The Life Of John Banim, the Irish novelist, author of Damon and Pythias, etc., and one of the writers of Tales by the O'Hara Family.
With extracts from his correspondence, general and literary.
By Patrick Joseph Murray.
Also selections from his poems.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1869.
The Ghost-hunter And His Family. By the O'Hara Family. New York: D. & J. Sadlier& Co. 1869.
John Banim was born in the city of Kilkenny, on the 3d day of April, 1798. His parents were in humble life, but, through industry and economy, were enabled to bestow upon their son the inestimable advantage of a good literary education, while their precepts and example united to secure for him a thorough Christian training. His genius for novel writing manifested itself at an early age. While in his sixth year, his ready fancy gave birth to a story of no little merit.
"He was not sufficiently tall to write conveniently at a table, even when seated, and having placed the paper upon his bedroom floor, he lay down beside it and commenced the construction of his plot. During three months he devoted nearly all his hours of play to the completion of his task; and when at length he had concluded, the writing was so execrable that he alone could decipher it. In this dilemma he obtained the assistance of his brother Michael, and of a school-fellow; they acted as amanuenses, relieving each other when weary of writing from John's dictation. When the tale was fully transcribed, it was stitched in a blue cover, and John determined that it should be printed. But here the important question of expense arose to mind, and, after long deliberation, the youthful author thought of resorting to a subscription publication. Accordingly the manuscript was shown to several of his father's friends, and, in the course of a week, the subscribers amounted to thirty, at a payment of one shilling each. Disappointment was again the lot of our little genius; for in all Kilkenny he could not induce a printer to undertake the issuing of his story. This was a heavy blow to his hopes; but honorable even as a child, he no sooner found that he could not publish the tale than he waited upon his subscribers for the purpose of restoring to them their shillings. All received him kindly and refused the money, telling him that they were quite satisfied with reading the manuscript."
In this little incident of his boyhood, the salient features of the character of John Banim, the man and the author, are easily discernible. His extreme facility of conception, his hurrying energy of execution, his confidence in the merits of his productions, his indomitable persistence in commanding public attention, his patience and courage under defeat and disappointment, and his scrupulous honesty of purpose, which controlled alike his writings and his business relations, are all contained and foreshadowed in the circumstances of this almost infantile enterprise. Maturer years darkened the shadows, deepened the lines, heightened the lights of Banim's character; but such as he was, when he ran home from his school-mates in their hours of play, "to see that 'Farrell the Robber' had not stolen his mother," such also was he, till, in his last hours, he begged of his brother,
"That I would stand by while his grave was digging, and that, when his body was lowered to its last resting place, I should be certain the side of his coffin was in close contact with that of his beloved parent."
Of the literary life and achievements of Banim, of his privations and discouragements, of his physical sufferings, and his premature decay and death, the pages of Mr. Murray's book contain a tolerably full description. It is to be regretted, however, that the task did not fall into the hands of Michael Banim, his brother and co-laborer in the O'Hara Tales. The work before us is too evidently the accomplishment of "an outsider"—of one who draws his information from letters, from books, from the accounts and descriptions of others, and not of one who "knew his man," and delineates the results of his own personal sight and hearing. John Banim was a man whose biographer should have been his most intimate and dearest friend, whose choicest qualities those who knew him most thoroughly could alone adequately value, and whom a distant public can be taught fully to appreciate only by a writer who himself has learned the lesson through long and close association.
Of the works of Banim, (one of the best of which we have also just received,) it is needless for us to make particular mention. They are worthy to be classed among the standard fictions of the century, whether for their rhetorical or dramatic power, and are almost wholly free from the loose sensationalism which disgraces the pages of so many modern tales. We have found them to inculcate virtue and industry, to do honor to purity and devotion, to abound in filial affection and religious fidelity to duty; and there is no half-heartedness in our wish that they, and such as they, may supplant, at least among Catholic readers, the noisome volumes which come swarming faster and faster both from the American and English press.
Problematic Characters: A Novel.
By Freidrich Spielhagen.
New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.