The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
IX. Anglo-Irish Literature.
§ 10. Maginn.
| And now we may hark back a little to the writers who, after qualifying for the task in Maga and other British magazines, were to establish and carry on for a long season the brilliant Dublin University Magazine. First and foremost of these was William Maginn. 5 This was the time when Lamb, De Quincey, Lockhart and Wilson were giving most of their writings to magazines, and Maginn proceeded to follow their example. His classical scholarship gave him style, to which he added remarkable versatility of literary power. It is said that he conceived the idea of the famous Noctes Ambrosianae and wrote many of these dialogues. He was the author of such brilliantly humorous, if truculent and devil-may-care, verses as The Irishman and the Lady and St. Patrick; while, among his satiric writings, his panegyric of colonel Pride may stand comparison even with Swift’s notable philippics; and his Sir Morgan O’Doherty was the undoubted ancestor of Maxwell’s and Lever’s hard-drinking, practical-joking Irish military heroes. Maginn, no doubt, suggested to William Hamilton Maxwell, another Trinity college graduate, the idea of laying himself out to write military novels; hence, his Stories of Waterloo. Maxwell was a greater sportsman, if a poor parson, and his Wild Sports of the West of Ireland enjoyed a great, and, in the opinion of “Christopher North,” a deserved, popularity. |
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