In the year 1870, during the first Viceroyalty of Earl Spencer in Ireland, Lever paid a visit to Dublin,[43] where he made friends with my nephew Courtenay Boyle, and was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Castle and Viceregal Lodge. From Ireland he came to London, and I had the pleasure of entertaining him at my little house in South Audley Street, where Lady Spencer gladly agreed to meet him. On the table lay a volume of Bret Harte’s parodies[44] of popular novelists, and I, volunteering to read a passage aloud, asked if he could recognise the authorship. It was the narrative of a cavalry officer who, in the heat of an engagement, took a flying, but unwilling, leap over a horseman in a dark cloak, cocked hat and white feathers. As far as I can remember the words-“My horse cleared the obstacle well, I lifted my eyes, and found myself for the first time in the presence of Field-Marshal The Duke of Wellington!” Footnote 43: I well remember this visit and the many chats we had about his novel, “Lord Kilgobbin,” then on the stocks. Footnote 44: The parody was “Terence Deuville”-“Putting spurs to my horse I rode at him boldly, and with one bound cleared him, horse and all. A shout of indignation arose from the assembled staff. I wheeled suddenly, with the intention of apologising, but my mare misunderstood me, and again dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the officer, this time, unfortunately, uncovering him by a vicious kick of her hoof. ‘Seize him!’ roared the entire army. I was seized. As the soldiers led me away, I asked the name of the gray-haired officer. ‘That?—why that’s the Duke of Wellington!’ I fainted.” A somewhat similar episode is recorded in another parody, the fighting “Onet y Oneth,” by W. M. Thackeray, written many years before Bret Harte (who, I am sure, was no plagiarist) wrote “Terence Deuville.” Never shall I forget Lever’s burst of laughter, which seemed to flood the whole room with sunshine. “Upon me soul, I believe it’s meself; it’s uncommonly like me.” That was the last time we ever met. The wife to whom he was deeply attached died shortly afterwards, and Charles Lever did not long survive her.