THE THE So continues the parodist; and whether such joy, most ill-treated and most enduring Public! be yours-great is our joy, for the throes of travail are over, and this child of many fathers has at last issued from the teeming Press. Great and grievous as have been thy burdens-heavy as must have been the loads-and multifold the inflictions which have reduced thy placid countenance into its unhappy resemblance to that of the donkey of the poet's venerated grandmother, they are, we maintain, but as a wart to Ossa, in comparison to those which await upon the projectors and perpetrators of a new Magazine, with the least of which, could Job have become acquainted, instead of wishing that his enemy had written a book, he would have prayed for his condemnation to editorial duties, such as ours have been. But the ice has at last been broken-the bark is upon the open sea-the load of crockery has fallen from the shoulders of Dapple. We can look our neighbours in the face without the slightest remaining portion of said Dapple's assinine melancholy; and, for a few days at least, so far resemble that unpleasant neighbour to his [Dapple's] wonted cargo-" a bull in a china shop," that we have every thing all our own way. Avaunt, therefore, all gloomy reflections, and more gloomy anticipations! Pressmen and Compositors! Blue Devils and Black Devils! aroint ye all! By the potent spell of publication we banish ye to the red and black seas of each different tinted ink! Joy should be, and joy is ours; and it shall go hard but that thou, our Public, shalt be made participator thereof; and that we shall lose all portion of said assinine melancholy, with VOL. I. NO. I. B which any of the curious, who wish to behold a human countenance most thoroughly imbued, has only, by a Speaker's order, to obtain admission under the gallery of St. Stephen's, and there look into the visage of the redoubted B-k-s, in whose features it is as visible as it is invisible in our own. Joy shall be thine! for the talent of Ireland has found at length a national vent. No longer shall her sons be compelled to seek in foreign countries, for the opportunity of that display of genius, which is denied them in their own. This First Day of May has been the birth of the "IRISH MONthly MagaziNE"-one as Irish as thou, O most discerning Public! may'st perceive, even to the colour of its wrapper, and whose every page shall preach of its nationality. We come not to support Whig or Tory; we will not assail you with "Scotch Feelosophy," like one periodical; nor weary you with English Toryism, like another; nor serve you up a sort of all sides of the gutter-dish of politics and philosophy and frolic, like a third; nor pelt you with the filth and contents of the aforesaid gutter, like a fourth. We shall, in our philosophy, in our politics, in our fun, even in our vituperation and satire, be Irish-and purely Irish. Like O'CONNELL, our party is the party of Ireland-a party which, if it be "the madness of many," has, and will continue to falsify the dictum of Pope, by ensuring the gain of the many also. Here, then, men of Ireland! is the First Number of a purely national periodical laid before ye. Let us see whether ye will enable those who seek in its institution, not private profit, but public benefit, to continue to contribute to your amusement-your instruction-and, we say it boldly, your Freedom! And who are they? Of that shall be instantly informed. They shall appear at my beck before ye; and, as courtiers to a monarch, shall your faithful and devoted subjects be presented to the only legitimate Sovereign-to the only Potentate whose service is equally beneficial to employer and employed-to the SOVEREIGN PEOPLE! Come, then, tumble up, my friends-just going to begin-the exhibition of the Contributors to the IRISH MAGAZINE; being the only collection of its class in Europe; admission only Two Shillings and Sixpence-Plenty of room, Ladies and Gentlemen!lots of room!-sitting and standing!-just going to begin! Now! silence!-Hand me that wand: attention, good people, I pray you. Thus we commence-draw the curtain-and-" Blow the Trumpet, Jerry!" Scene-The "HALL OF TARA." you Time :-Midnight-A Table, with Bottles and Glasses, interspersed with Proofs and Manuscripts of various descriptions: the IRISH BRIGADE are seated around. You per HERE you have them, Ladies and Gentlemen, all alive! Be pleased to direct your attention to the head of the table. ceive three personages-one occupying the Chair of the Meetingthe others supporting him on the right and the leftMa'am, you're perfectly right, they are old acquaintances-O'MORE, Yes, the gentleman in the centre, and his supporters, right and left, CAROLAN and CONLA, have been before the public in the pages of a certain periodical, of which hereafter.They generally act together, Sir, and, as such, we have placed them sitting together"Tria juncta in uno," as Paddy said when he shot the four Hessians"all Poets most seditiously inspired," and great proficients in what is termed "Pike Poetry." The gentleman on the left, Sir, is our religionist, rather addicted to philosophy, and a bitter opponent of the "without-note-and-comment system." The Chairman is rather more political than religious, and given to deal in GRAVE subjects; while the gentleman on the right is more in the amatory and theatrical line all three are writers of political articles, but, I assure you, not given to deal in what is termed Political Economy. But you "shall see what you shall see!" Now, please to look at the right hand of the President-the bluff-looking person in the blue coat and buff waistcoat, with Yacht Club buttons, he with the scar across his forehead, and the mark on his cheek-now, Sir, as he lays down his merschaum, you perceive he has lost two fingers of his left hand; that, Sir, is Mr. O'TAFFRAIL-a naval gentleman. Ma'am?