after that speech was spoken, he never forgot it, nor forgave those who might have risen in his defence, but who did not. Against Lord Goderich, now Earl of Ripon, his complaint was the bitterest; for, said Canning,

"

I have made him what he is, yet he

never answered a word to this attack which was made upon me!"

Lord Grey's "pride was up" at the time, and his popular associates having left him "almost a solitary individual,” even his extreme deference for the popular will, which, after all, was never a conviction of his judgment, nor a habit of his life, seemed marvellously to ooze away; and in a month after the above speech was delivered, we find him giving utterance to as energetic Toryism as ever was spoken in the House of Lords. On the 13th June, 1827, when again speaking on the subject of the corn laws, and combating the suggestions of those who urged the consequences of popular displeasure, if that against which he contended were not done, Lord Grey said, with that peculiar air of patrician significance, which no one possesses so much as himself

"I stand here one of a body who will always be ready firmly and honestly to resist such efforts which always considers maturely and feelingly the interests of the people, even when it must oppose the people themselves, and which will never consent, under the influence of fear, to give way to clamour."

In the same speech was the haughty earl's famous declaration in favour of his order

"If," said he "if there should come

a contest between this house and a great portion of the people, my post is taken, and with that order to which I belong, I

will stand or fall!"

for or against such measures, has since avowed, that, not his own principles, but "the spirit of the age," is the standard by which he determines upon (I will not say, judges of,) political measures. Finally, he who so proudly declared, that were a great contest to come between a great portion of the people and the order to which he belongs, he would stand or fall with that order, has broken his word. That contest did come; the order to which he belongs-the House of Lords-declared against him and his measures, and he was the man to avail himself of

the very clamour which, in a paroxysm of pique and affectation, he so loftily deprecated. He was momentarily driven from power by the House of Lords, (I speak of May, 1832,) and he was borne back to power upon the shoulders of the mob, who made "the order" to which he belongs, "under the influence of fear, give way to clamour." Such is the agreement of Lord Grey's acts with his speeches-such the consistency of a man whose guide is not a fixed and well-defined principle of duty, but the personal feeling of the day and hour.

I need not go over the events of the "Reform" era, for they are fresh in the mind of every one; and for the same reason it is needless to trace the decline of Earl Grey's popularity since the reform bill was passed. Let us hasten to the close. On the tenth of July, 1834, he came down to the house to say that he was no longer a minister. He wished to stop short in the middle of the steep down which he had driven the chariot of the government, but he found he could not; and then, deceived and colleagues, and disgusted, as he well thwarted, as he certainly was by his might be, he threw up the reins. He said, "I no longer address you as a minister of the crown," and then tears choked his utterance. He sat down and wept. I am not one of those who think no man can shed tears without betraying culpable weakness, though I think that if it be possible they should not be shed in public; and I should have readily pardoned, perhaps approved, this emotion of Earl Grey, were it not for the artful, unfair speech which he afterwards made, and which drew forth so sharp a reply from the Duke of Wellington. The noble duke

has been much blamed for the indignant severity of that reply, under the peculiar circumstances of Lord Grey's leave-taking; and I own that I think he would have done better and more gracefully, had he merely protested against the eulogy Lord Grey thought proper to pronounce upon the acts of his own administration, and concluded with some courteous expressions regarding the noble earl personally. But I can well understand how the warmth of the Duke may have been roused, without attributing to him that gross want of feeling, and even of decorum, with which he has been charged. He waxed wroth (as well he might) at the scarce-credible mixture of sneakingness and arrogance, and at the total want of candour towards opponents, as as well as of personal manliness, which the whimpering Destroyer manifested in making audacious and mendacious boast of the work of his own hands, at the very moment he was running away from it. In very truth, the pity which we feel for that old man, is not a reasonable pity, but it is extorted by the palpable treachery, towards him, of his colleagues and the underlings of his administration.

