BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN BANIM.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION-BIRTH-SCHOOL DAYS-YOUTH-FIRST LOVE.

IT has been said that the lives of literary men in England are, in general, devoid of incidents either interesting or exciting, and yet, in all the long catalogue of human joys and sorrows, of combats against the world, and of triumphs over difficulties almost insurmountable, of instances where the indomitable will has raised its possessor to the enjoyment of every object sought, and to the full fruition of every hope long cherished, where can such glorious examples be found as in the pages of literary biography? It is true that many a noble intellect has been shattered in the pursuit of literary fame; it is true that ghastly forms of martyred genius fit across the scene, and that, from the lowest depths of the deep hearts of Poets, the cry of gnawing hunger, and the wail of helpless, hopeless sorrow arises, with an anguish more frightful than that of Philoctetes, more awful that that of Lear. Truly, literature has had its martyrs-Nash, the creature of genius, of famine, and despair, tells us: "I sat up late

B

and rose early, contended with the cold and conversed with scarcity, and all my labours turned to loss—

'Why is't damnation to despair and die

When life is my true happiness' disease?'"

Churchyard, who wore out life on the food and in the rags of a beggar, had written on his grave, "Poverty and Poetry his tomb doth enclose." Stowe, after the labour of forty-five years, was a strolling mendicant through the country of whose antiquities he had been the learned chronicler. Otway, when he had endured all the woes of want, was choked by the hungry eagerness with which he tried to devour a loaf, the price of which he had begged. The saddest picture of all, in the martyrology of genius, is Chatterton

"the marvellous boy;

The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride”— writing home to his mother those brave letters in which he promises to become great and famous, because, "by abstinence and perseverance, a man may accomplish whatever he pleases ;" and then, after enduring days of starvation, and refusing a dinner from his landlady, the poor staymaker, he dies by his own hand of poison, and is buried amongst the rank graves of beggars in Shoe-lane workhouse. Literary biography has its kind good hearts too, doing deeds that shine in the face of heaven-its "noble silent men, scattered here and there; silently thinking; silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of." Look at Goldsmith giving to the relief of want, whilst himself existing on pennies. Look at Samuel Johnson crowding his house with the needy. Look at him walking all night around St. James's Square, because otherwise his companion, Richard Savage, would sleep upon a

cobbler's bulk. Look again, he is returning home late at night, his dim eyes serve him but poorly to see his way, and in his rolling, shambling walk, he stumbles over some object lying on the footpath; he stoops-it is a woman, half dead with cold, disease, and want. He takes her on his back, carries her to his lodgings, places her in his own bed, sends for a physician, and finding that she is a poor fallen outcast, prays, and teaches her to pray, and upon her recovery places her where poverty cannot again drive her from virtue. When Harte dined with Cave, meat was taken behind a screen placed at the end of the room; and there sat Johnson, too ragged and too proud to appear at table. But he heard them praise his Life of Savage—and the same man, so poor and so proud, some few years afterwards flung back to the clever puppy Chesterfield his praises of the Dictionary. Well has Thomas Carlyle written, "Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day-Corsica Boswell flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt up in its thoughts, in its sorrows, what could paradings and ribbons in the hat do for it?" Truly nothing. For it, honour and rectitude did all. These are the facts and incidents which give to literary biography its charms. Think of Kirke White, poor murdered child of song and sorrow; of John Keats, by his solitary hearth, a gloom-rapt soul, to whom

"The bare heath of life presents no bloom;"

of Gerald Griffin, so worn and wan before his time, starving by day, and awakened at night by the dread pulsation of his throbbing heart, to sigh lest day and its toil had come once more; and, most woful of all,

Sir Walter and Southey-so bright in intellect, and so dauntless in labour once, but so crushed and broken at the close of life-come before us, all teaching great truths in the moral of their lives, and proving, too, that old Burton judged rightly when, in "The Anatomy of Melancholy," he quaintly wrote, that the Destinies of old "put poverty upon Mercury as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are Gemini, twin-born brats, inseparable companions. Mercury can help them to knowledge, but not to money."

It is not by reason alone of its fascinating details that literary biography should be prized and estimated. The author, more than any other man, rises by his own merits, or sinks through his own faults. Even in the days when the lot of the man of genius was, but too often,

"Toil, envy, want, the Patron, and the jail,"

the want and the jail were frequently attributable to his own misconduct; but, in this our age, when from literature have sprung the glories of the Church, the Bench, the Senate, and the Bar, genius need no longer dress in rags, or live in poverty-its Patron is the Public; and for him who is entering on the journey of life, the best guide will be the biography of some literary man of the time. He will there discover how, by honourable conduct and by persevering application, all the honours of the kingdom can be obtained—and how, on the other hand, the brightest gifts of genius are useless, if desecrated by idleness or by misapplication. He will learn, also, to doubt the truth of one who has written :

"Let no man be bred to literature alone, for, as has been far less truly said of another occupation, it will not be bread to

him. Fallacious hopes, bitter disappointments, uncertain rewards, vile impositions, and censure and slander from the oppressors, are their lot, as sure as ever they put pen to paper for publication, or risk their peace of mind on the black, black sea of printer's ink. With a fortune to sustain, or a profession to stand by, it may still be bad enough; but without one or the other it is as foolish as alchemy, as desperate as suicide." *

The facts show to the reader how interesting and how useful a study literary biography becomes when rightly pursued; and we have endeavoured to render our Biography of John Banim as faithful a memoir as facts could make it, and to give it, through his own letters, somewhat the character of an autobiography.

There is a charm about biography which is immediately felt and acknowledged by all; but autobiography is still more attractive, being the record of the heart, the feeling and the actions of him who is the subject of his own pen.

Great old Samuel Johnson said, that if any man were to note down the facts of his daily existence, the diary should prove interesting, and for our parts we believe, most firmly, that he was right; we even consider that an indifferently executed autobiography is more interesting than an ordinarily compiled biography. Who would not rather read Horace's own account of his school days, of his boyhood, and of his every-day life, than the most erudite and accurate biographical sketch composed by his annotators? When he writes of himself he is before us, as in the years when he, the freedman's son, was brought to Rome by a father, noble in the nobility of manhood, and was sent to learn all that the Roman Knight could know. We see him as when he went attended by slaves, and dressed as if his estate

* Jerdan's Autobiography, Vol. I. p. 39.