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LIFE OF CHARLES HAL' DAY. X.\i
had collected, and that they were open to all. The Greeks
added Plutarch repaired at pleasure to the galleries and
porticoes as to the retreat of the Muses. So that his house
was in fact an asylum and senate-house to all the Greeks
that visited Rome.
And this too was true as regarded Haliday. For there
was no one engaged upon any subject that could be illus-
trated from his collection but he received him, discussed it
intelligently, and lent what was applicable
from his col-
lection.
He was Lucullus-like also in his reception of f oreigners of
merit, considering it as a kind of public duty to show them
the hospitality of his house.
My intimacy with Charles Haliday began about the year Beginning of
*
1850, the time when at the request of his colleagues in the
Holiday^
commission for preserving and improving the port of
Dublin, he undertook to collect materials for a history of
the harbour, principally with a view to trace the progress
of improvement in the navigable channel of the Liffey, and
to preserve some record of the plans proposed, and of the
effect of works executed for deepening the river, and ren-
dering the port commodious for shipping. 1 I had known him
for many years, as he was tenant to Viscount Clifden for his
house on Arran-quay, and my father, my grandfather, and I
had been during seventy years agents in succession of that
family for their properties in the city and county of Dublin,
and counties of Meath and Kildare. But, to say the truth,
I had at first no liking for Haliday, because of his haughty
mien and distant manners. The Agar Ellises, Viscounts Clifden,
derived through Sir John and Sir William Ellis, a valuable
leasehold interest from the Corporation of Dublin along
Arran-quay, Elli.s's-quay, Pembroke-quay, and thence westward
to the Phoenix Park. The leases were some of them
1 See the opening passage of his Irish Academy, volume xxii., Polite
essay on "The Ancient Name of Literature.* 'Read June 12, 1855.
Dublin," Translations of the Royal