Full text of "The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan"

See other formats

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http: //books .google .com/I

5 3 V <^ ^ . 4^ ^ . ^ &

HARVARD

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

^Z ^C rA^ 4^4^ , ^S

HARVARD

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

.' ' ■ >

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

The Life and Writings

James Clarence MangaoA

D. J. GJ>onoghuey/

AUTIiOR or

«'T1m Life orn^liam OriAtOQ '*
etCi| etc*

IV/TJI ILLUSTRATIONS

£Mnbnrdb : Patrick geddes & colleagues

Vttbltn: M. H. GILL & SON
T. G. O'DONOGHUE

CMcago^ VS^B. ; P. v. fitzpatrick
peabodB (Aaae^x tlLS.a.: mugent bros.

1897 '

■ -«.<w< >• • -f f«» • 1

« .

^zy./

. f.i'

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

NOV 24 1944

\,t§*

:iL Ji/Y-,/l^^-^> (>i-^

■^^ ^^ — — —"I

Konci.— nc Luge Pkpv Editioo of this work b itaiedy
10 Fifty Signed tnd Mttmberad copie% the price of
of vhkh b FUteen Shilliiigi Met The price of the
OettMoy copiei b Seieo ShflUqgp end Sixpence eechi

[^IZf fijpte ere fmire«(]

/HARVARD
UNIVERSITY

May 14 i^bt J

[

UUBiXV

.; •)

PREFACE. \

In sending forth this volume, perhaps a word or two of [
explanation, by vray of preface, of some of its features^
will not be superfluous. And first, as to the portraits
used. Strictly speaking, there is no authentic likeness
of Mangan. Various sketches are in existence, but they
are all deductions, distant enough for the most part, of
Burton's fine drawing of the poet as he lay in death.
The one which has been used as frontispiece to this
volume is, perhaps, remote from the truth, but it is ex-
tremely difficult to make a portrait of Mangan, as he
was in life, from Burton's idealistic sketch of the dead
face. The cast of Mangan's features, taken for Dr.
Stokes, seems to have disappeared altogether.

A word or two may be also given to the letters quoteda
in this work. They are few, but they are exceedinglyi^
representative. It would not be easy to give a wide^
selection from Mangan's letters without producing con-
siderable monotony. They are nearly all, as far as ■
have been able to discover, to the same effect, and this
greatest of writers could not always interest upon
eternal theme of pecuniary want Moreover, as point
out in due order, Mangan wrote comparatively fie
letters. Many biographies are mere packets of lettem^

Vi PREFACE.

stfung together anyhow, a lai^ proportion of the epis-
tles being of the baldest ot least interesting kind An
attempt has been made in the present volume to weave
soch extracts as have been made from letters and auto-
biographical pieces into the narrative, so that the whole
work might have a smoothness and consecutiveness
hard to obtain where letters are given in disconnected
batches^ with all their superscriptions, formalities, and
lepetitionsL In the case of Mangan, the absence or non«
existence of many letters is less to be regretted, in view
cf the most interesting personal touches so constantly
introduced into his published, but generally unknown,
articles and other writings— charming confidences, which
have been fully availed of here. If it should be thought
that too free a use has been made of that part of
Mangan's work which is personally illustrative, it may
be urged that in reality, when the enormous fertility of
MaDgan is concerned, only an infinitesimal portion has
been laid under contribution. With regard to the very
few quotations from Mangan's well-known verse, I am
content to shelter myself behind Macaulay, who has
said: *When I praise an author, I love to give a sample
or two of his wares." In general, however, only the
peces which throw some light upon the poet's character
or life have been reproduced.

I cannot conclude without a feeling of regret that the
tfibrt was not made, a generation or so ago, to collect
information from the then surviving friends of Mangan
ai to many obscure points in his life. Nearly all who
koked upon him are now dead, and the task of collect-

PREFACE. vii

ing material for this book has been rendered especially
laborious by necessarily extensive searches in old and
foi^otten periodicals for writings by Mangan — ^searches
only occasionally rewarded by success. Though the
labour of collecting material was really b^^n less than
a couple of years ago, the idea of writing a biography
of Mangan has been in my mind for four or five years
— since the time, in fact, when the necessity of con-
sulting the sources of information for an account of the
poet's life, which I had been requested to write for the
DicHanary of National Bu^raphy^ convinced me that no
Irishman of genius had been so strangely n^lected by
the biographer, and that no subject was better worth
the attention of an Irish writer. Such as it is, my
effort is here commended to the reader.

D. ;• O'DONOGHUE.

P.S. — I am indebted to the Frtifnaris Journal Cd,
Limited, for permission to use the portrait given as
frontispiece, and to Mr. Dorey for the receipt in Mangan's
handwriting here reproduced.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE

••• ••• ••• ••• •••

CONTENTS .., ix-nii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS rfr

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER L

JAMBS MAKGAN TRB KLDER — BIRTH OP THK POBT — HIS PATHBR'S
TSMPSRAMENT — MANGAN'S EARLY RBOOLLBCTIONS — THX
XLDBR MANGAN'S PAILURS— SCHOOLDAYS OP THS' POBT—
A CHILDISH BXPBRIENCB— THE SCRIVBHBR'S OPPICB — HIS

ASSOdATKS ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• X^Z 1

CHAPTER II.

THB MANGANS IN CHANCERY LANE — ^THE POET'S PANaES—
^ GENIUS," A PRAOMENT — ^THE KBNRICKS — ^THB TWO ARCH-
BISHOPS — JAMES TIGHE — HIS ADDRESS TO MANGAN — THB
ALMANACKS — ^MANOAN'S LOVB OP MYSTERY — HIS STRANOB
STORY OP THB LBPBR— THE ATTORNEYS' 0PPICE8 ••• ZS-St

CHAPTER IIL

STUDIES IN GERMAN LTTBRATURB — LOVE OP BOOKS — PERSONAL
APPEARANCE— ^A GLIMPSE OP MATURIN — MANGAN'S DESCRIP-
TION OP HIS UPB AT THE ATTORNEY'S— REUGIOU8 PEELINGS
— THE COMET CLUB— ITS MEMBERS— ** THB PARSON'S HORN-
BOOK," &C— JOHN SHBEHAN ••• ••• ••• SS-Jl

CONTENTa

CHAFTBR IV.

HAVOAII^ FIRST OOMTIUBUTIOir TO THS ^OOMST"— **TRB

mmiG nTHUsiAST "— MAKOAir ADom THS pxii-iiAn or

^'CLARXKCB*— THB ^DUBUll PKNlffT JOURM AL **— POSMf BY
MAllGAir— mu nriUB AXD JOHW O^DQirOVA]l--lCAllOAII^
rSRSOHAL SKSTCB18 OF THSM— THS HATSt FAMILT—
"TSSSB Oil TBS OBATH OF A BSLOTtD FRISNO" ••• 3*-4«

CHAPTER V. .

jm AUvswAui is nr ''ths shadss **<— htflusmcs of dsquiiicxf
— Ds. MAOiim't comrnriAL habits — mahoam's fbrsohal

qHlALITnSS— SHBSKAM^ BAD TASTS— '*A FAST KSSFSS"—
MAWSAH OH FOBTS-*** BBOKBH HBAKTBD LAYS"— **UFB IS
THS DBSBRT AMD THS SOUTUDS **— MAKOAN'S LAST FOBM IN
THS ** comet" — ^HIS OPINION OP THE KDITORS ... 43-55

CHAPTER VL

Omm-EATING — DE QUINCEY — ^JAMBS PRICE'S TESTIMONY — EDGAR
ALLAN POE — MANGAN'S LOYE AFFAIR — MITCHBL'S ACCOUNT

'^MY TRANSFORMATION" — MANGAN'S DISAPPOINTMINT —

HIS OWN STORY— LINES *' TO LAURA " ••• ••• 56-^0

CHAPTER VII.

C O Si lRABUAIO NS TO THE **DUBUN SATIRIST" — POPULARITY OF
CERMAN POETRY— IRISH TRANSLATORS — MANGAN ON GOETHB|
SCHILLER, AND OTHER GERMAN POSTS— *' THE DYING '
FATHER"~TUB ^'DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE"— MANGAN
GIVES UP SCRIVENERY WORK — SONNETS BY HIM — HIS
PERSONAL APPEARANCE— ENTERS THE ORDNANCE SURVEY

OFFICS ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 7'~^3

CHAPTER VIIL

SfAMOAM'S WIT— MASTERY OVER METRE AND RHYME— INVENTED
FORS— ORIENTAL EXCURSIONS— MARSHES LIBRARY— ORD-

CONTENTS.

MAMCt 8URVKY WORK— W. F. WAKEMAN ON MAKGAN —

EOCBNTRIQTISS OF TUB POST— *' TAR-WATBR **— MANOAN'S
RBCIPS ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• S4r9^

CHAPTER IX,

^UTBRJB ORIENTALES" — TURKISH DBUGHTS — " THE TIME OP THE
roses" — "THE HUNDRED -LEAFED ROSE" — ICANGAM ON
LUCIDIl-y — ^"THE thirty PLASKS" — "THE MAN IN THE
cloak'' — MANGAN DESCRIBED BY JAMBS PRICE— HIS PHRENO-
LOGICAL STUDIES — ^EXAMINATION OP HIS ^ BUMPS ** ... 94-XO5

CHAPTER X.

THE "WEEKLY REGISTER* — MANGAN's .PESSIMISM ONLY PAR-
TIAL — HIS FEEBLENESS OF WILL — ^DESCRIPTIONS OF HIM
BY MITCHEL AND O'DALY — HIS FASCINATING TALK —
HIS T'^YERN HAimTS — ^HIS YEARNINGS— HIS PRACTICAL
SIDE — HIS PROTEAN SHAPES — "THE TIME OF THE BAR-
MECIDES" — DR. NEDLEY — MANGAN'S DISUKE TO -NEW
ACQUAINTANCES — HIS WIT — DR. MAGINN ... ••• XO6-XX5

CHAPTER XI.

MANGAN ON GHOSTS— HIS GHOSTLY VISITANTS — " TWENTY GOLDEN
YEARS ago" — "IRISH PENNY JOURNAL" — "THE WOMAN
OF THREE cows"— ** LAMENT FOR THE PRINCES OF TYRONE
' AND TYROONNELL " — " KATHLEEN NY HOULAHAN " —
"o'HUSSEY*S ode to the MAGUIRE" — "BELFAST VINDI-
CATOR" — MANGAN's PHYSICAL DETERIORATION — W. F.
WAKEMAN'S DBSCRIPnON — REUGIOUS FEELINGS ••• ZZ6-X98

CHAPTER XIL

THE FOUNDING OF THE " NATION " — ^MANGAN A CONTRIBUTOR—
" THE * NATION^S ' FIRST NUMBER " — HIS POUTICAL VIEWS—
**GONE IN THE WIND"— THE THREE HALF-CROWNS— MARTIN
MACDERMOTT — "WHERE'S MY MONEY?" — ** PATHETIC HYPA*
THEnCS" — "THE COMING EVENT"— MORE TURKISH POETRY—
TRIMITy COLLEGE LIBRARY— " ANTHOLOGU OBRMANICA " 129-143

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIIL

WAiMiAw IK TRINITT COLLBOB LIBRARY— MITCHBL'S nRST SIGHT
or HIM— OR. JOHN KBLLS IlfGRAlC— MANOAM'S BXTBNSIVB
RXADIKG— Hit VBRSATIUTY— FATHBR MBBHAN AND MANGAM —
A KIGHT WITH MANOAK— THB GROWING BVU/— MANGAN'S
IRRBGULARXTIBS— LSriBRS TO M^GLASHAN ••• ... 143-^56

CHAPTER XIV.

** NATION ** AGAIN — ** NIGHTIf AR18 " AND *'MARCS' NIST8 " —
THB FAMINB YBAR — **THR PBAL OP ANOTHER TRUMPET" —
"THB warning VOICB"— "THB RYB MILL" — "THE SAW
MILL** — MANGAN^ DBSIRB FOR DEATH — HIS GROWING
SELF-ABANDONMENT — NERVOUS AFFECTIONS — LETTERS TO
M'GLASHAN — MANGAN AND JOHN O'DALY — ANGLESEA STREET
BOOKSELLERS-*" THB ANNALS OF THB FOUR MASTERS" —
'* POETS AND POETRY OF MUNSTER "— JOHN KEEOAN'S
DESCRIPTION OF O'DALY ... ... ••• ... I57-170

CHAPTER XV.

XAHGAN AND THE IRISH LANGUAGE — " SIBERIA '' — " TO THE
INGLEEZE KUAFIR" — "THE DREAM OF JOHN MCDONNELL "—
"MY THREE TORMENTORS "—JOHN KEEGAN AND EDWARD
WALSH—CONTEMPORARY OPINION OF MANGAN — "DARK ROSA-

"— " VISION OF CONNAUGHT" — LETTERS TO DUFFY I7I-18J

CHAPTER XVI.

MANGAN'S ADVICE TO HIS COUNTRYMEN — HIS PATRIOTIC FEELING
*-" A CRY FOR IRELAND " — "THE IRISH CATHOLIC MAGAZINE"
— '^ ANTHOLOGIA HIBERNICA " — MANGAN'S DESPAIR — IN
SOOBTY— CARLETON AND THB POET— MANGAN'S CHANGES OF
SBSIDBNCB — THB MACDERMOTTS — DR. ANSTER —• FATHER

r— BZCU8B8 TO M'GLASHAN— THB FAMINB ... 184-I9S

CONTENTS.

xiil

■•I

CHAPTER XVII.

TRIBUTE TO MANGAN'S RHYMING POWERS — THE NATIONAL
FEBUNG OF MANGAN — ^THE *' UNITED IRISHMAN *'— LETTER
TO MITCHSL — ^THE*'' IRISH TRIBUNE" — ^JOHN SAVAGES-
JOSEPH BRENAN ON MANGAN — ^MANGAN IN OAYUGUT —
MANGAN'S appeals to ANSTER, DUFFY, AND JAMES KAUGHTON
— HIS PROMISES — ST. VINCENT*S HOSPITAL— R. D. WILUAMS
—THE *' IRISHMAN ** — O'DONOVAN ON MANGAN — ^POEMS IN
THE "irishman" — ^JOSEPH BRENAN TO MANGAN — MANGAN*!
REPLY— BRENAN'S DESCRIPTION OF CLARENCE ••• I9^aiS

CHAPTER XVIII.

VOICE OF encouragement" — MANGAN'S LAST POEMS AND
SKETCHES — ^LAST LETTER TO ANSTER — ''THE TRIBES OF
IRELAND" — MANGAN ATTACKED BY CHOLERA — THE MEATH
HOSPITAL — HERCULES ELU8, JAMES PRICE, AND FATHER
MEEHAN ON MANGAN'S LAST DAYS — ERRONEOUS ACCOUNTS —
DR. STOKES — ^DEATH — AFTER DEATH — BURTON'S PORTRAIT —
BURIAI^— THE ''irishman" — ^THE "NATION'S" COMMENTS—
POEMS BY JAMES TIGHE, R. D. WILLIAMS, AND JOSEPH BRENAN
— ^MANGAN'S character — HIS OWN VINDICATION ... aiJ-tfSJ

CHAPTER XDC.

1849— MANGAN ON ECCENTRICITY — ^HIS ISOLATION— NEGLECT BY
HIS COUNTRYMEN— LORD CARNARVON AND SIR GEORGE
TRSVSLYAN— THE "SPECTATOR" ON MANGAN— HIS POSI-
TION IN IRISH POETRY — MANGAN AND MOORE— HIS CULTURE
— POE AND MANGAN— GILBERTIAN FLAVOUR OF MANGAN'S
UGHTER VERSE— CONCLUSION ••• ... ••• ll^^^i

APPENDIX

• ••

•••

• *•

•••

• ••

237-450

UST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

POBTXAIT AMD AUTOGRAPH

BUtTHFLACB OF ICAHGAM

irOu 6 YORK STRUT ••• •••

OKDVAirci SURVBY OWWICE

mmam nr icamoah's KANxywRinNG

•••

Froniispieee.
Mf X
x6

•••

n
n

9X
9o6

KfltnUXT or MAMOAN ATTIR DEATH

•••

221

■7'

- b

■5

1-^

i: INTRODUCTION.

■ic^

••.

':••

'i'

i.h

■■-•■^

** PitT me not Oh, no I
The heart laid waste by fljrief or aoorn,
Which inly knoweth
Its own deep woe.
Is the onlv Desert. Tkirt no spring is bom

Amia the sands — In tkai no shady palm-tree groweth I"

— -Manoam.

To write a life of Mangan is one of the most difficult tasks
a biographer could possibly undertake. Of no man of
equal gifts and fame belonging to this nineteenth century
is there so little recorded, and there is hardly another
poet known in literature about whom so much mystery
has been made. Apart from its difficulties, or perhaps
because of them, the writing of such a biography has a
strong fascination for one who is fond of research and
is at the same time, impressed with the greatness of the
subject But there b a painful side to the undertaking,
for surely there can never have been in the lives of the
poets a more mournful life-history than that of Mangan.
^ So melancholy are many of its details that it is hardly

surprising if some, knowing them well, have shrunk from
what, if the poet had been stronger-willed, might have
been a very pleasant duty. His genius is so remarkable^
however, that it is imperative to tell the story of his life
as completely as may be, and with the fullest sympathy.
I "" That desolate spirit,'' says Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy

; in one of his pleasant ^ Hours with Great Irishmen,"

*'had no companions. He walked the dark way of his life alone.
His comrades were strange shadows, the bodylest creations where-

INTRODUCTION.

in his ecstasy was most cunning. Phantoms trooped to him from
the twilight hmd, lured, as Ulysses lured the ghosts of Hades.
• • We seem to see him hurrying on his life, noost melancholy
journey, as they saw him gliding through the Dublin streets like
the embodiment of the weird £sincies of Hoffman, a new student
Ansdmus, haunted by the eyes of a visionary Veronica, or buried
among books, as Mitchel first found him, his brain, like a pure
flame refining all he read and transmuting it to something rich and
strange. • • . Of his real life, the existence burning itself
fiercely oat behind that ghastly mask, few knew anything, none
knew much. • • • Poe's career was dark enough, but it was
not an unhappy. He had loved and been loved; there were
moments in his wasted existence, even long intervals, of calm and
peace. But Mangan's life is one of unmitigated gloom. • . •
Life was to Mangan one long interval ' No one wish of his
heart,' says Mitchel, ' was ever fulfilled ; no aspiration satisfied.'
... If he could have faced the denials of destiny with an
austere renunciation, if he could have opposed a monastic fortitude
to the buffets of the world, his might have been a serener if not a
happier story. But a passionate longing after the ideal drove him
to those deadly essences which fed for a time the hot flame of his
genius at the price of his health, his reason, and his life. Genius
and misery have been bed-fellows and board-brothers often enough,
but they have seldom indeed been yoked together under condi-
tions as tragic as those which make Mangan's story a record
of despair."

Without sympathy and kindly feeling towards the
aathor of so many imperishable poems, this record would
be indeed a cruelty. In his admirable essay on the poet,
asks: —

** What would Mangan think and feel now, if he could know
that a man was going to write his life ? Would he not rise up from
his low grave in Glasnevin to forbid ? "

He proceeds with a declaration with which the present
writer may associate himself: —

" Be still, poor ghost Gently and reverently, and with shoes
teoa mj tec, I will tread that sacred gmund.**

INTRODUCTION. xvii

He adds, truly enough, that

" for his whole biography documents are wanting ; the man
having never for one moment imagined that his poor life could
interest any surviving human being, and having never, accord-
ingly, collected his biographical assets, and appointed a Uteniy
executor to take care of his posthumous fame."

But Mitchel is mistaken when he goes on to assert
that Mangan never

"acquired the habit, common enough among literary men, of
dwelling upon his early trials, struggles and triumphs ; "

as it will be seen that a not inconsiderable portion of
this biography is mainly derived from his own allu-
sions, veiled and otherwise, to the leading incidents of
a career upon some incidents in which he frequently
dilated.

The purpose of the present work is not merely to do

zviii INTRODUCTION.

should be concealed from public view; it is a sufficient
answer to say that it would be quite futile ; the only need
that can be recognised la that of a sympathetic record
At the same time, some discretion is essential in the male*
vDg of a biography. The position of those who contend
that the lives of erring poets should never be told can be
understood — ^it is logical enough from one point of view ;
but to give an untrue, a false picture of a poet, with all his
faults glossed over, or unrecorded, or transformed into
virtues, is a literary crime. Who thinks now of concealing
the manifest sins of a B}rron, a Bums, or a Shelley ? No
sensible person dreams of holding up Coleridge or Foe as
models^ of obliterating all allusions to their notorious self-
indulgence. Nor is there any sufficient reason shown for
screening from view the faults, the weaknesses of Mangan —
weaknesses which made his life wretched in the extreme.
One of the pressing needs of Irish literature is a fair and
impartial account of the almost forgotten or never recorded
lives of its most notable writers. As that of probably the
greatest poet Ireland has ever produced, the life of Mangan
is especially deserving of a faithful chronicle. His own
opinion as to the need of an account of his life is ascertain-
able, for in the curious autobiographical fragment written
by him for Father Meehan, he says : —

" At a very early period of my life I became impressed by the
conviction that it is the imperative duty of every man who has
deeply sinned and deeply suffered to place upon record some
memorial of his wretched experience for the benefit of his fellow-
creatures, and by way of a beacon to them to avoid, in their
voyage of existence, the rocks and shoals upon which his own
peace of sool has undeigone shipwreck.**

The present writer has too keen an admiration for
Mangan to do him an injustice. His object is to impress
iipon the ever-increasing numbers of the poet's admirers

INTRODUCTION. xix

the greatness of the genius of one of whom Mitchel uses
words which are not less applicable now than when they
were uttered : —

"I have not yet met," he says, "a cultivated Irishman or
woman of genuine Irish nature vho did not prize Clarence
Mangan above all the poets that their island of song ever

No doubt other Irish poets are more universally
knowii, but one of the strongest reasons for writing his
life is to show that Mangan's work is not half as familiar
to his countrymen as it should be, from causes which
may appear as this work proceeds. Were the full extent
of his genius as palpable as it will be one day, (when
all his finer work is disinterred from its present almost
inaccessible position in corners of dead and forgotten
periodicals,) he would unquestionably occupy by the
general acclamation of critics the proudest position in
: literature. It is not just to Mangan to judge him

INTRODUCTION.

vras the most dazzling light in the constellation of genius
which flashed over Ireland during the period between
1830 and 185a The better one's acquaintance with his
I>oems the more certain is the belief in the permanence
of his fame. Even in England his reputation is growing
steadily. In a characteristic sentence Mitchel gives us
what is, perhaps, the real reason that Mangan is not
already accounted one of the chief glories of the Victorian
age, as English journalists and critics love to call the
decades since 1837. As it is the fashion in English
critical circles to think that what is written purely for
Irish readers is necessarily provincial and local, it is not
sarprising to find Mangan, until recently, absolutely
missing from the poetic returns of Mr. W. M. Rossetti
and the others who have compiled lists of the poets of
the century. But Mitchel's sentence remains unquoted : —

** Mangan was not only an Irishman — ^not only an Irish Papbt,
-^lot only an Irish Papist rebel, but throughout his whole littrary
^e he never deigned to attorn to English criticism, never pub-
lished a line in any English periodical, or through any English
>)ookseller, and never seemed to be aware that there was an
English public to please."

As already hinted, during the fifty years which have
passed since Mangan was taken to his grave in Glasnevin,
little has been done for his memory by his countrymen.
A wretched headstone marks his grave, but there is no
tablet in the house in which he was bom — no public
memorial of any kind in the Dublin he never left — and
but for the exertions of Father Meehan and Mr. John
M<^ nothing but a few newspaper articles would have
been devoted to Mangan's genius. Mitchel's edition of
some of the poems — ^inadequate as it is — ^bas nevertheless
been of splendid service and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy has

INTRODUCTION. xxl

•done something by the few scattered references in Young
Ireland zxid Four Years of Irish History to make known in
England the poet whose name, more than any other,
^ill keep the memory of the Nation green in Irish literary
history. But Father Meehan is most to be thanked for his
endeavours to perpetuate the fame of his companion and
friend. Without his admirable introductions to the volume
of Munster Poets^ to the German Anthology ^ <uid to the use*
ful little collection of Mangan's minor work called Essays
in Prose and Verse, the Irish people would know little, about
the poet's literary activities 1 even now, they know nothing
at all of the inner history of his mind. Mr. John M'Call, in
his very creditable little brochure on Mangan's life, has told
us something not previously known of the early writings of
Mangan, and this is the proper place to acknowledge the
kindness with which he has assisted in the preparation oi
this biography. Most of the information relative to the
youthful career of Mangan has been obtained either from or
through him, and I am indebted to him for copies of some
of the curious and characteristic contributions to the Comet
and Satirist which have been made use of here. I have
also to acknowledge with thanks the help afforded me by
Sir Frederick Burton, whose drawing of Mangan's features
after death is so well known ; Mr. W. F. Wakeman, the
antiquarian and artist; Dr. Nedley, Dr. Sigerson, Mr.
M. W. Rooney, Mr. Martin MacDermott, Mr. J. Casimir
O'Meagher, Miss C. Anster, Mr. John O'Leaiy, Very Rev.
Canon O'Hanlon, Dr. John Kells Ingram, and, lastly, Lady
Perguson and the late Miss Jane Carleton, for reminis-
cences or other matter concerning the poet I am obliged
to my friends MessrsL David Comyn, P. J. M'CaU, William
Boyle and Frank MacDonagh for useful references, the
loan of printed matter about Mangan and other help.
The lack of personal letters by Mangan will be remarked^

INTRODUCTION.

and may be explained in two ways. Few are extant,

as Mangan was not given to letter-writing— except when

desperately in need of a loan — and as all his friends

redded near him (his acquaintance being restricted to

DnblinX it rarely happened that he was obliged to write.

That he did not write from the pleasure of the tbing

seems pretty dear from the fact that some of those who

knew him well for years never had a letter from hinu

Those letters which are quoted will be found very interest-^

ing and very Manganesque* Of course all known published

lef eie n ce s to Mangan have been consulted and made use

o^ and a good many interesting and unpublished remini*

scenoes of him by contemporaries are woven into the

narrativeL Several unknown autobiographical fragments

by Mangan himself have also been incorporated, and a

good many very serviceable discoveries which have been

made by the present writer help to fill up the gaps left

by other writers. It will be found that Mangan's own

confessions (and implications) are not always reliable in

the strictest sense of the word ; but it must be said that

his wonted exaggeration is not evident in the powerful

poem entitled ^The Nameless One/' a painful autobio-

graphy, which may be quoted here with the statement

that the biography which follows is mainly a corrobora*

tive ranning commentary of an extensive kind on this

teriUe summary of a ruined life. It is doubtful ii^ether

'^ all literature despair and fatalism have ever spoken

hi sacb mournful, pitiable accents as in this poem, which

Genres as an impressive prologue to the tragedy to be

i>Qlblded in these pages : —

''Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river,
Thst sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver

My soul of thee.

INTRODUCTION. XXu!

Tell thou the world, when my bones lie wlutening

Amid the last homes of youth and eld,
That there was once one whose veins ran lightning '

No eye beheld.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night hour,

How shone for him, through his grief and gloom.
No star of all Heaven sends to light our

Path to the tomb.

Roll on, my song, and to after ages

TeU how, disdaining all earth can giire^
He would have taught men, from wisdom's pages^

The way to live.

And tell howi trampled, derided, hated.

And worn by weakness, disease and wrong.
He fled for shelter to God, who mated

His soul with song —

•

With song which always, sublime or vapid,

Flowed like a rill in the morning beam ;
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid —

A mountain stream.

Tell how this Nameless, condemned for years long

To herd with demons from hell beneath.
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long

For even death.

Go on and tell how, with genius wasted.

Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,
With spirit shipwrecked and young hopes blasted.

He still, still strove.

Till spent with toil, dreeing death for others.

And some whose hands should have wrought for him
<If children live not for sires and mothers),

His inind grew dim.

INTRODUCTION.

And he M fiur through that pit abjimal,

The gulf and gimve of Maginn and Biini%
And pawned hit aonl for the deril'i dismal

Stock of letorns—

But yet ledeemed it in days of daricneii,

And ihi^ei and ngns of the final wiathi
When death, in hideooi and ghastly staikness^

Stood on his path.

And teU how now, amid wreck and sorrow.

And want and sidmess, and houseless nights.
He bides in calmness the silent monow

That no ray lights

And lives he still, then ? Yes^ old and hoary

At thirty-nine^ fiom despdr and woe^
He Uves enduring what future story

Will never know.

•
Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,

Deep in your bosoms. There let him dwell I
He^ too^ had pity for all souls in trouble,

HeieandinheUl''

•IKTUrLACB or MAMOAH

• . . ••

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

CHAPTER I.

JAMES MANCfAN THE ELDER — BIRTH OF THE POET — HIS FATHER'S
TEMPERAMENT — MANGAN'S EARLY REGOLLECTIOHS — THE
ELDER MANGAN'S FAILURE— SCHOOLDAYS OF THE POET—
A CHILDISH EXPERIENCE— THE SCRIVENER'S OFFICE — ^HIS
ASSOCIATES.

" Man, companioned by care, has incessantlf trod
His dark way to the grave down tlus Valley of Tears."— Mangan.

One of the most interesting streets in Dublin, by reason
of its numerous historical associations, is that portion of
old Fishamble Street which is now, for some inexplicable
reason, called Lord Edward Street The City Fathers
were doubtless inspired by the best of motivesi but it
seems strange that they were not content with naming
the new thoroughfare to the Cathedral after the ill-fated
Fitzgerald, but must needs carry the name right round
a comer, in order to include the few houses towards tiie
south side, among which is that one made memorable by
Mangan's birth therein.* It was in the old Fishamble
Street Music Hall that Handel's ** Messiah "* was first per*
formed, and in after days the street was notable by its
theatre, to which, according to the legend, ** ladies and
gentlemen '' without shoes or stockings were not admitted.
Some distinguished families were residents in this street

* They have made aooM amendi by calling out of the a«w iqnam ia tht

Xibestiet after the poeL

2 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and No. 3, the
actual house in which MarlglaLnwas bom (one is tempted to
say ushered into the world) Wiai^' owned by the old family
of Ussher, who lived here ^for several generations, and
whose arms may be seen just under the window of the
second floor. The famous Archbishop Ussher was of this
family, which retained the house until about the opening
of the eighteenth century, when it passed into other hands.
Towards the end of the century it came into the possession
of a grocer named Farrell, who married a lady named
Maiy Smith * of Kiltale, near Dunsany, Co. Meath. When
Farrell died, his business was continued by his widow.
Having no children, she sent to Kiltale for her niece, Miss
Catherine Smith, to assist her in the management of the
houses and, on her death, left the property to her. At this
time^ which we may fix at about the time of the Rebellion,
one James Mangan, a teacher from Shanagolden, Co.
Limerick,t was pursuing his calling in Dublin, and became
acquainted with the proprietress of No. 3. The acquain-
lance culminated in their marriage in 1 801, and their first
child, bom on May ist, 1803, was the subject of this
biography. He was christened James Mangan, in the old
chapel of Rosemary Lane, on the following day.

The elder Mangan was a man of some education and
refinement, but events proved that he was not altogether
fitted to succeed in business. His name does not appear
in the Dublin Directory as tenant of the house until 1806,
and it drops out after 1 8 1 1, the business being carried on from
1812 to 1822 by his brother-in-law, Patrick Smith, whom
he had induced to come from London for that purpose.^
James Mangan and his wife had four children — ^James,
already mentioned ; John, bom in 1804 ; William, bom in
1808 ; and a sister who is said to have died in early youth
from the effects of a scald. Of his father, the poet gives
conflicting accounts. In one of the biographical sketches
of eminent Irishmen, which he wrote in his last days,

• Vide Mr. John M'Call't sketch of Mannn't life.

tTbe Dame Mangan (pronoiinced Mang'-an, not Man'-gan), was originalljr
0*MoDgan, and the tribe belonged to Clare.

$TEe ftoTf told bf tererd writers, that Francis Higgins, the notorious
«*Shaiii Sqatte," began his career »;tf a potboy with one Smith, the paternal
giaiidlather of the poet, in this street, is a rtry improbable one. There was
• gioeer named Soiith at No. 6^ bat at a date which would not at aU fit Uie
Hoy nlladed to.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 3

Mangan introduces a casual reference to him. Speaking
•of Limefick people, whom he praises highly, he remarks : —

" I say not this, because my own excellent, though unfortunate
father came from Shanagolden, but because of my personal and
intimate acquaintance with multitudes of his friends and townsmen*"

Yet, in other places he seems to refer to him with some
bitterness, and in his last years, as in his earlier years,
attributed his own misfortunes to his father's neglect* In
one of his autobiographical frs^ments, he says : —

'* I share, with an illustrious townsman of mv own,* the honour or
the disreputability, as it may be considered, of having been bom the
son of a grocer. My father, however, unlike his, never exhibited the
qualities of guardian towards his children. His temper was not merely
quick and irascible, but it also embodied much of that calm, concen-
trated spirit of Milesian fierceness, a picture of which I have endeavoured
to paint in my Italian story of ' Gasparo Bandollo.'t His nature was
truly noble ; to quote a phrase of my friend O'Donovan (in the
Annals of the Four Masters)^ * he never knew what it was to refuse
the countenance of living man;* but in neglecting his own interests *and
not the most selfish misanthrope could accuse him of attending closely
to those— he unfortunately forgot the injuries that he inflicted upon the
interests of others. He was of an ardent and forwaid-boundmg dis«
position, and though deeplv religious by nature.'he hated the restraints
of social life, and seemed to think that all feelings with regard to
family connections and the obligations imposed by them were totally
beneath his notice. Me, my two brothers, and my sister, he treated
habitually as a huntsman would treat refractory hounds. It was his
boast, uttered in pure glee of heart, * That we would run into a mouse*
hole ' to shun him. While my mother lived he made her miserable ;
he led my only sister such a life that she was obliged to leave our
house ; he kept up a succession of continued hostilities wiUi my
brothers ; and, if he spared me more than others, it was, perhaps,
because I displayed a greater contempt of life and everythmg con-

* Thomas Moore.

tThe referenoe is to a powerful dramatic poem by Mangan, which tdls of
•an outlaw, who, leeking refuge in a peasant's hut, is betrayed by Uie peasant's
ton. The ton meets with no mercy from his father, Gasparo^ who slays him.
HereisafitagmcDtofthepoem: —

** The eye is dark, the cheek is hollow,
To-ni^ht of Gasparo Bandollo,
And his high brow shows worn and
Slijght signs all of the inward strife
Of the soul's lightning, swift to strike
And sure to slay, but flashing never.
For Man and Eaurth and Heaven alike
Seem for him voicefol of a tale
That robs him of all rest for ever,
And leaves his own ri^ hand to sever
The kst link binding him to liiiB.'*

4 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

Bected with it than he thought was shown by the rest of the iiamily. • • «
May God assoU his great and eternal soul, and grant him eternal peace
asd forgiveness. But I have an inward feeling, that to him I owe all
my misfortunes.'*

In another sketch of his own early career, Mangan tells
us that his father '* had a princely soul but no prudence/^
and he elaborates this conclusion in the account he wrote
for Father Meehan, where he declares that his father's

** grand worldly fault was improvidenci. To everyone who applied
to him for money he uniformly gave double or treble the sum requested
of him. He parted with his money, he gave away the best part of his
worldly propeny* and in the end he even suffered his own judgment
and duovtion to become the spoil of strangers. In plainer words, he
permitted cold-blooded and ciafty men to persuade him that he was
wasting his ener]pes by following the grocery business, and that by
le-oommendn^ hfe as a vintner he would soon be able not only to
retrieve all his losses but realise an ample fortune. And thus it
happened, reader, that I, James Clarence Mangan, came into the
wond surrounded, if I may so express myself, bv an atmosphere of
curses and intemperance, of cruelty, infidelity, and blasphemy, and of
both secret and open hatred towards the moral government ot God."

He tells practically the same tale in an impersonal way
in a notice of himself (which, with characteristic quaintness,
he intended for a series of articles on '* Disting^uished
Irishmen," signing it with the initials of Edward Walsh).
It was not published, however, during his lifetime —

"He was bom amidst scenes of blasphemy and riot, .... his
father had embarked in an unholy business— one too common and
patent in every city — and he was robbed by those around him.''

Witliout accepting as true everything that Mangan
says of his father— concerning whom he was admittedly
subject to hallucinations at^ the time he wrote the above —
there is evidence that the elder Mangan was one of those
not uncommon men who can be extremely pleasant and
even generous to all outside their own household. With a
rigorous conception of the awe and respect due to himself
as head of the family, he seems to have combined con-
siderable trustfulness in others, and a dependence upon the
words and goodwill of mere acquaintances which was almost
childlike. Mainly, it appears, from a disinclination to trust
his own mind, and a profound belief in the disinterested-
ness of others, he embarked upon several speculations
which turned out to be so many disasters. In fact, if his
SCO is to be completely believed, everything went wrong

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 5

with him once he was persuaded to give up the business
in which, apparently nuUgn luh he was prospering.

<< From the fatal hour,'* says the poet« ** which saw my father enter
upon his new business* Uie hand of retributive Providence was visibly
manifest^ in the change that ensued in his affairs. Year after year
his property melted away. Debts accumulated on him, and his
creditors, knowing the sort of man they had to deal with, always proved
merciless. Step by step he sank, until, as he himself expressed it,
only ' the desert of perdition * lay before him. Disasters of all kinds
thickened around him; disappointment and calamity were sown broad-
cast in his path. No man whom he trusted proved faithful. * The
stars in their courses fought against Sisera.' And his family ? They
were neglected— forgotten — ^left to themselves."

There is some truth in Mangan's account of his unlucky
parent, but it is not a wholly accurate impression. Had
the elder Mangan been less extravagant and ostentatious
in his manner of living, even his business reverses would
not have ruined him utterly. But the Irish love of dis-
play completed what bad investments had begun. At one
time James Mangan had actually retired from business
with a fair competence, and his brother-in-law, Patrick
Smith, managed the Fishamble Street house, in Mangan's
interest, at least for some time ; but the latter's inordinate
love of open hospitality speedily made heavy inroads into
his capital, and he resorted to more and more risky enter-
prises. He was accustomed, in the days of his prosperitjy
to give expensive parties, and when, as occasionally hap-
pened, his own house was too small for the invited guests,
he would engage a hotel for the puipose of accommodat-
ing them. Pic-nics in the counties ot Dublin and Wicklow
were a frequent form of entertainment indulged in by the
too lavish host.

" My father's circumstancest" says Mangan, *' at length grew des-
perate ; within iht lap«e of a very limited period he had failed in
•eight successive esUblishmenu in different parte of Dublin, t until
finally nothing remained for him to do but sit down and fold his arms
in despair. Ruin and beggary stared him in the face; his spirit was
broken.'*

• That of a Vintner.

tin the Dublin Directories of the time we find several Mangans, who may
not improbably have been his relativei. Thus, Darby Mangan, grocer,
occupied No. ix East Arran Street firom 1807 to 181a when Edward Mangan
replaced him. He^ corn Actor as well as grocer, is in his turn replaced by
Jfo^MsMnin 1817, In 1839 Edward Mangan again entered into

.-. X . ,:_-S- ■•.-_- .■ "tr I n»Mi> —

6 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

It is believed that some unfortunate building specula*
tions gave the finishing blow to his hopes of retrievement^
and Michael Smith, another of his wife's brothers, who
was in a good way of business as a bacon-curer and pro-
vision merchant, was finally obliged to take charge of the
education of the eldest son.

Previous to this eventuality, the future poet had been
placed in a famous school in SauFs Court,* off Fishamble
dtreet (which was founded in 1760 by the distinguised
Jesuit, Father John Austin, who had educated O'KeefTet
the dramatist). Mangan was seven years old at the time.
His earliest instructor seems to have been Michael
GMirtney, t who was employed at the academy, and who
afterwards had a school of his own, first in Derby Square,
which Mangan attended, and finally in Aungier Street
From Courtney he learnt little more than the rudiments of
education. After a short period he was entrusted to the
personal tuition of Father Graham, a very learned priest
in the establishment, who had, Father Meehan says, *' just
returned from Salamanca and Palermo.'' Under this ad-
mirable scholar, who replaced Courtney (whose Aungier
Street school was opened in 1812), Mangan obtained the
groundwork of his subsequent very creditable knowledge
of the Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish languages.
Naturally studious, Mangan pored over his books with
delighted assiduity. He tells us that when at home he

''sought refuge in books and solitude, and days would pass during
which my fauier seemed neither to know nor care whether I was
living or dead. My brothers and sister fared better ; they indulged ia
habits of active exercisei and strengthened their constitutions morally
and physically to a degree that even enabled them to present a

* Demolished in the making of Lord Edward Street It received its
name from a wealthy Catholic distiller of the last century, who had been per-
•ecntcd for sheltering a person whose relatives endeavoured to force her to
conform to the Sute Church. Father Austin's first school was in Cook Street
With Saul's Court many eminent persons are connected. One of the in-
teresting poinU about it is that it was the locali of the Gaelic Society of 1800,
whose leaiding members were Patrick Lynch, author of several works relating
to the language; Edward O'Reilly, compiler of the Irish Dictionary;
"William Halliday, author of the Grammar and translator of Keating ; Rev.
Denis Taaffe» author of a " History of Ireland" ; Theophilus O'Flanagan, an
mcdve Gaelic scholar ; Rev. Paul O'Brien, author of an Irish Grammar ; and
ocbers of lets note.

t Courtney was a Newry man, and a contributor to the almanacs and diaries.
oChb time. John O'Daly says Mangan sUyed at the school in Derby Square
va/dk be was fifteen^ and tmpties that he was never at any other. Mangaa
tiiwf If oa)/ aa eot i o oM the §cbool in Derby Square.

J^I^^MLJ- . _« 11* « Ill • ........ -. . . ....... - ■■ ^.^j._^ _^^^^M»*^«

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 7

successful front of opposition to the tyranny exercised over them.
But I shut myself up in a close room. I isolated myself in such a
manner from my own nearest relations that with one voice they pro-
claimed me ' mad.* Perhaps I was : this much« at least» is certain,
that it was precisely at that period (from my tenth to my fourteenth
year) that the seeds of moral insanity were developed within me^
which afterwards grew up into a tree ot giant altitude."

He also says that even at this early age he had a kind
of intuition that he was foredoomed to miser}\ Referring
to tibis in the impersonal autobiographical fragment already
alluded to, he says : —

** I am not a believer in what is popularly called predestination, but
I think that there does appear to be a destiny about Mangan. . • •
If the sins of the fathers be still visited upon the children, here
assuredly is a case in point His childhood was neglected. • . •
He had no companions. ... He never mingled in the amusements
of other boys. His childhood was dark and joyless. Of a strongly
marked nervous temperament by nature, his nerves even then were
irretrievably shattered."

And he proceeds to narrate a curious incident which, he
avers, " happened to him in his early boyhood " : —

** A hare-brained girl who lodged in his father's house, sent him out
one day to buy a ballad ; he bad no covering on his head, and there
was a tremendous shower of rain : but she told him the rain would
make him grow. He believed her. went out, strayed through many
streets and bye-places now abolished, found, at length, his way home*
ward, and for eight years afterwairds, from his fifth year to his
thirteenth, remained almost blind. In the twilight alone could he
attempt to open his eyes, and then he — read."

He is more explicit about the fatalistic tendency that grew
upon him in the sketch of his early life which he wrote for
Father Meehan : —

'* In my boyhood," he says, ** I was haunted by an indescribable
feeling of something terrible. It was as though I strove in the vicinity
of some tremendous danger, to which my apprehensions could give
neither form nor outline. What it was I knew not ; but it seemed to
include many Idnds of pain and bitterness — bafiled hopes and memories
full of remorse. It rose on my imagination like one of those dreadful
ideas, which are said by some German writers of romance to infest the
soul of a man apparently foredoomed to the commission of murder. I
say apparently, for I may here, in the outset, state that I have no ^th
in the theory of predestination, and that I believe every individual to
be the architect of his own happiness or misery ; but I did feel that a
period would arrive when I should look baick upon the past with
horror, and should say to myself: ' Now the great tree of my esdstence
is bUsted, and wiU never more jnit forth fruit or blossom.' And it wa»
(iflauiy §o ipeak) ont of the nightmare loads lying most heavily on

$ THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

my spirit that I could not reconcfle my fedings of iropeoding calamity
with the dictates of that reason whicn told me that nothing can irxe*
parably desteoy m man except his poper criminality ; and that the
veidict of conscience on oor own actions, if fiivoorable, should always
be sufficient to secure to us an amount of contentment beyond
the powers of accident to efiect, like Bonnet, whose life was em-
bittered by the strange notion that he saw am kmust man continu*
ally robbing his house. I suffered as much from my inability to
haimonise my thoughts and feelings as from the very evil itself that
I dreaded. Such was my condition from my sixth to my sixteenth

When his father's estate became seriously embarrassed.
Mangan was withdrawn from the more expensive academy
in Saul's Court and sent to Courtney's, in Derby Square.
This school, like that in Saul's CourtI is no longer in exist-
ence^ and few even of those who know Dublin well could
point out Debry Square itself. Mitchel thus refers to it —

''Very few of the wealthier and more fashionable inhabitants of
Dublin Imow the existence of this dreary quadrangle. The houses are
high and dingy ; many of the windows are patched with paper ; clothes-
lines extend from window to window, and on the whole the place has
an air of having seen better days."

It is now boarded up and deserted, but it is a pic-
turesque Tittle place, the entrance portico of which can be
seen in Werburgh Street, nearly opposite the church in
which Lord Edward Fitzgerald is buried, and within sight
of Mangan's birthplace. With the exception of a brief stay
at the academy kept by William Browne in Chancery
Lane, the poet appears to have had no other schooling.
He was largely self taught, and the wonderful proofs^of wide
reading in several literatures which in later years* he was
able to exhibit were the result of many years of close and
unhealthy confinement and absorption in books. His sight
would have been injured while he was in his teens by &is
close study alone — ^without any such common experience
as that of the errand in the rain which he has described.

Of his stay at Derby Square, Mangan tells an incident
which is wordi reproducing : —

** My schooling during those early days stood me in good stead.
Yet I attended litue to the mere technical instruction given to me in
school I rather tried to derive information from general study than
from dry niles and special statements. One anecdote I may be per-
mitted to give here, which will somewhat illustrate the peculiar condi*
tion of my moral and intellectual being at this period. ... It was
the first evening of my entrance. Twenty boys were arranged in a
dasik and to me, as the latest comer, was allotted the lowest place—

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 9

a place with which I was perfectly contented. The (question pro-
pounded by the schoolmaster was, ' What is a parenthesis ?* But in
vain did he test their philologiod capacities ; one alone attempted
some blundering explanation from the gnunmar ; and finally to me, as
the forlorn hope that might possibly save the credit of the school, was
the query referred. ' Sir,* said I, ' I have only come into the school
to-day» and have not had time to look into the {[rammar ; but I should
suppose a parenthesis to be something included in a sentence but which
mignt be omitted from the sentence without injury to the meaning of
the sentence.* ' Go up, sir,* exclaimed the master, ' to the head of the
class.' With an emotion of boyish pride I assumed the place allotted
to me : but the next minute found me once more in my original posi*
tion. ' Why do you go down again, sir ? ' asked the worthy pedagogue.
' Because, sir,' cried I boldly, ' I have not deserved the head place.
Give it to this boy ' — and 1 pointed to the lad who had all but succeeded
— ' he merits it better ; because, at least he has tried to study his task.*
The schoolmaster smiled ; he and the usher whispered together, and
1 was remanded to a seat apart. On the following day no fewer than
three Roman Catholic clergymen, who visited the academy, conde-
scended to enter into conversation with me, and I very well recollect
that one of them, after having heard me read Blair on ' The Death of
Christ,' from Scott's * Lessons,' clapped me on the back, with the exda*
mation, * You'll be a rattling fine fellow, my boy ; but see and take care
of yoursel£' In connection with this anecdote I may be permitted to
mention a singular fact, namely, that in my earlier years I was passion-
ately fond of declaiming, not for my auditors, but for myselil I loved
to indulge in solitary rhapsodies, and, if intruded upon on these occa-
sion$, I was made very unhappy. Yet I had none of the ordinary
shyness of boyhood. I merely felt or fancied that between, me and
those who approached me no species of sympathy could exist ; and I
shrank from communion with tnem as from somewhat alien frt>m my
nature. This feeling continued to acquire strength daily, until in after
years it became one of the gnmd and terrible miseries of my existence.
It was a morbid product of pride and presumption which, almost hid-
den from myself, constituted even from my childhood governing traits
in mv character, and have so often rendered me repulsive in the eyes
of others."

] ^ He was roused from his studies and soliloquies to the
imperative necessity of earning the livelihood of himself
and the rest of the family. His father, reduced to almost
absolute want (according to Mangan), recognised that some
member of the family should become its bread-winner, and
feeling himself unequal to the task, decided that his eldest
son should be apprenticed to scrivenery, at that time an
important profession. This decision caused Mangan in*
tense mortification and grief. He had fondly hoped that
he would have been left to his studies, and he knew himself
well enough to appreciate the fact that his was not a nature
fitted to battle in the world. The struggle for exbtence
i¥hich was thus to begin for him found him totally unpre-

lO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

pared and thoroughly dismayed. The love of solitude and
books, the tendency to dream, the dread of an uncongenial
life which had already become marked characteristics in
him, were intensified by hb enforced contact with a world
which he feared. To the end of his days he never spoke
of his experiences as a scrivener but with deep loatiiing
and all the bitterness of which he was capable. His
description of those experiences, however, is undoubtedly
exaggerated, and he makes far too much of the petty
annoyances and worries he was subjected to, \vhich, after
years of brooding, assumed terrible proportions to his
mind.

He was fifteen years of age when he was called upon to
earn the bread of the family. He thus refers to it : —

As a last resource he (his father) looked to the wretched members
of his family for that help which he should have rather been able to
exteod to them. I was mteen years old ; could I not even begin to
exert myself for the behoof of my kindred ? If my excellent mother
thought so she said nothing ; but my father undertook the solution of
the question, and I was apprenticed to a scrivener. Taken from my
booKS, obliged to relinquish my solitary rambles, and compelled, for
the miserable pittance of a few shillings weekly, to herd with the
coarsest of associates, and suffer at their hands every sort of rudeness
and indignity which their uncultivated and semi-savage natures
prompted them to inflict on me. ' Thus bad began, but worse re-
mained behind."*

In the impersonal narrative he remarks : —

*' Upon ]>oor Clarence at the age of fifteen devolved the task of
supporting him and his mother, even while they were yet in the prime
of life. With ruined health and a wandering mind, that knew not
where to find a goal, he undertook the accomplishment of what he
conceived to be his duty. Eleven * other years passed away, during
which he was compelled to be the daily associate of some of the most
tflfemally heartless rufiians on this side of hell."

Again, in one of his letters, he returns to the charge
against his fellow employees —

** For ten long years I toiled and moiled — all for my parents, my
sister, and my two brothers* I was obliged to work for seven years of
the ten from five in the morning, winter and summer, to eleven at
sught, and during the three remaining years nothing but a special
Providence could have saved me from suicide. For the seven years I
was in a scrivener's office* during the three in an attorney's. They
talkof fiictory slavery, I solemnly decl4re to you, my dear sir, and I

Mingin*s specific statements of this kind are imrely to be relied upon.

JilMES CLARENCE BIANGAN. II

have read with great interest all the papers by Mr. Oastler. as well as the
reports of the Commissioners, I solemnly declare to ]fOu that the
factory would have been a paradise to me in comparison with my office.
The misery of my mind ; my natural tendency to loneliness, poetry and
self-analysis ; the disgusting obscenities ana horrible blasphemies of
those associated with me ; the persecutions I was compelled to under-
go, and which I never avenged but by acts of kindness (which acts
were always taken as evidence of weakness on my partt and only pro-
voked furuiqr aggressions) — added to these, the dose air of the room*
and the perpietual smoke of the chimney— all these destroyed my con-
stitution. No, I am wrong ; it was not even all these that destrmd
me. In seeking to escape from this misery I laid the foundation of the
evil habit which has since proved so ruinous to me. I feel my heart
getting sick and my breath growing faint as I recount thew details to
vou.**

To return again to the impersonal autobiography
already quoted, he continues—

**Yet he somehow battled against what seemed destiny itsel£
Very despair lent him an energy* All day at an attorney's desk, amid
thidc smoke, sulphur, blasphemiest and obscenities worse than bkus-
phemiesi so passed poor Mangan his years at his period. His father
and mother never spoke to him, nor could he exchange his ideas with
them. He had gold and they had copper***

13 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER II.

TBS MAMGANS IN CHANCERY LANE — ^THE POET'S FANCIES—
* GBNITJSi" A FRAGMENT — THE KENRICKS — ^THE TWO ARCH-
BISHOPS — ^JAMBS TIGHB — HIS ADDRESS TO MANGAN — THE
ALMANACKS — ^MANGAN'S LOVE OF MYSTERY— HIS STRANGE
STORY OF THE LEPER— THE ATTORNEYS* OFFICES.

** And ever kmdier and nlenter

Grew the dark images of Life's poor dreain»
Till scarcely o'er the daskv scenery there
The Lamp of Hope ttseu could cast a gleam."— Mangan.

Upon leaving Fishamble Street the family seems to have
gone to Charlemont Street, where it is said they kept one
servant, and thence to Chancery Lane, a very interesting
thoroughfare, running from Bride Street to Golden Lane,
and still in the immediate locality of Mangan's birthplace.
This Street is now a very humble one ; only the very poorest
people live in it ; but it was a very " respectable " place,
indeed, in Mangan's early days. Among its residents were
Patrick Lynch, the Gaelic scholar, who was secretary of the
Gaelic Society previously mentioned, and author of some
useful works bearing upon the ancient tongue ; William
Browne, who was, like Lynch, a teacher, and Mr. Kenrick,
the scrivener, with whom Mangan served his apprenticeship.
It has an ancient appearance, and contains houses which,
though half-ruined, give evidence of their former importance.
In the description which follows, Mangan let his fancy
wander at will, and did not attend to accuracy. It is
practically impossible that such a house (or part of a house)
could have existed in the place at the time Mangan lived
in it Father Meehan saw the improbability of this account,
and questioned its truth, and the poet replied that he
dreamed it It must be remembered that this fragment of
autobiography, like the others, was written only a little
before nis death, and, therefore, many years after the
events described. But Mangan, who claims to be speakings
truthfully throughout, may be considered to be so in the

5
.1

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 1 3

sense that he really believed what he stated, having per->
suadcd himself of its truth. He gives, however, in a sketch
of Dr. Petrie, a very quaint and amusing account of how he
usually came to his conclusions : —

*^ My mode of formine an opinion suiteth myself and tcandaliseth
nobody. I take a few tacts, not caring to be overwhelmed by too
many proofs that they are facts ; with them I mix up a dish of the
marvellous — perhaps an old wife's tale — perhaps a half-remembered
dream or mesmeric experience of my own — ana the business is done.
My conclusion is reached, and shelved, and must not thenceforward be
di^urbed. I would as soon think at any time afterwards of question-
ing its truth as of doubting the veritable existence of the Barber's five
brothers in the AraHan Nights^ or the power of Keyn Alasnam, King
of the Genii. There it is, and an opponent may battle with me anent
it, if he pleases. I manage to hold my ground by the help of digres-
sions and analogies.**

Here is his description of the Chancery Lane abode : —

''At this time we — that is, my fother, my mother, my brothers, my
sister, and mvself— tenanted one of the dismalest domiciles, perhaps,
to be met witn in the most forlorn recesses of any city in Europe. It
consisted of two wretched rooms, or rather holes, at the rear of a totter-
ing old fragment of a house, or^ if the reader please, hoveL in Chancery
Luie. These dens, one of which was above the other, were mutually
connected by means of a steep and almost perpendicular ladder, down
which it was my fortune to receive many a tumble from time to time
upon the sloppy earthen floor beneath. Door or window there was
none to the lower chamber ; the place of the latter, in particular, being
supplied* not very elegantly, by a huge chasm in the bare and broken
wall. In the upper apartment, which served as our sleeping room,
the spiders and oeetles had established an almost undisputed right
of occupancy, while the winds and rains blew in on all sides and
whistled and howled through the winter nights like the voices of
unquiet spirits. It was to this dreary abode, without, I believe, a
parallel for desolateness. that I was accustomed to return from my
employer's office each night between eleven and twelve through three
long years. I scarcely regarded my own suffering when I reflected
on those of my relations— my mother especially, whose fortitude was
admirable^ and yet I did suffer, and dreadfully. I was a slave of the
most miserable order. Coerced to renuun for the most part bound tc
one spot from early morning till near midnight, tied down to the dull
drudgery of the desk's dead wood unceasingly, without sympathy or
companionship, my heart fdt as if it were gradually growm^ into the
banimate material I wrote on. I scarcely seemed like a thinf^ of life,
and yet at intervals the spirit within me would struggle to vmdicate
itself^ and the more poetical part of my disposition would seek to burst
mto imperfect existence. Some lines which I produced about this time
may serve to give my readers a notion of the sentiments which even
amid want and bitter pain, and loneliness of soul, may sometimes
agitate the breast of a boy of sixteen :<-

14 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

** O Genius t Genius t all thou dost endnre^
Fifst from thyseU^ and finally from those
The earth-bound and the bhnd, who cannot led
That there be soab with purposes as pore
And lofty as the moantain snows, and zeal
All auenchless as the spirit whence it flows.
In whom that fire, struck like the spark from iteet
In other bosoms ever lives and glows.
Of soch, thrice blessed are thejr whom ere matnre
lile generate woes which God alone can heal,
Hb merqr calls to a loftier sphere than this^
For the mind's conflicts are tne worst of woes ;
And fathomless and fearful yawns the Abyss
Of Darkness thenceforth under all who inherit
That melancholy changeless hue of heart
Which flings its pale gkxxn o'er the years of youth.
Those most — or feast — illumined by the spirit
Ol the eternal archetype of Truth.
For such as these there is no peace within
^ Either in action or in contemplation.

