Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II

“There’s that confounded old Monsoon!” said my diplomatist friend. “It’s all up if he sees us, and I can’t endure him.” Now I must remark that my friend, though very far from being insensible to the humouristic side of the Major’s character, was not always in the vein to enjoy it, and when he was so indisposed he could invest the object of his dislike with something little short of repulsiveness. “Promise me,” said he, as Monsoon came towards us, “you’ll not ask him to dinner.” Before I could make any reply the Major was shaking a hand of either of us, rapturously expatiating over his good luck at meeting us. “Mrs M.,” said he, “has got a dreary party of old ladies to dine with her, and I have come out here to find some pleasant fellow to join me and take our mutton-chop together.”

“We’re behind our time, Major,” said my friend. “Sorry to leave you so abruptly, but must push on. Eh, Lorrequer?” added he, to evoke corroboration from me.

“Harry says nothing of the kind,” interrupted Monsoon. “He says, or he’s going to say, ‘Major, I have a nice bit of dinner waiting for me at home, – enough for two, will feed three; or, if there be a shortcoming, nothing easier than to eke out the deficiency by another bottle of Moulton. Come along with us then, Monsoon, and we shall be all the merrier for your company.’” Repeating his words, “Come along, Monsoon,” I passed my arm within his, and away we went. For a moment my friend tried to get free and leave me, but I held him fast and carried him along in spite of himself. He was, however, so chagrined and provoked that till the moment we reached my door he never uttered a word nor paid the slightest attention to Monsoon, who talked away in a vein that occasionally made gravity all but impossible. Dinner proceeded drearily enough: the diplomatist’s stiffness never relaxed for a moment, and my own awkwardness damped all my attempts at conversation. Not so, however, Monsoon; he ate heartily, approved of everything, and pronounced my wine to be exquisite. He gave us a discourse upon sherry and the Spanish wines in general; told us the secret of the Amontillado flavour; and explained the process of browning, by boiling down wine, which some are so fond of in England. At last he diverged into anecdote. “I was once fortunate enough,” said he, “to fall upon some of that choice sherry from the St Lucas Luentas which is always reserved for royalty. It was a pale wine, delicious in the drinking, and leaving no more flavour in the mouth than a faint dryness that seemed to say, ‘Another glass.’ Shall I tell you how I came by it?” And scarcely pausing for a reply, he told the story of having robbed his own convoy and stolen the wine he was in charge of for safe conveyance.15 I wish I could give any, even the weakest, idea of how he narrated the incident, – the struggle between duty and temptation, and the apologetic tone of voice in which he explained that the frame of mind which succeeds to any yielding to seductive influences is often in the main more profitable to a man than is the vainglorious sense of having resisted a temptation. “Meekness is the mother of all virtues,” said he, “and there is no meekness without frailty.” The story, told as he told it, was too much for the diplomatist’s gravity, and at last he fairly roared with laughter. As soon as I myself recovered from the effects of his drollery I said, “Major, I have a proposition to make. Let me tell that story in print and I’ll give you five Naps.”

“Are you serious, Harry?” said he. “Is this on honour?”

“On honour assuredly,” I replied.

“Let me have the money down on the nail and I’ll give you leave to have me and my whole life, – every adventure that ever befell me, – ay, and if you like, every moral reflection that my experiences have suggested.”

“Done!” cried I. “I agree.”

