"At Covent Garden a sacred drama, on the story of Jephtha, conveying solemn impressions, is PROHIBITED as a PROFANATION of the period of fasting and mortification! There is no doubt where the odium should fix-on the Lord Chamberlain or on the BISHOP OF LONDON. Let some intelligent Member of Parliament bring the question before the HOUSE OF COMMONS."

Times, Feb. 20 and 21, 1834

THE WORKS OF FATHER PROUT.

THE RELIQUES.

I.

Father Prout's Apology for Lent.

HIS DEATH, OBSEQUIES, AND AN ELEGY.

(Fraser's Magazine, April, 1834.)

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[Mahony's first contribution to Fraser appeared in the same number in which Carlyle completed the second of the three books of his "Sartor Resartus." The now well-known Magazine, which had already won to itself a high degree of popularity, had but just then rounded the fourth year of its existence. Its salient feature from its commencement had been, as it long continued to be, the publication in each monthly instalment of one in a singularly varied Gallery of Literary Characters. These were doubly sketched, and with about an equally startling vividness, by the pseudonymous pencil of Alfred Croquis, a young artist afterwards world-famous in his own name as Daniel Maclise, R.A., and, upon a confronting leaf, by the pen of an anonymous writer, who was in reality no less caustic and scholarly a wit than Dr. William Maginn, then the responsible editor of Regina. No. 47 in that Gallery portrayed thus, in walking costume, for the amusement of the readers of Fraser, the well-buttoned-up form and vinous countenance of Theodore Hook, author of "Sayings and Doings." "A couple of years afterwards, when "The Reliques" were collected together for independent publication, Maclise's facile pencil adorned this opening chapter with two embellishments, one of them forming the frontispiece to the first volume, being his wicked limning, under embowering nets, of Mahony seated vis-à-vis with his alter ego or eidolon Father Prout, each busily engaged, fork in hand, discussing his-ahem !" Apology for Lent!" relays of dishes being brought in processionally to the already well-laden board; while the other, the companion vignette, appended to this opening instalment of the "Reliques," delineated, under the two significant words "Pace Implora," the reverend Father's solemn interment.]

"Cependant, suivant la chronique,

Le Carême, depuis un mois,

Sur tout l'univers Catholique

Etendait ses sévères lois."-Gresset.

THERE has been this season in town a sad outcry against Lent. For the first week the metropolis was in a complete uproar at the suppression of the oratorio; and no act of authority since the fatal ordonnances of Charles X. bid fairer to revolutionize a capital than the message sent from Bishop Blomfield to Manager Bunn. That storm has happily blown over. The Cockneys, having fretted their idle hour, and vented their impotent ire through their

B

"safety-valve," the press, have quietly relapsed into their wonted attitude of indifference and resumed their customary calm. The clamour of the day is now passed and gone, and the dramatic "murder of Jephtha" is forgotten. In truth, after all, there was something due to local reminiscences; and when the present tenants of the Garden" recollect that in by-gone days these "deep solitudes and awful cells" were the abode of fasting and austerity, they will not grudge the once-hallowed premises to commemorate in sober stillness the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. But let that rest. An infringement on the freedom of theatricals, though in itself a grievance, will not, in all likelihood, be the immediate cause of a convulsion in these realms; and it will probably require some more palpable deprivation to arouse the sleeping energies of John Bull, and to awake his dormant anger.

It was characteristic of the degeneracy of the Romans, that while they crouched in prostrate servility to each imperial monster that swayed their destinies in succession, they never would allow their amusements to be invaded, nor tolerate a cessation of the sports of the amphitheatre; so that even the despot, while he riveted their chains, would pause and shudder at the well-known ferocious cry of "Panem et Circenses!" Now, food and the drama stand relatively to each other in very different degrees of importance in England; and while provisions are plentiful, other matters have but a minor influence on the popular sensibilities. The time may come, when, by the bungling measures of a Whig administration, brought to their full maturity of mischief by the studied neglect of the agricultural and shipping interests, the general disorganization of the state-machinery at home, and the natural results of their intermeddling abroad,-a dearth of the primary articles of domestic consumption may bring to the Englishman's fireside the broad conviction of a misrule and mismanagement too long and too sluggishly endured. It may then be too late to apply remedial measures with efficacy; and the only resource left, may be, like Caleb Balderstone at Wolf's Crag, to proclaim a general fast.' When that emergency shall arise, the quaint and original, nay, sometimes luminous and philosophic, views of Father Prout on the fast of Lent, may afford much matter for speculation to the British public; or, as Childe Harold says,

"Much that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly."

