Beats every city upon the say;
’Tis there you’ll see O’Connell spoutin’
And Lady Morgan making tay”;
a night at Howth; the Knight of Kerry and Billy McCabe—form a succession of sketches teeming with vivacity, humor, and wit, and dashed off with a pen which almost makes a steeplechaser of the reader, so exciting and so rapid is the pace.
To Lever’s official career at Brussels we are indebted for several diplomatic portraits, notably those of Sir Horace Upton (The Fortunes of Glencore) and Sir Shally Doubleton (A Day’s Ride); the former of “a very composite order of human architecture, chivalrous in sentiment and cunning in action, noble in aspiration and utterly sceptical as regards motives, deep enough for a ministerial dinner and fast enough for a party of young guardsmen at Greenwich,” and the latter who could receive a Foreign Office “swell” thus: “Possibly your name may not be Paynter, sir; but you are evidently before me for the first time, or you would know that, like my great colleague and friend, Prince Metternich, I have made it a rule through life never to burden my memory with what can be spared it, and of these are the patronymics of all subordinate people; for this reason, sir, and to this end, every cook in my establishment answers to the name of Honoré, my valet is always Pierre, my coachman Jacob, and all Foreign Office messengers I call Paynter.” Upon the small-fry of diplomacy Mr. Lever is occasionally very severe, and his pictures of life at Hesse Kalbbratonstadt and similar unpronounceable principalities are as amusing as they are possibly realistic.
The success of Harry Lorrequer set its author at quill-driving in the same direction, and Charles O’Malley, or The Irish Dragoon, was given to the world. The very name sounds “boot and saddle”—rings of the spur and clanks of the sabre. What a romance: the high-spirited lad who leads his rival to the jaws of the grave in the hunting-field, and follows him in a ride of death against the unbroken front of Cambronne’s battalions on the blood-stained field of Waterloo! What a picture of the old Peninsular days! What portraits of Le petit Caporal, as the French army loved to call Napoleon, of the “Iron Duke,” the gallant Picton, and the great captains of that eventful period! What glimpses of dark-eyed señoritas and haughty hidalgos; of lion-hearted sons of Erin charging to the cry of Faugh a ballagh, and leading forlorn hopes with saucy jokes upon their laughing lips; of “Connaught Robbers,” as the Connaught Rangers were jocosely called, on account of the number of prisoners which they invariably made, and for the most part single-handed; of Brussels the night before Waterloo; and of the Duchess of Richmond’s celebrated ball:
“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.”