: IRISH LIFE :
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| Drawn by] | [Geo. Morrow |
| Frank Webber wins the wager | |
HUMOURS
OF IRISH LIFE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY CHARLES L. GRAVES, M.A.
NEW YORK:
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Printed by The
Educational Company
of Ireland Limited
at The Talbot Press
Dublin
Introduction.
The first of the notable humorists of Irish life wasWilliam Maginn, one of the most versatile, as well asbrilliant of Irish men of letters.
He was born in Cork in 1793, and was a classicalschoolmaster there in early manhood, having securedthe degree of LL.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, whenonly 23 years of age. The success in “Blackwood’sMagazine” of some of his translations of English verseinto the Classics induced him, however, to give upteaching and to seek his fortunes as a magazine writerand journalist in London, at a time when Lamb,De Quincey, Lockhart and Wilson gave most of theirwritings to magazines.
Possessed of remarkable sparkle and finish as a writer,considering with what little effort and with whatrapidity he poured out his political satires in prose andverse, and his rollicking magazine sketches, it was nowonder that he leaped into popularity at a bound. Hewas the original of the Captain Shandon of Pendennisand though Thackeray undoubtedly attributed to hima political venality of which he was never guilty, whilstdescribing him during what was undoubtedly the latterand least reputable period in his career, it is evident thathe considered Maginn to be, as he undoubtedly was,a literary figure of conspicuous accomplishment andmark in the contemporary world of letters.
Amongst his satiric writings, his panegyric of ColonelPride may stand comparison even with Swift’s mostnotable philippics; whilst his Sir Morgan O’Dohertywas the undoubted ancestor of Maxwell’s and Lever’shard drinking, practical joking Irish military heroes,and frequently appears as one of the speakers in ProfessorWilson’s “Noctes Ambrosianae,” of which the doctorwas one of the mainstays.
Besides his convivial song of “St. Patrick,” his“Gathering of the Mahonys,” and his “Cork is anEden for you, Love, and me,” written by him as genuine“Irish Melodies,” to serve as an antidote to