crime of writing a pamphlet, which nobody had sold, which nobody had bought, and of which not a solitary copy, save one, which I had the misfortune to present to Dr Viper-a protégé of the Reverend Jim Crow-which was presented by that small animal to the Reverend rascal his master, who forthwith (for he had no longer the fear of the Earl of Clangallaher before his eyes,) laid the production thus received, with all the circumstances of aggravation he could imagine, before his brother Commissioners. After an acknowledgment of the authorship, which Mr Lumpkin Snake, who is a Jesuit, invited me to deny, under pretence that he wished me to save my situation by telling a falsehood, the Commissioners called on me for my defence. My defence was, that I had written pamphlets before, and that the Commissioners not only permitted, but encouraged me to write them; praised them when written, and had lick-spittled me for writing them; and, moreover, had thanked the Earl of Clangallaher for recommending to their notice a man capable of writing so well.

This staggered them a little, but they were too old to be put off their game by such an answer as that; and accordingly they repeated the charge over and over again, informing me, in reply to all my supplications, that they had no occasion, unless they pleased, to give me any reason for my dismissal, that they were determined to dismiss me, and that they only gave me this reason for doing so as a satisfaction to my mind, and as a matter of favour. I offered, both in words and writing-for I thought of my wife and children to make them every satisfaction for my unintentional offence. I implored them, with tears in my eyes, not to bring me and my family to ruin; but I implored in vain. Whether it was that my election was a job of so shameful a nature, that they wished to drive away at once the recollection of it and the object-or whether it was that I was zealous and inflexible in the discharge of my duty-or whether it was that I knew more than all my masters, put them all together-or, what would contrast more forcibly with them, even than talent perhaps, because I was straightforward, manly and independent; certain it is, from the moment that the Earl of Alderney turned his back, when they knew they

dare do it, they settled my dismissal and dismissed me accordingly. Not only did they dismiss me, but they carried their spite beyond their own power-they refused me a certificate to enable me to gain employment elsewhere they got up in their places in Parliament, and although, thank God, they could not even get a fact against me, hinted a fault, and hesitated dislike. They gathered together the hirelings who depended upon them for present bread and future promotion, to testify to what they pleased to allege against me, on pain of being subjected to my penalty.

But why do I suppose motives for conduct where motives are so plain— why invent hypotheses to explain that which more than sufficiently explains itself? The fact was, the Honourable Tom Shuffleton had just sold out of the army, where he had distinguished himself everywhere but in the field, and wanted a situation. Now, there was unfortunately no situations_vacant at the time the Honourable Tom Shuffleton expressed, through his uncle, the Earl of Fishgall, who patronized the new Lord Lieutenant, his intention to take a situation; and as the Honourable Tom couldn't wait, the next best thing the Commissioners of National Navigation could do for him was to make a vacancy, which, after some consultation as to whose situation would make the vacancy most quickly, was accordingly done-and the privilege of being ejected, was very politely conferred on me.

I was dismissed, as I told you before, and received a very polite intimation from the secretary (which I have also in my pocket), informing me that there had been an election for an inspector vice your humble servant cashiered, that the number of candidates was forty-six, and that the Honourable Tom Shuffleton was unanimously elected.

The recital of this little incident in my eventful life is not of a personal interest alone, for, if it were personal only to myself, it would be a matter of no interest at all. It is, on the contrary, of the deepest public interest, and carries with it, as I may say, a political moral. It is proper that the public should know that these Commissioners of National Navigation are of that political faction whose existence began by a denial of the exercise of that very prerogative

more depressed; and, when it was communicated to him that Mr O'Hara declined allowing him to go any longer upon tick, he was observed to put his hand on his heart, and to declare that he was afraid his mainspring was broke, The ruling passion, however, exhibited itself strong in decay, and almost in dissolution: the day before he finally took to his bed, from which he never rose, having devoured, for a trifling wager (see Bell's Life in Lon don), a couple of hundreds of fullsized Malahides, six score to the hun dred, in nineteen minutes and thirtyfive seconds, with ease, getting through his fish, as was remarked by the bystanders, in a style equal if not superior to the performances of Dando himself. I mention this fact merely as another instance, in addition to the many we already possess, of the consistency of action and singleness of purpose observable in the characters of great men, which it is the duty of an impartial historian faithfully to record, and, whether false or true, to stick up to manfully, for the honour and glory of his hero.

This, however, was fated to be the last of the Oyster-Eater's fields; so that the tremendous match which was to have come off between him and the immortal Dando, for the champion. ship of England, and which excited as much attention in the oyster, as the match between Spring and Langan did in the pugilistic, world, being looked forward to, not merely with a crustaceous but national interest, is now for ever, as far as the Irish Oyster-Eater is concerned, at an end, and the immortal Dando reigns supreme.