“Not so fast,” said the diplomatist. “We must make a protocol of this: the high contracting parties must know what they give and what they receive. I’ll draw out the treaty.” He did so, at full length, on a sheet of that solemn blue-tinted paper dedicated to despatch purposes, duly setting forth the concession and the consideration. Each of us signed the document; it was witnessed and sealed; and Monsoon pocketed my five Napoleons, filling a bumper to any success the bargain might bring me. This document, along with my university degree, my commission in a militia regiment, and a vast amount of letters (very interesting to me), were seized by the Austrian authorities on the way from Como to Florence in the August of 1847, being deemed part of a treasonable correspondence – purposely allegorical in form, – and they were never restored to me. I freely own that I’d give all the rest willingly to repossess myself of the Monsoon treaty. To show that I did not entirely fail in making my “Major” resemble the great original from whom I copied, I may mention that he was speedily recognised by the Marquis of Londonderry, the well-known Sir Charles Stuart of the Peninsular campaign. “I know that fellow well,” said he. “He once sent me a challenge, and I had to make him a very humble apology. The occasion was this: I had been out with a single aide-de-camp to make a reconnaissance in front of Victor’s division; and to avoid attracting any notice, we covered over our uniform with two common grey overcoats which reached to the feet, effectually concealing our rank. Scarcely, however, had we topped a hill which commanded a view of the French, when a shower of shells flew over and around us. Amazed to think that we had been so quickly noticed, I looked around me and discovered, quite close in my rear, your friend Monsoon with what he called his staff, – a popinjay set of rascals dressed out in green and gold, and with more plumes and feathers than ever the general staff boasted. Carried away by momentary passion at the failure of my reconnaissance, I burst out with some insolent allusion to the harlequin assembly which had drawn the French fire upon us. Monsoon saluted me respectfully and retired without a word; but I had scarcely reached my quarters when a ‘friend’ of his waited upon me with a message, – a categorical message it was, too: ‘It must be a meeting or an ample apology.’ I made the apology – a most full one – for the ‘Major’ was right and I had not a fraction of reason to sustain me. We have been the best of friends ever since.” I had heard the story before this from Monsoon, but I did not then accord it all the faith that was its due; and I admit that the accidental corroboration of this one event very often served to puzzle me afterwards, when I listened to tales in which the Major seemed to be a second Munchausen. It might be that he was amongst the truest and most matter-of-fact of historians. May the reader be not less embarrassed than myself! is my sincere, if not very courteous, prayer. I have no doubt that often in recounting some strange incident – a personal experience it always was – he was himself carried away by the credulity of his hearers and the amount of interest he could excite in them, rather than by the story. He possessed the true narrative style, and there was a marvellous instinct in the way in which he would vary a tale to suit the tastes of an audience, while his moralisings were almost certain to take the tone of a humouristic quiz of the company. Though fully aware that I was availing myself of the contract that delivered him into my hands, and though he dined with me two or three times a-week, he never lapsed into any allusion to his appearance in print, and ‘O’Malley’had been published some weeks when he asked me to lend him “that last thing” – he forgot the name of it – I was writing.16

