In and about this plot (if such it may be called) there are more absurdities than we have patience to enumerate. The author, or narrator, for example, is supposed to be Harry Lorrequer as far as the end of the preface, which by the way, is one of the best portions of the book. O’Malley then tells his own story. But the publishing office of the “Dublin University Magazine” (in which the narrative originally appeared) having been burned down, there ensues a sad confusion of identity between O’Malley and Lorrequer, so that it is difficult, for the nonce, to say which is which. In the want of copy consequent upon the disaster, James, the novelist, comes in to the relief of Lorrequer, or perhaps of O’Malley, with one of the flattest and most irrelevant of love-tales. Meantime, in the story proper are repetitions without end. We have already said that the hero _saves the life of his mistress twice, and of her father twice_. But not content with this, he has _two_ mistresses, and _saves the life of both, at different periods, in precisely the same manner_—that is to say, by causing his horse, in each instance, to perform a Munchausen side-leap, at the moment when a spring forward would have impelled him upon his beloved. And then we have one unending, undeviating succession of junketings, in which “devilled kidneys” are never by any accident found wanting. The unction and pertinacity with which the author discusses what he chooses to denominate “devilled kidneys” are indeed edifying, to say no more. The truth is, that drinking wine, telling anecdotes, and devouring “devilled kidneys” may be considered as the sum total, as the _thesis_ of the book. Never in the whole course of his eventful life, does Mr. O’Malley get “two or three assembled together” without seducing them forthwith to a table, and placing before them a dozen of wine and a dish of “devilled kidneys.” This accomplished, the parties begin what seems to be the business of the author’s existence—the narration of unusually _broad tales_—like those of the Southdown mutton. And here, in fact, we have the _plan_ of that whole work of which the “United Service Gazette” has been pleased to vow it “would rather be the author than of all the ‘Pickwicks’ and ‘Nicklebys’ in the world”—a sentiment which we really blush to say has been echoed by many respectable members of our own press. The general plot or narrative is a mere thread upon which after-dinner anecdotes, some good, some bad, some utterly worthless, and _not one truly original_, are strung with about as much method, and about half as much dexterity, as we see ragged urchins employ in stringing the kernels of nuts.