he could do quietly in the country; but he felt that it would be better to "take the bull by the horns," and make his first appearance in London, which he accordingly did, at the Princess's Concert-room, on the evening of the 13th March, 1844. To a man who had never done anything of the kind before, and with a voice of very limited compass, it was daring enough; but nerving himself for the occasion, his first monologue received the unequivocal approbation of a crowded audience, and the next morning's papers contained most favourable notices of his performance. The entertainment was repeated only to be more successful, and after an extended run in London, he presented it to the public in the chief cities and towns of England, Ireland and Scotland. Two hours is a long time for one man, unassisted in any way, to keep people together, and, what is still more difficult, to keep them amused; but Lover succeeded in effecting this beyond all doubt. Song followed song, recitation followed anecdote in pleasing and attractive variety; and while the introductory parts of the entertainment were delivered with unaffected ease and fluency, his dramatic powers were ever ready to assist him in the rendering of his musical compositions, as well as to give effect to his stories and poetic recitations.

In America, whither he proceeded in the spring of 1846, his reception was most flattering, and in the best society (well guarded ring-fence as it is), he was treated with marked distinction. In the chief cities and towns of the States and also in Canada he gave his monologue, which he varied from time to time with new songs, stories, and anecdotes. The song of the "Alabama" was written while gliding down that beautiful stream. It is at once a charming sketch from nature and a transcript of his own feelings at the time. Here is the concluding verse:

"However far, however near,

To me alike thou'rt still more dear;

In thought, sweet love, thou'rt with me here,
On the winding Alabama.

"The watch-dog's bark on shore, I hear-
He tells me that some home is near;
And memory wakes affection's tear,

On the distant Alabama."

Shortly after his arrival in New Orleans he sung the "Alabama" in a draw. ing-room, and fresh as he was from the river, the theme of his song, it was perhaps the more effective. Mr. Clay, the distinguished senator, was present, and requesting him to repeat it, paid him a most refined and elegantly turned compliment by saying, "For the future the Alabama will be better known through the Poet than the Geographer."

The Deer-hunt, and the sleighing in America, furnished subjects which he has treated in a lively and perfectly fresh manner. The similarity of sound between slaying the Deer and sleighing the Dear, was quickly seized upon and illustrated in a song full of point throughout. A husband is recommended to prevent his wife from scolding him :

"If your dear's temper's crost,

Pray at once for the frost,
And fix her right into a sleigh;
If she would she can't scold,

For the weather's so cold,

Her mouth she can't open at all.

In vain would she cry,

For the tears in her eye

Would be frozen before they can fall."

The autumnal couch and repose of the Forest-hunter is truthfully and picresquely described in three short lines:

"When the leaves falling red

Yield a ready-made bed,

Where they rest after slaying the deer."

The superstition among the Indians, that the "Great Spirit" forbade the use of gold to his children, is thus dealt with:

"If gold had been good the Great Spirit had given—
That gift, like his others, as freely from Heaven.
The lake gives us white fish, the deer gives us meat,
And the toil of the capture gives slumber so sweet;
Then give me my arrows, and give me my bow,

In the wild woods to rove where the blue rapids flow."

These extracts, from songs written in America, 'will serve to show that Mr. Lover's poetry was not a conventional thing following in the beaten track of every-day association, nor confined to Irish subjects, with which his name was so identified; but fresh scenes produced fresh poetic combinations, alike truthful and just in imagery and illustration. Indeed, in a letter to a friend, he has described his sensations in the New World with a picturesqueness and force that makes his prose truly poetic:

