we trust, guarded so far against the charge of invidious judgments. At this time, it appears that he had been on the watch for occasion to enter on the arena of politics. Mr. Moore has discovered amongst his papers some fragments of notes for a pamphlet, in answer to Dr. Johnson's pamphlet, "Taxation no Tyranny," which now appeared. It does not, however, appear from these fragments, that the fame of Sheridan has lost any thing by the indolence which was the probable means of this intent not being effected. He had not yet arrived at the full maturity of knowledge, method, or style, that might have produced any thing worthy of his genius or of his antagonist; and without here entering into the merits of Johnson's argument, we think that Sheridan's preparations rather exhibit a juvenile notion of the task and subject he undertook. The personal attack on Johnson, as a pensioner, would have been both ungracious, silly, and unjust; and would, perhaps, have cost him a blush on reflection. Mr. Moore's remark on this is more pleasing and just, than we apprehend practicable:-" Men of a high order of genius, such as Johnson and Sheridan, should never enter into warfare with each other, but like the gods in Homer, leave the strife to inferior spirits." In the following year, mutual good offices took place between Sheridan and that truly illustrious manSheridan having, in his prologue to Savage's play of Sir Thomas Overbury paid a handsome compliment to Johnson, the biographer of its author. This was not diminished by the circumstance that Johnson, who had been for some time at variance with his old friend Tom Sheridan, seemed at this time to be anxious for a reconciliation. He was the more gratified by this courtesy from the gifted son. Sheri dan was soon after proposed by him in the Literary Club, with the complimentary observation ." He who had written the two best comedies of his age, is surely a considerable man." Many of our readers may be gratified by some notice of this club, nor can we imagine a subject of stronger interest, in the life of an eminent literary member of its first and best era. It was first proposed by Reynolds in 1764, and its first members were Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith, Johnson, Dr. Nugent, Mr. Beauclerk, Mr. Langton, Mr. Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, once a week, at seven in the evening, and sat to a late hour. The first intention seems to have been, to have limited its number to that of the nine first members.— Every one may easily comprehend the impossibility of long preserving such a limit. The claims of friendship, and the influence of rank, talent, and celebrity, must be quickly felt; and the barrier that would exclude a common friend of the majority will be broken, as soon as it is felt to be worth assailing. The club grew to thirty-five; but still the principle of its formation was preserved, and its growth was an enlargement of its talent and literature. A single adverse vote was enough to exclude any applicant for admissionand where so many must have felt a jealous sense of its real object, that exclusive vote could not be wanting, where an unfitting application was made. After about ten years, it was resolved to change the weekly supper into a dinner, once a fortnight, during the sessions of Parliament. The place of meeting has been also changed at different times, and is now at the Thatched House in St. James' Street. Of this club, Sheridan was elected a member, 26th January, 1777. "So pleads the tale, that gives to future times, The son's misfortunes, and the parent's crimes; There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive, Fixed by the hand that bids our language live." THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE REV. BLACKTHORN M'FLAIL, LATE p.p. OF BALLYMACWHACKEM. Written by his Cousin, the Rev. Phedlim M'Fun, Roman Catholic Rector of Ballymacscaltheen. CHAP. II. was As the day appointed for the celebration of young Blackthorn's christening approached, worthy Bosthoon seized with a kind of uncouth delirium which produced, upon his disjointed features, such grimaces as might be supposed to appear on the face of some Herculean corpse, whilst grinning under the influence of a Galvanic battery. His white hirsute eyebrows rose and sank alternately, like the buckets of a draw-well, whilst in his winks there might be read an oafish but strong character of jocularity, mingled with a vehement expression of the startling and grotesque, which, taken per saturam, renders it impossible for us to class his features under any style of the human face, hitherto known and recognized as such by art or science. His mouth, by the unsettled motion of the upper lip, seemed every moment about to shift its position, and indeed it seldom remained two days successively in the same part of his face, veering either to the right side or the left, according to the mood of the moment, and sometimes hanging transversely under his nose, in a right line with his eyebrow and the opposite side of the chin. On the occasion in question, he wore it twisted back