describe themselves without any laboured painting on his part, and by a complete avoidance of those telling catchwords which in the drama, and even in the works of Dickens, are employed. A sound essayist, Mr. Hutton, regards the dialogues in Lever's novels as so good that "they are no more like real talk in real society than the conversation in Sheridan's plays, in which everybody is a fairy who speaks pearls." There is this difference, however, between Lever and Sheridan: the first threw off his talk without an effort the second took a quarter of a century in elaborating and recasting his dialogue in "The School for Scandal."

When Thackeray died, his fame with ladies-was on the wane. They complained that in "Esmond" and later books he fell into a tone of undue familiarity with his reader. "When a man does this in society," they said, "we snub him; in a book we must needs submit to it!" Lever was on his guard against this error especially in his later works: he continued a favourite to the last. His books with one exception-and it is not certain that he really wrote the "Rent"-displayed no gradual failure of power, as in the case of some great novelists whom it might seem invidious to name. The literary star of Lever never dimmed. Croker once said of another, that he went up like a rocket, and came down. like its stick. Lever indeed did come down like a stick; but it was in the shape of an Irish black-thorn, with which he thrashed vice and folly. His energy was honest and above board. He never used a dirk dipped in gall.

But while Lever raised his arm in his own pleasant way, and as Lysaght said of the Irishman in his glory, "for love knocking down

"With his sprig of shillelah and shamrock so green,"

he built, at the same time, a rich storehouse of healthy amusement for his age, uniformly taking the jolly rather than the jaundiced view of human nature; and his death excited an outburst of emotional feeling which Thackeray's, sudden as it was, failed to evoke.

Popu

'Steadily and conspicuously his star has continued in the ascendant," writes one who with no honeyed words has often criticised men of mark. "Lever is just the same novelist and the same man to the rising generation as he was to the generation which is now risen. larity such as this, so well earned, so wholesome, so constant, so brilliant, is rare indeed. As for the new order of novelists, they come and go. The successes of one season are forgotten the next, and the fictions which created a furore in the past year have faded out of recollection in the present. But the novels of Charles Lever hold their place, and they will continue to hold it." In analytic power, such as Balzac wielded, Thackeray eclipsed Lever; in indefatigable vigilance of trivial traits, noted with irresistible humour, Dickens surpassed him. "But he possessed," adds the same shrewd critic, "certain literary qualities which both Dickens and Thackeray were without a brilliancy of dash, a rapidity of movement, an unflagging vivacity of spirit

that are absolutely unique in the library of British fiction."

Thus passed from us, in exile, this brilliant man of letters. In his character were many different elements combined. He had the fearlessness, of manhood, softened by woman's sensibility and purity, with the exuberance of life belonging to a boy. He possessed marvellous powers of fascination, attracting to him, and straightway converting into friends for a lifetime, men of different stations and moulds. The peer, the fellow of college, the judge, the country squire, the parson, the doctor, the statesman, the lawyer, the littérateur, the lowly peasant both in Italy and at home, alike appreciated him. Of his genius we have sought, in these pages to supply sufficient illustration. Indulgence is asked for shortcomings in his biographer, of which he is but too sensible. His own, such as they were, bore their bitter fruit; nor can we envy the bystander who would now make curious inquiry into them, for Lever "is in his

grave" and

"After Life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

THE PORTFOLIO.

I.--THE MISCARRIAGE OF FOUR CHAPTERS OF "LORREQUER"

IN THE EMBASSY BAG FROM BRUSSELS.

(Vol. I., p. 223.)

THE late Mr. James McGlashan-Lever's literary censor throughout the progress of "Harry Lorrequer "-declared that the chapters which never appeared in print owing to their miscarriage, had much the advantage of those that he hastily substituted for them. When the missing chapters came to light, long after, McGlashan got them carefully bound, and duly labelled in letters of gold, of which a full account is given by Lever in the last edition of "Lorrequer," dated 1861, as kindly communicated by W. H. Smith & Son. This records : "When I was last in Ireland [1854] I saw it on the shelves my friend's bookcase, and had the pleasure of hearing him say that he preferred it to that which had appeared in print."

of

CHAPTER LI.

THE following morning I took an affectionate leave of my kind friends, with the hope of an early meeting, and set off for Munich. "Don't forget that Baer is your hotel; and Schnetz, the tailor, in the Grünen Strasse, will furnish you with everything necessary for the ball," said Jack Waller, as I drove from the door, burning with impatience to reach the end of my journey.