The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-18 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

O'Dowd's Good Humoured Philosophy.
Cornelius O'Dowd upon Men and Women, and other
things an general. One vol. pp, 299. Blackwood
and Sons,
Another glorious serial from Blackwood's Moga •
zinc is here before us, collected together and pub
lished separately. It is the cheeriest ?et of chapters—
about (slightly altering its own sub-title) all things
in general and nothing in particular—that any blase
student of light literature, as it is for the most part
nowadays, could reasonably desire. In the mere
style of it, there is freshrsess if not absolute origina-
lity. The writer of these pages has sat dawn to
their composition in apiearcntly tip-top spirits. If
he does really happen, in spite of all appearances
hero to the contrary notwithstanding—to be, even
to a seocicrete extent, a victim to the ir na;rims,
otherwise to the blue devils born of dyspepsia, he
hes the :happiest knack sone•how :of hiding his
efiliction from the reader's ken altogether, and en-
titles himself indubitably, in that case, to the delight-
ful repute of being the most thoroughly amiable
and sweet-tempered of valetudinarians. Judging
here merely from the manner of the man, however,
we should be disposed to picture him to ours
selves as a compound of all sorts of delect-
able contradictions or incongruities. In this wise
—to begin with--Cornelius O'Dowd is manifestly
an unmistakeable Man-of-the-world, one who has
seen a good deal of the ins and outs of life,
who has seen them, moreover, with his eyes
wide open, who has, in his time, had quite
enough and to spare of town life, who has very
closely and critically examined for himself (to adopt
a happy phrase from an essayist in the Cornhill
i" the wrong side of the stuff," all the
tags and rags and bobtails of that motley embroi-
dery, the Social System ! And who, nevertheless,
has emerged from it all, from this town life, from
these wanderings behind the scenes, from these
strayings even into the holes and corners, as
one may say, of modern civilisation—a creature,
to the last, entirely genial in his spirits, in his
nature, in his whole temperament, and not the
least bit in the world of a curmudgeon ! In
other words, Cornelius O'Dowd may be set
down at once—as a min of the world—
unspoilt by his worldly wisdom ! In his idiocyn-
cracy ho was evidently, upon setting out in life, a
right good fellow. And—he is so still. He was
so in the green leaf. He is so—if Mrs. O'Dowd will
but forgive us for hinting as much—now that the
once glistening., dustless green leaf gives indica-
tions of crisping into the " sere and yellow." And,
seeing all this in Cornelius O'Dowd, we have a kinds
ness for him. The glint of the gray hsirs sown, here
and there, about his head and in his whiskers, in-
stead of deteriorating the gloss of those hirsute
honours of Cornelius O'Dowd's—on the contrary,
seems, in a manner, to enhance it, as it were, by a
last finishing touch of grace as with a crowning
sheen or halo! The crowsfeet at the outer-corners
of his blithe eyes, come to him loss, one might say,
from years than from frequent laughter or consti-
tutional merriment. His paramount characteristic
is his bonhommie. His bearing towards the
world at large, is very much indeed of the
" Hail fellow well met !" Nay—more than
that—he himself,one might say, is a hale fellow, and
one, here, in these pages, decidedly well met ! Read-
ing him, it is as if, in answer to his summons, we
had got our slippered feet at ease under his maho-
gany in a pleasant tjte ci tae, sipping bumpers of
his old crusted, cracking the ripest filberts culled
from his own nut-walk, dipping the milky kernels
of them in the attic salt of his wit, and—it is surely
needless to say, after this thoroughly enjoying
ourselves the while—when listening to his
hilarious prattle ! A prattle, too, it is—about
the chiefest charm of which is its dis-
cursiveness! Echoing our own preliminary
phrase for it, it is so much (to be plain, in about
one-and-thirty distinct chapters, or divisions) of
" Good Humoured Philosophy" Cornelius
O'Dawd's, to wit—" Upon Men and Women and
Other Things in General!' Cornelius's Mordan,
or Perry, twittering as lightly as any feather
—say as one of the grey goosequills of
the author's earlier youth—upon themes as che-
quered as—(like Elia's Mrs. Batt' e—with a diffe-
rence I) on " The Decline of Weist"—as (like Mr.
Babbage or Mr Bass—also, with a diffaence !) on
"The Organ NuisancP—on " Clubs" and "Lin
guists"—on " A New Hansard'' and " A New In

vestment"—on " The Ddeiine of the. Drama" and the
swarming of " Garibaldi's Worshippers," Various
as may be the opinions of Cornelius O'Dawd upon
Men and Women and Othcr Things in General, it is
certain, all the while, that he entertains no mean

opinion of one individual in particular, namely, the
important subject of his first paper yclept "My-
self I" Here, in proof of this, aro his qualifications
in full—

