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CHARACTERS. 



/Inecdotcs of Dr. Paul Hiffernan, 

 Jrotn the European Magazine. 



*HIS author may be well reck- 

 oned amongst the extraordi- 

 naries of modern literature ; not 

 that he excelled his contemporaries 

 cither in genius or learning : he de- 

 rives this character from his eccen- 

 tricities, and to this he was fairly 

 entitled from the peculiarity of his 

 famihar habits, his studies, and his 

 writings. 



Dr. Paul Hiffernan was born in 

 the county of Dublin, in the year 

 1749, and received his early edu- 

 cation at a grammar school in that 

 county. From this, at a proper 

 age, he was removed to a semi- 

 nary in Dublin, where the classics 

 were taught in good repute, and 

 where he was educated for the 

 profession of a Popish priest, his 

 parents being of the Roman Catho- 

 lic persuasion. 



For the better finishing his edu- 

 cation in this line, he was after- 

 wards sent to a college in the south 

 of France, where he became ac- 

 quainted with several students, some 

 of whom were afterwards much re- 

 nowned in the Republic of Let- 

 ters, and particularly the celebrated 

 Rousseau and Marmontel. The first 

 of these, he used to observe, gave 

 at that time no promise of his fu- 

 ture greatness, being very modest 

 andiiiraplc in his mauncrtt, and more 



fond of retirement and contempla- 

 tion, than either study or conversa- 

 tion. 



Of Marmontel he used to speak 

 in great praise. He was studious, 

 inquisitive, and hvely, was the very 

 soul of his class for conviviahty, 

 good humour, and wit ; and scarce 

 a day passed without his producing 

 a sonnet, an epigram, or a bon mot, 

 which gained him great applause, 

 and prophesied his future reputa- 

 tion. 



He remained at this college, and 

 at Paris, for near seventeen years, 

 which, though it gave him an op- 

 portunity of speaking and writing 

 the French language with fluency 

 and purity, accounts in some re- 

 spect for his having so bad a style 

 as an English writer, he having left 

 his own country at so early an age, 

 that he insensibly imbibed the 

 French idioms in preference to those 

 of his own. 



Most of the English and Irish stu- 

 dents at this college being edu- 

 cated for the profession of physic, 

 our author followed the same track ; 

 and, though contrary to the design 

 of his parents, who intended him 

 for a Romish priest, he took out his 

 Bachelor's degree of physic, and 

 soon after returned to Dublin, in 

 order to practise his profession. 



Why he did not fulfil his resolu- 

 tion, on his arrival in Dublin, can 

 be readily accounted for by any 



person 