Before we bring forward Father Prout's lucubrations on this grave subject, it may be allowable, by way of preliminary observation, to remark, that, as far as Lent is concerned, as well indeed as in all other matters, "they manage these things differently abroad." In foreign countries a carnival is the appropriate prelude to abstemiousness; and folks get such a surfeit of amusement during the saturnalian days which precede its observance, that they find a grateful repose in the sedate quietude that ensues. The custom is a point of national taste, which I leave to its own merits; but whoever has resided on the Continent must have observed that all this bacchanalian riot suddenly terminates on Shrove Tuesday; the fun and frolic expire with the 'boeuf-gras;" and the shouts of the revellers, so boisterous and incessant during the preceding week, on Ash Wednesday are heard no more. A singular ceremony in all the churches-that of sprinkling over the congregation on that Wednesday the pulverized embers of the boughs of an evergreen (meant, I suppose, as an emblem and record of man's mortality)—appears to have the instantaneous effect of turning their thoughts into a different channel : the busy hum subsides at once; and learned commentators have found, in the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, a prophetic allusion to this magic operation : "Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt."

The non-consumption of butchers' meat, and the substitution of fish diet,

is also a prominent feature in the continental form of observing Lent; and on this topic Father Prout has been remarkably discursive, as will be seen on perusal of the following pages. To explain how I became the depositary of the reverend man's notions, and why he did not publish them in his lifetime (for, alas! he is no more-peace be to his ashes!) is a duty which I owe the reader, and from which I am far from shrinking. I admit that some apology is required for conveying the lucid and clarified ideas of a great and good divine through the opaque and profane medium that is now employed to bring them under the public eye; I account for it accordingly.

I am a younger son. I belong to an ancient, but poor and dilapidated house, of which the patrimonial estate was barely enough for my elder; hence, as my share resembled what is scientifically called an evanescent quantity, I was directed to apply to that noble refuge of unprovided genius-the bar! To the bar, with a heavy heart and aching head, I devoted year after year, and was about to become a tolerable proficient in the black letter, when an epistle from Ireland reached me in Furnival's Inn, and altered my prospects materially. This despatch was from an old Roman Catholic aunt whom I had in that country, and whose house I had been sent to, when a child, on the speculation that this visit to my venerable relative, who, to her other good qualities, added that of being a resolute spinster, might determine her, as she was both rich and capricious, to make me her inheritor. The letter urged my immediate presence in the dying chamber of the Lady Cresswell; and as no time was to be lost, I contrived to reach in two days the lonely and desolate mansion on Watergrasshill, in the vicinity of Cork. As I entered the apartment, by the scanty light of the lamp that glimmered dimly, I recognized, with some difficulty, the emaciated form of my gaunt and withered kinswoman, over whose features, originally thin and wan, the pallid hue of approaching death cast additional ghastliness. By the bedside stood the rueful and unearthly form of Father Prout; and, while the sort of chiaroscuro in which his figure appeared, half shrouded, half revealed, served to impress me with a proper awe for his solemn functions, the scene itself, and the probable consequences to me of this last interview with my aunt, affected me exceedingly. I involuntarily knelt; and while I felt my hands grasped by the long, cold, and bony fingers of the dying, my whole frame thrilled; and her words, the last she spoke in this world, fell on my ears with all the effect of a potent witchery, never to be forgotten! "Frank," said the Lady Cresswell, "my lands and perishable riches I have bequeathed to you, though you hold not the creed of which this is a minister, and I die a worthless but steadfast votary: only promise me and this holy man that, in memory of one to whom your welfare is dear, you will keep the fast of Lent while you live; and, as I cannot control your inward belief, be at least in this respect a Roman Catholic: I ask no more.' How could I have refused so simple an injunction? and what junior member of the bar would not hold a good rental by so easy a tenure? In brief, I was pledged in that solemn hour to Father Prout, and to my kind and simple-hearted aunt, whose grave is in Rathcooney, and whose soul is in heaven.

