Miss Jane Austen's novels, models of writing at this day, at first met with no success. One of them, "Northanger Abbey," was purchased by a publisher in Bath for ten pounds. After paying this sum, he was afraid to risk any further money in its publication, and it remained many years in his possession before he ventured upon the speculation, which, to his surprise, turned out very profitable.
The poet Shelley had always to pay for the publication of his poems.
The "Ode on the Death of Sir John Moore at Corunna" was written by Rev. Charles Wolfe. It was rejected so scornfully by a leading periodical that the author gave it to an obscure Irish paper.
Con Cregan's Legacy.
BY CHARLES LEVER.
Charles James Lever (1806—1872) remains the most popular novelist that Ireland has ever produced. He was born in Dublin and studied medicine both there and in Germany. After practising his profession for several years, he began to write his novels of Irish life, the first of which, "Harry Lorrequer," appeared serially in the Dublin University Magazine in 1837. This story caught the fancy of the public at once, by its unrestrained spirit of rollicking fun, verging often upon farce. The flow of animal spirits which Lever displayed was even more conspicuous in the most popular of all his books, "Charles O'Malley," and in the succeeding novels, "Jack Hinton," "Tom Burke of Ours," and "The Confessions of Con Cregan," from the last of which the accompanying selection is taken.
Wit and humor are blended in everything that Lever wrote, and he had a keen eye for the grotesque. His later years were largely spent upon the Continent, and he died at Trieste, where he had been British consul for many years. He and Samuel Lover afford the best examples of Celtic wit that are to be found in literature.
When, my worthy reader, we shall have become better acquainted, there will be little necessity for my insisting upon a fact which, at this early stage of our intimacy, I deem it requisite to mention; namely, that my native modesty and bashfulness are only second to my veracity, and that while the latter quality in a manner compels me to lay an occasional stress upon my own goodness of heart, generosity, candor, and so forth, I have, notwithstanding, never introduced the subject without a pang—such a pang as only a sensitive and diffident nature can suffer or comprehend; there now, not another word of preface or apology!
I was born in a little cabin on the borders of Meath and King's County; it stood on a small triangular bit of ground, beside a cross-road; and although the place was surveyed every ten years or so, they were never able to say to which county we belonged, there being just the same number of arguments for one side as for the other—a circumstance, many believed, that decided my father in his original choice of the residence; for while, under the "disputed boundary question," he paid no rates or county cess, he always made a point of voting at both county elections!