sage, and marvelled how Lever knew certain
things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the humours of
war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is alone in the
literature of the world, but if ever there came a later Falstaff, Monsoon
was the man. And where have you such an Irish Sancho Panza as Micky
Free, that independent minstrel, or such an Irish Di Vernon as Baby
Blake? The critics may praise Lever's thoughtful and careful later
novels as they will, but "Charles O'Malley" will always be the pattern of
a military romance. The anecdote of "a virtuous weakness" in
O'Shaughnessy's father's character would alone make the fortune of many a
story. The truth is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to
leave off reading it, and get on with the account of Lever.

His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable
notice from the press. This may have been because it was so popular; but
Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at the papers. When
he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine there, he was more fiercely
assailed than ever. It is difficult for an Irishman to write about the
Irish, or for a Scot to write about the Scottish, without hurting the
feelings of his countrymen. While their literary brethren are alive they
are not very dear to the newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and
thus Jeffrey was more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the
Irish press, it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met
Lever in Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's
military propensities have been objected to strongly by his squeamish
Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in Ireland who is
fond of military spectacles? Why does the _Nation_ publish these
edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it that prates about
the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy, and the Irish at
Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr. O'Connell, like a wise
rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to flatter the national military
passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?"

Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of letters, and
a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest Doolan and his
friends, were not successful. That is the humour of it.

Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones
because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," n