Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/712
That ne'er shall wake them more.
On his arrival in England, he repaired immediately to London, and effected an exchange into the 99th, or King's Own Tipperary regiment, and set off immediately to join the depot then stationed in the Isle of Wight. In order to cover the reason of his leaving his former regiment, and to prevent the true cause of his exchange from becoming publicly known, he addressed the following stanzas to the officers of the 44th regiment, and took care to have them inserted in all the newspapers, with the signature of Morgan Odoherty. They are as follows:
Must in sadness go round to the friends of my heart,
With whom many a bright hour of joy has gone by,
Whom with pleasure I met, whom I leave with a sigh.
In the dark sky of winter, they fled like a dream;
Yet when years shall have cast their dim shadows between,
I shall fondly remember the days that have been.
That has bound us together be broken in twain,
And I'll drink, wheresoever my lot may be cast,
To the friends that I love, and the days that are past.
This ruse de guerre had the desired effect; for nobody could possibly suspect that the author of this sentimental and very feeling address had just been kicked out of the regiment by these very dear friends whom he thus pathetically lauds. Soon after his arrival at the depot of the 99th regiment, he was ordered to proceed on the recruiting service to Scotland, and arrived in Edinburgh in the summer of 1815. Here new and unexpected honours awaited him. He had hitherto been a stranger to literary distinctions, and notwithstanding his writing in the different periodical publications attracted much of the public admiration, he had hitherto remained, in the more extended signification of the word, absolutely unnoticed. This, however, was at length to cease; and though Mr Odoherty was by birth an Irishman (to the shame of that country be it spoken), it was Scotland which first learned to appreciate and reward his merit. Soon after his arrival at this metropolis, he was voted a member of the "Select Society." Here he distinguished himself by his eloquence in a very eminent degree; and as the gentlemen of this society seemed to pride themselves more on the quantity than the quality of their orations, and seemed to meet with much greater success in the multiplication of their words than in the multiplication of their ideas to correspond with them, Mr Odoherty, from his natural volubility, soon succeeded in casting his rivals in the shade. In particular, I am told he made a speech of four hours and a half, on the new and interesting question of, Whether Brutus was justified in the assassination of Cæsar, which was carried in the affirmative by a majority of one, and may therefore be considered as being finally settled. He likewise made a long speech on the question of the propriety of early marriages, and clearly established, in a most pathetic and luminous oration, that Queen Elizabeth was by no means justified in the execution of Mary. It was impossible that these elaborate displays of the most extraordinary talent could long remain unnoticed. In consequence of his giving a most clear and scientific description of a Roman frying-pan, found in the middle of a bog in the county of Kilkenny, he was immediately elected a member of the society of Scottish antiquaries, and read at their meetings several very interesting papers, which were received by his brother antiquaries with the most grateful attention. He was likewise proposed a member of the Royal Society, and unfortunately black-balled. Candour induces me to state, for the credit of that learned body, that this rejection was not understood to proceed on the personal unfitness of Mr Odoherty for the proposed honour, but was simply owing to the circumstances of several Irish members who had been recently chosen having bilked the Society of their fees, which made them unwilling to add to their number. To make amends for this disappointment, the same week in which it occurred he was proposed in the