Or shall I aspire on To tune my poetic lyre on The same key touched by Byron,And laying my hand its wire on,With its music your soul set fire on By themes you ne'er could tire on?
Or say,I pray,Would a lay Like Gay Be more in your way?
I leave it to you,Which am I to do?
It plain on the surface is That any metamorphosis,To affect your study You may work on my soul or body.
Your frown or your smile makes me Savage or Gay In action,as well as in song;And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray,Express but the word and I'm Young;And if in the Church I should ever aspire With friars and abbots to cope,By a nod,if you please,you can make me a Prior--By a word you render me Pope.
If you'd eat,I'm a Crab;if you'd cut,I'm your Steel,As sharp as you'd get from the cutler;I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel,And your livery carry,as Butler.
I'll ever rest your debtor If you'll answer my first letter;Or must,alas,eternity Witness your taciturnity?
Speak--and oh!speak quickly Or else I shall grow sickly,And pine,And whine,And grow yellow and brown As e'er was mahogany,And lie me down And die in agony.
P.S.--You'll allow I have the gift To write like the immortal Swift.'
But besides the poetical powers with which he was endowed,in common with the great Brinsley,Lady Dufferin,and the Hon.Mrs.Norton,young Sheridan Le Fanu also possessed an irresistible humour and oratorical gift that,as a student of Old Trinity,made him a formidable rival of the best of the young debaters of his time at the 'College Historical,'not a few of whom have since reached the highest eminence at the Irish Bar,after having long enlivened and charmed St.Stephen's by their wit and oratory.
Amongst his compeers he was remarkable for his sudden fiery eloquence of attack,and ready and rapid powers of repartee when on his defence.But Le Fanu,whose understanding was elevated by a deep love of the classics,in which he took university honours,and further heightened by an admirable knowledge of our own great authors,was not to be tempted away by oratory from literature,his first and,as it proved,his last love.
Very soon after leaving college,and just when he was called to the Bar,about the year 1838,he bought the 'Warder,'a Dublin newspaper,of which he was editor,and took what many of his best friends and admirers,looking to his high prospects as a barrister,regarded at the time as a fatal step in his career to fame.
Just before this period,Le Fanu had taken to writing humorous Irish stories,afterwards published in the 'Dublin University Magazine,'
such as the 'Quare Gander,''Jim Sulivan's Adventure,''The Ghost and the Bone-setter,'etc.
These stories his brother William Le Fanu was in the habit of repeating for his friends' amusement,and about the year 1837,when he was about twenty-three years of age,Joseph Le Fanu said to him that he thought an Irish story in verse would tell well,and that if he would choose him a subject suitable for recitation,he would write him one.
'Write me an Irish "Young Lochinvar,"'said his brother;and in a few days he handed him 'Phaudrig Croohore'--Anglice,'Patrick Crohore.'
Of course this poem has the disadvantage not only of being written after 'Young Lochinvar,'but also that of having been directly inspired by it;and yet,although wanting in the rare and graceful finish of the original,the Irish copy has,we feel,so much fire and feeling that it at least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was not written in that heart-stirring Northern dialect without which the noblest of our British ballads would lose half their spirit.Indeed,we may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,'
simply because they seem to speak straight from a people's heart,not to be the mere echoes of medieval romance.
'Phaudrig Croohore'did not appear in print in the 'Dublin University Magazine' till 1844,twelve years after its composition,when it was included amongst the Purcell Papers.
To return to the year 1837.Mr.William Le Fanu,the suggester of this ballad,who was from home at the time,now received daily instalments of the second and more remarkable of his brother's Irish poems--'Shamus O'Brien'(James O'Brien)--learning them by heart as they reached him,and,fortunately,never forgetting them,for his brother Joseph kept no copy of the ballad,and he had himself to write it out from memory ten years after,when the poem appeared in the 'University Magazine.'
Few will deny that this poem contains passages most faithfully,if fearfully,picturesque,and that it is characterised throughout by a profound pathos,and an abundant though at times a too grotesquely incongruous humour.
Can we wonder,then,at the immense popularity with which Samuel Lover recited it in the United States?For to Lover's admiration of the poem,and his addition of it to his entertainment,'Shamus O'Brien'owes its introduction into America,where it is now so popular.Lover added some lines of his own to the poem,made Shamus emigrate to the States,and set up a public-house.These added lines appeared in most of the published versions of the poem.But they are indifferent as verse,and certainly injure the dramatic effect of the poem.
'Shamus O'Brien'is so generally attributed to Lover (indeed we remember seeing it advertised for recitation on the occasion of a benefit at a leading London theatre as 'by Samuel Lover')that it is a satisfaction to be able to reproduce the following letter upon the subject from Lover to William le Fanu:
'Astor House,'New York,U.S.America.
'Sept.30,1846.
'My dear Le Fanu,'In reading over your brother's poem while I crossed the Atlantic,I became more and more impressed with its great beauty and dramatic effect--so much so that I determined to test its effect in public,and have done so here,on my first appearance,with the greatest success.