During my short stay at Watergrasshill (a wild and romantic district, of which every brake and fell, every bog and quagmire, is well known to Crofton Croker-for it is the very Arcadia of his fictions), I formed an intimacy with this Father Andrew Prout, the pastor of the upland, and a man celebrated in the south of Ireland. He was one of that race of priests now unfortunately extinct, or very nearly so, like the old breed of wolf-dogs, in the island: I allude to those of his order who were educated abroad, before the French revolution, and had imbibed, from associating with the polished and high-born clergy of the old Gallican church, a loftier range of thought, and a superior delicacy of sentiment. Hence, in his evidence before the House of Lords,

"the glorious Dan" has not concealed the grudge he feels towards those clergymen, educated on the Continent, who, having witnessed the doings of the sansculottes in France, have no fancy to a rehearsal of the same in Ireland. Of this class was Prout, P.P. of Watergrasshill; but his real value was very faintly appreciated by his rude flock: he was not understood by his contemporaries; his thoughts were not their thoughts, neither could he commune with kindred souls on that wild mountain. Of his genealogy nothing was ever known with certainty; but in this he resembled Melchizedek: like Eugene Aram, he had excited the most intense interest in the highest quarters, still did he studiously court retirement. He was thought by some to be deep in alchemy, like Friar Bacon; but the gaugers never even suspected him of distilling "potheen." He was known to have brought from France a spirit of the most chivalrous gallantry; still, like Fénélon retired from the court of Louis XIV., he shunned the attractions of the sex, for the sake of his pastoral charge: but in the rigour of his abstinence, and the frugality of his diet, he resembled no one, and none kept Lent so strictly.

Of his gallantry one anecdote will be sufficient. The fashionable Mrs. P——, with two female companions, travelling through the county of Cork, stopped for Divine service at the chapel of Watergrasshill (which is on the high road on the Dublin line), and entered its rude gate while Prout was addressing his congregation. His quick eye soon detected his fair visitants standing behind the motley crowd, by whom they were totally unnoticed, so intent were all on the discourse; when, interrupting the thread of his homily, to procure suitable accommodation for the strangers, "Boys!" cried the old man, “why don't ye give three chairs for the ladies?" Three cheers for the ladies ! re-echoed at once the parish clerk. It was what might be termed a clerical, but certainly a very natural, error; and so acceptable a proposal was suitably responded to by the frieze-coated multitude, whose triple shout shook the very cobwebs on the roof of the chapel !—after which slight incident, service was quietly resumed.

He was extremely fond of angling; a recreation which, while it ministered to his necessary relaxation from the toils of the mission, enabled him to observe cheaply the fish diet imperative on fast days. For this he had established his residence at the mountain-source of a considerable brook, which, after winding through the parish, joins the Blackwater at Fermoy; and on its banks would be found, armed with his rod, and wrapped in his strange cassock, fit to personate the river-god or presiding genius of the stream. [Old Izaak Walton would have liked the man exceedingly.]

His modest parlour would not ill become the hut of one of the fishermen of Galilee. A huge net in festoons curtained his casement; a salmon-spear, sundry rods, and fishing tackle, hung round the walls and over his bookcase, which latter object was to him the perennial spring of refined enjoyment. Still he would sigh for the vast libraries of France, and her well-appointed scientific halls, where he had spent his youth, in converse with the first literary characters and most learned divines; and once he directed my attention to what appeared to be a row of folio volumes at the bottom of his collection, but which I found on trial to be so many large stone-flags, with parchment backs, bearing the appropriate title of CORNELII A LAPIDE Opera quæ extant omnia; by which semblance of that old Jesuit's commentaries he consoled himself for the absence of the original.

His classic acquirements were considerable, as will appear by his essay on Lent; and while they made him a most instructive companion, his unobtrusive merit left the most favourable impression. The general character of a churchman is singularly improved by the tributary accomplishments of the scholar, and literature is like a pure grain of Araby's incense in the golden censer of religion. His taste for the fine arts was more genuine than might