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Mr. Hutchinson’s resignation of the prime serjeantcy, and acceptance of the provostship of Trinity College, though highly gratifying to his classical ambition, was perhaps an imprudent step, because its results were not only injurious to his peace of mind, but preclusive to all hopes of further advancement in his profession, to the highest honours of which he would otherwise most probably have attained. The provostship was the capital prize in the lottery of learning which the fellows of the university considered peculiarly and exclusively the right of their order. The clergy could not have been more offended at seeing the archiepiscopal mitre placed on the head of a physician, nor the army at finding a churchman their commander-in-chief, than were the monks of Trinity, on viewing a professional alien, transferred from the forensic drudgeries of the bar, to the throne of learning, and ruling over men who had devoted their lives to literary and philosophical science in that college, whose honours and emoluments they considered as their legitimate inheritance. They, therefore, regarded not only with jealousy, but marked hostility, the appointment of Mr. Hutchinson; and this hostility was, after a short time, much exasperated by an attempt of the new provost to innovate on the profound gravity of alma mater, by introducing the manly exercises, and the polite accomplishments, as part of a system hitherto exclusively devoted to scholastic studies. Instead, therefore, of implicitly following the steps of his predecessors, he formed the project of rendering the university, a school of elegance as well as of literature and science. He knew that a very great majority of the students in the university had no views to professional pursuits, but were intended to move in life as private gentlemen, and were sent there by their parents merely to complete their classical studies, and occupy {352} their minds during the years of adolescence, in a manner suited to fit them for intercourse in their appropriate rank of society. To such students the polite accomplishments were more an object than abstruse learning or profound science. Those accomplishments, necessary to gentlemen! must be acquired at some time. The Irish metropolis has presented few, and but very detached and imperfect means for such acquirements. The academic grove, or park, at the rear of the university, allowed no other sources of recreation or amusement, but leaping and football; amusements which, however conducive to manly vigour, robust health, and rude agility, were but ill calculated to form gentlemanly manners, or graceful deportment. Horsemanship, fencing, music, drawing, dancing, and modern languages, had no place within the university indeed, they were almost proscribed within its walls; where every thing incompatible with the austerities of study was discountenanced by the fellows, and could only be acquired out of doors, at a very heavy expense from occasional and very incompetent masters, besides exposing the pupils to the risk of improper intercourse and vulgar association. This was a defect in the Irish system of academical education, sensibly felt by the parents of pupils. It had by no means escaped the notice of Mr. Hutchinson, and, to remedy that defect, was one of his first objects. He thought it much more eligible to afford to young gentlemen, within the walls of the university, the means of acquiring every accomplishment necessary to their rank, under approved and skilful masters, than leave them to seek at random elsewhere for irregular and imperfect instruction, or be exposed to the temptation of spending their hours of amusement at taverns, billiard rooms, or gaining tables; instead of attaching them to more eligible intercourse within their college, and occupying their minds, in the hours of relaxation from learned studies, by attractions really conducive to their personal improvement.

