flag, he very skilfully adapted his course in this aerial voyage to all the mutations of impulse which agitated the stormy medium through which he passed, until at last, in attempting to rise into a still more lofty region, he has allowed the thin and combustible materials of his buoyancy to take fire, and comes tumbling down in a volume of fiery vapour, composed of the Veto, the Union, and Parliamentary Reform. "RICHARD SHEIL."

To this O'Connell published, on the 12th of January, a reply full of caustic humour. "He was at a loss to know how he had provoked the tragic wrath and noble ire of his Iambic rhapsodist. It seemed to him that anything so unprovoked never appeared in the annals of causeless incivility. He had set out in a passion, and had preserved his inconsistency to the end; and yet, after all, he would venture to wager that, like the rabid animal in the fable, Mr. Sheil was not half so mad as he pretended to be. He had begun by calling him a 'flaming fragment,' next he was 'lava,' and thirdly, heterogeneous materials."

After marshalling the other metaphors of his antagonist in grotesque array, he professes to put aside all these as "tawdry and tinsel decorations of melo

dramatic oratory" unsuitable to the gravity of the subject. Recapitulating the grounds of his former opinion, "that an unreformed Parliament could not emancipate the Catholics," he concluded thus: "Mr. Sheil was no doubt, in his own opinion, a diamond of the first water: he was heartily welcome to sparkle at his expense; but he implored of him, with all the earnestness of the plainest prose, to refrain from his sneering sarcasms, directed against, after all, the finest as well as the most faithful-the long-suffering and very wretched people of Ireland."*

Mr. Sheil was much irritated at certain insinuations of mercenary motives which the reply contained; and he consulted his friends, Mr. Ball, Mr. Woulffe, and Mr. W. H. Curran, as to whether he had not a right to call his antagonist to personal account. They found it at first difficult to convince him that, however bitter the retort he had provoked, political invective must be fairly distinguished from personal insult, and that an ineffectual attempt to fix a quarrel upon one whom he had first assailed would only serve to lower him in public estimation. At length he yielded: "I see it now," he exclaimed, "I'll think no more of the matter; I'll go home and finish my tragedy." This contro

* Memoir of O'Connell, by his Son. Vol. ii., p. 309.

versy, while it served to injure the general cause, tended to weaken still further whatever claim Mr. Sheil may have had on popular favour. He turned aside once more from politics, in which no path for him seemed likely to open of usefulness or distinction; and again busied himself, as formerly, with law and literature. One who passed much time in his society at this period describes him as being still without profitable business at the bar; but as, nevertheless, continuing to keep up his professional reading with diligence. Many an interval was snatched, indeed, from graver study, and devoted to the classics, works of travel, modern fiction, and the elder dramatists. He had many projects of poetic composition, some original, and others connected with the adaptation of old and obsolete plays for the modern stage. Amongst the latter was one which he proposed to Mr. Macready, respecting the Maids' Tragedy, which, if partly re-written, hẻ conceived might be rendered highly popular and effective. This project was never executed; but another was about the same time suggested to him, which he entered into with his customary zeal and spirit, and which eventually proved eminently successful. This was the adaptation of Massinger's almost forgotten play of The Fatal Dowry. On the

modern stage the dialogue, as it stands in the original text, would certainly not be producible. There are, moreover, defects in the construction of the plot, which must under any circumstances have rendered it difficult to sustain the interest sufficiently to the end. Both faults disappear in the adaptation. The two most effective scenes, that between Romont and Young Novall in the fourth act, and that with which the fifth act closes, between Charolois and the father of his bride, are well worthy of being associated with those that have been left unchanged from the pen of Massinger. Beside other alterations, nearly the whole of the latter part of the play was rewritten. When finished, it was submitted to the committee of Covent Garden Theatre, Messrs. Kemble, Willett, and Forbes, who declined acting it. It was, however, produced at Drury Lane in the winter of 1824, and had a splendid success the first night. On the second night Mr. Macready, who sustained the principal character, was suddenly struck down by illness, and as he did not again appear for more than three months, the prestige attending its first production was lost. It remains on the list of acting plays, but no effort seems to have been subsequently made to present it, in a manner worthy of its many and genuine claims to public attention.

In the summer of 1821, the intended visit of George IV. to Ireland was announced. Sanguine anticipations, soon to be dispelled, were thereby created. "His visit was regarded as the result of high political design, and not of vitiated appetite for applause. No one imagined that his object was merely to ascertain the difference of intonation between the shouts of an English and an Irish mob. The Orange party conceived that the liberation of Ireland entered into the royal purposes of George IV. They well knew that such a project would have been easy of achievement, and made a tender of amnesty, if not of peace. Political opponents met and broke bread together. The king came. The air was rent with applause. The Catholics suppressed all utterance of their wrongs. The king left an injunction of peace as a precious gift, and amidst the acclamation of a whole, and an apparently united people, bade them an affectionate farewell. Love each other, said the king; hate each other, said the law; and the law was speedily obeyed."*

A change in the Irish administration seems to have been resolved upon soon after the departure of the king. It was at first contemplated to have the Duke

*Speech of Mr. Sheil, 21st January, 1822.