The truth
is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to leave off
reading it, and get on with the account of Lever.
His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable
notice from the press. This may have been because it was so
popular; but Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at
the papers. When he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine
there, he was more fiercely assailed than ever. It is difficult for
an Irishman to write about the Irish, or for a Scot to write about
the Scottish, without hurting the feelings of his countrymen. While
their literary brethren are alive they are not very dear to the
newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and thus Jeffrey was
more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the Irish press,
it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met Lever in
Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's
military propensities have been objected to strongly by his
squeamish Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in
Ireland who is fond of military spectacles? Why does the Nation
publish these edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it
that prates about the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy,
and the Irish at Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr.
O'Connell, like a wise rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to
flatter the national military passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?"
Why not, indeed? But Mr.
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