DR. MAGINN'S

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

The Odoherty Papers.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ENSIGN AND ADJUTANT ODOHERTY, LATE OF THE 99th REGT.

CHAPTER I.

Odoherty's Debut.- His Progenitors and Education.-Obtains a Commission in the Militia.-Love-Passages with Augusta M'Craw.-A Ten-shot Duel.Epigram on a Dowager.- Extract from an unpublished and uncommon Tragedy.-Stanzas to Lady Gilhooly.-Volunteers into the Line.- Voyage to Jamaica.- Jeu d'Esprit.-Too late for Embarkation.-Sent to Coventry by his Fellow-Officers.

If there is something painful to the feelings in the awful ceremonial of consigning a deceased friend to the grave, there is something equally consolatory to our affection in perpetuating the remembrance of his talents and virtues, and gathering for his grave a garland which shall long flourish green among the children of men. This may indeed be termed the last and highest proof of our regard, and it is this task which I am now about to discharge (I fear too inadequately) to my deceased friend, Ensign and Adjutant Odoherty, late of the 99th or King's Own Tipperary regiment.*

* In the deeply pathetic lyric-"most musical, most melancholy," called Jack Robinson (which may be sung, with a chorus, to that touching melody VOL. I-1

In offering to the public some account of the life and writings of this gentleman, I have pleasure in believing that I am not intruding on their notice a person utterly unknown to them. His poems, which have appeared in various periodical publications, have excited a very large portion of the public curiosity and admiration; and when transplanted into the different volumes. of the Annual Anthology, they have shone with undiminished lustre amid the blaze of the great poetical luminaries by which they were surrounded.*

The Sailors' Hornpipe), there are a few lines applicable to this case. A lady, rejoicing in the picturesque and euphonious name of Polly Grey, and who has gone and done it," in the way of matrimony, with a male personage other than Mr. Robinson, to whom she had been engaged "three years ago, afore he went to sea," is accused of infidelity, and adroitly defends herself. Admitting that she had married another man, because she could not wait," she-but we must quote her own words:

"For somebody one day came, and said

As somebody else had someveres read,

In some newspaper, as how you was dead,”.

"I have not been dead at all," said Jack Robinson.

Odoherty's biographer appears in error, even as Polly Grey was, in re Jack Robinson, when he speaks of the ensign and adjutant as deceased." This first portion of the biography appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, number eleven, for February, 1818, and in the course of the following year (as will subsequently be seen) Odoherty, like Jack Robinson, emphatically declared that he "had not been dead at all." As, in a case like this, the individual himself is generally supposed to be the best authority as to suspended or actual vitality, it is pretty evident that, albeit Odoherty be above mentioned as defunct, he is to be considered as actually alive-so far as the Magazine is concerned.-M.

* The Annual Anthology, which flourished some sixty or seventy years ago, when verse-writers were comparatively scarce in England, was a receptacle for compositions, bearing the brevet rank or courtesy title of Poetry, which, classed under the generic name of "little effusions," were usually collected from the mysterious portion of the newspapers called "Poets' corner." Now and then, by accident or luck, something readable was thus preserved, but the general character of the collection was so low that were a criminal given the choice between twelve months' labor at the oar, as a galley slave, and six months' perusal of the Anthology, the chance is that, at the end of the first fortnight, he would eagerly solicit the privilege of the galleys, as the lesser evil! The Annual Anthology, in fact, was a sort of poetic safety-valve, in its day, such as the Annuals have formed in our own, and its contents came under the general and generic terms "dull and decent."--- M.

Never was there a man more imbued with the very soul and spirit of poetry than Ensign and Adjutant Odoherty. Cut off in the bloom of his years, ere the fair and lovely blossoms of his youth had time to ripen into the golden fruit by which the autumn of his days would have been beautified and adorned, he has deprived the literature of his country of one of its brightest ornaments, and left us to lament that youth, virtue, and talents, should afford no protection from the cruel hand of death.

Before proceeding to the biographical account of this extraordinary person, which it is my intention to give, I think it proper previously to state the very singular manner in which our friendship had its commencement. One evening, in the month of October, 1812, I had the misfortune, from some circumstances here unnecessary to mention, to be conveyed for a night's lodging to the watch-house in Dublin. I had there the good fortune to meet Mr. Odoherty, who was likewise a prisoner. He was seated on a wooden stool, before a table garnished with a great number of empty pots of porter. He had a tobacco-pipe in his

* We beg leave to hint to our Irish correspondent, that if the pots were empty, they could scarcely be termed pots of porter.-BLACKWOOD. [And I beg leave to hint that, in the watch-house in Dublin, in 1812, such a liquid as porter was not at all likely to be in request. The drink of that region would inevitably be—whiskey punch. In 1812, very little malt liquor was used in Ireland. Most of what was made was exported to the British army then under Wellington in the peninsula, to the British West India islands, and to the East Indies. The soldiers drank it, of course, as if it were so much "mother's milk”—only a great deal stronger. In the West Indies, where the drought was great, the draughts were copious. In the East Indies, whenever what was called Cork porter and Fermoy ale happened to arrive, in anything like good condition, it brought a great price, and was imbibed freely. But, in those days, brewers had not arrived at the present certainty of making ale as drinkable on the banks of the Ganges as in London, Dublin, Cork, and Edinburgh, In 1812, London porter was scarcely exported to the East or West Indies: Edinburgh ale was not known much beyond the city of its birth; and the supplies were sent from the porter brewery of Beamish and Crawford, of Cork, and the ale brewery of Thomas Walker & Co., of Fermoy. The last-named concern has wholly ceased, but Cork city rejoices in Beamish and Crawford's porter brewery, whence it also taken one of its parliamentary representatives (1855), in the person of Frank Beamish. At present, the pale ale of Bass and Alsop-rival houses in the small English town of Burton-upon-Trent—is the favorite tipple in British India, where one man asks another to "take a glass

