Lady Morgan. Maria Edgeworth. Jonathan Clerk. Thomas Moore.

Chapter XLV.

Memoranda Critica.

**Remarks on Lady Morgan’s novel of *The Wild Irish Girl, *&c. - Prince O’Sullivan at Killarney - Miss Edgeworth’s *Castle Rackrent - *Memoir of Jonathan *Clerk - Florence Macarthy - *Comparison between Lady Morgan and Thomas Moore as writers - The author’s knowledge of both - *Captain Rock *condemned - The Irish Melodies by Moore and Power - The harmonising of them by Sir John Stevenson injurious to the national music - Anecdote of Mr. Thomas Moore and Mrs. K---y.

It is remarkable that the state of the Irish people, in its various gradations of habit and society, has been best illustrated by two female authors - the one of more imaginative, the other of purer narrative powers; but each in her respective line possessing very considerable merit.

Though a fiction not free from numerous inaccuracies, inappropriate dialogue, and forced incident, it is impossible to peruse *The Wild Irish Girl *of Lady Morgan without deep interest, or to dispute its claims as a production of true national feeling as well as literary talent.

That tale was the first, and is perhaps the best of all her writings. Compared with her *Ida of Athens, *it strikingly exhibits the author’s *falling off *from the unsophisticated dictates of nature to the *less *refined conceptions induced by what she herself styles fashionable society.

To persons unacquainted with Ireland, the *Wild Irish Girl *may appear an ordinary tale of romance and fancy; but to such as understand the ancient history of that people, it may be considered as a delightful legend. The authoress might perhaps have had somewhat in view the last descendant of the Irish princes, who did not altogether forget the station of his forefather.

O’Sullivan, lineally descended from the King of the Lakes, not many years since vegetated on a retired spot of his hereditary dominions at Killarney, and though overwhelmed by poverty and deprivation, kept up in his mind a visionary dignity. Surveying from his wretched cottage that enchanting territory over which his ancestors had reigned for centuries, I have been told he never ceased to recollect his royal descent. He was a man of gigantic stature and strength, of uncouth, yet authoritative mien - not shaming his pretensions by his presence.

He was frequently visited by those who went to view the celebrated lakes, and I have conversed with many who have seen him; but at a period when familiar intercourse has been introduced between actual princes and their subjects, tending undoubtedly to diminish in the latter the sense of “that divinity which doth hedge a king,” the poor descendant of the renowned O’Sullivan had no reason to expect much commiseration from modern sensibility.

The frequent and strange revolutions of the world within the last 40 years - the radical alterations in all the material habits of society - announced the commencement of a new era; and the ascendency of commerce over rank, and of avarice over everything, completed the *regeneration. *But above all, the loosening of those ties which hound kindred and families in one common interest to uphold their race and name, the extinction of that spirit of chivalry which sustained those ties, and the common prostitution of the heraldic honours of antiquity, have steeled the human mind against the lofty and noble pretensions of birth and rank; and whilst we superficially decry the principles of *equality, *we are travelling towards them by the shortest and most dangerous road that degeneracy and meanness can point out.

I confess myself to be a determined enemy at once to political and social equality: in the exercise of justice alone should the principle exist; in any other sense it never did and never can for any length of time.

Miss Edgeworth’s *Castle Rackrent *and *Fashionable Tales *are incomparable in depicting truly several traits of the rather modern Irish character. They are perhaps on one point somewhat overcharged, but for the most part may be said to exceed Lady Morgan’s Irish novels. The fiction is less perceptible in them: they have a greater air of reality - of what I have myself often and often observed and noted in full progress and actual execution throughout my native country. The landlord, the agent, and the attorney of *Castle Rackrent *- in fact, every person it describes - are neither fictitious nor even uncommon characters, and the changes of landed property in the county where I was born - where perhaps they have prevailed to the full as widely as in any other of the united empire - owed in nine cases out of ten their origin, progress, and catastrophe to incidents in no wise differing from those so accurately painted in Miss Edge-worth’s narrative.