“‘Major Monsoon’ was Commissary-General Mayne… When he entered a town,” Lever declared, “he hastened to the nearest church and appropriated whatever plate or costly reliquaries he could seize. He once had a narrow escape from hanging, after having actually undergone a drum-head court-martial. When the allied armies entered Paris, Wellington was of course the constant figure of attraction. At a grand fête he took wine (or went through the form of it) with any officer whose face was remembered by him. The Commissary-General was a guest at this entertainment, and Wellington’s eye rested on him. Up went the hand and glass as a signal, and bows were wellnigh exchanged, when the Duke thundered out, ‘Oh! I thought I had hanged you at Badajoz. Never mind, I’ll do it next time. I drink your health.’” – Fitzpatrick’s ‘Life of Lever.’ Of Frank Webber I have said elsewhere that he was one of my earliest friends, my chum at college, and in the very chambers in Old Trinity where I have located Charles O’Malley. He was a man of the highest order of abilities, with a memory that never forgot; but he was ruined and run to seed by the idleness that came of a discursive uncertain temperament. Capable of anything – he spent his youth in follies and eccentricities, every one of which, however, gave indications of a mind inexhaustible in resources and abounding in devices and contrivances. Poor fellow! he died young; and perhaps it is better it should have been so. Had he lived to a later day, he would most probably have been found a foremost leader of Fenianism; and from what I knew of him, I can say that he, would have been a more dangerous enemy to English rule than any of those dealers in the petty larceny of rebellion we have lately seen amongst us. Of Mickey Free I had not one, but one thousand, types. Indeed I am not quite sure that in my late visit to Dublin, I did not chance on a living specimen of the “Free” family, much readier in repartee, quicker at an apropos, and droller in illustration, than my own Mickey. The fellow was “boots” at a great hotel in Sackville Street; and he afforded me more amusement and some heartier laughs than it has always been my fortune to enjoy in a party of wits. His criticisms on my sketches of Irish character were about the shrewdest and the best I ever listened to; and that I am not bribed to this opinion by any flattery, I may remark that they were often more severe than complimentary, and that he hit every blunder of image, every mistake in figure, of my peasant characters with an acuteness and correctness which made me very grateful to know that his daily occupations were limited to the blacking of boots and not to the “polishing off” of authors. I should like to own that ‘Charles O’Malley’ was the means of according me a more heartfelt glow of satisfaction, a more gratifying sense of pride, than anything I ever have written. My brother, at that time the rector of an Irish parish, once forwarded to me a letter from a lady, unknown to him, who had heard that he was the brother of “Harry Lorrequer,” and who addressed him not knowing where a letter might be directed to myself. The letter was the grateful expression of a mother, who said: “I am the widow of a field-officer, and with an only son, for whom I obtained a presentation to Woolwich; but seeing in my boy’s nature certain traits of nervousness and timidity which induced me to hesitate on embarking him in the career of a soldier, I became very unhappy, and uncertain which course to decide upon. While in this state of uncertainty I chanced to make him a birthday present of ‘Charles O’Malley,’ the reading of which seemed to act like a charm on his whole character, inspiring him with a passion for movement and adventure, and spiriting him on to an eager desire for a military life. Seeing that this was no passing enthusiasm but a decided and determined bent, I accepted the cadetship for him, and his career has been not alone distinguished as a student, but one which has marked him out for an almost hare-brained courage and for a dash and heroism that give high promise for his future. Thank your brother for me,” she continued, – “a mother’s thanks for the welfare of an only son, and say how I wish that my best wishes for him and his could recompense him for what I owe him.” I humbly hope that it may not be imputed to me as unpardonable vanity the recording of this incident. It gave me intense pleasure when I heard it; and now, as I look back on it, it invests the story for myself with an interest which nothing else that I have written can afford me.

