"Most people know Barney Bradey, and the more you know of him the better you like him. Perhaps very few of your comic poets have achieved such legitimate success as Barney, whether in 'St. Patrick's Ruction' or, the 'Queer Papers,' or even in the fugitive pieces which come to us from time to time. The whole story of Napoleon's war is told in verse, with a genuine Irish humour, abounding in good points and suggestive images. The fun is quite of an original kind, and is really _sui generis_. The author has great command of language, expressive yet simple, and manages meter with uncommon skill. The strange inversions, provoking hyberbole, and quaint terms characteristic of Irish humour, are here lavishly displayed; and the man who would not laugh with Barney, while yet appreciating his satirical truth, must be unhappy indeed. The range of thought, though extensive, is very germane, and the humourist discovers a tinge of that Byronic happiness in soaring high and still keeping the game in sight. We regret that we cannot quote a stanza or two from 'The Christening Cake' to prove to our readers that our praise is as well deserved as it is genuine."--_Freeman's Journal._ "This is a humourous extravaganza, by the author of 'St. Patrick's Ruction' and other comic rhymes, and is characterized by the same cleverness and quaint drollery. The 'baptism of fire,' the proclamations, letters, telegrams, projects, and incidents of the war, are represented in fantastic forms of illustration. The effect is as ridiculous as the author intends it to be."--_Daily Express._ "Welcome Barney!--In many a quaint, merry, and most grotesque "fytte," our rollicking Irish Rabelais runs over the most marked opening incidents of the Franco-Prussian war. All the outlandishness of diction; the funniness of Hibernian phonetic spelling; the strange, wild, yet always true, similes and comparisons; the madcap, boisterous, merry-making that characterized 'St. Patrick's Ruction,' and the 'Queer Papers,' are repeated, equalled, aye, surpassed in the CHRISTENING CAKE. Barney's history of the war ends at Saarbruck. We long to hear him on Weissembourg, Sedan, Strasbourg, Metz, and Paris. We lately noticed 'St. Patrick's Ruction,' a work as full of real Irish witticisms as any we ever perused, and one that has won its author unstinted praise. The orthography of the present brochure is as comically outrageous, the similes and comparisons as far-fetched, and yet as true to nature--the whole dainty tome as full of genuine, rollicking, open-hearted Irish fun and humour as 'The Installation' or 'Sods from Puncherstown.' It is pathetic, comical--true to nature, true to art."--_Tyrone Constitution._