Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of
letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest
Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is the humour of
it.

Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones
because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap,"
nor Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you
rather admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very
differently when you come to thirty years or more, and see other men
doing what you cannot do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And
then, if you are a reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for
what it does not give," as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:-

"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in
geological information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and
worthless, for his facts are not borne out by any authority, and he
gives us no information about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh!
our country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'"
and so forth.

It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not
only did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom
Burke," that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of
authors. He edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of
wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which
people are permitted to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust
there is in it to how few pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually
and politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered