g hands all the way up: he
stumbled at its base.

Maginn's reckless habits soon told upon his character, and almost as
soon on his constitution. They may be illustrated by an anecdote related
of him in Barham's Life of Hook. A friend, when dining with him, and
praising his wine, asked where he got it. "At the tavern, close by,"
said the Doctor. "A very good cellar," said the guest; "but do you not
pay rather an extravagant price for it?" "I don't know, I don't know,"
returned the Doctor; "I believe they do put down something in a book."
And I have heard of Maginn a story similar to that told of Sheridan,
that, once when he accepted a bill, he exclaimed to the astonished
creditor, "Well, thank Heaven, _that_ debt is off my mind!"

It is notorious that Maginn wrote at the same time for the "Age,"
outrageously Tory, and for the "True Sun," a violently Radical paper.
For many years he was editor of the "Standard." It was, however, less
owing to his thorough want of principle than to his habits of
intoxication that his position was low, when it ought to have been
high,--that he was indigent, when he might have been rich,--that he lost
self-respect, and the respect of all with whom he came in contact,
except the few "kindred spirits" who relished the flow of wit, and
little regarded the impure source whence it issued. The evil seemed
incurable; it was indulged not only at noon and night, but in the
morning. He was one of the eight editors engaged by Mr. Murray to edit
the "Representative" during the eight months of its existence. I was a
reporter on that paper of great promise and large hopes. One evening
Maginn himself undertook to write a notice of a fancy-ball at the
Opera-House in aid of the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It was a
grand affair, patronized by the royal family and a vast proportion of
the aristocracy of England. Maginn went, of course inebriated, and
returned worse. He contemplated the affair as if it had taken place
among the thieves and demireps of Whitechapel, and so described it in
the paper of the next morning. Well I remember the wrath and indignation
of John Murray, and the universal disgust the article excited.

I may relate another anecdote to illustrate this sad characteristic. It
was told to me by one of the Doctor's old pupils and most intimate and
steady friends, Mr. Quinten Kennedy of Cork. A gentleman was anxious to
secure Maginn's services for a contemplated literary undertaking of
m