‘JACK HINTON’

The favour with which the public received ‘Charles O’Malley,’ and the pleasant notices forwarded to me by my publisher, gave me great courage; and when asked if I could be ready by a certain date with a new story, I never hesitated to say Yes. My first thought was that in the campaign of the Great Napoleon I might find what would serve as a “pendant” to the story I had just completed, and that by making – as there would be no impropriety in doing – an Irishman a soldier of France, I could still have on my side certain sympathies of my reader which would not so readily attach to a foreigner. I surrounded myself at once with all the histories and memoirs I could find of the Consulate and the Empire; and, so far as I could, withdrew my mind from questions of home interest, and lived entirely amidst the mighty events that began at Marengo and ended at Waterloo. Whether I failed to devise such a narrative as I needed, or whether – and I suspect this must have been the real reason – I found that the vast-ness of the theme overpowered me, I cannot at this distance of time remember. But so it was, that I found much time had slipped over, and that beyond some few notes and some scattered references, I had actually done nothing; and my publisher had applied to me for the title of my story for advertisement before I had begun or written a line of it. Some disparaging remarks on Ireland and Irishmen in the London press, not very unfrequent at the time, nor altogether obsolete now, had provoked me at the moment; and the sudden thought occurred of a reprisal by showing the many instances in which the Englishman would almost of necessity mistake and misjudge my countrymen, and that out of these blunders and misapprehensions, situations might arise that, if welded into a story, might be made to be amusing. I knew that there was not a class nor a condition in Ireland which had not marked differences from the correlative rank in England; and that not only the Irish squire, the Irish priest, and the Irish peasant were unlike anything in the larger island, but that the Dublin professional man, the official, and the shopkeeper, had traits and distinctions essentially their own. I had frequently heard opinions pronounced on Irish habits which I had easily traced to that quizzing habit of my countrymen, who never can deny themselves the enjoyment of playing on the credulity of the traveller, – all the more eagerly when they see his note-book taken out to record their shortcomings and absurdities. These thoughts suggested ‘Jack Hinton,’ and led me to turn from my intention to follow the French arms, or rather to postpone the plan, for it had got too strong a hold on me to be utterly abandoned. I have already acknowledged that I strayed from the path I had determined on, and, with very little reference to my original intention, suffered my hero to take his chance among the natives. Indeed I soon found him too intensely engaged in the cares of self-preservation to have much time or taste for criticism on his neighbours. I have owned elsewhere that for Mr Paul Rooney, Father Tom Loftus, Bob Mahon, O’Grady, Tipperary Joe, and even Corny Delaney, I had not to draw on imagination, but I never yet heard one correct guess as to the originals. While on this theme, I may recall an incident which occurred about three years after the story was published, and which, if only for the trait of good-humour it displayed, is worth remembering. I was making a little rambling tour through Ireland with my wife, following for the most part the sea-board, and only taking such short cuts inland as should bring us to some spot of especial interest. We journeyed with our own horses, and consequently rarely exceeded five-and-twenty or thirty miles in a day. While I was thus refreshing many an old memory, and occasionally acquiring some new experience, the ramble interested me much. It was in the course of this almost capricious journey – for we really had nothing like a plan – we reached the little town of Gort, where, to rest our horses, we were obliged to remain a day. There was not much to engage attention in the place. It was perhaps less marked by poverty than most Irish towns of its class, and somewhat cleaner and more orderly; but the same distinctive signs were there of depression, the same look of inertness that one remarks almost universally through the land. In strolling half listlessly about on the outskirts of the town, we were overtaken by a heavy thunder-storm, and were driven to take shelter in a little shop where a number of other people had also sought refuge. As we stood there, an active-looking but elderly man in the neat black of an ecclesiastic, and with a rosette in his hat, politely addressed us, and proposed that, instead of standing there in the crowd, we would accept the hospitality of his lodging, which was in the same house, till such time as the storm should have passed over. His manner, his voice, and his general appearance convinced me he was a dignitary of our Church. I thanked him at once for his courtesy, and accepted his offer. He proceeded to show us the way, and we entered a very comfortably-furnished sitting-room, where a pleasant fire was burning, and sat down well pleased with our good fortune. While we chatted freely over the weather and the crops, some chance expression escaped me to show that I had regarded him as a clergyman of the Established Church. He at once, but with peculiar delicacy, hastened to correct my mistake, and introduce himself as the Roman Catholic Dean O’Shaughnessy. “I am aware whom I am speaking to,” added he, pronouncing my name. Before I could express my surprise at being recognised where I had not one acquaintance, he explained that he had read – in some local paper which described our mode of travelling – of my being in the neighbourhood, and this led him at once to guess our identity. After a few flattering remarks on the pleasure something of mine had afforded him, he said, “You are very hard upon us, Mr Lever. You never let us off easily, but I assure you for all that we bear you no ill-will. There is a strong national tie between us, and we can stand a good deal of quizzing for the sake of that bond.” I knew he was alluding to his order; and when I said something – I cannot remember what – about the freedoms that fiction led to, he stopped, saying, “Well, well! the priests are not angry with you after all, if it wasn’t for one thing.”