to its favourite berth under the left ear, in order, it is likely, that it might hold a more direct communication with the heart. Then he strided, and trotted, and bounced about with a sluggish alacrity that might not shrink from a comparison with the graceful motions of a dancing somnambulist. There is indeed a class of huge, heavy, dismal faced men, on whose features the exhibition of any emotion produces nothing but an expression of the purest distortion. The laughter and grief ofsuch persons are equally ludicrous, as indeed is every phase of the countenance that is necessary in their case to express the passions either in their full force or only in their more subordinate degrees. Let any of our readers conceive the idea of Liston weeping, and the illustration of that which we wish to convey will be complete. When the third morning, previous to the baptism of young Blackthorn, arrived Bosthoon, who ever since he got up had been singing, " Push about the Jorum," and " The Priest in his Boots," alternately, now addressed his wife: : 'Molsh," said he, smiling assassination at her as he spoke, "my shining daisey, that you are;" and here he approached her with the felonious intent of inflicting a smack; “my shining daisey that you are-" "Be aisey, Bosthoon," replied Molsh, getting behind a chair, “be aisey, dear: the nerra lip o' mine you'll taste today, so you won't." "I won't!" exclaimed Bosthoon, “an' why won't I? Is it a sin for a man to kiss his own wife?" 66 Faix it appears so wid some people; you know there's them in this world that 'ud take a bad manin' out of any thing. I tell you that we've both got a great dale of abuse for the last two or three months in regard o' what I tould you about little Blackthorn-the darlin'!" 66 And who wor they that dared to abuse us, Tiuckey?" 66 Indeed very nice jinteel peoplean' so modest that butther wouldn't melt in their mouths, I suppose. What a pity, Bosthoon, that we worn't sweethearts sittin' undher a hawthorne, an' nobody wid us but ourselves; then we might kiss an' hug one another for an hour, an' that 'ud be love-the tindherness o' love; but bekase a married man is known to kiss his wife, and bekase I tould you what you know, maybe as modestly considherin' every thing as the primmest of them all, why there must be a rout about it, an' people must be abused an' ill spoken of. You know yourself, Bosthoon darlin', that I even whispered it to you, an' afther all to be tould that I'm not modest! Well, all I say is, God pardon them for bringin' these tears from the eyes of a woman that never did them harm! But any how, there's great want of charity, an' great hypocrisy abroadparticularly among your grave and jinteel people." "The diouol may saize the woman among them that found fau't wid you, Molsh, half as modest at heart as you are; an' as for the men that abused you, be my sowl they're only men by accident; for you may kiss the book they wor intended for your side af the house-an' axcellent women some o' them 'ud make." "They can't expect me to be a lady, an' you a gintleman, Bosthoon." 66 Faith, an' we'd neither of us exchange hearts or consciences wid them that abuse us. Ladies and jintlemen! Arrah, Molsh, if you only hard what Jimmy Curtis, Lord Blackleg's butler, could say about ladies and jintlemen, be the Padereens it 'ud make your hair stand on end, so it would. Sure I'm tould but bad as they are I won't believe this-but it's given out on them any how; I'm tould that the ladies do be often at the play-house, wid devil a tatther an them from the waist up, not ashamed to sit there before men an' they half naked!" Well, that's a lie any how, Bosthoon; no woman 'ud do that barrin' them crathurs that I wouldn't name." Faith, an' if they're not mightily belied, that's far from bein' the worst of it. Don't they go half naked, as I tould you, to balls an' dances, where a chap will put his arms round one of their waists-an' the lady, Molsh, the lady!" "God purtect us from sich ladies, Bosthoon!" "Be the crass it's said, then, what I'm tellin' you; I don't myself believe it happens; for to tell you the truth, I think it's the lyin' scandal of blackguard sarvints, turned out o' place, that take this way of blackenin' the correcthar of the genthry ;-" well, the lady, Molsh-what does she do?" "Why, breaks his mouth I hope." "Divil a taste of it; but puts her hands about his shoulders, half naked an' all as she is, an' aff they set in that dacent way, whirling one another about the room! "Arrah go to-heaven, Bosthoon; no dacent, modest woman could bring herself to do sich a thing. Only think if we had a dance, and Biddy Murtagh, or any other modest girl, was to come to it stripped that way, why the poor colleen would lose her good name as long as she'd live." 66 Faith, an' she ought, too; for the diouol a good name she'd be entitled to. So, Molsh, let sich great people mend their own manners before they find fau't wid us-for doin' what there's neither sin or harm in. An' now, you want them-who has a right to kiss me but my own big Bosthoon ?" Bosthoon, with a murderous energy, exacted the