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How comes it to pass, that among the numerous endeavours to amuse the reading public with scenes of humble Irish life and manners, offering, it should seem, a rich field for genius to expatiate on, so few have been little better than miserable failures? Miss Edgeworth, alone, seems to have enjoyed the happy talent of just description, as well in the humorous as the pathetic; the rest, for the most part, bearing to her pictures the same proportion which extravagant caricatures do to the vivid representations of Hogarth's pencil. We may sometimes find a single scene tolerably well exhibited, or a natural representation of Hibernian character in a short essay, such as lately appeared in your Mis cellany, under the title of the "Irish Yeoman," but in works professing to give an ample delineation of Irish humour, feelings, habits, and manners, I have not been fortunate enough to meet with any deserving of just commendation, save those of Miss Edgeworth.

Shakspeare, whose comprehensive range of mind nothing seems to have escaped, and to whom nihil humani was alienum, is, as far as I know, the first who introduced the peculiarity of Irish character to public notice, and that only in one of his dramas. It was not, however, yet ripe for such a purpose; and all that can be said of the great dramatist is, that he laid the foundation. Captain Macmorris appears but in one scene, and is remarkable only for a hot temper, an intrepid spirit, and a profane tongue. Those of his nation had mixed little with the English in Shakspeare's time, and it is probable, that the great Bard drew the portrait less from personal knowledge than the report of others. The same may be said of the Scotch, one of whom appears in the same play (Henry V.), and is distinguished only by his northern dialect; the great influx of Caledonians being subsequent to the reign of Elizabeth, during which most of Shakspeare's dramas were written. Of Welsh peculiarities, from his own intimate acquaintance with them, he has made frequent and happy use, and would have done the same with the others, had he possessed an equal knowledge. It was not, I believe, un◄

til the commencement of the 18th century, that the character of native Hibernians afforded so copious and frequent a subject for the novelist and play-writer, the success of whose early labours on the stage, particularly, has given birth to a number of descrip tions, for the most part extravagant and overdrawn, the natural result of imitation falling into incompetent hands. Literary labour seems to be in this respect the reverse of mechani cal. When a very useful or ingenious piece of mechanism brings emolument or excites admiration, it is sure to be not only copied, but improved, by others, among whom, perhaps, there might be none possessed of the same inventive powers as the original contriver. But let a novel work of literary merit be brought forward, though it shall find thousands of copiers, how few will be the instances of adequate and commendable imitation! What a host of pens and printers have been pressed into the service of romance and novelism by the appearance of the Waverley Novels! The wish to be equally agreeable and instructive, was very natural, but the wishers, unfortunately, for the most part at least, forgot what was first not only to be wished for, but to be attained,-a genius capable of equalling or approximating the compositions of the great Leader. Ireland being out of his way, obvious. ly afforded fine ground for something like rivalship, in contrasting the amusing varieties of her national character. It had, indeed, been successfully trod before, by the lady above men tioned, whose works will bear no dis➡ advantageous comparison with any of a like nature. It had also been trampled by the bog-trotting buskius of Lady Morgan; who, wild as her fictions are, is somewhat more at home in endeavouring to paint the rude manners in which she was bred, than those of the civilized countries into which she has intruded. She always put me in mind of a passage in Hamlet's advice to the players, to apply which, the reader has only to substitute the word "writer" for " players." "Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of

Christian, nor the galt of Christian, Pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably." Truly, her Ladyship is one of the vile imitators of humanity, and yet she has her admirers, Sir Jonah Barrington among the rest. -No wonder-" Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mævi." Well! 'tis all for the good of trade. As long as there are superficial readers, there will be superficial writers, and to say nothing of both being worse employed, as was probably the case before the invention of printing, a man of humanity finds great consolation in thinking, that a vast number of persons earn their daily bread in the fabrication of paper, the casting of types, the working of presses, and all the etceteras that go to the production of volumes, which, after a few months, or at most years, are only fit for lining trunks, or wrapping spices.

Though I will not say that the Tales of the O'Hara Family were written with a view of rivalling the Waverley, or of rendering Irish subjects as productive of general interest and delight, as Sir Walter Scott has rendered those of Caledonia, I may at least venture to affirm, that they owe their birth to the success of his incomparable compositions. In this respect, Ireland did afford new and fair ground for honourable emulation in well-wrought adventures, deduced from stories of the olden time, in scenes of rich romantic beauty, and in skilful delineations of Irish character, modern as well as antique. But oh, sad indeed is the falling off, and mortifying the disparity! For why? A different genius illumines the brain, a different spirit rules the heart, and a very different hand governs the pen. I had been led to expect much from the representations of that lively genius which produced the burletta of Midas, and I believe some other compositions of a like nature. I had heard those talents praised " highly," if not (as Shakspeare says) "profanely," so that they were among the few works of the kind which I had a desire to see, though before I made them my own, I thought it prudent to try and borrow them from a friend. I have more than once been sadly taken in by list

ening to puffs, for puffers every writer contrives to find even among those from whom some degree of sound judgment is expectable. How this is managed, I don't pretend to say-partiality to a friend, or unwillingness to appear ill-natured, or any thing in short, but saying that the reproach cast upon the greatest city of old times, is true of London-Omnia venalia Roma. Scarce a work issues from the recessesof the printing house, but you see it puffed, sometimes openly and li berally, sometimes incidentally as it were, in some sly corner of a Periodical, a Magazine, a Literary Journal, or a newspaper. It is true, few of any note escape the knife of critical dissection, and some are handled a little too roughly; but it is also true, that others escape either with a slight scratch, or without any censorial ani madversion.

