e did not sign it. The reviewers
praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed work, rejoicing that
Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, and that a new Irish
author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming to eclipse him. In short,
he eclipsed himself, and he did not like it. His right hand was jealous
of what his left hand did. It seems odd that any human being, however
dull and envious, failed to detect Lever in the rapid and vivacious
adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," hero of one of the very best among
his books, a piece not unworthy of Dumas. "Con" was written after
midnight, "The Daltons" in the morning; and there can be no doubt which
set of hours was more favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked
"The Daltons" best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst
critics.

It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. Again he
drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper Carew"--which
contain some of his most powerful situations. When almost an old man,
sad, outworn in body, straitened in circumstances, he still produced
excellent tales in this later manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of
Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," and many more. These are the thoughts of a
tired man of the world, who has done and seen everything that such men
see and do. He says that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for
the grave and the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and
curly, and merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is
added that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his
affairs in perfect order.

Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he is not
prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Trollope, George
Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn back and read him once
more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy member of that famous
company--a romancer for boys and men.

THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a
fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle of St.
Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected in the
lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the
water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the
pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read "The Lay of
the Last Minstrel" over again, he