courage with which he had performed his task at Rome, and I wrote to him to put our recent controversy out of his mind, as I went into exile remembering only the good battle we had fought together for a good cause. The last letter but one which I got from him came in reply:—
"I was delighted, my dear Duffy, to receive your very kind note on my return to Brighton from London on a visit to the doctor. The little scene to which you refer was most painful to me, and I am, above all things, delighted that we may now consider the affair at an end. There may be a difference of opinion, but I am sure you acquit me of entertaining towards you anything but kind and affectionate feelings, such as I have no doubt whatever you entertain towards me. … It is to me a subject of the deepest regret that you are going from Ireland not only on public grounds, with regard to which I consider it a calamity but on private grounds, and because the absence of such a friend as I have always felt you to be makes our wretched politics very much more distasteful than they have hitherto been."
At this time, the autumn of 1855, D'Arcy M'Gee made a long-meditated visit to Europe to see old friends whom he had not forgotten and who had not forgotten him. We lived much together, and exchanged confidences on Irish affairs. We dined one evening with Dr. Brady, and I met Sam Lover at close quarters for the first time. Poet, painter, and lyrist as he undoubtedly is (says my diary), I have found it hard to like him. He is an Irishman under protest. There is not a gleam of the divine fire of nationality in all his writings. He helped O'Connell against the Established Church, and his written and lithographed satire on the bishops was piquant but a little too savage, but in the contest to make Ireland a nation he is always absent without leave. In manner and bearing he is a superb Jackeen.[1] His face is comical, but not plastic or expressive. It is the face of a droll; his stories are of the stage species, without natural humour. They are carried off by a certain boisterous pleasantry, but in print would be deadly dull. We spoke of Irish poetry and fiction,
- ↑ The Dublin equivalent of Cockney.