-unmarried, Ma'am, and comfortable in his circumstances; you will see something of his adventures in this number,-a kind man, but somewhat blunt, as sailors are given to be; he is a new recruit. Opposite to him sits CAPTAIN DENIS MAC FINN, the short thick-set personage with his broad good-humoured face-a Captain in the army, Ma'am, also unmarried-served all through the campaigns in the Peninsula, "in Picton's fighting Division"-wounded in three or four places-most amiable temper, Ma'am, only a little given to take an extra glass, as, in his Killarney dialect, he terms a tumbler of punch, and somewhat addicted to swearing-not single oaths, but broadsides, as Mr. O'TAFFRAIL calls them has invented a gamut of swearing, with which, however, you shall not be troubled; an intimate acquaintance of "MAURICE QUILL'S," with some of whose drolleries he may feel inclined hereafter to amuse you; has been reviewing a work of Colonel MACERONE'S for the present Number. The person in black, sitting by Mr. O'TAFFRAIL, is his cousin, PATRICK O'DOGGREL " Poet non Laureate" to the Irish Members-only a probationer, Sir; you may hear something from him shortly.The tall gentleman opposite, is a a descendant of the celebrated ALFIERI, and has something of the spirit of his ancestors about him—an advocate for Love and Liberty. As for myself, modesty forbids me to speak-Je m' appelle (as Lady Morgan says)Je m'appelle, FION; you'll find me in the "Romance of History." Just a sample, Ladies and Gentlemen; the supply shall be continued, if the demand be found encouraging. Here you have the PRINCIPALS, and their PRINCIPLES. The dii minores gentium I have not touched upon. In fact, we shall not call upon them at all for their exhibition; and, now, let me dismiss you to the perusal of the labours of my colleagues, with the wish, that "appetite may grow with what it feeds on;" that your amusement and instruction may be See his celebrated Lines on the Uninscribed Tomb. as great as the wish to contribute to them has been sincere and ardent; and that you may feel inclined to join us, in the prayer for our VIRGIN MAGA, of Father Paul for his country-ESTO PERPETUA. FION. BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF THE DUBLIN MAGAZINE PERIODICALS WHO HAVE LIVED AND DIED SINCE THE UNION. "They are gone I and the bright hopes we cherished It is a difficult task to write the history of our predecessors; yet, in performing the duty, perhaps we will do them more justice than if we were to undertake the same service for some of our contemporaries. Their works alone are the sources from which we draw our information, and the only materials which enable us to decide upon the claims they may have possessed to talents, or the benefits they rendered to the cause of patriotism. They figured and flourished in times antecedent even to our boyhood, therefore all their foibles and peculiarities are unknown to us; and we sit down to the undertaking with minds uninfluenced by any feeling which could be of the slightest disadvantage to their posthumous fame. Differing from the modest declaration with which a historian mostly commences, that all attempts prior to his own were failures, and that the world never had a true and impartial work upon the subject until he condescended to write one, we shall not begin by a sweeping assertion, that all the Irish Magazines ever printed were not to be compared to our NEW Monthly" nor shall we in the slightest manner insinuate, that because some of them had very short lives, that there must have been something weak in their constitutions. No: this would be a very unjust, as well as an ungenerous criterion to judge of their relative merits. As Buonaparte replied to one of his generals, when he asked for a sick leave, alleging, that the Doctor said he would die if he did not return home-" General," said Napoleon, "men die every where" so Magazines, as well as men, must die some time or other; and no country is so salubrious as to protract their dissolution beyond the course which the natural state of things has allotted for their existence. When we find that Magazines fall into a consumption and die, after trying every remedy which the Doctors of Paternoster-row and the Quacks of the Strand can prescribe for them in London, are we to be surprised if we hear that several have also fallen victims to the same complaint in the less congenial climate of Dublin? A poor "Englishman" slipped through their hands within the last season, notwithstanding all the efforts of the St. John *The Englishman's Magazine. |