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opens much in his old style, with a picture of military life in Dublin, "than which there is not a pleasanter place in the world, despite some drawbacks in the matter of guard-mounting and field-days." To a friend he said, "Sir Brook Fossbrooke' is the most carefully written of my works. The old Judge is a portrait on which I expended a great deal of time and paint."

The spot which he chose for work was "one of those lonely nooks, a cleft between the mountains, widening as you enter into a bay, watered by the blue sea, and sheltered by foliage of every shape and colour, from the oak to the olive." This lonely nook adjoined one of the smaller bays, opening from the Gulf of Spezzia. Here, with brain well nurtured, his imagination teeming with fertility, he threw forth fruit.*

To the last "Sir Brook Fossbrooke" continued his favourite, though with readers it never enjoyed popularity. Presenting a copy to Mr. Palmer some years after, his words are: "The very flattering things you have said of some performances of mine, embolden me to ask your acceptance of a volume somewhat better than its brethren, and certainly better than I am like to do again."

"One of Lever's daughters," observes a kinswoman, "inherited much of his literary taste and talent; but although some things she wrote sufficiently indicated this gift, he strongly urged her against publishing them,

* A visit to Lever's villa, in autumn, 1878, has found it much changed. Its privacy has been invaded and its beauty destroyed by being built into by the new Dockyards. The boatmen remember him with affection, and on his name being mentioned, flew into enthusiastic ebullitions.

and uniformly expressed a hope, that she might never embark in a literary career. He himself was often disposed to regret that he had not followed medicine in preference to letters; which he said was the mistake of his life."

It was about this time that a very strong appeal was renewed to allow himself to be put in nomination as member for the University of Dublin. His brother, one of the most retiring of men, had not been favourable to the notion, and addressed a long letter to Mr. Spencer on the subject. Lever himself, though at first tempted, was finally of opinion that he could be more usefully employed in the sphere of action to which his natural bias led him. Dickens was also besought to enter Parliament in 1869, and declined very much for the same reasons. Lever said that, just as Johnson called patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, Parliament had well nigh become the last resource of incapacity. "What fatal tendency of our age inclines men to adopt a career in all respects unsuited to them?" he asked. "When Pitt said of our octogenarian Generals, 'I don't know what effect they produce on the enemy, but I know that they frighten me,' he expressed what I very strongly feel about these small boys of politics-they fill me with fear and misgiving." Mr. Innes, it will be remembered, assigns further reasons, which led Lever to relinquish the Parliamentary project.

But a cause far graver than that assigned by Lever no doubt chained down an ambition at one time willing enough to vault. "I am old and broken," he said to

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Major D in 1865, "though working on still, for I can't afford rest. My whole life's labour has been lost to me by a misfortune."

He sometimes sought honey near the spot where stings had fallen. "Ought I not to be happy," he said, "to find an audience composed of the sons and grandsons, and, what I like better, the daughters and granddaughters of those who once listened to 'Harry Lorrequer'?" Lever was offered strong introductions to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Eglinton, previously famous for his gorgeous tournament, but the glare of a satrap had lost its charm for him. From his successors he also held aloof.

Pleasanter it was to write for "St. Paul's" under Anthony Trollope. In 1868 appeared "The Confessions of Paul Gosslet in Love, War, and the Civil Service. My first Mission under F.O." People were puzzled as to the authorship, and it is the work of Lever's perhaps the least known. Mr. Trollope, in characteristic and interesting words, has been kind enough to give us some impressions of his co-novelist.

you

"Charles Lever was an intimate friend of mine whom I very dearly loved, but I do not know that I can tell any details that will serve the purpose of your book.

"Of all the clever men I have known, his wit was the readiest. In conversation he was the quickest goer and the best stager I ever knew, never failing even in ill health, never showing sign of weariness after any labour. But all that is simply my feeling of the man.

I had

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many letters from him, as he wrote for a Magazine which I edited, but I never kept one. Though he lived always in Italy, with short intervals in London, he never dropped his Irish manner or his Irish tongue. In literature it was peculiar to him to have altogether changed his manner and tone, from the time of Harry Lorrequer' to that of Tony Butler,' and to have been quite at home and quite successful in each. He became attached to the Conservative party; but yet I doubt whether he had any strong political feeling. His was a kind friendly nature, prone to cake and ale, and resolved to make the best of life when, as you no doubt know, things were often very sad with him." *

Why did Lever give no public readings from his books? Their excitation would have held at bay the subtle approach of morbid gloom. His early shyness,— the chain which often shackles men of mark, had dropped from him. He was, in fact, just the man for oral flow. Sir Hamilton Seymour said of Lever that as a writer he was simply nowhere in comparison with Lever the talker. "Write that as you have told it," he once said to him. It was not so easy, however. "The pleasant freedom of the voice, the union of cadence and gesture, the spontaneity that comes of self-reliance as one feels his success-where are these," asked Lever, " in presence of your ink-bottle and your foolscap?"

Though his appearance in advanced life might tend to disenchant them, his admirers would soon find that in

* Letter of Anthony Trollope, Esq., London. March 24, 1879.

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dramatic art and elocutionary strength Lever was not second to Dickens.* Lever had a grand opportunity of making a hit and a fortune in this way, but we are not aware that the idea ever seriously occurred to him.

Sir Thomas Watson traced to the excitation attending these displays the paralysis of Dickens. But the equally prolific Lever, who never gave readings, incurred the same subtle stroke. Possibly, had he read publicly and shared the glow of Dickens' life, his own might not have ebbed away as it did. The elixir of society seems to have been as essential to his nature as aliment to the body; and we know that during his long expatriation he failed to find as much social intercourse as his nature craved. In 1869 he bemoans the death, at Trieste, of "his one friend, Möring." Can we doubt that he was, so to speak, starved to death? It will be seen that minor cares were soon over-ridden by heavy woe, whose hoof beat down his heart.

"No author," observes Charles Reade, "has ever left a fortune made by writing. Dickens, the sole exception, was a reader and a publisher." In Dublin the readings of Dickens had been specially successful. "You can hardly imagine it," he writes, "All the way from the Hotel to the Rotunda (a mile) I had to contend against the stream of people who were turned away. When I got there, they had broken the glass in the pay-boxes, and were offering £5 freely for a stall. Half of my

platform had to be taken down, and people heaped in among the ruins. You never saw such a scene." (Life, iii., p. 201.) And again, "They had offered frantic prices for stalls. Eleven bank-notes were thrust into a pay box at one time for eleven stalls. Our men were flattened against walls, and squeezed against beams. Ladies stood all night with their chins against my platform. Other ladies sat all night upon my steps. We turned away people enough to make immense houses for a week." Lever lost a great chance in not giving readings.