Barry had a choice of religions; his father was a protestant, his mother a catholic, and her creed he adopted, as she had probably taken most pains to form his opinions; yet, although this early pre-disposition was confirmed by his own inquiries, for he had made himself by intense investigation, a profound polemic, he appears at one period to have vaccillated, like most other young men, in his religious opinions, and had nearly enrolled himself among that illuminated class of philosophers who modestly deny every thing which they are unable to comprehend; Butler's Analogy of Religion, put into his hands by Burke, rescued him from the gulph of infidelity; and it had been well if he had imbibed the moderation together with the conviction, which breathes through that admirable treatise; but enthusiastic in all things, he rushed from doubt to bigotry, which in after-life, was confirmed to such a pitch of inveteracy, that he was once heard to consign Pope to everlasting perdition, for the heterodox liberality of his Universal Prayer.
At the age of two and twenty, Barry came to Dublin, and exhibited, at the Society of Arts in that capital, an historical picture which he had recently painted, on the subject of a tradition relative to the first arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland. This picture, it may be presumed, was sufficiently defective, but Achilles when brandishing the sword in petticoats, though not, perhaps, evincing all the masterly management, which he afterwards acquired on that instrument, still shewed himself Achilles; and Barry, in this his first appeal to the public, exhibited such proofs of the divinity within him, as induced Burke to take him under his immediate patronage.—His, however, was not that capricious patronage, which delights its vanity with having caught a genius, and discards it as soon as caught, to angle for others. Shortly afterwards, he brought Barry with him to England, provided him. introductions and employments, and in the ensuing year sent him to Rome.
