assure the reader that I took very good care not to dispel that
agreeable delusion. Indeed, at this time, I was as great a young
literary coxcomb as ever lived, my vanity being high and inflated
exactly in proportion to my ignorance, which was also of the purest
water. This vanity, however, resulted as much from my position and
circumstances as from any strong disposition to be vain on my part.
It was generated by the ignorance of the people, and their extreme
veneration for any thing in the shape of superior knowledge. In fact,
they insisted that I knew every earthly subject, because I had been a
couple of years at Latin, and was designed for a priest. It was useless
to undeceive men who would not be convinced, so I accordingly gave them,
as they say, "the length of their tether;" nay, to such, purpose did I
ply them with proofs of it, that my conversation soon became as fine a
specimen of pedantic bombast as ever was uttered. Not a word under
six feet could come out of my lips, even of English; but as the best
English, after all, is but commonplace, I peppered them with vile
Latin, and an occasional verse in Greek, from St. John's Gospel, which
I translated for them into a wrong meaning, with an air of lofty
superiority that made them turn up their eyes with wonder. I was then,
however, but one of a class which still exists, and will continue to do
so until a better informed generation shall prevent those who compose it
from swaggering about in all the pompous pride of young impostors,
who boast of knowing "the seven languages." The reader will find an
illustration of this in the sketch of "Denis O'Shaughnessy going to
Maynooth."

In the meantime, I was unconsciously but rapidly preparing myself for
a position in Irish literature, which I little dreamt I should ever
occupy. I now mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until
indulgence in them became the predominant passion of mv youth. Throwing