of the _Quarterly_, or of _Blackwood_ itself. But he was
equally reckless of his health and of his money. The acknowledged
original of Thackeray's Captain Shandon, he was not seldom in jail; and
at last, assisted by Sir Robert Peel almost too late, he died at Walton
on Thames in August 1842, not yet fifty, but an utter wreck.

The collections of Maginn's work are anything but exhaustive, and the
work itself suffers from all the drawbacks, probable if not inevitable,
of work written in the intervals of carouse, at the last moment, for
ephemeral purposes. Yet it is instinct with a perhaps brighter genius
than the more accomplished productions of some much more famous men. The
_Homeric Ballads_, though they have been praised by some, are nearly
worthless; and the longer attempts in fiction are not happy. But
Maginn's shorter stories in _Blackwood_, especially the inimitable
"Story without a Tail," are charming; his more serious critical work,
especially that on Shakespeare, displays a remarkable combination of
wide reading, critical acumen, and sound sense; and his miscellanies in
prose and verse, especially the latter, are characterised by a mixture
of fantastic humour, adaptive wit, and rare but real pathos and melody,
which is the best note of the specially Irish mode. It must be said,
however, that Maginn is chiefly important to the literary historian as
the captain of a band of distinguished persons, and as in a way the link
between the journalism of the first and the journalism of the second
third of the century. A famous plate by Maclise, entitled "The
Fraserians," contains, seated round abundant bottles, with Maginn as
president, portraits (in order by "the way of the sun," and omitting
minor personages) of Irving, Gleig the Chaplain-General, Sir Egerton
Brydges, Allan Cunningham, Carlyle, Count D'Orsay, Brewster, Theodore
Hook, Lockhart, Crofton Croker of the Irish Fairy Tales, Jerdan, Dunlop
of the "History of Fiction," Gait, Hogg, Coleridge, Harrison Ainsworth,
Thackeray, Southey, and Barry Cornwall. It is improbable that all these
contributed at one time, and tolerably certain that some of them were
very sparing and infrequent contributors at any time, but the important
point is the juxtaposition of the generation which was departing and
the generation which was coming on--of Southey with Thackeray and of
Coleridge with Carlyle. Yet it will be noticed (and the point is of some
importance) that these new-comers