or
Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you rather
admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very differently when
you come to thirty years or more, and see other men doing what you cannot
do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And then, if you are a
reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for what it does not give," as
thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:--

"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in geological
information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and worthless, for his
facts are not borne out by any authority, and he gives us no information
about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! our country, our green and
beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" and so forth.

It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not only
did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom Burke,"
that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of authors. He
edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of wading through
waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which people are permitted
to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust there is in it to how few
pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually and politely. The office cat
could edit the volunteered contributions of many a magazine, but Lever
was even more casual and careless than an experienced office cat. He
grew crabbed, and tried to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful
parody "Phil Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever.

Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style (Mr.
Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so entertaining. He
actually published a criticism of Beyle, of Stendhal, that psychological
prig, the darling of culture and of M. Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on
Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He nearly fought a duel with the gentleman
who is said to have suggested Mr. Pecksniff to Dickens! Yet they call
his early novels improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a
combat between Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely,
resembled the father of Cherry and Merry.

Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in
Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his life. He saw the Italian
revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is plain from
one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." He wrote it at
the same time as "The Daltons," and h