Irish Books and Irish People | Page 7

institution.
Carleton does not stand by himself; he is the head and representative of
a whole class of Irish novelists, among whom John Banim is the best

known name. All of them were peasants who aimed at depicting scenes
of peasant life from their own experience. What one may call the
melodramatic Irish story, in which Lever was so brilliantly successful,
has its first famous example in The Collegians of Gerald Griffin. The
novel has no concern with college life, and is far better described by its
stage-title, The Colleen Bawn. Here at least is a man with a story to tell
and no object but to tell it. Griffin belonged to the lay order of
Christian Brothers: his book deals principally with a society no more
familiar to him than was the household of Mr. Rochester to Charlotte
Brontë; and his method recalls the Brontës by its strenuous imagination
and its vehement painting of passion. The tale was suggested by a
murder which excited all Ireland. A young southern squire carried off a
girl with some money, and procured her death by drowning. He was
arrested at his mother's house and a terrible scene took place, terribly
rendered in the book. Griffin, of course, changes the motive; the girl is
carried off not for money but for love, and she is sacrificed to make
way for a stronger passion. Eily O'Connor, the victim, is a pretty and
pathetic figure; the hero-villain Hardress Cregan, and the mother who
indirectly causes the crime, are effective though melodramatic; but the
actual murderer, Danny the Lord, Hardress Cregan's familiar, is worthy
of Scott or Hugo.
In his sketches of society, Hyland Creagh, the duellist, old Cregan, and
the rest, Griffin is describing a state of affairs previous to his own
experience, the Ireland of Sir Jonah Barrington's memoirs; he is not, as
were Carleton and Miss Edgeworth, copying minutely from personal
observation. Herein he resembles Lever who, when all is said and done,
remains the chief, as he is the most Irish, of Irish novelists. It is true
that Lever had two distinct manners: and in his later books he deals
chiefly with contemporary society, drawing largely on his experiences
of diplomatic life. Like most novelists he preferred his later work; but
the books by which he is best known, Harry Lorrequer and the rest, are
his earliest productions; and though his maturer skill was employed on
different subjects, he formed his imagination in studies of the
Napoleonic Wars and of a duelling, drinking, bailiff-beating Ireland.
His point of view never altered, and the peculiar attraction of his
writings is always the same. Lever's books have the quality rather of

speech than of writing; wherever you open the pages there is always a
witty, well-informed Irishman discoursing to you, who tells his story
admirably, when he has one to tell, and, failing that, never fails to be
pleasant. Irish talk is apt to be discursive; to rely upon a general charm
diffused through the whole, rather than upon any quotable brilliancy;
its very essence is spontaneity, high spirits, fertility of resource. That is
a fair description of Lever. He is never at a loss. If his story hangs, off
he goes at score with a perfectly irrelevant anecdote, but told with such
enjoyment of the joke that you cannot resent the digression. Indeed the
plots are left pretty much to take care of themselves; he positively
preferred to write his stories in monthly instalments for a magazine; he
is not a conscientious artist, but he lays himself out to amuse you, and
he does it. If he advertises a character as a wit, he does not labour
phrases to describe his brilliancy; he produces the witticisms. He has
been accused of exaggeration. As regards the incidents, one can only
say that the memoirs of Irish society at the beginning of this century
furnish at least fair warranty for any of his inventions. In
character-drawing he certainly overcharged the traits: but he did so
with intention, and by consistently heightening the tones throughout
obtained an artistic impression, which had life behind it, however
ingeniously travestied. His stories have no unity of action, but through
a great diversity of characters and incidents they maintain their unity of
treatment. That is not the highest ideal of the novel, but it is an
intelligible one, not lacking famous examples; and Lever perfectly
understood it.
If one wishes to realise how good an artist Lever was, the best way is to
read his contemporary Samuel Lover. Handy Andy appeared somewhat
later than Harry Lorrequer. It is just the difference between good
whiskey and bad whiskey; both are indigenous and therefore
characteristic, but let us be judged by our best. Obviously the men have
certain things in common; great natural vivacity,