Of the writers of that day Griffin's favorite, as might be expected, was Sir Walter Scott. He had a profound respect for the historical romances of that great man, and, with an ambition honorable to his patriotism, he resolved to abandon for a time the portraiture of local and modern life, and attempt to do for his native country what the author of Ivanhoe had so admirably done for Great Britain. Accordingly, in the spring of 1829, he removed to Dublin, where he spent several months in the study of ancient history and in visiting on foot several parts of Ireland, the topography of which he designed to introduce into his new work. The fruit of his antiquarian labors was The Invasion, which appeared during the winter of the same year, a short time after the publication of a second series of Munster Festivals. But though it had an extensive sale and was highly praised by the more learned, it did not, from the very nature of the subject and the remote epoch treated, establish itself in the affections of the public so generally as his previous and subsequent writings. While in the Irish capital, he was introduced to Sir Philip Crampton and other distinguished scholars, from all of whom he experienced the most flattering attention. His fame, indeed, had preceded him among all classes of his countrymen, and their warm and discriminating encomiums, diffident as he was to a fault, must have fallen pleasantly on his ear, and not the less so when they were expressed in the mellifluous accents he was accustomed to hear from his infancy. A closer intimacy with the congenial spirits of his own country appears to have worn off a great deal of his natural reserve; for we now find him mentioning that he had met Miss Edgeworth, and was anticipating the pleasure of an introduction to Lady Morgan and other contemporary celebrities. In the latter part of this year he also formed the acquaintance of a lady residing in the south of Ireland, which soon ripened into a lasting friendship, founded upon similarity of tastes and mutual esteem. The name of the lady is not given in his life, and we know her only as the recipient of several pleasant gossiping letters, addressed to her by the initial "L.," and by the many beautiful poems dedicated in her honor. A married lady, the mother of a numerous family, and Griffin's senior by several years, she exercised a wholesome and judicious influence over a mind naturally sympathetic but peculiarly sensitive, such as none of his own sex could or would have attempted. In company with her husband and relatives he made a prolonged visit to Killarney, the romantic beauty of whose lakes filled him with the most intense delight.
In the winter of 1829, he was again in London, which city he was obliged to visit each succeeding year till 1835, to attend to his subsequent works; The Christian Physiologist, The Rivals, The Duke of Monmouth, and Tales of My Neighborhood, appearing in nearly regular annual succession. The intervening time was generally spent in acquiring material for these works, or at the watering-places enjoying his well-earned repose. It was on the occasion of one of those flying trips across the channel, in 1832, that, being requested by the electors of Limerick to present, on their behalf, a request to Moore that he would consent to represent them in Parliament, Griffin deviated from his route and called on that celebrated poet at Sloperton Cottage. In a playful account of this ever-memorable interview, addressed to his friend "L.," he says: "O dear L——! I saw the poet, and I spoke to him, and he spoke to me, and it was not to bid me to 'get out of his way,' as the king of France did to the man who boasted that his majesty had spoken to him; but it was to shake hands with me, and to ask me, 'How I did, Mr. Griffin,' and to speak of 'my fame.' My fame! Tom Moore talk of my fame! Ah the rogue! He was humbugging, L——, I'm afraid. He knew the soft side of an author's heart, and perhaps had pity on my long, melancholy-looking figure, and said to himself, 'I will make this poor fellow feel pleasant, if I can;' for which, with all his roguery, who could help liking him and being grateful to him?"
In 1838, he projected a tour on the continent; but was induced to change his purpose for a shorter one in Scotland, from which he derived not only great pleasure, but restored health. His diary of the trip, originally taken in short-hand notes, has been published, and abounds in good-natured criticisms on the manners and customs of the people he met on his journey, and some very fine descriptions of the scenery of the Highlands, which fell under his observation.