From first to last — ^but even as they begin.

They doie the dim night of their tribulation t

Worn by the torture of the untiring breast.

Which, scorning all, and shunned of all, by turns,

Upheld in solitary strength begot

Bv its own unshared shroudedness of lot.

Through years and years of crushed hopes, throbs, and boms.

And bums and throbs, and will not be at rest,

Searching a desolate Earth for that it findeth not."

As will be seen later, Mangan has given us what must
be described as an unreliable picture of his experiences in
the scrivener's office. He may have suffered some annoy-
ances and heard many blasphemies in the attorneys' offices
in which he was employed after leaving the scrivener's, but
hardly in the latter. But before mentioning the real facts
of the case it will be better to let Mangan finish his allusions
to this period.

** My apprenticeship terminated ; but so did nothing else in my un*
happy position. The burden of an entire family lay upon me, and the
down-dragging weight on my spirit grew heavier from day to day. I
was now obliged to seek employment wheresover I could find itt and
thankful was I when even my father and mother were enabled to reap
the fruits of my labour. But my exasperated mind (made half mad
through long disease) would frequently inquiret though I scarcely
acknowledge the inc|uiry to myself, how or why it was that I should
be called on to sacrifice the Immortal for the Mortal ; to give awav
irrecoverably the Promethean fire within me for the cooking of a beef-
steak ; to destroy and damn my own soul that I might preserve for a
few miserable months or years the bodies of others. Often would I
wander out into the fields and groan to God for help. DeprofundU
dmwund was my continual cry. And in trutfa« although my narradyo
•caroely appears at a glance to justify me, my circumstaoces, taken

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 1 5

altogether, were amply sufficient to warrant the exclamation. A mined
souJ in a wasted frame; the very ideal of perfection of moral and
physical evil combined in one individuaL"

Such is Mangan's account of his life in the scrivener's
office, llie facts that are now known of this period of his
career, however, are rather against his statements. He
must have confounded the offices of the attorneys by whom
he was afterwards employed with that in which he served
his apprenticeship. In this he did an unconscious injustice
to very worthy people and a very respectable firm. The
office was situated in York Street, Stephen's Green ; and in
1818, when Mangan entered it, it was being carried on by the
Rev. Richard Kenrick for the benefit of the widow and
children of his brother, Thomas Kenrick, who had died in
the previous year. One of the sons of the latter had just
left the office in order to study for the priesthood, and his
brother was still employed there during Mangan's appren-
ticeship. It is a remarkable fact that both these brothers
became Catholic archbishops, and were respectively the
late Most Rev. Francis Patrick and Peter Richard Kenrick,
Archbishops of Baltimore and St. Louis, U.S.A. A
business carried on by a priest like Father Kenrick * with
the aid of such assistants as the two future prelates, cannot
have been such a place as Mangan described. . That
Mangan's own conduct was unexceptionable at this time we
have the testimony of the late Archbishop P. R. Kenrick, who
wrote as follows from St Louis on October 19th, 1887, to
Mr. John M'Call, Dublin :—

*' I knew James Mangan for several years very intimately, and highly
esteemed him for his talents and virtue. My brother^ the late Arch-
bishop of Baltimore, never had any knowledge of him. After my
father's death, in 1817, his office was continued for some years in
which both Mangan and myself were engaged. The office was in
York Street"

The hours which Mangan declares he worked at the
scrivener's are impossible. At that time, as we learn from
a very interesting letter, signed " D. C" in the Nation of
October 13th, 1849, no scrivener could have kept his office
open so many hours, and besides, there were more than

^T. ^ ^<^^ Kenrick was first curate and afterwards parish priest of St
Nicholas, Fhmds Street, where there is a Uhlct to his mcmofy. He died in
1837, two years after the scrivener's business was giTen ap. The Kitnrirks,
as already stated, Uved in Cbanoefy Lane.

16 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

four months in the year — namely, the Easter Recess (one
monthX the Long Vacation from Trinity Term until the
middle of October (more than three months), and the
Michaelmas vacation (about three weeks) when the
scrivener had no work for his clerks. But even if, after he
had concluded his apprenticeship, Mangan was employed
for so many hours, he must have earned a considerable .
amount per annum, as ninepence per hour was the
recognised rate of wages, and at this figure, eight months'
labour would have resulted in the anything but con-
temptible sum of ;f 140 8s. Mangan may have entered
Kenrick's office slightly before he was fifteen, and he seems
to have remained there longer than he implies. One of his
fellow-writers in the office was James Tighe, who is still
remembered as the author of some clever literary efforts.*
The business being discontinued in 1825, those then em-
ployed in it were compelled to seek other employers. It is
probable that both Mangan and Tighe remained on till at
least the year named Mangan's statement that he began to
drink while at the scrivener's may be true, though it has
been doubted ** D.C already quoted, says emphatically
that he " was never known to take spirituous liquors of any
description ** at this period. Yet from some verses addressed
to him about 1826 by Tighe, he appears to have already
begun to resort to stimulants. This would prove, if his
declaration as to having commenced the evil at the
scrivener's be true, the correctness of the conclusion that
he was much longer at Kenrick's than he admits. Here
are some of the verses in question, taken from Mr. McCall's
sketch of the poet's early life.f

** Frae new come folk wha tarry near,
I aften for my Jamie speer,
As bow he liked the bygone year,

And SIC discoorse ;
And if his — what d'ye call it ? — fear

Is naething worse.

* He WIS bom at Carrickmacross, co. Monaghan, in 1795, and died in
Pnblin on November i^th, 1869. He was in his late years a bookseller, and
at his shop in Great Bntain Street published a temperance poem, roughlv, but
^ \y expressed, entiUed *' A Defence of Drunkenness, by the celebrated

irmraasl]
SaiSwie.

Swig," (1843). Ti^e wrote some onoe popular songs, and was a welcome
eojBtrihtitor to various Irish papeis. AAcr Mangsn, he was undoubtedly the
best of all tHe <« diarians."

tThcy oiigiaally appeared In Gramfs Aimamuk (or the year mentioned.

M*. • YO,tLK ITKBET

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 1/

** On fine-stnmg nerves that witch can play
Sic dirgefu* notes by night and day»
Till fancy sees a dread array

O' doads and gloom.
Arching a dark aiid dismal way

Down to the tomb.

Some canna thole the mental pain
That racks a nerve-disordered brain*
Hence deadly dives and draughts are ta*en

To smooth the way»
An' some prefer the sharp, wee Man

Like Castlereagh.

Och. Jamie, shake away the dole
That hath too long o*^ercast thy sool-^
111 no* conrniendue reekin' bowl.

Or gillhouse fiin ;
But just a mom an' evening stroll,

An' loup an' run.**

Even at this period Mangan was subject to those fits of
melancholy which he sometimes endeavoured to conceal
under a mask of enforced merriment. The opinion which
has been Expressed by some that it was a love disappoint-
ment which changed a happy, -contented, gentle Mangan
into a wretched, hopeless outcast is an entirely erroneous
one. His first poems are as much saturated with mourn-
ful feeling as his last

When he left Kenrick's he entered the office of a Mr.
Franks inMerrion Square, and thence proceeded to another
office, kept by a Mr. Leland, in Fitzwilliam Square. With
this gentleman, who paid him about thirty shillings a week,
and his successor, Mr. Murphy, he seems to have remained
till 1836, when he finally abandoned the regular pursuit of
a scrivener, merely accepting occasional work of that kind
when compelled by stem necessity. It was in 18 18
that his earliest poems appeared. There were then
hardly any literary periodicals in Ireland, and the Dublin
and Belfast dmanacs were the recognized receptacles in
Ireland for the abundant poetical output of rhymesters all
over the country. Michael G>urtney was a frequent
contributor, and may have been the first to induce
Mangan to write for them; but James Tighe was
perhaps, a more likely instigator. Mangan took ve^
readihr to the recreation, and to the dose of his life
was fond of perpetrating such trifles as would fittingly
occupy a place in the ''poetical ** dqiartment of the

I8 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

almanacs. It may be conjectured that the love of mystifi-
cation, which was an abiding characteristic of the poet*
was first suggested and finally implanted in his mind by
the mania, very prevalent then, for puzzles of all kinds,
charades, acrostics, rebuses, and the like. It need hardly
be said that Mangan soon became one of the most popular
of Uie puzzlers. In one of his later articles in the Dublin
University Magazini^ he

^ Man would appear to be an animal that puzzles and is puzzled.
He talks enigmas, he hears enigmas* he sees enigmas, he dreams
enigmas, he meets enigmas, he enacts enij^as, and last, not least, he
»t$ down and writes, or else translates, enigmas."

He rather deliberately cultivated the gift of writing
the ephemerides so much relished by the readers of the
almanacs. The chief contributors were mostly teachers
*of the mathematics" and hedge-schoolmasters, but not a
few nurslings of genius were reared by these caterers for the
intellectual gymnasts of those days. The amusement
almost became a necessity with many of the " diarians,"
who spent all their leisure in propounding mathematical
cruces, or in concocting the various forms of rebus and
charade. Naturally, Mangan excelled in the pastime — the
enigmatical side of his character was at once attracted,
and he took pleasure in disguising himself under various
pseudonyms. Only three contributions by one writer were
allowed in any one number of Grants and the New Ladies*
almanacs, and it may have been with the object of
obtaining insertion for more than the allowable number
that Mangan appears as " Peter Puff, Secundus," " James
Tynan," •• M. E.," " P. V. McGuffin " and other individu-
alities as well as under his own name of " James Mangan."
He admits his fondness of mystification in the impersonal
autobiographical sketch which has been quoted from, but
he ascribes it to diffidence : —

** Like the man, who, some years back, published an enormous
volvme in Germany and fathered it upon Sanconiatho (pity he did not
add 'Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus')* my poor friend
Clarence has perpetrated a great number of singular literary sins,
which, taken together, as a quaint and sententious friend of mine
vemaiks, would appear to be 'the antithesis of plagiarism.' It is a
aliaage Ouilt, no aoubt, and one that I cannot understand, that Mangan

* ICsngm endenUy had in his mind, . when be wrote this, the reference

JAMES CLARENCE HANGAN.

■hould entertain a deep diffidence of his own capacity to amuse or

Ittract others to anything emanating from himself. But it is the fact.

It comprehend it, but he has mentioned it to me times without

Lumber .... People have called him a singular man, but he is

jaiher a plural one— .1 Proteus ... He has been much addicted

o the practice of fathering upon other writers the offspring of his own

)in . . ■ I cannot commend iL A man may have a right to

er his property to others, but nothing can Justify him in forcmg it

on them. I once asked Mangan why he did not prefix his own name

bis anti-plagiari5fic productions, and his reply was characteristic of

: man— 'that woulcf be no go— no how you fixed it.' I must write

a variety of styles I"

Hence all the pretended translations in more mature times

am Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and other Eastern tongues.

Very few of his lucubrations in the almanacs are worth

buoting; as puzzles they may be good enough, but they

liever rank as poetry. It must be said, however, that if

mhey are doggerel, the doggerel is deliberate, not uncon-

■cious. Many of them are, of course, serio-comic. Here

i portion of a piece addressed to his friend Ttghe^ not

Lncharacteristic (in one sense) of a later time : —

" What shall 1 say lo thee, thou son of song ?
What can 1 say, I mean—
Oh I for a crutch whereon to lean
And help my gout-struck muse along 1
Powers of genius I whither have ye sped,

ao THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

ical difBcuIties of verse, and his inordinate display of his
masteiy over them, are traceable to his feats of literaiy
agility in the almanacs. An enormous proportion of his
subsequent literary work is characterised by visibly painful
efforts to appear gay and festive at a time when hb mind
and heart were overwhelmed by woe. In the slightly
altered words of one of his Irish versions, he did little
but—

*'• • • jest and keep grinning,
While his thoughts were all guileful and gloomy ! **

That Mangan was rendered wretched in mind and body
by almost chronic ill-health and nervous disturbances there
is sufficient evidence to believe. Occasionally, when his
condition was unbearable, he was obliged to absent himself
firom his office, his brother John, who was sdso employed as
a scrivener, acting as his substitute. It must have been
for the purpose of deadening pain or of forgetting his
troubles that he, like De Quincey, began to take opium.
He never, of course, took the extraordinary quantities that
the English opium eater did, but there can be no longer
any doubt that somewhat early in his career he took the
drug to alleviate his pain. The evidence on this point is
quite conclusive. He himself denied (in one place) that
he was an opium eater, but in other writings he clearly
admits it. He tells a wild story, in the strangest of his
personal confessions, of a terrible experience which, he
says, happened to him in a hospital. It is, of course, a
purely imaginary affair : —

*^ My physical and moral torments, my endurances from cold,
heat, hunger, and fatigue, and that isolation of mind which was perhaps
worse than all, in the end flung me into a fever, and I was trans-
mitted to an hospital. This incident I should hardly deem
worthy of chronidmg if it had not proved the occasion of intro-
ducing into my blood the seeds of a more virulent disease
than any I had yet known — an incurable hypochondriasis. There
was a poor child in the convalescent ward of the institution
who was afflicted from head to foot with an actual leprosy, and
there being no vacant bed to be had I was compelled to share that
of this miserable being, which, such was my ignorance of the nature of
contagion, I did without the slightest suspicion of the inevitable result
Bat in a few days after my dismissal from the hospital this result but
too plainly showed itself on my person in the form of a malady nearly
as hideous and loathsome as that of the wretched boy himself ; and
though all external traces of it have long since disappeared, its monU
cfiecu remain incorporated with my mental constitution to this hour,
and will probably oontintie with me through life. It was woe on woe.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

' wilhin the lowest deep a lower deep,' Yet, will it be credited ?

y kindred scarcely seemed lo take notice of this new and terrible

so set upon me. Privation and despair had rendered iheiti

1 indiRerent to everything ; and, for me, sullen, setf-enrafit,

fceascd within and without, I cared not lo call their attention to iL

Uy heart had grown hard, and I hurt my hand when 1 struck it.'*

Very slowly, and only when a kind acquaintance (for I was not

utterly desened) came fonvard to rescue me from the grave by hit

ledical skill, did I in some degree conquer the malignity of this

ftastly complaint. Another disease, however, and another succeeded,

il all who knew me began to regard me as one appointed to a

ftgering, living martyrdom. And for myself, I scarcely knew what to

ink of my own condition, though 1 have since learned to consider it

I the mode and instrument which an all-wise Providence made useot

1 curb the outbrcakings of that rebellious and gloomy spirit that

liouldered like a volcano within me. My dominant passion, though

jessed it not, was pride ; and this was to be overcome by pain of

y description and the.continual sense of scll-helplessness. Humilia- .

is what I required, and that bitterest moral drug was dealt out to

in lavish abundance. Nay, as if Pelion were to be piled upon

3, for the purpose of contributing to my mortification, 1 wai

Impelled to perform my very penances — those enjoined me hy

■iriiual directors — in darkness ana subterranean places, wheresoever

lould bury myself from the face of mortal, man. And they were all

vrciful dispensations these, to lift me out of the hell of my own

Kture, compared with' those which the Almighty afterwards adopted

TT my deliverance.''

2Z THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER III

nVDIES IK GERNAN LITERATURE — LOVE OF BOOKS — PERSONAL.
APPEARANCE — A GUMPSE OF MATURIN — MANGAN'S DESCRIP-
TION or HIS UFS AT THE ATTORNEY'S — ^RELIGIOUS FEELINGS
— THE COMET CLUB— ITS MEMBERS — "THE PARSON'S HORN-
BOOK," &C— JOHN SHEBHAN.

Tell how timmpled, derided, hated.

And worn by weakness, disease, and wrongs
He fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song."— Mamgan.

The period between 1826 and 1831 seems to have been a
barren one for Mangan, as far as literary work is concerned.
He wrote little, and published nothing. During this time
he perfected his knowledge of the several languages of
which Father Graham had taught him the rudiments.
German literature proved more fascinating to him than any
other. He does not appear to have cared for the more
materialistic French writers ; he loved to dwell among
German dreamers, and even when they snored, he preferred
them to their livelier neighbours. He saturated himself
with German thought, which unquestionably exercised a
great influence upon him and his future literary work. In
the words of the couplet, which occurs in one of his Irish
paraphrases, he was —

"What you mi^ht term an
0*erwhelmer in German."

His knowledge of English literature was remarkably
extensive. His favourite authors, like Shakespeare and
Byron, he was fond of declaiming ; he knew their writings
so well that he could almost repeat everything of theirs by
heart Old out-of-the-way books, more particularly curious
mediaeval ones, he was always studying. Anything quaint
in black letter was sure to extract from him whatever
spare cash he possesed. He was a constant frequenter of
the hook-shops and book-stands, especially those outside

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 23

the Four Courts, and along the railings ot Trinity College
on the Collie Street side. His appearance at this time
was not unattractive* He had a very handsome profile, but
serious ill-health had reduced him almost to a sluulow, and
his once golden hair had become so grey that he wore a
wig. He appears to have taken more pains to look ** a char-
acter ^ than Father Meehan allows. It is hardly a matter
admitting of doubt, that he was possessed by the desire
of causing attention and remark when he was in the street
This he acknowledges in one of his ** anthological " papers.

** I should far and away prefer being a great necromancer to being a
great writer or even a gr^t fighter. My natural propensities lead me
rather to seek out modes of astonishing mankmd than of edifying them«
Herein I and my propensities are dearly wrong ; but somehow, I find
that almost eveiything that is natural m me is wrong also."

Mangan had a decided objection to letting his real age
be known, and he is constantly misstating it To one of
his friends, a little while before he died, he wrote : —

** I suppose, en passant^ that vou imagine me an old man. I am
36 years ofage in point of time, but twice the number in soul ; and,
strange to say> I feel within me a power of mind that sets Time at
defiance."

He looked considerably older than his years, and the
following description of him by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,
who did not know him till about 1836, is very curious.
It seems to suit the Mangan of 1825 rather than the
Mangan of the former year. The ** golden hair " became
a golden wig before Mangan had reached his sixth lustrum.

*^ When he emerged into daylight he was dressed in a blue doak«
midsummer or midwinter, and a hat of fantastic shape, under which
golden hair, as fine and silky as a woman's, hung in unkempt tangles,
and deep blue eyes lighted a face as colouriess as parchment. He
looked like the spectre of some German romance rather than a living
creature."

Add to this that he was slim and of middle height and
you have a fairly correct idea of Mangan as he was in the
twenties and part of the thirties.

He was working at Na 6 York Street when the famous
author of Bertram and Melmoth ilu Wanderer^ who lived
at No. 41, died.^ Maturin was a very familiar figure in
Dublin streets, and one of the most eccentric as well as

* On Odobor 30th, 1824.

24 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

doqaent of preachers. Towards the close of his life
Mangan pat on record his impressions of this remarkable
writer, in whom Scott and B)nron so thoroughly believed
that the 6rst offered to edit his works after his death, and
tiie latter used all his influence successfully to get a hearing
for his plays. Numerous stories are related of him. His
genius was of the untamed, uncultivated kind. His works
are those of a [madman, glowing with burning eloquence
and deep feeling, but full of absunlities and inconsistencies.
His Irish tales, such as The Wild Irish Boy^ and The
Milesian Chiefs are made almost unreadable by a vicious
and ranting style. Whenever Maturin was engaged in
literary work, he used to place a wafer on his forehead, to
let those who entered his study know that he was not
to be disturbed Mangan had more than the prevailing
admiration for the grotesqueness of Maturin's romances ;
their terrible and awe-inspiring nature impressed him pro-
foundly. He felt a kind of fascination for this lonely man
of genius, whom at one period he might have called in his
own words,

^The Only, the Lonely, the Earth's Companionless One."

He opens his sketch, which is very characteristic of his
style, with the humorous rhyme : —

*' Maturin, Maturin, what a strange hat you*re in ? **

" I saw Maturin but on three occasions, and on all these within two
months of his death. I was then a mere boy ; and when I assure the
reader that I was strongly imbued with a belief in those doctrines of
my Church which seem (and only seem) to savour of what is theologi-
cally called ' exclusiveness,' be will appreciate the force of the impulse
which urged me one morning to follow the author of Melmoth into
the porch of St Peter's Church in Aungier Street, and hear him read
the Buiial Service. Maturin, however, did not read, he simply
repeated ; but with a grandeur of emphasis and an impressive power
of manner that chained me to the spot. His eyes, while he spoke,
continually wandered irom side to side, and at length rested on me, who
reddened up to the roots of my hair at being even noticed by a man
that ranked far higher in my estimation than Napoleon Bonaparte. I
observed that, after having concluded the service, he whispered some-
thins^ to the clerk at his side, and then again looked steadfastly at me.
If I had been the master of sceptres^of wor)ds — I would have given
than all that moment to have been put in possession of his remark.

The second time I saw Maturin he had been just officiating, as on
the former occasion, at a funeral. He stalked along York Street with
an abstracted, or rather distracted air, the white scarf and hat-band
which he had received remaining still wreathed round his beautifully-
sluiped penoD* and exhibiting to the gaie of the amused and anuuted

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 2$

:desirians whom he almost literally encounltred in his path, a boot
wr one foot and a shoe on the other. His long pale, melancholy,
on Quixote, out -of-the- world face would have inclined you lo believe
hal Uanie, Bajazet, and ihe Cid had risen together from their
epulchrcs, and dubbed their features for ihc production of aa effect.
Maturin's mind was only fractionally pourtrayed, so to speak, in
countenance. The preat Irishman, like Hamlet, had that wiihin
I which passed show, and escaped far and away beyond the possi-
hly ol expression by ihe clay lineament- He bore the 'thunder-
cars' about him, but ihey were graven, not on his brow, but on hif

ITie third and last time that I beheld this marvellous man I
emembcr well. It was some time before his death, on a balmy
utumn evening, in 1824. He slowly descended the steps of his own
Duse, which, perhaps, some future Transatlantic biographer may thank
ne tor informmg him was at No. •43 York Street, and took his way in
he direction of Whitefnar Street, into Castle Street, and passed the
loyal Exchange into Dame Street, every second person staring at him
nd the extraordinary double-belled and trcble-caped rug of an old
arment — neither coat nor cloak^which enveloped his person. But
,ere it was that I, who had tracked the footsteps of the man as his
hadow, discovered that the feeling to which some individuals, rather
ver sharp and shrewd, had been pleased to ascribe this 'affectation of
ingulariiy,' had no existence in Maturin. For, instead of passing
long Dame Street, where he would have been 'the observed of ail
bservers,' he wended his way along the dark and forlorn locality of
)ame Lane, and having reached the end of this not very classical
horoughf a re, crossed over to Anglesea Street, where I lost sight of
haps he went into one of those bibliopolitan establishment*

26 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

the Ml belief that I was fal611ing a destiny which I could not oppose
and which I had no right to arraign.

I wearv the reader by calling on him for ever to listen to a tale of
immhigated calamity. But« as I am bound to adhere to strict truth in
thb autobiography, he will kindlv forgive as well the monotony of
gener<ai reflection as of particular detail which he here encounters. By
and by I may invite his attention to more cheerful and consolatory
matter. At present the scroll which I am compelled to unroll before
him iS| like that of the prophet, ' written within and without with
moctming, lamentation, and woe.' And perhaps those who are more
desirous of understanding the motives than of listening to a cold recital
of the actions of another may find some interest in perusing a record
whidi, I willingly admit, embodies hardly a sentence upon which the
mere worldling would care to expend a moment's reflection.

I had not been long installed in mv new situation before all the
old maladies tmder which I had laboured returned with double force.
The total want of exercise to which I was subjected was in itself suffi-
cient to tell with ruinous effect upon a frame whose long-continued
state of exhaustion had only received a temporary relief from the four
months^ change of life to which I have adverted. But other agencies
also combinra to overwhelm and prostrate me. The coarse ribaldry,
the vile and vulgar oaths, and the orutal indiflerence to all that is true
and beautiful and good in the Universe, of my office companions,
affected me in a manner difficult to conceive. My nervous and hypo-
chondriacal feelings almost verged upon insanity. I seemed to
myself to be shut up in a cavern with serpents, and scorpions, and all
hideous and monstrous things, which wnthed and hissed around me,
and discharged their slime and venom upon my person.* These
hallucinations were considerably aided and aggravated by the pesti-
ferous atmosphere of the office, the chimney of which smoked continu-
ally, and for some hours before the dose of the day emitted a
sulphurous exhalation that at times literally caused me to gasp for
breath. In a word, I felt utterly and thorougly miserable. The
wretched depression of my spirits could not escape the notice of my
mother, but she passed no remark on it, and left me in the evenings
altogether to myself and my books ; for, unfortunately, instead of
endeavouring somewhat to fortify my constitution by appropriating my
spare hours to exercise, I consumed these in unhesdthy reading. My
morbid sensibilities thus daily increasing and gaining ground, while
my bodily powers declined in the same proportion, the result was just
tuch as might have been anticipated. For the second time of my life
nature succumbed under the intolerable burden imposed upon her ;
and an attack of illness removed me for a season from the sphere of
my irksome and melancholy duties. My place in the omce was
assumed by my younger brother, John, a stout and healthy lad of
nineteen,t who had already acquired some slight experiences in the
mysteries of scrivenery and attorneyship, and I returned home.

* ''Those who knew him in after yean," says Mitchel " can remember with
what a ihuddering and loathing horror he spoke, when at rare intervals he
would be inclined to speak at all, of his labours with the scrifensr and the

■ llniiTii **

t Thb would fix the date as 1823, but Mangan's daU are onrcUable. It
later than that*

JAMES CLARENXE MANGAN. 2/

My conBnement to bed on this occasion was not of long duration,
but, though after a lapse of a few days able to crawl about once more,
I was far indeed from being recovered. A settled melancholy took
possession of my being. A sort of torpor and weariness of life suc«
ceeded to my former over-excited sensibilities. Boolcs no loneer
interested me as before : and my own unshared thoughts were a burden
and a torment unto me. Again I essayed the effect of active exercise,
but was soon compelled to give over from sheer weakness and want
of animal spirits. I indulged, however, occasionally in long walks
into the country around Dublin, and the sight of hills, fields, and
streams, to which I had long been unaccustomed, produced in me a
certain placidity of mind, with which, had I understood my own true
interests for time and eternity, I ought to have remained contented.
But contented I did not, and would not, remain, I desired to be
aroused, excited, shocked even. ^ My grand moral malady — ^for
physical ailments I also had, and singular of their kind — was an im-
patience of life and its commonplace pursuits. I wanted to penetrate
the great enigma of human destiny and my own, to know *the be-all
and the end-all,' the worst that could happen here or hereafter, the
final denouement of a drama that so strangeiv united the two extremes,
of broad farce and thrilling tragedy, and wherein mankind played at
once the parts of actors and spectators.

If I perused any books with a feeling of pleasure, they were such
as treated of the wonderful and terrible in art, nature, and society.
Descriptions of battles and histories of revolutions, accounts of earth-
quakes, inundations, and tempests, and narrations of moving accidents
by flood and field, possessed a charm for me which 1 could neither
resist nor explain. It was some time before this feeling meiged into
another, the sentiment of religion and its ineffable mysteries. To the
religious duties enjoined by my Church I had always been attentive,
but I now became deeply aevotional, and studied the lives of the saints
with the profoundest admiration of their grknd and extraordinary
virtues. If my mind had been of a larger and sterner order all this
had been well enough, and I should doubtless have reaped nothing
but unmixed advantage from my labours. But, constituted as I was,
the effect of these upon me was rather injurious than beneficial. I
gradually became disquieted by doubts, not of the great truths of faith,
for these I never questioned, but of my own capacity, so to speak, for
salvation.

Taking a retrospective view of all the events of my foregone
years, reflecting on what I had been and then was, and meditating on
what it was probable that I should live to be, I began to think, with
BufTon, that it is not impossible that some beings may have been
created expressly for unhappiness ; and I knew that Cowper had lived,
and perhaps died, in the dreadful belief that he himself was a cast-
away and a ' vessel of wrath fitted for destruaion.'

' Scruples of conscience also multiplied upon me in such numbers
in tne intervals between each of my confessions that my mind became
a chaos of horrors, and all the fires of Pandemonium seemed to bum
* w ^7 ^^^'^ ^ consulted several clergymen with regard to what I
should do in this extremity. Most recommended me to mix in cheerful
^d gay society. One alone, I remember, counselled me to pray.
And pray I did, for I had so held myself aloof from the companionship
of oiaen that I knew of no society with which I coukl mix. But I

28 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

derived no consolation from praying. I felt none of that confidence
in God tben, which, thanks to His almighty power and grace, 1 have so
li e qu ently known. The gates of heaven seemed barred against me ;
its floors and walls of brass and triple adamant repelled my cries ; and
I appeared to myself to be sending a voice of agony into some inter-
minable chasm. This deplorable mterior state, one which worlds and
diabdems should not bribe me into experiencing again, contmoed for
aboat a twelve-month, after which it gradually disappeared, not through
p io gicss of time, not through any process of reasonmg, or. indeed, any
cfibrt of my own, but, remarkably enough, precisely through the agency
of the very remedy recommended me by my spiritual advisers.**

Mangan did not complete his account of this remarkable
transformation. Not very long after this period we find
him a prominent member of the staflf of the Comet, a
paper which deserves more attention than it has hitherto
obtained.* In its earlier days, it did yeoman service
to the popular cause, but its writers became demoralised
and turned the anti-tithe movement, which it represented,
into a war of personalities, and the pages of the Comet
ended by becoming the arena of party and personal
hatreds. But this was subsequent to the beginning of
Mangan's connection with it. The "Comet Club" consisted
of several of the younger and more active literary spirits who
had espoused the popular side in the struggle against
the injustice caused by the levying of tithes in aid of the
Protestant clergy, many of whom were absentees, from the
Catholic farmers. The original members were nearly all
quite unknown, but most of them afterwards became
distinguished in literature or journalism. Thomas Browne f
(** Jonathan Buckthorn*'), was, after John Sheehan, the
most voluminous contributor to the Club's first publication.
Sheehan J (" Philander ") was a fertile and clever jour-
nalist, full of resource and wit, which in later years gave
him a considerable reputation in London, where, as " The
Irish Whiskey Drinker " and "The Knight of Innishowen,**

* To the Dublin Literaqt Uazette, started in 1830 (previously called 7^$
NatmuU Magazine and edited bv Lever), Mangan sent his translation
of Sduller*s poem " To my Friends." Lever was removed from the editor-
ship becanse be accepted, and perhaps wrote, an article in praise of Shellev's
poetry. The enlightened proprietors put in hir place, Philip Dixon Hardy,
a determined and narrow " Evangelical," who speedily killed the magazine.

t Originally a miller in the Queen's County, and bom about 1775. He
liM been called " The Irish Cobbett."

) Sheehan was the son of a Celbridge hotel-keeper and general merchant,
and WM educated at Qongowes Wood College, where *' Father Prout " was
cue of his tcachen. He was a friend of Thackeray later in life, and the
■wmiimMffl ocigiaal of Captain Shandoo in Ptmknnit,

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 29

he was one of the chief writers for BentU^s Miscellany and
Temple Bar. Two other early members deserve special
notice* One, Mr. Norreys Jephson/ M.P. (for Mallow),
wrote the most pungent of the satires in The Parsoris
Horn Bookf the first attack upon the tithe S3rstem directed
by the Club against the Protestant clergy. This work,
Part L of which was published early in 183 1, was illustrated
by the other member above alluded to but not named —
Samuel Lover, whose powerful etchings did as much for
the agitation as any of the satires in prose and verse.
Their high excellence as art would surprise those who
only know Lover's artistic efforts in later years. Three
of the four men mentioned were quite young at the
time — Browne was a middle-aged man — and The Parsat^s
Horn Book, which was their joint production » is a notable
example of youthful vigour and talent. The book had
an astonishing sale — its scathing attacks on the Govern-
ment and on the tithe-receivers were read with delight
on the popular side and alarm and indignation on the
other. Sheehan, in an interesting account of the ^ Comet
Club/' published more than forty years later, says
the work had '' a greater circulation than any work ever
published in Ireland, and created a greater sensation than
had been known since the days of Swift." Several editions,
the first of which consisted of fifteen hundred copies, which
were sold at five shillings each, were issued and speedily
sold out, an astonishing success in those times. * A second
series followed, and met with a like triumphant reception,
and a little later The Valentine Post Bag made its
appearance, but by that time people had become used to
attacks of the kind, as the Cofput paper, started in conse-
quence of the demand for the Horn Book, was engaged
in its wordy battle with Tresham Gregg,*)* Caesar Otway
and other opponents of the same kind. Meanwhile, the
Irish people had been roused and many serious disturbances
occurred. The Catholic farmers, particularly of Leinster,
refused to pay tithes, and when their property was

*Sir Ouurles Denham Jephson Norrejri^ lit Bart, was bom b 1799, educated
at Oxfoid, and was M.P. for Mallow, from 1S26 to 1S59. He was made a
baronet in 1838, when he added the surname of Norreys. He died In Queens-
town, July, 1888.

t Ae Rev. JTrcsham Gregg, an active Ptotestant oontioveisialist, popohriy
known as <*Thrashem Gregf^ and ** Trashy.'* He wrote a couple of ied)le
titgedies. Otway was more literary (his Tmr in Cmmmmgki^ SkMks m
Jttkmd^ ha^ can be read with interest in spite of their nbuT bigotry). Ho
^ris called by the Omm^ writcra •« Sdae-her-Odd-Way.**

JO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

upon and shipped to England (there being no
of a successful sale in Ireland), the owners
followed, and by appealing to intending buyers, and explain-
ing their cases made the auctions difficult and costly, or
caused fhem to fail altogether.

Early in 1831, the promoters of the Horn Book and
Post Bag^ together wi^ a few young literary friends,
met at 10 D'Olier Street, and there founded the famous
Comet newspaper. On May 2nd of that year, its first
number appeaml. Browne was editor, Sheehan sub-editor,
the staff being composed of the members of the Club.
A list of the leading members — ^apparently from first to
last^is given by Sheehan. They were — ^Joseph Sterling
Cq}me, afterwards eminent as a dramatist, humorist, and
contributor to Punch; Lover, Browne, Jephson and Sheehan
himself; John Cornelius O'Callaghan ("Carolan "), subse-
quently well-known as the historian of '' The Irish Brigades
in the Service of France;" Maurice O'Connell, the witty
and poetical son of the Liberator; Robert Knox, who
eventually became editor of the London Morning Herald;'*
Thomas Kennedy (" O'More "), author of the popular
ballad entitled " The Uninscribed Tomb," and of " Reminis-
cences of a Silent Agitator ;" Dominick Ronayne, later a
Cork M.P., who wrote a series of pointed squibs called
•• Figaro in Dublin ;" George Dunbar f (*' Nebula '*), whom
Sheehan characterises as the " most sparkling and classic
writer of English prose in any publication of his time ; "
and lastly, James Mangan (*' Clarence"), who did not write
for the paper till it was more than a year in existence. Of
the score of members, says Sheehan, all but three were
under twenty-five. They were not all Catholics, as some
writers have assumed ; Lover, Browne, Coyne, Dunbar and
Knox, at least, were Protestants.

Before it had reached the age of six months, its circu-
lation was the then phenomenal one of 2,300 copies per
week. It was entirely composed of original matter, unlike
any of its contemporaries, and did not purvey news of any
kind except in its own dress, nor did it purloin ('* Convey
the wise it call," as Ancient Pistol says) from its rivals
while pouring contumely upon them. So long as it steered
clear of savage personalities it did excellent service, but

^ Knoz edited the Herald itom 1846 to 1858, and died in March, 1859.

t Born aboat 1797, and educated axjeney until he was twelve jean of
ap, then at Martin'f school in York Street, Dublin, and later at Tkini^
CnOcfa. He liftd a peat deal in Fianoe^ and died there in 1856.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

I Shcehan admits that " measures not men" was an anti-
I quatcd principle laughed at, and in December, 1831, when
I its weekly circulation was 3,000 copies, some of its contri-
I butors, on the ground that it had departed from the original
I resolution of not attacking private character, seceded and
I started a rival club called " The Irish Brigade." O'Callaghan,
I Ronayne, and O'ConneU were amongst the "seccders," who
I issued a periodical called the Irish Monthly Magazine,
I which was not long-lived.

The Comet's satirical thrusts were evidently keenly felt,
■ for they were bitterly resented, and several violent demon-
Istrations took place outside its offices in D'Olier Street, A
I riotous mobof unticked cubs from Trinity College once or
Itwice threatened to demolish the premises and to severely
I maul the Comet's ta.\\.

Mangan, according to Sheehan's rather doubtful state-
lment,"was one of the Comet's merry youngsters." He
■certainly affected a gaiety he did not feel, but he was
■hardly merry at any time, and was not altogether a
j" youngster" at this time, being almost thirty years of
■age, and nine years older than Sheehan himself, who, by the
ly, was the youngest member of the club. The religion

'Tangan, says the same writer, "was undemonstrative
,■ himself in thos

33 TIIB LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER IV.

IUIIGAII'8 FIRST COMTRIBUTION TO THE " CONST **—** THK
0nKG KNTHUSIAST **— IfANGAN ADOPTS THB PBN-MAMS OT
** CLARXNCX **— THE ^DUBUN PENNY JOURNAL ''—POEMS BY
MANGAN — ^DIU PETRIB AND JOHN O'DONOVAN^IIANGAN'S
PERSONAL SKETCHES OF THEM — ^THB HAYES FAMILY —
''VERSES ON TUB DEATH OF A BELOVED FRIEND."

" My iOttl was formed for Lore and Grief;
These both were blended at my btrthf
But iifeleu at a Bhrivelled leaf
lie now my dearest hopes on earth.^^MAMOAN.

Mangan'S earliest piece in the Coptei is a whimsical essay
of a trifling character. It is largely made up of puns and
other verbal quips, and is signed " J. C. M./' which
signature shows that he had already adopted a second
Christian name.

He could write admirable nonsense when he liked, and
the late Edward Lear might have got a hint or two from
him for those " Nonsense " books which are held not un-
deservedly in such high estimation by present-day critics.
The editor politely intimated to the new writer that though
he was cordially welcomed a little brevity was desirable.
A couple of neat sonnets ''By an Aristocrat" form
Mangan's second contribution, and we are speedily fol-
lowed by his poem, " The Dying Enthusiast," which ap-
peared in Na 67 (August 5th, 1832). Credit may fairly be
given to Mangan in that, though encouraged to write what
was merely ephemeral and personal, he often rose far above
the petty, banal conceptions of the conductors of the Cornet^
and forced upon its readers' attention more enduring stuff
than they expected. This poem of ** The Dying Enthu-
siast,** though by no means up to Mangan's higher level,
is entitled to praise. Mangan shortly afterwards published
it in the Dublin Pinny Journal, thus recording his own
good opinion of it It is, perhaps, of a gloomier cast than
the poems of his last years, being without even the faint

— JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 3}

3;leam of hopefulness which lights them. Though he seemed
:o foresee clearly his own sad future life, he never entirely
iost faith, and always exhorted his countrymen to " Hope
3n, hope ever." The poem, whose full title is " The Dying
Enthusiast to his Friend," may possibly have been ad-
dressed to James Tighc, who made every efibrt then and
iftcr to reconcile the poet to his condition: —

" Speak no more of life j

What can life bestow.
In this amphitheatre of strife.

All times dark with tragedy and woe?
Knoivest thou not how C3re and pain
Build their lamplcss dwelling in the brain.

Ever, as the stem intrusion
Of our teachers, time and truth,

Turn to i^Ioom the bright illusion,
Rainbowcd on the soul of j'Oulh f
Could I live to tind that this is so i
Oh t no I no t

As the stream of time

Sluggishly doth flow.
Look how all ol beaming and sublime

■Sinks into the black abyss below.
Yea, the loftiest intellect
E,irlic5t on the strand of life is wrecked.

34 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Henceforth haiL Oh, who would grovel

In a world impure as this ?
Who would weep in cell or hovel.

When a palace might be his ?
Wonld'st thou have me the bright lot forego?
Ohl nol nol**

At the time this poem was published the Dublin Penny
Journal was in its zenith, though only a month or two in
existence, and perhaps this is the most suitable place to say
what is required of tihis famous periodical. Started by Dr.
Petrie and others, and contributed to by John O'Donovan,
Aubrey de Vere, Edward Walsh, Sir William Betham,
Thomas Ettingsall, Robert Armstrong, Caesar Otway, John
Gettyi Petrie himself, and other notable antiquaries and
poets, it promised to have a long and successful career.
Mangan was an early contributor. Its chief purpose was
to foster Irish literature ; but it had other objects, principal
amongst which was the extending of the knowledge of
Irish antiquities and folk-lore. Its editors were anxious to
make known to the world the priceless value and extent of
the material records in stone and metals, no less than in
manuscript, and while it lasted it did splendid service in
that direction. But, unfortunately, after its first year its
proprietor sold it to Mr. Philip Dixon Hardy, whose touch
was blighting. Everyone in Dublin knew that the journal was
doomed to extinction as soon as this fanatical *'swaddler" ^
assumed control. His bigotry and prudishness were such
that literature could not thrive under him. He had already
compassed the death of one or two other journals, and
nearly all its distinguished writers, and most of its readers,
ceased to take any further interest in the Dublin Penny
Journal. During its first year of life it was admirable in
every respect Mangan began his connection with it in
November, 1 832, by a translation from " Filicaja," signed "C."
A second one followed on December ist, similarly signed,
but addressed from "Clarence Street, Liverpool." He
masquerades as an Italian, and is referred to as ''our Italian
correspondent" His address was a fictitious one, for he
was never out of Ireland in his life. It is interesting, as show-
ing his gradual assumption of the pseudonym '' Clarence,"
to note this Other sonnets from the Italian show that he

* A nuiie which has the Mine n^nificMict at ^^touper," and was applied to
the then namcrow clait of pcoaelytuen.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. $5

'as at this time studying that language carefully. But his
ttention became permanently attracted to the German
octs, and his interest in them never wavered or slackened

om this point onwards. Over the signature of "A Constant
Leader " he asks O'Donovan a couple of questions, which
nply that he is studying Irish, and he adds: "I intend,
Ir. Editor {Deo volente), in a few years hence to travel into
)enmark, Sweden, and Norway, where I might chance to
ick up some valuable Irish manuscripts." A few weeks
iter appears his poem, "The One Mystery," with the
ignature of " Clarence." There can be no doubt, from his
incy for repeating to his friends the lines from Shake-
peare, "Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,"

lat the Duke who is only remembered by the fact of his
avtng been drowned in a butt of Malmsey, was a fasci-
ating individuality to Mangan, who had no other reason
3r adopting his title as a nom de guerre on so many occa*
ions." "The One Mystery" belongs to the same order
f verse as "The Dying Enthusiast," but it is somewhat
uperior in diction and rhythm. It is given here for the

ioefit of the many who do not know it : —

*"Tis idle, we exhaust and squander

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

When this decaying shell is cold,
Oh ! sayest thou the soul shall climb

The magic mount she trod of old
Ere cnildhood*s time?

And shall the sacred pulse that thrilled

Thrill once again to glory's name?
And shall the conquering love that filled

All earth with flame.
Reborn, revived, renewedi immortal.

Resume his reig^ in prouder mighty
A sun beyond the ebon portal

Of death and night ?

No more, no more — with aching brow,

And restless heart and burning brain,
We ask the When, the Where, the How,

And ask in vain.
And all philosophy, all faith.

All earthly — all celestial lore.
Have but one voice, which only saith —

Endure — Adore."

Mangan's two last poems in the Penny Journal were
Enthusiasm," and an excellent version of Schiller's
Lament of Ceres.'* I quote the former —

••Not yet trodden under wholly,
Not yet darkened,
Oh, my spirit's flickering lamp, art thou t
Still, alas I thou wanest — though but slowly ;
And I feel as though my heart had hearkened
To the whispers of despondence now.

Yet the world shall not enthral me —
Never 1 never!
On my briary pathway to the grave
Shapes of pain and peril may appal me.
Agony and ruin may befall me —

Darkness and dismay may lower ever.
But, cold world, I will not die thy slave t

Underneath my foot I trample
You, ye juggles-
Pleasure, passion, thirst of power and gold I
Shall 1, dare I> shame the bright example,
Beaming, burning in the de^ and struggles
Of the consecrated few of old ?

Sacred flame — which art eternal I
Oh I bright essence t
Thou, Enthusiasm t forsake me not I
Oh, though life be reft of all her vernal
Beauty, ever let thy magic presence
Shed its glory round my clouded loL"

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 37

OiTi good result of Mangan's connection with the paper
Ivas his acquaintance with Petrie and O'Donovan, who were
Both able to befriend him in after life. He has left us his
■mpressions of the two scholars, and a few passages are
Interesting. The sketches from which I quote were written
In the last few months of the poet's life. Of "dear old
Tetrie," as Cartyle calls him, he says : —

" If he can syrnpaihise with ihe dry drollery of Charles Lamb, he

.s himself more than 1 should be inclined to accuse him of; but I

lather imagine that cjuainiest of all my bound and lettered acquain-

^nces would have lilile prospect of a perusal under his hand by the

lide of another version of the 'Tara Hymn of St. Palrirk." The

Bharacier ofDr. Petrie in private life is without blemish. His appear-

- ruly patriarchal, and his manner does not belie his appearance.

DC anything in or about him which even the most rigid dis-

liplinarian could translate into the name of a failing, it is his indul-

ence towards the errors and weakness of mankind. Not, certainly,

1 my opinion, but questionless, the less that I allude to any cause

isentiilin;^ me from breathing a syllable of reproach against the most

Bbandoned of delinquents the better. 1 speak of the view which

Bociety would be likely to entertain of the matter. Dr. Petrie would

■, 1 apprehend, but an indifferent Attorney- General, and, ccrtes,

d shine with the very least conceivable degree of lustre as a

Janging judge."

Of O'Donovan he had an equally grateful and kindly

38 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

never have any cordial sympathy on any of the great questions
which habitually absorb the consideration of all human souls not
cmlmitified by sensual pleasure or enslaved by the pursuit of gain.

Since that perioa, however, I have had abundant reasons to
abandon my first conceptions of the intellectual calibre of this dis-
tinguished man. In reality no one exists who combines a larger share
of the imaginative mind with the philosophical than John O'Donovan.
Only it is not quite apparent at first, not very clearly seen on the
smface of his character. You must search for it, as you would delve
into the mountain side for a mine of gold. But when you have found
it it richly repays your trouble. Mr. G'Donovan never dazzles ; but
he shines witn a steady and well defined li^ht. He is never brilliant,
bat neither is he ever obscure. His reasonings improve greatly upon
acquaintance, as wine acquires a more delicious flavour by the lapse
of years. You grow fond of listening to him ; and when the souna of
his voice no longer echoes in your ears* it almost appears to you as
though some exquisite strain of music had been suddenly stilled.
There is to-day no person of my acquaintance whose conversation of
aa evening, be the subject what it might, I should prefer to that of
John O'Donovan. • . The private character of Mr. G'Donovan is
truly praiseworthy. I happen to know something of him in this
lespea ; and I can with all sincerity affirm that, excepting, perhaps,
Dc Anster, I have never met with his equal for frankness of soul, and
generous, genuine, unostentatious kindness. Personally I owe him a
debt of i^itude which 1 can never repay. May he flourish and
m>sper like a tree in its ripeness, for he is a good man, and a thorough
Irishman."

Now and again during the rest of 1832 the initials
*J, C. M." appear in the Comet, but thenceforth the
signature of " Clarence " becomes the usual mark by which
bis writings in the paper may be traced. Occasionally
he uses the anything but cryptic signature of '^ B A M."
In a poem entitled " Childhood,'' printed early in 1833, he
recalls his youthful emotions and hopes, and although
his infancy was not happy, he still yearns for its irrespon*
silnlities. Viewed in the light of later experience his
earlier years were comparatively blissful : —

** And where is now the golden hour, .
When earth was as a fairy realm.
When fancy revelled
Within her own enchanted bower.
Which sorrow came to overwhelm.
Which reason levelled ?
When life was new and hope was young
And sought and saw no other chart
Than rose where'er
We turned— the crystal jov that sprung
Up freshly from the bubbling heart —
Oh I tell us where ?

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 39

~ I tee thy willow-darkened streaoi.
Thy waveless lake, thy sanless gmw%
Before me glassed
In many a dimlv-gorgeoos dream*
And wake to love» to doubly love
The m^ic past.
Or fiction lifts her dazzling wand«
And lo ! thy buried wonders rise
On slumber's view.
Till all Arabia's genii-land
Shines out* the mimic paradise

Thy pencil drew.
• • • • • •

But thou, lost vision, memory clings
To all of bright, and pure, and fond*
By thee enrolled :
Mementoes as of times and things
Antique, remote, far, far beyond
The flood of old."

The banter or <* chaff/' if not worse, which the morbid
mind of the extremely self-conscious poet did not relish
coming from his fellow-clerks, was soon liberally bestowed
upon him by some of the Comet writers and notably
by John Sheehan, who seems to have shown little
sympathy for his troubles. Observing Mangan's many
weaknesses, he evidently looked upon him with con-
tempt. He was quite incapable of appreciating the
finer qualities of his mind, his own vulgar, coarse nature
finding pleasure and admiration only among the bois-
terous and reckless spirits who foregathered at the tavern
kept by Henry Howard in Church Row,* off Dame
Street, where the proprietor's son, Alfred, the editor of the
disreputable Paddy Kelly's Budget^ and writers of his
stamp were to be frequently met.f Mangan was practi-
cally driven out of the society of his colleagues in the
attorney's office and the " Comet Club." There was, how-
ever, one member of the club, at least, who understood
and pardoned the eccentricities of '^ Clarence.'' This was
James Price, % a young literary man of talent, who many
years after wrote with generous feeling and admiration of

* It stood on portion of the site now occupied hy Corlen*! Restanmnt
t The ComMi and Paddy /da/s Budgu were both erentiially pubUihed
opposite Howard'i Tavern in Church Row.

% Price wrote tome interesting poems for varioos Dublin end other papen,
and wu editor of Uie Rveminr PmckH at Uie time of his death (January 14th,
i^. A kmcmount of hialifo has been written by Idi. rohnM^Oaifora

40 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

unfortunate friend. The shy, often abstracted poet
sought comfort in the taverns himself, but he secluded
hin^f from the gaze of his ** friends.'' The habit of self-
companionship grew upon him so much that he shunned
people he knew, rarely visited anybody, and when he left
his office, instead of going to his home, which bad no
attraction for him, he stole into one or other of the
taverns, where he would sit for hours in thought, noticing
no one, and if observed himself, caring little about it. He
was not, it is believed, a heavy drinker at this time. He
would sometimes shake off this feeling of isolation and
friendlessness, and few more delightful companions could
be found than Mangan in his more cheerful moments.
He added a little to his income by teaching German to a
few pupils. Among these was a Miss Hayes, of Rehoboth
House,* Dolphin's Bam, then a rural district outside
Dublin. The house is almost certainly that one described
by Mangan in one of his autobiographical fragments : —

" On the south side of the city of Dublin, and about half way down an
avenue which breaks the continuity of that part of the Circular Road
extending from Harold's Cross to Dolphin's Bam, stands a house
plain in appearance, and without any peculiarity of external structure
to attract the passenger's notice. Adjoining the house is a garden
with a sort of turret lodge at the extreme end, which looks forth on
the high road. The situation is lone and picturesque, and he who
should pause to dwell on it must be actuated by other and deeper, and
possibly, sadder feelings, than any that such a scene would be likely to
excite in the breast of the poet or artist. Perhaps he should be under
the influence of such emotions as I recently experienced in passing the
spot after an absence of seventeen years." t . . . ** Seventeen
years ! Let me rather say seventeen centuries. For life upon life has
followed and been multiplied on and within me during that long, long
era of passion, trouble and sin. The Pompeii and Herculaneum
of my soul have been dug up from their ancient sepulchres. The few
broken columns and solitary arches which form the present ruins of
what was once Palmyra present not a fainter or more imperfect picture
of that great city as it nourished in the days of its vouth and glory
than I, as I am now, of what I was before I entered on the career
to which I was introduced by my first acquaintance with that lone
house in 1831. Years of so much mingled pleasure and sorrow I
Whither have you departed, or rather, why were you allotted me ? You
delivered me from sufferings which at least were of a guiltless order,
and would shortly, in a better world, have been exchanged for ioys, to
ghre me up to others, the bitter fruits of late repentance, and which

* Sir John Stetensoo, the compoMr, lived in this house, it is said, when he
I anrninging Moore'i /risk MUidUs.
t This WM written in 1849.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 41

await no recompense, and know no change, save from severe to se-
verer. But a!as ! thus it was, is, and must be. My plaint is chonissed
by millions. Generation preaches to generation in vain. It is ever
and everywhere the same old, immemorial tale. From the days of
Adam in Eden to our own, we purchase knowledge at the price of in-
nocence. Like Aladdin in the subterranean garden, we are permitted
to heap together and gather up as mtich hard bright gold and diamonds
as we will— but we are forever, therefore, entombed from the fresh,
natural green pastures and the hcaittty daylighL"

Miss Catheritie Hayes was a young girl, and Mangan
became very much attached to her. But there is not the
slightest reason for assuming, as some writers have done,
that his Hieing for her constituted the famous love affair con-
cerning which so much mystery has been made. There is
no doubt that about this very time Mangan was in love
with a lady to whom allusion will be made directly. Mean-
while, it should be mentioned that Miss Hayes died in
October, 1832, and Mangan, who felt her loss very keenly,
wrote a touching poem on the event in the Cotnet, entitled
"Elegiac Verses on the Death of a Beloved Friend."
Price, speaking of this death, says : —

"aarence, so keenly sensitive to the influence of grief— SO devoted
in bis personal attachments— had not only to mourn over unrequited
love, but was doomed to follow to ihe firavc an early and faithful
friend, one in whose perfect communion of feeling he ever looked for.

4S THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

, 'Weep not for me, bot for yomrtelvesp' wu said
By Him who bore the cross on which He Ued;
And if I drop a solitary tear.
It is that thoa art gone while I am here.

And he who^ looking on the naked chart
Of lifo^ feels nature sinking at his heart :
He who is dragged with sorrow* he for whom
Afflicdon carves a pathway to the tomb-
He win unite with me to bless that Power
Who gathers and transplants the fragile floweiv
Ereyet the spirit of lifo s certain storm
Comes forth m wrath, to ravage and deform.

And if it be that God Himself removes
From peril and contagion those He loves»
I*n weep no more^ but strew with freshest roses
The hallowed moond where Innocence reposes.

The world is round me now. bat sad and shiglo
I stand amid the throng with whom I mingle ;
Not one of all of whom can be to me
The bosom treasure I have lost in thee.** *

^TUi poem nun lo nineteea vases in the Cnmif. Six years aftcrwuds
isdoOly lepriatod most of it ia the MAwrn^ JIfiMmM
thelriihr

JAMBS CLARENCE MANGAN. 43

CHAPTER V.

AN ADVENTURE IN ** THE SHADES " — INFLUENCE OF DE QUINCSY
— ^DR. MAGINN'S CONVIVIAL HABITS — MANGAN'S PERSONAL
QUAUTIES— SHEEHAN'S BAD TASTE— '' A FAST KEEPER " —
MANGAN ON POETS— '' BROKEN HEARTED LAYS**— ''UFB IS
THE DISERT AND THE SOLITUDE "— MANGAN'S LAST POEM IN
THE ** COMET " — HIS OPINION OF THE EDITORS.

** Ah, for yoath*f delirious hoon
Man pays well in after days.
When spent hopes and wasted powers
Mock his love-and-langhter lays,"— Mangan.

In his '^ Extraordinary Adventure in the Shades/' which
the Corned published in January, 1833, we get some inter-
^ting glimpses of Mangan.

'< Under present circumstances," he says, ^m]r only feasible pro-
ceeding is to inarch onward rectilineally, cheek-by-jowl with the spirit
of the age, to abandon the bower of Fancy for the road-beaten path-
way of Reason — ^renounce Byron for Bentham, and resign the brilliant
and burning imagery of the past for the frozen realities of the present
and the future.**

After expatiating for some time upon a singular man
whom he meets in ** The Shades,''* while awaiting the arrival
of his friend ''Brass Pen,"t with whom he had an appoint*
pfient, Mangan comes to the conclusion that the strange
individual before him is Dr. Bowring,the then well-known
translator. Everything convinces him of the correctness
of his inference, tiiough he has never seen Bowring in his
life. Every movement of the mysterious person proclaims
him to be the well known delver in the fields of foreign
literature. He hesitates to accost him,' however.