It is some comfort to a person, who, like me, possesses, or fancies that he possesses, a little of criticizing talent, when he does happen to light upon a book of false pretensions, to think that he has got a subject wherein that talent may be amusingly employed. But then it must be worth cutting up, otherwise the zest of employment is gone; for who would descend to the task of refuting folly, and commenting upon absolute dulness? Fortunately I have a neighbour or two, to whom, having many an hour to spare from the ordinary pursuits of life, and minds not very hard to be pleased, every new tale is welcome, particularly in the long evenings of a winter in the country. As they have the means of gratifying their reading propensities, they are good customers to the bookseller, who knows their palates, and takes care to supply them with suitable provision; such literary dainties as have reference to their own country being most acceptable. To one of these kind friends my pocket is indebted for retaining the price that otherwise would have gone to cumber my shelves with the tales of the O'Hara Family. I have already told you how much my hopes of entertainment had been raised by the promise of the name-they were still farther enhanced by the title page announcing, a Second Edition. Oh, thought I, my hour for amusive reading will this night pass smoothly; and so as soon as

it struck nine, I commenced reading the first tale, entitled, "Crohoore of the Billhook."

Crohoore of the Billhook, however unheroical his appellation, is not withstanding, if not the intended hero of the tale, at least the most extraordinary personage of the drama, and such a one as certainly never appeared upon the stage of life. It seems to be the opinion of many writers of tales, that the more they recede from nature and reason, the more they will engage the attention of the reader; and that if they can fill their pages with wonders enough, the object of their ambition is attained. It is not very difficult to construct volumes on this principle, and if children were to be their readers, the plan might answer well enough, provided the stories were short, and the language simple. Uninteresting prolixity is a sad penance either to eye or ear.

Crohoore is introduced to the reader as making one in a Christmas Eve party, at a rich farmer's house in the county of Kilkenny, generally, I believe, considered to be one of the least mountainous and most civilized parts of the island. In this farmer's family he, taken in many years before as an orphan child, lived as a servant, well fed, clothed, and lodged, and repaying the benevolence that sustained him, by his daily labour within and without. That family consisted of the man of the house, represented as passionate but good-natured, his wife, a very kind and gentle mistress, and their daughter, a most amiable, as well as beautiful young creature. That party, on that night of peculiar festivity, was increased by the company of some neighbours, among whom was a merry piper, and a very handsome young man (Pierce Shea,) the young lady's accepted lover. One would think that there was not a heart in company that should have beat with warmer feelings of joy and gratitude than that of Crohoore, contrasting his actual situation in such a house, with what it might have been, had not the charity of the inmates taken pity on the destitute condition of the orphan. This, indeed, would have been natural and reasonable, especially in a generous mind, as his eventually proves to be; but then it would not have suited the story, or answered the purposes of an author, determined, like Mr Bayes, " to elevate

and surprise." On the contrary, Crohoore keeps aloof in sullen silence. Like King Alfred, who trimmed his bow while the cakes were burning, the heroic Crohoore sat apart with his hat on, sharpening his billhook, but for what purpose, I defy the most fertile of romantic invention to guess, or even to make the smallest approach to in the way of conjecture. It was not indeed for the purpose of trimming his beard on Christmas morning, but it was for the purpose, one never certainly contemplated by any but the ingenious authors of these tales,-of going out on the night preceding Christmas-to snare rabbits!!! And for whom was the heroic Crohoore to hook rabbits on a night of such preposterous selection? Why, for a poor old woman in the neighbourhood, who, it seems, some time before informed him that she was his mother, and to whose support he chose that singular method of contributing. But though Crohoore could have turned the billhook to little account as a poacher, it was materially requisite for the views of the author, and indeed so necessary to conduct the plot, that the tale itself might with great propriety be nominated, The Billhook. Crohoore's sullen behaviour, and the noise of the billhook, having justly given some offence, he is reproved by the man of the house, and not answering with due respect, the old man proceeds to blows, and the upshot is, that Crohoore takes his departure, refusing to listen to any apology, and denouncing vengeance with his scowling looks. That very night the old couple are murdered, and the daughter missing; the circumstances of the preceding night, corroborated by the billhook found in the house bloody, necessarily conspiring to fix the charge of the murder on Crohoore.

But the person of this hero must not be passed unnoticed, though the entire of the picture is too long to insert. To a head of enormous size, furnished with features, not merely ugly, but approaching to horrible, the describer attaches a "trunk considerably under the height of even men of low stature; their unnatural disproportion probably heightened their unfavourable expression, and joined to another cause, we shall have occasion to notice," (namely his reputation of being in league with the devil), “creas ted, among his rustic compeers, a feel