"Glorious Niagara! never can I forget the sensations with which my eye first caught the rapids rushing down to the falls; the mighty mass of waters heaving, and foaming, and bounding onwards; and then, when I first saw their headlong dash down the abyss, I lost all powers of speech; for when I attempted words to tell what I felt, my tongue refused its office, my voice trembled, and I could scarcely refrain from tears. I threw off my hat in the spirit of reverential awe, and held out my hands towards the mighty giant, with his flowing robe, as if of molten emeralds, with a fringe of pearls and diamonds, for to nothing else in colour or brilliancy may be likened the vivid green of the waters, the flashing and whiteness of the spray. Then the mighty cloud that arises, steaming up from the vast cauldron below, a messenger, as it were, seeking heaven, whose Master had bidden the waters to fall there, to tell His will was done.' The god-like sun imaging his light in the spray, and adding prismatic beauty to that already so beautiful! Down, down eternally fall those long festoons of snow-white waters, and the voice of God in the never-ceasing thunder of the cataract. "How the flood below heaves, and eddies, and rushes on through the giant gap of the stupendous cliffs, clothed with the nodding verdure of the green summer; while the leaves are sprinkled with the diamond-shower of the spray, adding beauty to the feathery lightness of the woods, and refreshing their verdure. How the momentarily-formed rainbows flit about upon the ascending spray, as it whirls around in the never-dying breeze of this enchanting spot-another blessing in the fervour of an American July. Oh, Niagara! Niagara! how endless are thy beauties, how vast thy sublimity. Never have I seen grandeur and beauty so combined as in thee!"

On his return to England in 1848, being more than two years away, he gave an entertainment, entitled " Paddy's Portfolio," which was a combination of Irish songs and stories, and an epitome of his American notes and experiences. In delineating transatlantic character he was at once faithful and humorous, but never descended to ill-nature or caricature. His recitations of "The Irish Fisherman," and "The Flooded IIut of the Mississippi," were delivered with a depth of feeling and pathos which always found their way to the hearts of his audiences; while in his telling that exquisitely-droll story of "The Adventures and Mistakes of Jemmy Hoy," he invariably excited hearty and genuine laughter. "The Songs of the Superstitions of Ireland," with several legendary ballads, &c., have been published in a collected form; but since then Mr. Lover has written the words, and composed the music for many other songs. In his tale of "Handy Andy" we find a good specimen of that power of condensation, which we have before alluded to in this song :

In the song "Forgive but Don't Forget," the second verse has a cumulative power of antithesis:

"Oh why should friendship harshly chide

Our little faults on either side?

From friends we love we bear with those,
As thorns are pardoned for the rose.
The honey bee on busy wing,
Producing sweets, yet bears a sting;
The purest gold most needs alloy,
And sorrow is the nurse of joy."

And then the way in which the old saying is reversed in the cloncuding four lines:

"Forgive, forget-we're wisely told,

Is held a maxim good and old;

But half the maxim-better yet,

Then oh forgive-but don't forget."

In the "Birth of St. Patrick," the conceit that the saint being born at midnight on the 8th, and the uncertainty arising whether the 8th or 9th was his true birthday, are ingenious

:

"For mistakes will occur in a hurry and shock;

And some blamed the babby, and some blamed the clock;
For with all these cross-questions, sure no one could know
If the child was too fast, or the clock was too slow."

Then father Mulcahy making "confusion worse confounded," by declaring— "No one could have two birth-days but a twin."

And winding up with the device, that as eight and nine make seventeen, so conflicting testimonies would be best reconciled by making the 17th the birthday; giving a good bit of advice, too, which might be well observed on more serious occasions in Ireland :

"Don't be always dividing, but sometimes combine.”

But here is his last, which none of our readers have yet met with :

"COAXING CONNOR.

"Now let me alone, though I know that you won't,

For I don't b'lieve a word, Coaxing Connor, you say;
You swear that you love me, but maybe you don't,
And 'tis with my poor heart you'd be wanting to play.
That's a game you're well up to, with soothering arts

For Jane, Bet, or Nance-me, or Molly, you'd strive;

I ask but one trick for my poor ace of hearts,

While you, wicked rogue, would be playing spoil five.'”*

*For the benefit of general readers, we state that "spoil five" is a favourite Irish game at

cards, in which the ace of hearts predominates.

"O! Peggy, your coaxing refusals among,

I heed not the word, but the look that replies;
With glances so bright, you've no need of a tongue,

For, if you were dumb, you might talk with your eyes.
Your sweet lips may serve other uses than speech,

You could smile me to bondage, you know, Peggy dear;
Be dumb, if you like-Beauty never should preach—
But, oh, be not deaf, when 'tis Love bids you hear.