" You may deem me boastful if I have to set forth my
qualifications ; but what can Ido ? It is only when I have
openod my pack and displayed my wares that you may feel
tempted to buy. lam driven, then, to tell you that I know
everybody that is worth knowing in Europe, and some two
or three in America ; that I have been everywhere—eaten of
everything—seen everything. There is not a railway guard
from Norway to Naples doesn't grin a recognition to me ;
not a waiter from the Trois Freres to the Wilde Mann
doesn't trail his napkin to earth as he sees me. Ministers
speak up when I stroll into the Chamber, and prima donnas
soar above the crohestra, and warble in ecstasy as I enter
the pit."

With such a cicerone no wonder the book is filled
with adventure and amusement. One of the early
chapters " A friend of Gioberti" gives a whimsical
account of the O'D)wds' honeymoon expedition to
the Continent when an Italian Count, and friend of
Gioberti, gives Mr. and Mrs. O'D. the benefit of

some Italian lessons. The upshot being that he
(Gioberti's Friend that is) gives the unconscious
lady some Italian loredetters to endite by way of
exorcises, and then disposes of them at a heavy sum
to the credulous husband. An explanation ensues
thereupon, of course, between the lady and gentle •
man, but " the friend of Gioberti" has departed
with his compensation. Altogether this book penned
by Cornelius O'Dowd, of O'Dowd's Folly, in the

county of Mayo, Ireland, is as exhilarating a volume
as one could wish to have bad issued from the press,
in the very nick of time, upon the eve of one's holiday
excursion—no matter whither ! Precisely the very
book of books to drop into one's valise as a fill.up
for:xtray moments when lounging in the corner of a

railway carriage or when sprawling at greater ease
apon the cabin sofa of a stcamboat—stray moments
when, without the fatigue of talking, one enjoys

so completely through a baok, just such an
intellectual companionship as that of Monsieur,
Signor, Herr, D3a Cornelius O'Dawd—this

travelling Irishman,who talks wherever:he goes, we

may be certain of that, Spanish, German, Italian,
French, it matters nothing which, but each and
all of them with the one unmistgkeable Mayo

accent! Not a high-flAvoured, broad-spreading

accent like that of tri.e dreadful Patland-widow in
George Meredith's "Emilia in England," what that

arch humorist hims7.lf dubs " pickled Irish"—
but a very delectable, an easily detectable taste

of the brogue—a taste of th© brogue, let us say,

caught frotn a just casual lick of the Blarney Stone!
And, so baying, let us here cheerily—as, in truth,

alone beCs a—reader who stands indebted to his

autb)r for many a gey, nay often, too, fir many a
wise and wholesome laugh—let us here cheerily
bid a c3rdiA adieu to Cornelius O'Dowd, of
Dowd's Fully aforesaid, the merry eyed, frank
speakneg, open-handed owner (alas! lute owner)
of liilreuraynabaehlisb, Ballagby and Gre naslat-
fiery.

PRINCESS'S THEATitE.—='Mr Edward Thompson,
who has been Connected for many years with the
box-office of this theatre, has announced his annual benefit
for this evening.. The performances will consist of "I3orr
to Good Luck " and the new drama called the " The Streets
of London." The z-Ril and courtesy with which Mr Thorny-
son uniformly discharges the duties of his office give him
the strongest claims upon the patronage of the public, who
it is to be hoped will show their sense of his merits on the
present occasion.

MADAME TUSSAUD'S.—SeveraI new figures have
been lately added to the celebrated Historical Gallery in
Baker-street, among which we would call special attention
to that of Richard 11, and his Queen Isabella ; also Henry
IV. and his Queen Joan of Navarre, and Henry VI. and
his Queen Margaret of Anjou—all being attired in the costly
costumes of their respective periods. A full-length mode!
of Archbishop Wickham, in magnificent ecclesiastical robes,
Sz.., is likewise to In seen.