It has been confided to me, although unworthy, as the medical attendant of the deceased, and, as I may say, his literary executor, to attempt to gratify that curiosity, as natural as it is laudable, that stimulates the little to pry into the habits, modes of life, and even the conversations of the truly great; to measure the exact angle at which they were in the habit of turning out their illustrious toes, and to record whether they sniftered or sneezed when their erudite noses took snuff! Biographers have a settled order of procedure in these matters, from which it is not for an author, all inexperienced as I am, to presume to vary, even to the variation of a hair. There are ten thousand published

precedents to guide me, and twenty thousand more sweating in the press;

from statesmen and heroes down to court physicians and vice-regal dan, cing masters, and the devil is in it if I cannot pick out of some one of them a hint of the way in which it becomes a biographer to go!

In the first place, then, I have to apologize to the reader for the absence of the mezzotinto engraving, from a picture by Martin Cregan, P. R.H.A., of the Oyster-Eater, which should have illustrated this portion of my narrative, or rather have preceded it. I need not say a mezzotint engraving is the regular thing to begin with, and that no respectable biographer would put his name to a title without it. However, it is unluckily not ready, and I am, therefore, compelled to substitute in this place, for the mezzotint engraving, a slight pen-and-ink sketch of the illustrious subject of my biogra. phical labours, trusting that the generous reader will excuse the want of the engraving until next month, when, to recompense his indulgence, two will be given that being also the regular thing in illustrated publications, where lithographs and letterpress share divided laurels. It is a curious fact, nor do I know how to account for it; but in every biographical work I ever saw, the hero is either above the middle size or below it-none that I have ever heard of being of the middle size to a nicety. The Oyster-Eater was rather above the middle size, and I would have given his exact height if I could have ascertained what height the middle size is, in feet and inches. Let it suflice, then, that he was not below the middle size, like the one-half of the world's great men, but resembled the other half in being above it. His nose-we begin with the nose, being that which George Robins calls the leading feature was a variegated proboscis, aquiline in the beginning of its career, but, as it got on in the world, becoming a perfect murphy, turning up its cartilage in evident contempt for noses less erudite than itself.

His eyes-but why proceed with a catalogue of the individual articles of his physiognomy?-he had the usual number of eyes, with a corresponding pair of eyebrows to match-a very good head of hair, and a couple of whiskers whose growth he encouraged with paternal solicitude, until at last

he looked more like an owl in an ivy bush, than a rational human creature. His figure was modelled on the plan of a broomstick, or rather after the fashion of a scullery door, and his appearance, take him altogether, was that of a disbanded life-guardsman, or one of the new police off duty. His dress, for some years before his death, was of that particular material and cut known in Dublin as the Plunkett Street style, his hat a gossamer, that some years ago had taken it into its head to change its name from black to brown-his shoes high-lows, to which were strapped down tightly a pair of " never-mention-'ems," evidently made for the wearer when he was a foot or two shorter than he subsequently grew. His coat, winter and summer, was tightly buttoned up, and further secured closely at the throat with a large corking-pin, so that I cannot gratify the natural curiosity of the inquisitive reader as to the cut of the Oyster Eater's waistcoat, or the colour of his shirts, or indeed, for the matter of that, whether he might not have altogether dispensed with the superfluities of both shirt and waistcoat. To finish the matter, the dress of the Oyster-Eater, taken altogether, was seedy, and his whole turn-out an unsophisticated specimen of the shabby-genteel.

The next point to which I think it my biographical duty to direct the attention of the patient reader, is to the progress and probable cause of that extraordinary mania for oystereating which has gained for him a niche in the temple of fame, and will hand him down to posterity with Apicius, Dando, Sir George Warrender, and the Editor of the Almanac des Gourmands. It was to his dismissal by the Commissioners of National Navigation that he owed his devotion to oyster-taverns, and the extraordinary facility for the developement of his peculiar turn of humour which such places afford.

He has, in his own account of himself, said nothing of this, nor do I suppose that, had he lived to complete his work, would he have alluded to it; being anxious to drown, in continual dissipation, not only the present consciousness of that he was, but also the more bitter retrospect of that he might have been. It is certain that, up to the time of his dismissal by the Com