^ A tavern which stood fai College Green. ** A classic spot,** says Mangin.
The National Bank now covers its site.

t A Wcstmcath poet named Joseph Lestvsnge^ who was a ooatribntor t6
the CmpmT and other joumaU of iu class. Mr. John M*CaU wrote sone ycu»
ago an account of his life lior an Irish periodkd.

44 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

** Would it be reasonable ? Would it be even polite ? Should I
not in €ict desenre to be hooted down whenever I exhibited m^rself,
and driven, like Ahasueros the wanderer, from post to pillar, seeking
idnge now in a cavern and now in a pot-house, and finding rest no-
whatf a houseless wretch, a spectacle to sodety* and a melancholy
memorial to after ages ! "

It has already been suggested that Mangan clearly fore-
saw his ultimate misery, and passages like that just quoted,
which are numerous even in his early writings, are evidence
of his gift of foretelling ** coming events " by the shadows
cast before them.

He goes on to descant upon mannerism in a poet :— -

** Mannerism is a grave thing, pursued I, following the current of
my reflections. It is the real heavy bullion, the genuine ore, the ingot
itself; every other thing is Jelly and soapsuds. You shall tramp the
earth in vain for a more pitiable object than a man of genius with
nothing else to back it with. He was bom to amalgamate with the
mud we walk upon, and will, whenever he appears in public, be trodden
upon like that Transfuse into this man a due portion of mannerism-;;-
the metamorphosis is marvellous. Erect he stands and blows his
trumpet* the sound whereof echoes unto the uttermost confines of our
magnificent world. Senates listen, empires tremble, thrones tumble
down before him. He possesses the wand of Prospero, the lamp of
Aladdin, the violin of Paganini, the assurance of the devil. What has
conferred all these advantages upon him ? Mannerism, destitute of
which we are, so to speak, walking humbugs— destitute of which the
long odds are that the very best individual among u^ after a life spent
on the treadmill system, dies dismally in a sack.*'

Finally, after the figure has undergone several transforma-
tions, Mangan is convinced that the strange visitor is a
mighty oriental necromancer, and he proceeds : —

'' What was to be done ? Hastily to discuss the remainder of my
wine, to order a fresh bottle, and to drink six or eight glasses in rapid
succession, was the operation of a few minutes. And oh, what a
change I Qeverly, indeed, had I calculated upon the glorious reaction.
Words I have none to reveal the quiescence of spirit that succeeded
the interior balminess that steeped my faculties in blessed sweetness.
I felt renovated, created anew. I had undergone an apotheosis. I
wore the cumbrous habiliments of flesh and blood no longer ; the shell,
hitherto the circumscriber of my soul, was shivered. I stood out in
front of the universe a visible and tangible intellect, and held, with
giant grasp* the key that had power to unlock the deep prison which
enclosed tlie secrets of antiquity and futurity I"

It suddenly occurs to him that the magician can exercise
his infernal art upon him, and he soliloquises : —

*Too intimately am I aojuainted with thine iron character to
doubt Cor an instant thy rocky mmiovability of purpose I What thou

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 45

wiliest, that executest thou! Expostalation and remonstrance* oratorjr
and poetry are to thee so much rigmarole ; even my tears will be thy
laughing stock. I have not the ghost of a chance agkinst thee • • •
To look in any direction but the one I felt to be totally impractic-
able. He had spell-bound me doubtlessly ; his accursed jugglery had
been at work while I» with the innocent unsuspiciousness which forms
my distinguishing characteristic, had been occupied in draining the
decanter* Was ever an inhabitant of any city in Europe so horribly pre-
dicamented ? It was manifest that he had already singled me out as his
first victim. I foreknew the destiny whereunto I was reserved. I saw
the black marble dome, the interminable suites of chambers* the
wizard scrolls, the shafts and arrows, and in dim but dreadful perspec-
tive the bloody cage in which, incarcerated under the figure oif a bat,
I should be doomed to flap my leathern wings througn the sunless
day."

Mangan eventually finds himself in bed, and learns that
the extraordinary visitor who had caused him so much per-
turbation was none other than his friend '' Brass Pen.'*

Now, the interest and importance of this sketch lie in
its establishing, as it seems to me to do, three things —
namely, that Mangan had been indulging in opium ; that
he was strongly under De Quinceps influence whilst
writing the article, passages in which, as readers will allow,
are not unlike ** The English Opium-Eater ; " and that the
poet was already an admirable prose writer. So far, the
prose extracts have been mainly those from his later
writings. There can be no doubt, I think, that had he
wished, had he written seriously and upon the most suitable
subjects, he might have become as distinguished in prose
as in verse.

Two or three weeks after the appearance of the *^ Extra-
ordinary Adventure,'' Mangan, emulating Swift, who once
wrote, as a burlesque upon Robert Boyle, a discourse about
a broomstick, perpetrated *' A Treatise on a Pair of Tongs,"
which is an extremely characteristic piece of pleasantry.
It needs to be repeated that the Conul did not desire
gloomy or remorseful verse, and made light of anything
in that vein, preferring the satirical or the frivolous, but
especially the partisan, pen, and Mangan was naturally
inclined to ** grin," as he himself expressed it In one of
his early sketches he admits a peculiarity which he was
well aware every reader of his works would immediately
observe: —

" I occupy,** says he, " the laughable office of Grinner-General to
the public at lazge • • • Lord Chesterfield observes— 'There are
some people who have ahabit of always laughing when they speak, sa

46 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

that thdr fiioes are perpetually on the grin.' This is precisely my
case; I am grinning night and day like a mountebank through a horse
coOar. I now begin iw the first time in my life thoroughly to under*
ttuid that the great business of my existence is grinning/'

In his ** Treatise on a Pair of Tongs " he is most whim-
^cal and quaint, but scarcely inspiring. Under his mask
of gaiety and light-heartedness he concealed a wounded
^irit, a lacerated heart The ** treatise " is really amusing
nonsense, though its author was most unhappy while he was
preparing this humorous effort. Here is a sample of it : —

''If a bachelor be so unfortunate as to have neither cook nor
housemaid, the concentrated energies of his own mind should be
lavished upon the task of burnishing his tongs. When I stalk into a
dramngroom and perceive a magnificent brace of tongs genteelly
lounging by the fireside I experience a glow of spirit and a flow of
thought bordering on the archangelical. Standers-by are instantane-
ously stricken lifeless with astonishment at the golden tide of poetry
which, in myriads of sunny streams and glittering rivulets, issues Ironi
my lips ; poetry as far beyond what you, Public, are accustomed to get
from me. as ambrosia is beyond hogwash. With modest effrontery I
take a chair, and if my quick eye detect the presence of anything in
the shape of wine or punch on the table I cheerfullpr abolish its exist-
ence. Impelled, as I am, on such occasions by an irresistible impulse,
all apolo^ is superfluous ; but, to speak the truth, the mingled grace
and gravity that accompany my performance of the manGeuvre afford
superabundant compensation to the company for the disappearance of
the drinkables.'*

Excellent fooling, perhaps ; but the thought arises —
how unnatural a style for Mangan, and how much more
dignified a position he might have occupied than that of
••tickling the ears of the groundlings" who read the Coinetl
It is so necessary to a complete picture of the man to dwell
upon his frequent change of mood, to notice his indirect
allusions to himself, that, at the risk of seeming to give
undue prominence to these epheinerides^ I must quote
another sentence or two, which might have been written by
Dr. Maginn, whom Mangan evidently admired, and b
interesting as showing the influence of diat famous wit and
winebibbor. Mangan alludes to his own habit of —

*• Swilling firom time to time protracted draughts from a pitcher of
punch to invigorate the nerves and preserve me from hysterics." *• Let
me reflect," he goes on ; ** it b now 2 ajn. ; taverns are closed ; not a
minimum of rum under my roof; I am waterless, sugarless, and

spir ; no, not spiritless. I go forth, Public, in terrible night and

flashiDg rain and howling tempest, to storm the city for a beaker."

It must be remembered that at the time this was written

JAMES CLARENCE BtANGAN. 47

there was a large and admiring audience for similar stuff.
It was made popular by Ms^inn and the thirsty group that
assisted him in Frtuuf^s Magazine. The man who did not
relish whiskey-punch was considered a fool or a knave, and,
as a matter of fact, in those pre-temperance days, it would
have been almost impossible to find anybody who did not
participate, more or less, in the '' pleasures '' of the bottle.
We have seen that Mangan participated in them with
eagerness in the endeavour to escape from the thoughts
of his dismal life ; in extenuation of his errors in this
respect may be put his personal wretchedness and the
persecution to which he was subject It must not be for-
gotten, either, notwithstanding the opinions of modem
crusaders in favour of total abstention, that a sober Mangan
might have been a nullity in literature. Without his mis-
fortunes, and consequent excesses, we should probably
have been bereft of his priceless legacy to Irish literature;
and one cannot very harshly condemn a poet who, despite
his follies, has done such wonderful work. It should be
stated at once that, apart from his too ready and reckless
indulgence in the universal vice of his day, Mangan was
uncontaminated in any way. All who knew him are agreed
upon this point He never did anyone an injury — ^he alone
suffered for his errors — ^he never sought to revenge himself
upon any of his enemies, if he had any ; he was full of
piety, gentleness, resignation, and affection, as even those
who have pnly casually studied his life and writings can see.
Of revengeful feeling he harboured not a trace, though he
had good reason for detesting some of his soi^disant friends.
He has himself said : —

*^ All the blank-Tcrsii^ng in Europe to the contrary notwithstand-
ing, revenge of personal wrongs is a mean passion. • • • I am
convinced that none besides grovelling minds are capable of harbour-
ing it."

Mitchel says very truly : —

**He had no malignity,* sought no revenge, never wrought sorrow
and suffering to any human being but himself. In his deadly struggle

"^ la one of his antobiogmphical allusions in the DubUm Umhirsity Maga^
iMM, Mangui ironieslly remarks — " It is a matter pretty notorioos at present
that ne have our share ot fupHt moHrn: the detection of fiuilti never failing
to affMd ns deep latisfcfltion while the diieoveiy of beaatics agonises us.*

48 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

with the cold world he wore no defiant air and attitude, was always
lunnble and affectionate,* almost prayerfuL"

And again : —

^ His manner and voice were always extremely gentle, and I never
heard him blame anybody but himself. Neither did he speak much
of his utter misery and desolation, but it was easy to perceive that his
being was all drowned in the blackest despain"t

It was at this period that Mangan was most under the
influence of Maginn, to whom he refers several times in his
writings. X It is strange that one so widely read in contem-
porary English literature as he undoubtedly was should
have felt no desire to contribute to the notable English
periodicals of the day, but such seems to have been the
case with Mangan. He never wrote a line in Fraser or
Blacituoadf or Uiosc other magazines which he was in the
habit of reading. Yet there can be little doubt that had he
obtained admission to the select company of contributors
to the periodicals referred to his reputation in the world of
literature would be vastly greater than it is. His writings
would have rivetted public attention and commanded admi-
ration outside Ireland.

James Price gives an interesting account of his first
meeting with Mangan at the ** Comet Club " : —

^ It was at the dinner party of a literary club that he had recently
joined — inthemidstof a circle of Dublin's choicest spirits. . . . Primi-
tive in appearance, simple in habits, knowing nothing of the world, and
not yet under the dommion of that fatal indulgence to which, in after
life, he was unfortunately a slave, he was not at home amongst the
wild and reckless beings he there encountered. To * roast' the retiring
and half-frightened student* the president called on him for a son^.
He declared his inability to sing, and was pressed the more by his
boisterous companions. Nervously anxious to court their good opinion,
he then, with the utmost simplicity, said he would attempt a recitation,
and actually, in a monotonous tone, went through nearly the whole of
* Marino Faliero * before he discovered that they were only amusing
themselves at his expense. We afterwards met frequently at this dul^

^ One who knew him well (probably Joseph Brenan), wrote thus after his
death — " He was kind-hearted and affectionate , his love was gende as woman's.
We have heard him say that he coold Aats nothing."

t Mitcbel is of course speaking of the last years of Mangan's life in this
passage.

^ow and again we come across sentences which read very like the im-
moittl " Maxims of Sir Morgan CDoherty," as, for example : '< From the
moment that any man tells me that he cannot tinderstand the humoar of Rabe*
lais I ntwa cart to speak to him, or to bear Urn speak to me on literary

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 49

and always found ' Clarence'— the signature appended to his early lite-
rary productions — the same simple, innocent creatuief full of that fresh
romance which, as at the touch of an enchanter's wand, summons up
shapes of beauty and glory. • • . He was the least worldly being we
ever met His sensibilities were keen and easily excitable, and his
whole organization, physical and mental, was instinct with genius.
A peculiar feature or his character was Uie intense melancholy that
rested upon him continually like a shadow. No matter how mat
the festivity— how bright the faces surrounding him — a deep gloom
would suddenly fall upon ' Clarence,' a gloom that he conld not shake
off"

The Cornet^ though very willing to accept his writings,
certainly never appreciated the better side of his powers,
and its editor was even guilty of the bad taste of sneering
at his sentiments, and of disparaging his personal appear-
ance. Occasionally, one finds a more or less (generally
less) witty allusion to him in '' Answers to Correspondents/*
as thus — " Clarence has no permanent residence fixed on
yet, and may, in the meantime, be seen of a hazy
morning heavily finding his way out of a watchhouse with
other Peep o' Day Boys.'' For a time Mangan took no
notice of these remarks, but he withdrew from the paper when
the usual limit of jesting was passed.

In No. 99 of the Comet (March 17th, 1833), there.are a
couple of his sonnets, one of which '* A Fast Keeper,** is
already well known to students of Mangan's lighter
effusions : —

** My friend, Tom Bentley, borrowed from me lately
A score of yellow shiners. Subsequently
I met the cove, and dunned him rather gently ;
Immediately he stood extremely stately,
And swore, 'pon honour, that he wondered greatly.

We parted coolly. Well (exclaimed I mentllyX
I calculate this isn't acting straightly ;
You*re what slangwhangers call a scamp, Tom Bentley.

In sooth, I thought his impudence prodigious ;

And so I told Jack Spratt a few days after;

But Jack burst into such a fit of laughter ;
* Fact is ' (said he), * poor Tom has turned religious.*
I stared, and asked him what he meant—
Why, don't you see,' quoth Jack 'ki kitfis tki Lint.**'

In the second sonnet, called "Symptoms of Heart
Disease," he punningly alludes to an imaginary or real
love episode of his, and to its effect upon his personal
appearance : —

50 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

•• My bail's a Whig— 'twill shortly turn to Grey ;•
ApiMdled at night from dreary areams I start :
My httdth is wrecked beyond the power of art,
I cani drink anything except some whey,
Vm credibly informea I've shrunk away
To half my sise— yet I've increased my sij^"

Id the following week's issue, in " An Ode to the Gmut^
Maogin has a sounding eulogy of

** The Camii so blazing* amazing and dever
The wonderful, thunderfiil Catmi (or ever 1 "*

Of Sheehan he says : —

'* That man is a goose,

Or at least he's a gander,
. Who dreams that the visible globe can produce

A match for Philander.

On the hi^h ground of principle

Phil is invincible :

It is always his glory

To slaughter a Tory,

And fiercely to tweak

That rascally clique

Of Whigs by the beak

Till the vagabonds shriek.
He makes dismal examples

Of renegade knaves ;
His heel into powder imperially tramples
Your Castle-haclc fawners and crouchers and slaves ;
His price is exceedingly far above rubies I "

And so on for a few more lines. Sheehan did not
reciprocate this feeling of admiration^every allusion to
••Clarence** (sometimes called "Clear-hence") is a some
what contemptuous one. Mangan was now nearing the
end of his connection with the paper, and some of his few
remaining contributions are not in the least in the Comet
vein. They are chiefly the expression of his personal sor«
sows Other pieces prove what has already been suggested,
that he deliberately "grinned," to use a favourite term of
his, in order to conceal the true feelings which were rack-
ing his heart In one of his Univirsify Magazim articles
he grimly says :*•

** Poets are a gay, grinnine, joking, jolly set of fellows, full of life,
lanshter, and waggery. To this all Dublin can testify. We appeal
to uie experience of every man, woman, and child between Rathmmes

'^EarlGicy.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

Not one soul ol them all, big orlitile, bui must in honour admit that
we stick like wax to the unvarnished truth."

PiKts eat and drink without stint," he adds, with an evident glann
« his own forlorn condition, " and seldom at their own cost— for what
nan of mark or likelihood in the moneyed world is there who is not
^er to get their legs under his mahogany ? Again, poets never fall •
n love— their sympathies are of too cosmopolitan an order for ih«
iKcIusiveness demanded by the tender passion,"

Yet despite all this aflected liveliness, he says in one of
lis poems : —

" But oh. no horror over-darks

The stanzas of my gloomlul verse
Like that which then weighed down my soul I "

" Broken-hearted lays — Na I." is the title of Mangan's
lext piece, and it has more of the real Mangan in it than
ilinost any other of his writings from the Comet. Its deli-
>erate anticlimax is certainly an unpleasant indication of
he poet's mania for mystification, the object of it being
:learly to show that he was not so wretched as he pretended
o be. Mangan never entirely lost this eccentricity, which
las unqucstiunally spoiled several of his poems. Tbepoeoi,
vhich is little known, is as follows : —

fa THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

When* yielding to the might she cannot master.

The soul foiisdces her palace halls of youth,

And (touched by the Ithuriel wand of truth,
Which oft in one brief hour works wonders vaster

Than those of Egypt's old magician hostX

Sees at a single glance that all is lost 1
And brooding in her cold and desolate lair
Over the plumtom-wrecks of things that were,

And asking destiny if nought remain ?

Is answers — ' Bitterness and life-long pain,
Remembrance, and reflection and despair,

And torturing thoughts that will not be forbidden,

And agonies that cannot all be hidden.'

Oh ! in an hour like this, when thousands fix,
In headlong desparation, on self-slaughter.

Sit down, you droning, groaning bore, and mix
A glorious beaker of red rum and water I

And finally give care its flooring blow.
By one large roar of laughter, or euflaw.
As in the * Freischutz' cnorus : 'Haw I haw 1 haw 1 '

Vaffairi esi fat/e—you^vt bammed and bothered woe I ** *

At the very time he is writing this forced attempt at
gaiety he is assuring us in another poem, and probably
with truth : —

" My drooping heart can nowhere borrow
Lsmguage to paint its awful sorrow.*'

Mangan's connection with the Comet was now drawing
to a close, and his remaining contributions, with one notable
exception, are mostly exercises in rhyme. Such are his
*' Grand and Transcendent Ode and Acrostic, written for
the purpose of giving glory to the Cofnet^ and \}rhich I
publicly challenge any Mohawk in Europe to beat," and
''My Mausoleum," the first of which is clever, the last
merely curious trifling. He pauses in the midst of his
highest ** toploftical '' flight in the former poem to tell us

that—

" Talkers are partial to caulkers.
Thinkers have always been drinkers, and scribblers will always be
bibblers.**

Adding —

** Waiter 1 I solemnly charge you to vanish and make yourself handy;
And the best wav to do that is to cadge me a bottle of brandy*
If you've no pitcher, you sumph I haul in a half -gallon decanters-
Haul it in here by the neck, m style, in state, and instantirr

* Jtmet Price, in hit recollections of Mangan {Duhiin Evening Packtif
\t^S% sq^ HADgui wu under the inflacnce of opium when he wrote this

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 53

The finest of all the poems Mangan wrote for the Comet
is one that was printed on July 21st, iSjjt and entitled
'< Life is the Desert and the Solitude." * He evidently had
in his mind the lines from Edward Young^-

** Can then Death's self be feared ? Our life much rather :
Life is the Desert — Life the Solitude ;
Death only joins us to the great majority."

In this poem Mangan throws aside his mummer's garb, .
and lays bare the rankling wound which made his da)rs
and nights miserable to him. If it has not all the poignancy
of '' The Nameless One/' it has not less terrible truth and
reality. It would be astonishing that neither Mitchel nor
Father Meehan gave it a place in their collections, did we
not know that the former knew very few of Mangan's
orignal pieces, and that the latter, who was well aware of
Mangan's Comet work, contented himself with collecting
the whimsicalities alone. Here is the poem in its entirety^

" It is the joyous time of June,

And fresh from nature's liberal hand
Is richly lavished every boon

The laughing earth and skies demand ;
How shines the variegated land —

How swell the many sparkling streams t
All is as gorgeous and as grand

As the creations wherewith teems

The poet*s haunted brain amid his noonday dreams.

Falls now the golden veil of even ;

The vault on high, the intense profound.
Breaks into all the hues of heaven ;

1 see far off the mountains crowned
With glory — I behold around

Enough of summer's power to mould
The breast not altogether bound

By grief to thoughts whose uncontrolled

Fervour leaves feeling dumb and human utterance cold.

Yet I am far— oh 1 far from feeling

The life, the thrilling glow, the power
Which have their dwelling in the Dealing

And holy influence of the hour.
Affliction is my doom and dower ;

And carest in many a darkening throng,
Like night clouds round a ruin, lour

Over a soul which (never strong

To stem the tide of ill) will not resist them long.

. •;

* Manctn afterwaids atuched the mne title to one of his tmnilationt ftom
todwiglieck.

54 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

And all that glances on my vision*

Inanimate or breathing, rife
With voiceless beauty, half Elysian,

Of yoothfol and exubenmt hfe,
Serves but to nurse the sleepless strife

Within— arousing the keen thought.
Quick-bom, which stabbeth like a knife^

And waJces anticipations fraught

With heaviest hues of gloom from memory's pictures wrought

What slakeless strife is still consuming

This martyred heart from day to day?
Lies not the bower where love was blooming

Time-trampled into long decay?
Alas! when hope's illusive ray

Plays round our paths, the bright deceiver
Allures us only to betray,

Leaving us thenceforth wanderers ever

Forlorn along the shores of life's all-troubted river.

Had I but dreamed in younger years

That time should paralyse and bow
Me thus — ^thus fill mine eyes with tears —

Thus chill my soul and cloud my brow!
No ! I had not been breathing now —

This heart had long ago been broken;
I had not lived to witness how

Deeply and bitterly each token

Of bygone joy will yield what misery hath bespoken.

Alas! for those who stand alone —

The shrouded few who feel and know
What none beside have felt and known !

To all of such a mould below
Is bom an undeparting woe,

Beheld by none and shared with none —
A cankering worm whose work is slow,

And gnaws the heartstrings one by one

And drains the bosom's blood till the last drop be gone." *

The last piece sent by Mangan to the Comet is a serio-
comic poem, •• The Philosopher and the Child."t As he
wrote no more for the paper after its appearance, it is not
too much to assume that John Sheehan's remarks upon it,
which are in execrably bad taste, led to the severance.
Sheehan had previously annoyed the poet by his personal
gibes ; he seemed to take pleasure in animadverting upon
the broken-down appearance of ** Clarence," whom, at the

* This poem, somewhat altered and perhaps improved, appeared years later
In the DhoHh l/niversUy Magw$u under the title of "Stantai which Ought
Mt to have been Written in Midsummer.**

tMangui got this piece reprinted in ^^ B$lfut Vmiicuttr of October
9314 l8j9^ with his faiitials appended.

JAMES CLARENXB ICANGAN. 55

same time, he afiected to regard as a fop. Mangan was
unquestionably eccentric in his habits, but he was extremely
sensitive to ridicule. He wore a wig to conceal his greyness,
and Sheehan thought this an excellent opportunity for
cheap wit In ''The Philosopher and the Child '* Mangan
describes how one day he saw an old patriarch talking
earnestly to a little child, and he immediately conjured up
in his mind a vision of Socrates and Pythagoras instructing
the youth of Attica and formulating sublime truths for
future ages. As the poet approaches the old man he finds
that what he has assumed to be words of deepest wisdom
are these : —

. *' Bad luck to dat oul* rap in Mary's Lane

Dat come and aked me for to sky de copper ; *
Bad luck to him, de vagabond! to rob
And swindle me wid pitch and toss, and fob
De penny dat I wanted for de cropper 1'* t

To this burlesque efiusion Sheehan appended a few
vulgar remarks, to the effect that its author was dnmk when
he wrote it, and advising him to go to Sir Arthur Clarke
(a well-known Dublin ph)rsician, brother-in-law to Lady
Morgain) for the stomach pump, and adding : ** Make your
will, and leave the coroner a lock of your wig for the trouble
he will have at your inquest." That decided Mahgan's
departure for the Comet, which did not survive it long.
After undergoing several transformations, among which we
cannot include a return to good taste, and after incor-
porating itself with one or two other smaller journals, it
finally ceased in December, 1833, about five months sub-
sequent to the appearance of the last poem signed
•' Clarence."

Mangan has given us his opinion of the Comet men in
the autobiographical sketch written by him and signed
" E.W.,'' already referred to and quoted from. It is worth
reprinting as a fitting pendant to this chapter.

" About this time, as I believe, he became acquainted with the
editors ot the Cometh a journal which, some fifteen years back, earned
and enjoyed a high degree of notoriety throughout Ireland. They
tried to corrupt him, and fail^. He wrote for them gratuitously.
But when he attended at their drinking bouts, he always sat at the
Uble with a glass of water before him. They and their hangert-on,
most of whom have since gone to the— angel, at length laughed him
to scorn, voted him a * spoon,' and would have no more to do with
him. *Tis a m ad world, my masters I ' "

^Topkyatpitchaadtois. t A half-glMS of whiskey.

56 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER VI.

OnUM-BATnrG->DK QUINCSY — ^JAICSS PRICE'S TESTHCONY — ^BDGAR
ALLAN POB — ^MAMGAM'S LOVK AFFAIR — MITCHEL'S ACCOUNT —
^ mr TRANSFORMATION " — ICANGAN'S DISAPPOINTMENT — ^HIS
OWN STORY— UNES '* TO LAURA."

'* Thftt intolerabte word
Which, inlx tearching, pierceth Uk« « sword
The breast, whose wounds thenceforwiud know no healing.**

_^^^^ — Mangaic.

A QUESTION which has frequently exercised writers about
Mangan is, whether he had recourse to opium. He only
once denied that he used it In the short account of his
life which he fathered upon Edward Walsh, he uses these
words: —

" I conclude with a most solemn statement — that Mangan is nof
an opium-eater. He never swallowed a grain of opium in bis life* and
only on one occasion took — and then as a medicine — laudanum. The
veport with respect to his supposed opium-eating propensities origi-
nated from the lips of William Carleton, who for some or no purpose
thought proper to spread it"

To which it may be answered that Carleton never
declared it is a fact, but simply gave it as a common
rumour. Carleton was not alone in thinking that Mangan
took opium — his intimate friends all believed it. True,
Father Meehan seems (and only seems) to deny the story.
He says — ** As for opium, I never knew him to use it. The
poppy of the West satisfied his craving." But Father
Median only knew Mangan from 1845 to his death, and it
is quite possible that Mangan may have, like De Quincey,
reduced the quantity previously taken to an infinitesimal
amount, or may have given it up altogether. In one of his
earliest contributions to the Comet, namely — ^^ Very Original
Correspondence" — there is a short passage, the only
notable one in the sketch, which irresistibly reminds one
of an opium-eater's fancy : —

^'Yoa know, my friend, the constitutional placidity of my tem-
peiament ; bow like Epictetus I am, and so forth, but coming into

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 57

collision with the wrongheadedness of the age so freqaentljr as I do,
innate integrity and a sense of principle compel me to carse by bell,
book, and gasfieht* every thine and being in the vicinity of m^ person.
The Gorgon's head| the triple-faced hell dog, the biandwritmg on
Belshazzar's palace wall* the into-stone metamorphosinff snake
locks of Medusa, the Cock Lane Ghost, the Abaddon-bom visions of
Quincey, the opium-eater, the devil that perpetually stood opposite to
Spinello, the caverns of Dom Daniel, the fireglobe that bumed below
the feet of Pascal, were each and all miserable little bagatelles by the
side of the phantasmagoria that ever more haunt my brain and blast
my eyes." t

Whatever the cause, whether intolerable pains, as in
De Quincey's case, or from a desire to forget the trials and
tribulations to which he was a martyr, there is no room for
doubt that Mangan took opium. His intimate friend,
James Price, than whom no better authority could be
found, admits the use of opium : —

*' Poor Clarence 1 what a world of dreamy enthusiasm was thine I
How thickly studded was thy universe — the universe of thy better
spirit^ with rapturous fancies and golden hopes. How like an eastern
sky thy mind became at times, *with every thought a star.' The
opium drug, so destructive in its ultimate effects, but oh, how delicious
in its first visions, lifted thee from out thy abode of squalor, thy
associations of wretchedness. Thou becamest the denizen of another
—a fairy-world. Round thee ministrants to love and luxury and all
imaginable blisses thickly thronged. Thy mean garret grew to a
^[lowing garden, thy poor bed to a couch of roses. Changed for the
time were thy corporeal being and thy spiritual existence. But oh 1
when thy dearly lK>ught pleasure vanished— when the transient glow
faded, and the dismal reality stared in thy glazed eye, how terrible
was the reaction. Was it a wonder, poor mend, that this passion
grew on thee ? Was it a wonder that even the horrors of thy waking
misery did not deter thee from purchasing from a pleasureless life's
gloomy reality some fleeting moments of entrancing aelusion."

Mitchel, who was well acquainted with Mangan during
his latter years, and, at least, knew many to whom
Mangan's habits were not unfamiliar, expressly mentions
the use of opium : —

^ Here (at the scrivener*s) Mangan laboured mechanically, and
dreamed for certain months, perhaps years; carrying the proceeds in
money to his mother's poor home, storing in his memory the proceeds
which were not in money, but in another kind of ore, which might
feed the imagination indeecL but was not available for board and lodging.
All this time he was the bond-slave of opium. • • • No purer and
more benignant spirit ever alighted upon earth— no more acMuidoned
wretch ever found earth a purgatory and a hell."

* Cms wu, of course, a oorelty in January, 1833.
^ Almost these ideniiod words occur in a letter whidi he sabsequcntly
wrote to James Price.

58 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Again, he says, in another part of his essay :—

" And now hb life Sms wasted and gone — ^the very powers of
intellect and imagination, wherein he could freely live and move
'twenty golden years ago,' were now lying darkened and bound in the
toqKV produced by a horrible drug.'*

Mitchel was referrin^i^, in this Is^t sentence, to a later
period of Mangan's life than .we have yet reached, but it
is right to use his corroborative testimony here.

Others who knew Mangan well tell me that, though he
never admitted it, it was generally understood that he was
addicted to opium, especially in his earlier years. De
Quincey says he will not ''readily believe that any man hav-
ing once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards
descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol.''
But*Mangan was able to accomplish this (as De Quincey
suggested) almost impossible change. Neither His recourse
to opium nor to alcohol was due to a desire for epicurean
pleasure, but, as cannot bef too often stated, with the vain
object of alleviating his wretched condition of ill-health
and intellectual misery. As De Quincey suggests, few
woulc^ indulge in the practice ** purely for the sake of
creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement."
Perhaps Mangan felt as the English opium-eater did when
he%rst tasted the dread narcotic : —

** Happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the
wsustcoat pocket ; portable *eq^tasies might be had corked up in a pint
bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail
coach.**

•

He soon learned that itl-elieved-but to plunge again into
deepest gloom and depression, and that the last state wa^
worse than the first De Quincey informs us that —

** The opium eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspira-
tions; he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realise what he
believes possible and feels to be exacted by duty ; but his intellectual
apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of
execution only, but even of power to attempt.**

In this way Mangan's already feeble will was still further
weakened, and his efforts to retrieve himself were doomed
to failure from the moment he sought oblivion in opium.
Edgar Allan Poe, in one of his last letters to a friend, while
admitting his own excesses, dwelt upon the fact that his
feeling ofmiseiy was stronger than his will. He says :— *

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 59

** I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I some-
times so madly indulge, it has not been in the pursuit of pleasure
that I have perilled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the
desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories — memories of
wrong and iniustice and imputed dishonour— from a sense of insup-
portable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

These words apply to Mangan fully, and instead of
heaping blame upon the unfortunate poet, we ought rather
to give him credit for his restraint of himself during so
long a period) for it was only in the last few years of his life
that his feeble will completely abandoned the struggle and
allowed the temptation to drink to master him altogether.
It will be necessary to return to this question of opium-
eating again, and, therefore, it may be left for the
present

It must have been early in the thirties — or even earlier
— ^that Mangan made the acquaintance of a family, living
in Ranelagh, in which there were three daughters. The
whole affair has been made a mystery, and in many of its
details it is likely to remain one, but a few facts are obtain-
able. Father Meehan does not mention it at all, and other
writers arc either equally silent, or entirely wrong in their
inferences and assumptions. The name of the lady was
Margaret Stackpoole, and, according to tradition, the family
lived in 'Mountpleasant Square. Mangan felt a strong
admiration for one of the girls, and from an admirer
gradually became a warm lover. Miss Stackpoole, he
says, reciprocated the feeling, and gave him a good deal
of encouragement Mitchel thus refers to the cpisod<

" In that obscure, unrecorded interval of his life,* he seems to have
some time or other, by a rare accident, penetrated into a sphere of life
higher and more renned than any which his poor lot had before
revealed to him ; and even to have dwelt therein for certain davs.
Dubiously, and with difficulty, I collect from those who were his
intimates many years thus much. He was on terms of visiting
in a house where were three sisters ; one of them beautiful,
sfiirituelU^ and a coquette. The old story was here once more
re-enacted in due order. Paradise opened before him ; the imagin-
ative and passionate soul of a devoted boy bended in homage before
an enchantress. She received it, was pleased with it, even encouraged
and stimulated it, by various arts known to that class of persons,
until she was fully and proudly conscious of her absolute power over
one other gifted and noble nature — until she knew that she was the
centre of the whole orbit of his being, and the light of his life ; then,
with a cold surprise, as wondering that he could be guilty of such a

* Pronmably the period between l8a6 and 1836.

6o THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

isoGsh pmaniptioii, she exercised her undoubted prerogative, and
whistled him down the wind. His air-paradise was suddenly a dark-
ae» und a chaos. • • • He never loved and hardly looked upon anv
vomaD for ever more. Neither over his disappointments did he enash
litt teeth and beat his breast before the pubhc; nor make himseu and
lus sorrows the burden of his song."

Mitchel had means of discovering the truth of the famous
love afiair ; and it may be taken for granted that his
account is fairly correct But the last statement is inaccu-
late. Mangan did frequently make his personal sorrows
the burden of his song, and alluded to his hopeless love
over and over again. Mitchel, however, as his collection of
the poems proves, did not know a great deal concerning
Mangan's literary labours. Mangan's repeated allusions to
false friendship—" betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,"
etc — apparently owe their origin to his feeling that he had
been unfairly supplanted by a friend ; and this surmise is
borne out, I think, by a remarkable sketch which he wrote
for the Dublin Satirist of October 19th, 1833. It is called
•* My Transformation : A Wonderful Tale ; " and though
the characteristic serio-comic element is introduced, one
can hardly imagine Mangan writing such a sketch, unless
for the purpose of indirectly taking the world into his
confidence about his own experience of womankind.* He
was so persistently autobiographical in his writings that to
accept this narrative as authentic is not so very wild a
proceeding. A few extracts will suffice for the purpose.
He describes his meeting with the lady as having taken
place in 1828, when "she was twenty years of age, and a
model of all that is witching and winning in woman. She
was," he goes on, ** the most beautiful and fascinating girl I
had ever met before, or have ever since known/' He found
himself

"deeply, incurably smitten. I avowed my passion, and was not
lejeaed. Changed as I am in heart and soul. I look back upon the
dealing brightness of that brief hour with feelings beyond the con-
ception of any, save those whose bosoms have burned with a ' lava
flcNxi ' like that of my own. I have wept over the recollection of it
with heart-wrung tears."

He proceeds to tell how he foolishly introduced a friend,
a life-long friend, to the lady, and says : —

^ I have iiooe discovered that the seriotti part of the sketch may be
thoRMi^y relied upon. Price asserts its tmdi.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 6l

*' I well remember that, on the very evening of the introduction, a

rresentiment of over-shadowing evil hung like a cloud above my spirit,
saw, as on the glass of a magic mirror, the form and character of the
change that was about to be wrought upon the spirit of my dream.
Those who are familiar with presentiments know that earlier or later
they will be realised. So, alas ! it was with me. Shape and verifiou
tion were speedily given to the outlines of my vague imaginings.*"

He was jilted in favour of the ** friend " he had introduced
into the house. " Then began the tempest in his souL**

" I tried to summon a sufficient share of philosophy to assist me in
sustaining the tremendous shock thus inflicted on me. In vain 1 in
vain 1 The iron had found its way into my souL There it rankled
and festered; the decree had gone out, and I was thenceforth
condemned to be the miserable victim of my own confidingness and
the treachery of others. Possibly I might live— might bear about with
me the burthen of my agony for long years to come, but my peace was
everlastingly blasted, and the common atmosphere of this wond, health
and life to others, must be for me impregnated with invisible poison*
The denunciatory handwriting had been traced along the wall of my
destiny ; the kingdom of my affections had been taken from me and
transferred to a nval. Not. indeed, that I had been weighed in the
balance and found wanting. No I fonder, truer, madder love than
mine had never streamed in lightning through the veins of man. I
had loved with all the intense fervour attributed only to the heroes of

romance, and here was my requital I Would not

any other in my circumstances have stabbed the faithless fair to the
heart, or despatched a bullet through the brain of his perfidious rival ?
I alone saw how futile such a proceeding must be. Uppermost in my
mind floated a sense of loathing inexpressible. • • . I wrapped up
my heart in the folds of bitterest scorn — this was all, and enough. No
thought, no shadow of a thought of vengeance hovered within the

sphere of my meditations for the future I was much too

proud to be revengeful. Strange idiosyncrasy of mine! Yet not

wholly unparalleled The combination of love

with despair probably contributes the perfect measure of human

wretchedness Weeks and months wheeled onwards,

but generated no alteration in me unless for the worse. I had
drunk deeply of the waters of bitterness, and my every sense was
still saturated with the flavour of the accursed wave. There was a
down-dragging weight upon my faculties— I felt myself gradually
growing into the clay. I stood upon and almost sighed for the advent
of the night that should see my head pillowed upon the green and
quiet mould below me. What was the earth to me? Properly no
more than a sepulchral dell, whose very freshest flowers were the rank,
though flaunting, offspring of rottenness and corruption. I tried to look
in the miraculous face of the sun, but his glory was shrouded by a pall
of sackcloth. The burial of my hopes appeared to have been followed
by an eclipse of all that was bright in the universe.

On the other hand, I cherished a morbid sympathy with whatever
was terrific and funereal in the operations of nature. • • • Of^cn»
when the whirlwind and tempest awoke, I stood out under the starless
firmamental cope and longed personally to track the career of the

62 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Ilgiitiimg, or to envelop myself darkly in the curtains of the thunder-
oood. The pitiless booming of the sea against the naked rocks in winter
possessed a peculiar charm for my ulcerated ima^nation • . • *

Questionlessly^ my dreams were peopled with the most horrible
and hideous and misbegotten spectra that ever rioted in the desolate
chambers o£aL madman's brain. Frequently have I started from my
bed in the hollow of the night to grapple witn the phantasmagoria that
flitted before me, clothed in unnameableterrors. . . • The house I
dwdt in was in an isolated and remote quarter of the city. Solitary,
sfloit, and prison-like it was ; nevertheless a dwelling I would not
have forsaken for the most brilliant pleasure-dome under the Italian
heaven. To the lere of the house extended a Ions; and narrow court-
vaid, partly o v e r grow n with grass and melancholy-looking wild flowers,
oat fla^[gea at the extremity, and bounded by a colossal wall. Down
the entire length of this wall, which was connected with a ruined old
building, descended a metal rain-spout, and I derived a diseased
gratification in listening in wet weather to the cold, bleak, heavy
plash, plash, plash of the rain as it fell from this spout on the flags
peneath. • t

Few and rare were the visitors who speckled my solitude. I had
voluntarily broken the magnetic bonds which unite man to man in
socialised being. • . . This human worid had died to me ; the
lights and shadows of life's picture had long since been blended into
one chaos of dense and inextinguishable darkness ; the pilgrimage of
my blank years pointed across a desert where flower or green thing
was forbidden to live ; and it mattered not how soon some . shifting
columns of the sand descended and swept me into its bosom. There-
after daricness would swathe my memory for ever ; not one poor sigh
would be expended for me — no hands would care to gather mine
onremembered ashes into the sanctuary of an urn. . . .| ^Vhat
cared I if those who thus attempted to break down with their feeble
fingers the adamantine barrier that severed me from a communion
witn mankind, perceiving the futility of their enterprise, retired from
my presence in disgust and despair ? "

Mangan, however, true to his habit of jesting amid his
misfortunes, § then proceeds to narrate how he was revived,
awakened to life and happiness by perusing the new
journal, the Dublin Satirist, Few people will, I think,
dispute the opinion that this sketch is, so far as it is serious,
a record of real experience. It looks as though Mangan
had nearly completed it when it occurred to him that the
readers of the Satirist did not want a story of unrelieved

* See his remarkable poemip "O'Hossey's Ode to the Maguire," and
* Siberia," for pictures of tenible desolation.

t Compare his poem " Twenty Golden Years Aso.

•*

X Bian^ was as fond as his German poets of allusion to his grave. An
ct metncal rendering of this sentence might be easily gathered from one or

f " I have a vciy repfchensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my
- -^ — •• (De Qutnocy's Cmfissmtt.)

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 63

gloom, and hence he tacked on the not very amusing
burlesque ending, or anti-climax. If a theory is permis-
sible in this matter, I would suggest that Mangan did not
really declare, boldly, his love for Miss Stackpoole, but
allowed his rival to forestall him simply from inordinate
shyness. He does not say in this sketch that she really
returned his love— and Mitchel only suggests tadt
encouragement. In one of his early sonnets there are some
lines which seem to refer to }iis own case. He is probably
idludihg to himself in the mention of

" The shrouded few who share
• Their locked up thoughts wiUi none.'*

* And he adds —

'*Ah 1 think not thou this heart hath never homed
With passion deeply felt and ill-returned.
If, ice-cold now, its pulse no longer glowst
The memory of unut^nd.lovts and woes
Lies there, alas ! too faithfully inumed."

It will be seen that these lines support the present
contention. In another sonnet written at the same time,
he says : —

*« Still I did adore

The unreal image loftily enshrined ^

In the recesses of mine own sick mind.
Enough, the spell is broke, the dream is o*er»
The enchantment is dissolved — the world appears

The thing it is — a theatre, a mart I

Genius illumines, and the work of art
Renews the wonders of our childhood's years,

Power awes, wealth shines, wit sparkles, but the heart,
The heart is \o%U for love no more endears."

At the same time. Price quotes a letter of Mangan
which says that she encouraged him in every way, and the
same writer also enables us to see how profoundly his
disappointment affected him : —

"He would speak." he says, "with blended bitterness and
sorrow of lost love and faithless friendship. He would, with a kind
of saturnine pleasure, dwell upon his own experiences, or his various
readings of implicit trust requited with open perfidy— of fond affection
repaid with cold scorn — of true friendship returned with hollow selfish-
ness. ^ Then when we laughed or strove to laugh him into a healthier
mood, it was sometimes frightful— yes, frightful, with a frame so fra^e
and a cheek so pale— to witness the almost boisterous schoolboy murth

m which he would indulge His very nature was one ol

gloom. • • • • Ho once, with unusual bitterness of manner,

64 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OP

•Haded to the priceless argosy of a heart's first affections, tossed amid
the quick-sands of a woman's caprice, to a love, fresh, pure, fervent, and
beautiful as ever liehted passion's flame in human tK>som, its jealous
agony derided, and its nrst rapturous declaration chilled by cruel
and oitter scorn. Poor Clarence 1 It was impossible for a nature
lOce his, so full of tender impulsiveness, to exist without loving. Once
the. ties of affection rent, they were rent for ever. • • • He was not
formed to win the love of woman. Though never did living man
possess a soul more generous or truthful in its impulses, more /ond,
more trusting — more womanly in its gentleness — Clarence had not
f ' those soft parts of conversation that chamberers have,' and acutely
and keenly, according to his most sensitive nature, must he have felt
this when rejected. We have an autobiographical letter beside us,
written at this period, containing, amid much mcoherence, a relation
of the effect produced on him by the bursting of the radient-hued
babble createa by an inordinate fancy. One brief extract is sufficient —
' My fother and mother meant well by me, but they did not under-
stand me. They held me by chains of iron. I dajed not move or
breadie but by their permission. They seemed to watch mv every
action, and to wish to dive into my very thoughts, few of which, much
as I loved them— and I had a morbid love of them — I ever made them
acquained with. My existence was miserable. I often longed for
death. Death, however, came not, but in its place came something
worse than death— love. I formed an attachment to a young lady
who gave me every encouragement for some months, and then
appeared to take delight in exciting me to jealousv. One evening —
I well remember it — she openly slighted me and shunned me. I
escaped marriage with this girl, but it was at the expense of my health
and mind.' "

Mangan thenceforth looked upon the fair sex as essen-
tially cruel and malicious, and in one of his poems
exclaims

" Man at most is made of clay —
Woman seems a block of granite 1 "

In one of his later Irish poems (" The Vision of Egan
O'Reilly ") the lines :—

"Alas for us the darkened 1
We dream our years away : we mingle false and true in one.
Pain chides us now ; now pleasure chains :
But we are taught by naught and none —
God's voice itself remains
Unharkened 1 "

clearly allude to himself; there is no doubt that he
occasionally mingled the false with the true, but it is only
the incredible that we need reject Now, there is no
inherent improbability in the idea of Mangan loving
passionately, and being deceived by his friend and by

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 65

the lady he so deeply admired. His feelings might be
exprc^ed in Dryden's lines : —

" How could you betray.
This tender heart, which, with an infant fondness
Lay lulled between your bosoms and there slept
Secure of perjured faiCh ? I can forgive
A foe, but not a mistress and a friend —
Treason is there in its most horrid shape
Where trust is greatest ; and the soul resigned.
Is stabbed by her own guards.'*

It is almost certain that Mangan, who was at this time,
at any rate, an easy victim to such a transient gleam of
hope as this love episode afforded him, was profoundly
afifected by it. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy says it turned
the drama of his life into a tragedy. There are some
lines of an old poet * which represent with sufficient truth
the state of his mind after this severe disillusionment >—

*' There is a stupid weight upon my senses,
A dismal, sudden stillness, that succeeds
The storm of rage and grief ; like silent death
After the tumult and the noise of life. ■
Would it were death (as sure 'tis wondrous like itX
For I am sick of living : my soid's palled ;
She kindles not with Anger or Revenue.
Love was the informing, active fire within ;
Now that is quenched, the mass forgets to move.
And longs to mingle with its kindr^ earth.'*

He evidently forgot, when he introduced a friend to
the object of his affections, the lines of Shakespeare : —

" Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love.'*

Perhaps he thought that the moral support of his friend
would enable him to summon up the necessary courage to
propose to Miss Stackpoole. In any case, he was woefully
deceived, and the reason of it matters little now. From
1833 ^o 1 849, whatever his subject, the note of disappointed
love comes up in his writings. Even in his so-called
Turkish, Arabic, and Persian poems we have evidence of
his remembrance of the wound inflicted upon his affections.
Several small snatches of the love-lyrics may be quoted.
For example }—

*Ifiebolas Rowe.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Lock up thyself within thyself; distrust the Stranger and the 1
Tlie fool IS Uown from whim to whim by every gust of Pa

Sci;
re t

JUdft where the lute and song are mute, and— as thy soul wouli

Avert thine eyes from Woman's fiioe when twilight falls ax
nnndls!'^^

Again —

''Why look mine eyes bloodshot? Ah! canst thou require
To be told of what Love, when it rages within* does ?
Or dost thou not know, when a house is on fire,
That the flames will be apt to break out at the windows ?

And this —

** Darksome though the Night of Separation
Unto two fond hearts must ever i>rove,
Those twin sorcerers, Hope— Imagination,
Raise a moon up from the Well of Love."

And this —

** My soul was as buoyant as air,
My books made the chief of my care.
Till love came, like lightning, to rend
My bosom and madden my bram***

Here is another allusion —

** What is love ? I asked a lover :
Liken it, he answered, weeping,
To a flood unchanged and sweeping
Over shell-strewn grottoes, over

Beds of roses, lilies, tulips,
0*er all flowers that most enrich the

Garden, in one headlong torrent.
Till they shew a wreck from which the
Eye and mind recoil abhorrent.
Hearts may woo hearts, lips may woo lips,

And gay days be spent m gladness,
Dancing, feasting, lilting, luting.

But the end of all is sadness,
Desolation, devastation.
Spoliation, and uprooting ! **

And for a last poetical teference take this —

** Oh 1 the joys of love are sweet and false— are sorrows in disgu
Like the cheating wealth of golden eve, ere night breaks up the
If the graves of earth were opened— oh 1 if Hades could but spc
What a world of ruined souls would curse the ^een of beauty's d

It is very curious that in 18391 besides writing the ]
*To Laura," Mangan also made several other undoi

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 67

allusions, as I think, to his love affair. No special discern-
ment is necessary to discover, introduced into hb papers
on German aiid Oriental poetry, a few sentences which can
only have a personal significance. They have no reference
to the poet or poetry then under discussion, and the con-
jecture is not far-fetched which applies them to his dis-
appointment in love. Thus, speaking of a volume of
Gellert's poems, he says : —

" Here, however, it now lies before os, and we hail it as an old
friend — nay, as better than a friend, because it lies before ns, while a
friend commonly lies behind our back.**

Again, in a dialogue he makes an interlocutor say, ** A
friend should bear a friend's infirmities," to which the other
replies, ** My reading of that is, * a friend should iare a
friend's infirmities.'" And what is the meaning of the
mysterious passage in his article on another German poet,
printed in the same year, after a somewhat extended ab-
sence from the magazine ? Here are a few sentences : —

" About three months back we had the misfortune to sustain a
severe attack of intellectual hypochondriasis, the effect of which was to
revolutionise for a season all our literarv tastes. .... Neither
physicians nor metaphysicians were able to comprehend, far less to
remove, our malady. Where it originated we ourselves can hazard no
conjecture, for who shall fathom the abyss of the human mind?
Enough, that while it lasted it either paral)rsed or perverted all our
faculties— converting us, even while we fancied ourself an eagle, fay
turns into an owl, a raven, and a gander."

He goes on in his usual ironical manner, which to those
who knew his habits, was probably highly amusing : —

" We attribute our recovery, which was gradual, to the combined
agencies of gymnastics and toast water— a sooer beverage in the main,
though frequently drunk twice a day for weeks in succession."

He then tells us that hosts of friends have congratulated
him on his recovery, including William Carleton,

*' who has fraternally counselled us to make the most of the great
change that has overtaken us. We thank this distinguished man from
the bottom of our ink-stand, and shall endeavour to act on the injunc-
tion, the more especially as any small change that may overtake us
stands, we lament to observe, a very slend^er chance of being made the
most of in such hands as ours.*'

Now this may be all mere whimsicality with no real
cause, but, taken in conjunction with other allusions it
seems to me to point to the disturbance of his mind conse-
quent upon his disappointment in love. The only other

68 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

allusion of his to the subject with which I shall trouble the
reader is that in his impersonal autobic^;raphy» where he
says: —

*' Mangan was at one period of his mysterious life drawn away, and
entirely, into the snare of love, and was even within an ace of becom-
ing a Benedict But certain strange circumstances — ^tbe occurrence
ef which he has described to me as having beoi foreshadowed to him
in a dream — interposed their ungallant proportions between the lady
and him ; and so he abode a mauedict, and Hymen despatched Cupid
and Plutus to look for somebody else."

Some writers, especially those who know little about
bis poems, always quote as corroborative of his disappoint-
ment the well-known lines from Riickert, '* And then no
more." But that piece only shows that Mangan was
tempted to translate those poems which more or less cor-
responded with his own feelings ; it is only when he
goes out of his way to introduce his own sorrows into the
writings of others that the matter calls for comment.
No proof of this peculiar habit of his is needed. It
is readily admitted by all who know them that in his
German and Irish versions his own personality is often
paramount, and that expressions, and almost whole
poems, unwarranted by the professed originals are to be
found. The lines from Riickert are too familiar to readers
of even the most inadequate collection of Mangan's poems
to call for reprinting ; but there is one notable poem
referred to by Mitchel, but, strangely enough, not included
in his (or, indeed, in any other) collection of the poet's
works, which has an indisputable connection with this love
romance of Mangan's life. Mitchel refers to it as addressed
to ^ Frances," and characterises it as ** one of his dreariest
songs of sorrow.** Hercules Ellis, in his Romances and
Ballads of Ireland (i9 so), also gives the name as "Frances."
But in 1839 Mangan himself entitled the poem ''To Laura,*'
and attributes it to an Italian poet. As even the only
reprinted version (that in Ellis's book) is generally un-
known, and is imperfect, no apology is necessary for quoting
the verses in their entirety^ as they appeared in the Dublin
University Magazine of April, 1839.*

The lines : —

The love is deepest oh and truest
That bums within the breast untold^^

* Dr. Sigenou has in his possessioo, and has leoentl j shown me, a much
eulier aatopaph oopy of the poem, where the name is given as " Fnmoes."

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 69

seem, like others, to show that he never proclaimed his
love openly. The following version contains two
not in Ellis's copy, and it differs in other respects

^ The life of life is ^one and over ;
I live to feel I live in vain,
And worlds were worthless to recover
That dazzling dream of mine again.

The idol I adored is broken,

And I may weep its overthrow ;
Thy lips at length my doom have spoken,

And all that now remains is woe.

And is it thus indeed we sever?

And hast thou then forgotten all ?
And canst thou cast me off for ever,
* To mourn my dark and hopeless thrall ?

Oh 1 perfidy, in friend or foe.

In stranger, lover, husband, wife,
Thou art the blackest drop of woe

That bubbles in the Cup of Life I

But most and worst in woman's breast,

Triumphant in thy blasting power.
Thou reignest like a demon-guest

Enthroned in some celestial bower I

Oh ! cold and cruel she who, while

She lavishes all wiles to win
Her lover o*er, can smile and smile.

Yet be all dark and false within 1

Who, when his glances on another

Too idly and too long have dwelt,
Can sigh, as though she strove to smother

The grief her bosom never felt 1

Who, versed in every witching art
That even the wannest love would dare,

First having gained her victim's heart,
Then turns him over to despair I

Alas ! and can this treachery be ?

The worm that winds in slime along,
Is less contemptible than she

Who revels m such heartless wrong I

Go, then, exulting in thy guilt,

And weave thy wanton web anew ;
Go, false as fair, and if thou wilt

Again betray the Fond and True 1

Yet learn that this, my last fEurewell,

Is less in anger than in sorrow ;
Mme is the tale that myriads tell

Who loathe to-day and dread to-morrow.

JO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Me, Lauia, me thou never knewest,
Nor sawest, that if my speech was cold«

The love is deei>est oft and truest
That bums within the breast untold,

Mysoul was formed for Love and Grief-*
These both were blended at my birth,

But lifeless as a shrivelled leaf
Lie now my dearest hopes on earth,

I sizh — where none my sighs return ;

1 love — ^but am not loved again.
Till life be past this heart must bam.

With none to soothe or share its pain.

Adieu I in pleasure's giddy whirl

Soon wilt thou have forgotten me,
But where, oh, most dissembling girl I

Shall 1 from thy dear image flee ?

Adieu 1 for thee the heavens are bright,

And flowers along thy pathway lie ;
The bolts that strike, the winds that blight

Will pass thy Bower of Beauty by !

But when shall rest be mine ? Alas 1

Soon as the winter winds shall rave
At midnight, through the long dark grass

Above mine unremembered grave .

So ends Mangan's love romance. He never gave
another woman an opportunity to trifle with his feelings,
and never forgot or forgave ** Laura" (or "Frances"),
According to one who knew him, he once rushed, with a
drawn ds^er, upon a person who spoke slightingly of her.
In his own words —

*' True love outlives the shroud
Knows nor check nor change,
And beyond Time's world of Qood
Still must reign and range.''

JAMES CIARBNCB MANGAM. 7I

CHAPTER VII.

OONTRIBUTIONS TO THE '' DUBUN SATIRIST" — POPULARITr OP
GERMAN POETRY — IRISH TRANSLATORS — MANOAN ON GOBTHI|
SCHILLER, AND OTHER GERUAN POETS — "THE DYING
father"— THE ''DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE'* — ^MANGAM
GIVES UP SCRIVENERY WORK — SONNETS BY HIM— * HIS
PERSONAL APPEARANCE — ENTERS THE ORDNANCE 8XmVB¥
OFFICE.

'* Knowledge and truth
Are bat golden gates to the Temple of Sorrow I "— Mangan.

