FullReads

[1] “I am of your Patriarchs, I, a branch of one of your antediluvian families–fellows that the Flood could not wash away.”–CONGREVE, “Love for Love.”

[2] To balrag is to abuse–Mr. Lover makes it ballyrag, and he is high authority: but if I remember rightly, Curran in his national stories used to employ the word as above.–See Lover’s most amusing and genuinely Irish work, the “Legends and Stories of Ireland.”

[3] Larry evidently means the Regium Donum;–a sum contributed by the government annually to the support of the Presbyterian churches in Ireland.

[4]Correctly, Dens–Larry not being very particular in his nomenclature.

[5] “But she (Popery) is no longer the tenant of the sepulchre of inactivity. She has come from the burial-place, walking forth a monster, as if the spirit of evil had corrupted the carcass of her departed humanity; noxious and noisome an object of abhorrence and dismay to all who are not leagued with her in iniquity.”–Report of the Rev. Gentleman’s Speech, June 20, in the Record Newspaper.

LETTER X. FROM THE REV. MORTIMER O’MULLIGAN, TO THE REV. —-.

These few brief lines, my reverend friend,
By a safe, private hand I send
(Fearing lest some low Catholic wag
Should pry into the Letter-bag),
To tell you, far as pen can dare
How we, poor errant martyrs, fare;–
Martyrs, not quite to fire and rack,
As Saints were, some few ages back.
But–scarce less trying in its way–
To laughter, wheresoe’er we stray;
To jokes, which Providence mysterious
Permits on men and things so serious,
Lowering the Church still more each minute,
And–injuring our preferment in it.

Just think, how worrying ’tis, my friend,
To find, where’er our footsteps bend,
Small jokes, like squibs, around us whizzing;
And bear the eternal torturing play
Of that great engine of our day,
Unknown to the Inquisition–quizzing!
Your men of thumb-screws and of racks
Aimed at the body their attack;
But modern torturers, more refined,
Work their machinery on the mind.
Had St. Sebastian had the luck
With me to be a godly rover,
Instead of arrows, he’d be stuck
With stings of ridicule all over;
And poor St. Lawrence who was killed
By being on a gridiron grilled,
Had he but shared my errant lot,
Instead of grill on gridiron hot,
A moral roasting would have got.

Nor should I (trying as all this is)
Much heed the suffering or the shame–
As, like an actor, used to hisses,
I long have known no other fame,
But that (as I may own to you,
Tho’ to the world it would not do,)
No hope appears of fortune’s beams
Shining on any of my schemes;
No chance of something more per ann,
As supplement to Kellyman;
No prospect that, by fierce abuse
Of Ireland, I shall e’er induce
The rulers of this thinking nation
To rid us of Emancipation:
To forge anew the severed chain,
And bring back Penal Laws again.

Ah happy time! when wolves and priests
Alike were hunted, as wild beasts;
And five pounds was the price, per head,
For bagging either, live or dead;–[1]
Tho’ oft, we’re told, one outlawed brother
Saved cost, by eating up the other,
Finding thus all those schemes and hopes
I built upon my flowers and tropes
All scattered, one by one, away,
As flashy and unsound as they,
The question comes–what’s to be done?
And there’s but one course left me–one.
Heroes, when tired of war’s alarms,
Seek sweet repose in Beauty’s arms.
The weary Day-God’s last retreat is
The breast of silvery-footed Thetis;
And mine, as mighty Love’s my judge,
Shall be the arms of rich Miss Fudge!