hart, could see no merit in anything written by a Whig. His contempt for sober men was only equaled by his hatred of Whigs. He reviewed the

Adonais," heaping ridicule and contempt on both Shelley and Keats and maintaining that every two lines out of three were sheer nonsense. Had he lived he would have changed his mind, for no man ever lived who was more alive to the spirit of literature, but for the moment he allowed his political prejudice to bias his judgment. But we must now take him as we find him, and while there is much in his life and work that we are bound to deplore, we will go far before we find prose so spirited and vigorous, or verse so facile and various as his. To enjoy much of it we must enter into the spirit of the time in which he wrote. He must be taken with his environment. This may require some effort, but whoever takes the trouble will find a deal of pleasure in the society of this

Slashing, dashing, smashing,

Lashing, thrashing, hashing, Irishman.

One of the main interests that centers about Maginn and his works is that he was the literary father of Thackeray. The great novelist was eighteen years his junior, and he evidently

made a careful study of Maginn's methods, and is indebted to him for many a favorite allusion and quotation. So similar is much of their work, for they were both contributors to Fraser's, that a number of Maginn's pieces have been attributed to Thackeray. But the pupil was greater than the master. Maginn's humor does not possess the rich quality of Thackeray. The vein of tenderness and human sympathy that comes to the surface in the pages of "Pendennis” and “The Newcomes," giving pathos to even the bitterest satire, is not so apparent in what Maginn has written. The doctor was one of the best of good fellows and was ever generous and kindly in action, but he could never see anything but villainy and villains. Thackeray, on the contrary, could say a good word even for such a rascal as Barnes Newcome, and could even say something in extenuauation for the "Old Campaigner." But Maginn had more fun in him than Thackeray and was a keen enough observer of society. Some of the "Maxims of Odoherty" are very acute, as where he says: "Mediocrity is always disgusting, except of stature in a woman." And: "The next best thing to a really good woman is a goodnatured one."

:

FRANCIS MAHONY,

FATHER PROUT."

(1804-1867.)

"FATHER PROUT" came as a dancing ray of sunshine after a murky day, and the reading world awakened to a new sensation. Most assuredly here was something new, and a writer who had his languages at his finger tips and tongue's end. He was a brilliant Irishman who for several years was associated with Maginn on Fraser's Magazine. They were both Corkonians, but Maginn was the elder by ten or eleven years and was already established as one of the editors of Fraser's when Mahony arrived in London in the early part of 1834, when he was about thirty years of age. He had been bred to the priesthood, a profession for which he had no vocation, though he made strenuous efforts to join the order of the Jesuits in the early days of his studies. But the fathers rejected him. He was, however, ordained a

priest through his own persistence and self-will, afterwards to his life-long regret. In any other profession he would have reached undoubted eminence. Handicapped by that, he gained eminence in none.

He

In London Mahony soon joined the Fraserians and was hail fellow in that convivial band. wrote a series of papers that ran from April, 1834, to December, 1836, the most original in conception and polyglot in character that ever emanated from any pen. They were the famous "Reliques of Father Prout," and purported to be the work of a parish priest of that name, of "Watergrass Hill," near Cork. The good father, of course, was the creation of Mahony's genius, just as Jededian Cleishbotham was of Scott's, but he became enormously popular and gave great vogue to the magazine.

The second paper, "A Plea for Pilgrimages," is a serio-comic rhapsody in praise of pilgrimages, and then goes on to describe a pilgrimage to the Blarney stone made by Father Prout in company with Sir Walter Scott. It is an exquisite piece of fooling and classic drollery, in which the good priest and Sir Walter discourse most learnedly on the origin and history of the Blarney stone, and how at last it got to the County of Cork. Father

Prout calls it "the most valuable remnant of Ireland's ancient glory, the most precious lot of her Phoenician inheritance." Compared with it neither the musical stone of Memnon, nor the lapidary talisman of Lydian Gyges, nor the colossal granite shaped into a sphinx of Egypt, nor Stonehenge, nor the Pelasgic walls of Italy's Palæstrina, offer so many attractions. "What stone in the world, save this alone, can communicate to the tongue that suavity of speech, and that splendid effrontery so necessary to get through life? Without this resource how could Brougham have managed to delude the English public, or Dan O'Connell to gull even his own countrymen?"

Then we are told that this palladium of Ireland was brought originally from Phoenicia, and a large amount of classical learning and allusion is brought up to prove it. The climax of the paper is reached when the then popular song, "The Groves of Blarney," is given in French, Greek and Latin verse, while Father Prout declares that Millikin, the author of the song, was simply a translator from the Greek original. "Indeed," says the reverend father, "I have discovered, when abroad, in the library of Cardinal Mazarin, an old Greek manuscript, which after