Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh.

  • James Joseph Walsh
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. / James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    far as possible also the literary man should confine him- self to the other occupation. His brother wrote in his obituary in the Dublin Freeman’s Journal: “ During the interval between 1857 and 1865 he resided first in Cork and afterwards in Dublin, and supported himself partly by writing and partly by the prizes and scholarships of the college, for he never competed for a scholarship that he did not win. It would be instructive to describe in detail the sort of life he led from about 1854 till he took his degree in 1865—instructive to these thousands of young people who are under the delusion that mere natural abilities will enable them to spring upwards without trouble or toil. During these ten or eleven years the career of the rising poet was a life of in- cessant labour—studying the ordinary subjects of his college course, and the extraordinary subjects for prizes and scholar- ships. But it was withal a pleasant life. For a time while in Dublin devoting himself to medi- cal practice, as far as it came to him, and to medical study for which the Irish capital has at all times during the last century furnished magnificent opportunities, Dr. Joyce still continued to cultivate the Muses and de- vote himself to literature. For a time he was professor of English Literature at the preparatory college of the Catholic University in Dublin. This was just after New- man’s time at the famous institution. Joyce was scarcely more than a boy when he began to display his poetic ability by the brilliant rendition into verse of many of the old Irish legends and stories which in his hands became very striking ballads that appeared in various Irish magazines and newspapers. He was for a time a leading contributor to “The Harp,” a Cork maga- zine, though he did not write under his own name, but under the nom de plume Feardana. He was also a con- tributor to the “ Dublin Hibernian Magazine” and to the
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