is that he is the nearest equivalent in Irish literature, or in English
either, to the marvellous faculty of D'Artagnan's creator. He has the
same exuberance, the same inexhaustible supply of animal spirits, of
invention that is always spirited, of wit that goes off like fireworks.
He delighted a whole generation of readers, and one reader at least in
this generation he still delights; but I own that to enjoy him you must
have mastered the art of skipping. Whether you take him in his earlier
manner, in the "Charles O'Malley" vein of adventure, fox-hunting,
steeple-chasing, Peninsular fighting, or in his later more intellectual
studies of shady financiers, needy political adventurers, and the whole
generation of usurers and blacklegs, he is always good; but alas and
alas, he is never good enough. His work is rotten with the disease of
anecdote; instead of that laborious concentration on a single character
which is necessary for any kind of creative work, but above all for
humorous creation, he presents you with a sketch, a passing glimpse, and
when you look to see the suggestion followed out he is off at score with
a story. In the first chapter of _Davenport Dunn_, for instance, there
is an Irish gentleman on the Continent, a pork-butcher making his first
experience of Italy, hit off to the life. But a silhouette--and a very
funny silhouette--is all that we get of Mr. O'Reilly, and the figures
over whom Lever had taken trouble--for in that work Lever did take
trouble--are not seen with humour. Directly he began to think, his
humour left him; it is as if he had been funny in watertight
compartments. And perhaps that is why, here as elsewhere, he shrank from
the necessary concentration of thought.

There is always a temptation to hold a brief for Lever, because he has
been most unjustly censured by Irishmen, even in so august and impartial
a court as the _Dictionary of National Biography_, as if he had traduced
his countrymen. Did Thackeray, then, malign the English? The only charge
that may fairly be brought against him is the one that cannot be
rebutted--the charge of superficiality and of scamped work, of a humour
that only plays over the surface of things--a humour which sees only the
comic side that anybody might see. And because I cannot defend him, I
say no more. Lever is certainly not a great humorist, but he is
delightful company.

One may mention in passing the excursions into broad comedy of another
brilliant