Charles Lever : his Life in his Letters. By Edmund
Downey. 2 vols. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 21s. net.)—This book is certainly in some respects disappointing. Most of it, we may say, is from Charles Lever's own pen, and we do not get as much amusement as we might expect. He kept his fun for his books. We cannot blame him ; but his biography suffers. It is some- thing to be told that "Frank Webber" was an amalgam of two of Lever's College friends; but there is nothing of the Frank Webber fun about the quite respectable career at Trinity, Dublin. For two years and more after graduating Lever wandered over various regions in Germany. He returned to Ireland in 1830, and spent the next seven years in medical practice in Dublin, Clare, and Portstewart. In 1837 he migrated to Brussels, where he spent five years. By degrees he became well known as an author, and literature prevailed over medicine. About literature—that is, on its commercial side—we hear much. On the whole, Lever seems to have fared well ; he certainly got as much for his books as they can be fairly said to be worth. But he was not easily satisfied. " I cannot be good for £20 a sheet," he says in reference to one book which he allows to be a poor performance ; and he goes on : "just as I would revoke if I played whist for shilling points." This is significant. A man may lose a good deal of money in the hour at shilling points, if he plays badly or unluckily. He seems to have been frequently in an impecunious condition. He thinks, for instance, that the copyright of a book (the .820-a-sheet book) is worth £200, but is so "hard up" that he will take .2100: "I mit driven to my last resources : a deluge of duns awaits me." Most of the letters in the latter half of the biography are addressed to John Blackwood. They are full of thanks and appreciation. Indeed, it is easy to see, though we are without the other half of the correspondence, that the transactions to which they refer are "an object-lesson in the relations which may exist between Author and Publisher," as Mr. Downey puts it in his dedication of the two volumes to "The Memory of John Blackwood." The letters abound with notices of English and foreign politics. Lever's sympathies were not with the popular cause—it would have been strange if a client of the Blackwoods had been of this temper—and it strikes us that he is not to be relied on for any- thing like "sweet reasonableness." Gladstone, to give an instance, he thinks to be more of a poseur than Disraeli.
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