Though moderate fortunes have frequently and fairly been realised by agents, yet to be on the sure side of comfort and security, a country gentleman who wishes to send down his estate in tolerably good order to his family should always be *his own receiver, *and compromise any claim rather than employ an attorney to arrange it.

I recollect to have seen in Queen’s County a Mr. Clerk, who had been a working carpenter, and when making a bench for the session justices at the courthouse was laughed at for taking peculiar pains in planing and smoothing the seat of it. He smilingly observed, that he did so to make it *easy for himself, *as he was resolved he would never die till he had a right to sit thereupon; and he kept his word. He was an industrious man, and became an agent; honest, respectable, and kind-hearted, he succeeded in all his efforts to accumulate an independence. He did accumulate it, and uprightly. His character kept pace with the increase of his property, and he lived to sit as a magistrate on that very bench that he sawed and planed.

I will not quit the subject without saying a word about another of Lady Morgan’s works, *Florence Macarthy, *which, “errors excepted,” possesses an immensity of talent in the delineation of the genuine Irish character the different judges no one can mistake; but the Crawleys are superlative, and suffice to bring before my vision, in their full colouring, and almost without a variation, persons and incidents whom and which I have many a time encountered. Nothing is exaggerated as to them, and Crawley himself is the perfect and plain model of the combined agent, attorney, and magistrate - a sort of mongrel functionary whose existence I have repeatedly reprobated, and whom I pronounce to be at this moment the greatest nuisance and mischief experienced by my unfortunate country, and only to be abated by the residence of the great landlords on their estates. No peopJe under heaven could be so easily tranquillised and governed as the Irish; but that desirable end is done attainable by the personal endeavours of a liberal, humane, and resident aristocracy.

A third writer on Ireland I allude to with more pride on some points, and with less pleasure on others, because, though dubbed, par* **excellence, *“The bard of Ireland,” I have not yet seen many literary productions of his, especially on national subjects, that have afforded me an unalloyed feeling of gratification.

He must not be displeased with the observations of perhaps a truer friend than those who have led him to forget himself. His *Captain Rock, *though I doubt not well intended, coming at the time it did, and under the sanction of his name, is the most exceptionable publication in all its bearings as to Ireland that I have yet seen. Dr. Beattie says, in his *Apology for Religion, *“If it does no good, it can do no harm;” but, on the contrary, if *Captain Rock *does no harm, it can certainly do no good.

Had it been addressed to or calculated for the better orders, the book would have been less noxious; but it is *not *calculated to instruct those whose influence, example, or residence could either amend or reform the abuses which the author certainly exaggerates. It *is not *calculated to remedy the great and true cause of Irish ruin - the absenteeism of the great landed proprietors. So much the reverse, it is directly adapted to increase and confirm the real grievance, by scaring every landlord who retains a sense of personal danger - and I know none of them who are exempt from *abundance *of it - from returning to a country where *Captain Rock is proclaimed *by the “Bard of Ireland” to be an *immortal Sovereign. *The work is, in fact, a warm effusion of *party, *not a firm remonstrance of *patriotism. *It is a work better fitted for vulgar *éclat *than for rational approbation. Its effects were not calculated on, and it appears to me in itself to offer one of the strongest arguments against bestowing on the lower orders in Ireland the power of reading.

Perhaps I write warmly myself; I write not, however, for distracted cottagers, but for proprietors and legislators, and I have endeavoured honestly to express my unalterable conviction that it is by encouraging, conciliating, reattaching, and recalling the higher, and not by confusing and inflaming the lower orders of society that Ireland can be renovated.

Most undoubtedly Mr. Thomas Moore and Lady Morgan are among the most distinguished modern writers of our country, indeed, I know of none, except Miss Edgeworth, who has at present a right to compete with either, in his or her respective department.