The Dublin Satirist was started on June zind^ i833t
its first few numbers being published at 64. Upper Sackville
Street, whence it was transferred to No. i Elephant Lane.
In the same month as he relinquished his connection with
the Comet Mangan became a contributor to the Satirist,
sending its editor some translations from Schiller, his
favourite German poet He had .thoroughly mastered
German by this time, and had conceived, as he informs
us, the notion of '* translating Deutschland out," but when
he commenced the task he had no idea of the extent of
German poetical literature. Altogether he ** overset " some
hundreds of German poems. In his earlier attempts he
did not play many pranks with the Teutons, and gave in
each case the original German with his English version.
What presumably influenced Mangan in his endeavour to
make the German poets better known in Ireland was the
activity of writers like Carlyle and many others in
urging their merits upon English readers. A whole library
of translations from the German was issued during the
decade preceding 1833, and German mysticism and
sentiment had exercised a very considerable influence
upon English thought You could not take up an
English magazine without encountering the names of
German Doets, with translations or imitations of their
works. There is no question that Mangan preferred this
dreamy, melancholy literature to any other— always

y2 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

cepting English, for he admired Shakespeare and Byron
l)eyond sJl other poets, and often indirectly acquaints his
Teaders with the tact If he was fond of German poetry,
neither was he blind to its defects, as we shall see ; but he
greatly delighted in its peculiar qualities. To Mangan's
translations most Irish people may be said to owe what-
ever knowledge they possess of it, and his Anthologia
Germanica^ though it may possibly have done him a dis-
service in causing the very prevalent, but erroneous, impres-
sion that he was simply a translator, and nothing more,
would tempt many an indifferent student to study the origi-
nals of his generally beautiful versions. Mangan decidedly
excels, in many of his translations, the German originals.
Where he seriously admires, he nearly always does well,
but he is occasionally in a sportive mood, and twists the
German author's meaning beyond legitimate bounds in
order to illustrate his own feelings or mood of the moment
Very few poets have succeeded so triumphantly in pro-
ducing translations which are not merely faithful in spirit,
but are at the same time really first-rate as poems ; and
though, to secure this end, he has sometimes deviated a
good deal from the precise meaning of the German poet,
he alwa3rs inimitably reproduces the spirit From no
other translator do we obtain so pleasurable an impres-
aon of the nature and special excellences of German
verse. Other translators may be more literal — none are
more genuinely poetical. He refers somewhere to Carle-
ton's characteristic declaration that Shelley was specially
created for the sole purpose of translating Faust^ reminding
the Irish novelist, who, of course, knew next to nothing of
Shelley or Goethe, that the former only rendered a small
portion of Fausi into English, while Dr. Anster, who was
not specially created for the undertaking, had translated
the whole work, and that admirably.

The success of Mangan and Anster in translation
reminds us that Irishmen have often signalised themselves
in the same way. Some of the standard English versions
of the classics and of foreign masterpieces have proceeded
firom Irish poets. Thus we have Maginn*s spirited
Hanuric Ballads (which Matthew Arnold, Mr. Glad-
stone, and Pro£ Conington have so highly praised), and hb
even better translations from Lucian; Henry F. Gary's
version of Dante ; Edward Fitzgerald's Quatrains of Omar
Khoffom^ which is the finest achievement of its kind in

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 73

English literature, and the same writer's Calderon ; D. F.
McCarthy's brilliant rendering of the same Spanish drama-
tist ; John O'Hagan's 5i7»^ of Roland; Richard Burton's
Camoeris Lusiads ; and Quillinan's version of the same ;
Francis's Horace^ and Sir Stephen de Vere's much superior
attempt ; Father Prout's Songs of Beranger^ and Miss
Costello's Early French Poets ; Moore's Anacreon^ and the
previous version by George Ogle ; G. A. Greene's Modem
Italian Poets^ so warmly eulogised by the critics ; and,
finally, the delightful Irish translations of Ferguson^ Walsh,
Callanan, Sigerson, Hyde, and, of course, Mangan himsel£
There are many other Irish writers who have done service-
able work in the same direction, but the really notable
translators have been enumerated above.

For Dr. Anster's translation of Faust Mangan had a con-
siderable admiration. He was not a very great admirer of
Goethe,and somewhat anticipated Professor Dowden's recent
criticisim of that famous writer's extraordinary and fatal
fertility, and his exposure of its bewildering effect upon
the German public. Mangan does not agree with Herder's
characterisation of Fatist as '' rubbish and dirt,"* or with
Maginn's description of its author as '' an old humbug," or
even with Professor Dowden's opinion that Goethe was
something of an impostor, but he is one of those who
decline to accept him as one of the great world-poets.
He seemed to consider that Fatist had been as well trans-
lated by Anster as was possible or necessary, and, therefore,
in his very numerous articles on German poetry, he did not
himself attempt to translate more than a small fragment or
two of the work. Yet it is permissible to believe that he
would have left us a masterly — ^perhaps the standard-
version, had he attempted the whole work.

His views upon German poetry are highly interesting
and amusing ; and he has humorously exhibted its peculi-
arities in papers which, it is no exaggeration to say, are
quite equal to Prout's Reliques. He was well aware that
his tendency to paraphrase rather than to translate literally
was objected to in some quarters, and he answers the
objection thus : —

'* We know that we have been charged with paraphrasing and even
travestying our originals, and the charge ma^r be true or false ; we
neither admit it nor deny it ; but good-natured judges will, perhaps, be

^ He, however, oonsadered Byron's Ato0wf a greater dnunatic poem.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Badined to consider that we are as literal as the difference between the
iMtractare of English and the structure of German allows us to be. In
^neality there is no reason that we should perpetrate paraphrases.
"Jnmslarions are considerably easier.'*

And elsewhere he says : —

" Most to be commiserated of all is his (the German poet's) English

^^ranslator, who, having the severest iudges in Europe for his oriticsi is

^>ften reduced to the necessity of either making himself ridiculous by

Ihs desperate fidelity, or criminal by his departures from it, however

marvelloosly these may improve the original — as in five instances out

of six they do, and by a process of no more magical skill than is

mvolved in a substitution ot brilliant and elevated sentiments for plain

and stupid ones."

But he refuses to incriminate himself—

^We have always considered any deprecation of censure for our
attempts to be quite out of the question. The entire weight of the
Uame rests upon the authors from whom we versify. We cannot,
like the experimentalist in Gulliver^ undertake to extract a greater
number of sunbeams from a cucumber than it is in the habit of yield-
bg. . . • It is our business to cast a veil over the German poet*s
blemishes, and brin? forward nothing but his excellences, or what we
presume to be such.

And in his characteristic bantering style he proceeds to
award himself a liberal measure of praise for his exertions: —

** It is now generally admitted by both Tynan and Trojan that
we have awakened a wide and deep and intense and permanent
interest in the literature of Germany, solely, by the bold, arrogantr
audacious, judicious, and original manner in which we have dared to
improve upon its poetry and hector its poets. We have blown soap-
bobble after soap-bubble into their legitimate dignity of rainbows ;
and the rudest apparent grossnesses of our originals have dazzled the
eye upon coming forth from our hands as gold when it issues from the
furnace seventy times purified. There was music in them (the afore-
said originals), much music of the most soul-entrancing quality ; but
nobody guessed whereabouts it lay — not a ninny could elicit a note of it
— until w£ arose, and using our long goose quill as a wand, wiled it
(the aforesaid music) forth to steep the senses of millions in Elysium ;
performing in this respect, much the same service towards it as the
thaw performed towards Baron Munchausen's bom.*'

In his serious moments, Mangan took a very humble
view of his labours in this, as in other undertakings, but
he was irrepressibly fond of quizzing. He whimsically
laments that he is being left alone to acquaint Europe with
the wealth of German literature, and he banteringly calls
upon his brother translators of the day to come to his
assistance in the Herculean task he has set himself-^

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 75

" Where art thou, soul of Perversion ?
Where be thy fantasies jinglish ?
Why lies intact so much Prussian and Persian,

And whither has fled the phrase ' Done into English ' ?

Up from thy sofa. Lord Egerton I

Marshal the Blackiesand Gillieses ! *
Bravo, Von Brockhaus t— give gold by the wedge or ton 1
Pay, till all Europe cry out, ' What a tiU is bis ! '

Oh I when translation's so feasible.

Where is the scamp would be scheming off?
Bowring, you sponge I have you ceased to be squeezable?
Anster the Bland 1 what the deuce are yoo dreaming of ? **

He is particularly amusing in his criticism of once famous
German poets, like Klopstock (whom he calls Clockstop
and Stopclock,. and whose so-called Miltonic style he
describes as ''mill-stone-ic"). Even at Justinus Kerner, a
prime favourite of his, he has hb fling, and

"His ' Dichtungen ' may be said to be made up of an aggregate
number of Thr&nen^ Vbgel^ BlUnun^ Buckie and SUrtUt with here and
there a Grab to burv himself in." * The German poet,' he also remarks^
* begins in atone ot thunder, as if he would bring Heaven and Earth
into collision, but while you are waitine to see what will come of It be
calls for his pipe» and you thenceforth lose him in the fog.' "

Of German epigrams he says —

'* The humour of three-fourths of their number consists altogether
in their want of pointi but giants cannot be expected to excel at push-
pin.*'

He is also very merry at the expense of Ludwig Tieck,
then greatly over-rated, and his criticism is decidedly
happy.

** Ludwig Tieck, man-milliner to the Muses, poet, metaphysician,
dramatist, novelist, moralist, wanderer, weeper and wooer, a gentle-
man of very extensive endowments, is, notwithstanding, in one respect a
sad quack. Such rubbish, such trumpery, such a farrago of self-cov
dcmned senilities, so manv modey nothings, altogether so much
drowsiness, dreariness, drizzle, froth and fog as we have got in this hi»
last importation from Cloudland, surely no one of woman bora before
ourself was ever doomed to deal with. We now, for the first time in
our life, stumble on the discovery that there may be less creditable
methods of recruiting one's finances than even those which are re*
corded with reprobation in the columns of the NewgaU CaUndar, All
that we can gather is that he is ddectably miseraUe. He maintains

* These are the names of prominent Gennan tnmsUtois of the time,
t An eminent Gennan publisher.

76 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

almost firom first to last one monotonous wail» as mournful and neariy
as unvarying as the night lament of the Whip-poor-Will in the forests
of South America. He simpers and whimpers, and yet one cannot
tell whether he would be Uiought glad or sad. He plays the poetical
coquette between Fortune and Misfortune* • . . He is knocked down
by a bulrush every half minute in the day, and reverently kisses the
£ice of his fatherland fourteen hundred and forty times in twelve hours,
A dead leaf throws him into convulsions, and at the twittering of a
swallow the heart of the poor man batters bis ribs with such galvanic
violence of percussion that at three yards' distance you suspect the
existence othypertrophyf and are hall disposed to sununon a suigeon.**

He certainly did not believe in the existence of German
humour, and as regards wit, he would have endorsed the
£unous question and answer of PereBouhours,the eighteenth
century literary critic — Un AUetnand peut il avoir d$
Ftsprit f Point du taut. In his disguised sketch of him-
selft from which several quotations have been made, we
read tiie following : —

*' I asked him for his opinion of German humour. ' Why,' said he,
* you have, doubtless, heard of the author who began and ended a
work ' On the Rats of Iceland,' with the words * There are no Rats in
Icdand.' So my opinion of German humour is, that there is no such
thing as German humour."

It is noteworthy, as showing his deep interest in German
literature at the time, that of three dozen or more poems
contributed by him to the Satirist during its existence of
two years and a half, nearly thirty are from the German,
and chiefly from Schiller, " Germany's g^atcst poet.*' Many
of these Mangan utilised afterwards in the University
Magazine and other periodicals, generally improving them
in subsequent treatment Just as he had rescued from the
almanacs such pieces as he thought worthy of preservation
by printing them in the Cornet^ so he reprinted in later
periodicals some of the most skilful versions from the Ger-
man which he had written for the Coifut Knd Satirist, One of
his Satirist contributions was used in four different places.
It is worth giving here as being an anticipation of Thacke-
ra/s **King of Brentford" It is called "The Dying Father/'
The present version is not the Satirist one, but a later
amended copy : —

** A father had two children. Will and Christy^

The last a bright young lad, the first a dull humdrum.
One day, perceiving that his hour was come.

Stretched on the bed of death he glanced with misty

Eye around the room in search of Christy—

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 77

' M V son/ he said, ' sad thoughts begin to daxken

My mind. You are a genius. What a task it
Will be for you to face the world I But hearken t

Inside my desk there lies a little casket
Of jewels. Take them all, my son,
And lock them up, and give your brother none.*

The youth was wonder-struck. He thought this droU,
And looking in his father's face, he said—

' But, bless me father ! — if I take the whole»
What is poor Will to do ? I greatly dread '—

' Dread nothing. Christy,' interrupted t'other;
*' There's not the sligtest ground for this timidity ;

I'll warrant you your booby of a brother
Will make his way through life by sheer stupidity ! * "

The Satirist contributions are not remarkable, generally,
for merit or originality, and so need not detain us long.
Nearly all he wrote for it reappears later; even his
punning " Elegy on Joe King " turns up years after as a
Chinese Elegy on *'Tchao King,'' a witticism evidently
suggested by the present tense of the verb "to joke."
Some time before the cessation of the paper he obtained
admission to the Dublin University Magazine^ to which
he began to contribute early in 18349 twelve months
after its first appearance. Thenceforth, for a good many
years, he was enabled to confine himself almost entirely to
its pages, and it is interesting to note that at least five
hundred poems of his were published in it between and
inclusive of the years 1834 and 1849, besides ^ considerable
quantity of prose criticism and reflection, and a few stories*
This famous magazine, the best literary oi^n Ireland has
ever known, was started by a few Trinity College men, its
first editor being the Rev. Charles Stuart Stanford, who
was succeeded after eighteen months or so by Isaac Butt
Even at the beginning, its staff included some remarkably,
clever writers, but as time passed it gradually concentrated
in itself almost the whole of the literary talent of Ireland,
and obtained a great circulation and an European reputa-
tion. Writers like Lever, Ferguson, Lefanu, Anster, Wilde,
Maxwell, Butt, Rowan Hamilton, Lover, Marmion Savage,
Carleton, John Fisher Murray, M. J. Barry, D. F, McCarthy,
J. F. Waller, D. P. Starkey, and many others too numerous
to mention, gave it for more or less lengthy periods some of
their best work, and Mangan, who had probably never re-
ceived payment for any previous literary work, was enabled
to add considerably to his income as a scrivener. If he had
received the usual figure paid by the MagasUu in its best

78 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

daysy namely^ sixteen guineas per sheet, he would have
drawn a very large sum of money during the fifteen years
he was connected with it, but it is quite certain that he
<lid not The probability is that, with his usual modesty
and diffidence as to his own worth, he ofTered his services for
a very small remuneration. Certainly he received much less
than other and inferior writers after James M'Glashan
obtained control of the periodical. The latter was too
^ shrewd a Scot not to make a good bargain with the poor
poet, and it is a fact that he got Mangan s valuable services
at an absurdly low price in the end. Whatever Mangan's
remuneration may have been, however, it was evidently
sufficient to induce him to give up all work in attorneys'
offices. He seems to have done no more scrivenery work
after 1834, unless occasional transcripts for Drs. Peterie and
Todd in the Dublin libraries and the work for the Ordnance
Survey are covered by that term. How he occupied himself
between that date and his appointment to a small post in
the Ordnance Survey Office two or three years later is not
known, but, of course, his literary activity can be measured
by his University Magazine contributions, and we may
assume that his time was largely taken up by writing and
study. Mitchel says that —

"For some years after his labours had ceased in the attorney's
office there is a gap in his life which painstaking biography will never
fill up. It is a vacuum and obscure gulf which no eye nath fathomed
or measured — into which he entered a bright-haired youth and emerged
a withered and stricken man."

Unfortunately, Mitchel nowhere vouchsafes a date, and we
can only surmise that the period to which he refers is that
at which we have now arrived.

As in the case of the Satirist^ Mangan's earliest pieces
in the University Magazine "w^x^ translations from Schiller.*
German poetry was, seemingly, the most popular subject of
the day — and the perusal of it was certainly Mangan's
favourite recreation. That the conductors of the Magazine
valued his work is clear from the fact, which they made
public early in 1835, that they allowed a special departure in
his favour from their rule that all contributions should be
hitherto unpublished. The editor announced in the number
for February, 1835, that the translation by Mangan of

* There It retson to believe, «s already stated, that the proprietor preferred
ICangu&'s papcn oq German poetry to aoything elie written by him.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 79

Schillei^s '' Lay of the Bell ** there published was a reprint
The earliest origin^ piece of his in the Magajnui is a
sonnet, unsigned, in the number for June of the same year.
It is undoubtedly Mangan's, and, as it has never been re-
published, I quote it here : —

** Bird, that discoursest from yon poplar bough,
Outweeping night, and in thy eloquent tears
Holding sweet converse with the thousand spheres

That glow and glisten from Night*s glorious brow —

Oh ! may thy lot be mine I that, lonely, now,
And doomed to mourn the remnant of my years,
My song may swell to more than mortal ears,.

And sweet as is thy strain be poured my vow I

Bird of the poet's paradise ! by thee
Taught where the tides of feeling deepest tremble,

Playful in gloom, like some sequestered sea,
I, too, amidst my anguish would dissemble.

And tune misfortune to such melody
That my despair thy transports would resemble ! *'

Two other original sonnets of his — ^"'Life" and ••Love" —
appear in the same volume, and may be quoted if for no other
reason than that which he himself suggests to us in an
article on the poems of Matthisson and Salis in this same
year. •* We believe," he says, " that the heart and intellect
of a poet are ever more easily susceptible of analysis by a
simple reference to his works than by the aid of the most
elaborate explanatory criticism that ever passed through
the press ; " and he adds : '' Thus much in temperate
explanation of our preference of the poetry of poets to the
prose of ourselves." Which view the present writer adoptSi
and conforms to by reproducing the two sonnets refeired
to^ instead of merely expatiating upon them :— ^

** O human destiny ! thou art a mystery

Which tasks the o*er wearied mtellect in vain;

A world thou art of cabalistic history
Whose lessons madden and destroy the brain.

O Life I — whose page, a necromantic scroll.
Is charactered with sentences of terror
Which, like the shapes on a magician's mirror.

At once bewilder and appal the soul —
We blindly roam thy labyrinth of error,

And clasp a phantom when we gain thy goal t

Yet roll, thou troubled flood of Time 1 Still bear
Thy base wrecks to the whirlgulfs of the past— ^ '

But Man and Heaven will bless thee if thou hast

Spared for their final sphere the Noble and the Fair.**

So THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

The sonnet on '' Love " is, perhaps^ better : —

^ Spirit of wordless love ! that in the lone

Bowers of the poet's musefill soul doth weare
Tissues of thought, hued like the skies of eve
Ere the last glories of the sun hath shone I
How soon, almost before our hearts have known
The change, above the ruins of thy throne
Whose trampled beauty we would fain retrieve
By all earth's thrones beside, we stand and grieve I
We weep not, for the world'^ chill breath hath bound
In triple ice the fountain of our tears.
And ever-mourning memory thenceforth rears
Her altars upon desecrated ground,
And always, with a low despairful sound.
Tolls the disastrous bell of sul our years ! '*

Mangan, however, does not succeed altogether in the
sonnet His was essentially a lyrical genius, which was at
Its best when unrestrained by any special metre or form.
His translations of Italian sonnets are good, but not so
good as they might have been, were it not for the metrical
restraint impos<^. Like Shelley, with whose lyrical giil
Mangan's own might not unfitly be compared, he could
hardly write a sonnet which would pass muster with the
sticklers for perfection of form. One of the reasons of
Mangan's fancy for German literature lay in his fondness
for the ballad style, which the German poets have mastered
so thoroughly. He troubled himself comparatively little
with the literatures of France and Italy, so far as translating
from them was concerned, feeling himself to some extent out
of sympathy with them. Yet his numerous references show
that he greatly admired the Italian poets, and was as well
acquainted with them as with those of France and Spain.
In his German translations he is strangely unequal. His
versions from Goethe are sometimes unsuccessful — for him
'— and in other instances he proves inferior to poets of
much smaller calibre ; but he " overset ** the poems of
Ruckert, Kemer (not Komer, whom he, fairly enough,
dismisses with a word or two of praise), and Freiligrath,
with remarkable success. In fact, his versions in those
cases are unmistakably better than the originals. Some
of his translations from Schiller are also very fine, notably
that of " The Ideal " (which he calls •• The Unrealities "),
and ** The Lament of Ceres ; " and the famous ballads by
Burger respectively entitled ** Lenore " and '* The Demon
Jager *' have never been so well rendered into English as

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 8 1

by Mangan. It is curious that one of his best transla-
tions is that of Jean Paul Richter's prose sketch, ''The
New Year's Night of a Miserable Man/' which he has
turned into admirable verse, a specimen stanza of idiich
follows : —

** And Youth returned^ and Age withdrew its terrors-
Still was he young, for he had dreamed the whole ;

But faithful is the image conscience mirrors
When whirlwind passions darken not the souL

Alas ! too real were his sins and errors.
Too truly had he made the earth his goal ;

He wept, and thanked his God that. wiSi die m\l^

He haa the power to choose the right path stilL"

It is to be feared that the offence which he alleges
against Richter of ** sauandering the wealth of his mind
on fantastic fripperies, though justified, may be charged
with equal truth to himself. A too large proportion of his
time was expended upon curious effects in rhyme, which,
however amusing and quaint, produce a similar impression
to that caused by seeing a well-painted piece of still life
done by a master of portrait or landscape. While reo^-
nising the cleverness and ingenuity, one unconsciously
suggests that the object, rather than the manner of treat-
ment, is of paramount importance, by the wish that such
genius were better employed. Although the early contri-
butions to the University Magazine are much soberer than
his later ones, he occasionally ventures upon the wildly
whimsical, the absurdest of absurdities. But even in these
he is self-revealing, and always interesting, as, for example,
in a certain digression into the subject of dreams which
occurs in one of the earlier numbers. The whole passage
is too long to quote, and is, to tell the truth, a little too
absurd, but here are the opening sentences : —

" We have never yet had the happiness to meet with anyone who
knew how to dream properly. For ourselves we lament to state that the
Rip-Van-Winklish soundness of our slumbers for eleven hours out of
the twenty-four effectually prevents us from dreaming at alL We are
not excited even by opium, though we have repeatedly devoured
stupendous quantities of^that drug, and we now beffin to despair of ever
becoming a vision-seer. Once and once only in the course of our life
did Somnus mount guard so negligently on the citadel of our imagina-
tion as to allow Morpheus to enter it ; but, oh 1 that was a glorious
moment when we beheld Stamboul arise before our mind's eye
m all iu multifarious goigeousoess, glittering with mosques, Idoda,
mmareu, temples and turrets."

82 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

And SO on, through various experiences, until

«• all melted away into thin air, leaving nothing behind bot the remem-
brance cf a dream, which," he adds, *' Dr. Macnish in his next edition
of * The Philosophy of Sleep' is welcome to transfer to his pages for
a trifling gratuity."

Mangan found that many of his friends, and most of

his readers, looked upon him as an eccentric of the *' first

water/' and he endeavoured to live up to their belief. It

was generally admitted that he could, better than anyone,

mingle the jocose and the tragic, but any attempt to imitate

any of Mangan's peculiarities was immediately frowned

upon and discoursqg^ed. A really serious article by him

would have come as a disappointment to many, and he could

only ** edge in," as he would say, the expression of his

intimate thoughts and griefs. He became as eccentric and

odd in his attire as in his sketches, and proceeded from

<]ueemess to queemcss, adopting finally the style of dress

'Which Father Meehan, who did not know hiip till nearly ten

years after, has described. The description of his personal

appearance in 1845, however, practically holds good of the

year 1836 : —

'* He was five feet six or seven in height, slightly stooped, and
attenuated as one of Memlin^*s monks. His head was large, beauti-
fully shaped, his eyes blue, his features exceedingly fine and ' sicklied
o*er ' with that diaphanous pallor which is said to distinguish those in
whom the fire of genius has burnt too rapidly even from childhood.
And the dress of this spectral-looking man was singularly remarkable,
taken down at haphazard from some peg in an old clothes shop — a
baggy pantaloon that never was intend^ tor him, a short coat closely
buttoned, a blue cloth cloak still shorter, and tucked so tightly to his
person that no one could see there even the faintest shadow of those
lines called by painters and sculptors drapery. The hat was in keep-
ing with this habiliment, broad-leafed and steeple-shaped, the model of
wmch he must have found in some picture of Hudibras. Occasionally
he substituted for this headgear a soldier's fatigue cap, and never
appeared abroad in sunshine or storm without a large malformed
umbrella, which, when partly covered by the cloak, might easily be
mistaken for a Scotch bagpipe. This eccentricity in costume and
mancer was not afiected, and so little did he heed the incidents passing
about him that he never was conscious of the remarks and glances
bestowed on him by the empty-headed fops who stared at him in the

Such was the strange figure which for some years
was not averse to haunting the streets even in daylight*
Subsequently he shunned the public gaze, and would only
appear out of doors after dusk.

JAMES CLARENCE BfANCAN.

Not long after the establishment of the historical
department of the Ordnance Survey, Mangan, (who had
previously been supporting some of his relatives by his
earnings from the University Magctzitu)^ obtained em-
ployment as a copyist in the office, mainly through the
personal exertions of Petriei who thought that a regular
daily employment would tend to check the tendency to
drink which was becoming more and more pronounced in
the poet This was about 1838. Mangan*s caligraphy was
exquisitely formed, and his experience as a scrivener made
the labour, for which he was paid five shillings a day, less
irksome, perhaps, than to his colleagues. This was one of
Mangan's happiest periods. He was at times unwontedly
gay and lively ; pecuniary troubles did not mudi afflict
him, and everything promised well for the future. His
ofiice companions were mostly personal friends— men who
understood, even if they did not appreciate^ his vagaries.
But it is necessary to retrace our stq» a littlCi

THE LIFE AMD WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER VIII.

MAMGAll'S WIT--MASTBRY OVER METRIC AND RHTMB— IlfVKMTBI>
POETS— ORIENTAL EXCURSIONS— MARSH'S LIBRARY— ORD*
KANCS SURVEY WORK— W. F. WAKEMAN ON MANOAN —
XCXmTRICITIES OF THE POET— '' TAR-WATER ''—MANGAN'S'

" Methinks it images well
Whmt Uk» hast been, thoa loneljr Tower,

MoonUght and lamplight mingled— the deep choral swell
Of Music m her peals of proudest power,

And then — the TaYcm dice-box rattle I
The Grand and the Familiar fought

Within thee for the mastery 1 and thv depth of thought
And fUy of wit made every conflict a drawn battle ! "— Mangam.

Whether permissible or not from the strictest literary
point of view, Mangan was much given in those days to
playing with his readers — to poking fun at them— and
his surprises were frequent Sometimes, of course,
he overshoots the mark, and the jokes fall flat ; but
generally he is extremely entertaining, and what might
otherwise had proved a partly dull and dry disquisition upon
German poetry becomes a very pleasant essay, full of little
pseudo-personal confidences and diverting metrical es-
capades, especially when his sportiveness is at the expense
of the minor denizens of what he calls the " cloudland " of
German literature. Their attempts at the mystical more
often than not succeeded only in enveloping tliemsclves
and their readers in a sort of misty haze, and Mangan took
advantage of all opportunities of reminding them that the
mystical is not necessarily obscure and unintelligible. He
scores off them very neatly in many places, but he is most
interesting in his personal allusions — even when he is also
performing tricks with words. He does not stop even at
the most audacious punning, as when, alluding to his
voluminousness, he remarks : —

* A tea of argument stretches before os, and the waves thereof
curl about our feet But we forbear to plunge in. Reflection recurs,
and we leodve a check oo the bank.*

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 8$

iVnd he whimsically proceeds to dilate upon the fertility
which he claims to possess : —

*' We possess, in a marvellous degree, the capability of expatiating to
eternity upon a single topic. Our sentences meander onward, ngbt
and le/t, like an unbroken stream of zig-sag water througb the mazes
of a wilderness ; and just as you, venerable public, ' see them on their
winding way' now, so would you see them 'an endless year' (as
Moore says) hence, did not the barrier-walls of the Magamtu restrain
them. Give us but one pull from St Leon's* elixir-bottle, and ages
might elapse until the grass grew over the forgotten tombs of those
who shall be still unborn in the days of our great grand-children,
"before our monotonous drawl should cease to astound and mystify
mankind."

And in the same quizzical manner, he insists that the
public shall admire his work : —

" By the mustachious of Mohammed himself^ we swear that with the
brevity and beauty of this article the public must be enchanted to a
degree rather^ to say the truth, too pamful to be dwelt on ; and with
respect to which, therefore, propriety dictates to us the preservation of
a dignified, we will not add a stem, silence. They, the said public,
shall not feel otherwise, on penalty of being fiercely cut, eveiy anti-
human soul of them, wherever we encounter them, at home and abroad,
in street and sauare, north, south, east, west, at church, mart, levee, and
theatre. Let them, and they may abide by the consequence. . • •
Our native city shall be in our eyes as a Citv of the Dead, and we,
agreeably to the Fichtean philosophy, the only existent individual in
town. We shall pace the trottoirs% perceiving nobody, astounded at
our own solitariness, and musing, with Baconian profundity, over that
instability of human affairs which in the space of thirt]^ days has
removed from the metropolis a population so celebrated for its singular
dimensions, to substitute in its stead a type of plural unity— ourself.
. . • We, in short, shall be everything and the public nothing, after
the manner of the second and third estates of the Abbe Sie^res* Till,
upon some bland morning in October, weary of wandering hither and.
thither in this astounded* musing, and misty-eyed state, we shall at once
halt, and proceed, with a majesty of manner worthy of the world's
wonder, to appropriate to our own use all such cash and portable
valuables as may have been thoughtfully left in our way througnout the
wilderness around us— chanting, the while, sundry snatches of songs,
and songs of ^snatches ' by the Arab Robbers of the Desert"

This manner of Mangan's wore off to some extent after
a time ; it was simply a cloak to cover his inmost thoughts,
which became more and more dismal when he more clearly
foresaw his^ hapless end. It never altogether forsook him,
and even his letters, which one might expect from the facts
of his life to find saturated with melancholy, are largely

* The hero of William Godwin's novd of Uiat name.

86 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

couched in the same vein of forced triviality and affected
gaiety. Towards the end of his lifci however, Mangan's
literary work assumed more dignity, more restraint ; but
the real Mangan cannot possibly be described by ignoring
a peculiarity which is so characteristic of most of his work.
In conversation he was extremely fond of verbal quips and
quiddities, and this often took the form of absurd misread-
ings of famous sayings, or mottoes, or lines from the poett
—* phonetic** waggery one might almost term it Some
of lus professed discoveries of references to himself in the
English poets are curious enough, as when he suggests that
Spencer's line-^

"The wretched man 'gan grinniog horridlic,**
should read —

*'The wretched Mangan grinning? Horrid liel"

Space, however, is too valuable to devote it to many of
such follies of a man of genius. It will be more to the
purpose to point out his marvellous power of rhyme and his
daring metrical enterprises. His metres are never obvious
ones — he scorned what was easy of accomplishment to
others — and it must be confessed that one cannot express

g articular satisfaction at this sheer waste of valuable gifts,
till these eccentricities have their interesting side. If he is
often merely curious and queer, he is often humorous enough,
toa Mangan's great admiration of Byron, whose fondness
for apparently impossible rhymes is known to all readers,
may have awakened in him a desire of emulation, such desire
£nding expression in the many attempts to fit rhymes to-
the most extraordinary names of Eastern people and places.
One reason, perhaps, why Mangan's Turkish, Persian, and
other translations (so-called) are so little known, is the
difficulty of pronouncing what the Germans call, though
not in the same sense as the English, the ** outlandish **
nomenclature introduced into them. Only a comparatively
few of these Oriental poems by Mangan are likely to be-
come popular. Those few, however, are very fine.

One excellent example of Mangan's gift of rhyming
may be gathered from the University Magasine for 1837..
It is entitled * The Metempsychosis," and a verse or twa
will suffice to show how he has treated the thorny subject
of the transmigration of souls in verse. Better examples
even than this, however, might be found : —

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 8/

•
*' Tve studied sundry treatises by spectaded old sages

Anent the capabilities and nature of the soul and
Its vagabond propensities from even the eariiest ages,

As harped on by Spinota, Plato, Leibnitz, Chubb, and Toland ;
But of all systems Tve yet met or p'rhaps shall ever meet with,
Not one can hold a candle to (vidiUcii^ compete withX
The theory of theories Pythagoras proposes.
And called by that profound old snudge (in Greek) Metempsycbostt.
t •••••• •

This may be snapped at, sneezed at, sneered at Deuce may cm
for cavils —

Reason is reason. Credit me, I've met at least one myriad
Of instances to prop me up. Tve seen (upon my travels)

Foxes who had been lawyers at (no doubt) some former period ;
Innumerable apes, who, though they*d lost their patronymics,
I recognised immediately as mountebanks and mimics.
And asses, calves, etcet'ra, whose rough bodies gave asylum
To certain soub, the property of learned professors whilom.

So far weVe had no stumbling block. But now a puzzling question

Arises : ail the aforenamed souls were souls of stunted stature.
Contemptible or cubbish — but Pythag has no sup^stion

Concerning whither transmigrate souls noble m their nature,
As Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Schiller^— these now, for example,
What temple can be found for such appropriately ample ?
Where lodge they now ? Not, certes, m our present ninnyhammers.
Who mumble rhymes that seem toVe been concocted by their
gammers.*

Well, then, you see, it comes to this, and after huge reflection

Here's what I say : A soul that gains by many transmigrations,
The summit, apex, pinnacle, or acme of perfection.

There ends, concludes, and terminates its earthly per'grinations.
Then, like an air balloon, it mounts through high Olympus' portals,
And cuts its old connection with Mortality and Mortab I
And evidence to back me here I don't know any stronger
Than that the truly Great and Good are found on earth no longer I **

Mangan began the first of his ^ Liters Orientales ** for
the University Magazine in the year 1837, and found
therein an excellent opportunity for playing practical jokes
innumerable, especially in the invention of impossible
poets. He was able to do the same thing to a small
extent in his Anthologia Gertnanica though with more
difficulty, and yet, so far as is discoverable, his contem-
poraries do not seem to have detected it Even at the close
of 1836 there is a joke of this kind in a group of poems in

* The Unntenity MagoMtm misprinted this as " gUBman»'' which leemi to
have panled Father Meehan, who Un Euajt in Prou and Vtru) makes U
•< giamman *— an absurdity. There is point in the right reading.

88 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

the Magazine called ^Stray Leaflets from the German Oak.**
There are several reasons for doubting the genuineness of one
of these translations — ^that entitled ''Stanzas to * * * *''
and attributed to one '' Drechsler." I can find no trace of
any German poet of this name, and Mangan seems to
waid off possible criticism by declaring, a liUle later, that
so bx this writer had only contributed to periodicals.
Moreover, the poem so attributed had been previously
published in the Satirist without any indication of German
origia Lastly, when we remember that DnchsUr is Ger*
man for a '' turner/' the supercherti seems conclusive. I
ghe the poem here, as it has its interest-
's

** I knew that Disaster

Would shadow thy morning, and must ;
The fair alabaster

Is easily trampled to dust
If the bright lake lay stilly

When whirlwinds rose to deform,
If the life of the lily

Were charmed against every storm,
Thou mightest, though human,

Have smiled throu;;h the saddest of years—
Thou mightest, though Woman,

Have lived unacquainted with tears.

Weep, hapless forsaken I

In my lyrical art I can find
No spell that may waken

The glow of young hope in thy mind.
Weep, fairest and frailest I

Since bitter, though fruitless regret
For the loss thou bcwailest

Hath power to win tears from thee yet ;
Weep, while from their fountain)

Those drops of affliction can roll —
The snows on the mountain

Will soon be less cold than thy souL

Not always shall Sorrow

As a scimitar pierce to thy core ;
Then cometh a morrow

When its tyranny daunteth no more ;
Chill Habitude, steeling

The breast, consecrates it to Pride*
And the current of Feeling

Is locked like a firm winter-tide.
And the stricken heart pillows

Itself in repose upon Pain,
And cares roll in billows

O'er the hull of the soul still in vain.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAM. 89

Bot the crumbling palace

Is lovely through ruin and ill.
And the wineless chalice

Sheds light on the banquet still ;
And as odours of glory

Exhale from the patriot's shrood.
As the mountain, though hoary

And barren, still kisses the doad*
So may thine affections

Live on, though their fervour be past.
And the heart's recollections

May hallow their shrine to the last t **

It must not be imagined, as it has too readily been, that
all Mangan*s Oriental poems are original. There can be
no manner of doubt that some of them are genuine para-
phrases, but not of course directly from the Eastern
languages. Mangan must have been well acquainted with
the German fascination for the literature of the East, and
not improbably got his own prepossession in that direction
from German writers. He was necessarily aware of Goethe
and Riickert and Freiligrath*s renderings and imitations of
Eastern poetry, and evidently consulted the German tra-
vellers and scholars who had done so much to make Eastern
life and literature familiar to Western people. With the
works of D'Herbelot, and other French savants, he was,
of course, also familiar. Among English books, apart from
translations of The Arabian Nig/Us^ he clearly knew the
works of Sir William Jones, Edward W. Lane, and Sir
Gore Ouseley ; and Sale's " Koran " was naturally con-
sulted, and probably read with delight. Speaking of the
various efforts to translate Eastern poetry, he says : —

" As to translations from the Oriental tongues, no one should attempt
them."

In another place, he recurs to the same theme, noting
that while Oriental literature is untranslatable into English
in the strictest sense, it may be paraphrased with success
in almost any language. He explains that even the proper
understanding of Persian poetry is extremely difficult : —

'* The student is not to flatter himself that because he has rattled
through a Persian grammar and skimmed Richardson*s dissertation
that the business is accomplished, and that he has nothing more to do
but take his MS. in hand and loll on his ottoman. A severe initiation
awaits him. He must for a season renounce his country, divest him-
self of his educational prejudices, forego his individuality, and become,
like Alfred Tennyson, *a Mussulman true and sworn.' • • • If ho

90 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

woald appreciate Ottoman poetry, if he would even make an approach
to miderstanding it, he must first disencumber himself of all the old
lags of Europeanism and scatter them to the winds. • • • He must
b^n his p<>etical education afresh, • . • and after a series of yeara
(industry, commentators, and opium in the meantime assisting) he
may perhaps be able to boast that he has measured the height, length,
brnuith, and circumference of the Great Temple in which the imagi-
nation of Bakki and the soul of Hafiz are ensnrined, and beyond Uie
extreme outer porch, or Ethnic Forecourt of which none save those
who have served a like probationarv apprenticeship to the Genius of
Orientalism have ever been permitted to advance.*^

After pointing out some of the defects of Eastern poetry
he proceeds :—

^ It is occasionally graphic enough^can on most occasions be ad-
mired for euphony— and may at intervals exhibit sublimity ; but the
^ great irradiating light of Imagination is not there ; the highest of the
faculties, the very pillar of Genius, the vivifying soul of Thought, the
power upon which poetry is dependent for its ethereality, and without
which it dwindles into a most monotonous and mechanical process of
mind, is wanting, and ' the long-resounding march and energy immense'
of compound epithets and sonorous polysyllables make us but indif-
ferent amends for its absence."

Mangan's ''Literae Orientales" are not by any means
as well known as they should be. It is true that many of
the poems are overburdened with Arabic and Persian names
and allusions, and that the refrains bristle with what to
unfamiliar eyes and ears seem barbarous exclamations. It
may also be objected that the prose is somewhat over-
embroidered ; but, after all has been said that can be
said to their detriment, and when all the recognised refuse
is discarded, there remains a residue of great interest and
beauty. A few of the poems like ** The Time of the Bar-
mecides," " The Karamanian Exile,*' and '• The Wail and
Warning of the Three Khalendeers,'' have already won
their way to the admiration of thousands of Irishmen.
With the single exception of Edward Fitzgerald, in his
** Quatrains of Omar Khayyam,'' no writer has come near to
Mangan's richness of imagery ; while the variety of rhyme
and metre, and fulness of melody in these *' Liters Orien-
tales/' which ran through various numbers of the Umversity
Magazine f are his own.

^We copy no man,"* says he, "we follow in the track of none.
Our labours— inferior as we cheerfully admit them to be— are altogether
peculiar to ourself and our tastes."

But his first batchy of paraphrases (and otherwise) are
mostly mere eonfetH. Before attempting an examination

m^i^

OKDHAHGB tURVBY OmCB

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 91

of them it will be welt to explain how Mangan obtained the
books which opened up to him the glories of the Eastern
world.

The date of his entrance upon his duties as a copyist
fpr the Ordnance Survey work was somewhere about 1838.
He was sent to Marsh's Library, Trinity College, and else-
where to transcribe necessary documents, and it is clear
that the famous old library founded by Archbishop Marsh
in connection with St. Patrick's Cathedral was often visited
by him for the sake of its wonderful collection of old and
curious literature. Here Mangan worked, surrounded by
the old worm-eaten tomes in which are treasured the thoughts
of all the philosophers and poets of antiquity, unjostled by
clamorous moderns. In Petrie's letters to O'Donovan,
quoted in Stukes's Life of the former, we get two very brief
glimpses of the poet in 1838. In one letter he says :—
" Mangan is at work for you, and an admirable scribe he it — ErA

In another: —

" Mangan is at work for you in Marsh's Library, and is working at
the Latin, so that you will soon have in him a valuable caterer."

The office of the historical department of the Ordnance
Survey was in the house of Dr. Petrie, No. 2 1 Great Charles
Street, Here, in the little back parlour, Mangan and the

<92 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

** We were supposed,** says Mr. Wakeman, " when on home duty
to meet daily in the office at lo a.m. All were usually punctu^
except Mangan, who^ as a rule, was late, would often not appear
before deven or twelve o'clock* and would not infrequently be abisent
altogether. He had in our room a large unpainted deal desk, about
bratft high* supported upon four legs, ana to match, an equally
pkdn stool or seat, both being his own property, and of his own
introduction. Upon this desk, when he worked at all, he would copy
documents as required. He had nothing else to do, so that his
tiaining as scrivener made the task all the more easy. At times he
would be very dull and silent, but occasionally he was apt to make
pons and jokes. He generally had some awful story of a super-
natural character to tell us as he was sipping his * tar-water,* a bottle
of which medicine he always carried with him. At the time I speak
€>f Mangan could not have numbered more than thirtv-five or thirty-
mx years, yet he was then physically worn out—agea in fact — as far
as the bodv was concerned. His mmd, however, still was that of the
poet, and he was inditing those soul-stirring verses published then
and afterwards in the Insk Pennv Journal and Dublin University
Ma^ansu^ and I believe elsewhere.**

As to the ** tar-water," thereby hangs a tale. Mangan
was an admirer of Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher, and,
indeed, had read deeply in metaphysics generally.* But
he professed a greater liking for the bishop's tar-water
specific than for his philosophy, which, however, he had
taken the trouble to read. The worthy bishop had a
profound belief in the curative properties of the fluid, and
many of his contemporaries also professed faith in it.
Mangan's motive in labelling the stuff which he carried in
a bottle in his right-hand pocket as '* tar- water " is easily
divined. According to the general belief, sedulously spread
abroad by Mangan, alcohol could not be used with it, and
naturally his friends hesitated to question his veracity,
though few could get him to speak seriously on the topic.
But he would never allow anyone to touch, or even to
examine too closely, his famous bottle. There is no need
to disguise the fact that his associates satisfied themselves
that the secret beverage was that '' red rum and water "
which he had begun to use instead of opium, and which he
had several times glorified in verse and prose. It is
extremely likely that he had actually used '' tar-water" for
some complaint or other ; it is tolerably clear that long
after he had discontinued it, it served the useful purpose of

* *The time has been," be tells us, ''when for the writing of Reid, Kaat»
Dogtld Stewart, Brown, and Malebranche, I would have willingly abandoaed
aU the poeliy of Shakctpcie and B/rao."

JAMES CXARENCE MANGAN. 95

covering more ruinous libations. Father Meehan has pre-
served a document which Mangan wrote for John Frazer
{** J. De Jean ") the Nation poet, giving directions as to the
manufacture and use of the specific in question. The
recipe runs as follows :—

** Pour a gallon of cold water on a qnart of tan Stir both up with
a stick for five or six minutes. Let the mixture (which should be
coveted) lie for three days ; then pour it off. Nothing more need be
done except, perhaps, to skim the oil from the sunace. If nghtly
made it will appear of a light amber colour, somewhat like that of
sherry wine.

" With respect to quantity to be taken, this will depend on the
nature of the disease. In most cases half a pint in the morning and
another in the evening will be sufficient. Where the complaint is of a
desperate character, double or treble that quantity ma]|f be requisite.
Bishop Berkeley cured a hideous malady — 'a gangrene in the blood'^
a leprosy, in fact* in one of his own servants by forcing him ' to drink
tar-water by night and day.* He cured an old soldier who had been
turned out of hospital as incurable of the dropsy, by administering to
him two quarts ^^^M ot this Western Balm ot Gilead. He also
cured^but see his work, and see Prior,* who was, next to him, the
greatest tar- waterman of the day.

"One thing, however, should be particularly attended to This
namely, that he who takes tar-water must t^e nothing that will
interfere with it. He must not approach any intoxicating liquor.' He
may drink cold water and milk, and soups to any extent ; he may also
drink tea and coffee, but the less of the latter the better.

** Tar-water knows its own power. It is a iealous medidne. It is
the emperor of specifics, and Turk-like, * 'twill bear no brother near
its throne.'"

* Thomas Prior, a native of Queen's Couoty, and a well known phika-
throfHst of the Uit century.

94 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER IX.

^UTERM ORIENTALES'*-^TURKISH DEUGHTS — '* THE TIME OF THE
roses" — "the hundred leafed rose" — MANGAN OH

LUCiDmr— "the thirty flasks'' — "the man in the

cloak" — MANGAN DESCRIBED BY JAMES PRICE^HIS PHRENO-
LOGICAL STUDIES — EXAMINATION OF HIS ** BUMPS."

"* Twonld seem that Nature willed in him to show
How hwh mere mortal genius might aspire ;
But look vpon his life and deeds Uie while^
The blotted records of his years and hours."— Mangan.

As one of the aims of the present writer is to make the
reader acquainted with some of Mangan's unknown work,
giving a natural preference to that which helps to illustrate
his life, a good many quotations are necessary. Still, pro-
portionately to the extraordinary quantity of his literary
production, such extracts are necessarily meagre and
inadequate. When it is borne in mind that he wrote for
the Dublin University Magazine alone what would make a
dozen good sized volumes (that is considerably more than
a thousand closely printed double columns of the maga-
zine), an occasional sample of his Oriental wares will not
be too much to offer. He is particularly profuse in
epigram — in couplets and quatrains, many of which are
excellent. They frequently remind one of Omar Khayyam^
and the supposition that Edward Fitzgerald was acquainted
with Mangan's articles when he produced those remarkable
quatrains which have captured and enraptured the English
critical world is not an extreme one. Bits like the fol-
lowing are common enough in Mangan's versions and
perversions —

* My heart is a monk and thy bosom its cloister;.
So sleeps the bright pearl in the shell of the o^ter.**

Again—

^ My friend sat sad and silent all the eighty
Until the red wine loosed his tongue.
So when mora breaks, I said, with rosy lights
The lark's first pleasant song is sung."

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 95

Some of the snatches are not alwa)rs Eastern in s^le»
but generally they are just what we should expect from an
Oriental. The humorous element has more of Mangan's
peculiar stamp upon it : —

^ Mine eyes, of old the beamiest of the beamyi
Are now, alas I the filmiest of the filmy ;
So meagre am I too, no lath is like me ;
Death, for my shadowy thinness, cannot see me,
And when he enters my sad cell to kill me
His lance wiU not know how or where to strike me."*

Here is a similar scrap —

^ I, once plump as Shiraz ^rape.
Am, hke Thalbh, of thm renown,
Grown most chasmy, most phantasmy.
Yea I most razor-sharp m shape !
Fact 1 And if Tm olown through town
rU oit all the sumphs who pass me I **

Now and then a very fine thought is expressed, as in the
following lines to Sultan Murad II. —

** Earth sees in thee
Her Destiny I *
Thou standest as the Pole— and she resembles
The Needle, for she turns to thee and trembles!*

Or we have admirable touches like this —

** Came Night, with its congress of stars

And the Moon in her mournful glory ;
O, Time, I exclaimed, thou art just ! Nothing bars

The Great from the Temple of Story ;
But the Destinies ever in unison bind

The cypress and laurel ; and, save in the dusk
Of the sepulchre. Fame writes no Bismillak / "

% The imagery is sometimes of a very original kind, as

1 when, speaking of eyebrows, he says —

f *' Mine are clouds that dull the orbs below,

\ Or deserted bridges

Underneath whose dreary arches flow,
In unresting ridges.

Evermore the waters of deep woe.**

Such are the shorter pieces, the parings or cuttings, as
it were, of the fine stuflfs he wove out of Eastern lore. In
*' The Time of the Roses,'' we have a fairly good example

■i

* Mnimd signifies ** Destiny.

96 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

of the longer and less known pieces. Here are some of the

** Morning is blushing[ ; the ga^r nightingales
Warble their exquisite songs in the viues ;
Spring, like a spirit, floats everywhere.
Soaking sweet spice-showers loose Arom her hair ;
Murmurs half-musical sound from the stream,
Breathes in the valley and shines in the beam
In, in at the portals that youth uncloses.
It bastes, it wastes, the Time of the Roses.

Meadows, and gardens, and sun-lighted glades*
Palaces, terraces, grottoes, and shades
Woo thee ; a fairy bird sings in thine ear»
Come and be happy, an Eden is here f
Knowest thou whether for thee there be any
Years in the future ? Ah I think on how many
A young heart under the mould reposes.
Nor feels how wheels the Time of the Roses t

In the red light of the many-leaved rose,
Mahomet*s wonderful mantle re-glows
Gaudier far, but as blooming and tender
Tulips and martagons revel in splendour.
Drink from the chalice of Joy, ye who may I
Youth is a flower of eariy decay.

And Pleasure a monarch that Age deposes,
When past, at last, the Time of the Roses I

See the young lilies, their scimitar-petals
Glancing like silver *mid earthlier metals ;
Dews of the brightest in life-giving shower?.
Fall all the night on these luminous flowers.
Each of them sparkles afar like a gem I
Wouldst thou be smiling and happy like them ?
Oh, follow all counsel that Pleasure proposes 1
It dies, it flies, the Time of the Roses !

Pity the Roses ! EsLch rose is a maiden,
Prankt, and with jewels of dew overiaden.
Pity the maidens I The moon of their bloom
Rises to set in the cells of the tomb ;
Life has its winter — when summer is gone.
Maidens, like roses, lie stricken and wan.
Though bright as the fiery bush of Moses,
Soon fades, fair maids, thie Time of the Roses t

Lustre and odours^ and blossoms and flowers.

All that is richest m gardens and bowers,

Teach us morality, speak of mortality,

Whisper that life is a swift unreality !

Death is the end of that lustre — those odours ;

Brilliance and beauty are gloomy foreboders

To him who knows what this world of woes is»
And sees how flees the Time of the Roses 1

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. gjr

Heed them not* hear them not I Morning is hlushiqg»
Perfumes are wanderincf, fountains are gushing ;
What though the rose. Tike a virgin forbidden*
Long under leafy pavilion kiy hidden.
Now far around as the vision can stretch,
Wreaths for the pencil of angels to sketch,

Festoon the tall hills the landscape discloses.

O I sweet, though fleet, the Time of the Rotes I '

Now the air— drunk from the breath of the flow ers
Faints like a bride whom her bliss overpowers ;
Such, and so rich, is the fragrance that fills
Ether and cloud that its essence distils,
As through their lily-leaves, earthward again,
Sprinkling with rose-water garden and plain.
O ! joyously after the winter closes
Returns and bums the Time of the Roses 1

O, for some magical vase to imprison!
All the sweet incense that yet has not risen 1
And the swift pearls, that, radiant and rare,
Glisten and drop through the hollows of air 1
Vain I They depart, t^th the beaming and fragrant 1
So, too, Hope leaves us, and Love proves a vagrant !
Too soon their entrancinp^ illusion doses —
It cheats, it fleets, the Time of the Roses 1**

Another of these Eastern poems is worth quoting for
\ its curious rhyme effect. The poet finely likens the world
to a Khan or stopping-place in a desert, and speculates
on the source and destination of the pilgrims who call
thereat : —

" To this Khan, Sind/rom this Khan,

How many pilgnms came and went, too 1
In this Khan — and dy this Khan

What arts were spent— what hearts were rent, too 1
To this Khan — Sind/rom this Khan

Which for penance man is sent to,
Many a van and caravan

Crowded came — and shrouded went, too I
Christian man and Moslem man,

Guebre, Heathen, Tew, and Gentoo,
To this Khan — Sindjrom this Khan

Weeping came and weeping went, too I
A riddle this since time began

Which many a sage his mind hath bent to ;
AU came and went, but never man

Knew whence they came or where they went to.**

When Mangan wrote this poem, he had probably
already learned that the old Irish poets were masters of
assonance. He several times attempted the trick him*

98 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

self, but the English tongue does not easily lend itself
to it without more or less cheapening results. But even if
Mangan did not then know the practice of the Irish bard^
be must have been well aware of the Spanish use of asson-
antal aid. Before leaving the " Liters Orientales," I must
quote a portion of one of the best examples of Mangan's
pseudo-Turkish verse. It is entitled '*The Hundred-leafiSd
Rose." Irish readers may be pardoned for thinking that
the real significance of the poem concerns a place mudi
home than the land of the Crescent :—

•

** Her cloak is green, with a gloomy sheeoi
Like a garment of beauteous Jose,*
And prisoned around by a sentinelled wall
Is the Hundred-Leafi6d Rose.

Like Issa,t whose breath first woke from Death

The souls in this world of woes»
She vivifies all the fainting airi

The Hundred-Leaf6d Rose.

The Flower of Flowers, like a convent towers

Where Virtue and Truth repose ;
The leaves are the halls, and the convent walls

Are the thorns that pierce the Rose.

Who sees the sun set round and red

Over Lebanon's brow of snows.
May dream how bums in a lily-bed

The Hundred-Leafed Rose.

The sun is an archer swift and strongi

With a myriad silver bows,
And each beam is a barb to pierce the garb

Of the Hundred-Leaf^ Rose.

While the moon all the long, long spectral night

Her light o*er the f^den throws,
Like a beauty shrinkmg away from sight

Is the Hundred-Leafed Rose.

Like the tears of a maiden, whose heart o'erladen

With sorrowful thought, overflows
At her weeping eye, are the dews that lie

On the feminine cheek of the Rose.

As man after Fame, as the moth round the flame^

As the steer when his partner lows.
Is the Nightingale, when his fruitless wall

Is poured to the silent RosCt

* The %]rptka Joseph. fj

JAMES CLARENXE MANGAN. 99

A Princess tranced by a talisman's poweri

Who bloomingly slumbers, nor knows
That the sorcerer's spell encircles her bower,

Is the Hundred-Leaf6d Rose.

Alas ! that her Kiosk of Emerald rare

Should be powerless all to oppose
The venom of Serpent Envy's glare

When its eye is fixed on the Rose.

A Virgin alone in an alien land.

Whose friends are but silent foes—
A palace plundered by every hand

Is the Hundred-Leaf6d Rose." *

Mangan held that a poet's worst crime is to be unin*
telligible. He insisted that a writer of mystical tendencies
need not be obscure, and it would certainly be difficult to
catch him napping in this matter of lucidity. A profound
believer in the use of the m>'stical and the spiritu^J — ^if not
spiritualistic — in poetry, he is at all times intelligible — ^he is
even luminously clean

"No luxuriance of imagination/' he says, "can atone for the
absence of perspicuity. A poet above all men should endeavour to
make words the images of thmgs."

And he also says : —

} ** The best poetry is that which most resembles the best prose."

j This was Mangan's time of greatest material prosperity.
\ Between his earnings from the University Magazine and
h the work in the Ordnance Survey Office he must have
\ made a decent income. Even if he had only obtained ten
; guineas a sheet from M'Glashan, his eamingrs froiii the
j Magazine alone would not have been less than £jo or
\ ;C8o a year. The usual rate, however, was sixteen guineas
i a sheet ; but Mangan's humility and modesty naturally
\ prevented him from getting anything like this price during
'\ his connection with M'Glashan. Indeed, it is certain
'\ that, in the end, he worked for him at an appallingly low
rate.f It was not at this time, however, than Mangan
could say, as he grimly did at a later period, '' I sometimes
carve, but mostly starve," The year 1838 was a specially
I — .

i • "The Time of the Rows- and "The Hundred-LcafAi Rose" wm

\ l?[?^^ ^ ^^'^ ^f ^^ S4asom^ a coUectioa pabli^hed \j Cuny sod Co,
} Dublin, in 183Q.

I t One who knew him well has stated that at last Mangan obtained sisptmee

\ per poem from one of his "patrons"!

