Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

516 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
position of the 'Noctes/ and which are sometimes
still interesting though so far back, giving a glimpse
into the busy world as it was in those days. Mr
Crofton Croker is the liveliest of all the gossips, and
records his anecdotes with the ease of a person moving
familiarly in the society he described. His position,
however, was not a very exalted one. He was a clerk
in the Admiralty, appointed thereto by his namesake
(but not we believe relation) the much less attractive
John Wilson Croker, whose communications are in
singular contrast with those of the lively and agree-
able young man who had come across from Ireland in
the traces of Maginn, and at once leaped into a place
among the fiery journalists and article writers of his
race, softened and modified by his clerkship, which
probably restrained him from joining in that headlong
rush of competition which spoiled the others. The
newspaper world would seem to have been crowded
with Irishmen in these days, so many that it would
be curious that they had not moulded the world into
compliance with all Irish desires, had it not been for
the fact that most of them were " black Protestants,"
often Orangemen, and ready to resist with much more
violence than any mere Englishman the demands of
their compatriots. Crofton Croker was the author of
Tales, from the legendary lore of his own and other
countries, and otherwise would seem from his letters
to have played the pleasant rdle of a young man
about town, seeing many people of interest, and
entering into general society, not confined to the
journalistic and literary world, with which alone
Maginn and his myrmidons were usually familiar.