We are now at the close of Lord Grey's political career; and if ever politician lived and died, on whose tomb it may be truly recorded that he pursued one undeviating career of practical disloyalty and error; and subscribed his absolute maximum to the ruin of his country, from his entrance into public life to its close, that man is Lord Grey-I mean among men who are deserving to be called statesmen, which undoubtedly Lord Grey is. This distinction will provide against the mention of other names high in the present administration, to whom it would be

The

ridiculous to apply that title! unhappy Earl Grey has done the deed of destruction, but, personally, he has the mind of a statesman, and the carriage

of a nobleman. I have now done with him as a public man. Requiescat in pace! As a private man, Lord Grey is respectable and amiable. His constitutional hauteur has no harshness in it, but rather develops itself in the condescension, and graceful courtesy of his manners. In his family he appears to be much beloved, and the cares of public life have not been by him suffered to interfere with that familiar and kindly intercourse with his relatives, and with society, which is not less a social duty, than a pleasure. Lord Grey's habitual temperament is not that of cheerfulness; but still he is often to be met at evening parties, and often riding about the parks, (generally with his daughters,) with a far more happy and undisturbed air, than others, where thought is more profound, and sensibility less acute. The first time I ever saw Lord Grey, (out of the House of Lords,) was when he took the chair at the distribution of annual prizes by the London University, in the year 1828 or 9, I cannot now recollect which; but I well remember how much I was charmed by the easy dignity of his address, the correctness of his elocution, and the graceful cordiality with which he congratulated the youthful students, as he placed in their hands the rewards they had earned.* I have often seen him since, in situations with which his politics had nothing to do, and I will say of him, that apart from politics, it would be difficult to find a more accomplished, graceful, agreeable, and amiable gentleman, than Earl Grey.

THE gridiron which graces the Register of William Cobbett is unquestionably a famous frying-pan. Worthy of equal celebrity is that also "the loan of a loan" of which is Englished by "Parlez vous Francais !" in the "Gridiron" of Samuel Lover. Mr. Lover's is indeed a pan per se, or, so to speak, the To Hav of gridironsa griddle, truly, of no common capacity, on which our literary Tauridor can grill a whole bull at a time, and that so handsomely, and with such an offhand air, that you would suppose him engaged in work no heavier than frying a rasher with his friend Judy of Roundwood, or tossing a pancake with the Misses Heatley in the same classic village, on a Shrove Tuesday morning.

But while we admire the devilling of the bull, we are far from admitting that the poor animal was butchered either before or since he came into Mr. Lover's hands: for a bull once butchered is to the end of time defunct, and all the art of Galvanism can produce no further resuscitation of his carcass than a paralytic stagger, like the gait of a new-dropped calf, accompanied by a partial palsy of the mane and tail, and a tremulous retroversion of the whites of the eyes, symptoms which so clearly distinguish the butchered bull in a state of semireanimation, that our reader will require no farther instructions for detecting the presence of Galvanic agency in all cases of Tauriform pretension. But the genuine bull, the true tenant of the Gridiron, is not only an impersonation of Jove's genius-for it is clear to us that the Irish bull is no other than that divine beast which once before, in prophetic allegory, captivated ravished Europe-but an emanation also, of his pseudo immortality, and can never die; a fortiori, can never be the subject of post mortem experiment, and, there

fore, the charge of tampering with the dead carcass of the bull defunct of a former owner of the gridiron, which has been alleged against Mr. Lover by certain Bullcalves, falls to the ground like Staggering Bob himself, when he first essays to advance his nose to the yielding teat of aged Drimindhu.

Mr. Lover then, is neither Butcher, nor Resurrectionist, but we here, by our diploma, constitute him Laureate and Doctor of bulls; a degree unappropriated since the death of Mr. Edgeworth, whose work on Irish bulls we intend shortly republishing, with notes and annotations, by his meritorious

successor.