100 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

prolific one for him. Besides various articles on Turkish
and German poetry, he wrote a couple of sketches, one of
them running through two numbers of the Magazine^ and
entitled ''The Thirsty Flasks." It bears one of his numerous
signatures ("The Out-and-Outer"), ^nd would make a small
volume. It is an exceedingly clever story about an old
magician, and is far the best thing of its kind written by
Mang^n. It is almost incredible that Father Meehan, who
republished his most trivial sketches, should have overlooked
this admirable piece. But one does not like to severely
criticise the worthy priest, who has done more for Mangan
than any other writer, or than any of the other friends of
the poet ever dreamt of doing. ''The Man in the Cloak" —
" a very German story,'' as Mangan labels it — is the second
sketch referred to above. It is fairly well known. Mangan
himself used it, or rather allowed its use, more than once.
It is very characteristic of his lighter moods, though some
may pronounce it a piece of " melancholy wit '* — a descrip-
tion Mangan once applied to some of his own lucubrations.
The signature attached to it is " B A M.'' Apropos of
" The Man in the Cloak/' it would be interesting to know
how Father Meehan, who would not admit that Mangan
was conscious ^f his eccentricity in dress, accounted for
the production of a certain extravaganza, of which his
famous cloak is almost the deus ex fnachina* The piece
referred to appeared a little later on. It is called " My
Bugle, and How I Blow It ; " and as it bears on this ques-
tion of Mangan's deliberate eccentricity, I am tempted to
quote a few passages from it : —

**• Public, do you listen ; you are elevated to the high honour of
being my confidante. I am about to confer an incredible mark of my
favour upon you, Public Know, then, the following things :^

Firstly — ^That I am not a Man in a Cloak, but the Man in the
Cloak. My personal identity is here at stake, and I cannot consent to
sacrifice it. Let me sacrifice it, and what becomes of me ? * The earth
bath bubbles as the water hath,' and I am thenceforth one of them. I
lose my cl6ak and my consciousness both in the twinkling of a pair of
tongs ; I become what the i>hilosophy of Kant (in opposition to the
OuLi of Philosophy) denominates a Nicht^Ich^ a Not-I, a Non^Ego,
Pardon met my public, if I calmly but firmly express my determination
to shed the last drop of my ink before I concede the possibility of such
a paltry, sneaking, shabby, swindling, strip-and-pilh^e-me species of
contingency.

* In one of his letters to Gavia l>aStf he says— ^ How litUe do yoo know
«f the Man in the Ckitk.**

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. [Ot

Secondly— Thai I am the Mam in the Cloak— vii.. I am not aa
'Old Woman,' as Mrs. Trollope complains that the Yankees would
call her, despite her best bonnets, satin frocks and flounces, and
corsets a ttnfanl. Neither am I a lump of moonshine all out, Stip
matise me, if you will, as a Hottentot, as a Troglodyte, as a hang-a
bone jailbird ; still, you cannot put your hand on your heart and assert
that 1 am a make-believe, a bag of feathers, a non-eits, a bull-beggar,
a hobgoblin, ahumbug, a lath -and -pulley gct-up like Punch. Not at
all. I do not say that you dare not. but I clap my wings like a banlam
on a barn roof, and I crow aloud in triumph thai you cannal, public
]t is outside the sphere of your power, public. I am the the Afati in
the Cloak. SUItei ccla dans voln pipe, et fuma-U, tiien Puilic.

Thirdly— That I am the Man in the Cloak, In other words. I
am by no manner of means the Man of the Cloak or the Man uniUr
the Cloak. The Germans call me ' Der Mensch mit dem Mantel,'
the Man with the Cloak. This is a deplorable error in the nomen-
clature of that otherwise intelligent people, and I am speechless with
astonishment that they could have fallen into it. Why? Because
my cloak is not part and parcel of myself. The cloak is ouuide and
the man is inside, as Golasmiih said of the world and the prisoner,
but each is a distinct entity. Of that I am satisfied. On that point
I, as the Persians say, tighten the girdle of assurance round the waist
of my understanding — though, perhaps, there is no waste of my
understanding whatever. ) admit that you may say, 'The Man with
the Greasy Countenance,' or "The Chap with the Swivel Eye.' Ttiul
also Slawkenbergius (vtdt Tristram Shandy) calls his hero * The
Stranger with the Nose,' and reasonably enough, for although it was
at one period conjectured that the nose in question might extend five
hundred and seventy -five geometrical feet in longitude, not even the
incredulous amongst [he faculty of Strasburg

I02 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

cxample^to become an African, an American a West Indian, an
Egyptian ? I see not the decillionth part of a reason for doing so.
I call Europe to witness that I shall never do so as long as I have my
doak. In a case like this I laugh at coercion and despise the prospect
of torture. What did I buy my cloak for? Why did I pay fifteen
shillings and sixpence, besides boot, for it to a Jew hawker of old
tags, but that I might don it and never doff it, I should be glad to
know."

There seems to be no room for doubt that Mangan
took some pains to appear an eccentric, if only to live up
to the reputation as such that people had given him. * His
features had by this time lost all or nearly all their earlier
attractiveness — their delicacy of outline. He was prema-
turely aged ; constant study of manuscripts and books for
copying purposes, intense devotion to reading, combined
with chronic ill-health, and the one great failing of his life,
and perhaps what he calls his ''ancient malpractice of
lucubrating by candle-light," had affected his eyes very
much, had reduced him to a shadow, and made him prac-
tically a total wreck, physically. But the sacred fire
burned within as fiercely as ever, and at intervals blazed
magnificently. Admirable as his previous work had been,
his genius was yet to flash out still more finely. His
greatest efforts were yet unmade. The poorer he became,
tiie more wretched his health, the more hopeless his future,
the nobler grew his utterances. James Price, the friend
who knew him best, whose knowledge of him extended
over nearly twenty years, gives the following personal des-
cription of him as he appeared at this period : —

^Behold him passing through our streets with a quick yet shuffling
gait, as if some uneasiness hurried him onward, pausing not, looking
not to the right or left, until brought suddenly to a full stop before a
bookstand. See how eagerly he searches there for some old volume
of German black-letter. If it is found, and his finances can secure its
purchase, lo 1 what a flash of joyous feeling lights up those before
heavy and lustreless eyes ! He passes onward, his pace quickening to
a run, until, in the solitude of his lonely chamber, he can commune
with his new treasure.

Clarence Mangan was about five feet six in height, thin even to
emaciation, and slightly stooped in the shoulders, hke many men of
studious habits and close application. In his dress, the eccentricity
of his mind was outwardly displayed, His coat, a very little coat,
tightly buttoned, was neither a frock coat, dress coat, morning coat,
nor shooting coat, and yet seemed to partake of the fashioning of all
Idar. Sometimes, however, it was covered with a blue cloak, the
tightest cloak to the form that can be imagined, in which every attempt
at the bias cut that ^ives a free flowing drapery was rigidly eschewed.
But it was in the article of hati that poor, Ckurenceft eccentric fancy was

JAMES CLARENCE HANGAX. tOj

especially shown. Such a quaint-shaped crown, such & high, wide-
bosted leaf as he fancied, has rarely been seen off the stage And
though Ihc hat usually gave the finishing touch of the grotesque to his
appearance, still there was something strangely striking and inieiesling
about him- You could not laugh at that deathly pale and visibly dream-
haunicd man, whose thin, worn teaiures spoke of unhealthy seclusion,
close study and heart-weariness. You could not even laugh at tho
grisly moustache * which, with a strange notion, of he himself knew
not what, he clothed his upper lip. You could not ; for in his ejti
on his cheek, you must have read (he struggle of genius with adverse
circumstances; you must have felt that he was no ordinary man,
singularly aitired though he was. on whose wan face and attenuated
form the hand of death was visibly strengthening its grasp."

The mention of the story of the " Man in the Cloak "
(the hero of which shows decided interest in phrenology)
reminds us of Mangan's faith in that pseudo-science. He
had read pretty deeply in the writings of Spurzheim and
Combe, and had not improbably attended their lectures. I
find that the former, who had visited Dublin about 1S15,
paid a second visit in 1S30, delivering a course of lecture^
during the progress of which he was made an honorary
member of the Royal Irish Academy. He impressed a
good many people, and some of the leading physicians
adopted his views.f William Combe lectured in Dublin
also in 1829, Mangan was among the convinced, and
afterwards told his friends that he had a notion of opening

104 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

suspected. There is a phrenological account of him ex-
tant, and I shall quote it here. Father Meehan, who
prints it, tells us that on his first introduction to the poet,
the latter, before taking his seat, ran his fingers through
his new-found friend's hair, '^but," says Fatiber Meehan,
* whether be discovered anything to his or my advantage
I don't remember." In spite of his implication that he did
not give credence to theories of fatalism, it is certain that
Mangan fully believed that his future would be a hopeless
one; that his declining years would be saddening and
wretched in the extreme ; and that no attempt to live a
nobler life would or could be successful Hence his utterly
reckless abandonment in the end.

But to return to the subject of phrenology. The fol-
lowing explanation of Mangan's cranial development was
written in February, 1835, by a phrenologist of some note,
named Wilson, who, it is believed, did not personally
know the poet very well It is of great interest, if only in
view of Mangan's undoubted belief in the system : —

*'This is the head of one capable of warm attachment, and of
having his mind enthusiastically wrought up to the consideration of
any subject or the accomplishment of any purpose. He would be apt
to live much more in the world of romance than in that of reality, and
with respect to the other sex, he would be inclined to cherish fanciful
notions of their dispositions and characters. He has a bright imagina-
tion and possesses the spirit of pjoetry in a very high degree, but he
would be subject to great alternation of feeling, and would be suscep-
tible of great extremes, both of joy and grief. His mind is of an inquir-
ing order, and he possesses ability for pnilosophy, but in general, and
for a continuance, a literature of a lighter ana more imaginative kind
would suit him best. He appears to have but little combativeness,
destructiveness, acquisitiveness, or self-esteem, which, with large
cautiousnessand no great degree of firmness, would render him very likdy
to be much influenced b^ the spirit of his associates; on the other hand
having but little veneration, he would not be disposed to yield much
submission to authority. He has a tender and compassionate heart
for others, but especially for the young and innocent. He has also
a strong desire to acquire the goodwiU of others, and more particularly
of those who are themselves great or amiable. He would not be of a
domineering, insolent, or quarrelsome disposition ; he would rather
err in the contrary extreme, and regard the crimes and follies of others
with too lenient an eye. In religion he would be more speculative
than devotionaL In politics he would prefer the people to the Crown.
In all afiairs of life sfenerally, he would be more imaginative than
pradent. He has but httle secretiveness. and would then be inclined to
express his sentiments without disguise on all occasions, peihaps often
incuscreetly. Constnictiveness is hardly developed at all, on which
aoooimt he would not have a ffenius for mechanism or inventions
fenenlly, but he would posiess the power of magnifying, embellishiog,

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. lo;

and beautifying in the highest degree. A tendency to exaggerate and
amplify would pervade whatever be undertook. He has great Form
and Language, and would have an exquisite 'perception of (he beauty
of figure from the first and a remarkable memory for words from the
latter. His memory for places would be also great. In argument he
would be quick- though ted, but singular, and prone to dissent from
commonly- received opinions. In action, he would be rather irresolate,
unless operated upon by some strong motive, on which occaiioo he
would be rather impetuous- In conclusion, this is the head of one
who is susceptible of strong impressions, great joy or great sorrow,
but who would live much more in the past and future than in the
present, and would be reckoned somewhat eccentric by the world.
The principal ingredients of the character it indicate* uk taster wi^
extravagance, vividness of fancy, generosity, pronenesi to yield to tbe
solicitations of otben.*'

I06 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER X.

^WEEKLY register" — MANGAN'S PESSIMISM ONLY PAR-
TIAL—HIS FEEBLENESS OP WILL — DESCRIPTIONS OF HIM
BY MITCHEL AND O'DALY — HIS FASCINATING TALK —
HIS TAVERN HAUNTS — HIS YEARNINGS — ^HIS PRACTICAL
SIDB — HIS PROTEAN. SHAPES — ''THE TIME OF THE BAR-
MECIDES^ — DR. NEDLEY — MANGAN'S DISLIKE TO NEW
ACQUAINTANCES — HIS WIT — DR. MAGINN.

" And oh I that tach a mind, so rich, so overflowing
With ancient lore and modem phantassr*
And prodii^ of its treasures as a tree
Of golden leaTcs when Autumn winds are blowing.
That such a mind, made to illume and elad
All minds, all hearts, should have itself become
Affliction's chosen Sanctuary and Home ! —
This is in truth most marvellous and sad I " — Makgan.

To the weekly edition of the Register^ a very able Dublin
paper, conducted by the distinguished Irish publicist,
Michael Staunton, Mangan is said to have occasionally
contributed in the thirties.* But it was in the University
Magazine of this period that the extraordinary variety of
his metres, the never-failing novelty of his phraseology, '
attracted wide attention. No matter how complicated his
measures — no two of which are alike, generally speaking —
where a less discriminating intellect might have become
confused, he is always clear and definite, and never gets
involved. It was in the office of the Register that Gavan
Duffy first met him, and formed the friendship which lasted
so many years. Mangan had not, so far, attempted to shun
society altogether. And it may be truly said that he was no
misanthrope, properly speaking, at any time of his life. He
did not hate his tellowman, and, like so many disillusioned
poets, scourge mankind in revenge of personal suffering.
Even when he was, as Mitchel puts it, ^ drowned in the

^ A oarefel acaicli throiq^ miiqr Tolninci, howcfcr, hat fiulcd to ditoofcr
OBjthiqg of bis.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. Ip7

blackest despair/' he never inveighed against society, never
predicted or beh'eved in '* univer^ smash/' but always and
ever h'mited his pessimism to himself. He was not a
pessimist at all in the sense which devotes all and every-
thing to a future of woe and misery and final destruction.
He was not averse to the belief that though he himself was
destined to what he calls '* a death in life," the world was
yet a joyous place for others, and while he saw nowhere
any sign of hope for himself he constantly appealed to his
countrymen to ** hope on, hope ever/' Hope — for others
— is, indeed, the main burden of all his latest writings.
''Contarini Fleming/' says he, ''wrote upon the wall,
* Time ' ; our inscription would have been ' Hope and
Exertion/ "

At this time his home, such as it was, had no pleasure
for him ; " he found there," says Mitchel, '' nothing but
reproaches and ill-humour/' Mitchel goes on —

" Baffled, beateni mocked* and all alone amidst the wrecks of this
world* is it wonderful that he sought at times to escape from conscious-
ness by taking for bread, opium and for water brandy ? Many a sore
and pitiable struggle he must have maintained against the foul fiend,
but with a character and a will essentially feeble he succumbed at
last."

To quote again the same admirable writer : —

" Never was there a creature on this earth whose existence was so
entirely dual and double ; nay, whose two lives were so hopelessly and
eternally at war, racking and desolating the poor mortal frame which
was the battle ground of that fearful strue."

And Mitchel, despite his comparative lack of knowledge
of Mangan's life, says many profoundly true things of the
poet. His description of him may be compared with that
of O'Ddly :—

" Mangan, when the present writer saw him first,*' he says, " was
a spare and meagre figure, somewhat under middle height with a finely-
formed head, clear blue eyes, and features of peculiar delicacy. His
face was pallid and worn, and the light hair was not so much grizsled
as bleached.*'

O'Daly's account is more full : —

*' In person Mangan was below the middle height and of slender
proportions ; the ashy paleness of his face was lighted up by eyes df
extraordinary brilliancy. His usual costume was a light brown coat ;
he wore his hat closely pressed over his eyebrows, and used to cany
a large umbrella under his arm. Of his manner and conversation it

X08 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

woald be impossible to give a correct idea; they may be best described
bj an otract from his fovourite Schiller :—

* His dreams were of great object^
He walked amidst us of a silent spirit
Cnmmimine with himself; yet I oave known him
Transported on a sudden into utterance
Of strange conceptions ; kindling into sptendoor^
His soul revealed itselC and he spake so
That we looked round, perplesed, upon each other.
Not knowing whether it was craxinem
Or whether it were a god that spake in him.* **

To return to Mitchel, who helps to complete the
picture —

** The visitor (Mangan) would sometimes remain in conversation of
his own for an hour ; for though extremely silent shy, aind reserved habita-
aUy, vet» with those in whom he confided, he was much given to strange
and deraltory talk» which seemed like the soliloquy of a somnambulist.
His blue eyes woidd then dilate, and light up strangely the sepulchral
pallor of his face. **

He delighted his friends, as Father Meehan remarks,
^ with viua voce criticisms of the Italian, German, and French
poets." And other writers have spoken of the great charm
of his conversation or monologues. Father Meehan, in one
of his letters, also says : —

** In all our conversations I never heard him say a word that was
not worth remembering."

And Gavan Dufly also tells us how he

** spent maoy a night, up to the small hours, listening to his delightful
monologues on poetry and metaphysics."

He was frequently to be found in the "Phcenix" tavern
in D'Olier Street, or in the "Ster and Garter" close by,
and would sometimes, even in so public a place, repeat
aloud one of his own poems, or pieces from his favourite
authors, to any close acquaintance. A poet whom he was
very fond of quoting was Byron, and his reading of Byron's
** Mazeppa ''—especially the passages describing the wild
ride — had a weird significance not to be conveyed in print
Mrs. Petrie, the stepmother of Dr. Pctrie, took a great liking
to Mangan, and often obtained his promise to call and take
tea- with her, but he occasionally found the attractions of
the tavern too powerful. Mr& retrie would invite him and
W. F. Wakeman together, and the latter tells me that he
spent some ytxy pleasant evenings at her place (she kept a

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. lOQ

small general shop near the Castle Yard), listening to the
poet's fascinating talk and strangely effective recitation or
declamation. But those who were able to secure Mangan's

J)resence of an evening were privileged persons. He pre-
erred to be left alone with his thoughts, with his liquor,
and a book.

In a so-called Oriental poem of this period there is a
quatrain which evidently came to him whilst sitting in his
comer in the ** Phcenix/' or one of the other taverns he
resorted to : —

" Boy, fill another bumper, and take care you fill it up full I
My manner grows extremely bland when 1 have drained a cupful—
My temperament, you understand, is somewhat dry and drouthfol ;
I don't eat much, and can*t conunand a rdish for a moothfuL"

It should be remembered that though Mangan had un-
fortunatety contracted his fatal habit of drinking before he
met DufTy, and continued it, with few intends, to his
death, he had not, at the period now reached, become a
very heavy drinker. Indeed, Duffy says —

" I never saw him affected by drink* Opium was supposed to be
bis temptation."*

And James Price, who knew more of Mangan than any-
body, expressly assures us that it was in his attempt to
escape from the terrible drug which had obtained an almost
complete mastery over his senses that he fell into the other
habit, not less potent for evil, not less personally degrading.
He conquered the opium fiend after a fierce ordeal of self-
torture, but it is certain that his second state was worse than
his first.

Mitchel very adroitly likens the poet's history to that of
Ireland : —

'' His history and fate," he says, ** were indeed a type and shadow
of the land be loved so well. The very soul of his melodv is that plain-
tive and passionate yearning which breathes and throbs through all
the music of Ireland. Like Ireland's, his gaze was ever backward,
with vain and feeble complaint for vanished years. Like Ireland'Si
his light flickered upward tor a moment, and went out in the blackest
of darkness.*'

*D'Arqr M'Gee, too, in an article written before Mangan's death, uses thew
words—** it is reported, indeed, that the poet finds a roidy, thdogh most un-
happy, way out of the evils of the actual into the ideal, and that his inspira*
tion, like that of the Dervishes he is to familiar with, comes from opium*
eating.-

I lO THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

In Mangan's poetry and prose we frequently meet with
this sehnsucht after the unattainable : —

^ Had we Aladdin's lamp," he says somewhere, ^ Gyges* ring, the
wishing cap of Fortunatus, Faganini's violin, the lyre of Orpheus, the
collar of Moran, the sword of Harlequin, Prosperous wand, St. Leon's
MxirvUae^ the finger of Midas, the wings of Icarus, the talisman of
Camaralraman, the flying horse of Prince Firouz Schah- there is none
of all the thirteen we should shrink from bartering for that which we
have lost."

Wretched as his early life was he looked back to it as to
a time of joy, and its irresponsibility made an especially
powerful appeal to one of his weak and wavering character
and enfeebled body.

In 1839, Mangan continued his excursions into German
and Turkish poetry, and we find poems which had appeared
before elsewhere (sometimes more than once) coming up
a|;:ain, generally in a new dress and to better advantage.
The use made by Mangan of poems which had been
previously published at a disadvantage, shows that there
was a practical side to his character. And this is borne
out by several who knew him. Someone — probably Joseph
Brenan — writing in the Irishman of June 23rd, 1849,
says: —

"It is a curious fact, and worth notmg for his biogra(3hers, that
although he passed the greater portion of his life in the region of the
Ideal he was not at all unacquainted with the Real; he acted as a
theorist, but he was naturally a practical man. . . . Mangan had
a rich vein of common-sense in nis character. This was the source of
his humour, quaint and rich, the very flowering of common-sense, for
humour was as much a characteristic of his as fancy. He could be
anything—gay, pathetic, or elevated, according to his mood."

In one respect these latter observations are true, but it
cannot be said that humour was natural to him. He could,
of course, write amusingly, and his writings are here and
there humorous, but he was no humorist His tempera-
ment was at bottom a terribly gloomy one : a settled
melancholy took possession of him in boyhood, and all
attempts at gaiety and pretence of light-hcartedness were
hollow mockeries. But that he could really produce, by a
kind of tour dt force^ a witty poem or sketch even in his
saddest moments, is undeniable. He could be anything by
turns, but nothing long ; his moods were ever-shifting, ever-
varying. He was a veritable Proteus, as he himself tells
us in words already quoted. In the impersonal autobio-

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. Ill

graphical fragment before referred to we also find the
following : —

** And do you really sympathise with your subject?" I demanded.
^^Yes, always, always," was his answer. ^When I write as a
Persian. I fed as a Persian ; and am transported back to the days of
Djemsheed and the Genii ; when I write as a Spaniard, I foreet, for the
moment, everything but the Cid, the Moors, and the Alhambra; when
I translate from the Irish, my heart has no pulses except for the wrongs
and sorrows of my own stricken land.**

Yet he was always himself. Dr. Anster once expostu-
lated with him on the wrong he did himself in attributing
to others what was his own, and mentioned the strong
personal flavour of some of his pretended translations from
the Persian of Hafiz. ** Ah," said Mangan, '' anyone can
see that they are only Half-his.'*

In the University Magazine for 1839 there are many of
his characteristic jokes. To Gellcrt he attributes some of
his love-sonnets, to the Chinese his '* Elegy on Joe (Tchao)
King,** to the Irish his poem beginning ** I Stood Aloof/'
to the Italian his poem best known as ** To Frances," and
so on. From an elaborate joke which he attributes to
Drechsler, who, as already pointed out, had no separate
existence, the following two stanzas are extracted ^—

^ I knew him ! — By that sunken chamel cheek

And spectral eye
And drooping horizontal head.
I knew him 1 Yet, I did not, could not, speak—
I passed him by.
And in cold silence cut him dead !
I knew him by that vast columnar brow,
Once all unworn,
And polished to the last degree.
But furrowed with High-German wrinkles now—
I could have sworn
From that Shakespearean brow 'twas he 1

Disastrous years had rolled, since last we met,
O'er him and me.
O'er me in pain — o'er him in prison ;
And many a golden sun meantime had set
Red in the sea.
And many a silver moon had risen—
And now we were estranged— and he was changed,
As one oft is
By time and inward agony.
No matter— all my eye — my quick eye-»ranged
Athwart his phiz.
And told my heart it must be he 1 "

112 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

In the same article in which appeared the skit just
quoted froniy there is the first version of a poem known to
and admired by Irishmen all over the world, namely —
** The Time of the Barmecides/' a pretended translation
firom the Arabic Mangan shortly afterwards published
an improved version, which is too familiar to my readers
to need reprinting here. But it may be interesting to
record the fact, in view of Richard D'Alton Williams'
clever and well-known parody of the poem, that Mangan,
who preferred it to any other piece he ever wrote, gives a
sample stanza of a (much earlier) parody of his own,
which runs : —

** Ere my nose was red or m^ wig was grey

Or I sat in the civic chair,
I often left Rome on a soft spring day

To taste the country air —
All satin and plush were my bran-new dothes —

All lace my white cravat —
All square my buskins about the toes —

And oh 1 ail round my hat 1 "

That Mangan had a special fondness for '* The Time of
the Barmecides," I am informed by more than one who met
him. Dr. Ncdley, the distinguished Dublin physician, has
in his possession a copy of the poem which was given to him
by Mangan under the following circumstances. He was
dining with Father Meehan one night, and there met
Mangan, who had a like invitation. As Father Meehan
was called away on some parochial matter, the doctor, then
very young, was left alone with the poet, and had a long
talk with him. Mangan had just previously heard him sing
•' The Time of the Barmecides," to the old air of " Billy
Byrne of Ballymanus," and was so charmed with the singing
(Dr. Nedley was noted then and after for his beautiful
tenor voice), that he promised him an autograph copy of
the poem, telling him at the same time that he thought
it the best thing he had ever written. This copy Dr.
Nedley duly received and has religiously preserved.

Mangan became more and more solitary as time went
on. Since the betrayal by his friend he had lost much
of his belief and trust in mankind, and gradually developed
a dread of making new acquaintances. He would not go
anywhere t6 meet new people, and would sometimes, when
inve^led,as it were, into an acquaintance, remain silent,
and take the earliest opportunity of making his 'escape.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. II5

•

Mitchel remarked this, for he says that it was only when
Mangan found him alone that he would enter into conver*
sation. He also tells us that there was a difficulty in his
own case, and that acquaintanceship with the poet was

''a fact not easily accomplished, for Mangan had amofbid reliict^
ance to meet new people or to be * introduced.' **

Gavan Duffy practically corroborates this : —

** He stole into the Naiian office once a week," he state% '* but if
any of my friends appeared he took flight on the instant"

And Mangan, true to his invariable habit, introduces an
admission of this peculiarity into one of his articles in the
University Magazine : —

** We are but little disposed to prepossessions in favour of new
acquaintances, whether in literature or hfe.**

And again : —

** The poet cares nothing for solitude, but he wishes to avoid man
• • • Anything is better for us than imprisonment in a sphere within
which we are ' not at home,' and nothing can be more dreadful than
compulsory companionship with beings who are sufficiently alike as
to awaken our sympathies in their behalf, yet more than sufficiently
unlike us to make those sympathies recoil upon our hearts, burdened
with the mournful lesson that in

' Our wretchedness and our resistance.
And our sad, unallied existence,*

there lies a woe beyond our power to heal, a mystery our faculties are
forbidden to fathom.*'

I have said that Mangan could be very amusing at
times — mostly so when he is making fun of the methods of
the German poets. De la Motte Fouque, the German
rhymer with anything but a Teutonic name, was one of his
butts. He uses a very amusing illustration to express his
disappointment over the great promise and small perform-
ance of the Baron's volumes : —

*' The peculiar peculiarity of the Baron's * banquets,' " he says,
referring to a special example of " great cry and little wool," ** is that
you can never detect the presence of aliment in any shape in any of
them ; not a single tumbler of double stout — not the phantom of one
consumptive parsnip can be had either for love or money. Now, few
people would care to stomach treatment like this. There is no prece-
dent for it Even our friend Bernard Cavanagh * would, we are certain,

* This was a *'&sting " man then exhibiting himielf in Dublin. He was
itioogly, and no doubt nghtly, suspected of being a fraud.

114 1*H£ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

have manifested more hospitality than the Baron ; there would have
been on Bernard's mahogany at least the appearance, the theatrical
show, the Barmecidal promise, of a ham and a brace of sausages. * I
never drink,' said a solemn friend of ours to us once, * but I like to see
the decanter on the table,' and there was in the observation a pro-
Ibonder instinct of spiritual philosophy than even the observer himself

And again, in his own odd way, he thus praises the
editor of some Grerman poetry, telling him that mere words
would not express his feeling of indebtedness.

** If we owed Mr. K a thousand pounds, he does not suppose

that we would have brass enough to tender him a eroat by way of
payment No. Our sense of the magnitude of the dfebt would rather
mipose perpetual silence on us. Not one penny should we jingle
agsunst another before him. The mingled nobleness and perspicuity .
vdiich have on many occasions distinguished us would enable us
thoroughly to appreciate the delicacy of his feelings ; and if he ever
alluded to pecuniary subjects we should merely either cough him
down at once or enquire, with a considerable noftchalitnei^ whether he
could not do himself the favour of pressing an additional thousand on
our acceptance."

His jocular references to himself are, however, too often
so much word-spinning, as in the following insistence that
he is the " stupidest man alive." But anybody can per-
ceive between the lines Mangan's meaning : —

*' We are stupider to-day than we were yesterday, and there is not
a shadow of doubt upon our mind that we shall be stupider to-morrow
than we are to-day. .... We say it without vaunting, our
stupidity is a result sui freneris — a phenomenon to be contemplated
with wonder: not to be discussed without a certain awe; to be
analvsed only by intellects of the first order ; obscurely to be compre-
hended even by them, and never to be paralleled by any. Many persons
are called by courtesy stupid, when in point of fact they are only
smoky, or perhaps in a degree muzzv ; but, for us, we are not only
decidedly stupid, but we are sunken, lost, buried, immeasurable ioisis
down, in the nethermost depths of the lowest gulf of the last vortex of
stupidity. Not one solitary ray of intelligence telieves the dense gloom
that enwraps our faculties. Friends and foes alike acknowledge that
our state is one to excite the deepest sympathies of the philanthropist
as weU as the unbounded amazement of the psychologist and the
pathogonist Hence it is that we are spared the necessity of all that
exertion and solicitude which break the hearts of thousands. Our
stupidity is our sheet anchor, the bulwark of our strength, the pioneer
that levels aU impedimenu before us, the talisman whose touch con-
verts ideas into gold. By means of our stupidity we flourish, we
prosper, we laugh and grow fat; we are monthly winning greener
Jaorels. andhooily getting on at an ever-accelerated pace towards the
9oalof£une.*

in his series of ma3dms entitled ** Sixty Drops of

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 11$

Laudanum," published about this time, where Mangan
now and ag^n reminds us of Maginn, there are several such
passages as this : —

^ Experience is a jewel picked up by a wrecked mariner on a desert
coast^a picture frame purchased at a preposterous cost» when decay
has done its duty on your finest Titian — a prosperous lecturer who
sermonises a sleeping congregation, a warden who alarms the citadel
when the enemy has broken through the gates, a melancholy moon
after a day of darkness and tempest, a sentinel who mounts guard over
a pillaged house, a surveyor who takes the dimensions of the pit we
have tumbled into, a monitor that, like Friar Bacon's Brazen Head,
tells us that Time is past — a lantern brought to us after we have
traversed a hundred morasses in the dark, and are entering an illumi-
nated ^age ; a pinnace on the strand found when the tide has ebbed
away ; a morning lamp lighted in our saloon when the guests have
departed, revealing rueful ruin ^-^or anything else equally pertinent
and impertinent. Why, then, do we panegyrise it so constantly?
Why do we take and make all opportunities to boast of our own ?
Because, wretched worms that we are, we are so proud of our
despicable knowledge that we cannot afford to shroud from view even
that portion of it which we have purchased at the price of our
happiness."

It is worth noting here that Mangan, who, as has
already been mentioned, had a pretty high appreciation of
the famous but ill-fated Corkman, wrote an article upon him
during the last few months of his life, from which a few
sentences only, more or less applicable to himself, need be
extracted : —

** Maginn," he says, ** wrote alike without labour and without
limit. He had, properly speaking, no style, or rather he was master
of all styles, though he cared for none. His thoughts literally gushed
from his brain in overflowing abundance. He flung them away, as he
flung himself away, in the riotous exuberance of his heart and spirit
He cast the rich bread of his intellect upon the waters, but he did not
find it again after many days, or, if he did, it came back to him with
the properties of poison- • • For all intents and purposes of
posthumous renown he has lived in vain. His name, like that of
Keats, has been ' writ in water '—or more properly in gin and water/*

* These last two images are veiy Tom Mooreish.

Il6 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER XL

IfANGAN ON GHOSTS— HIS GHOSTLY VISITANTS—** TWENTY GOLDfiN
YEARS AGO •'—** IRISH PENNY JOURNAL "—** THE WOMAN OF
THREE COWS * — *' LAMENT FOR THE PRINCES OF TYRONE AND
TYRCONNELL "— ** KATHLEEN NY HOULAHAN *•— ** tf HUSSEY'S
ODE TO THE MAGUIRB"— ** BELFAST VINDICATOR**— MANGAN'S
PHYSICAL DETERIORATION — W. F. WAKKMAN'S DESCRIPTION—
RSUGIOUS FEEUNGS.

" Vetfst deem it a shibboleth phimse of the crowd,
Nsrer call it the dream of a rhymer ;
The instinct of Nature proclaims it aloud —
We are destined for something sablimer 1 "— Makgan.

It will be readily believed that Mangan had a pro-
nounced leaning towards Spiritualism. We find his ideas
on the subject developed in several articles in the
University Magazine^ but he often personally assured his
friends that he was in communion with forms from the
unseen world, and in one of his poems (an unrhymed one —
for a change), occur the lines : —

*' Yet is this dreary abode to me a forecourt of Paradise I
Neither, friend, live I alone, as thou so idly imaginest.
Angels and glorified souls constantly dwell and converse with me«*'

But these shapes were not always pleasant or welcome.
He had a notion that his father* often came to him in the
night and troubled his rest. Mitchel puts it in this way —

" He saw spirits, too, and received unwelcome visits from his dead
fiuher, whom ne did not love."

And in a sketch of Mangan written by D'Arcy M'Gee,
but not" published during the poet's lifetime, it is said :—

** He is nightly exposed to supernatural visitors, who are sometimes
as unwelcome to him as if they were of the earth, earthy. I remember
he complained bitteriy of them to a friend, a Catholic deiig^ymant
especially censuring ' that miserable old man (his fjaither), who would

* I have not been able to disoorer the date of the elder Mangan's death*
hot k was soawwhere in the thirties. His mother had died prcvionslj-

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 11/

not let lum sleep o* niffhtst coming to the tide of lus bed and enter*
ing into conversation.' *'

The University Magamneiox 1841 contains a couple of un-
signed papers on ** Gmnan Ghosts and Ghost-Seers," which
are certainly Mangan's. In the first of these he insists upon
the sincerity of recognising the sincerity of ghost believers.

'*The incredulity of the age is incredulity in second power. Not
only do we not believe in Uie marvellous ; we believe not even in any
belief therein. We are sure there are no ghosts — ^nay, we are sora
there are no believers in such. . . • And here belt remembered
that an opinion may be worth very little in itself, and yer the fiict tiiat
men hold it may be worth a great deal. Methinks a ghost-believer,
no less than a ghost, is a phenomenon needing to be ac cou nted for» if
possible on natural grounds. And I know not whether a nation of
ghost-believers be not something quite as wonderful as an authentic
irretegable ghost"

■

In further articles, called *^ Chapters on Ghost-Craft,"
which bear his signature of ''The Out-and-Outer," Mangan
calls the unbeliever the "credulous" man, the gullible
party. Even were these not signed, there are the* usual
evidences of Mangan's authorship. As, for example^ in
this passage addressed to the reader : —

**Our motives for what we do are perhaps revealable, and periiaps
not ; but whether they be or not, they should be beyond thy suspicion,
as assuredly they are beyond thv omiprehension, being mysteries,
even as we ourseu are a m3rstery.'*

It is unfortunate that Mangan does not give any of
own personal experiences in these articles, wUch are
entirely devoted to German visions ; consequently there
is no temptation to dwell upon them here

There are some lines in a poem of his (also unrhymed)
which have a bearing on this subject of ghosts, and may be
quoted here : —

** Breakfastless, bangless,* bookless, and chiboukless,t
Through the chill day, alone with mv conscience I
Mope m some nook, and ponder my tollies.
Which same were not few 1

Mope thus aU day, and through the drear hours ol night.
Wander in dreams from one to another hell.
Chased by the ghosts of long-buried pleasure hours.
Whom I, too late, behold in their proper shapes,
Hideous as ghouls."

* Without opium.

t Without chibouk (or tobaooo pipe>

Il8 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

The personal strain is even more marked in the well-
known verses, entitled "Twenty Golden Years Aga" These
appeared in the University Magazine in 1840 as one of the
••Stray Leaflets of the German Oak."* Of course^ the
author to whom Mangan attributes them had no existence^
and Uie student will look in vain for *'Selber"* in any
history of German literature or collection of German poetry.
The poem in question has too strong a personal interest to
be omitted from this work : —

^ Oh, the rain, the weary, drearv rainy

How it plashes on the window-siU I
Night, I giiess. too, must be on the wane^

Strass and Gass t around are grown so stUL
Here I sit with coffee in mv cup—

Ah, 'twas rarely 1 beheld it now
In the tavern where I loved to sup

Twenty Golden Years Ago.

Twenty years aj^o, alas I — ^but stay —

On mv life, 'tis half-past twelve o'clock I
After all, the hours do slip away —

Come, here goes to bum another block 1
For the night, or mom, is wet and cold,

And my fire is dwindling rather low ;
I had fire enough when young and bold

Twenty Golden Years Ago I

Dear I I don't feel well at all, somehow !

Few in Weimar dream how bad I am ;
Floods of tears grow common with me now.

High- Dutch floods that Reason cannot dam.
Doctors think I'll neither live nor thrive

If I mope at home so— I don't know— >
Am I living now t I was alive

Twenty Golden Years Ago t

Wifeless, friendless, flagonless, alone.

Not quite bookless, though, unless I chose^
Left witn nought to do, except to groan.

Not a soul to woo, except the Muse —
O 1 but this is hard for nu to bear.

Me, who whilom lived so much in kaui^
Me, who broke all hearts like chinaware.

Twenty Golden Years Ago 1

Perhaps 'tis better— time's defacing waves
Long have quenched the radiance of my brow^

They who curse me nightly from their graves.
Scarce could love me were they living now ;

^Sdbtr ho practiodly the same meaning as Sdhi'^i^ iek mUtff
mjyBelll Mangan made nse of the dugoiie in other " Stiay Lteflets."
t Sued mad kiie.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. II9

But xny loneliness hath darker iUi

Such dun duns as Conscience* Thoughti and COi— »
Awful Gorgons 1 worse than tailors' biUs

Twenty Golden Years Ago!

Did I paint a fifth of what I feel,

1 now plaintive you would ween I was I
But I won't* albeit I have a deal

More to wail about than Kemer has 1
Kemer's tears are wept for withered flowers*

Mine for withered hopes ; my scroll of woe
Dates, alas I from youth's deserted bowers* • •

Twenty Golden Years Ago 1

Yet may Deutschland's bardlings flourish long I

Me, I tweak no beak among Siem ; hawks
Must not pounce on hawks ; besides, in song

1 could once beat all of them by chalks.
Though you find me, as I near ray goal.

Sentimentalizing like Rousseau*
O 1 I had a grand Byronian soul
Twenty Golden Years Ago 1

Tick-tick, tick-tick ! not a sound save Time's,

And the windgust as it drives the rain.
Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes.

Go to bed and rest thine aching brain !
Sleep—no more the dupe of hopes or schemes ;

Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow —
Curious anti-climax to thy dreams

Twenty Golden Years Ago 1'*

Lest there should be any doubt as to the non-existence
of Selber— whom Mangan confessed to D. F. M'Carthy
was a creation of his own, though the mere name or the
style alone would convince any student of German who
had any knowledge of Mangan's work — it may be well to
extract a few lines from a later reference by him to this
bodiless poet —

" It is fortunate for us that we are not required to criticise as well as
translate, for we should scarcely know what judgment to pronounce on
this eccentric writer. . • • He appears to have ' begun the world *
witharedundanceof enthusiasm, and to have* accordingly, duly realised
the saddening truth of the sentiment advanced by Moore— (if we mis-
quote our friend Tom he will be good enough to send us a set of his
works) : —

* Oh ! life is a waste of wearisome hoars

That seldom the rose of enjoyment adorns ;
And the toes that are foremost to dance among floweis
Are also the first to be troubled with corns.

Nobody can translate Selber to advantage. His peculiar idiosyn-
crasy unfortunately betrays itself in every line he writes, and ther»

X20 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

cnstSy moreorer, an evident wish on his part to show the world that he
possesses * a life within himself."'

Leaving for a while Mangan's fearless rhymes, miracu-
lous metres, and sly superchirits in the University Magazine^
let us go back a little to the Irish Penny Journal^ started by
Gunn and Cameron, of Dublin, in the summer of 184a
While it lasted — about a year — it was an admirable journal
Tlie leading Irish historicad and antiquarian writers of the
tjme contributed to it, its object being chiefly an anti-
quarian one, but it also attracted a few of the best Irish
poets and novelists to its pages. Mangan, besides some
prose sketches or apologues, wrote for it several of his
finest and best-known translations from the Irish, which
language some of his colleagues in the Ordnance Survey
Office had induced him to take some interest in. The
earliest of the poems was the inimitable *' Woman of Three
Cows," which was promptly reproduced in part in the
Belfast Vindicator^ of which his friend Gavan Duffy had
become editor. Writing to him, thereupon, on September
15 th, 1840, Mangan says —

^ I thank yon for clapping the ' Three Cows ' into pound in vour
paper. But why did you omit the three stanzas ? Are you able to
give me a reason ? Not you, I taJU it However, you can make me
some amends shortly. In No. 15 of Cameron's there will be a trans-
magnifican bandancial elegy of mine (a perversion from the Irish) on
the 0*NeiIls and the O'Donnells of Ulster, which is admired by myself
and some other impartial judges."

The elegy here referred to was the famous poem be-
ginning '* O Woman of the Piercing Wail/' which Lord
Jeffrey so much admired when he saw it in Duffy's Irish
Ballad Poetry some years later. An interesting question
arises here as to how far Mangan was indebted to the ori-
ginals for these two poems. At this time he knew nothing
of Irish, and it is admitted that O'Curry made literal ren-
derings for him to versify. The latter made a strange
claim a year or two later in a private letter to Thomas
Davis in respect of these poems, and it will be best to quote
this letter as it appears in the first edition of Duffy's Life
of Thnnas Davis. Speaking of Duffy's praise of Mangan's
tnmslations in Irish Ballad Poetry^ he says : —

"* According to this rule I find Mr. Mansan pot forth as the best of
an translators mm the Irish. Now it so happens that Mr. Mangan
has no knowledge of the Irish language, nor do I thmk he regreu Uiat
dlhci; but anyone reading this introduction must believe that he is

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 121

deeply versed in Irish, and that he has translated directly from the ori-
ginals the three pieces which appear with his name in the volume.
• • • • It was I that translated those poems (the three of them) frcnn
the originals — that is, I turned the Irish words into English* and Mr.
Mangan put those English words, beautifully and faithfull^f, as well as
I can judge, into English rh^ine. If I have not made a fruth(ul trans-
lation, then the versification is not correct, for it contains nothing but
what is found in the translation, nor does it contain a single idea that
is not found, and as well expressed, in the originaL"

It is quite obvious that Mangan would not adhere
so slavishly as O'Curry implies to any original, whether
Irish or other. As a matter of fact, at least two of the
poems, it may be said confidently, even in the absence of
O'Curry's manuscript version, are lai^ely Mangan's own.
This assertion is corroborated by another private letter to
Davis, this time from John O'Donovan. O'Donovan,
commenting on Duffy's allusions to the stiffness of his
translations from the Gaelic, says : —

" I know English about six times better than I know Irish, but I
have no notion of becoming a forger like MacPherson. The transla-
tions from the Irish by Mangan, mentioned by Mr. Duffy,* are very
food ; but how near are they to the literal translations furnished to
f angan by Mr. Curry ? Are they the shadow of a shade ?"

Of the three poems named, all of which were first pub-
lished in the Irish Penny Journal^ not even " The Woman
of Three Cows," the most literal, can be said to be a genuine
translation. '* The Lament for the Princes,*' like most of
Mangan's other Irish poems, is clearly a paraphrase. One
other Irish translation by Mangan appeared in the Irish
Penny Journal^ and it is one of his best. " Kathlecn-ny-
Houlahan " is an exquisite poem, worthy of Mangan's highest
powers. All Irishmen who are in the least acquainted with
his work probably know it and admire it as warmly as did
William Carleton, who considered it the best thing Mangan
ever did. While on this subject of translation from the
Irish it will be useful to show that though in nearly every
case Mangan paraphrased freely, and concocted— forged,
O'Donovan calls it — a considerable proportion of the
versions from the Irish, there is one notable instance where
Mangan is surprisingly literal, and where a very grand and
striking piece owes next to nothing to its versifier. I allude
to the remarkable poem known to all readers of Mangan as
'^O'Hussey's Ode to the Maguire." Samuel Ferguson

* The third poem was MscLiag'B ** Kinoom.'

122 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

printed an unrhymed translation of this piece in the Uni*
versity Magazine for 1834. Seeing that he could not
improve it, he did not attempt to turn it into rhyme. It was
this particular version of Ferguson's that Mangan, who
greatly admired it, and wished to make better known, ver-
sified. Even Mangan's genius, however, could not add
much to its force and beauty, and as it will help to clear up a
very important matter, a few verses of Ferguson's rendition
— a veiy literal one — are given here in a note. Mangan
kept as closely to O'Hussey's poem, as rendered by Fergu-
son, as he could. His, version is quoted in its entirety. The
bard laments that Hugh Maguire, his chief, should be
wandering abroad on a perilous expedition in a terrible
storm :—

* Where is my chief, my master, this bleak night, mmvromf
O cold, miserably cold, is this bleak night for Hugh,
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleel pierceth one through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone !

Rolls real thunder? Or was that red, livid light
Only a meteor ? I scarce know ; but through the midnight dim
The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes him,
Nothmg hath crueller venomy might.

An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems I

The floodgates of the rivers of heaven, I think* I have been burst

wide-
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide^
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.

Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods.
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchangeable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he^
This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.

O, mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire !
Darkly as in a dream he strays ! Before him and behind
Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind.
The wounding wind, that bums as fire I

It is my bitter grief— it cuts me to the heart —
That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his &te 1
O woe is me, where b he ? Wandering houseless* desolate,
Aloneb without or guide or chart 1

Medreams I see lust now his face, the strawberry-bright,
Uplift to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds
Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleet*shower

blinds
The beio of Galang to-mghf !

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 1 23

Large, large affliction anto me and mine it is,

That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stateljr fonn.

Should thus be tortured and o'erbome— that this ttnsparing stoini

Should wreak its wrath on hotd like his 1

That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed,
bhould this chill, churlish night, perchance* be paralysed by fiosi**
While through some icicle-hung thicket — as one lorn and lost-
He walks and wanders without rest. *

The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead,
It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds-*
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds.
So that the cattle cannot feed.

The pale, bright margins of the streams are seen by none ;
Rushes and sweeps sdong the untameable flood on ever]f sid^—
It penetrates and fills the cottagers' dwellings £ur and wide-
Water and land are blent in one.

Through some dark woods. *mid bones of monsters, Hugh now strmy%
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart but inanly ~
Oh I what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his were now
A backward glance at peaceful days 1

But other thoughts are his — thoughts that can still inspixe
With joy and an onward-bounding hope the bosom of Mac N
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the
Borne on the wind's wings, flwiing fire 1

* Here is Ferguson's prose translation of this and the three pieoedli^
«:—

** In the country of Clan Daire

It grieves ine that his fate should be so severe ;

Perhaps drenched with the cold wet dropping of the thickets.

Perhaps exposed to the high heaven's floods

Cold seem to me your two cheeks strawberry-red.
As the fury of the cloud-gathering storm
Impels the weather-winds of the serial expanse
Against the royal hero of resplendent Galang.

Sore misery to us and torturing our bosoms.
To think that the fine front and sides of his comely frame
Should be ground by this rough, sullen, scowling
In cold steely accoutrements.

His kind dealing hand, which punished cruelty,
Bv frost made numb ;
U nder some spiked and idcle-hung tree.
OhI bleak and dreary is this night for Hugh T'

124 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

And Uioogh frost glaze to-night the dear dew of his eyes,
And white ice-^untlets glove his noble, fine, fiur fingers o^er,
A warm dr^s is to him that lightning garb he ever wore^
The lightning of the soul, not sides.

Summing Up.

Huffh marched forth to the fight— I grieved to see him so depart ;
And lo 1 to-night, he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad, betraye^
But the memory of the lime- white mansions his right hand hath laid
In ashesy warms the hero's heart'**

It will be noticed that Mangan, In order to give as
literal a version as was consistent with rhyme restrains his
usual metrical fancy, and leaves the poem in an appro-
priately nigged and savage form. The original Irish is
not without considerable melody and smoothness. His
incorrigible tendency to ** rhyming and chiming in a very
odd way '* is for once subjected to control and subordinated
to a good purpose. He was too strongly impressed by the
greatness of the picture conceived by the seventeenth
century bard of the Maguires to resort to paraphrastic
escapades.

To the Belfast Vindicator o{ 1840, 1841, Mangan con-
tributed a few pieces of no particular merit They are all
jeux (f esprit^ and it may be assumed that the editor did not
insist upon serious contributions. The Irish Penny Journal
of the same period did not accept such trifles, and indeed
strongly dissuaded Mangan from wasting his power upon
mere jokes and whimsicalities. Petrie and O'Donovan con-
stantly urged the poet to nobler flights — the University
Magazine^ tlie Belfast Vindicator^ and even the Nation
during its first couple of years* existence, may be said
to have encouraged, in not strongly discouraging, him
in the production of the wildest skits and squibs. As
will be seen by the letters quoted later, Mangan was quite
susceptible to friendly advice in the matter of a selection
of subjects. He readily adopted the suggestions of Father
Meehan as to religious poetry, and of O'Donovan about
the Gaelic poets ; he was, in fact, extremely docile in all
things except his course of life. Even here he tried hard,
in deference to the wishes of his friendis, to retrieve himself.

••<(yH«Me]r^sOde*wMtnnslatedb]r Mannn for M'GlsshMi, who did
not pobliih it m hit msgaiiae, bat reserred it for H. R. MootgooMiy's
Spiimmi €ftk$ Smrfy Nuiim Buhy tflrtkmd^ 1S46.

JAMES CLARENXE MANGAN. 12$

and though he failed in his efforts to break away from the
temptations of the taverns, it is beyond doubt that it was
not without terrible, pitiable struggles. But when,
Mitchel say

**he had reached that point of remediless misery, described so
terribly by the grim Roman satirist* when the soul can but say to itself

when he found his exertions unavailing, he surrendered
himself completely to his victor, and sank lower and lower
into the abyss. Now and again at periods previous to 1846^
he would reappear after an interval of absence almost com-
pletely restored to sobriety and a regular mode of life, and
his friends, who were numerous at this time, rejoiced
exceedingly. But when their fears were passed, he would
again disappear for weeks at a time, and return bearing
unmistakable evidences of indulgence in dangerous potions.

** He'd sit, without winking, in alehouses drinking.
For days without number.
Nor care about slumber I "

and to all remonstrances of his friends would implore them
not to judge him harshly — lamenting that his temperament
was too strong for him — but he would prcynise earnestly to
give up* all stimulants by degrees. His friends and well-
wishers, however, came to know in time that Mangan had
no control over himself. Nor could he be induced to take
the pledge from Father Mathew, fearing, or knowing in his
inmost heart that it was impossible to keep it Mangan's
delicate features and weak frame already showed evident
signs of the long-continued irregularity of his habits. W.
F. Wakeman gives a sad picture of his appearance during
the last days of the historical department of the Ordnance
Survey. The description is painful reading, but its general
truth is borne out by others who saw Mangan at different
times and places in the city.

After mentioning other woeful signs of physical decay,
he adds : —

^ He possessed very weak eyes, and used a huge pair of green
spectacles ; he had narrow shoulders, and was flat*aiested, so much
so, that for appearance sake the breast of his coat was thickly padded.
Of course there was no muscular strength, and his voice was low.
sweet, but very tremulous. Few, perhaps, could imagine that so odd
a figure might represent a genius, and Mangan himself did not i4>pear

126 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

to care a fif what people thought of him. In fact, he seemed to court
the reputation of an oddity. His coat was of an indescribable fashion ;
both in cut and colour ; it appeared to have been a kind of drab.
Out of doors he wore a tig^ht little cloak, and his hat exactly resembled
those which broomstick-riding witches are usuall)r represented with.
Sometimes, even in the most settled weather, he might be seen parad-
ing the streets with a very voluminous umbrella * under each arm
The large coloured spectacles, already referred to, had the effect of
setting off his singularly wan and wax-like countenance with as much
force as might be accomplished by the contrast of colour."

Such was Mangan when compelled to seek fresh employ-
ment by the closing of his department of the Ordnance
Survey Officei in which, it must be confessed, he was found
to be of slight use. Indeed, but for the kindly interest of
Petrie, his services would probably have been dispensed
with much earlier. He never sought any further employ-
ment of a regular character, and for the next few years
lived in a miserable way upon what he could earn by his
pen. His parents had died before this date, and he lived
with a younger brother, who, by all accounts, was a very
worthless, idle character, considerably fonder of the public
house than the workshop. His trade, that of a cabinet-
maker, was never exercised as long as the poet could
obtain either a loan or remuneration of any kind for literary
work. Though Mangan was not yet altogether lost, his
life was wretched in the extreme. He hoped against hope
that he might, by some lucky chance, by some intervention
of Providence, And a means of extricating himself from
his forlorn plight. ** Something," says Mitchel, "saved
him from insanity — perhaps it was religion.'' It is in some
respects the most astonishing feature of his career that
even in his deepest, most abysmal misery and despair and
suffering, he never lost his religious faith. He was inter-
ested in many religions, in many of the world's religious
teachers, but his early convictions remained intact, and
personally, apart from his habit of drinking or opium-
eating, his conduct was irreproachable enough. At the
approach of death his muse became more religious than
ever, and his reading lay more and more in religious books,
but even at this time (1840, 1841), he frequently introduces
mto his verse a strain of high religious feeling, as in the
following stanzas taken from the university Magazine :-<-

* E^ren Jamci Price does not fomt the fiunooiiimbreUa, "^ clutched to
tightly wider his arm, and Ibrcinii: his nded blue doak into a peak b^ind—
taeMid oBbceUa being one that VLxu Gamp would havt njoJoea in **

Ring loud aroond theeT shalt thou find

True peace of soul ?
O where* hut in reli^pon's arms^
Where» hut with Faith, which wings the mind

To heaven, its goal?

For me, no formal tome I cite.
No grave, elaborate moralist.
No poet-lays —
For he who turns to such for light
Meets but at most a dazzling mist
That mocks his gaze.

I raise my thoughts in prayer to God,
I look tor help to Him alone
Who shared our lot —
The Mighty One of Heaven, who trod
Life's path as Man, though earth — His
Received Him not!

I turn to Him, and ask for nought
Save knowledge of His heavenly will»
Whatever it be ;
I seek no doubtful blessings, fraught
With present good, but final ill
And agony :

Come Death or Life, come Woe or WeaU
Whatever my God elects to send
I here embrace ;
Blest while, though tortured on the wheel*

12B THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

The fount of Happiness— the source of GIor]r—
Eternity is in Thy hands and Power —
Oh ! from that sphere unrecognised bv our

Slow souls» look down upon a world which, hoary
In evil and in error though it be»

Retains even yet some trace of that primeval

Beauty that bloomed upon its brow ere Evil
And Error wiled it from Thy Love and Thee I
Look dowut and i& while human brows are bri|^teoiag

In godless triumph, angd eyes be weeping,
Publi^ Thy will in lyUaUes of Lightnin|[

And sentences of Thunder to the Sleepmg I
Look down, and renovate the waning name

Of Goodness, and idume the wanmg light
Of Truth and iKiritv I— that all may aim

At one imperishable crown'tbe oright
Guerdon which they who^ by ontired and holy

Eiertioo o v e r co m e the world inherit^
The Self Denying, the Peaceable, the Lowly,

The tn^r MefSfol, the Poor in Spirit*

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I29

CHAPTER XIL

THE FOUNDING OF THB " NATION "—MANGAN A CONTRIBUTOR—

" THE • nation's ' FIRST NUMBER " — HIS POLITICAL VIEWS

<' GONE IN THB WIND " — ^THE THREE HALF-CROWNS — MARTIN
MACDERMOrr — " VTHBRB'S BIY money ? " — " PATHETIC HYPA-
THETICS "— " THE COMING EVENT ''—MORE TURKISH POETRY
—TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY — *'ANTH0L0GIA GERMANICA.*

*' Ask him who hath sufTered woes untold
From some Tolcanic strife
Of pftssionate years if he remembert
Tombed in the mve of Life's December,

Its cancelled golden June."— Mangan.

On October isth, 1842, the first number of the Nation was
published at the office in D'Oh'er Street Charles Gavan
Duffy, who had given up the Belfast Vindicator^ was the
only practical journalist among the three founders, and
naturally became editor of the new venture. A fairly
efficient corps of contributors had been organised, but some
of these proved of little use, and were dropped when better
men came to the front Mangan's name appears on the
prospectus of the new journal as a contributor, and he
opened his connection with some effective verses in the
first issue, entitled, "The Nation* s First Number." In
these he acts as the herald of the new movement, and
announces the attractions in store for the readers of the
paper. Naturally, the verses are not of a very high order
of merit, but as Mangan had seen some periodicals of great
promise disappear very quietly soon after their advent, he
could not have been very loftily impressed or earnestly
inspired by his theme. Doggerel, but of a superior order,
and certainly not unconscious, '' The Nation's First
Number" maybe called, but even in this poem— dashed
off, doubtless, at Mangan's characteristic lightning speed-
there are some tolerable lines. The aims of the paper, he
declares, will be—

XjO THE LIFE AND l^VRITINGS OF

^ To give Genius its due, to do battle with Wrong,
And adiieve things undieamt of as yet save in song.

