344 The Newspaper Pr'fss of Ireland. [OcT. 



have seen Comerford the morning before his death it was a Saturday ; 

 and there is a mournful preciousness about the recollection which makes 

 me recur to it with a sigh. His manner was hurried, and there appeared 

 to me something wild and supernatural in his air. " I have had a dream 

 last night," said he, " of the most extraordinary nature, and the memory 

 of which agitates me even now. I dreamt that I fell into the water, 

 and swam till I reached the bank ; when the moon, which hitherto had 

 been hid, was unveiled, and disclosed to my view alongside the bank, on 

 which I was ineffectually clambering, a coffin on the plate of which my 

 name was wril." As he concluded these words, J could hardly suppress 

 laughter ; but I saw that what I thought a vision had indelibly impressed 

 itself on his mind, and 1 went my way. The next morning I walked on 

 the Royal Canal, when the first object I beheld was Comerford a corpse ! 

 On the Saturday evening he had dined with Mr. Frederick Edward Jones, 

 the then patentee of the theatre royal, and sat late. The night was dark 

 and rainy ; and, in crossing a small bridge over the canal, he slipped his 

 footing and fell in. He must have swam a long way; for his body was 

 found nearly a quarter of a mile lower down, with his fists firmly clutched 

 in the bank, in the act of clambering up ; but the edges were steep and 

 slippery 3 and his struggles were in vain. With him perished a brilliant 

 genius, and a memory of almost incredible retention. He spoke French 

 with the idiom arid purity of a native, and could repeat verbatim some of 

 the speeches of Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, which he had 

 heard in early youth. With him, too, vanished the literary reputation of 

 the Patriot, which now drags out a miserable existence by the aid of 

 proclamation-money and government advertisements. 



The Irishman, a paper lately established, is conducted on popular prin- 

 ciples. Though its reputation for honesty cannot be questioned, yet its 

 style is verbose and declamatory, and reminds one of Cicero's description 

 of Asiatic eloquence. 



The story of the other three-day and weekly papers in Dublin may be 

 briefly told. The Correspondent delights in sesquipedalian syllables, and may 

 be read, for aught I know to the contrary, in many lunatic asylums : I know 

 it is read nowhere else. The Weekly Freeman and the Weekly Register are 

 transcripts of the morning papers whose names they bear; and they have a 

 very extensive circulation in the provinces. Suffice it to despatch the 

 Warder by saying, that Sir Harcourt Lees Parson, Baronet, and Fox- 

 hunter writes in it sundry articles, which would entitle him to high consider- 

 ation in Bedlam or Swift's. Many of the provincial papers are respectable. 

 Among others, I would mention the Cork Southern Reporter, the Leinster 

 Journal, the Carlow Post, the Connaught Journal, and the Northern 

 Whig: the last mentioned is the organ of the dissenters of the north, and 

 is ably and temperately conducted. The journal of George Faulkener, 

 the friend of Swift, and Dublin alderman, has lately perished. 



I have now exceeded my space, and given, I hope, a not unfaithful 

 I am sure a very unprejudiced account of the Press of Ireland. 

 Unquestionably it has much improved of late years; but still, when com- 

 pared with " the brethren of the broad sheet"* in this our isle of Britain, 

 there is much room for improvement. But the German proverb tells us, 

 " Der zeit bringt rosen ;" and why should not time also, the greatest 

 innovator (as Lord Bacon says), bring improvement to the Press of 

 Ireland? I shall next month take a glance at the " Literature of Ire- 

 land." 