Meantime, as a whet to take the wire edge off our appetite, lest, like the bride of Ballyporeen, we crack our eye-strings tugging at the tough jump and sirloin of the essay, here is a handsome octavo,* all green and gold outside, and all within a forest of shillelah, with the Irish bison ramping up and down, and roaring for a reader on whom to exercise their hoofs and horns.-Ah, youth of humorous susceptibilities, beware how you venture into the park of the sticking cattle; neither hay nor horn-board here, to save you from a violent death; but, gored through the midriff, you shall surely perish in cacchinatory convulsions, or, stuck in the diaphragm, give up your melancholy ghost in a single singultus. Beware, in particular, we would beseech you, of this fierce quadruped the COMMODORE, so called from that aquatic excursion which has no less delighted than bewildered admiring Europe; for not to the Dictean caves of Crete as once before, did he bear the astonished daughter of Agenor, but by the Three-Spike headland, and the Long Round, half way to the great Indian Ocean, then head

Legends and Stories of Ireland. series. London: Baldwin and Craddock, Wakeman, Dublin. 1834.

ing homeward on his "North-East Coorse," went snorting through the foam of Lusitanian and Biscayan billows, nor stayed his pawing hoofs till their recalcitrations rang on the dry pavement of the high street of Cove-A fierce

fellow, yet not altogether untameable, and answers to the name of Bernardo; or as his keeper usually calls him BARNEY O'RIERDON, THE NAVIGATOR, but better known at all great cattle shows as the PRINCE OF BULLS.

This, ladies and gentlemen, and the Kerry Stirk, Little Fairly, are the only animals of the lot that have been before exhibited all the rest are, as you may perceive for the first time in any boards-Kishogue, the Weaver, Darby Kelleher, the Leprechaun, and the Spanish Boar, which has been permitted the entree, in consideration of his being a Sow; but the White Horse of the Peppers not proving a Grey Mare, as might have been expected, (and certainly among the bulls the grey mare had been the better horse,) has been denied admittance, and is being walked outside the wicket, while we proceed to adjudge the prize among the black cattle within.

Barney O'Rierdon and Little Fairly have both already received their due meed of public praises, having originally appeared in the pages of our own Magazine, so that they are no longer competitors; although, were the Commodore a candidate, we think he would push the best of the newcomers for the gold medal. But here is Kishogue, and here is Darby Kelleher, preparing to dispute the palm with the Weaver and the Leprechaun respectively; while the Boar, that was a Sow, finding itself unmatched in the mellee, takes to its double nature, and disputing in its own person the preeminence of the two genders, stands, as to the general issue,

neuter.

Well, then, looking with an impartial eye on the rivals in the field, we must give the preference to Kishogue, as being decidedly the best told story of the sort we have ever met with.

"The curse of Kishogue" we would take as the type of Mr. Lover's forte, for in this species of composition none has been so happy-as witness Barney

O'Rierdon, Paddy, the Piper, and, to crown all Pan of Pans, To Пav, THE GRIDIRON-while out of this felicitous province few men of ordinary literary acquirement need fear to enter the lists with him on equal terms: the Leprechaun and the Genius, and the White Horse of the Peppers, by much the least successful efforts in the volume before us, mournfully attest the truth of our assertion.

Still, that province of which Mr. Lover is really the potentate, affords a sway sufficiently eminent and undisputed to satisfy the ambition of one who makes literature a pastime rather than a profession; and we should suppose that, coupling this distinction of, if you will, a minor potentate in literature with that on all hands accorded to a high proficient in art, Mr. Lover is entitled to possess as much well-merited selfsatisfaction as should prevent the unfavourable view we take of his efforts in poetry or legitimate romance from being a cause to him, either prospectively or retrospectively, of disappointment or chagrin. The realm of Cloudland is, indeed, an island of Barataria to Mr. Lover, but in Patland he is de facto et de jure potentate of his province, Minotaur of that labyrinth inextricable of fun, whim, subtlety, simplicity, mad mirth, and savage melancholy, called Irish humour. Humour is a word which classically would signify the whole disposition of character: we do not here make use of it in that acceptation. We employ the term in its more usual meaning, as indicating that peculiar kind of grotesque wit for which the lower orders of the Irish have been so long remarkable; and we draw the distinction, because, in the one sense, humour is