Gerald Griffin's last novel, as we have intimated, appeared in 1835, when only in the thirty-second year of his age. He had succeeded in the fullest sense as a novelist, in giving to the world in half a score of years some of the healthiest and most fascinating books in our language; had won the applause of the gifted and good alike, and, in a pecuniary point of view, had secured himself against all probability of dependence. Still, in a certain sense, he was not content. The pursuit of fame, as he had on more than one occasion predicted, had alone given him pleasure—its acquisition brought him no permanent satisfaction. Whether in abandoning the drama he had departed from his true path, or that his early insight into the mysteries of authorship had led him to underrate the labors of those whom the world is allowed to know only at a distance, or that his mind, naturally of a serious and religious turn, now fully developed, instinctively arrived at the conviction that only in the performance of those duties and sacrifices imposed on the ministers of the Gospel could be found his real sphere of action, or whether all these causes acted upon him with more or less force, certain it is that he now began to contemplate a radical change in his life. We know that he relinquished writing for the stage with reluctance, and that as early as 1828 he commenced the study of law at the London University; but it was not for two or three years afterward that his friends noticed his growing inclination for the life of a religious. From that time his poems, those beautiful scintillations of his soul, began to exhibit a higher fancy and a purer moral power than could be drawn even from patriotism, or the contemplation of mere natural objects. His conversation assumed a graver tone, and his letters to his friends, formerly so pleasantly filled with gossip and scraps of comment on the persons and literature of the day, were mainly taken up with graver topics.
This change, we are satisfied, was the effect of grave and due deliberation, and not the result of caprice or disappointed ambition. It had been remarked that his letters to the different members of his family during his residence in London, while filled with minute details of his literary labors, fears, and aspirations, seldom touched on religious matters, and hence it has been inferred that during his sojourn there he had neglected the practical duties of the faith of his boyhood; but this supposition is altogether gratuitous. In familiar intercourse with men of his own age and pursuits, he may have given expression to crude or speculative opinions without that proper degree of reverence which older minds exercise in dealing with such important questions; but we have the assurance of his nearest relatives and of those few who enjoyed his friendship that this weakness was seldom indulged in. However, Griffin in a spirit of self-condemnation, which we cannot help thinking disproportionate to the supposed offence, inaugurated his new mode of life by endeavoring to remove from the minds of his former associates any wrong impressions such conversations might have produced. In an admirable letter written to a literary friend in London, under date January 13th, 1830, he says:
"Since our acquaintance has recommenced this winter, I have observed, with frequent pain, that not much (if the slightest) change has taken place in your opinions on the only important subject on earth. Within the last few weeks, I have been thinking a great deal upon this subject, and my conscience reproaches me that you may have found in the worldliness of my own conduct and conversation reason to suppose that my religious convictions had not taken that deep hold of my heart and mind which they really have. I will tell you what has convinced me of this. I have compared our interviews this winter with the conversations we used to hold together, when my opinions were unsettled and my principles (if they deserved the name) detestable, and though these may be somewhat more decent at present, I am uneasy at the thought that the whole tenor of my conduct, such as it has appeared to you, was far from that of one who lived purely and truly for heaven and for religion."
With a short visit to Paris and his tour in Scotland, Griffin practically bade adieu to the outside world, and, retiring to Pallas Kenry, prepared himself for admission into the order of the Christian Brothers. We learn from one of his letters to friends in America that he had at first designed to offer himself as a candidate for the holy ministry, and had even commenced a preparatory course of theological study; but distrust of his vocation for a calling requiring so many qualifications led him to select the more quiet but highly meritorious sphere of a humble teacher of little children.
"I had long since relinquished the idea," he writes, "which I ought never to have entertained, of assuming the duties of the priesthood; and I assure you that it is one of the attractions of the order into which I have entered, that its subjects are prohibited (by the brief issued from Rome in approval and confirmation of the institute) from ever aspiring to the priesthood."
Having destroyed all his unpublished manuscripts, including Matt Hyland, a ballad of considerable merit of which only a fragment remains, and taken affectionate leave of his friends, the author of Gisippus and The Collegians, in the prime of his manhood and the fulness of his fame, left his home for ever, entered as a postulant the institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Dublin, September 8th, 1838, and on the 15th of the following month, the feast of St. Teresa, was admitted to the religious habit.
"I have," he writes, "entered this house, at the gracious call of God, to die to the world and to live to him; all is to be changed; all my own pursuits henceforward to be laid aside, and those only embraced which he points out to me."