• • • • • •
Be it OUTS to stand forth and contend in the van

Of Truth's legions for Freedom, the turthright of Man.

• •••••
We announce a new era— be this our first news,

When the self-grinding landlords shall shake in their shoes ;
While the Ark of a bloodless yet mighty reform
Shall emeige from the Flood of the Popular Storm ! **

Of the staff of the paper he tells his readers that —

** Critics keener than sabres, wits brighter than stars.
And reasoners as cool as the coolest cucumber,
Form the host that shine out in the NtUunis First Number I **

It is strange that for two or three subsequent years
Mangan wrote next to nothing for the Nation of a serious
character, only epigrams and squibs of his being discover-
able, under several different signatures, such as **M./'
^ * Vacuus," " Terrae Filius, ^* and •« Hi-Hum." In printing
one of his skits,* a quasi-political one, the editor refers to
the author

* one whose name will some day be illustrious in literature. It must
not be written here, with a mere bagatelle thrown off in a moment of
relaxation ; but it will write itself on marble.''

A little later t the editor prints an anonymous bit of
curious rhyming by Mangan (which was, though the editor
does not seem to have known it, a reprint from the Cornet
of July, 1833)9 and prefaces it with a very useful hint to
the poet : —

'* He ought not, we think, to have thrown away his fine genius
upon such a task. From some of his past contributions we know he
is capable of the finest verses, grave or gay.*'

Those •* past contributions," however, were not written
for the Nation. In reprinting subsequently (1844) his
eccentric essay, ^ My Bugle and How I Blow It," the editor
makes a remark which proves that Mangan's relations with
the Nation were so far of the slightest : —

** This pleasant extravaganxa, a quis upon the German school, b> a
popolar writer, was given some years ago to the editor of the Nation

^ Haidiisth, 184^ fMajiSUioflheMuiieycar.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAK. I3I

for a publication of a litenuy character. It is thoogfat necessary to
mention this, as we have not an opportunity of communicating with the
author, and he may not choose to be identified with the particnlar
politics of the Nation**

As the skit is not political in any way, and some of his
squibs written directly for the Nation were, this editorial
comment is somewhat mysterious. But it may have been
suggested simply by an absence, longer than usual for
Mangan, from the Nation office. His politics were certainly
not well-defined at this time. He bad, in fact, until the
last two or three years of his life, no fixed opinions upon
the political questions then agitating the public mind. His
writings, however, attest that he had undoubted national
feeling, and he certainly became in the end strongly
national, allying himself with the more advanced section of
Irish nationalists.*

He was rarely to be met in the Nation office. DufTy
says : —

" He could not be induced to attend the weekly suppers, and knew
many of his fellow-labourers only by name. He stole into the editor*s
room once a week to talk over literary projects, but if an^ of my
friends appeared he took flight on the instant The animal spirits and
hopefulness of vigorous young men oppressed him, and he fled from
the admiration or sympathy of a stranger as others do from reproach
and insult."

It was not till 1846 that he began to contribute largely
to the Nation. Meanwhile he continued his ** Anthologia
Germanica'' in the University Magazine^ alternating
those papers with occasional articles on Spanish poetry,
and the " Liters Orientales.'* During 1842 some of his
best versions from Ruckert appeared, including that in-
teresting poem entitled, " Gone in the Wind/' to which the
following verses belong : —

*' Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind.
Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind.
Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind*
Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind.

* A little earlier, when Duffy had aiked him to write political articlei^
he had declined, tending instead tome epigramt — " Do not atk me for
political ettavt joit now— I hr.ve no eiperience in that gmri ^terire^ and I
thonld infalubly blander. I tend yon tix pages • . . 'JokeriaiiA,'
'Jokerismty' * flim-flam ,' * Whim-whami^' or anything else you like to
call them .... They might do iiir year fourth page— piaj UcavM ytm
don't imagine they'd do for your paper altogether. *"

132 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Say, what is pleasure ? A phantom, a mask ondefined.
Saence ? An almond, whereof we can pierce hot the rind.
Honour and Affluence ? Firmans that Fortmie hath signed.
Only to gUtter and pass on the wings of the wind.

Solomon I where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind*
Babylon I where is thy mieht ? It is gone in the wind.
Who is the Fortunate ? ne who in anguish hath pined—
He shall rejoice when his relics are dust in the wind I

Mortal t be careful wherewith thy best hopes are entwined ;
Woe to the miners for Truth — where the Lampless have mined t
Woe to the seekers on Earth for what none ever find I
They and their trust shall be scattered like leaves on the wind.

Solomon I where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind.
Babylon I where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned
All Earth's affections, and longings* and cares to the wind.**

The ''Nameless One'' seems to have been written in the
year 1842, if Mangan's statement in the poem that he was
thirty-nine be reliable, but as I can discover no trace of it
in the periodicals of that period it must have been, if
written, held over by Mangan till the time when he could
no longer conceal the depth of bis despair and misery.
His muse in 1842 was in anything but a despairing or
doleful mood. One of his happiest contributions to the
University Magazine belongs to that year. It is a very
amusing essay on the art of borrowing, and of evading
one's creditors, with various translations from Casti, the
Italian burlesque poet. It is entitled '* The Three* Half-
Crowns," and Mangan prefaces his actual tackling of the
subject proper by a few observations of the nature of the
following :^

** The real secret of the happiness poets enjoy is to be sought in their
imagination. This is the facidty to which they owe the possession of
almost everything they have, and the absence of almost everything
they ought not to have. It is this that elevates them, balloon like,
sky-high above the petty wants and cares that shorten the days of

prosers It makes more than a monarch of the poet.

It is his clue through the labyrinth of life^his tower of strength in
peril— his guide, mentor, monitor, oracle, shield, cloak, truncheon,
tabernacle, and house of refuge. It is, in a word, the mysterious
curtain-doud that interposes between him and all matters mundane.

^ICangan wis food of the naniber thiee; witness his ^ Three Tonnea-
ioa^*"* The Thieefbld F^redictkm," etc

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 1 33

and prevents him from being affected by anythinfjf, except* pnlups,
the occasional vision of a dish or decanter. Such is imagination as
monopolised by the poet. We have said that he owes almost every-
thing to it. By so saying we have left it to be understood that he now
and then owes a little in other quarters. This» unfortunatelyy is the
fact."

The poet proceeds, in a kind of sonnet sequence, to
tell how he once borrowed three half-crowns, and of the
-endless worrying of his creditor to recover die amount.
The prose and verse alike are in an inimitable style, full of
humour, the rhymes reminding one very much of B)nron in
his " Don Juan." The ingenuity of the shifts to which the
debtor resorts, the amusing fancies about creditors, and the
comparisons between them and other persecutors of poets
are all highly creditable to the poet's imagination. He
<loubts, in the sketch, whether a creditor is not worse than
an Algerian pirate, and thinks he is, for while the latter
only robs you of what you have, the former tries to rob you
of what you have not, and never can have, namely— Three
Half-Crowns. He goes on to say that various alarming
portents having appeared of late, foretelling the imminent
end of the world, he is surprised that under the circum-
stances his creditor does not find something more serious to
do than harassing him for three paltry half-crowns.. He dis-
covers himself replying to every question, no matter bv
whom put or upon what subject, " I really haven t
got them ; " and when he is quite alone, and hears him-
self asked for them, he iinds it is the echo of his own voice
which, from force of custom, is asking for ** those three
half-crowns." He is astonished that wherever he goes he
meets his creditor, and muses on the phenomenon in this
wise : —

** Let Doctors dissertate about Attraction,

And preach long lectures upon Gravitation,

Indulging thereanent in speculation,
For which no human being cares one fraction.

'Tis all mere twaddle— talk and iteration ;
Of those mysterious modes of Nature's action

There never yet was any explanation
To anybody's perfect satisfaction.

However, this I stubbornly believe,
And for the proof thereof see no great need

To take down Isaac Newton from the shelf-^
That, move where'er I wiil^morn noon, or eve,

I manage to attract with awful speed
My Three Half-Crowni* Tormentor tow'rds myself 1 **

134 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

He says that if he were an astrologer who had found
the idiflosopher's stone, he would rest satisfied, after his
great discovery, with coining merely three half-crowns :—

** Those old alchymic dreamers ! — rest their bones.

And be their souls eternally assoiled —
The Lillys, Arnolds, Gabors, who so toiled

To turn base metals into precious ones I
Sleepless and worn, amid retorts and cones.

And crucibles, they fused and blew and boiled —
Alas ! in vain — their sulphurs, salts and stones

Exhaled in smoke— and they died, fagj^ed, and foiled.

Yet, after all, why might not Art and Labour
Adiieve the project ? I don't know. Man's lore

Is vast, and Science day by dav increases ;
But this I know, that if, by following Gabor,

I could coin Three Half-crowns, Pd ask no more,
But break my pots and furnaces to pieces I "

The wit is admirably kept up to the last. Mangan was
fond of expatiating upon loans and the inconvenience of
not meeting one's creditor's demands. In this connection
an absurd story, originating with D'Arcy M*Gce, may be
definitely disposed of. M'Gee remarks (in a sketch which
he wrote for the Nation during the poet's lifetime, but
which was declined by that paper, though it afterwards
reprinted it from M'Gee's own journal subsequent ta
Mangan's death),

** I have heard it said of him that bein^ often reduced to extreme
want, he was never known to borrow at a time more than one and six-
pence, and if more were offered to him, he would neither accept it,.
nor repeat his request in that direction."

It is a quaint notion, and not improbably emanated
from Mangan himself, but it is very far from the actual
truth.* Mangan was constantly obliged to borrow from
his friends, and though in some cases he paid them back in
contributions of which they made profitable use, the fact
remains, and is one of the points naturally best remem-
bered by his contemporaries, that the need of a smsdl loan
was a not at all uncommon reason of a visit from Mangan*

• «<

In addition to ptying Mangan liberally," says Sir C G. Dufiy, in a.
letter to the present writer, " for whatever he wrote, I have memoranda \k
his o%m hanawiiting acknowledging ahont jfioo^ in loms of ^£5, j£io^ and

JAMES CLARENCE BCANGAN. 13$

Apropos^ Mr. Martin M'Dermott has favoured me with
the following reminiscence of his only meeting with
Mangan : —

** During one of my occasional visits to Ireland I happened to be
breakfasting with my old friend and school-fellow, Thomas Deria
Reilly, when the servant came in, and in a low voice gave htm the name
of a visitor. He said, 'Ask him to come in,' and turning to me he
whispered, ' Clarence Mangan.' I was of course all eyes when the
poet entered in the quamt, shabby attire described by Father
Meehan, and with a shy, faltering step, seeing the stranger in the roooL
approached the table. The introduction gone through, my host asked
Mangan to join us at our meal, but he declined, still in the same sty,
hesitating manner, and asked Reilly if he could have a word with him
outside. When the two reached the hall I heard the chink of ooio,
and my fnend came back with one of the silk purses used then— look-
ing very Haccid— in his hand, saying with a sigh, * Poor Mangan I * **

The subject of money naturally crops up in many of
Mangan 's letters — in too many of them, unfortunately—
and some are extremely painful reading on that account.
Others, however, are jocular in tone, and in one of these
addressed to the editor of the Nation^ he says —

"You wish to know why I have not acknowledged the receipt of
the letter of credit you sent me. I beg in reply to observe that any
acknowledgment of the kind forms no part of my system. Any f^ivem
amount of money, in goldi silver, or paper, I take, put up, and say
nothing about. If it be gold, I introduce it into a steel purse ; if silver,
I drop it into a vXk one ; if paper, I stow it away in a pocket-book ;
but I never jingle or display any of them before the eyes of others."

In another characteristic letter to the same friend,
Mangan writes in the same vein —

'* I look on odes as ode-ious compositions— adulatory stuff, flattery
of the flattest sort, worthy to be paid for, not in the glorious renown
which all honest, honourable, high>souled and high-heeled men seek*
but out of the purse— one pound one a line — not a camac less I Now
you know I spit upon this sort of thing — 1 never take money for what
I write. It is always given me. press^ on me, sent tome, flung in my
phiz— and I, for the sake of a quiet life, pocket the affront I *

Sometimes he would ask for a loan with assumed gaiety,
but not infrequently (especially, of course, in his last years)
when his need was desperate, his appeals for help were as
painful ordeals to his friends as to himself—

••Whether,*' says Mitchel, "the beautiful and luxuriant world of
dreams wherein he built his palaces, and laid up his treasures, and
tasted the ambrosia of the gods, was indeed a sufficient compensatioQ
ibr all the squalid misery in the body is a question upon whico thtte is

136 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

ao occasion to pronounce. One may hope that it was, and much more
than a compensation, for God is jnst**

And he adds —

"Some 'poets* there are who desire to own a dream-world and at
the same time to own stock in banks and raihoads."

Mangaa was not one of these, but he was well aware of
the value of money, and he so frequently makes it a peg
upon which to hang a few rhymes or a few sentences, that
I>erhaps a little space is not altogether wasted in dwelling
upon it He has written a poem on '* the way the money
goes,'' which, though based upon Von Gaudy's ^ Wo bleibt
mein geld," is very characteristic and peculiar to himself.
It is well worth quoting as a creditable specimen of his
witty verse. It is entitled " Where's My Money ? '*—

^ Ay, Where's my money ? That's a puzzling query.

It vanishes. Yet neither in my purse '

Kor pocket are there any holes. Tis very

Incomprehensible. I don't disburse
For superfluities. I wear plain clothes.

I seldom buy jam tarts, preserves or honey,
And no one overlooks what debts he owes

More steadily than I. Where is my money?

I never tipple. Folks don't see me staggering,

Siuu cane and castor, in the public street.
I sport no ornaments — not even a bagu4 (ring).

I have a notion that my own two feet
Are much superior to a horse's four,

So never call a jarvey. It is funny.
The longer I investigate the more

Astoundedly I ask. Where is my money ?

My money, mind you. Other people's dollars

Cohere together nobly. Only mine
Cut one another. There's that pink of scholars.

Von Doppeldronk ; he spends as much on wine
As I on— everything. Yet he seems rich.

He laughs, and waxes plumper than a bunny.
While I grow slim as a divining-switch.

And search for gold as vainly. Where's my money ?

I can't complain that editors don't pay me ;

I get for every sheet one pound sixteen*
And well I mav ! M]( articles are flamy

Enough to blow up any magazine.
What's queerest in the affair though is* that at

The same time I miss nothing but the one. He
That watches me will find I don't lose hat*

Gknres, fogle, stick, or cloak. *Tis always money I

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. ^ I37

Were I a rake Td say so. When one royslers

Beyond the rules, of course, his cash must go.
*Tis true I nearly sup on oysters.

Cheese, brandy, and all that. But even so ?
What signifies a ducat of a night ?

** The barmaids,*' you ma^ fancy. No. The sonny
Loadstar that draws my tin is not the light

From their eyes anyhow. Where then's my money ?

However, apropos of eyes and maidens,

I own I ao make presents to the sex —
Books, watches, trinkets, music too (not Haydn'sX

CombSi shawls, veils, bonnets— things that might perplex
A man to count. But still I gain by what

I lose in this way. Tis experience won— eh ?
/ think sa My acquaintances think not.

No matter. I grow tedious. Where's my money ? **

There is another poem of his, written at this time, also
attributed to an undoubted German source — Schubart —
and called by Mangan " Pathetic Hypathetics/' which looks
very unlike anything in the literature of the Fatherland.
A verse may be quoted in support of the suggestion
that no German wrote it There is clearly more of Mangan
than Sichubart in it. He soliloquises to this effect in the
last verse : —

•• Were Wine all a quiz,
I should wear a long phiz
As I mounted each night to my ninth storey garret.
Though Friendship, the traitress, deceives me,

Though Hope may have long ceased to flatter*
Though Music, sweet infidel, leaves me.
Though Love is my torment— what mattei^^
IVe still such a thing as a rummer ol claiet ! "

Mangan, of course, heard a good deal of Father Mathew's
crusade against intemperance, and in one of his temperate
intervals at this period he formally abjured — in verse — ^his
excessive indulgence in stimulants. The abjuration, which
is called *'The Coming Event," is as excellent as it is
unknown. Here it is : —

^* Curtain the lamp and hury the bowl,

The ban is on drinking.
Reason shall reign the queen of the soul

When the spirits are sinking.
Chained is the demon that smote with blight

Men's morals and laurels.
Then hail to health and a long good night.

To old wine and new quarrels 1

XjS THE UFB AND WRITINGS OF

Nights shall descend and no taYerns ring

To the roar of our revels ;
Mornings shall dawn, but none of them bring

mt/e lips and Shu devils.
Riot and frenzy sleep with remorse

In the obsolete potion.
And miad grows calm as a ship on her coarse

0*er the level of ocean.

So should it be f for man*s world of romance

Is hat disappearing,
And shadows ot changes are seen in advance^

Whose epochs are nearing.
And the days are at hand when the best shall require

All means of salvation ;
And the souls of men shall be tried in the fire

Of the final probation I

And the witling no longer or sneers or smih

And the worldline dissembles,
And the black-hearted sceptic feels anxious at whiles

And marvels and trembles.
And fear and defiance are blent in the jest

Of the blind self-deceiver ;
But hope bounds high in the joyous breast

Ot the child-like believer

Darken the lamp, then, and shatter the bowl.

Ye faithfullest-hearted I
And as your swift vears travel on to the goal

Whither worlds have departed.
Spend labour, life, soul, in your zeal to atone

For the past and its errors ;
So best shall ye bear to encounter alone

The EVENT and its terrors I "

A month or so later in the same year (1844) Mangan
contributed a fresh instalment of Ottoman poetry to the
magazine, and introduced therein two of the most familiar
of his poems — namely, *'The Caramanian Exile" and
•The Wail and Warning of the Three Khalendeers," the
last of which will be better remembered, perhaps, by
quoting the opening verse-*

* Here we meet, we three, at length,

Amrah, Osman, Perizad,
Shorn of all our grace and strength.

Poor and old and very sad I
We have lived, but live no more,

Life has lost its gloss for us
Since the days we spent of yore

Boating down the Bosphorus/

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 139

In another poem in the same article he exhcMts
readers to live nobly, to be patient, meek, docile^ and
courageous, and to abhor

*' Woe unto those who but banish one vice for another ;
Far from thy thoughts be such damning delusion. O brother I

• • • • • •

Donning new raiment is nobler than patching and piedag—
Such are the tone and the tune of the ditty tluit Wi ting !

• • • • • •

Cast away Pride as the bane of the soul ; the Disdainful
Swallow much mire in their day, and find everything

Like the bright moon before Midnight is blended with morrow,
Shines the pure pearl of the soul in the Chalice (tf Sorrow 1 ^

With all his own wretchedness, Mangam never fidtered
once in his belief in the future of others. He had given up
all hope of conquering his one vice, and those who knew <m
it might have replied to his exhortations, ** Physician, heal
thyself." But his friends trusted in a final reformation^
and they did not, therefore, in spite of its apparent useless-
ness, cease their entreaties to him to ** live his poetry, to
act his rhyme." He never resented their earnest expostu-
lations, and often told them with tears in his eyes that it
was too late — he could not give up his evil habit One
of them, James Price, tells us of his constant endeavours
to bring the poet to a deeper sense of his growing
degradation : —

** His unhappy transgressions,** he says, ** were more widely known
than his genius ; /Afx were apparent to many, f/ was appreciated only
by the few."

And he continues : —

" Many a time have we pleaded with Mangan^ against the deadly
enemy that was slowly, but steadily, destroying him. We have held
the glass to his face, and bade him behold the ravages nuuie, and not
by Time. 'Yes,* he said, ' I see a skinless skull there, an empty socket
where intelligence once beamed ; but oh, I look within myself and
behold a sadder vision— the vision of a wasted life 1 * '*

About this time, through the kindness of Dr. Todd, he
obtained a post as assistant cataloguer in Trinity College
Library, a place in which he had often studied, but the
salary was very small, and towards the end of 1844 his
circumstances became so desperate that his friends con-
ceived the idea of getting some of his writings published

I40 THE LIF£ AND WRITINGS OF

in vohime form by a London publisher, in order to relieve
his necessities ; and Thomas Davis wrote to Daniel Owen
Maddyn, the author of Revelations of Inland and other
books, who was then residing in London, to interest him
in them: —

" I think yoo were a reader of the University Magaxine. If so,
yoa must have noticed the * Antholog^a Germanica,' * Leaflets from the
German Oak,' * Oriental Nights,' and other translations and apparent
translations of Clarence Mangan. He has some small salary m the
College Library, and has to support himself and his brother. His
health is wretched. Charles Duffy is most anxious to have the papers
I have described printed in London, for which they are better suited
than for Dublin. Now, you will greatly oblige me by asking Mr.
Newby if he will publish them, giving Mangan ^50 for the edition* If
he refuse you can say that Charles Duffy will repay him half the £yy
should the work be a failure. Should he still declare against it, pray
let me know soon what would be the best way of getting some pay-
ment and publication for Mangan's papers. Many of the ballads are
Mangan's own, and are first-rate. Were they on Irish subjects he
would be paid for them here. They ought to succeed in Lonaon nigh
as well as the * Prout Papers.' "

Maddyn did not succeed in obtaining^ a London pub-
lisher for Mangan, and the project had to be abandoned.
In thanking him for his efforts, Davis wrote : —

**The care you took about Mangan was very kind. He, poor
feUow, is so nervous that it is hard to get him to do anything business-
like ; but he is too good and too able to be allowed to go wrong."

Maddyn then suggested that a literary pension should
be asked for the poet, adding : —

** 1 entreat that there may be no democratic or high republican
squeamishness shown in this matter. So long as we are living under
a monarchy, let us at least have the advantages of it And the
Repealers do not profess to be anti-monarchical— neither are they, I
am sure. Therefore, let Mr. Mangan's friends not scruple to do for
him what Leigh Hunt's did three or four years since, when they sought
to interest Queen Victoria for the Radical poet In short, this pomt
is really of consequence, and if Mangan could be well launched, his
future voyages would be easier and more agreeable."

The pension was heard of no more, however, and the
German translations were only published in Dublin by
M*Glashan when Gavan Duffy, who has said of Mangan
that—

^ his poems will live as long as Tennyson or Browning's,"

and of the poet himself that —

^be was as truly bom to sing deathless songs as Keats or Shelley "—

JAMES CLARENXE MANGAN. I4I

guaranteed £$0 for one hundred copies. M^lashan,
though well enough disposed towards Mangan, was un-
willing to risk any money in the venture.

** I calculate*** he wrote, ** that the printing* binding, and adverti-
sing of Mangan*s Anthology will cost us neariy ;£io(x Onr view
was to pubiisn the book, sell as many as possible, and f^ve Mangan
an equal share of the profits, and in this manner I conceive he would
be more benefited than by an>[ definite sum we could afford to give
hinu However, as our wish is, as much as yours can be* to serve
Mangan, without iocurrinjg^ any unnecessary risk, suppose yoo pay
Mangan £,2^ in the meantime, and remainder to us until the ffHpgniff
of the book have been covered. Could I be sure the volumes would
sell equal to their merits, there would be litde difficulty about an
arrangement very profitable to Mangan, but I cannot forget they are
verse, and the public took ten years to buv one smaU edition of Anster^
Faust a book which all at once occupiea a very high positioii in the
literary world."

The following letter from Mangan refers to these trans-
actions with M'Glashan * : —

*^ Thursday, Noon.

*' My Dear Duffy,~I have just received your exceedingly kind
note. You are the soul of goodness and generosity. WUl you be at
leisure on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday evening ? If you can I wiU
be most happy to call out (and out) on you. I say out-and-out. as I
conceive that as yet I have made you only a series of half {fmd half —
that's paying you back, eh ?) drop-in Paul-Pryish visits, or visitatkms.
I have made out the inventory for the sale (excluding, as you advised*
pots and pans) and put it into the hands of M^Glashan.

Yours ever faithfully,

J. C. Manoan/*

Another letter to DufTy may be quoted in this connec*
tion : —

" Friday, 3 o*docL

''My Dear Duffy,~I am harassed, goaded, made madl I
have but a few days wherein to make up an Anthology for M*Glashan,
and my health is failing, though 1 am now living very regularly, at
least very abstemiously. But I would rather fail anywhere than in my
duty towards you. Within the last hour I have written what I send
you. I hope you will not dislike it, and if you do not, I hope it will be
in time. As soon as I have finished the Anthology I will call on you
with more poetry. God bless you.

Ever yours faithfully,

J. C. Manoan."

* See IrUk Mmtkly, 1S83, p. 381.

143 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

It bad been intended to include a volume of Echoes
of Foreign Song by Mangan in the Ltbraiy of Ireland
series projected by the Nation, but the idea was given up,
and in June^ 1845, or thereabouts, the German Anthology^
comprising a selection of nearly 150 pieces, was brought
out in two volumes by M'Glashiin. It sold very well, and
ins warmly praised in many quarters. Mangan's preface
to the work is the only professedly direct personau com-
mnntcation to the public from the poet, and as such is worth
transferring to these pages : —

"Tbc ttansUtions comprised in these volumes hare (with a single
enept ion) been selected from a series which have appeared at irre^uUr
intervals within the last ten yean in the page* of tne Dublin Umvtr'
titr MagoMiMt. They are now published in their present form at the
instance of some valued friends of mine, admireta, like mysdf, of
German litentture, and, as I am happy to believe, even more solicitous
than I am to extend the knowledge of that literature throughout these
kinKdoms.

It will be seen that the great majority of the writers from whom
they are taken are poets who have flourished within the current
century. In confining myself generally to these I have acted less
frinn choice than from necessity. Little or none of that description of
material which a translator can mould to his purpose is to be found in
the lyrical or ballad compositions of the earlier eras of the German
muse, and the elaborate didactical poems of the seventeenth or eieh>
teenth centiviet would not, I ^>prebend, be likely to suit the highly-
cultivated tastes of the readers of the present day. My design, I need
scarcdy remaik, has been to furnish not miscellaneous samples of all
fciods of German poetry, but select samples of some particular kinds ;
and if 1 have tticceeded in this design 1 have achieved all that my
leaders would, under anv circumstances, thank me for accomplishing.

Of the tnuislatioiu' taemselves it is not for me to say more than
that they are, as I would humbly hope, faithful to the spirit, if not
always to the l^ter. of tbdr originals. As a mere matter of duty,
bowever, I am exceedingly amdous to express— and I do here, once for
all. express— mv most grateful acknowledgment of the very favourable
Rception they have experienced from the various periodical publica-
tions of the day, and more especially from the newspaper Press.
Tboogh I may at times be indued to think that the language of my
i e» i ew er s has been too flattering, I, nevertheless, gladly accept it at
evidence of a gen er o u s goodwill on their part towards me. which,
while it does tSem honour, should excite me to such endeavours as
miclit in sone degree qualify me to deserve it

J. C. HaMgah."

JAMES CLARENCE IIANGAM. X43

CHAPTER XIIL

MANOAN IN TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY — MITCHXL'S FIRST 8IGBT
OF Hllf— DR. JOHN KSLLS INGRAM— MANGAN'S BXTSNSIYB
READING— HIS VERSATIUTY— FATHER MEEHAN AND MANOAN—
A NIGHT WITH MANGAN— THE GROWING EVIL — ^MAMOAN*S
IRREGULARITIES—LETTERS TO M'GLASHAN.

€9

So It my spirit bound with chains.
And girt with troubles, that 'tis wonder

A single spark of soul remains
Not altogether trampled under."— BIangan.

Mangan'S employment in Trinity College Library being
merely of a temporary and supplementary nature, his
earnings were naturally small. I am informed that there
is no record on the books of the college of his eng^age-
ment, which was due mainly to the kindness of Dr. J. H.
Todd, the eminent scholar, whose influence in the institu-
tion was considerable. Mangan*s duties were of a compara-
tively light character, consisting of the classification of the
stores of literature which Were gradually accumulating in the
library. He had previously been a fairly assiduous reader
there, and his new occupation gave him further opportunities
of studying the mediaeval books in which he revelled.
Mitchel, who was at the time a young solicitor, with a strong
bent towards literature, but without any actual literary
acquaintances (his introduction to the Nation Office being
accomplished a little later), thus describes his first glimpse
of the poet, whose poems he was the earliest to make
an effort to collect —

** The^ first time the present biographer saw Garence Mang^an
was in this wise : Being m the College library, and having occasion
for a book in that gloomy apartment of the institution called the
* Fagel ' library, which is the innermost recess of the stately building,
an acquaintance pointed out to me a man perched on the top of a
ladder, with the whispered information that the figure was Garence
Mangan. It was an unearthly and ghostly figure* in a brown gar^
ment ; the tame garment^ to all appearance, wmch lasted till the day

144 THE UFE AND WRITINGS

of bis death. The blanched hair was totally unkempt ; the corpse-like
features still as marble ; a large book was in his arms* and all nis soul
was in the book. I had never heard of Clarence Mangan before, and
knew not for what he was celebrated, whether as a magician, a poet,
or a murderer ; yet took a volume and spread it on a taUe, not to read,
but with pretence of reading to gaze on the spectral creature upon the
ladder.**

Dr. John Kells Ingram, the distinguished political
economist (who is, however, best known amongst his
countrymen by his fine rebel song, *' Who Fears to Speak
of '98 **), has been good enough to give me a slight account
of Mangan as he recollects him : —

^ I saw very little of Mangan in the College library, and never met
him elsewhere. Dr. Todd was librarian at the time when he was
employ^ — 1 believe as temporarv clerk. 1- have no doubt that Todd,
knowing his poverty, employed him rather on that account — ^being
interested in htm as a man of genius — than for the sake of any work
he was likely to da He certainly did not strike me as a serviceable
officiaL Perhaps the most interesting fact about him which I then
learned was that he used any spare time he had in reading the works
of Swedenborg.

There is now no one in the library who was there in Mangan*s
time. . • . When I said above that I saw very little of Mangan in
the library, I meant to convey that the time during which he and I
were both there was very short. I had one conversation with him — I
forget on what, but, no doubt, on some literary subject — and at the
close of it he said to me with the air of a prince : ' Sir, I shall always
be glad to converse with you.' "

Dr. Ingram's statement about Swedenborg is borne out
by Mangan's own allusions to that mystical writer. He
was not a follower of Count Emmanuel, but he had a great
admiration for the man and his writings. M'Gee, in the
sketch of Mangan already referred to, remarks : —

'* In his later years Mangan has become a disciple of Swedenborg
in religion, and is a firm believer in all the inhabitants uf his invisible
world.**

He was undoubtedly powerfully attracted by the spiri-
tualistic imaginings of Swedenborg, and, like him, con-
stantly saw " a sphere of light about men's souls."

But his reading took other directions than this. He was
deeply versed in the lives of the saints, and I have been
informed by several that St Francis d'Assisi was particularly
venerated by him, and that he would expatiate upon his
life and meditations for hours. Father Meehan mentions
aome of the books in which Mangan was specially interested,

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I45

and the list could be greatly extended, if necessary, merely
from his own frequent indications of literary preferences.

** His reading," says the worthv priest* ''then ranged over sobjecti
which few but himself would nave deemed interesting— Zedlei^
Universal Lexicon^ Zeiler's Recueil d§ Umits Us Littret^ UgoUno^
TJUsauna Anttquitaium Sacrarum^ Van Til's De Usu Imtrmmith
iorum Muiicorum apud Hebraios\ and Calmet's DisurimtU im
Musicam Viterum Hebra£orum—\omt% that, in all likdihood, have
seldom been taken down from their ioculi since. Another ponderous
old volume — Mathew Paris's Hisioria Anf^arum^ written in 1348-9*
proved to him a source of real delight, for it was from the Benedicdne's
pa^es he first learnt the weird story of the Everlasting Jew. • • •
This most singular legend, which, like the generality of all legends,
was the outcome of a popular fiction^ all but fascinated Mangan, so
much so that for many years before his decease he meditated a poem
descriptive of his wanaerings."

Mangan, however, contented himself with translating
the poems by Schubart and Schlegel on the subject One
book which has not been alluded to by Father Meehan was
such a favourite with Mangan that he is constantly referring
to it in his articles and letters. This was Godwin's Si.
Leon^ the principal character of which possesses a wonderful
elixir which caught Mangan's fancy.

In one of his letters to Duffy, Mangan takes the oppor-
tunity of praising Maturin, in whose works, as previously
suggested, he saw only the genius.

''Did it ever occur to vou that Maturin's Milesian CA^g^— the
most intensely Irish story I know of—might be brought out in a cheap
form to advantaf^e ? Did you ever hear of Gamble,* the author of
Northern Irish Tales 7 He made a powerful impression on me when
I luxuriated (a la Werter) in my teens. His narratives are aU
domestic and exceedingly melancholy. Which county of Ulster gave
him birth I wist not, but in one of his tales he apostrophises the
Moume as his own river — and in truth he seems to have drunk royally
of its waves, for he is very, very mourne-ful. Something might be
done with him too. Sherlock is the name of the Irish writer whom I
spoke to you of some thirteen months back in the Dublin Library.
His letters are particularly spiritual, and I think would bear a
republication." t

Mangan's love of literature and his absorption in books
remained with him even in his most abandoned moments,

* I thmk John Gamble came from Strabane, or thereabouts. Viems ef
Society and Manners in the North tf Inland was another book of his. tt
was pttblished in 1S19.

t Thomas Carlyle afterwards Kiade the same suggestkm to Dnl^. It is to
the "Letters** of Martin Sherlock (2 vols. Lond. 1781) that ICangan and Oolyk
lefened. They would haidly bear repoblicatk», howefer.

146 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

and he read even on his death bed. He assimilated the
contents of whatever interested him so thoroughly that he
was able to project himself into the mind of the author,
and to identify himself completely with his thoughts.
Hence his wondrous skill as a translator, whether from
the Irish, the Turkish, or the German.

* He has written hymns," says D'Arcy M«Gee, * with the spiritual
itrroar of Sedulios, and philosophised with the subtilty of Schiller.
From a fairy-tale to a cahtide, nothing comes amiss to him ; he is a
German with the Germans, a Mussulman among the Turks, and a
very Seanachie among the Celts from whom he sprunji^. And all these
phases of intellectual labour have been included m a long life of
mvarying misery."

John Cashel Hoey, in an article upon the poet,* uses
almost the same language.

" He could be a Bursch amon^ the Germans, a Persian in Ispahan,
a Turk in Constantinople, a Spaniard in Madrid, or a Celt in Con-
naught. ... He was often more German and Gaelic than the
authors he translated from."

From these extracts it would almost seem as if either
M'Gee or Hoey wrote the admirable criticism which is
prefixed to the selection from Mangan's poems (only
twenty being given) which was issued as a supplement to
the Nation of December 15th, 1852, for there is consider-
able similarity between certain passages in each of the
notices, as, for example : —

''The idiosyncracy of the author, or of the country, the time or the
language is exquisitely observed. Place and time become diaphanous
to that intense and vivid imagination. He is a Dervish among the
Turks, a Bursch among the Germans, a Scald among the Danes, an
Improvisatore in Italy, or a Seanachie in Ireland. And his fancy
levels with equal light and freedom by the Bosphorus or the Baltic*'

From the date of his acquaintance with Father Meehan,
Mangan saw more of him than of any other of his literary
friends. He was always welcome to the Presbytery in
Lower Exchange Street, where he occasionally found D.
F. McCarthy, R. D. Williams and others who were in-
terested in him. Father Meehan would not allow anyone
to say a word against Mangan, and often defended him
from unsympathetic comments. Personally he did all in
his power to wear the poet from his unfortunate habits.

* PjtiBled ia 77k Okhftrm/Jfimt, London, of Febnaiy 1st, x868

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I47

but even he, who had more influence over him than
anybody, could not effect any permanent good in tl»t
direction. If Mangan was anxious for sympathy, he did
not want or appreciate the patronising air of some of the
people with whom he came in contact He had peculiar
views on the question of patronage, and would only accept
help from those he personally liked, or those who were
indebted to him for literary services.

"There is no error," says he, in one of his confidences, " more
decided than ihai of supposing that the mind of a great and originil
tone requires what is called encouragement or patronage. On ibe
contrary, such a mind should voluntarily erect an impassable barrief
between its own operations and any support that others might be
inclined to tender iL All support of the kind, like that which the ivy
affords to (he oak, would, in fact, have a latent tendency to imftare iu
vigorousness."

Though Mangan had refused, previous to his acquain-
tance with Father Mechan, to take anytemperance pledge,
even when Father Mathow himself administered it outside
of the Church of St. Michael and St John* to lai^e

THE UFE AXD WUTIKCS OF

I; and ezsy ' osed to be bdd every erasing.

'e still Ihrii^ in Dublin iriio mnerob..

of tbese ncial gzAcrii^i. HewasnveljrB
I by anyooe, nnkss ha brotber WtUiani, antfi
.. or honn aqipiag his Hqiior, now aw) agai
Id the smgcr^ and even cimwiooallycciitnbotw^i
..• .^. - a>oadyiiniteah»tiactcdand o b U > hw J

tseoine
tfieSi

KBv dcscribci a

tii iff iiallj ■

of i»73. Mine '

ig with Magan at one cf tbea'

> a d m itt ed fact* torn
e dark chill November c

Eaaii m ftaend ariio knew Mangan, went to a
* " 'ia tke ne^shboorbood of Camden SCrcC," rtc«.l
Bweleame wbo had the wbcmrjd^ far adnd(;ara
PMd^7 to riig or otbowne I'wnliibnit to the evenfaj^kl

I •< Ar bfaoKiBf pap^ni

k Ml If Vr NM4i if J

ri«w itevcnca

^ram Ac pace ftl

^ S-

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. X49

Farewell to the revelling wine-cup I
The flattering, fooling wine-cup I
The cup that snares^ that sinks and wean^
The fame-defiling wme-cup !

• •••••

Farewell to the tempting wine-cup I
The danger-scoffing wine-cup I
An upas-tree, my land, to thee.
Is the baneful, stainful wine-cup 1"

Even Father Meehan, who, as already stated, saw more
of Mangan during these last years than any other literary
friend, frequently lost sight of him for months : —

** Ah, the pity of it I Waymrdness and irresolution were strooc^
developed in Mang^, and despite words of encouragement and gentle
attentions he would, at intervals, be missed for weeks and months
from the little circle in the attic, none knowing whither he had gone."

His nervous system was at this time greatly disordered,
and his physical weakness was lamentable to behold.

" I have never met*" says Mangan himself in the pretended sketch
by Edward Walsh, "anybody of such a strongl^r nuurked nervous tem-
perament as Mangan. He is in this respect quite a phenomenon ; he
IS literally all nerves and muscles. In accordance with such a tempera*
ment, Providence has endowed him with marvellous tenacity otlife.
He has survived casualties that would have killed thousands-Hcasu-
alties of aU kinds — illnesses, falls, wounds, bruises, wet clothes, no
clothes at all, and nights at the round table. His misfortunes have
been very great, and he ascribes them all to his power of writing,
facetiously deriving calamity from calatftus^ a quill.**

James M'Glashan, the publisher, aware of Mangan*s
deplorable lack of resolution and craving for stimulants,
used to pay in instalments such small sums as the latter
earned. He used to beg earnestly for money in advance for
his literary work, and it was generally given to him, but in
small amounts. It was well known to all his friends that
he could not keep it or use it wisely. Five pounds would
vanish as speedily as five shillings. The present writer
has been told by some of those who used to see him that
the forlorn condition of the poet was a heart-rending sight
for those who knew and admired his genius. That such a
man should sink so low and, as was by this time fully
recognised, beyond retrievement, was an appalling reflec-
tion for his best friends : —

^ But the cry of his spirit,*' as Mitchel truly says« " was ever— •
* Miserable man that I am, who will deliver me from the wxmth to
come?***

150 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

The same admirable writer is, however, unnecessarily
brutal when he observes that

^ there were two Mangans. one well known to the moses» the other to
the police,"

a sentence which might imply that the unfortunate poet was
lost to all decency, and led a particularly scandalous life — an
implication very far removed, indeed, from the truth. His
one fault, his only crime, was the ever-gnawing desire for
such oblivion as he could procure in the taverns. His
friends did absolutely tyexything to rescue him from his
debasement, reminding him often of the duty he owed to
his high reputation as a writer, but all to no purpose. He
either argued the question in his own peculiar fashion, or
declared his utter helplessness. And, as he says in one of
his

*' Poetry never had at any time more to do with rectitude of pur>
pose or conduct than with red hair or round shoulders."

His friends, as Mitchel remarks,

''regarded him with reverential compassion and wonder, and would
have felt pride in giving him a shelter and a home. But sometimes
he could not be found for weeks ; and then he would reappear, like a
ghost or a ghoul, with a wildness in his blue, glittering eye, as of one
who had seen spectres ; and nothing gives so ghastly an idea of his
condition of mind as the fact that the insane orgies of this rarely-gifted
creature were transacted in the lowest and obscurest taverns, and in
company with the oflal of the human species.'*

He rightly adds that those who knew him

*' could do nothing for him ; he would not dwell with man. or endure
decent society ; they could but look on with pity and wonder."

Mitchel puts the facts very crudely, but, unfortunately,
they cannot be disputed in so far as they refer to the period
subsequent to 1845. His irregularities were tolerated in
Trinity College Library as long as Dr. Todd could possibly
tolerate them, but eventually his services had to be dis-
pensed with. All that Mangan has to say about this dis-
missal — to which he seems to me to clearly refer in a sketch
of Dr. Todd which he wrote for the Irishman of 1849 —
is "

^ He does not, I fimcy. advance auite thelength of Voltaire in the
astompcioD that human beings shoula be habitually reganled by wise
men modi in the light of rattle-soakcs or tigen, but drcumstances, of

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I5I

which, of course, I know nothing, may have accttstomed him to eate^
tai.i a certain distrust of mankind. If I be wrong in this opinioo -and
nothing more than an opinion it is— I beg his pardon.**

James M'Glashan, to whom Mangan was worth a good
deal more than he paid him, was sometimes compelled to
speak rather harshly to the wa3nvard poet The fbllowing
extracts from his letters to M'Glashan — ^which cover the
period between 1843 and 1848, are of interest as showing
his literary activity, his frequent promises of reform and his
invariable impecuniosity : —

^'My Dear Sir,~I thank yon from my heart for your kindneoi
I enclose you additional stanzas of 'the Death Chant.** The difficdty
of varying the forms of expression in such a peculiar poem increaaei
"^on me of course as I proceed.

Would you want a Midsummer Anthology for June ? or a Poly*
glot for the opening volume in July ? or a very striking storyi the scene
of which should be laid in our college ?

I return you the proofs — Lamartine's poem f is» in my opinkm,
the finest thinjr I have ever done. I could wish you to ghmce at
stanzas 1 5 to 18. They are powerful, and yet I wrote them ^ paKiI)
reclining against a havstack after a fast (lilce St Leon's in the Dtmgeoa
of Bethlem Gabor) of thirty-six hours. I am clearly convinced that
there may be worse intemperance in eating than even in drinking. I
fancy I have discovered the true key to my health, and, please the
Fates 1 hope to unlock with that same key the portal that bars me
from the free and uncontrolled exercise of my mtellect You shall
have the remainder of my monthly contribution by Monday. There
will be some striking and fiery ballads therein. It will conclude^-
unless you object, the * Stray Leaflets.* I am rather anxious to be
done with the German, and to enter upon some new track. How dad
I should be to get that Danish volume of £wald*s Poems whioi I
beipoke of you. The Irish Anthologies, however, are those to whidi
I mean now chiefly to devote my attention. May God bless jrou. my
dear sir; you do not know of what service the sum you so oflf-haadedly
gave me has proved to me."

In another letter he says : —

** I would entreat of you not to judge me over harshly for my great

rLSt lapses. Men see effects. It is for God alone to scrutinise causes,
leave myself in future to be tested by my acts, not my promises. A
retributive eternity is rapidly cominf^ upon me, and woe onto me now
and for ever if 1 fsul to fulfil the mission allotted to me.**

Again : —
** I now propose, as £ur as possible, to retrieve the past, and I hope

* A long Scandinavian poem entitled ^The Death Chant of King R«Mr
Lodbfok." ^^

t "Farewell to France,** whkh, however, sabsequently appeared In the
AMw instead of the UnimnUti MtipnitH.

153 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

I shall be sustained by your kind offices. I enclose yon a legendary
ballad from the Bohemian* the literature of which I have been
studying for several months. Could you favour me with the usual
price for it? It is with ^reat pain that I bring myself to make this
request^ as* when I consider tne multitude of my past obli^tions to
you, when I reflect on jrour immeasurable and unostentatious kind-
nesses to me, I am overwhelmed. But, please God, I will yet adiieve
more for my reputation than I have yet accomplished. That I might
not be tempted to relapse into my old habits, ihave renewed my vow
of abstinence.*

So large a proportion of the scanty correspondence of
Mangan which hais survived is devoted to what must, I
suppose, be called matters of business, that there is neces-
sarily a good deal of monotony in it, and net a few repeti-
tions. Here is an extract from another letter to M'GIashan,
more or less characteristic : —

*' I have now no longer the same motive for requesting money from
you, which, unfortunately, I too often had on former occasions. In
other words, I am now and henceforth a water-drinker. The College
has lately received a lar^e accession of Oriental works. Although
you may not entirely credit it, it is a fact that I have made great pro-
gress in the Persian language, and am ready to teach it to such of my
countrymen as are willing to do credit to the Vallanceyan notion of
their Oriental descent. If you would care to introduce Hindoo poetry
to your readers, I could supply you with it And now, my dear sir, I
have but one request to make of you — that is, that you will not judge
of me bv what you have known of me. I have reially only begun to
tjdst within the last month. You, perhaps, remember that Godwin
describes St. Leon, after the latter has been imprisoned bodily for
twelve years, as * the mere shell and shadow of a man— of no more
worth and power than that which a magic lanikom inscribes on a
walL** Imagine, then, what my condition must have been, shut up
within the ceUs of my own chafed and miserable spirit for fifteen years.
Retrospection, however, answers no purpose : the future is the empire
of the numan wilL"

He was always attentive to any suggestions as to his
contributions, and, consequentiy, as it is known that
M'Glashan often exercised the functions of editor, over-
ruling the latter personage whenever he thought fit, even
when he was a man of the reputation of I^er,t it is

* ''Bat it revokes my thraldom's ban.
And I, the Aunt and feeble-heaited
Shell and ihadow of a man.
Arise like one lefirashed with wine.**— Manoan.

\Apf9^^ Lefcr thought bigfahr of Mangsn's vseiUness to the MoiOMim.
He oooe wiote: ''ICangan Is a icaUy fint-iater— keep him by you.*

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 153

possible that the subjects of some of Mang^n's articles in
the University Magazine "^tx^ of M'Glashan's own choosing
In one of his letters Mangan asks : —

" Would you desiderate any new and striking artide for the Jamiazy
nombor of the Afagantte f Or shall I continue the * Lays,' tn give you
a Gemum or an Oriental Anthology? Anything you be»p«ik you
can have."

As a final example, for the present, of his letters to
M'Glashan, take this : —

" My Dear Sir, — Let me hope that you are not angry with me.
Could you know all that 1 have suffered of late, any resentment that
you might feel against me would be converted into compassion. But
I believe that it is not in a nature like yours to harbour resentment
against anyone. I shall have finished the Antholo^ (Spanish), I hope,
by Saturday, when, I do not hesitate to say, you wiU witness a marked
improvement in my appearance. If you do not at once perceive that
I am thoroughly changed, I will consent ^t you shall refuse all fiitaie
assistance. I have two or three literary projects in my mind, but the
execution of them will altogether depend upon your kind reception of
me ; for if you cast me off I resign literature altogether.

You said, when leaving you on Tuesday, that yon feared I might
misappropriate the £1 you so kindly presented to me. I paid m
landlord 15s. ; with the remainder I was enabled to procure a bath
(which has done me great service) and an umbrella, which I always

miss."

With the exception of half-a-dozen translations from
Lamartine, a story called '* The Threefold Prediction/'
some twenty or thirty original poems and short versions
from the German, and some scattered thoughts, all of which
were published in The Irish MantlUy Magazine between
September, 1845, and February, 18461 Mangan's entire
work during the next year or two was contributed to the
Nation and University Magazine.

As the poems contributed to the MontJtfy Magazine
were apparently quite unknown to Father Meehan, and are
not mentioned by any other writer about Mangan, and have
never been collected, it may be well to give the reader a
few specimens here.*^ One. is called ''Lines written in a
Nunnery Chapel " —

* I am indebted to Mr. John O'Leary for the reference to and loan of tUs
eztremelv scarce macaane, which is not an the British Museom, or la any of
the DttbUn libcaxies.

154 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

^ Me hither from noonlight

A voice ever calls
Where pale pillars cluster

And organ tones roll —
Nor sunlight nor moonlight

£*er silvers these walls-
Lives here other lustre—

Hie Light of the SooL

Here budded and blossomed^

Here foded and died—
Like brief bloomiiM^ roses

Earth's purest of pure I
Now ever embosomed

In bliss they abide-*
Oh ! may, when Life dosesi

My meed be as sore I **

Here is a characteristic scrap— ^

Wisdom and Folly.

** Thev who go forth, and finally win
Their way to the Temple of Truth by Error's multiplied stages»
They are the Sages I

They who stop short for life at some inn
On the side of the road — say Momus's, Mammon*s« or Capid*s»
They are the Stupids 1 ^

Another is entitled, " Rest only in the Grave **—

^ I rode tin I reached the House of Wealth^
*Twas filled with Riot and blighted health,

I rode till I reached the House of Love—
Twas vocal with sighs beneath and above 1

I rode till I reached the House of Sin-
There were shrieks and curses without and within.

I rode till I reached the House of Toil^
Its inmates had nothing to bake or boiL

I rode in search of the House of Content^
But never could reach it, iar as I wec^t I

The House of Quiet, for strone and weak^
And Poor and Rich| I have stul to seek-
That House is narrow, and dark, and small^
But the only Peace&l House of all 1 **

• !

I '

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I55

And these two small snatches which he attributes to lb
favourite Ruckert : —

••Yet I true Poetry is wixard power ;
*Tis the felt enchantment of the heart —

But the Poet, what is He ? Enchanted
Or Enchanter ? Master of his art.
Or but Slave ? Haunts he the Worldsocil*s Tower I

Or is he himself the worldsoul-haunted?**

** Because a chance hath overset

Thy House of Cards, thou grievest 1— Why io ? •
Since thou thyself art standing yet,

' Thou hast no cause to sigh and err tOb
Besides, thou mayest, if thou but will,

Construa a nobler dome at leisure ^—
The Cards are on the table still,

And only wait the Builder's pleasure I **

Another of the poems is a version of EichendorflTs
** Miller's Daughter/' which seems to me to be mudi supe-
rior to that other and better-known one given in tevonl
collections : —

"The mill-wheel turns with a saddening
I hear it each morning early.
When the sun arises red and round,
And the flower cups glisten so pearly.

The Miller's daughter is gone
And oh ! most bodeful wonder I

The ring she gave me on Valentine's Day
Sprang yester-even asunder I

No longer now may I linger here—
ril don the willow and till grim

Death shall at length arrest my career,
I'll wander about as a pilgrim.

Ill wander with lute from bower unto haU,
From shepherd's dell unto city.

Compelling tears from the eyes of all
Who shall hearken my doleful ditty.

The mill-wheel turns in the early mom :
I hear both wheel and water —

And 1 turn too— awa>', forlorn —
For I think of the Miller's daughter.

That wheel shall turn and turn again,

Ke-tum, re-turn, for ever ;
But the Miller's fitithless daughter— when

Shall she return ?— Ah I never I"

lS/6 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

* Tbe Counsel of a Cosmopolitan '' which follows is also
attributed to the German, but it has more of Mangan in it
than of any German writer.

Counsel of a Cosmopoutaii •

' Give imiles and sighs alike to all*
Serve all, but love not an^ ;
Love's dangeroos and delicions thrall
Hath heon the tomb of many.

The sweetest wine-thoughts of the heart

Are turned ere long to bitter ;
Sad memories loom when joys depart*

And gloom comes after glitter.

Why Mwn thy soul for one lone flower.
And slight the whole bright gariaad ;

Clarissa's eyes, Luanda's bower,
WiUfailtheeinalarlandl

Love God and Virtue 1 Love the Sun,
The Stars, the Trees, the Mountains I

The only living streams that run
Flow from Eternal Fountains 1 **

Here is another characteristic piece, without a title ^x-

**The night is falling in chill December,
The frost is mantling the silent stream.
Dark mists are shrouding the mountain's brow,
My soul is weary : I now

Remember
The days of roses but as a dream.

The icy hand of the old Benumber,

The hand oi Winter is on my brain,
I try to smile, while I inly grieve :
I dare not hope, or believe

That Summer

Will ever brighten the earth again.

So, gazing gravewards, albeit inunortal,
Man cannot pierce through the girdling Night

That sunders Time from Eternity,

Nor feel this death-vale to be

The portal
To realms of glory and Living Ught"*

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. XJ/

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ** NATION " AGAIN — ** NIGHTMARXS " AND ^'MARIS' NUTS*'—
THE FAMINE YKAR — *'THS PKAL OF ANOTHER TRUlCPBr"'—

"the warning voice"— "the rye mill"— ••the saw
mill" — mangan's desire for death— his growuio

self-abandonment — nervous affections — LETTERS TO
M'GLASHAN — MANGAN AND JOHN O'DALY— ANGLBSSA STREET
booksellers — "the annals of the four MASTERS*—
"poets and poetry of MUNSTER "— JOHN KBEOAM^
DESCRIPTION OF O'DALY.

" To stamp dishonoar on thy brow
Wit not within the power of emrth |
And art thou agonised when now

The hoar that lost thee all thy worth
And turned thee to the thing thoa art.
Rushes upon thy bleeding heart ? "—Manoan.

The Nation^ believing, with Horace Walpole, that only a
man of genius can trifle agreeably, gladly printed all the
squibs and skits that Mangan sent to it, but its editor did
not fail to observe that the poet might have been better
employed. In printing a whimsical set of verses on ** The
Blackwater '' — a compound for which Mangan found several
rhymes — ^the editor remarks : —

" Here we have the truest poet this country has produced in cor
days — to the few we need not name him, to the many it is still prema-
ture — writing versides verv much akin to the nonsense verses with
which Swift and hit friends made war against the spleen and blue
deviU."

Nevertheless, Mangan proceeded on his way, scattering
epigrams and jeux (Tisprit on the one hand, and reserving
his serious work, so far, for the University Magatitu.
There are a couple of articles in that periodical for 1845
which I have no hesitation in attributing to MangaxL
They are respectively entitled *' Nightmares^ and " Marei*
Nests,** and are unsigned, but certain passages strongly
suggest the author of the polyglot anthologies. With tfaie

J 58 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

exception of a rare joke, the articles are in the very serious
vein. In the first-named article he says, among other
things, that Blake the artist was fortunate in being able to
transmit his nightmares to canvas : —

^ Happy was Blake, who lived in good understanding with the
artist within him. and whose ready pencil transferred the unearthly
creations oi this latter to insensible canvas, instead of receiving them
on his own sensitive skin. The pencil was the conductor whidh
carried off innocuous the destructive-creative force, the lightning that
would have smitten and fused his own corporeality into new, anoma-
lous, fantastic forms. • • • Had Blake not been able to paint his
nightmares, and his daymares too, they would have painted themselves
in wixard marks upon his own body.*'

The madman, according to Mangan in this article, is he
whose power of transmitting his imagination is arrested*
and whose own soul receives all its effects. The whole
article is marvellously acute, and, did space allow, might
be largely quoted with advantage. In the article on
'* Mares' Nests " there are also some interesting and
characteristic passages, as, for instance, this : —

*' dildren are the greatest artists, creative, genial. What a drama-
tist, what a romancer, what a magician, is the child in his play I That
is a lingering after-sheen of the glory of his infancy. And the true
artist is a child all his life. Only in so far as he is a child is he a
creator ; ceases he to be child-like, he is thenceforth no more an artist,
but a mechanic : a cobbler, not a genius. He is, in Fichte*s phrase, a
hodman ; useful when building is going on, yet not to be called a
builder. He is a picture-wright, or a play-wright, or a tale-wright :
m versifier or a prosifier— ^mything but a poet"*

At this same, time Mangan was continuing his versions
and perversions from the German, and in the number
which contains the article on ** Nightmares " there are some
characteristically whimsical pieces from the German of
Selber (himself). Even in these, however, we get an occa*
Aonal Une or two of a serious or half-serious character, as
where he gives us, in a poem of which the refrain

** Hark 1 again the rueful winds are blowing,
Andalaal IdweUaloneP't

* In Kactnky'i Diaiy ii a reflection to pncdcaUy the nme eflEect— Uiat
ckfldien aie the tmett poets, by the ttrength of their 8m«£^n>tw^.
t The kst lefhun oTaU Is—

"HmAI agpdn the raefiil winds are blowiagy
And alas I I want a loan 1"

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 159

a verse like the following : —

** O, ye rosy ghosts of buried hours,

Haunters of a bead which they made boary.
How you mock one wbcn Disaster lours,

With your shameless Tantalusian glory!
Memory draws upon her ill-got wealth

All the more as Fancy waxes thrifty.
I want neither 1 Give me Hope and Health,

Give me life, O, Eighteen Hundred Fifty 1
Give me back, not Youth's imaginings,
But its feelings, which are truer things.**

One of his critics truly says that into his rhymes,

*' however fantastic or difficult, his language flows with mJX its
unimpaired vitality and grace, like fused metal mto a mould.*

And the Nation, afler hb death, said of his poetical work
with equal truth : —

** He has faults, which he who runs may read, mannerism, grotesqucb
and an indomitable love of jingling ; he often sins against simpliatyt
but the inexpiable sm of commonplace no man can lay to his chaige.