“Oh, I know,” cried I, “that stupid story of Father D’Array and the Pope.”17

“No, no, not that; we laughed at that as much as any Protestant of you all. What we could not bear so well was an ugly remark you made in ‘Harry Lorrequer,’ where – when there was a row at a wake and the money was scattered over the floor – you say that the priest gathered more than his share because – and here was the bitterness – old habit had accustomed him to scrape up his corn in low places! Now, Mr Lever, that was not fair; it was not generous, surely!” The good temper and the gentleman-like quietness of the charge made me very uncomfortable at the time; and now, after many years, I recall the incident to show the impression it made on me – the only atonement I can make for the flippancy. I had begun this story of ‘Jack Hinton’ at Brussels, but on a proposition made to me by the publisher and proprietor of ‘The Dublin University Magazine’ to take the editorship of that periodical, I determined to return to Ireland. To do this, I was not alone to change my abode and my country, but to alter the whole destiny of my life. I was at the time a practising physician attached to the British Legation, with the best practice of any Englishman in the place, a most pleasant society, and, what I valued not less than them all, the intimacy of the most agreeable and companionable man18 I ever knew in my life, whose friendship I have never ceased to treasure with pride and affection.

I dedicated to him my first book, and it is with deep gratitude and pleasure I recall him while I give the last touches to these volumes. There is one character in this story to which imagination contributed scarcely anything in the portraiture, though I do not pretend to say that the situations in which I have placed him are derived from facts. Tipperary Joe was a real personage; and if there are, among my readers, any who remember the old coaching days between Dublin and Kilkenny, they cannot fail to recall the curious figure, clad in a scarlet hunting-coat and black velvet cap, who used, at the stage between Carlow and the Royal Oak, to emerge from some field beside the road, and, after a trot of a mile or so beside the horses, crawl up at the back of the coach and over the roof, collecting what he called his rent from the passengers, – a very humble tribute generally, but the occasion of a good deal of jest and merriment, not diminished if by any accident an English traveller were present, who could neither comprehend the relations between Joe and the gentlemen, nor the marvellous freedom with which this poor ragged fellow discussed the passengers and their opinions. Joe – I must call him so, for his real name has escaped me – once came to see me in Trinity College, and was curious to visit the Chapel, the Library, and the Examination Hall. I will not pretend that I undertook my office of cicerone without some misgivings, for though I was prepared to endure all the quizzings of my friends and acquaintances, I was not quite at my ease as to how the authorities – the dons, as they are called elsewhere – would regard this singular apparition within academic precincts. Joe’s respectful manner, and an air of interest that bespoke how much the place engaged his curiosity, soon set me at my ease; while the ready tact with which he recognised and uncovered to such persons as held rank or station at once satisfied me that I was incurring no risk whatever in my office as guide. The kitchen and the sight of those gigantic spits, on which a whole series of legs of mutton were turning slowly, overcame all the studied reserve of his manner, and he burst into a most enthusiastic encomium on the merits of an institution so admirably suited to satisfy human requirements. When he learned, from what source I do not know, that I had put him in a book, he made it – not unreasonably, perhaps – the ground of a demand on my purse; and if the talented artist who had illustrated the tale had been accessible to him, I suspect that he, too, would have had to submit to the levy of a blackmail, all the more heavily as Joe was by no means pleased with a portrait which really only self-flattery could have objected to. Hablot K. Browne never saw him, and yet in his sketch of him standing to say his “good-bye” to Jack Hinton at Kingston, he has caught the character of his figure and the moping lounge of his attitude to perfection. Indeed, though there is no resemblance in the face to Joe, the pose of the head and the position of the limbs recall him at once. I have already said elsewhere that the volume amused me while I was writing it. Indeed I had not at the time exhausted, if I had even tapped, the cask of a buoyancy of temperament which carried me along through my daily life in the sort of spirit one rides a fresh horse over a swelling sward. If this confession will serve to apologise for the want of studied coherency in the narrative, and the reckless speed in which events succeed events throughout, I shall deem myself indebted to the generous indulgence of my readers.

‘THE O’DONOGHUE.’

