The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1888-10-27
CHARLES LEVERS NOVELS,
As Regarded by a Contemporary
Irish Journalistic Many
Sided Man.
R0LLICKlNG CHARLES 0'MALLEY.

Coon Oregan" il a Perfect Treasure
House Of Delight, Says the
Journalist.
Under the general heading of Stud.
les in Irish Song and Story" a contrib
utor to the United Ireland writes thus
of Charles Lever, the novelist: Edgar
Allen Poe in one of his fantastic stories
conceives a picturesque and fascinating
allegory. He lmagines that some
wanderer in Greece come upon the shat
tered fragments of a temple to the an
tique gods Of Hellas and finds that out
of all the affairs which had once smoked
with sacri6cial fires or reddened with
sacrifcial blood one altar, and one
alone, remained erect, almost unin-
jured by time. This solitary survivor
Of a whole Pantheon bore upon it's
base the single inscription Laughter" :"
From this altegory Poe proceeds to de-
duct the permanence of the spirit of
laughter over all the other human pas
sions and emotions which found their
presentiments in the creations of Greek
mythology. The ideaawas fanciful, at
uractive; for the moment, however, it
would seem to have lost It's application.
Laughter and the leve of laughter is
scarcely characteristic Of this present
epoch Of the worlds existence; in liter
ature, at least, laughter can hardly be
said to exist at all. Fiction of late has
taken al extraordinary turn in the di.
rection OF intense sensat1onalism. The
more a story drips with blood, the more
Its pages TEEN with startling or horri-
bic adventures, the more improbable
and appalling it's incidents, the more
likely is it to command public favor
and the privilege Of multitudinous edl-
tions. But while this murder mania
controls romance, mirth seems to have
no place, no influence in fiction. 1t
would be difficult, perhaps, to say why
this is so, but the fact that it is so is
to be contested. An English
living novelist is always vehemently
the necessity for high spir-
it's" as If the very fact Of such vebe-
nent assertion were not itself a signal
proof of the absence 70 "high spirits
in our age. High spirits are absent;
it is not Of an age Ct high spirits; every
BODY would like to be- amused, but
somehow the capacity for being amused
seems to have gone with the capacity
for amusing Is life too busy, or too
jaded, or too civilized to be high spirit
ed? What is the matter with contem
porary fiction that it can only wallow
in blood bath or coldly analyze its
own emotions? What would be the
fate of novelist in the present day
who should take up and wear auda
ciously and successfully the mantle of
Charles Lever IL ever there was All
author whose works were inspired by
the very genius of high spirits"
Charles Lever was the man. AS serious
pictures of Irish life, Irish character,
as "human documents" Of any kind,
they have but little value. The graver,
deeper qualities OF the Irish nature
Lever seems to have hardly apprecia-
ted; the heroic position of Ireland and
the Irish people was hardly appreliend-
ed By him. His writings will never
render to the student of Irish history
the service that Scott's novels render to
the student of Scotch history. The
Irlshmen of his lively manner are too
often merely the Irishmen of the comic
stage; the figures of his later manners
move almost entirely in what may be
called continental atmosphere. Lev
er often and gravely misunderstood bis
own country and his own countrymen.
But there was one thing that he never
and that was the art of
being amusing. sometime wonder if
there ever was writer so purely and
so brilliantly amusing. In his pages
we breathe an air saturated with the
ozone of high spirits; we drink from
chalice that is always bubbling with
laughter; mirth admits US of her crew
from the opening chapters. Other
writers have been funny, too have
made sides shake and heads wag-but
seldom with a straightforward, simple,
honest humor as that which animates
all the early creations of Levers genius.
Pope and Robert Browning have both
left on record their admiration for the
bumor OF Rabelais, but the man, I
should imagine, does not live who could,
actually find himself interrupted in his
perusal of the Gargantuan and Panta
gruelesque chronicles BY shouts of ire:
,oro,,;hln fonuhtor nnoa anvnn1H