Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/307

 996 Jtl CHARLES BYRNE WAs a man, whose powers ever might be truly termed great, and at times striking. He was exactly eight feet high, and after his decease, which occurred on the 1st of June, 1783, he measured eight feet four inches. ' His death is said to have been precipitated by excessive drinking, to which he was always addicted, but morep ticularly since his loss of all his property, which he had invested in a single bank note of 7001. In his last moments (it has been said) he requested that his ponderous remains might be thrown into the sea, in order that his bones might be placed far out of the reach of the chirargical fraternity; in consequence of which, the body was shipped on board a vessel to be conveyed to the Downs, to be sunk in twenty fathom water. The veracity of this report, however, has been ques- tioned, as it is well known at the time of Byrne's decease he excited a great deal of publie curiosity, and somebody is suspected of having invented the above, to amuse themselves, and the world at large. The following story has been related of many tall men, but it certainly originated in the individual now before us; Being necessarily obliged to walk out very early in the morning, or not at all, he used to startle the watchmen, who at that hour were parading the streets, by taking of the tops of the lamps, and lighting his pipe at the flame within. CHARLES BYRNE WAs an excellent miniature painter, and born in Dublin, in which city he died about the year 1810. He practised during a short time in London.-With a superior under- standing and much benevolence of heart, he mingled a dash of eccentricity, which not unfrequently drew on him the animadversion of his friends, who mistook that for