Even his rebuses and acrostics have an air of distinction
about them. But the time was nearing when Mangan's
thoughts were, of necessity, more often raised above the
trivialities of life, when a larger and freer utterance and
nobler aspirations took the place of the smaller and, as it.
were, constrained movements of his earlier career. From
the opening of the year 1846, when the fearful shadow of
an impending famine was cast over the country, Mangan,
though he did not change his own habits or mode of life,
almost entirely forgot his mannerism, and assumed the
character of an almost inspired prophet In impressive
odes like "The Warning Voice" and "The Peal of
Another Trumpet," he pointed to the future, and bade his
countrymen hold up their hearts, imploring them to act
with dignity, moderation, and courage, and not to allow
the terrible outlook to overwhelm them with despair. More
than anyone of his time, he predicted the misery of the
forthcoming years. He urged, above all things, the stem
necessity of preparation for whatever the future might
bring, the supreme importance of firmness, the danger of
weakness and irresolution. Hitherto he had been con-
tented with the name of ^ poet ; " he now appeared as the
great national poet of Ireland — ^the most splendidly eo«
dowed with imagination and keenness of vision of an/

l60 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Irishman of his time. And thus in " The Peal of Another
Trumpet" he addressed his suffering fellow-countiymen >—

** Revolution's red abjrss

Bums beneath us all but bared—
And on high the fire-charged cloud

Blackens in the finnament,
And afar we list the loud

Sea voice of the unknown event

Youths of Ireland, stand prepared I
For all woes the meek have dreed,

For all risks the brave have daiedt
As for suflfering, so for deed*

Stand prepared 1
For the peitilence that striketh
Where it listeth, whom it liketh,
For the blight whose deadly might
Desolateth day and night —
For a sword that never spared

Stand prepared 1
Though tnat gory sword be bared,

Be not seated I
Do not blench and dare not fidter 1
For the axe and for the halter,

Stand prepared 1 "

It was to the Nation that Mangan contributed his
finest National poems, beginning with *'The Warning
Voice," * to which he prefixes the following sentences firom
Balzac's ** Livre Mystique " : —

" II me semble que nous sommes k la veille d'une grande bataille
hmnaine. Les forces sont \k ; mais je n'y vois pas de gto^raL"

In the following week's issue the editor characterises
it as ** the most impressive poem, perhaps, we ever
published," and quotes these words ot ''a dear corres-
pondent " :—

** M.'s poem sounded to me like the deep voice of a dying man,
making his last appeal to the good in men^s hearts, or a voice from
the sky, so far was it above all the littleness of party prejudice or party
motives.**

From the opening lines —

*• Ye Faithful !— Ye Noble 1
A day is at hand
Of trial and trouble
And woe in the land,**

* It appetfed od February aist, 1S46W Mitchel crroneoaily attributes it
toi&i2, whoit of coarse, it would have been pncticsUy a prophecy "after the

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. l6l

to the finale^ this fine poem soars high beyond the tome-
times petty plaints of the poets of the day :—»

•• Now, therefore, ye True,
Gird your loins up anew 1
By the good you have wrought.
By all you have thought
And luflfered and done !
By your souls, I implore yoOf
Be leal to your mission-
Remembering that one
Of the two paths before yoa *
Slopes down to Perdition.

To you have been given

Not granaries and gold.
But the Love that lives long

And waxes not cold ;
And the zeal that hath striven

'Gainst Error and Wrong,
And in fra^ents hath riven

The chains of the Strong.

Your true faith and worth

Will be history soon.
And their stature stand forth

In the unsparing noon I "

Nearly all his writings in the Nation of this year are
serious, and indeed lofty in tone. Among them are his
most superb poems, like '' Dark Rosaleen," '' The Dream of
John McDonnell/' " Siberia," " Shane Bwee," - A Cry for
Ireland," "A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth
Century," ''A Lament for Sir Maurice Fitzgerald,** and
others of lesser note, but he did not give up altogether his
mere rhyming exercises. No further examples of his
powers in that direction are» perhaps, necessary; but as
"The Rye Mill," which appeared in the Nation a week
after ''The Warning Voice," has interesting associations^
a couple of verses or so may be given here —

^ The drab-coloured river rushed on at full speed—
The Rye, that noblest of trout streams —
The coppices around looked very dun indeed*
As dim as the dimmest of Doubt's dreams.
To the north rose a hill o'er a field— or a fen ;

But albeit I felt able to climb hill
And cliff like a goat, I didnt see it then—
I saw but the picturesque Rye Mill I

I62 THE LIF£ AND WRITINGS OF

And winged, as with liffht, were the weeks of my stay

In its neighbourhood I We all know how slips
The long day away with a boy while at play,

With a giii while gathering cowslips :
But mine was but a moment from mom unto eve,

Though in truth I was part of the time ill
With a cold in my throat, which I caught, I believe,

Through a hole in the wall of the Rye Mill.
• • • • •

What's the Chancellor himself ? * A mummy in a wig.

What's his office ? At best a sublime ill.
Take the woolsack, O Brougham f but let me sit and swig

Adam*s alet on a meal sack in Rye Mill I *'

This mill, on the Rye, near Leixlip, had a peculiar
fascination for Mangan, who had seen it in earlier years,
when it had taken a strong hold on his imagination. Not
long after the appearance of the poem just quoted, aiid in
the same year, Mangan returns to the subject in the Nation^
but this time he calls it a saw milL In sending ** The Saw
Mill *' to Duffy, he says : —

^The lines I enclose are something apropos de rien of a miU that I
remember having seen in mv boyish days in Rye Valley, Leixlip. If
thev suit you I shall be glad, and if they do not, why somebody else
will be, of course— for spaces must be filled up in newspapers as well
as in society.*'

The poem is so peculiar, so strange, that perhaps readers
who do not know it will like to see it. Here it is

^ My path lay towards the Moume agen.
But I stopped to rest at the hill-side
That glanced adown o*er the sunken elen,
Which the Saw-and-Water-mills hid^

Which now, as then,
The Saw-and-Water-mills hide.

And there as I lay reclined on the hill,
Like a man made by sudden qualm ill,
1 heard the water in the Water-mill
And saw the saw in the Saw-miU 1

As I thus lay still,
I saw the saw in the Saw-mill!

The saw, the breeze, and the humming bees,
Lulled me into a dreamy reverie.

L.uiiea me mco a areamy revene.
Till the objects round me, hills, miUs, trees,
Seemed flprown alive, aU and every.

By MOW degrees
Took ufe, ai it were^ each and every 1

* Lnd Brougham. f Water.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. X63

Anon the sound of the waters grew
To a dreary* mournful ditty.
And the sound of the tree that the saw sawed thioqg)i
Disturbed my spirit with pity»

Began to subdue
My spirit with tenderest pity I

Oh, wanderer 1 the hour that brings thee back
Is of all meet hours the meetest
Thou now, in sooth, art on the track.

Art niffher to home than thou weetest I

Thou hast thought Time slack.
But his flight has been of the fleetest 1

For thee it is that I dree such pain
As, when wounded, even a plank win ;
My bosom is pierced, is rent in twain^
That thine may ever bide tranqutl»

May ever remain
Henceforward untroubled and tranquiL

In a few days more, most Lonely One!
Shall I, as a narrow ark, veil
Thine eyes from the glare of the world and run
'Mong the urns m yonder dark vale,

In the cold and dun
Recesses of yonder dark vale I

For this grieve not ! Thou knowest what thanks
The weary-souled and meek owe
To Death I I awoke, and heard four planks
Fall down with a saddening echo,

I heard four planks
Fall down with a saddening echo ! "

Whether Mangan, who was, as he himself tells us, " a
being of incredible sensibility," actually heard in his boyish
visit to the Rye the falling of planks, or whether he
merely dreamt of the incident, the poem is highly
characteristic. The reference to death reminds one that
he had for years looked forward to it as to a release
from trials too hard to bear. He did not conceal from
his friends — nor even from his readers — that it would be
welcome; he mentions somewhere, indeed, that he had
serious notions of emulating Cato, and of compassing
what he so much longed for. Although he was now
writing almost constantly for the Nation and Umversiiy
MagcLzim^ his friends were rarely able to meet him. Father
Meehan saw most of him during these last jrears, being
prepared to seek him out in the most noisome alleys and

I64 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

courts in the city — ^places where others would not go.
Mangan would not and could not reform to oblige his
friends ; it is almost certain that* with the loss of a power
of restraint, he had also lost the wish or will to restrain
himself. James Price says of this period : —

"At last friends could do nothing for him. The ever-gnawinff
craving for excitement wauid be satisfied, though self-respect and
man*s esteem were sacrificed. Pity him, weep for him, but censure
him not 1 His own self reproaches were abundant punishment for
his £&ult. The horror of his waking reaction was a terrible expiation
to pay for human infirmity."

He would promise earnestly to change hb habits, and
really made heroic efforts to carry out his promises, but
all without avail In one of his lighter effusions he admits
that no amount of teaching can effect a change if the will
is not present. A line or two will suffice : —

'' Philosophy, thou preachest
Vainly unto all who take to tippling or the tea-chest ;
Wonder-worker truly wert thou couldst thou but achieve a
Change in our Teetotalites, who sit and count their siller,
Or in our Teetotumites who reel from post to pillar."

Yet he would voluntarily abstain, sometimes for weeks^
from drink, though it was evident to all who knew him
that he suffered agonies in the effort

Even before he began to drink at all, as has already
been stated, his nerves were practically destroyed, and his
nervous condition in moments of extreme distress was
pitiable to witness. The present writer has heard from
the lips of some of those who knew Mangan descriptions
which are too painful to write. Only a foint glimpse of
him here and there can be attempted. A certain dis-
tinguished Dublin physician informs me that he saw him
one bitterly cold night, insufficiently clad, steal into the
Nation office, and hand into Mr. Fullam, the manager, a
few pages of manuscript, begging at the same time that
some money should be given to him on account. The
manager told him that he was prohibited from doing so ;
he had received peremptory orders not to advance money
to any contributor. Mangan implored so earnestly that
at last he was given a small sum, and my informant tells
me that one would have imagined from his manner in
receiving it that he had just been reprieved from a sentence

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 16$

of immediate death. The sequel !s pathetic The
manuscript handed in was the ** Warning Vcict,^
which appeared in the next issue of the paper. The
same scene was often repeated in M'Glashan's office.
M'Glashan declined to pay Mangan except in small
amounts, knowing full well that the unfortunate poet would
have been speedily relieved of the whole sum^ if he bad
got it, by his brother and other hangers-on, thoujg^h Mangan
would solemnly assure him, and often with tnith, that he
urgently wanted the whole amount for necessary purchases^
or to pay off a specially pressing debt for rent But the
publisher was well aware that any artful knave or cajoler
among those with whom he chose to associate could
easily frustrate any such intention as Mangan expressed
One of the letters already given has some bearing upon
this point, and in the following note Mangan explains to
M'Glashan what he had done with money which had been
given him — money which was not a gift, but due for work
worth ten times such remuneration : —

'* My Dear Sir— With what you so kindly and off-handedly gave
me on Tuesday I was enabled to procure several articles of dress
(shirts, stocking, etc). I was, in truth, very much in need of them.
If ^ou will say £2 for the enclosed contribution I shall be quite
satisfied. This will enable me not only to settle with my worthy
hostess, and, I am sorry to say, un worthy laundress, but, my dear '
sir, it will provide me with the means ot procuring some books of
Danish and Swedish poetry. I know where these are to be had,
and very cheap, and I confess I would prefer the possession of one
book purchased with mv own earnings to that of a hundred presented
to me bv others. Alas f if it were not so should I not have a large
(foreign; library to-day ? For what munificence could surpass yours
towards me m that same article of books ?**

In another letter he mentions that he has been offered
the post of French and German correspondent in a Liver-
pool house (Wilmington and Pratt's), in which situation, he
says, the hours of work will kill him. He asks M'Glashan
to save him from this alternative to literature.

"In the name of heaven, advance me something with the

fenerosity which has always characterised your dealings with me.
f you will not, let me know the worst ... If you decide against
domg 80— and if you do, I must acknowledge you will decide justly— >
I shall not complain. My circumstances have rendered me qoitA
reckless.'*

l66 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

Then a little later he writes :—

** On reflection I think it better to adhere to my promise, and to
ask no more money in advance. I cannot always continue, even for
the sake of crithers, to submit to the forfeiture of self-respect. It
would and could only end in destroying the last particle of spirit
within me, and would render me alike a reproach to myself and a
burthen to others."

One other letter to M'Glashan during this period will
suffice just now : —

" I have always, my dear sir, found you very kind and off-hand in
Your pecuniary transactions ; indeed, in this respect I know nobody
like you. I make you now a fresh proposal, and I pledge myself to
work for you with all the powers of my mind and intellect. I pledge
m^elf to rise early, to labour hard, not to spare myself, to endeavour
to cultivate my intellectual powers to their highest point, and, in fine»
to redeem the last and past years of my life as far as may be possible.
In foct, I pledge mvseu to become a new man in soul, bodv, mind,
character, and conduct But my fate now, I say it solemnly, is in
your hands. You have been hitherto the kindest of friends to me,
and I trust in heaven you will not now, in the darkest hour of my
life, abandon me."

Another friend of Mangan was John O'Daly, the
second-hand bookseller, of Anglesea Street, in whose shop
the poet was frequently to be found. He made rough
metrical versions of Munster poems for O'Daly, who gave
him from time to time very small sums for them. Anglesea
Street had several other booksellers of note at this period.
One, Patrick Kennedy, was a literary man of no mean
order. His collections of folk tales and his Wexford and
Carlow sketches have earned a deserved popularity.
Another, M. W. Rooney, is remembered as the publisher
of many useful school classics, and as the fortunate finder
of a very early edition of HatfUet^ concerning which
he has pift>Iished a pamphlet. O'Daly was chiefly
known as a publisher and editor of Gaelic books^ but he
brought out other works of a creditable character. Finally
Bryan Geraghty, another Anglesea Street bibliopole,
issued Cbnnellan's Annals of the Four Masters^ the
cost of which ruined him. It did not meet with sufficient
support, and, naturally, O^Donovan's far greater and more
complete edition injurai to a very considerable extent its
chances of success. Connellan's imperfect edition has its
particular interest here, for it was Mangan who '^ Englished ^
it^ Guinellan not being particularly well acquainted with

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 167

thaf language. O'Donovan thus refers to it in one of his
letters to Davis : —

^ The translation of the Annals of ike Four Masters^ published bf
Mr. Geraghty, though put into readable English by Mangan, is faU of
errors, and you will find it very unsafe to trust it.'

But it was John O'Daly, among the booksellers, with
whom Mangan was mostly connected. He would be found
occasionally in Rooney's, where he frequently obtained
the loan of books ; but he did a considerable amount of
work for O'Daly of a more or less crude kind. His
translations from the Irish, which form the well-known
volume, The Poets and Poetry of Munster (publi^ed
after his death), are rarely of high poetical merit. Many
of them are decidedly inferior to the previous versions by
Edward Walsh, Ferguson, and Callanan. Of the fifb^-six
poems in the book, not much more than a dozen are
worthy of Mangan's gifts. It is very doubtful whether he
would have allowed them to appear in their present more
or less prosaic form.

The only two pieces which are really well-known are
" The Fair Hills of Erin," and " the Dame of the Slender
Wattle," though they are not the best poems in the volume.
A number of these pieces were written for O'Daly in the
little shop, quickly, and almost without consideration, *
and it is more than probable that Mangan, had he been
alive at the time of publication, would have given them, as
he often did with his earlier poems, an additional polish,
or other necessary revision. That some injury is done to
his fame by the popular impression that this is a
very important work of his, is clear from the fact that one
or two English writers have spoken slightingly of his Irish
poems simply from a study of this volume. For example^
Mr. John H. Ingram, both in his well-meant but hopelessly
innacurate account of Mangan in the Dublin University
Magnzine for December, 1877, and in his somewhat less
inadequate criticism of the poet in Miles's Poets and Poetry
of the Century^ characterises his Irish translations as
" spiritless '* and poor. If he had said that those in The
Poets and Poetry of Munster were generally so, he would
have been, even then, rather unduly severe ; but the impli-
cation that all Mangan's Irish translations (that is, of
course, those he is acquainted with) are in the same
category, is preposterous His truly magnificent Irish

l68 THE LIF£ AND WRITINGS OF

poems do not belong to Ttu Poets and Poetry of Munster^
andy indeed, were not written for O'Daly at all. The poems
translated for O'Daly, are, in fact, mostly mere drafts for
future consideration, made from the bookseller's own prose
translations, and the volume only contains pieces which
were unpublished at his death. In the pieces like '' Dark
Rosaleen,'' and '* A Cry for Ireland,** he followed not his
originals but his phantasy, and deviated widely from the
former whenever he chose to do so — which was pretty often.
They are rather voluntaries upon Irish themes than trans*
lations.

Mangan had only the merest smattering of Irish so far,
but he l^an to learn it in earnest, so far as I can make
out, some time in this year of 1846, to which we have
arrived. O'Dal/s shop was one of his known haunts. Its
proprietor was a curious man, not specially loved by certain
of his countrymen on account of his coquetting with the
'* soupers,'' in whose ranks he had enrolled himself some-
what earlier. When the little boys in Kilkenny began to
run after him, calling out " souper," he thought it time to
give up his new friends, and used to mollify the urchins by
saying, ** Aisy, boys, amn't I goin* to lave thim ? " John
Keegan, the poet, has left us in one of his unpublished
letters a sketch of O'Daly, which may be worth quoting
here: —

"John O'Daly," he says, "the publisher of Utit Jacobite RelicSn* is
another intimate friend of mine. He and I corresponded every week.
He is a County Waterford man. I first met him in Kilkenny in 1833,
when he kept the school there for teaching Irish to the Wesleyans of
that city, lie, I am sorry to say, renoun<^ the Catholic creed, and
was then a furious Biblical. He subseauently came back, and is now
living in Dublin, secretary to the * Celtic Athenaeum,' and keeps a
bookseller's shop in Anglesea Street. He is one of the best Irish
scholars in Ireland. He is about fiftv-five years of age, low-sized,
merry countenance, fine black eyes, vulgar in appearance and manner,
and has the most magnificent Munster brogue on hit tongue that I
ever had the luck to hear.**

Before closing this chapter it may be worth while to
quote an anonymous squib of Mangan*s from the Nation of
April 4th, 1 8461 It bad then its special significance for
Irishmen :^-

* By Edwaid Walsh.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 169

THE DOMICILIARY VISIT.

(A Sans in tki Faubourg SU Anicim^ Pans*^

Dramatis Person.»—

An Officer of the Gendarmerie and a Citiien.

Off. DiparURoL You are Pierre Coulisse?
at. I am.

Off. I thought so. Scan date^

Address, and signature of this !

(Givu Um api^r^l

CiU {nods) ** Arrest^by Royal mandate • . •**
Why, what's my crime ? /^ignore

Off. PohJ Poh!

Of coarse, youn^ man, you ignore it—

Your name is m the Black Book, though,
With two red marks before it I
Whence came you by those four cane-swords ?

Cif. Cane-swords? Which?

Off. Yonder sham-rods I

Cif. They are mere tobacco-pipes.

Off. No words I —

( IVrHes^^T^o poniards and two ramxods** I)

Ci/. Heavens I You don't mean

Off. A Frenchman means

The thing he does. Your press-keys I

{fipsns a drawtr.)

What make you with those tools ?
CVA Machines.

Off. Ay, such machines as Fieschi*s ! *

Pray, what's that carbine-like affair

Behind the window-shutter ?
at. A walking-stick. (// in a Fair.)

Off. Speak up, sir I What d'ye mutter ?

CU. A stick.

Off. Don't shout I A lie's no truth
Because 'tis bellowed louder.
A gun, you mean. A stick, forsooth I
Why, one can smell the powder !

(Takis up a book.)
Ha I " Treatise on the Poles " I

at. The South

And North Poles only^

* '* I need not remind the reader that Fietchi is renided is the iuTentor ol
the most teirific ' iniiemal maduncs * of modem timei?' (Mangsn's nole).

I70

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

4)jr. Rebel 1

How dare yoa ope y(MirraMi>» mouth ?
Your explanations treble
Yoargnilt South Pole and North? To what

Owes Earth its nvotuHons
If not to these» you leveller-flat
Of thrones and institutions ?
Give up that letter I Hal what's here?

** Dear Qaudet I could not borrow
One hour to-day; but never lear,
1*11 do the job to-morrow. **
So-hol The job? Oh, yes t— we hit

The meaning of such letters—
Yoo*ndoM#i»iise'ijob;-eh? That's itl
Come^ Jeaiw pot on his fetters I "*

{JUadii

JAMES CLARENCE MAMGAN. I7(

CHAPTER XV.

UANGAN AND TUB IRISH LANGUAGE— '* SIBERIA ** — ''TO THB
INGLBBZB KHAFIR** — ''THB DREAM OF JOHN U'DONNKLL*—
"my three tormentors*— JOHN KESGAN AND BDWAlO
WALSH — CONTEMPORARY OPINION OF MANGAN — "DARK ROSA-
LBBN "— " VISION OF OONNAUGHT ''—LETTERS TO DUFFY.

'* I am not ycning ; I am not old ;
I life, yet have no Ufc^—MANOAN.

Mangan's contributions to the Nation bad now become
far more valuable and interesting than those to the Umver"
sity Magazinit for which M'Glashan« who seems to have
been afraid of the poet's personal revelations, was appar-
ently more anxious to obtain translations than original
poems. Having begun to study Irish in a more or less
desultory way, Mangan became deeply interested in it.
He never had a good knowledge of the language, but to
conclude that he was completely ignorant of it, as all who.
have commented upon his life and writings have done, is
absurd. He could not have translated the archaic poems
he did without help from Irish scholars, but he certainly
knew something of modem Irish. His long and intimate
connection with O'Donovan, O'Curry, Connellan, and
O'Daly forbids the idea that he '* did not know one word
of Irish.'' Where did he obtain the scraps of the langus^
which he occasionally employs, with an evidently full
knowledge of their meaning, in some of the University
Magazine articles ? It is noteworthy that, though at
the time of the Irish Penny Journal^ and a little later
he makes his acknowledgments to O'Curry, O'Donovan,
and others for literal prose versions of the poems versi-
fied by him, he does not do this in his latter years,
but simply mentions where he obtained the original.*

^ A caae in point it the admiiable *' Qj for IreUnd,** oCherwiae «* A Le-
nient for Banba,** which appeared in the ^'«-'—

173 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

Moreover, we have his own direct testimony that he had
some acquaintance with Irish — stated, not in ayWi JCespriU
but in a serious letter to M'Glashan, written about thi^
time, of which a portion follows. ^ The Will of Cathaeir
Mor," referred to therein, did not eventually appear in the
University Magazine^ however, but in the Nation.

*' It strikes me that a very telling thing might be made out of ' The
Will of Cathaeir Mor * in O'Donovan's * L^bhar na-g-ceart* I
woaid cast the translation in the same irregular metre as ue original,
only occasionally doubling the rhymes in a single line, which oas a
very good effect on an English ear. It would, if attractively rendered,
appear as one of the most characteristic and extraordinary of our
archaeological literary relics. I have get two or three pupils whom I
am instructing in German and Irish, and hope to obtain more.**

Apropos of German, Mangan contributed very few trans-
lations from that language to the Nation after the spring of
1846. Almost all his poems thenceforward were Irish in
subject When these are professedly translations more or
less free they are always admirable — ^sometmes they are really
superb. All things suffer by translation, except a bishop,
according to the old joke, but it cannot be said that any of
the Irish poems Englished by Mangan lose anything by his
treatment of them. The Nation of 1846 is full of fine
poems by him. In the issue of April i8th there are two
poems so dissimilar in every respect that they call for more
than a passing notice. One is that remarkable description
of appsdling desolation and frightful silence which be has
written upon '"Siberia." Three verses alone need be
quoted—

*' In Siberia's wastes,

No tears are shed
For they freeze within the brain,
Nought is left but dullest paiut

rain acute, yet dead.

Pain as in a dream.

When years go by
Funeral-paced, yet fugitive,
When man lives, and doth not live,

Doth not live-— nor die.

In Siberia's wastes

Are sands and rocks.
Nothing blooms of green or soft,
But the snow-peaks rise aloft.

And the gaunt ice-btodo.**

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 173

And then we have, cheek by jowl near it* that amusing
pseudo-Turkish malediction by " Meer Djafrit" * on ** Djann
Bool Djenkinzun " in three verses, a portion of which fol-
lows:—

** I hate thee like sin,

For thy mop-head of hair, '

Thy snub nose and bald chin,

And th^ turkey-cock air.
Thou vile Ferindjee

That thou thus should*st distoxb ap
Old Moslem like me«

With my Khizzilbash turban*

I spit on thy clothing.

That garb for baboons—
I eye with deep loathing

Thy tight pantaloons^
I curse the cravat

Which encircles thy throatt
Thy cooking-pot hat

And thy swallow-tauled coat I

Go hide thy thick sconce

In some hovel suburban
Or else don at once

The red Moozleman turban I
Thou dog, don at once

The great Khizzilbash turban ! *

These poems were followed in a week or two by that
exquisite ballad, " The Dream of John M'Donnell,'* one of
the most harmonious of all his Irish poems. Listen to
these verses : —

** I lay in unrest— old thoughts of pain.

That I struggled in vam to smother,
Like midnight spectres haunted my brain.

Dark phantasies chased each other.
When lo ! a figure, who might it be ?

A tall fair figure stood near me 1
Who might it be ? An tmreal Banshee I

Or an angel sent to cheer me ?

Though years have rolled since then, 3ret now

My memory thrilHngly lingers
On her awful charms, her waxen brow.

Her pale translucent fingers,

^ Merc chaff writ? ^/ne^, how few would iospectt from his diaff, the
fine flour of Maogan's genius ?

174 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

Her eyes that mirrored a wonder workU

Her mien of unearthly mildness*
And her waving raven tresses that curled

To the ground in beautiful wildness.

* Whence comest thou. Spirit ? ' I asked, metfaoqghlb

* Thou art not one of the Banished 1 '
Alas for me 1 she answered nought,

But rose aloft and vanished :
And a radiance» like to a ^lorv, beamed

In the light she left behmd her~
Long time I wept, and at last medteamed

I left my shieling to find her.

And first I turned to the thunderous Northf

To Gruagach*s mansion kingly ;
Untouching the earth I then sped forth

To Inverioughy and the shingly
And shining strand of the fishful Erne*

And thence to Cruachan the golden
Of whose resplendent palace ye learn

So many a marvel olden.

I saw the Mouma's billows flow —

I passed the walls of Shenady,
And stood in the hero-thronged Ardroe,

Embosked amid greenwoods shady :
And visited that proud pile that stands

Above the Boyne^s broad waters.
Where iEngus dwells, with his warrior-bands

And the tairest of Ulster's daughters.

To the hall of MacLir, to Creevroe*s height.

To Tara, the glory of Erin,
To the fairy-palace that glances bn^ht

On the peeK of the blue Cnocfeenn,
I vainly hied. I went west and east —

I travelled seaward and shoreward—
But thus was I greeted in field and at feast —

** ' Thy way lies onward and forward ! ' **

Leaving the Nation for a little while, and returning to
the University Magazine^ I find a poem in the March
number, entitled ^The Three Tormentors," which is
personal, though attributed to the German. The three
tormentors are — Intemperance, Desire for Money, and
Love. Here are the first and last verses : —

" Three spirits there be who haunt me always,
Plaguing mf spirit in sundry Small ways.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I/S

One is apparelled in purple and red ;
He sits on a barrel^a chaplet of laurel»
Which ought to be mine* and was before be
Robbed me of brains* and bread* and glory.
Wreathed around his globular head,
And a royal and richly bubbling cup

Of the blood that he drains from his victims' vtiai»
In his hand, that shakes as he lifts it up !
Oh ! woOf woe.
And sorrow
To me, to be
His slave
Through every coming morrow,

Till years lay me low,
Low in an honourless grave I
• •••••••

The third — oh I the third is a marvellous creature,
Infant-like, and of heavenly feature;
His voice is rich as the song of the spheres ;
But, ah I what tragic unrest its magic
Doth bring to the bosom who shall tell of?
To me that voice has been as the knell of
Death and Desjiair through bitterest years 1
And then his bright and mischievous eyes I

Their mildest glance is the wound of a lanoe,
'Neath which the heart's blank innocence dies I
Oh ! woe, woe.
And sorrow
To me, to be
A slave
To these through every morrow,

Till years lay me low.
Low in mine honourless grave."

There is in the same magazine for this year a quatrain
by Mangan — entitled " Ibrahim Pacha and Wellington,"
and said to be from the Coptic — which may be worthy of
mention. William Smith O'Brien, in one of his visits to
Limerick, had been given a public reception by the towns-
people, and had been presented with a monster brush by
the brushmakers, expressive of their desire to sweep away
the abuses of the Government.* The incident excited a
good deal of comment at the time, and Mangan wrote an
impromptu on the subject, which he showed to his friends,
one of whom sent it to the University Magazim^ where it
appeared anonymously. Here it is: —

^ Like Van Tromp, the Dutch Adminl so ngnally defeated by Bklcc^
who oied to hoist a broom at his masthead as an indication that be woold

sweep the English from the

176 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

** Is there a wise man inyour queen's dominions ? **
Asked Ibrahim. * The Pnnce of Waterloo

Replied—" There cannot. Sire, be two opinions
Of Williamsmithobrienbrushboro.'*

It may be interesting to learn bow Mangan was re-
garded by his brother-poets of the Nation. What Edward
Wal^ thought of him is not known, but in a note to
''Shane Bwe, or the Captivity of the Gaels/' published
in that paper on June 13th, 1846, Mangan gives us his
opinion of Walsh, alluding to him as

''a gentleman to whose literary exertions Ireland is indebted
almost beyond the power of repayment**

Mangan's versions or perversions from the Irish have
not the wonderful Celtic homely touch of Walsh's, but they
have far more power and freedom. Walsh was a man of
high poetical genius, nevertheless, whose Irish poems are,
perhaps, even more valuable than Mangan's as examples of
the native Gaelic muse. There is an admirable letter on
Walsh's home life among John Keegan's unpublished
correspondence. It is so interesting that no apology is
necessary for quoting it here. Keegan is writing to a
friend of his in the countrj' : —

** I met poor Edward Walsh by mere chance in the Northumber-
land CofTee-room on last Saturday. He dragged me home to see his
children (four beautiful little thmgs) and their mother-— the far-famed
Bfighideen bhan tno sihore.i whose praises he sang so sweetly in the
song of that title, and the still more exquisite verses of Mo Craoibhin
Cno. She is a sweet, simple-looking, love-inspiring woman of twenty-
six years of age, though she looks like a thackeen of eighteen. She is
not a belle or a 'blue/ but she is well-formed, speaks English prettily
and Irish bewitchingly. I am almost in love with the poet*s wife my-
self, and envy him the treasure he enjovs in the once channing and
still interesting Bridgid Sullivan of Amnan Mor. I believe she feels
for me in a kindred vein, for she seemed enraptured at having me at her
fireside, and will not rest if I do not go every day in tiie week. I never
spent a happier hour than at poor Walsh's, though I fear his fortunes
are not looking brilliant just now. He is forty-three years of age, tall
and elegant in figure, and looks the very essence of feeling and intelli-
gence—he seems, too, like myself, to have suffered much mentally, for
his fajot is worn and his hair is nearly thoroughly silvered. Mrs.
Walsh is tall • • • of pale complexion, with large blue eyes, very

^ Who bad bees visiting Engbad. t So qpelled by Keegtn.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 177

prominent and apparently swelled, as if with some radical disease or
excessive weeping. She was in her haift and justly has her husband
described that hair when he says~

'My girl has ringlets rich and rare,'

for never did lovelier hair decorate Eve herself in Eden than dusters
over the fair brow of Mo Craoibhin Cno, Yet she is not (at) all a
beautifiil woman. She is not intellectual-looking or gracefuL althoqg)i
one must love her at first sight"

Keegan, a peasant poet whose talent almost amounted
to genius, gives us two glimpses of Mangan himself in his
letters, which, though anything but flattering, have their
importance. His admiration for Mangan was certainly not
excessive, and like another poet, John D. Frazer, though
to a much less extent, wondered at the great praise which
he received from Irish critics of the day. Frazer was some-
what envious of Mangan's popularity with the Nation
writers, who found many opportunities, and lost none, of
sounding his praises in that paper.

" For the life of me I cannot see where is Mangan*s merit at aU,"

said Frazer to one of his friends. He frequently com-
plained that Mangan was unoriginal, and his jealousy led
htm to make the foolish chaise that Mangan knew neither
German nor any other language besides English. As he was
himself practically an uneducated man, he was hardly in a
position to judge of Mangan's originality. Keegan's first
allusion is apropos of The Irish Catholic Magazine (edited
by Father Meehan), to which Mangan and others contri-
bated, and it is written with strong prejudice. The
reference to religion is grossly wrong : —

"The Rev. C. Meehan is principal editor. Mr. £. Walsh, I am
sorry to say, is discarded from its pa^es, and why ? Guess. Because
he had a diflference in the Ri^ster with. D. F. M'Carthy,^ who happens
to be a special favourite with the Rev. Mr. Meehan. Clarence Mangan
is engaged on it, though he is a madman and a drunkard, and without
a spark of religion. Worth your while to see Clarence Mangan. I
met him in Dublin. He is about forty-two years of age, p2de £ice,
little cat-like eyes, sleepy in his appearance, and slovenly, sottish, and
clownish in exterior. He is a man of magnificent talent, but of no
originality of conception."

There is a second reference, less unjustifiable, in another
of Keegan's letters : —

^ Wtlsh was extnordinarily fcniitive^ as his pieirioos difeoios with
Thomas Davis showed.

178 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

** I got an invitation," he writes, ** to hold a ieii'€hiiti with Clarence
Mangan some day next week, and I think I will accept of it I will
be happ^ to know that highly gifted man. He is a most extraordinary
Idlow, hving in strict seclusion, and seldom appearing abroad except
in tap- rooms and low paUic-hottses. He might earn /20 a week by
his pen, but he cares nothing if he can ^ enougn of wine and
whiskey, fuel and plain clothes. He is about my age, slovenly in his
person, and cares nothing for what the world may say or think of him
or his talents."

Samuel Ferguson had a high opinion of Mangan's
genius, and more than once devoted some space in the
University Magazine to praise of his work. He also, like
Dr. Anster, warmly interested himself in the fate of the
poet, and aided him in material matters.

** Poor Qarence Mangan,** writes Lady Ferguson to the present
writer, ^sometimes lived in a garret in Johnson's Lane, off Britain
Street and from time to time my dear husband and others among
Mangan's well-wishers tried to save him from the misery which his
habits brought on himself. But no permanent rescue of this child of
genius from ' that pit abysmal ' was |>ossible. His fits of drinking,
and, if I am not mistaken, of opium-taking, were too strongly rooted,
and baf&ed all endeavours to save him from himself. . . . He
would send a messenger from some den to say he was a prisoner,
<nr very ill, or starving, and Sir Samuel would go and see him and give
him money and advice, and do what he could to rouse him to exertion
and give him a fresh start. . . • Dr. William Stokes was also
ready to succour a man of genius, and I have heard him discuss with
my husband the problem of how to assist Mangan."

Another of the Nation poets, D. F. McCarthy, held
Mangan in high esteem, and despite his follies, which
strained the good feeling of even his greatest admirers
and friends, never ceased to speak well of him. In a
poem signed ^'Vig," which appeared in the Nation after
some months of absence on the part of Mangan from its
pagesi McCarthy asks : —

** Where, above all, art thou, O Qarence Mangan ?—

And here you will allow me just to state,
Although I am no bruiser like Jack Langan,

And not in any sense a man of weight.
Yet I would walk from Rathlin to Rauiangan

That man to fight call out or lick, or slate,
And spoil his taste for vision and for victual.

Who would attempt to wrong thee in a tittle.**

Bearing upon this question of contemporary opinion of
Mangan's personality and genius, an article in the Umvtrsity
Magamm of a year or so later contains a very interesting

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 179

passage on him, portion of which may be transferred to
this chapter : —

•

** We maybe permitted to express our admiration and wonder at
the spontaneity ot his genius, as well as its richness and profiisioik
Month after month he twirls his kaleidoscope, as if it required qo
efforts but the shifting of his fingers to produce those ever-changing
forms of the beautiful and the grotesque in which he delights to indul^
He seems but to breathe on the Strang and quaint legends and wild
melodies of distant lands, frozen up as it were by the frosts ofa handled
dialects, and lo I as if of their own accord, the foreign harmonies break
melodiously on the startled ear like the tunes in the bagle-hom of
Munchausen I If we had not seen him in the flesh, if we had not
shaken his delicate hand, and been held by his 'glittering eye,' Ifloe
the wedding guest by the Ancient Mariner, so miraculous seems his
acquaintance with all tongues known and unknown — so familiar does
he appe^ with all authors, dead, living, and unborn, that we woukl be
strongly inclined to suspect the respectable and prudent publisher of
this maeazine of having secured, * at enormous expense,* the reversion
of the WatuUring Jiw from M. Sue, now that that £unoiis personage
must live by his wits. . • . • However, we have certified that
Clarence Mangan, though unquestionably mysterious, is yet a reality,
and not a myth."

On May 30th, 1846, '' Dark Rosaleen " was printed in
the Nation^ and remarkable as had been some of Mangan's
previous poems in that journal, its readers were quite amazed
at the passion and beauty of this magnificent piece. The
question was then and is now asked : " Is it a translation
from the Irish, or is it original ? " By enabling readers to
see the unrhymed translation from the originsd Irish lyric
of " Roiseen Dubh," which Mangan used in writing his
poem, the matter may be finally settled. The Gaelic author
was one Costello, of Ballyhaunis,and Mangan got his English
version from one of Ferguson's articles in the University
Magazine on Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy. It will be seen
that the most famous of Mangan's poems is an extremely
free rendering, a transformation of^ an undoubtedly good
lov#-song into a much finer and grander poem — a national
apotheosis. It is to all intents and purposes an original
poem: —

** Oh, rose-bud, let there be not sorrow on you on account of what

happened to you ;
The pnnces axe coining over the sea, and they axe moving over the

ocean.
Your pardon will come from the Pope of Rome in the East,
And spare not the Spanish wine 00 my Roiseen Dubh.

l8o THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

The road is long over which I broaght you from yesterday to this

day —
Over mountains I went with her, and under sails across the sea^
The Erne I passed at a bound, though great the flood,
And there was music of strings on each side of me, my Roiseen

Dubh.

You have killed me, mjf fair one, and may you sufier dearly for it I
And my soul within is in love for you, and that neither of yostcarday

nor to-day.
You left me weak and feeble in aspect and in form ;
Do not discard me, and I pining for you, my Roiseen Dubb.

I would walk the dew with you and the desert of the plains.
In hope that I would obtain love from you, or part of my desire^
Fragrant little mouth I You had promised me that you had love for

me;
And she is the flower of Munster, she, my Roiseen Dubh !

Oh I smooth rose, modest, of the round white breasts I

You are she that left a thousand pains in the centre of my heart.

Fly with me, oh, first love 1 and leave the country.

And if I could, would I not make a queen of you, my Roiseen Dubh !

If I had a plough, I would plough against the hills ;

And I would make the Gospel in Uie middle of the Mass for my

black rose-bud ;
I would give a kiss to the young girl that would give her youth to me.
And I would make delights behind the fort with my Roiseen Dubh.

The Erne shall be in its strong flood, the hills shall be uptom ;
And the sea shall have its waves red, and blood shall be spilled ;
Every mountain valley, and every moor throughout Ireland shall be

on high.
Some day before (you) shall perish, my Roiseen Dubh I **

Now, Mangan's " Dark Rosaleen " has only a remote
resemblance to the literal version just quoted. To be sure,
he mentions the Erne, and the plough, and the Pope and
the Spanish ale ; but what splendid use he makes of them ?
Mangan's poem is an allegory — Dark Rosaleen being
Ireland, the priests the foreign auxiliaries coming to her
aid, and the wine and Spanish ale allusions to the weapons
and otiier expected assistance from Spain and Italy. Take
the thu-d, fifth, and sixth verses of Mangan's poem, which
are the nearest in aflfinity, and compare them with the
original, and it will be proved what little similarity there i»
be tween the two poems : —

** All day long in unrest
To and fro do I move ;
The very soul within my breast
Is wasted for yoo, km!

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. l8l

The heart in my bosom faints
To think of you, my queen !
My life of life, my saint of saints*

My dark Rosaleen I

My own Rosaleen I
To hear your sweet and sad complaintSi
My life, my love, my saint of saintSi

My dark Rosaleen 1

• • • c

Over dews, over sands

Will I fly for your weal :
Your hol>[, delicate, white hands

Shall girdle me with steeL
At home, in your emerald bowers»
From morning's dawn till e'en,
Youll pray for me, mv flower of flowerit
My dark Rosaleen I
H I My fond Rosaleen I

Youll think of me through daylight's hoursi
My virgin flower, my flower of flowersi
My dark Rosaleen I

I could scale the blue air,

I could plough the high hills,
O, I could kneel all ni^ht in prayer*

To heal your manv ills 1
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me my own, my true.
My dark Rosaleen !
M^ fond Rosaleen !
I Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew.
My dark Rosaleen I"

Early in July, Mangan sent his beautiful ** Vision of
Connaught in the Thirteenth Century,'' to the NiUimL
Irish readers will remember its superb metrical structure,
its marvellous music, its weird imaginative power. Its
opening lines lift one to a higher level than was possible
with any of his Irish contemporaries : —

** I walked entranced

Through a land of Mom ;
The sun, with wondrous excess of light.
Shone down and glanced

Over seas of com
And lustrous gardens aleft and right***

Robert Buchanan, in calling it *' a piece of wondrous

1 82 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

workmanship,*^ is only giving it its bare due as a technical
triumph. But it is something more — it is instinct with life,
and gives us an almost blinding glimpse of a world of
imi^nation rarely visible to even the greater poets. When
Mangan

^ Dreamed this dream

Of the time and reign
Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand,**

he ilras living a life, the misery of which is quite inde-
scribable. Such money as he earned *-well, enough has
been said of his use of it Some of his letters to Dufly,
written about this time, are by turns humorous and tragic.
In sending the '^ Lament over the ruins of Teach-Molaga "
(Timoleague, Ca Cork), he affects merriment in his odd
way : —

** Qarence is come— false, fleeting, perjured Clarence^ who stabbed
me in myjfnve near (Timoleague). I trust, my dear Dufl^, that poor
Shane O'Colain t will not thus greet me on mv entrance mto Hades.
I have just finished his " Lament," and hope I have done it at least
justice. The measure I have chosen is one peculiarlv elegiacal—
namely, eight syllables, twelve syllables, ten syUables, and six
syllables to each verse. But enough. Again to quote my namesake,

** My soul is heavy, and I £un would sleep ! **

And he adds : —

" In truth I feel as if I should never laugh again.'*

In another letter he says : —

** What I sent you lastly was vastly ghastly. I hope the enclosed
will be more to your taste. Alter any word m it you like, or rather*
any word you don't like."

He had previously promised Duffy, to whom he' looked as
a generous employer and friend, to give the National
movement the fruits of his genius, the aid of his pen, and
he wrote : —

* I promise in an especial manner — and mv friend Dufiy may» if
be will, make the promise public — that I will bqgin in earnest to
labour for my country henceforward, and that« come weal or woe, life
or death, glory or shame, the triumphal car or the gallows, I will adhere
to the fortunes of my fellow-patriots. And I invoke the vengeance
of heU upon me if ever I prove falsetto this promise." I

* In "A Look Round Literature."

t Tohn Collins, author of the ** Lament " in auestk)o.
} He wished Dufly to pcopose him as a memDer of the Confederation, but
te fcrmcr dissuaded nlm uom the klca, in view of his principal dependence

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. iS}

He did not prove false thenceforward till his death, a
not distant event ; his noble teachings^ his earnest
exhortations in the National papers form the most
inspiriting part of the poetical inheritance left to his
countrymen. He adds to the last quoted letter one of
those bursts of gratitude which all who knew Mangan
remember as specially characteristic of him :—

** May God bless you I You have been to me* as Godwia
remarked of Curran, the sincerest friend I have ever had."*

He carried to extremes the gratefulness

guished him, and sometimes spoke of small services
rendered to him, and even of returned benefits, with extra-
ordinary effusiveness. Other letters to Duffy * have their
inevitable joke^ as thus :—

" I will shortly give you a funeral wail from the Ttokish on tiie
decease of one of the sultans. The spirit of the composition clotdy
resembles what we meet with in Irish poems. • • . The small
ballad from one of Muller^s Greek melodies I have thrown into teveial
stanzas. It is» however, all one in the Greek."

Or he introduces proof of his knowledge of all that is
weird or fabled or grotesque, opening one Tetter thus :*—

** May Gog and Magoe watch over thee, my friend I Mayest thoa
find favour in the eyes of Brahma the Originator, Vishnu the Pie-
server, and Seeva the Destroyer."

He not infrequently descends from his highest altitudes to
ask for a very small service or a loan. At other times he
describes a vision, as in this instance : —

'* I had a singular dream a few nights back. There was a light
and a throng — not the * lurid light and trampling throng ' of Colerid2;ei
yet quite as impressive. In other words, a monster moon ahone m
the finnament, and a crowd of people were beneatht with whom I
held, as I suppose, a long conference. I say 'as I suppose,' for aU
that I distincuy remembo: was that, turning away from them, I foond
myself on the verge of a precipice, with the words of St. Jolm in my
mouth: * And none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou ? "*

^ See /;iMr Ysari ifSrith HiOmy.

l84 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER XVI.

XAMGAN'S ADVICB to his countrymen — HIS PATRIOTIC FBBLINO
— -<* A CRY FOR IRELAND " — *'THB IRISH CATHOLIC MAGAZINE"
»" ANTHOLOGIA HIBERNICA " — MANGAN'S DESPAIR — IN
SOaSTY — CARLETON AND THE POET — MANGAN'S CHANGES OP
RESIDENCE — THE MACDERMOTTS — DR. ANSTER — FATHER
MEEHAN— EXCUSES TO M'GLASHAN — ^THE FAMINE.

** Alone the Poet lives — alone he diet.

Odn-like, he bean the isolating brand
Upon his brow of sorrow. Tme^ his hand

Is pore from blood-guilt, but in hitman eyet
His u a darker crime than that of Cain."— Mangan.

Mangan adopted various signatures in the Nation during
184& Several of his poems were signed ''Monos,'' such as
-Shane Bwee" and •'Cean Salla"; "The Saw-Mill/'
already quoted, was signed '' A Mourne-r/' and another
poem, entitled '' An Invitation/' purporting to come from
an American, is sub^ribed '* A Yankee." He urges the
** friends of Freedom " to abandon worn-out and decrepit
Europe for a " healthier, holier clime,''

*' Where your souls may grow in strength.
And whence Love bath exiled Fear I **

Here are a couple of the more inspiring verses of this

poem:—*

** Cross with me the Atlantic foam.
And your genuine goal is won.
Purely Y reedom's breexes blow.
Merrily Freedom's children roam
By the doedal Amazon
And the glorious Ohio I

Thither take not gems and gold.
Nought from Europe's robber-hoards
Must profane the Western Zones.
Thither take ye spirits bold,
Thither take ye ploughs and swords.
And your fathers' Suried bones.*

.ll

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 18$

In his "" Counsel to the Worldly Wise,'' published in
the Nation a little later in the year, we have Mangan's
only recorded tribute to the work of Thomas Davis^ ex*
prised in a quaint and characteristic fashion >—

•* Go A-Foot and go A-Head I
'J That's the way to prosper ;

Whoso must be carnage-led
SufTereth serious loss per
j Day in health as well as wealth ,

J By that laziness with which

Walkers have from Birth warred;
And ere long grim Death by stealth
Mounts the tilbury, and the rich
Loller tumbleth earthward I

■

Abo, keep your conscience pure—
[ ^ Neither lie nor borrow;

He who starves to-day, be sure

Always carves to-morrow.
March m front ; don't sulk behind ;
Dare to iive^ though sneering groups
Dub you rara avis —
* Serve your country— love your kind|*
And whene'er your spirit droops.
Think of Thomas Davis I "

There is another of his minor pieces, written for the
Nation at the same time, which merits attention. It was
suggested by a landscape by Maclise, and is called ** The
Lovely Land." It shows that Mangan was very sensible
of the beauties of Irish scenery : —

** This is some rare climate olden,
Peopled not by men. but fays,
Some lone land oi genii days,
Storyful and golden I

4 O ! for magic power to wander

One bright year through such a land I
Might I even one hour stand
On the blest hills yonder?

What divinest light is beaming
Over mountain, mead, and grove I
That blue noontide %Vy above

Seems asleep and dreaming I

l86 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS. OF

No I no land doth rank above thee

Or for loveliness or worth I

So shall I, from this day forth.
Ever sing and love thee I ^

Among the many well-known poems which succeeded
each other so rapidly this year in the paper was the
splendid ** Lamentation for Sir Maurice Fitzgeratd,** which
an Irishman can hardly read without a glow of pride, the
''Lament for Patrick Sarsfield,* the ''Lament over the
Ruins of Timoleague Abbey/' and ^ A Cry for Ireland''
What could be more admirable, more beautifully expressed,
or more melodious than these verses from the last-named

* O. my grief of all griefs
Is to see how thy throne
Is usurped, whilst thvself art in thrall I
Other lands have their chiefs,
Have their kings— thou alone
Art a wife, yet a widow withal I
Alas, alas, and alas
For the once proud people of Banbal**

The high house of O'Neill
Is gone down to the dust,
The O'Brien is clanless and banned ;
And the steel, the red steel
May no more be the trust
Of the faithful and brave in the land !
Alas, alas, and alas.

For the once proud people of Banba I"

In the literature of passionate lament Mangan has per-
haps never had a peer. So much of his poetical work is in
this vein that one might expect to find a monotony of
cadence, a sameness of imagery, but such is not the case.
All is varied, all is picturesque, all is charged with emotion
in its highest expressiveness.

He gave comparatively little of his work during 1847 to
the Nation — it was in the Unwersiiy Magazine that most of
his subsequent writings appeared. He, however, wrote a few
excellent poems of a religious character for the Irish Cat/uh
Uc MagoMine^ which was published by James Duffy and
edited by Father Meehan, who gladly found employment

* BwHkk is oat of the olde st names hy which Lrelaad was known to the

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. iSf

for the poet on its staff. It only lasted a little over a year,
but during its existence he contributed to it, among odier
things, a notable ^ Lamentation of Jeremias over Jerusalem,'*
" Father Klaus of Unterwalden/' '* The Death and Burial
of Red Hugh O'Donnell,'^ the remarkable translation of
" St. Patrick's Hymn before Tara,'* *• David Lamenteth
Saul and Jonathan,'' a '' Te Deum Laudamus/' the " Stabat
Mater," and one or two other pieces, Irish or religious. His
** Pompeii," too, which had appeared many years before,
was reprinted in the magazine by the reverend ^tor. Bat
we must turn to the University MagoMUu to find the
choicest examples of his work of that year. In a series
of ''Anthologia Hibemica" appeared ''Ellen Bawn,"
one of Mangan's raciest and most Irish of poems, the stately
** Welcome to the Prince/' beginning —

*' Lift up the drooping head

MethalDubh Mac Giolla Kierimf
Hot blood yet boundeth red
Through the myriad veins of Erin ; "*

and the more characteristic and more beautiful ''Love
Song," paraphrased from the Irish, which follows. There
is a personal note in this poem which affords an excuse for
reprinting it here, Mangan's work being the best souroe of
information as to his moods and feelings :—

'* Lonely from my home I come
To cast myself upon your tomb,

And to weep.
Lonely from my lonesome home.
My lonesome house of grief and gloomy

While I keep
Vigil often all night long

For your dear, dear sake.
Praying* many a prayer so wrong
That my heart would break !

Gladly, O my blifi^hted flower,

Sweet Apple ofrov bosom's Tree,

Would I now
Stretch me in your dark death*bower

Beside your corpse, and lovingly

Kiss your brow ;
But we*ll meet ere many a day,

Never more to part.
For even now I feel the clay

Gathering round my heart.

l88 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

•

In my soul doth darkness dweUf

And through its dreary winding caTet

Ever flows.
Ever flowsf with moaning swell

One Ebbless flood of many Wares

Which are Woet.
Death, love, has me in his lures ;

But that grieves not met
So my ghost may meec With yours

On yon moon-loved lea.

When the neighbours near my cot

Believe me sunk in slumber deep^

I arise —
For O ! it is a weary lot

This watching aye, and wooing sleep

With hot eyes^
I arise, and seek your grave,

And pour forth my tears ;
While the winds that nightly rave

Whistle in my ears.

Often turns my memory back

To that dear evening in the dell,

When we twaint
Sheltered by the sloe-bush black.

Sat, laughed and ulked, while thick sleet USk

And cold rain.
Thanks to God ! no guilty leaven'

Dashed our childish mirth.
You rejoice for this in heaven,

I not less on earth I

Love I the priests feel wroth with roe,

To find I shrine your image still

In my breast.
Since you are pfone eternally

And your fair frame lies m the chill

Grave at rest ;
But true Love outlives the shroud,

Knows not check nor change.
And beyond Time's world of Qoud

Still must reign and range.

Well may now your kindred mourn

The threats, the wiles, the cruel arts,
^ , They long tried

On the child they left forlorn 1

They broke the tenderest heart of hearts^

And she died 1
Corse upon the love of Shew I

Curse on Pride and Greed I
They would wed you ^high 1'— and k> 1

Here l>ehold their meed I **

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 189

But in a further poem of 1847, entitled ** Moreen, a
Love Lament/' Mangan has some terrible verses concern-
ing his hopeless life. Some of these, amended, were
introduced into a poem which was written as a reply to a
friend who had invited him to visit him — ^a reply in verse
which is so truly autobiographical that it cannot be with-
held from readers. This poem, which he called ''The
Groans of Despair/' and which was not published
during his life-time, was suggested by ^Moreen,** and
there is considerable similarity between them. I quote
the former poem as being distinctly finer. It is one
of the numerous pieces of high merit by him not
included in any collection. I have introduced one vene--
die sixth — ^from ^* Moreen,** as properly belonging to the
present poem :^>

^ Oh no, my friend I I abide unseen^
Y<m paint your home as left forlorn ?«
^ Yet ask not mi to meet you more,
This heart of mine, once gay and green,
Far more than vours is now outworn,
■ ^ And feels as 'twere one cancered sora;

\\ I walk alone in trouble

Revolving thoughts of gloom,
Each passing day doth but redouble
The miseries of my doom I

In trouble ? Oh, how weak a word I—
In woe, in horror, let me say —
In wretchedness without a name I
The wrath of God, the avenging sword
Of Heav'n bums in my breast alway,
.' With ever freshly torturing flame I

- And desolateness and terror

Have made me their dark mate^
The ghastly brood of sin and error
Repented all— Too Late I

■

(

I see black dragons mount the sky,
I see earth yawn beneath my feet—
I feel within the asp, the worm
That will not sleep and cannot die.
Fair though may show the winding sheet I
I hear all ni^ht, as through a storm
Hoarse voices calling, calling
My name upon the wind —
All omens, monstrous and appalling^
Affiright my guilty mind.