missioners, whose conduct forms the subject of his last chapter, he was a good father, tender husband, a sober and steady man, and was giving every reasonable hope of becoming a bright and useful member of society. From the day of his being dismissed, however, misery and misfortune crowded fast upon him-the Commissioners' refusal to grant him a certificate, which he might have relied on, deprived him effectually of obtaining elsewhere another employment-the influence they exercised with the officials of every successive government to prevent him having his case taken into consideration-and their personal malignity, silently exercised by a shrug, a wink, or a shake of the head, weighed altogether too heavily upon his prospects, and crushed him and them together. As he himself has finely observed, "the hopes upon which he fed for years had died within him, and their epitaphs might be read legibly on his brow." It was often and often suggested by those who wished him well, that the Commissioners being sycophants by profession, the aspect of erect independence was personally offensive to them—that the subserviency with which they approached their superiors, they exacted from their inferiors in turn, just as when in the Rivals, Captain Absolute kicks his valet, Mister Fag, and Mr Fag in his turn kicks the little dirty boy who recalls him to wait upon his master. It was observed by Sophia, that, as sycophancy was their current coin, it was very unlikely they would consent to be paid in any other. But the OysterEater was not naturally constituted to stoop to conquer, particularly when he would have been obliged to stoop to men who crawled habitually on their bellies in the worship of Mammon. He replied to all the arguments used to induce him to consent to such a prostration as would perhaps satisfy the Commissioners, that he would do it for the sake of his wife and family if he could, but that he found his back refuse its degrading office; he said he had never in his life taken off his hat save to virtue, independence, or a woman, and it was too late in life to begin now.

As the consciousness of his situation opened upon him, and the fate that awaited his family became more and more imminent, he appeared more

and more to lose that energy and spirit that in more hopeful circumstances characterised him. He shunned the society of his wife and children, and was almost exclusively to be found at O'Hara's, where, so far from supposing that his heart was breaking, and his constitution gone, the casual visiter, who witnessed the flashes of his broad and original humour, would have supposed him a man without a care. He became, by acclamation, a sort of permanent chairman of the evening convivial meetings, and, as he was usually treated with oysters and grog by some or other of the more wealthy guests, he gained vast popularity, and thunders of applause; for he was a man who would rather shine in a pot-house than shine not at all, and lost nothing but his self-respect, his time, and his constitution.

The affection of his wife he still retained, probably because she saw that his faults were as much the offspring of his misfortunes as the result of a vicious inclination to dissipation, and made allowances for her husband's frailties accordingly.

Having thus endeavoured shortly to account for the prevailing propensity of my deceased friend, a short notice of his writings-being also the regular thing-will not, I trust be altogether unacceptable.

The Crustaceous Tour, which introduced him to the literary world, as it was the first, so, like other maiden efforts of other great pens, was the best, of all the works he afterwards gave to a discerning public. Whether it was designed as a satirical burlesque of the grave and solemn style of tours in general, or simply a journey undertaken with a view to a more intimate acquaintance with what the author enthusiastically describes as the "gelatinous objects of his affections," it is impossible to conceive any thing more racy, more full of piquant and original humour, from the opening paragraph to the close. But what is perhaps the highest authority I could adduce in its favour, is the fact which I can myself attest, that the OysterEaters in Dublin-no mean judges of literary merit-have actually extracted the favourite passages of the work, and suspended them over the doors of their several shops and cellars, "worthily emblazoned in letters of gold." To the Account of Himself, I regret that

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXXIV.

I cannot afford the same full measure of approbation. It appears to be a story inartificially constructed, badly connected, and unequally sustained, beginning in the shape of a very dull dialogue, which is metamorphosed, for no reason that we can discern, into a narrative equally dull. The characters are introduced apparently with no fixed purpose or settled design, are conducted any how, through a chapter pedantically called by the author a fasciculus, and, without contributing in the least degree to the main action or progress of the narrative, are finally dismissed. Nor is the narrative itself consistent in its several parts. A chapter of personal narrative is interrupted by a long digression, and digression makes way again for personal narrative. As it is the province of the critic to lay hold of some trifling anachronism or violation of arbitrary rules which genius spurns and contemns, I think it my duty to observe that the Oyster-Eater, in one of his fasciculi, travels through the Midland Counties in company with a factory-boy towards London, while the next fasciculus exhibits them at Warrington, north of the Midland Counties, so that they must have journeyed towards London backwards-a style of ambulation peculiarly crustaceous! In another place, Sophia is made to address her lover as "Horatio," while in the dialogue between the OysterEater and the horse-jockey, the latter is made to address the former by the sponsorial appellation "Pat." This, however, may be considered as a poetical license, and, as there is a lady in the case, I will not be ungallant enough to press the objection further.

Not only is the matter of the OysterEater's Account of Himself not interesting, but his humour is not original

perhaps, indeed, it might have been original when he wrote it, but it certainly is not original now. It is a sort of miscellaneous humour, compounded of the humour, or rather of an imitation of the humour, of Swift, of Goldsmith, of Sterne, of Washington Irving, and, although I never read him and know nothing about him, of the humour of Rabelais. Accordingly, not being original, it is bad; for, I presume, nobody will have the hardihood to assert that in these days any thing (except port wine) can be good that is not new!

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