full dozen; after which he exclaimed, wiping his mouth with that luxurious sweep of the right hand, which among country people intimates a recent participation in something that they feel to have been delicious"That for them, Molsh, my daisy; but hear to me now-isn't it full time that we should be layin' in the prog for Father Blackthorn's christenin'?" Why, throth it is, if we're to have sich doins as you say," replied Molsh. "Doins! Whagh, agh, agh. Divil the sich a baptrism ever was seen in the parish as I'll put on him.” 46 66 It's not baptrism, Bosthoon; don't be miscallin' it, any how." 66 Christenin', then; will that plaise ye? I know I'm not over an' above larned, Molsh; but if I don't happen to be cousin-jarmin' to the Dixonary, I'm up to my P's and Q's at any rate. We must have a puddin' the size of a hay-cock; a side o' bacon a foot deep; fat geese and mutton for the clargy; you know we must give thim jinteel feedin' any way; half an acre of greens; and whiskey galore to wash all down. Whirroo, my daisy; wont that be doin' it fat? hoch, och, oh!". "In that case, then you must get me a clane sack and a shafe o' whate straw for the puddin'." "Faith the whole haggard's afore you, so plaise yourself; but I don't care if you put a taste of explanation to the 'straw' at any rate; how is that consarued in the puddin', Molsh ?" 66 Why don't you know that when a puddin's to be made for a weddin' or a christenin', or a great number o' people, the best way to manage wid it, is to put it in the end of a clane sack; but you must first have a shafe o' whaten straw to draw through it for fraid it would scatther in the boilin'-the straw you see binds it." "And how is it cut when it's done, Tiuckey?" "If there happens to be a carpenther present he always carves it wid a handsaw; and faix when you pull the straws away it's choice aitin' all out. God be good to my poor mother, it was her gev me the resate to make it. Sometimes it's boiled in the bed-tick; but a clane sack 'ill be large enough for ours, I'm thinkin'." "Don't be miserly or a nager in the Molsh, one kiss to vex them!" thing, any how, Molsh; an' above all, "Ay, a dozen, Bosthoon darlin' if my shiner, don't spare the haggard." Well, well," replied Molsh, yielding rather reluctantly, "throth you men have often no bowels, so you havn't; the crathur, to take him up out of his little sleep!" In a minute or so she returned, however, with the youngster in her arms, who set his eye on Bosthoon, as if he understood his purpose and language. 66 Mass like Skewball, or the Paderes mare, that wor never bate." He then commenced, as usual, to "ait him up out o' the face," as he expressed it; but the reader, we presume, remembers our illustration of the bear, when we previously described Bosthoon in this process. At length, after what may be termed a huge sucking kiss, which drew one of the urchin's cheeks into his mouth, he placed him in Molsh's arms, on whose cheek he fastened in a similar manner, and with a power which might have caused her to imagine that she was within the vortex of the Maelstrom, had she known of its existence. Having performed these two operations, he knowingly shook his upper lip, which, at best was pendulous as a dew-lap, made an indescribable gri Why, the man's beside himself,” 66 takin' lave of his exclaimed Molsh; seven senses altogether. Bosthoon, I say, come back here. Do you hear me? Come back I tell you?" "Thin push about the jorum, sing foral lol Arrah, Bosthoon, dear ?" mace, intended for a wink, and, after a Murdher in Irish, Molsh, see how burst of mirth that resembled the subterranean rumble of an approaching the shaver looks at me! Be the vestment you'd think he's up to all I'm earthquake, he threw up his heavy sayin'! Whagh hogh-whagh hogh-heels, like a tired horse turned from wee ho!-that's the boy will lift the the cart to the paddock, and trotted Latin ! Now, Molsh, my daisey, out neighing out of the room. wid the trewth, don't you think the limb o'grace has a priestly look? Eh, now? Confiss, you sinner, confiss it; don't you think he has? Sure, tare an' ages, look at the roguery of his eye, an' the knowin' twist he gives his mouth; an' how he let's down! Be my sowl you'd think it was Father M'Flewsther at a punch-jug. Faith, you may say what you will, but I say that he has all the marks an' tokens of it about him. Look at his limbs, like a young miller's; an' his fists-be me sowl he'll shine in conthrovarsey yet, the swaddy; thin his head, agin,-divil a thing else it was made for but a battherin' ram aginst heresy! Hurroo! Blackthorn! more power to your reverence! You've the stuff in you for the tribunal, my darlin' boy; you've the metal for the tribunal. Whagh, heogh, heeogh, heeeogh!" "Why, I b'lieve, Bosthoon, you're cracked about him." No, diouol a crack; but we'll have a crackin' christenin' over him any how; hand him here till I make a meal of him. Ho, ho, Blackthorn, you're the boy will be able to hould a hard cheek yet, or to give larned jaw to the heretics, accordin' as the wind 'ill sit. Be me sowl, Molsh, this fellow, whin he gets into the robes, will gallop over a 66 Well, threacleen, what's asthray wid you now?” "You're goin' away widout settlin' about this christenin', or tellin' us who we'll have at it. There now, the sorra know we know, up till this minute, who'll stand for him.” "Faith, we'll give him two sets o' gossips, for fraid one would n't be enough." But who will they be? The best way is, for you to name the men, and me the women." Done, Molsh; I say for Barney M'Scut and Creepy O'Sleeveen. Now who do you say for in the faymale line?" "Why, for Bid Fogarty and Lilly M'Faitrich." "Lilly M Faitrich !