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 Ilav 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 entreé, 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 Ilav, 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 sympathics 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.

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 may 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 magnanimcus 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.

Yet, in his poor judgment, this is heroic measure, and a worthy epitaph; and the translator of Ossian has, for his name's sake, a friend already in the Rake of Mallow. Alas, our poor Kishogue! no boy in trouble shall ever fortify his last moments by emulous remembrance of him. John Highlandman hangs high above the pride of the seven parishes. Like Phalerus, too, the Sicilian smith, Kishogue is doomed to expire in a bull-for his death must be abortive, like the births of those who come into the world before their time. Caret vato sacro. Tim Riley lies drunk in the ditch, and Kishogue must die without The Rakes of Mallow. Oh for one bar of the prelude-for but one rousing screech of the catgut-one cheering cheep of the rosin on the bow! There would be the cure, beyond the skill of doctors-the charm that would shoot up his chest like a hill side, and set his leg out on the cart floor before him, so tight that his full stocking would need never a garter: but, alas, the only music Tim Riley will make this day must be with a less artificial instrument; and even were he up and sober, we fear his fiddle is too much the worse of that last fall to second his harmonious endeavours with any effect-the bridge, indeed, is much dilapidated, and we are inclined to apprehend, from the position of Tim's elbow, that something serious has happened also to the belly. What could

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have induced Tim to take her with him to confession? Had he left her at home, some other hand might have been found to waken her slumbering chords and give Kishogue a chance. But no, it is doomed for Kishogue that he will not die game today; so "Take it out of my sight," says he, putting the mug of mulled wine away wid his hand, and put me out o' pain at wanst," says he, “for my heart is low, bekase Tim Riley desaived me, when I thought he would rise it, that I might die like a rale Rake o' Mallow!" Kishogue is hanged accordingly; but so low are his spirits, on account of Tim Riley's deceiving him, that he has hardly the heart to kick. So much for the humour, now for the moral of our tale. A respite arrives-they cut our poor friend down; "but it was all over wid Kishogue; he was as dead as small beer, and as stiff as a crutch. Oh millia murther, millia murther!' cried out the Widdy Houlaghan, in the crowd; 'Oh Kishogue, my darlint, why did you refuse my mull'd wine? Oh, if you'd stopped wid me to take your dhrop o' drink, you'd be alive and merry now!' So that is the maynin o' the Curse o' Kishogue; for you see Kishogue was hanged for lavin his liquor behind him." And the Curse of Kishogue upon the man who will refuse, at parting with Mr. Lover, to drink his health in Deogh an dorish.

Toor a loo, &c.

Toor a loo, &c.