1829.] a Tale of Crulched- Friars. .')23 



whicli his affecting anecdotes rarely failed to bring on, I found him 

 stretched in an apoplectic fit upon the floor. With some difficulty he 

 was brought to his senses ; but, a relapse occurring in a few days, it 

 became but too evident that, like the late John Wesley, he had had a 

 call — that, in short, his closing hour was come. I was with him in his 

 last exti-emity, and have every reason to be satisfied with the Christian 

 character of his exit. He swore most incredibly at all poets ; left 

 Thomas his blessing and six half-crowns ; his daughter a MS. Essay, 

 by the political economist of Houndsditch ; and then, with a convulsive 

 jerk of his left leg, which lamed the bed-post for life, set out on his 

 travels to eternity, with the story of the apprentice on his lips. 



Of his three children, Thomas is the sole survivor. The "Wanderer's" 

 wife was taken off, about a fortnight since, by dyspepsia, the conse- 

 quence of inordinate indulgence in tripe and toast-and-water ; while her 

 £))rightly sister, Sophy, threw herself headlong into a mill-pond at 

 Holyhead (having previously tied down her petticoats at the ankles), 

 on being informed by O'Blarney, in one of those confidential moments 

 which bi-andy-and-water seldom fails to ehcit, that he was already 

 the devoted husband of three wives and a proportionate abundance of 

 pledges, and had quitted London not so much v»ith a view to visit any 

 Irish estates — which, as a matter of course, existed only in liis fancy — 

 as to obviate the personal inconveniences likely to arise from the circum- 

 stance of his having, in a moment of forgetfulness, ajjpropriated to his 

 own use the purse and pocket-book of one of his most intimate and valued 

 acquaintances. The poor girl's body was fished up, a few days afterwards, 

 by a Welsh clergyman, who was trolling in spectacles for pike ; and a 

 coroner's inquest having been summoned, the evidence of O'Blarney 

 was taken, from wliich it clearly appeared that the deceased was at tiines 

 insane, and, only two hours before her death, had made three attempts to 

 swallow a salt-cellar. The young Irishman deposed to these and other 

 facts with so much feeling, earnestness, and simplicity, that the coroner 

 complimented him highly on his humanity ; and an account of the 

 inquest Jiaving been furnished by himself for the North JFalcs Chronicle, 

 it soon afterwards made the round of the London newspapers, under the 

 title of " Distressing Suicide." 



Of poor Thomas, my account, I grieve to say, must be equally dis- 

 heartening. An ei)ic poem, on which he had been some months engaged, 

 having not only failed, but even contributed to introduce its publisher to 

 ready-furnished lodgings in the Fleet, he is now driven to the necessity 

 of jobbing for minor periodicals, thereby adding one more to the already 

 swollen catalogue of tliose who, mistaking the ignis fatuiis of vanity for 

 the sober radiance of intellect, start off prematurely on the voyage of 

 life, without pilot to steer, compass to direct, or b^last to steady their 

 course. 



When I called on the young man, a few mornings since, I was 

 much struck with his more than usually picturesque condition. Being 

 always fond of air, he had hired aback attic, overlooking two charm- 

 ing gardens filled with clothes'-lincs, and commanding a distant view of 

 some brick-fields, a pig, and an Irish hodman from Carrickfergus. 

 His wife was seated at the fire, watching a leg of mutton as it pirouetted 

 before the grate, at tlie end of a bit of wliipcord : Fernando, her 

 eldest boy, was riding witli manifest ecstasy on the back of an 

 old chair : and lier two other darling babes, Alphonso and Kleonora, 

 were fast asleep, on a turn-iq> bedstead, in an adjoining room. Close by 

 Thomas, wlio w.xs busy writing reviews at a deal table with three legs, 

 was an elderly coltou shirt, hanging to dry on a small wooden horse, 



