1829.] Donnybrook Fair. 261 



After death had snatched him from the scene he illustrated by his 

 achievements, I contemplated publishing his memoirs, under the title of 

 " Recollections of Sir Daniel Donnelly and his contemporaries ;" X 

 intended to prefix a silhouette sketch of Dan, as he generally appeared 

 on his return from the prize ring, and impelled by the love of truth, I 

 would have heightened the interest of the work, by detailing, with the 

 unvarnished simplicity of a diary, those various little domestic faihngs 

 which my hero possessed in common with other great men, and the dis- 

 closure of which is so soothing to the vanity of the rest of the world. I 

 was eminently qualified to perform the task, since I was admitted to his 

 confidence, and shared his convivial hours ; but by a singular coincidence, 

 just as I was arranging my materials, and culling piquant anecdotes 

 from my fancy, my memory, and my journal, " Recollections of Lord 

 Byron and his Contemporaries," appeared, on a plan so similar to mine, 

 that I gave up the undertaking, lest I should be suspected of imitating 

 a work which I could never hope to rival. 



The character of Dan Donnelly will not suffer by comparison with 

 that of any hero of ancient or modern times. It is true it was never his 

 fortune to lead hundreds of thousand to glorious slaughter; nor, in 

 truth, did his taste lean that way, for he could not, as he himself ener- 

 getically expressed it, " See the fun ov thravellin' over the say, to be shot 

 at by blackguards that couldn't spake English, an' daren't stand up to a 

 man, for a hog (Anghce, a shilling) a day." But it is not so much by the 

 magnitude, as by the nature of his exploits, that the character of a hero 

 is measured in the estimation of the philosophical historian ; he strips 

 it of the adventitious support of accident or fortune, he appreciates it 

 according to its intrinsic strength, and draws his conclusions as to its va- 

 lue, from its development when left to its unassisted energies, rather than 

 when supported by, and linked with the powers of others. Following 

 this just and equitable rule, let me ask any sound and impartial judge 

 what chance would even the Great Captain himself have had against 

 Sir Dan in a twenty-four feet ring, at half minute time ? Why he 

 would be " doubled up" in the twinkling of an eye. As for Napoleon, 

 that arbiter of the destinies of nations, he was one of the " light 

 weights ;" and the gigantic champion would have disdained to lift a 

 finger to him. Perhaps, after all, the character of Alexander the Great 

 is that to which my departed friend bore most resemblance ; and let me 

 lemark, that there is a coincidence in the manner of their deaths, too 

 striking not to excite the attention even of the most careless observer. In 

 the cup of Hercules the conqueror of the east found the fate which he 

 had escaped at Issus and Arbela ; and the champion, whom Oliver and 

 Cooper could not overcome, sank beneath the overpowering influence of 

 eight-and-twenty tumblers of punch. 



My feelings have seldom been so much excited as they were one day 

 when passing through Thomas-street, the Whitechapel-road of Dublin, 

 I chanced to look into a barber's shop, and almost the first object which 

 met my eye was a cast from the never-to-be-forgotten visage of Sir Dan 

 moulded into a wig-block ; there it was — that iron, indomitable face, 

 which beating might improve, but never could injure : that round, solid- 

 looking, bullet head, that seemed made to be propelled, in the fiishion 

 of a battering-ram, against adventurous assailants. Still did the glassy 

 eyes stare with their usual expression of tranquil self-assurance, while 

 the compressed trap-like lips, denoted that inflexible determination of 