It was in wandering through the south of Ireland I came to visit the wild valley of Glennesk – a scene of loneliness and desolation with picturesque beauty I have never seen surpassed. The only living creature I met for miles of the way was a very old man, whose dress and look bespoke extreme poverty, but who, on talking with him, I discovered to be the owner of four cows that were grazing on the rocky sides of the cliff. He had come some miles, he told me, to give his cows the spare herbage that cropped up amongst the granite boulders. As I had seen no house or trace of habitation as I came along, I was curious to know where he lived, but his answer, as he pointed to the mountain, was, “There, alone,” and this with evident unwillingness to be more freely communicative. Though not caring to be interrogated, nor, like most Irish peasants, much inclined to have a talk with a stranger, he made no scruple to ask for alms, and pleaded his wretched rags – and they were very miserable – as a proof of his poverty. I did not think that the pittance I gave him exactly warranted me in asking how the owner of the cows we saw near us could be in that condition of want he represented; at all events I preferred not to dash the pleasure I was giving him by the question. We parted, therefore, on good terms, but some miles farther on in the glen I learned from a woman, who was “bulling” her clothes in the river, that “ould Mat,” as she called him, was one of the most well-to-do farmers in that part of the country; that he had given his daughters, of whom he had several, good marriage portions, and that his son was a thriving attorney in the town of Tralee. “Maybe yer honor’s heard of him,” said the woman, – “Tim O’Donoghue.” It was no new thing to me to know the Irish peasant in his character as a hoarder and a saver. There is no one trait so indicative of the Celt as acquisitiveness, nor does Eastern story contain a man more given to the castle-building that grows out of some secret hoard – however small – than Paddy. He is to add half an acre to his potato-garden, or to buy another pig, or to send the “gossoon” to a school in the town, or to pay his passage to New York. This tendency to construct a future, so strong in the Irish nature, has its rise in a great reliance on what he feels to be the goodness of God: a firm conviction that all his struggles are watched and cared for, and that every little turn of good fortune has been given him by some especial favour, lies deep in his nature, and suggests an amount of hope to him which a less sanguine spirit could never have conceived. While I thought over the endless contrarieties of this mysterious national character, where good and evil eternally lay side by side, I wondered within myself whether the new civilisation of latter years was likely to be successful in dealing with men whose temperaments and manners were so unlike the English, or were we right in extinguishing the old feudalism that bound the peasant to the landlord, ere we had prepared each for the new relations of mere gain and loss that were in nature to subsist between them? Between the great families – the old houses of the land and the present race of proprietors – there lay a couple of generations of men who, with all the traditions and many of the pretensions of birth and fortune, had really become in ideas, modes of life, and habits, very little above the peasantry about them. They inhabited, it is true, the “great house,” and they were in name the owners of the soil, but, crippled by debt and overborne by mortgages, they subsisted in a shifty conflict with their creditors, rack-renting their miserable tenants to maintain it. Survivors of everything but pride of family, they stood there like stumps, blackened and charred, the last remnants of a burnt forest, their proportions attesting the noble growth that preceded them. What would the descendants of these men prove when, destitute of fortune and helpless, they were thrown upon a world that actually regarded them as blamable for the unhappy condition of Ireland? Would they stand by “their order” in so far as to adhere to the cause of the gentry? Or would they share the feelings of the peasant to whose lot they had been reduced, and charging on the Saxons the reverses of their fortune, stand forth as rebels to England? Here was much food for speculation and something for a story. For an opening scene what could I desire finer than the gloomy grandeur and the rugged desolation of Glenflesk! And if some patches of bright verdure here and there gleamed amidst the barrenness, – if a stray sunbeam lit up the granite cliffs and made the heather glow, – might there not be certain reliefs of human tenderness and love to show that no scene in which man has a part is utterly destitute of those affections whose home is the heart? I had now got my theme and my locality. For my name I took ‘The O’Donoghue’; it had become associated in my mind with Glenflesk, and would not be separated from it. Here, then, in one word, is the history of this book. If the performance bears but slight relation to the intention, – if, indeed, my story seems to have little reference to what suggested it, – it will only be another instance of a waywardness which has beset me through life, and left me never sure when I started for Norway that I might not find myself in Naples. It is not necessary, perhaps, for me to say that no character in this tale was drawn from a model. I began the story, in so far as a few pages went, at a little inn at Killarney, and I believe I stole the name of Kerry O’Leary from one of the boatmen on the lake; but, so far as I am aware, it is the only theft in the book. I believe that the very crude notions of an English tourist for the betterment of Ireland, and some exceedingly absurd comments he made me on the habits of people which an acquaintanceship of three weeks enabled him to pronounce on, provoked me to draw the character of Sir Marmaduke; but I can declare that the traveller aforesaid only acted as tinder to a mine long prepared, and afforded me a long-sought-for opportunity – not for exposing, for I did not go that far, but – for touching on the consummate effrontery with which a mere passing stranger can settle the difficulties and determine the remedies for a country in which the resident sits down overwhelmed by the amount, and utterly despairing of a solution. I have elsewhere recorded that I have been blamed for the fate I reserved for Kate O’Donoghue, and that she deserved something better than to have her future linked to one who was so unworthy of her in many ways. Till I re-read the story after a long lapse of years, I had believed that this charge was better founded than I am now disposed to think it. First of all, judging from an Irish point of view, I do not consent to regard Mark O’Donoghue as a bad fellow. The greater number of his faults were the results of neglected training, irregular – almost utter want of – education, and the false position of an heir to a property so swamped by debt as to be valueless. I will not say these are the ingredients which go to the formation of a very regular life or a very perfect husband, but they might all of them have made a worse character than Mark’s if he had not possessed some very sterling qualities as a counterbalance. Secondly, I am not of those who think that the married life of a man is but the second volume of his bachelor existence. I rather incline to believe that he starts afresh in life under circumstances very favourable to the development of whatever is best, and to the extinguishment of what is worst in him. That is, of course, where he marries well, and where he allies himself to qualities of temper and tastes which will serve as the complement, or, at times, the correctives, of his own. Now Kate O’Donoghue would instance what I mean in this case. Then I keep my best reason for the last: they liked each other. This, if not a guarantee for their future happiness, is still the best “martingale” the game of marriage admits of. I am free to own that the book I had in my head to write was a far better one than I have committed to paper, but as this is a sort of event which has happened to better men than myself, I bear it as one of the accidents that authorship is heir to. A French critic – one far too great to have his dicta despised – has sneered at my making a poor ignorant peasant child find pleasure in the resonance of a Homeric verse; but I could tell him of barefooted boys in the South, running errands for a scanty subsistence, with a knowledge of classical literature which would puzzle many a grown student to cope with.