mouth, and was talking with great gallantry to two young ladies of a very interesting appearance, who had been brought there under similar circumstances to himself. There was a touching melancholy in the expression of his countenance, and a melting softness in his voice, which interested me extremely in his favor. With all that urbanity of manner by which he was distinguished, he asked me "to take a sneaker of his swipes." I accepted the invitation, and thus commenced a friendship which ended only with his life, and the fond remembrance of which shall cease only with mine.

Morgan Odoherty was born in the county of Kilkenny, in the year 1789. His father acted for many years as a drover to the Right Honorable Lord Ventry, at that period an eminent grazier;* and on that gentleman's being raised to the peerage, he

of Buss" with him, just as, elsewhere, he would invite him to take a glass of champagne. It is surprising that in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, some capitalist does not commence an ale and porter brewery, and go in to make a fortune thereby. Long after Odoherty's time, Guinness's Dublin porter came into note in rivalry with "London Stout." The story goes that Guinness had no great note until the full body of one particular brewing attracted the attention of those who malt. On cleaning out the vat, there were found the bones and part of the dress of one of the workmen, who had been missing for some weeks. Guinness, it is said, sang small about the matter, but to give his porter the required body, instead of boiling down a man, as before, substituted a side of beef, and has continued the ingredient from that time to this. So, after all, even a tee-totaller must admit that Guinness's porter is but a malted description of-beef-tea! — M.

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*There is a trifling error of fact here. Lord Ventry never was an eminent drover,' nor anything half so useful. The family name is Mullins patronymic so ungenteel, that it was changed, by letters patent under Queen Victoria's signature (dated 24th February, 1841), to that of "De Moleyns," which, it was hoped, had somewhat of the Norman flavor, and sounded as if it had come down from the Conquest. The Mullins family pretend that they are relations of that Sir Richard Molyneaux, in Lancashire, who founded the ennobled house of Sefton; also that thence came the De Moleyns of Norfolk, descended from a baronial house of that name in Hants. The fact is a certain trooper called Colonel Mullins settled in Ireland, and bought estates (out of his plunder) in Ulster, which he exchanged for property in the "Kingdom of Kerry," and became a member of the Irish Parliament, in the reign of William III. A descendant of his was made a baronet in 1797, and raised to the peerage, as Baron Ventry, in July, 1800. A schoolfellow of mine, at Fermoy in Ireland, some thirty years ago, piqued himself so much on his noble birth that

succeeded to a very considerable portion of his business. He had certainly many opportunities of amassing wealth, but the truth is, he only provided meat for others, with the view of getting drink for himself. By his wife he had acquired a small property in the county of Carlow, which it was his intention to have kept as a provision for his family. His business, however, gradually decreased, and on the last settlement of his accounts, when he came to liquidate the claims of his creditors on his es

he had written in all his school-books, "Frederick William Mullins, grandson of the Right Honorable Lord Ventry." As schoolboys are more or less democratic, such an aristocratical inscription as this was unanimously voted "most tolerable and not to be endured." Mullins was civilly requested to erase it, and, on his refusal, there was a solemn incremation of the whole of the books so inscribed. In later years, this Mullins sat in Parliament for Kerry, and was committed to Newgate, London, early in March, 1854, on the charge of uttering a forged power of attorney, and obtaining thereon the amount of fifteen hundred pounds sterling stock, &c., in the Bank of England, belonging to a person of the name of Simpson. Mrs. Lucy de Molyns, his wife, was likewise arrested, and committed on the same charge, but providing the necessary bail for her appearance at the next Central Criminal Court Sessions, she was liberated. Mr. de Molyns was unable to procure the extent of bail demanded (four thousand pounds sterling), and was in consequence conveyed to Newgate, where he died on March 16, 1854. An inquest was held, and a verdict of natural death recorded.― Apropos of the sneer, by Odoherty's biographer, at an eminent grazier," it may be as well to state that this class of money makers usually accumulated large fortunes in Ireland. One of them, a Mr. Lyons, who lived at Croom in the county of Limerick, purchased vast landed estates, and pushed his sons forward, by his wealth, in the church, the army, and at the bar. Once upon a time (as the old story books say), he gave a splendid dejeuner a la fourchette, to which he invited the leading people of the county. Among them was the Lady Isabella Fitzgibbon, (sister of the Earl of Clare), who, affecting either fashionable airs or probably having had a good meal of beef-steaks, before she went out, neglected most of the delicacies of the -table, and merely trifled with a lobster salad. Old Lyons, who had a great respect for the substantials, by which he had realized his money, turned round to her as she sat by his side, the picture of aristocratical nonchalance, and kindly said, "Ah, then, my lady, why don't you take some of the good beef and mutton, the chickens and the turkeys, and don't be filling your stomach with that could cabbage!" Lady Isabella almost fainted, but contrived to survive. She is yet alive, and unmarried, at that "certain age," which, Byron wickedly says, means "certainly aged." Such is the mournful result of neglecting wholesome fare, and "filling the stomach with could cabbage." Let it be a warning to her sex!-M.