He returned to London with a volume of stories for the press, and sold the copyright to the Messrs. Simpkin Marshall & Co., for L70. The work appeared in December 1826, under the title of "Hollandtide Tales." It was well received. The style was original, graceful and easy. The three novels, which comprised the series, were interesting and free from the taint of grossness and immorality, so erroneously deemed essential when describing the habits and customs of the poorer classes. It was an eloquent vindication of a much-wronged portion of the Irish peasantry, and like Banim's contemporary writings, it was hailed with universal exultation in Irish literary circles. The success of his first work was so immediate and decisive that he resigned his editorship, abandoned the magazines and reviews, and continued with few interruptions to appear annually before the public as a novelist. "Tales of the Munster Festivals," which appeared in two series, and for which he received L250, was the title of his next work. In 1858 appeared "The Collegians" which placed him with one bound in the fore front of the great writers of his country. It was not only the best Irish novel that had appeared previous to its first publication, but is admittedly the best that has ever been written since.[C] "The Invasion," "The Rivals," "The Duke of Monmouth," and others which he wrote subsequently, are all far inferior when placed side by side with this great master-piece of fiction. In it may be seen to best advantage the wonderful power and versatility of Griffin's genius as a great novelist, for within its single compass he has touched with a master hand the whole gamut of human passion and human affections. As a literary artist of the "dark and touching mode of painting," which Carleton has set down as the chief characteristic of his brother novelist, Griffin has few equals and no superior. To depict the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he especially delights. He does not delay the progress of the plot to impress upon his reader the exact frame of mind in which his hero felt at certain trying conjunctures. This suggests itself unconsciously, in occasional snatches of vague and emotional distraction, in half uttered replies, in the joke that mechanically escapes the lips, in the capricious laugh that best discovers the anguish preying on the mind and the despair eating at the heart. But it is in the ingenuity with which he makes local surroundings play such an important part in the drama of human destiny, that Griffin excels to a remarkable extent. What reader of the "Collegians" has not realized all the perils of the windy night and the stormy sea with trepidation and horror scarcely surpassed by the occupants of the little craft tossing amid the boiling breakers--Eily,