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 stature? Dr. Watts, too, was a little man; and when taunted with the smallness of his person, is said to have exclaimed:—

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

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:—

—and then the old objurgation against perfide Albion:

— 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