But I can never repeat too often that I am *not a critic; ***although I choose to speak my mind strongly and freely. I hope neither my friend Moore nor her ladyship will be displeased at my stating thus candidly my opinion of their *public *characters : they would perhaps scout me as an adulator were I to tell them what I thought of their *private *ones. I dare say some of the periodical writers will announce, that my telling the world I am a very inefficient critic is mere work of *supererogation: *at any rate, it must be owned that making the confession in advance is to the full as creditable as leaving the thing to be stated for me.

In concluding my rambling estimate of the merits of these two justly celebrated authors, let me bear in mind that they are of different sexes, and recollect the peculiar attributes of either.

Both of them are alike unsparing in their use of the bold language of liberty: but Lady Morgan has improved her ideas of freedom by *contrasts *on the European continent; whilst Thomas Moore has *not *improved his by the *exemplification *of freedom in America. Lady Morgan has succeeded in adultering her refinement; Thomas Moore has unsuccessfully endeavoured to refine his grossness: she has abundant talent, he has abundant genius, - and whatsoever distinction those terms admit of, **indicates in my mind their *relative *merit. This allowance, however, must be made, that the lady has contented herself with invoking only substantial beings and things of this sublunary world, whilst the gentleman has ransacked both heaven and hell, and “the halfway house,” for figurative assistance.

I knew them both before they had acquired any celebrity and after they had attained too much. I esteemed them then, and have no reason to disesteem them now: it is on their own account that I wish some of the compositions of both had never appeared; and I really believe, upon due consideration, they will themselves be of my way of thinking.

I recollect Moore being one night at my house in Merrion Square, during the spring of his celebrity, touching the pianoforte in his own unique way to “Rosa,” his favourite amatory sonnet; his head leant back, now throwing up his ecstatic eyes to heaven, as if to invoke refinement, then casting them softly sideways, and breathing out his chromatics to elevate, as the ladies said, their souls above the world, but at the same moment convincing them that they were completely mortal!

A Mrs. K---y, a lady then *d’age mur; *but moving in the best society of Ireland, sat on a chair behind Moore: I watched her profile: her lips quavered in unison with the piano; a sort of amiable convulsion, now and then raising the upper from the under lip, composed a smile less pleasing than expressive; her eye softened, glazed, and half melting, she whispered to herself the following words, which I, standing at the back of her chair, could not avoid hearing:

“Dear, dear?” lisped Mrs. K---y, ” Moore, this is not for the god of my soul!”

Almost involuntarily I ejaculated in the same low tone *

“What *is not, Mrs. K---y?”

“You know well enough!” she replied, but without blushing as people used to do formerly; “how can you ask so silly a question?” and she turned into the crowd, but never came near the piano again that night.

I greatly admire the national, indeed patriotic idea, of collecting and publishing the *Irish Melodies; *and it were to be wished that some of them had less the appearance of having been written *per annum. *[I allude to the public trial as to copyright by Mr. Power, when it was stated that Mr. Moore wrote the Melodies, for so much a year. They are certainly very unequal.]

Sir John Stevenson, that celebrated warbler, has melodised a good many of these; but he certainly has also *melodramatised *a considerable portion of them. I think our rants and planxties would have answered just as well without either symphonies or chromatics, and that the plaintive national music of Ireland does not reach the heart a moment the sooner for passing through a mob of scientific variations. Tawdry and modern upholstery would not be very appropriate to the ancient tower of an Irish chieftain; and some of Sir John’s proceedings in melodising simplicity remind me of the Rev. Mark Hare, who whitewashed the great rock of Cashell to give it a *genteel *appearance against the visitation.

As I do not attempt - I suppose I ought to say presume -to be a literary, so am I far less a musical critic; but I know what pleases myself and in *that *species of criticism I cannot be expected to yield to anybody.

As to my own authorship, I had business more important than writing books in my early life; but now, in my old days, it is my greatest amusement, and nothing would give me more satisfaction than hearing the free remarks of the critics on my productions.

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