stature? Dr. Watts, too, was a little man; and when taunted with the smallness of his person, is said to have exclaimed:—
"Were I so tall to reach the Pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I would be measured by my soul,
The mind's the standard of the man!"
The story may be true, or not; it is at least ben trovato. Croker might well submit to the same test; for if he has not left the shade of a great name upon the earth, he attained a respectable place in the republic of letters, and has left behind him the sweet savour of an honourable and useful career.
Thomas Crofton Croker,—to give him his whole name,—was, like Maginn, a Corcagian, born in the "beautiful city," on the lovely banks of
"The spreading Lee, that, like an island fair,
Encloseth Corke with his divided flood,"
on the 15th January, 1798. In a paper on " Irish Minstrelsy," which he contributed to Fraser in the second month of its existence (March, 1830), he, with pardonable, yet characteristic, egotism, translates, from the original Irish, as "a specimen of the improvisatory power of the professional Keener," a long string of impromptu verses on his departure from his native city:—
"I liked your dark eyebrows,
And eyes bright and merry,
And your cheeks that resemble
The hawthorn berry.
Master Crofton, your country
You leave but for dangers —
To meet with false Saxons,
And cold-hearted strangers,"
—and then the old objurgation against perfide Albion:
"The country of Saxons
Takes all of our quality,
And, I've heard it from many,
Has small hospitality.
That little's the welcome
For the Irish among them;
But their only delight is
To cheat and to wrong them,"[1]
— and so on, interminably. Well, the beldame was Irish, and I do not suppose for a moment that she ever thought that her favourite had met with his deserts; but I think that a glance at his career will result in the belief that it was a reasonably successful one. Upon his arrival in England, his first visit was paid to his countryman, Tom Moore, at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire; he shortly proceeded to London, where it was not long before he received from John Wilson Croker (a namesake, but in no way related), the appointment at the Admiralty, which he held for nearly thirty years, retiring in 1850, as senior clerk of the first class. In literature he is perhaps best known by his Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, which first appeared in 1825. This was translated the same year into German by the brothers Grimm, with
- ↑ The particular Keen, of which these verses form part, is appended to the volume
Keens of the South of Ireland, Collected, Edited, and chiefly Translated by T. Crofton Croker. Printed for the Percy Society, No. xlvi., June, 1844.
