to visit Ireland in my days of greatness. I wish I had the
money now. But what's the use of regret? I have had many a harder bed
than that I shall sleep on to-night, and many a scantier meal than
honest Phil Murphy gave me on the evening I ran away from school. So six
weeks' was all the schooling I ever got. And I say this to let parents
know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in
the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor,
whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street,
in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at 'Button's
Coffeehouse'); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural
philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping,
the small-sword, the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the
manners of an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for
myself that Redmond Barry has seldom found his equal. 'Sir,' said I to
Mr. Johnson, on the occasion I allude to--he was accompanied by a Mr.
Buswell of Scotland, and I was presented to the club by a Mr. Goldsmith,
a countryman of my own--'Sir,' said I, in reply to the schoolmaster's
great thundering quotation in Greek, 'you fancy you know a great deal
more than me, because you quote your Aristotle and your Pluto; but can
you tell me which horse will win at Epsom Downs next week?--Can you run
six miles without breathing?--Can you shoot the ace of spades ten times
without missing? If so, talk about Aristotle and Pluto to me.'

'D'ye knaw who ye're speaking to?' roared out the Scotch gentleman, Mr.
Boswell, at this.

'Hold your tongue, Mr. Boswell,' said the old schoolmaster. 'I had no
right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered me very
well.'

'Doctor,' says I, looking waggishly at him, 'do you know ever a rhyme
for ArisTOTLE?'

'Port, if you plaise,' says Mr. Goldsmith, laughing. And we had SIX
RHYMES FOR ARISTOTLE before we left the coffee-house that evening. It
became a regular joke afterwards when I told the story, and at 'White's'
or the 'Cocoa-tree' you would hear the wags say, 'Waiter, bring me one
of Captain Barry's rhymes for Aristotle.' Once, when I was in liquor at
the latter place, young Dick Sheridan called me a great Staggerite, a
joke which I could never understand. But I am wandering from my story,
and must get back to home, and dear old Ireland again.

I have made acquaintance with the best in the