-a Protestant! Is it a heretic to stand god-mother Why, Molsh, I for his reverence? hope there's not a bad dhrop in you somewhere !-that, indeed!" "No-but, Bosthoon, I'm afeard The Confessional. you 're not square; you want a quarther I doubt. Don't you know, or ought n't you any way, that whin we, Catholics, ax a Protestant god-father and godmother to stand for one of our childre, we always have four gossips; two of our own perswaidjion to do the real thing, and two o' the others standin' alongside o' them, and thinkin' that themselves are gossips as well as the others; wherein they're not gossips at all; but let them alone for comin' down with the Presents. Sure Lilly doesn't know what to do wid her money, an' we may as well take this way of comin' at a whang of it as another. It's not unpossible but she may do somethin' for Blackthorn yet. Sure it's not a fortnight agone since myself hard her say that she supposed it was bekase she was an "ole maid" that nobody ever thought it worth their while to ax her to stand gossip for a child; but people might find that she might be as kind a godmother as if she had childre of her own. Divil thank me, Bosthoon, for takin' the hint; did n't she threwn the bait herself?" Bosthoon made no reply whatsoever, but he snapped his fingers, and neighed and lowed, and put his body through such a series of Kamskadale evolutions as literally threw Molsh into convulsions. Why, Bosthoon, Bosthoon dear! Queen o' heaven this day! Bosthoon, I say, will you behave; I'm too wakely to laugh so much-ha, ha, ha! Darlin' I'm in airnest-ha, ha, ha-I'm too -too-ha, ha, ha-I'm too wakely, afther bearin' Blackthorn, to laugh so much. It 'ill hurt his little allowance, too, acushla; it will darlin'; oh, be aisy, dear, on his account. Queen o' saints! I'm as wake as wather, so I am! Oh, on his account, Bosthoon, darlin', quit of it, quit of it. Oh! Yeah, this day!" "We'll have her, we'll have her," shouted Bosthoon ; an' touch the heretic airighad for Blackthorn. Be me sowl, the same customer's born to good look, I'll be bail; every thing's in his favour." mad? would you break us out o' house an' home ?" "Hut! blood alive, woman, has n't he a blessin' wid him that 'ud cover all expenses? Be me faix, now that we have him, we'll thrive like shot, never fear. Has n't he the grace o' God, as good as painted on his reverence's face any way; an' could you ax betther security for a let out ?" "Why, that's thrue sure enough; an' another thing, Bosthoon, sure there's an O an' a Mac to stand for him, an' they say it has been prophesyzed that heresy is to be put down by an O an' a Mac; the one to be a bishop, an' the other a counsellor." "Ay, but what does Kolumbkil say, as I have it from Owen Devlin, the boccagh? Why, that heresy is to be extwinguished by a poor man, who's to go round among the people, livin' upon what he can get, an' that, for their sakes, he is to prefer that way of life to any other, in ordher to show his humility. They say that there's not to be more, durin' any day in the year, nor five ounces of flesh upon his body, an' that, if he goes beyant that, he loses the virtue of poverty, until fastin' an' prayin' makes him as lean as before. He's to have a priest altogether to himself, to confiss to, an' Why, blood alive, Bosthoon, you're ravin'; surely he can't be sich a sinner as to require a whole priest to himself to forgive him?" "Faith an' there's reason in what you say, Molsh, whether or not; but the truth is, that these holy men, bint on raisin' up our church, must do many things, maybe, that you an' I 'ud scruple to do of ourselves, bekase we don't see so far before us as they do." "An' they say too, Bosthoon, there's many a thing that 'ud be a sin in the likes o' you an' me that wouldn't be a sin at all in larned people that know what they're about." "Hut woman, sure nothin's a sin that puts down heresy, and advances our own church. To swear that black's white is a virtue, if it'll do the one or the other. Sure the priest can forgive us all at the long run, an' that's an advantage the Protestants can't boast of.' "Oh thin, Bosthoon, I'm sorely afeared that we're not half thankful enough for bein' born in the thrue church-but, Bosthoon ?" "Who else? No but, Molsh, who else won't we have at it? Be the piper o' Moses, I think the best way to borry the Tithe-procthor's books, an' ax them by the town-land." Why, Bosthoon darlin', are you "What is the raison that he's bound not to have more nor five clear ounces o' flesh upon him?” 2 K |