""Tis you've play'd 'spoil five' with my senses, machree,
For 'tis your voice I hear in the soft summer wind;
In the fresh-blushing roses 'tis you that I see—

Oh-I see you so plain!--though they say Love is blind.
If I touch a sweetbriar-I say that's herself;

If I e'er feel your hand-on my ear 'tis I feel

But the taste of your lip-oh, like sweets on a shelf,

"Tis kept far out of reach from the boy that would steal."

There are many other of Mr. Lover's songs and poems which we would gladly give extracts from, did space permit. But in those which we have given there is evidence of nature and truthful feeling, which make up for more studied and polished artifice. We believe he lacks what is called classical scholarship, but his writings are probably the fresher for the want of it. Schlegel, in his dramatic literature, when speaking of Shakspeare, says:

"Our poet's want of scholarship has been the subject of endless controversy, and yet it is surely a very easy matter to decide. Shakspeare was poor in dead school-cram, but he possessed a rich treasury of living and intuitive knowledge. The general direction of his mind was not to the collection of words but of facts. With English books, whether original or translated, he was extensively acquainted, and we may safely affirm that he had read all that his native language and literature then contained, that could be of any use to him in his poetical avocations."

Burns, too, was not prevented by want of classic lore from being a poet, and Spenser said, that in the early ballads of the Irish, wild as they were, there was much of the pure gold of poetry." In treating Irish subjects, Mr. Lover is essentially Irish in spirit, and his illustrations are in strict accordance with the theme. What Lover has done for the popular superstitions of Ireland, another lyrist has more recently effected for those terse and pithy proverbs to be found in the mouths of our peasantry :-"Dance light, for my heart it lies under your feet, love;""Welcome as flowers of May;" with many others which are all now familiar to lovers of song, and have been admirably given by Jonathan Freke Sling-by, a name second to none in that class of poetry with which he has identified himself. We cannot refrain from expressing a hope that these charming ballads may yet be collected in some permanent form.

In music Lover is not scientific, but he knows enough to write the symphonies and accompaniments to his own songs. His ear is so true that we never find him writing false harmony, and thus one will not be disposed to inquire, when hearing or reading his compositions, whether he is conversant with the mysteries of extended sixths, or diminished or German sevenths. Without toiling through the abstruse rules of music, he appears to have intuitively learned that which has taken other men years to acquire. We have stated before that his voice is of limited compass, but, like Moore, who sung his own melodies with such charming effect, he makes up for the want of organ, by clear articulation and expression, that musical reading of song which is so rarely to be met with in these days.

In mentioning Moore's name it reminds us, that when he launched his lyric bark he had no competitior. The Continent was closed against us, no foreign music then reached our shores. At such a time, when the world was tired of poor imitations of the stilted old style of music, nauseated with words in which Phillis and Chloe, Strephon, and any quantity of lambkins abounded, how welcome was the freshness of his songs! how sparkling their poetic beauty! and then, what a mine of wealth was at his disposal in the melodies which Bunting had previously rescued from oblivion, and to which the poet's words gave an imperishable fame. Time, however, has made great changes. The Continent

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has now been open for years, and the lyric poets of the present day have difficulties to contend with to which Moore was a stranger. The fascinations of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Spohr, Meyerbeer, Weber, are all in the field, and rendered more available to the public by the greater cultivation of foreign languages. It is, therefore, something to say for the subject of our memoir, that his songs have been popular in the days of such brilliant contemporaries; that they have lain side by side with their works on the piano-fortes of the accomplished, and have been hummed, whistled, and organised through the length and breadth of the land. While he effected this by his talent, he also achieved a first-rate reputation as a painter, was a successful novelist, a successful dramatist, and then appeared the vivâ voce illustrator of his works; and was again successful, in no small degree too, as public criticisms well attest. Dibdin wrote and performed his own monologue; but, with the exception of Lover, we know of no one else who did the same. He did more, however, than Dibdin, for he has written novels, and illustrated them himself, and composed the incidental songs, a literary feat which has no example that we know of." In a word, poet, painter, dramatist, he has won sufficient celebrity to make the fame of three different men, which we trust, like the shamrock of his own native island, may long continue to be

TRIA JUNCTA IN UNO.