Indeed, the system of college discipline for a long series {353} of years previous to the presidency of Mr. Hutchinson, gave facilities for the wildest irregularity in the conduct of the students. The taverns, the billiard rooms, the gaming tables, and places of still worse resort, were crouded every night with young gownsmen, and even those who, obedient to the last summons of the ten o clock bell, hurried within the gates, for fear of lecture or rustication, afterwards, instead of retiring to bed, scaled the college walls, and returned to their nocturnal haunts, where, elevated with wine, they sallied forth from those orgies, scoured the streets in tipsey groupes, broke the lamps, beat the watchmen, attacked all whom they met, regardless of age, sex, or condition. They were at open war with the middling and lower orders of citizens; perpetually in midnight broils with butchers boys, city apprentices, and others, who frequently mustered in groups, either for self-defence, or to avenge some former outrage, upon the collegians, who made common cause against all classes but their own. Hevegh for Trinity! was at once their parole and watchword; and scarcely a night passed without some formidable fray, or mischievous frolic of their contrivance. But the night which followed their day of half-yearly examinations, was always a night of terror to all who ventured into the streets in the vicinity of the college. On this night they paid off their scores on the common enemy. They sallied forth from the taverns, heated by wine, and paraded the streets, with bludgeons and drawn swords, assaulting all they met. They attacked the theatre, knocked down the door-keepers, forced their way to the galleries, pit, boxes, and even to the stage and green-room; put the whole audience and corps dramatique to the route; and then rushed forth again to wreak their vengeance on their devoted enemies, the watchmen, chairmen, and hackney coachmen, and all who ventured to oppose their career. In these desperate conflicts, many wounds and fractures were interchanged, and not unfrequently lives lost. Such was the state of things up to the time of Mr. Hutchinson’s induction to the academic chair; and against this system {334} his best exertions were zealously directed. Measures of severity, fines, rustications, and expulsions, had proved ineffectual, - and, therefore, others were to be tried, apparently more indirect, but rapidly more effectual. Amongst these means was a project, for blending with the severer studies of the Parthenon, the more vigorous and attractive exercises of the Gymnasium. A riding-house was to be erected, for instructions in horsemanship; accomplished masters in fencing, dancing, and music, as well as in the modern European languages, were to be appointed; and a new era was about to dawn in the system of academical tuition; when the fellows, roused from their sound slumbers by the rumour, took the alarm at these unstatutable novelties, and those birds of Minerva, dreading the prophanation of her temple, and the consequent desertion of the goddess, emerged from the gloom of their ivied and hooted, in harsh concert, against their new provost; and his menaced arrangements. All the rusty armour of college wit was hastily furbished for the war, which immediately broke out against Mr. Hutchinson, in pasquinades, lampoons, epigrams, doggrel rhymes, pamphlets, essays, and newspaper squibs. The chief engineer of this ordnance was the late Doctor Patrick Duigenan, of virulent memory, then one of the senior fellows of the university; and no man ever proved himself more skilled in the pyrotechnics of vituperation. He was an accomplished master in the science of scurrility, and possessed all that happy coarseness and copia verborum, that might have well entitled him to a professor’s chair, had the eloquence of the fish-market formed a branch of study in the college system. The Hibernian Journal, a popular newspaper of the day, became, on this occasion, a gratuitous channel for the ridicule and sarcasm of the doctor and his partisans. He attacked the provost under the appellation of Prancer, allusive to the horsemanships dancing, fencing, &c. which he proposed to introduce; and these fugitive effusions were afterwards collected into a volume, published under the title of Pranceriana. {355}

One of the points of attack which lay most exposed to the doctor and the coadjutors was the eminent alacrity ediaoed by Mr. Hutchinson, to reap the full benefits of patronage from the government he had so eminently served; and to let no post of emolument pass him unasked, which could be had for solicitation, or acquired by address. He had for many years enjoyed the prime serjeantcy, a lucrative and honourable post in the law; he held, at the same time, the sinecure appointments of searcher, and packer, and comptroller, and guager, in the easterns; be had also the sinecure post of alnager of Ireland, which waft the collectorship of a duty on woollen cloths, typified by a leaden seal of his office affixed to each piece; and, at one time, when the tide of patronage flowed too tardily for his wishes, he became urgent with the then chief governor, Lord Townsend, who told him banteringly, that really nothing had fallen in of late worth his acceptance, but a majority of horse - never supposing that such a post could be acceptable to a law officer of the crown. Mr. Hutchinson, however, convinced him to the contrary, by actually soliciting the commission until something better should occur. It was granted, and, although he did not fill it in person, he found a friend to substitute, for certain adequate considerations. He was at the same time a privy councillor, and held the high office of secretary of state. There is on record a bon mot of Lord North’s, reflecting archly upon this propensity to place-seeking statesmen. The story says, that when Mr. Hutchinson once paid his devoirs at the royal levee, Mt St. James’s palace, and was introduced in the usual forms, his late majesty privately asked Lord North, who that gentleman was? The facetious minister answered, "that is your majesty’s principal secretary of state on the Irish establishment; a man, on whom, if your majesty were pleased to bestow both England and Ireland, he would ask for the Isle of Man for a potato garden."

The college was now split into hostile factions. [...]

The ensuing pages deal with the quarrel with Patrick Duigenan, author of Pranceriana, a squib directed at Hutchinson’s progressive ideas in Trinity College - especially the proposed gymnasium and riding-school. See full article in Biog. Hibernica (Vol. II, 1821) - in RICORSO Library > Criticism > History > Legacy - Richard Ryan via index or as as attached.