Charles Lever - Page 2

yell burst forth from the mass of people along the shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank gradually down to a low wailing, then rose and fell several times, as the Irish death- cry filled the air, and rose to heaven, as if imploring vengeance on a murderer."

Passages like this, and that which follows--the dangerous voyage through the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the reefs--are what Mr. Thackeray may have had in his mind when he spoke of Lever's underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early stories that we remember, and that he lives by--the pages thrown off at a heat, when he was a lively doctor with few patients, and was not over-attentive to them. These were the days of Harry Lorrequer and Tom Burke; characters that ran away with him, and took their own path through a merry world of diversion. Like the knights in Sir Thomas Malory, these heroes "ride at adventure," ride amazing horses that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a mountain crest, or be it the bayonets of a French square.

Mr. Lever's biographer has not been wholly successful in pleasing the critics, and he does not seem to affect very critical airs himself, but he tells a straightforward tale. The life of Charles Lever is the natural commentary on his novels. He was born at Dublin in 1806, the son of a builder or architect. At school he was very much flogged, and the odds are that he deserved these attentions, for he had high spirits beyond the patience of dominies. Handsome, merry and clever, he read novels in school hours, wore a ring, and set up as a dandy. Even then he was in love with the young lady whom he married in the end. At a fight with boys of another school, he and a friend placed a mine under the ground occupied by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the only time, this romancer of the wars "smelled powder." He afterwards pleaded for his party before the worthy police magistrate, and showed great promise as a barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he was full of his fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in disguise (like Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night collected thirty shillings in coppers.

The original of Frank Webber, in "Charles O'Malley," was a chum of his, and he took part in the wonderful practical jokes which he has made immortal in that novel.

From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Gottingen, where he found fun and fighting enough among the German students. From that hour he became a citizen of