but a part and a minor part of that characteristic genius of which it is the representative in the other. It is of Irish humour in this limited application of the term, that we consider Mr. Lover the master; and we would here almost except the last ingredient of that quality of Irish humour. Melan choly is a sentiment for which Mr. Lover's sympathies possess their least susceptible affinity: had he this sort of sympathy more healthy in its functions, he would not only acquire a racier perception of Irish humour, but rise to a comprehension of Irish genius itself.

may

As it is, however, nothing of the kind has surpassed, nay, we will say, equalled, some of Mr. Lover's humorous prose pieces; and among the best of these we would be inclined to place the Curse of Kishogue. Kishogue, the pride of the seven parishes, is to be hanged for horse-stealing, and being in the cart which is to convey him to the place of execution, stops at the Widow Houlaghan's door, as was the custom, that he might get a drink, to enable him to say something edifying to the people. Instead of calling for the drink, however, "the minit the cart stopped rowlin' he called out, as stout as a ram, sind me out Tim Riley here,' says he, that he rise my heart wid the Rakes o' Mallow; for he was a Mallow man by all accounts, and mighty proud of his town. Well, av coorse, the tune was not to be had, bekase Tim Riley was not there, but was lyin' dhrunk in a ditch, comin' home from confission." Now, here is the humour of it, and truly humorous it is-" When poor Kishogue heard that he could not have his favourite tune, it wint to his heart to that degree, that he'd hear of no comfort in life; an' he bid them dhrive him an, an' put him out o' pain at wanst." There is an essential difference between the humorous and the ludicrous. We do not laugh here, as we would at a man in a predicament : we feel that Kishogue is in trouble, nay in the depth of despondency, in a state of mind altogether disconsolate and very wretched. Still there is a certain magnanimous and disdainful resignation in his deportment, which scorns the abject impotence of utter despair as much as the temporizing meanness

:

;

of mere make-shift expediency. Aut Caesar aut Nullus, he has said, and since he cannot get the Rakes of Mallow, he will have none of your mulled wine still, even in his nonentity, he would act as may become one who had once a chance of being Cæsar : he will go, like Coriolanus, into exile, with dignity at least, if not with music so none of your possets for Kishogue. "Oh take the dhrink any how, aroon,” says the Widdy Houlaghan * "take the dhrink, Kishogue, my jewel," says she, handin' him up a brave big mug o' mulled wine fit for a lord-but he would'nt touch it-" Take it out o' my sight," says he, "for my heart is low bekase Tim Riley desaived me, whin I expected to die game, like one o' the Rakes o' Mallow!" Kishogue was like a bold gambler who, staking his all on a single throw, loses; and hurrying to drown himself, declines the use of an umbrella offered by the doorkeeper as he leaves the club-house, on a rainy morning. Marcus Curtius, when on the brink of the gulf, would as soon have dismounted to get his horse's off-fore-foot shoe fastened; or Empedocles, on the lip of the crater, stooped to have tied the latchet of his brazen slipper. No; Kishogue had set his heart on dying game; it had been the staple of his courage, the thread of his discourse, the warp and weft of his dreams and meditations; and out of that one idea he had woven himself a tissue of serene strength against all invasions of despondency. But that last glass, which paralysed the quick elbow of Tim Riley, and laid his tuneful head low in the green grip, among the grasshoppers, has, like the morning spindle of Penelope, undone the long vesper labours of his fancy's distaff, and the whole ill-compacted fabric, ravelled and rent from seam to selvage, falls from about his naked helplessness like the drapery of a ghost blown out of its lineaments by a blast of gusty Gælic on Morvern or Moilena. Alas, our poor Kishogue! the Ossianic controversy gives him little trouble; nor of Macpherson has he heard more than his rant :

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he;
He played a spring and danced it round
Aneath the gallows tree.