190 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OP

I exult alone in one wild hour,
Tbat hour in which the red cup drowns
The memories it anon renews
In ghastlier guise, in fiercer power—
TkM Fancy brings me golden crowns.
And visions of all brilliant hues
Lap my lost soul in gladness,

until I awake again.
And the dark lava-fires of madness
Once more sweep through my brain 1
1
YoQ tell me truth may win me back —
Alas I your words but pierce like spears 1
Alas I my hopes lie long inurned I
The gone is gone — man cannot track
Afresh his course of blasted years
Or bid flowers bloom where fires have bamed;
Such flowers bloomed once around me

But those are dead I — all — all t
And now the fiends whoVe bound me
Hold me in hopeless thrall 1

In those resplendent years of Youth
When virtue seems the true romance.
And nought else lures the generous mind,
I mighty even had I strayed from Truth,
Have yet retrieved my road perchance.
And left mine errors far behind —
But return now ?— oh, never

Never and never more I
Truth's holy fire is Quenched for ever
Within my bosom's core 1

Farewell I my friend. For you fair hope
Still smiles — though lone, you still are free*
But, for myself, I nightly die —
In dreams I see that black gate ope
That shows my future doom to me
In pictured forms that cannot lie I
Farewell I forget my story

I live beneath a ban :
But to the all- wise God be glory,
Whate*er becomes of Man I "

If there is anything in literature more awful, more
despairing, than these verses into which Mangan has put
so much genius, so much emotion, the present writer is
unacquainted with it Dante himself could hardly have
written a more terrifying description of the feelings of a
lost soul in the Inferno. The verses are marvellously
expressive of Mangan's thoughts in his moments of
darkest hopelessness. But & was not very often.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 19I

fortunately for his reason, and for the comfort of his admireriy
in such a ghastly state of mind. He would dash off a squib
of the most whimsical kind on the same day that he would
write one of his most desolate, most dolorous plaints.
But even then he would avoid his best friends, and, unless
under peculiar circumstances, would never go into a hcKise
whose inmates he did not know intimately. He would
sometimes promise to go, and then r^ret it for weeks, and
vow that it would never happen again. It is to be feaied
that his presence was sought at reunions — when it was
sought at all, which was rarely enough at this time — rather
for the purposes of curiosity than from motives of admira-
tion, or sympathy. Still, there were a few people sincerely
anxious to help in bring^ing him back to decent society.

Once, as I am informed by one who had the anecdote
from William Carleton, the latter was invited with Mangan
to a social party at the hospitable house of Mrs. Hutton,
of Summerhill. Mangan, rather to the astonishment of
his friends, accepted die invitation, and when Carleton
arrived, was known to be in the house, but not with the
party assembled. The novelist was asked to fetch Mangan
out of the room to which he had retreated. " We cannot
induce him to come into the drawing-room," said tlie
hostess. Carleton — who knew Mangan and his ways very
well, and who was in some sort a boon companion of his,
though Mangan had no moral sympathy with his coarser
nature, and hardly one single point in common with him—
asked : •' Is there any whiskey about ? " " Yes," said Mrs.
Hutton, ** the butler will show you the supper-room, and
you will find a decanter of whiskey on the sideboard
there." Carleton proceeded to look for the poet, whom he
eventually found hidden under cloaks, coats and wraps in
one of the rooms. " What are you doing there ? " queried
Carleton. "Seeking an opportunity of escape,'* faltered
the poet : *' I had no right to come here — I don't know
how I did come.*' " Well," said the novelist, *' come and
have a nip of something which will put courage and life
in you." He gave Mangan a glassful of whiskey, and took
one himself, and after a while the timid poet allowed his
captor to introduce him to the hostess and her guests,
whom he soon delighted by his brilliant talk, but whom he
also gladly left.

It was in Father Meeharfs " attic," or in the Natiom
office that he might sometimes be met by those who had

192 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OP

that privilege. The kind-hearted priest was always ready
to welcome him to his humble fare. He had free ingress
at all times to the presbytery in Lower Exchange Street.
He was well known by appearance and name to the other
dwellers in the house, and especially to the old servant-
woman, who is reported to have said to him on one
occasion when he presented himself with a more than
usually woe-begone appearance : —

^ Lord forgive yon, Mr. Mangan, yoo might be rolling in your
coach if you'd only keep from the liquor, and make baUads for Mr.
Nugent m Cook Street^—

the said Mr. Nugent being the printer of countless street
ballads and ** come-all-ye's,'' which were, doubtless, the
only '* poems " the simple old woman cared to know any-
thing about Mangan, in his humble way, merely
replied : —

** Likely enough, Essy, likely enough, but don't be too hard on me.**

He was always changing his residence, and nobody
knew at any given time where he lived. One summer
evening, according to Father Meehan, an old crone brought
him to his door, saying that she had given him a lodging
in a hayloft in Copper Alley,* but could not allow him to
remain any longer, alleging that he actually wanted a
candle at night

** Sure, sir,** said she, '*you might as well think of bringin' a bumin'
sod of tuii into a powder magazine. I'll have no more to do with
him — let him pay me, and he can have his tar-water (?) and the papers
be was writing."

Yet Mangan need not have lived his nomadic existence
had he wished otherwise. James Duffy, the publisher,
offered him board and lodging in his house, and the famous
Father Kenyon, the most virile of the polemics of his day,
would have been glad to carry him off to his home in
Templederry in the South had the erratic poet allowed
him. Mr. MacDermott, an a eminent Dublin alderman and
merchant, who admired his work, did once succeed in

Siting Mangan to stay with him and his family at his
lasnevin house for a while, but he soon escaped to his

^ Ib Copper AUey, off Fbhamhle Street, Kane (or Kean) (yHaia. the
oMntod aathor oC'Ofidii^'' *« The Golden Pippia^" etc., was bor^T^

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. I93

old resorts. This MacDermott family was a very musical
one, the alderman and his two brothers being admirable
vocalists, while their sister. Miss Mary MacDermott, had a
beautiful contralto voice. One of the brothers, Thomas
Harris MacDermott, was an excellent composer, some of
whose songs have been widely popular. It was while at
Glasnevin in July, 1847, that Mangan wrote for MacDer-
mott the additional verse for Bloomfield's * Welcome^
Peace 1 " The composer was anxious to set the lyric to
music, but there was only one stanza in the original;
hence the following, which is as poetical, to say the least;
as the verse of Bloomfield : —

" All around me liveth still*

All, as in my childhood's houn ;
Still flows on the tinklm^ rill,

And still the dell is nch with flowers.
Here ag^in my heart lives o*er

Its early golden dreams of joy,
And now, amid these groves once morCi

I feel myself almost a boy."

Miss MacDermott was very prudish, and also a deter-
mined temperance reformer, and never forgave Mangan for
baffling her efforts to reclaim him. That he was always ** on
the move " at this time may be gathered from his letters to
Dr. Anster written in this and the following two jrears.'
They are all addressed from different lodgings. The trans*
later of Faust was a generous man, and took a stronger
personal interest in the poet than many others who knew
him. Mangan acknowledges his kindnesses in a sketch of
him which he wrote in 1849, where he says : —

" He did not introduce me on a sudden into all the halls of the
great marble palace of his intellect, nor did I care to make him
acquainted with all the nooks and comers of the little clay hovel of
mine. At some other time I shall speak of his generous kindness
towards myself personally — at a perioo, too, when tew except h«*ntelf
would have said that I had the shadow of a claim to it.**

The letter which follows is dated March 26th, 1847,
and concerns,like almost all his correspondence, his personal
affairs. Indeed, a large proportion of his letters, unre*
lieved by his fitful sparkles of wit, or his quaintness of
expression, is anything but exhilarating. The theme is
always the same — lack of pence and peace :—

194 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

** My dear Dr. Anstsr,

I do not know for which I ought to be more grateful to yoi
TOOT delicacy or your generosity. God bless you I You needed not*
nowever, have selects anybody as the medium of your bounties.
From a purse-proud aristocrat I should certainly have resented any-
thing of the kind as an insult — to you I Have only to offer my humblest
thanks. 1 hope to be able to wait on you soon» and make my acknow*
ledgments in person. Meantime, allow me to assure you that I am
at present placed bevond the necessity of trespassing isurther on your
kindness. I am still struggling, it is true, and struggling most strena*
onsly, but I hope to be able to hold my head in soaety yet As far,
at least, as penitence for the past and exertion for the future can
retrieve me, I will, and, with the help of the Living God, before many
days, emancipate mysdf.

I fear I write very incoherently — for I have been in a very feverish
state for the last week or sa I owe £$ to my landlord, and his
iorebearance towards me in not casting me into prison half maddens
me. I see him almost once a day, and as I sneak by him, I feel as if
I had lost a year of my existence. I have long wished to leave this
neighbourhood for a healthier locality, but ah^ I in reference to him
I am compelled to say, as Priuli remarks to Jaffier*—

* Rent is our bond.'—

And of course I must respect this.

You perceive that, after all, I could not conclude without a very
indifferent effort at a joke.

Ever yours faithfully and gratefully

J. C. Manoan.**

For Father Meehan Mangan reserved his warmest
sentiments. He has not shown his feeling to the fullest
extent in the personal account of him which he wrote
before his death, that being intended for the public eye,
but there is ample evidence of his affection for him in the
recollections which I have heard from surviving friends of
both, and even from those who did not know the priest at
alL His well-known rough tongue notwithstanding, Father
Meehan had the kindest of hearts, and would share his last
meal or his last shilling with the needy. In the biographical
account, or rather character-sketch, of Father Meehan which
he wrote just before his death, Mangan g^ves, in his own
quaint way, his on-the-surface opinion of him as an historian,
an Irishman, and a man. But his regard for him was deeper
than any newspaper reader would gather from such a sketch.
A short extract will give a notion of the whole article :—

^ I confiess that, personally, I myself do not care much about the
pditical history of my unfortunate country. Successful revolutions I

^ These aisdiaiactMS in Otwqr's VmiM^munMi.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 195

like well enoagh to read of; but failures and defeats are matten too
disagreeable for me to contemplate. The shy and shabby ^h^rsftff
of our pike, poker, and pitchfork rebellions is a thing that I cannol
away with. As a matter of course, therefore, I was really altogether
ignorant of the fact that a ' Confederation * had ever existed in Kil-
kenny * until I met with Mr. Meehan*s admiraUe volume. I bad.
however, hardly perused half-a-dozen pages of that volume before I
became deeply absorbed by the interest which the narrative ex-
cited. • • •

The disposition and temper of Mr. Meehan are lively, quick, and
bordering on choleric. His Milesian blood courses rather too hotlv
through his veins. He is carried away by impulse, and suffers himseu
to float, without rudder or oar, upon the tide of the sentiment that
sways him for the moment. But he is a num of a loftv and generous
nature. Anything like hypocrisy is as alien from his heart and soul
as the snake from his native land. He needs no sounding board under
the feet of his mind, either to deliver his sentiments or to transmit his
faune to after-ages. Many a writer of the present day, who has
managed to get and keep hold of the uppermost button ot the paUM
of the public, is, by a long chalk, his interior, both as an author and as
a man. Of unintellectual trickery and sleight-of-hand be understands
nothing. He is a genuine human being, not a mere makebelieve, or a
bundle of old clothes with a mop head at the top of them.'*

In the last months of 1847 clusters of poems by him,
in instalments, entitled " Lays of Many Lands,'' appeared
in the University Magazine^ and a further cluster, with the
same title, in January of the following year. In sending
the last batch to M'Glashan in December, he thus writes,
excusing himself, as was his wont, for his irregularity : —

**The year draws to a close. It has furnished me with grave and
serious matter for reflection, and, as I should hope, sees me a better
and a wiser man than at its commencement. Henceforth, and with
the beginning of the new year especially, I lead a new life. I may be
unhappy, but I shall no longer be imprudent or criminal. I am
making the most strenuous efforts to retrieve myself^ Henceforward
I will labour with r^oubled sedulousness. I enclose you a Polyglot
Anthology, comprising translations from the Irish, German, Danish,
Swiss dialect, French, Spanish, Welsh, and Persian. They are aU
bona fide ones ; and I purpose, if you please, to send you also poems
from the Servian, Romaic, and Turkish ; but perhaps you might thioJt
these might lengthen the article too much. But, in truth, 1 must rise
early and work hard, as I feel that I shall almost go mad if I have
not constant employment both for my head and hands."

^ In several of his poems written in this year, Mang^an
paints with lurid effect the dread famine which was then

* One of Patber Meehan's best books is TTi§ C^mfidirviUm 0J

196

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OP

the land. Looking upon the results of the
dearth of food, as seen in Dublin, and from what he daily
heardi Mangan struck a bolder, fiercer chord than usual in
his poems, even ui^ing his countiymen in some poems to
rise in arms i^inst England, and to extort their rights ;
bat he especisdly preaches self-reliance : —

•

^ Sound the timbrel, wind the horn,

Arise to life at length, or never I
Show the world the hour is bom

That breaks our country's chains for ever I
Ask America for nought,

Implore not France's proud protection.
Through yourselves, as true men ought.

Work out your country's resurrection I

Work but well, and Earth nor Hell
Can stay your country's resurrection ! *

In a translation from the Greek which followed close
upon the last quoted piece, he introduces an allusion to the
famine, which was almost universal, and to which he him*
self and others in the city had not been altogether a
stranger, in these terms : —

** Gaunt Famine rideth in the van,

And Pestilence, with myriad arrows,
Followeth in fiery guise : they spare
Nor Woman, Child, nor Man 1
The stricken Dead lie without burrows.
By roadsides, black and bare I

O God I it is a fearful sif^ —
This fierce, mad, wastmg, dragon hunger I
Were there a land that could at most
But sink and peak and pine
Infant-like, when such Agony wrung her.
That land indeed were lost I

Were there a land whose people could
Lie down beneath Heaven's blue pavilions
And gasp, and perish— famished slaves I
While the ripe golden food
That miffht and should have fed their millions
Rotted above their graves —

That land were doomed I **

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 19/

Finally, leaving aside many powerful verses on the
same subject, we have these quaint lines, in a poem called
« When Hearts were Trumps " :—

** Spades are now trumps: far and near

All seek out the sexton :
What with cholera, famine, fear.

Men ask what comes next on.
No more marryings, no more cheeri

All is dark and lonely :
Town and country both appear

One wide churchyard only.'*

Mangan had [foreseen the terrible plague that was to
depopulate the country, and had entreated the national
leaders not to let the people starve in myriads without <mt
blow in their defence. When too late, when the people
had become spiritless and weak through starvation, a
feeble effort was made to repair a lost opportuni^, with
the result that a partial and squalid insurrection was
crushed with inglorious ease, and amidst the laughter of
the world. Mangan wrote of it with bitterness :—

•• We have fought, we have failed—
We must now learn to bear—
Our foe's flags are not nailed.

As ours were, to the air I
So. hurrah for the trampler I
And hug we his chain-
Till some battle-field ampler
Lie bared for us twain.''

And in a poem called '* Consolation and Counsel " he
lays the blame largely to the love of flattery, the readiness
to believe what is pleasant to believe, which are such pro*
minent characteristics of the Irish temperament. Here
are the second and third verses of the poem. The allusion
to O'Connell in the third is at once trud and well
pressed: —

^ In sheer despair and dreariness of soul,

I sometimes yield me to such thoughts of gloom ;
I sigh lest Innisfail has reached her goal,

^d be, indeed, the Isle of Doom I
Her glories wane and darken, star by star ;

Her highest hopes turn out but swindling dreams }
Her lamp of freedom, seen through clouds afar.

Shines but by cold phosphoric gleams I

198

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Alss I we have vaunted all too much our patt»

Or fondly hearkened those who vaunted us I
We have scarcely deigned to noark bow creed and caste

Divide us wide as Pole and Russ.
Drinking, like wine« the flattery of that chief.

Who rarely scourged us but with buhrusb rodst
We have waxed o'erwanton, till our own belief,

If sane* would make us demi-gods 1 *

JAMSS CLARENCB MANGAN. 199

CHAPTER XVII.

A TRIBUTE TO MANGAN'S RHYMING POWERS— THE KATIOHAL
FEEUNG OF MANGAN — THE '* UNITED IRISHMAN ''—LETTER
TO MITCHSL— THE ''IRISH TRIBUNE" — ^JOHN SAVAGE—
JOSEPH BRENAN ON MANGAN — MANGAN IN DAYUGHT—
MANGAN'S appeals to ANSTER9 DUFFY, AND JAMES KAUGHTOV
— HIS PROMISES— ST. VINCENT*S HOSPITAL— R. D. WILUAM8
— THE ''IRISHMAN**— O'DONOVAN ON MANGAN — POEMS IN
THE " IRISHMAN **— JOSEPH BRENAN TO MANGAN— MANQAN'S
REPLY— BRENAN'S DESCRIPTION OF CLARENCE.

'* Tears darkened long thy bodilj TisioQ nighty ;
Vet then, even then* the Interior Eye mw bnghtly.**— Manoan.

Several references have already been made to Mangan's
incorrigible love of unusual and difficult rhymes and com*
plicated metres, and it has been shown that the concoction
of mere rhymes had been a favourite pastime with him from
youth. He clearly found the early habit ineradicable, and
abandoned it only in his last days, when he had themes
which moved his very soul. Then the notes of the organ,
the trumpet tones of his higher self would roll forth in
majesty and power. So much of his poetical work is
characterised, or, as may be held, defaced by intellectual
jugglery, that of his eight hundred and more poems, about
three hundred only are worthy of preservation. If he is
never prosaic, he is too often eccentric. But his contem*
poraries liked him in any role, whether that of a great poet
or mere wonder-worker in words. In 1847 an eminent
bishop of the Church of Ireland, the Right Rev. William
Fitzgerald, addressed him in a poem which was much com-
mented upon at the time of its appearance in the Uni-
versity Magazine, chiefly, perhaps, by reason of its political
flavour. Here are the opening lines of the piece, which has
been erroneously attributed to Sir Samuel Ferguson in the

200 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

recent biography of that distinguished Irish poet written
by his widow :— -

''Various and carious are thy strains, O Clarence Mangan 1

Rhyming and chiming in a very odd way :
Rhyming and chiming-^the like of them no man can

£aaily find in a long summer's day I
For the true Irish metre is full of tricks and rogueries,

Slipping from your fingers at unawares ;
Someumes full of fun, and frolicing and rollicking,

Sometimes pensive and full of cares.
For the Bards are the pulse. of the big heart of Erin,

Throbbing wildly, now quick, now slow ;
Now ready to burst with good nature and good humour ;

Now ready to break with a load of woe.
Thou, too, art a Bard — and thy Spirit's River

Is fed by each streamlet from her founts of Song ;
Pure thro' her frowning salens it glides in darkness,

It sparkles in her sunshine pure and strong.
Go wander in thy strength thro* the scenes o( Erin*s history.

Pour thy glad waters round many an abbey's walls ;
Let the fiel£ of old triumphs be green again with verdure.

And awake the echoes of the princes' halls."

At the time this was written Mangan had boldly iden-
tified himself with the more extreme section of Irish
politicians — Mitchel and his friends — and when the author
of Hu^/i (yNeill seceded from the Nation^ he carried not
only Devin Reilly along with him, but Mangan alsa The
latter never went so far as Mitchel and Keilly in their
hostility to DufT/s paper, but for a time, at any rate, he
deserted the Nation. Mitchel very erroneously says : —

^ Clarence Mangan never wrote another line for the Nation^ nor
during the short career of the United Irishman^ ioit any other publica-
tion than this."

On the contrary, Mangan wrote several pieces for the
Nation after the suppression of Mitchel's paper, and con-
tributed to the University Magazine during its existence,
and though he certainly sympathised with Mitchel per-
sonally, he does not seem to have lost his esteem for Dufly.
He wrote only three poems for the United Irishman^ during
its sixteen weeks of life; namely, "A Vision," "The
Marseillaise," and the "Irish National Hymn" — not one
of which is up to his highest level The last, "* from one
whom some have called a seer,"* is the best-known, but
its peculiarly unsuitable metre, so fantastic, irregular, and
tmoooventiraalt rather injures it as a poem, It has not the

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 201

swing or the ring or the fine diction of his other national
pieces. There is a letter of Mangan's at this period wbid),
more than these poems, shows the strength of his political
feelings. When after the fifth number of the paper, a
prosecution of the editor was talked of, Mangan wrote
promptly to Mitchel to express his sympathy and his
resolve : —

**My Dear M., — ^There is a rumour in circulation that the Goveni-
ment intend to commence a prosecution against you. Insignificant
an individual as I am, and unimportant to society as my polidcal
opinions may be, I, nevertheless, owe it, not merely to the kwdness
you have shown me, but to the cause of my country, to assure yoa
that I thoroughly sympathise with your sentiments, that I identify mj
view of public afiairs with yours, and that I am prepared to go all
len^hs with you and your intrepid .friend, Devin Reilly, for the
achievement of our national independence. I mean to write you, in a
few days, a long letter explanatory of the course which, I think, it
becomes the duty of every Irish patriot to pursue at the present
eventful epoch. Meanwhile, you are at liberty to make what use yon
please of this prelimidary communication.

Yours in life and death,

James Clarence Mangan."

The "long letter'* never reached Mitchel, and the
services of the poet in the imminent struggle of Mitchel
and his friends with the Government were never availed of.
The paper was suppressed, and Mitchel was deported to a
penal colony, while Mangan continued his weary pilgrimage
towards his not far distant goal. For the Tribune^ one of
the immediate successors of the United Irishman^ he wrote
'• The Tribunis Hymn for Pentecost," and then, after its
speedy suppression, returned to the Nation fold. John
Savage, one of the promoters of the Tribune^ has left us a
not uninteresting, if badly-written, reminiscence of Mangan,
as he saw him, which should be quoted at this point : —

"A crooked little street, called Trinity, off one of the ^atest
thoroughfares of the city. The principal propellers of the exatement
which moves the city and country have their being in this crooked
little street, famous in Irish history, in the shape of the two joumals»
the Irish Tribune and Irish Felon^ both prcachmg the same creed and
rivals only in their devotion to it. Out of either of these offices — ^they
are side by side, like brothers in a fight — we perceive a strange-
looking individual has glided, even as a shadow on a walL

That shy, abstracted-looking man has held not the least powerful
talisman by which a nation is moved. We must look at him mora
minutely. He is about the middle size, and glides more than walla,
yet at that is but infirm. He stoops, and is abstracted. Athreadbara

202 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

dark coat— b it brown or black ?— battoned up to the throat, sheathes
his attenuated body. His eye is lustrously mud and beautifully blue,^
and his silver-white locks surround, like a tender halo, the once beauti-
ful, and now pale and intellectual, face of the prematurely-aged man
before us. ne glides alon^ and through the people, who are naturally
attracted to his locality, as if he did not belong to the same earth with
them. Nor does he. His steps seem as if they were not directed by
any thought, bat mechaniadly wended their way to his wretched
abode."

Joseph Brenan, too, one of the truest of Irish poets, and
a close friend of the writer just quoted and of Mangan, in
an article written after the latter's death, thus alludes to
the utter abandonment of Mangan during these, his last
years: —

'*What a life was thine, and alas, how suggestive of saddest*
dreariest reflections !

Six months ago you were a homeless, houseless wanderer through
the streets of the city, shunned by the opulent, who could have relieved
you with the crumbi from their table, and utterly unknown, save in
your deathless song, to those epicures of taste who banqueted on the
rich repast vour genius provided them in newspapers and periodicals.
You were cfubbc^ 'drunkard' b^ one and 'opium-eater* by another.
The Pharisee whom you asked for alms gave you a homily — the Nice
Scented Gentleman who admired your 'soul mated with song ' fled all
contact with vour person, as though you were a pollution ; and need
we wonder that that soul of thine, sickened and disgusted at the
unrealities of life — at this eternal cant about Christian charity and
commiseration for human errors and failings — longed and pined for
that shelter which God alone can give ?*'

So few and indiflferent had his friends become, that
Mangan might have exclaimed with Rowe,

•* Where are my friends ?
Ah ! where, indeed 1 They stand afoofi
And view my desolation from afar —
When they pass by, they shake their heads in scorn ! "

He had been known to many, but was befriended by
few. Those who knew him slightly and saw him in his
rare appearances by day were almost ashamed to stop and

* Mr. Martin MacDermott has made particalar reference to Mangan*s eves :
'* He appeared to me jutt as he it described by Mitchel and Father Meenan,
caoept that one peculiarity that struck me greatly appears to have escaped their
Dotioe— the intense blue of his eyes, which were of a deep ultramarine, like the
wBtcn of Lake Leman. I have only seen in one other countenance eyes of th*
hriDianqr ttMl depth of cokmi; The effect was startUag in a ace oUier-

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 203

speak to so weird a figure, and neither did Mangan care to
be questioned or accosted in the streets. A passing word
might be exchanged, but that was alL uenerally he
would take as little notice, in his abstractedness, of a
friendly salutation, as of a stare of scorn or curiosi^.
Price speaks of him as, in those days,

" crawling through our streets, grotesque in figure, mean in attire^
bread, a comb, pens, and manuscript sticking from his podcets, bis
hair long and unkempt, and with the dreamy enthusiasm ot the opinm-
eater flickering at times across his sallow features,**

and D'Arcy McGee gives us a glimpse of him as he saw
him just before his death : —

" Poor fellow I I remember meeting him in the streets of Dublin
as if it were yesterday, looking like one of his fiivourite German
myths, ' The Man Without a Shadow.' He was standing in his bare
brown coat, stooped and attenuated, bewildered at the whiri of life
around him, like an anatomy new risen from the dead, with grisded white
hair bristling on his colourless and once handsome Oelob, his o>Id, b^
blue eyes staring vacantly, and his thin hand dutching a waDdag*
stick."

Early in 1848, Mangan became very ill, and more
distressed in circumstances than ever before — lacking the
power of earning even the scantiest livelihood. He then
wrote some despairing letters to Gavan Duflfy, James
Haughton, the philanUiropist, and Dr. Anster. He was
living at 61 New Street, when, in a moment of agitation,
he wrote the following note to the last named gentle-
man: —

61 New Street

28th April, 184S.

" My Dear Sir. — My brother wiU convey this note to you. He is,
like myself, in a very wretched and deplorable state. He is of opinion
that you might, perhaps, be able to recommend him to some person
who would give him employment. His trade is cabinet-making. If
you could but grant him what he petitions for you would confer a great
and lasting favour on him and me.

I remain, my dear Sir,

Ever yours faithfully and gratefully,

John Anstkr.**

This epistle, now lying before me, is thus endorsed by
the genial recipient : —

** This strange note is from Mangan; on being examined as to what
the meaning of putting my name to it was, his brother replied, that be
supposed it was nervousness.

J. A.-

204 THE UFE AND WRIllNGS OF

When Father Meehan visited him at his lodgings about
this time he found Mangan and his brother

*'in a miserable back room, destitute of every comfort, a porter
bottle doing daty for a candlestick, and a blanketless paUet for a bed
and writing table. On expostulating with him, and giving him a sum
of money --the gift of a sympathising friend — ^he vowed that he would
endeavour to retrieve himself, and make amends for the past. But,
alas for promises I they were broken as soon as made."

To (I believe) James Haughton, who was an enthusi-
astic temperance advocate, he wrote as follows : —

**Dear and Respectid Sir,— Perhaps I may venture to hope
that you have not altogether forgotten me. I, on my part, have never
ceased to remember mj promise to ^ou.' That pronuse has, if I may
so speak, burned itself into my bram and memory. It is written on
my heart, and chronicled on the tablets of my spirit. It forms my
last thought before I lie down at night— my first when I rise in the
morning.

Can you, or will you, dear sir, help me to fulfil it ? I trust in the
Almighty God that you will In addressing you, I address no com-
mon man. I am aware that I appeal to, perhaps, the most dis-
tinguished philanthropist of our era. The stronger, therefore, is my
confidence that you will not refuse me the aid I seek at your hands.

I write to you, dear sir, from a fireless and furaitureless room, with
a sick brother near me, whom I have supported for years. My heart
sinks within me as I contemplate the desolation around me. I myself
have abstained from animal food for a long period ; vet I regretted
that I was unable to buy him more than an egg on Cnristmas Dav.
But this matter of diet is a trifle. Healthy persons require little
nourishment, they can subsist on bread and water. It was the
apothecarv's bill which, on Christmas Eve, left us without a shilling,
and has obliged me even to resort since to the pawnbroker.

I call on you, dear sir, with this note; but, perhaps, you may
not have leisure to see me.

Your very obedient servant,

J. C Mangan.**

To Duffy he wrote still more agonising letters*. He
considered himself especially indebted to the editor of the
Nation for frequent assistance, and had already said : —

"All that I have written belongs to yon; do with it what you

And in this time of supreme and indescribable neces^
tity, he sent him the following heartrending summons : —

** My Dkar DuriY,— I am utteriy prostrated. I am m a sute ol
absolute desolation of spirit

For the pity of God come to me. I have ten words to say to you.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 90$

I implore you to come. Do not tofier me to believe that I an
abandoned by Heaven and man.

I cannot stir out ; cannot look anyone in the fiice.

Regard this as my last request, and comply with it as if yoo mp'
posed me dying.

I am hardly able to hold the pen, bat I will not, and dare imM^
take anv stimulants to enable! me to do sa Too Ion? and fioaUy
already have I been playing that game with mv shattered nerves.

Enough. God ever bless you. Oh, come f— Ever yomrsi

J. C Mangah."

He gave him also the formal promise to give up stimo-
lants, which is subjoined. Needless to say, it was broken ;
but Mangan's friends were well aware that he really
endeavoured, at the cost of much inward torture, to redeem
his oft-repeated vows of temperance :— -

*' I, James Clarence Mangan, promise, with all the sincerity dutt
can attach to the declaration of a human being, to dedicate the portioo
of life that may yet remain to me to penitence and exertion.

I promise, m the solemn presence of Almighty God, and, as I trust;
with His assistance, to live soberly, abstemiously, and regularly in all
respects.

I promise, in the same Presence, that I will not spare mysdf*—
that I will endeavour to do all the good within my power to oUiers — that
I will constantly advocate the cause of temperance, the interests of
knowledge, and the duties of patriotism — and, finally, that I will do iJl
these things irrespective of any concern personal to mys^; and
whether my exertions be productive of pront and fame to me, or, as
may happen in the troublous times that I believe are at hand, eventn-
ate'in sinking me still further into poverty and (undeserved) ignominy.

This declaration of my intentions with respect to my future pur*
poses I give Mr. Duffy. I mean, with his permission, to send similar
declarations to my other literary friends, varying the phraseology of
them only as his prudence may suggest.

James Clarence Makcvn.**

The " troublous times " referred to by Mangan in his
formal promise were not long in coming. Duffy and other
sympathetic friends were imprisoned. Mitchel had been
transported, while McGee, Brenan, R. D. Williams, Savage
and others friends managed to escape to America with
some difficulty.

His health at last became so thoroughly broken that
in May, 1848, he was admitted to St Vincent's Hospital,
whence he wrote on the i8th to M'Glashan :—

"Here I am at last^here. where I shall have ample time for
repentance, for I cannot leave for some months, and during all that
tinie I shaU be rigorously denied everything in the shape of

206 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

stimulaiits. My intellect Is becoming dearer. As I shall have so
much leisure on my hands, possibly you might wish for some con-
tribution after my mrmer manner. My general health is better than
it has been for years, but my lower limbs are in a dreadful state. I
write to yon from bed, from which I have not risen since I camo
hither.-

On the same date he wrote the following letter to John
0*Daly, whom he addresses as ''John Daly, publisher,
Bedford Row"*:—

St Vincent's Hospital* St Stephen's Green £ast»

Thursday. May ist, 1848.

** My Dear Daly,— It is here that I am at last I will take it as
a great fiivour if yon can pay me a visit at your leisure, and bring
with you any poems you may wish to have versified. The usual days
of admission are Sundays and Thursdays — from 12 to i, but direc-
tions have been given to the attendants to admit all friends of mine
on any day— only, however before 3 o'clock. You will forgive me for
not having written sooner, but I have been dreadfully upset of late.

Don't be afraid to come— there is no fever in iAis hospitaL
Yours ever»

J. C. Mangan.*'

He wrote comparatively little for the University
Magazine or Nation during this year of 1847. The latter
was suppressed in the summer directly after he left the
hospital, where he would not stop sufficiently long to effect
a complete cure. Mrs. Atkinson, in her admirable " Life
of Mary Aikenhead " has recorded briefly but excellently
a few points concerning his admission and stay in the
institution :—

^ One day there came another poet to St Vincent's, not indeed, to
y his respects to Mrs. Aikenhead, but to seek rest and healine in
,er hospital with the poor and the ungifted. A pale, ghost-Tike
creature, with snow-white hair tossed over his lordly forehead, and
£Uling lankly on either side of a fiice handsome in outline, bloodless
and wrinkled, though not with age. James Qarence Mangan was
carried up to St Patrick's Ward, and laid on a nice fresh bed. His
weird Uue eyes, distraught with the opium-eater's dreams, closed
boieath their heavy lids, and his head fell back in sleep just as it is
pictured fallen back in death by Frederick William Burton's magical
pen^ The change from poor Mangan*s wretched garret to the
comforts of the hospital ward, was fiilly appreciated by the sufferer,
who, however did not pour forth his gratitude in a tide of song. * Oh 1
the Inmry of clean sheets 1 ' he exclaimed. Nor, indeed, did . the
raters recognise in their patient the charm of one who had drunk of
HippocreooL AU they could discover of the poetic organisation in this

•BedJBrfRowisacontiaBatkwof AagkissStieet

^ I

1 i1

•^

"^ ?

z
<
o
z
<

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 20/

strange, sad mao» was the acutely sensitive and jMunliilly restless
temperament supposed to be a characteristic of genius. The author
ol the German and Irish anthologies was, in truth, a rather trouble-
some patient. One of the sisters, willing to excuse his peculiarity,
simply remarked : * These poets have nerves at every pore. **

Richard D' Alton Williams, the other poet referred to by
Mrs. Atkinson, was a student at the hospital at the time
Mangan was admitted, and there was a friendly rivalry
between them in the translation of the '' Dies Irae." Their
versions are characteristic of their authors, and that is all
that needs to be said of them.

The suppression of the Nation left Ireland practically
unrepresented by a national paper, and an effort was
made by Bernard FuUam, ex-manager of the Nation^ and
some literary friends to supply its place. Duffy, who was
in prison, was naturally wroth when he heard of this
project to supplant his paper, and after his release a
wordy war followed between the rival journals. Eventually
the Irtshfnan,\ihc name chosen for the new enterprise,ceased
publication after about eighteen months of existence. It
began with the opening of the year 1849, and with Mangan,
Brenan, Keegan, '* Eva," and others made a goodly show.
Mangan wrote continuously for it. Nearly thirty poems
and about a dozen prose sketches by him appeared in its
columns. Meanwhile, he was writing for the Dublin Untver-
sity Magazine a number of poems attributed to Irish, French,
German, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Persian, Servian,
Russian, Bohemian, Moldavian, Roumanian, Spanish,
Italian, Portuguese, and other sources. Of these the Irish
were perhaps the most numerous, forming part of the series
called Anthologia Ilibemica^ but there are few of them of high
merit They are generally too long, or too topographicaL
Of them he says: —

*' Of our own versions we shall say nothing, except that we believe
the)[ will be found, upon comparison with the ori^nals, to possess the
merit of fidelity— a merit, we admit, occasionally of a very qoestioo*
able kind in translations."

And, in another place, he indicates his intention to
devote himself more and more to the study of Irish
poetry :—

*^ Slender as our talents are,*' he adds, " we have become exceed-
injB^ly desirous to dedicate them henceforth exclusively to the aorice
otoor country."

208 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

It is to be feared that, in the half-year that separated
the suppression of the Nation from the starting of the
Irishman^ Mangan was in a parlous condition. A letter
from O'Donovan to a friend, though unquestionably exag-
gerated, enables us to estimate the depth of Mangan s
wretchedness : —

^ I had a visit recently." he says, ** from the poet Mangan, who is
In a horrid state of destitution. He had no shirt, and had slept in a
dirty hall the night before. He beats Dermody and Dr. Syntax
hollow, and it u my opinion Iw will never get any good of himself.
He cannot give up drinking, and, therefore, cannot attend to any
description of business. Now and again he writes a short poem,
which he composes as he moves like a shadow along the streets, and
writes in low public-houses, in which he gets pens and ink i^atis. One
short poem of his exhibits seven different mks and seven different
varieties of hands, good or bad, according to the number of glasses
of whiskey he had taJcen at the time of making the copy. He never
inverts ku style^ but transfers from the excited sensorium to the dirty
piece of paper amid the din of drinkers. I feel ashamed of him, but
still I thmk he should be prevented from dying of cold in the street.
He seems to have no friends but the State prisoners, who seem to
sympathise with the divine intoxication of his soul, but their subscrip-
tions wiU not keep him in whiskey for one fortnight He broke the
pledge four or five times,"

O'Donovan has somewhat overstated the case in this
instance. The present writer has autographs of Mangan
belonging to various periods, and has seen many of this
special period, and except in one instance, the writing is
always admirable, every letter neat and well formed. The
exception referred to is clearly due to haste rather than to
unsteadiness of hand. And I have never seen any sign of
more than one ink having been used. The Irishman^
almost from its first number, as has been said, numbered
Mangan among its contributors. Nearly all the poems
he wrote for it are original — that is to say, they are not
professed translations. They are mostly addressed to
his countrymen, upbraiding them for their vacillation and
other weaknesses. In his first contributioni ''Look For-
ward," he asks why the old-time spirit of resistance has
grown feeble, why "the wronger" waxes stronger, and he
thus proceeds : —

^ Or, have we of ourselves
Sunken even to this,
That the mine-slave who delves
Finds no deeper abyu ?

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 109

Are we self-swindled vaunten
Who deem ourselves bold.

Though in tfanill to our keepoii
Like those royal ileepers»
The Moorish enchanters
Held captive of old ?

1 not so, by our souls I

O 1 forefend it, ye powers I
Bounding blood as yet rolls.

Through these Uue veins of ours t
We are true men, not traitors 1

We are stem inalcontents !

But, schooled by ripe reasoot
We bide a sure season t
The genuine creators

Of will are— Evenu i"

Following swift on this poem came '' The Vision of
Egan O'Reil^r," «• Duhallow," and •* O'Dal/s Keen for Owen
Roe O'Neill/' poems well worthy of a place in any collec-
tion of his works. In " The Funerals " he describei a
vision, which he used to see every night, of an unendiiq;
line of hearses, containing his buried thoughts :^-

*' What was this mystery ? Years would seem
To have rolled away
Before those Funerals halted on their path-~
Were they but mockeries of a dream ?
Or did the vision darkly say
That here were signs of coming wrath ?

I know not 1 but within the soul
I know there lives
A deep, a marvellous, a prophetic power
Far beyond even its own control"

*y For Soul and Country " is another of these Irishman
poems. The last verse is the most noteworthy >—

" My countrymen I my words are weak.
My health is gone, my soul is dark.
My heart is chill —
Yet would I fain and fondly seek
To see you borne in Freedom's bark
0*er ocean stilL

Beseech your God, and bide your hour —

He cannot, will not, long be dumb ;

Even now His tread

Is heard o'er earth with coming power ;

And coming, trust me, it will come.

Else were He dead."

2IO THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

Again, in another poem, he exhorts mankind to ''bear

^ Bear ap I even though thoa be» like me,
StretchcMl on a bed of torturing pain
This weary day»
Though heaven and earth seem dark to thee.
And thine eyes glance around in vain
For one hope-ray 1

Though overborne by wrong and ill —
Though thou hast drained, even to its lees.
Life's bitter cup-
Though death and hell be round thee, still
Place faith in God 1 He hears 1 He sees I
Bear up ! Bear up ! "

And in the poem called ^ Consolation and Counsel,'' in
very felicitous and telling words, he reminds his readers of
the fatal results of overweening belief in oneself, of the evils
of intolerance, and of underrating one's enemies :— -

"Eye not arch, pillar, hall alone : but glance
At Mankind's mighty temple, roof to base ;
The Clootzes, Dantons, Lafayettes of France

Were orators of the human race.
Not Celtic only. Praise be theirs.
Not seldom golden 1 They had words for even the foes
iir steel on. Is't not somewhat sad

They drew their

llie niggard show We make of those ?

•f

Joseph Brenan, his friend and colleague, who was
well aware of the contrast between Mang^n's pre-
cepts and practice in certain directions, wrote ** A Word
to J. C M." which, for its own sake, as well as for the sake
of Mangan's reply, should be given hera Both were
printed in the Irishtnan.

** Brother and friend ! your words are in mine ear,

As the faint toneing of a hidden beU
At one time distant — at another near —

Something between a joy-peal and a knell
The hidden bell, the hidden meaning ; thus thy mind

Accompanies the undertone of rhyme,
As sylvan stream o'er flower and leaf will wind

Towards its goal, its murmur keeping time—
The brook notes which the Ancient Mariner

Heard whispered in 'the leafy month of June,*
Thr song is now ; a^n it thrills the air

Like the low ammiag of a magic rune—

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 211

Each word is aerial at thy command,

Soothing the Castaway on Life's dark shore ;
Thou art the Prospero of ruthless wand —

King by the 'right divine' of mystic lore —
Dreamer of dreams, now gloomy as La Morgue

Thro' which, as thro' glass darkly, loom the Deid x
Now, like the angel-trance of Swedenbore,

When heavenly portals opened o*er his head*
Seer of Visions 1 Dweller on the Mount I

Reader ol Signs upon the future's sky !
Scholar of Deutschland I Drinker at the Fount

Of old Teutonic awe and mystery 1
Herr Mangan, listen ! — live with Cahal Mor,

Sojourning in the wondrous * land of Mom '—
Or, an thou wilt, with Kemer bow before

The air-bom music of the marvellous hom I
Laugh the quaint laugh, or weep the bitter tear,

Be gay or sad— be humorous or sublime —
One thing remains—but one — Herr Mangan, hear 1

To Live Thy Poetry—To Act Thy Rhyme I*

Mancfan promptly replied in the following touching
verses which are somewhat familiar to Irish readers »— »

** Friend and brother^ and yet more than brother.
Thou endowed with all of Shelley's soul I

Thou whose heart so buraeth for thy mother ^

That, like Ass, it may defy all other
Flames, while time shall roll 1

Thou of language bland, and manner meekest.

Gentle bearing, yet unswerving will —
Gladly, gladly, list I when thou speakest,
Honoureid highly is the man thou seekest

To redeem from ill I

Truly sbowest thou me the one thing needful I

Thou art not, nor is the world yet blind.
Truly have I been long years unheedful
.Of the thorns and tares that choked the weedful
Garden of my mind I

Thorns and tares, which rose in rank profusion
Round my scanty fruitage and my flowerti

Till I almost deemed it self-delusion

Any attempt or glance at their extrusion
1: rom their midnight bowers.

Dream and waking life have now been blended

Longtime in the caverns of my soul —
Oft in daylight have my steps descended
Down to that dusk realm where all is ended*

Save remeadless dole I

* Earth.

2X3 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

Oft, with tears, I have groaned to God for pity-
Oft gone wandering till my way grew dim-
Oft sung mito Him a prayerrul ditty—
Oft» all lonely in this throngful city,
Raised my soul to Him 1

And from path to path His mercy tracked

From many a peril snatched He me»
When false friends pursued, betrayed, atucked me»
When gloom overdarked and sidmess racked me,

He was by to save and free I

Friend I thou wamest me in trulv noble

Thoughts and phrases 1 I will heed thee well ;
Well wiU I obey thv mystic double
Counsel, through all scenes of woe and trouble,
As a magic spell 1

Yes I to live a bard, in thought and feeling I

Yes I to act my rhymes bv self-restraint,
This is truth's, is reason s deep revealing,
Unto me from thee, as God's to a kneeling
And entranced saint I

Fare thee well I we now know each the other.
Each has struck the other's inmost chords —

Fare thee well, my friend and more than brother.

And may scorn pursue me if I smother
In my soul thy words I "

There is an admirable description by Brenan of
Mangan as he was in his decadence, which will fittingly
conclude this chapter : —

^ If yon passed through Dublin any time these four years — if you
were abroad when the twilight began to vanish and the shadows grew
blacker on the walls, you might have noticed a middle-sized man,
infirm-looking and stooped, moving on slowly with noiseless steps.
Hb ludr was white as new-fallen snow, which gave him the appearance
of age before he was old . • . In thirty and some odd years, this manT
has lived long enough to become grey. ^ His face is calm, though
marked with thunder-scars. His eye is inexpressibly deep and
beautiful, and centred therein, there is a union of quiet love and daring'
thought. The mouth had lost the charm which it once had ; but the
forehead i% unwrinkled and white as ever. His figure is wasted away :
the sword is eatin([ through the sheath. He moves seemingly with
p^n, and plainly his last hour is not Car off— the earthworks of life
nave already been carried.

You musi look at him as he passes. If he speaks you cannot
dioose but listen to his low, toodiing voice; like the Ancient Mariner^
he

' Holds yoa with his gPtteriag eye.'

That man to meanly dressed, to weak, to miserable— that man
whom yoo meet alone in lile« tntking companionship in darkness, is
James Glaie&ot MaQgan***

JAMES CLARENCB MANGAN. 313

CHAPTER XVIII.

^A VOICE 07 BNOOURAGKMBNT " — MAHGAIC'S LAST POBMS AXD
SKKTCHBS — LAST LETTER TO ANSTER — ** THE TRIBES OP IKS'
land" — MANGAN ATTACKED BY CHOLERA — THE MIATH
HOSPITAL -— HERCULES ELLIS, JAMES PRICB| AND PATHOl
MEEHAN ON MANGAN'S LAST DAYS — ERRONEOUS ACCOUNTS*
DR. STOKES — ^DEATH — ^APTER DIATH — BURTON'S PORTRAIT—
BURIALr— THE *'iRISHI«AN" — ^THE *' NATION'S* OOlOCBlfTS—
POEliS BY JAMES TIGHE, R. D. WILLIAMS, AND JOSEPH BRSXAV
— MANGAN'S CHARACTER — ^HIS OWN VINDICATION.

" And DOW rejoice, thoo Faithfollest and Meekest I
It lies in tight, the qniet Home Hboa ledteil !
And gently wilt thoa pus to it« for thou
Art almott disembodied even now I "— IAanoan.

Mangan's career was now nearly closed, and the only
notable poems contributed by him to the NcUUm during
the last year of his life were the ** Dawning of the Day,"
'''The Testament of Cathaeir Mor/' and "A Voice of
Encouragement : a New Year's Lay." In this last, he
mournfully describes the gloom that had come over the
land — the apathy, the supineness of the people. Address-
ing '* Youths, compatriots, friends,'' he exclaims that,
though a man —

^ unworthY to rank in yonr number.
Yet with a heart that bleeds for his country's wrongs and affliction,'

would he —

" Fain raise a Voice too in Song, albeit his music and diction
Rather be fitted, alas 1 to lull to^ than startle from slumber I *

He goes on —

"' Friends I the gloom in the land, in our once bright land, grows
deeper ;
Suffenng, even to Death, in its horriblest form aboundeth ;
Through our black harvestless fields the peasant's Caint wail
resoundeth —

Hark to it even now I "

ai4 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

And he declares that the people —

^ Now oot alone succumb to the Chan^ and the De^padation,

But have ceased even to/rr/ them I God ! ihU indeed is abase*
mentP

But the outlook is not altc^ether hopeless —

** No ! there is always hope for those who, relying with earnest
Souls on God and themselves, take for their motto * Labour ' —
Such see the rainbow's glory when Heaven lowers darkest and
sternest.
Such in the storm-wind hear but the music of pipe and tabor."

And he concludes in a spirit of lofty imagery : —

^Omen-fuU, arched with gloom, and laden with many a presage.
Many a portent of woe, looms the impending Era,
Not as of old, by comet-sword,* Gorgon, or ghastly chimera,
Scarcely by lightning and Thunder, Heaven to-day sends its-
message
Into the secret heart— down through the caves of the spirit^
Pierces the silent shaft — sinks the Invisible Token —
Qoaked in the Hall the Envoy stands, his mission unspoken,
While the pale banquetless guests await in trembling to h#ar it I "

In the University Magazine for 1848-9, apart from
** The Fairies' Passage," ** The Time ere the Roses were
Blowing/' and ** Gasparo Bandollo," there is little to call
for mention. And even his pieces in the Irishman show
some fidling off in merit, though not in personal interest.
In one of them, entitled ** Have Hope/' he

' I, too» have borae» unseen, alone»

Mine own deep griefs, griefs writ on sand.
Until my heart grew like to stone—

I struck it, and it hurt my hand.
My bitter bread was steeped in tears.

Another Cain's mark marred my brow—*
I wept for long my wasted years —

Alas 1 too oft I weep them now 1

Yet I despair not ! Ill bodes ^ood —

And dark time bright eternity ;
For aye the gay and mournful mood

Turns on tne spirit's axle-tree.
First grief^ then joy— first earth, then heaven-

This is Uie etmal all-wise law^-
Soch law, by God Almighty given

Let all revere with hdiest awe 1 **

^ Sfttlkkf^t Hisimy 0j Ae Fkim §f Lmdem.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 315

Among his last contributions to the Irishtnan were the
sketches of ''Illustrious Irishmen/' which included Dr.
Anster, Rev. C. R. Maturin, John O'Donovan, Fadiff
Meehan, Dr. Todd, Dr. Maginn, Dr. Petrie, and Gerald
Griffin. Most of these have been already quoted from as
opportunity oflfered. In one other, not yet meationedt
which is devoted to Miss Maria Edgeworth, there is a
very characteristic passagei interesting as a further example
of his curious trifling.

*' Of Miss Edgeworth's * Moral Tales,* " he says, « I have little to
say. It has been denied that they excel Mannontel*s by one iott.
They do excel Mannontel's — ^by one iota. An acquaintance of mine
meeting another a few days back told him that Jack Smith had stid
that his (my acquaintance's) character was not worth a button. * And
what did you reply?* asked the other indignantly. 'Why,* said nqr
friend, ' I replim, after some reflection, that /thought it wasl*^

It was in reference to his sketch of Dr. Anster that the
following letter, one of the last composed by Mangan, per^
haps the very last, was written. It is the latest commmu-
cation of his which I have seen —

1 1 Upper Abbey Street^

22nd April, 1849.
"Dear Dr. Anster, — The enclosed appeared in Saturday's
Irishman, Perhaps you may have seen it, but I rather think that yoa
have not. I know that I shadl not see you this evening, but perhaps I
may be able to gain a sight of you towards the end of the week.

Ever yours faithfully,

James C. Mangan.

P.S. — If vou do me the favour of a visit, pray turn into the doorway
at the left side of the hall, and enquire for ' Miss Atkins.* The house
itself you will recognise at once : there are pillars in front of it.
Kifttist du das Haus f AufsauUm ruhi dU Dock / "*

Much of Mangan's work during 1849 was done for John
O'Daly. Besides translating various Munster songs, he
put into English rhyme the famous satire by i£ngus
O'Daly known as '' The Tribes of Ireland." f Mangan had

* ** Know you the house T On pillars rests the roof ? " This is the open-
ing line of the second stanza of ** Mignon's soi^ " by Goethe.

t iCngus O'Daly, the satirist, who lived in £lizabethan day% was employed
by Sir George Carew, on behalf of the Government, which well knew the
dreaded power of Irish satirists, to scouige the dans, and set them one against
another. The venal satirist executed the work, girding at their curtoms,
denying their notorious open hospitalitv, and wounding the chie£i In their in-
most feelings. He was eventnally stabbed to death by one of the O'Mce^Mn
of Ikerrin.

2l6 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

a version by John O'Donovan before him when engaged in
this task for O'Daly, and he has treated it in his usual airy
way, by a considerable divergence from the author^s mean-
ing, and by pretty frequent interpolations. He has some-
what lightened such humour as was to be found in the
original, and there is a good deal of his own clever wit and
raiUeiy in his version. The rhymes are of course inimit-
ably well done. A few stanzas here and there will enable
the reader to judge of this. The satirist's frequent refer-
ences to buttered bread show, O'Donovan says, that it was
the staple food of the people. Mangan's version runs to
seventy-five stanzas, and he manages to introduce into
them allusions (on his own account) to Shanagolden f where
his father was bom), potatoes (whidi he detested), and other
matters upon which iEngus O'Daly says nothing. Here
are some verses from different parts of the poem :-^

** These Roddys are niggards and schemers,
Thev are vendors of stories (odd dreamers)—
Who talk of St. Kallin*s miraculous powers,
And how he continually showers wealtn on their tribe ;
They are worse, in good sooth, than I care to describe.
Moreover, if >rou sit at their table,
Youll soon think the Barmecides' banquet no fable I

I called on them once, on Shrove Tuesday, at night.

But the devil a pancake, flour, oatmeal, or brancake,
In parlour or kitchen, saluted my sight
I iN^dked off. I'd have starved ere I'd pray to
One imp of the gang for a single potato I

• •••••

Take Anamcha's* clansmen away from my sight 1

They are vagrants and varlets, whose jealous ill-star lets
Them do nothing, sav nothing, think noUiing right —
And the^r swear so, I d count it a sin to
Abide with them while I had hell to jump into I

The Clan-Rickard I brand as a vagabond crew.

Who are speeding to wreck fast Ask (JUm for a brtak&st ?
They march to Mass duly on Sundays, 'tis true :
But within their house portal.
To a morsel was ne*er yet adioutted a mortaL

No lady below
The high rank of a princess, believe one, e*er winces
*Neath my poet's knout Savage sometimes I grow,

• The (yiCiiddcns ofGalway.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 21J

Bat with none bat the tip-top,

And them I do lash, as a stnpling his whip-top I

• • • • • •

The men of Fermanagh, thoagh cerUs no fools.
Are a race that search bread crumbs as ducks search the poob;
Of all shabby acts I know nothing forlomer ^

Than their practice of hiding the cake in the comer.

You*ll allow that I havenH mach flattered the Clans :
But Uiere*s one that I will praise— the doughty McCaims ;
For if I didn*t, wAa would ? I guess not a man on
Earth's face— at least no one this side of the Shannon ?

• • • • • •

One day feeling footsore and fointish» I made.
By tardv approaches» my way to the Roches ;
It relieved me, at least, to creep into the shade :
I got bread, but my landlady shut her
Old rat-haunted cup-board at once on the butter I

• • • • • •

Poor little Red Robin, the snow hides the groondt
And a worm or a grub is scarce to be found ;
Still don't visit O^Keefle— rather brave the hard weather I
He*d soon bring your breast and your backbone together 1

• • • • • •

The pinch-bowel Clan of McMahon the Red

Give you just on your dish the bare shadow of bread—

An ant put in harness, I think, would be able

To drag their best cake and their biggest from table I **

Mangan's last months of existence were spent in un-
paralleled wretchedness. He had no home, and could not
be seen by anyone. He ceased paying even the few visits
to those friends and protectors whom he knew to be
anxious about him — nobody knew what had become of
him. Joseph Brenan certainly obtained an occasional
glimpse of him, and he records that at their last meeting,
the mind of the poet reverted to his dismal experience in
the attorney's office.

'*The very last night we saw him,*' he says, ''he spoke with
disgust of the dark crib, smoke-discoloured, wherein curses and
blasphemies were hourly heard."

And he adds with truth : —

**his own thoughts haunted him, Actaeon-like, to ruin* His genios
was a Midas gift, which came saddled with a curse."

There is little need to probe the details of his life during
the last two or three months of his career. Some time be-

2l8 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

fore, he had a serious accident by falling at night into the
foundations of a building in an unfamiliar locality, and
there is reason to believe that he had met with other
mishaps. At all events, his health was deplorable, and he
had lost also the free use of his limbs, from weakness
and lack of nourishment He became a ready prey to
the cholera, then raging in the city. Early in June, 1849^
according to Father Meehan, Mangan's condition became
known. When it was discovered that he was suffering
from the dread disease — ^to which he had previously
declared he would inevitably fall a victim — ^he was
removed to the temporary sh^s at Kilmainham, but was
allowed to leave after a few days — ^when he was thought to
be nearly well. But his system had received too rude a
shock, and on the 13th he was discovered dying in a
deplorable lodging — a cellar — in Bride Street John O'Daly
implies that he was the person who found Mangan in this
place : —

"On his recovery" (from the attack of cholera), he says, "we
found him in an obscure house in Bride Street, and at his own request
procured admission for him to the Meath HospitaL"

Father Meehan, however, distinctly says that he was
removed thither

"by the advice of the late Dr. Stokes, who pronounced his case
hopeless.'*

James Price, who was in a very good position to know
the truth, tells a somewhat different tale : —

** He had been discovered, we believe, by Dr. Wilde,* during one
of his antiquarian researches among our poorest districts— discovered
in a state of indescribable misery and squalor, occupying a wretched -
hovel where he had retired to die. Humanity could not have sunk
lower. Misery, more than disease, had reduced him to a pitiable
condition."

This was written in 1849, A year later, a very sensa-
tional, and mostly erroneous, account was published by
Hercules Ellis (an Irish barrister, author of various poems,
and editor of Songs of Ireland), in his Romances and Ballads
of Ireland^ in whidi he states that he obtained the facts from
tiie house-surgeon of the Meath Hospital at the time of
Mangan's deaih.

^ Aftttwaids Sir William Wikto.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 21^

''In the month of June, iS^gj,** he says, '*the cholera morbas
raged in Dublin ; temporary hospitals were erected bjr the Board c(
Health for the reception of pauper sufferers from this district, and
servants of the Board were despatched with carts to all paits of
the city for the purpose of bringing to those hospitals the persons
attadced by this dreadful epidemic While searching for this par-
pose in an obscure portion of Dublin, the servants of the Board of
Health were informed that the tenant of a single room, in one of die
most wretched houses of the neighbourhood, had been for some time
confined to his bed, and was supposed to be suflfering from cfaokn
morbus. They ascended to the lodging thus indicated, and there,
stretched on a wretched pallet, and surrounded by proofs of the most
squalid misery, they found the wretched form of a man, insensible
from exhaustion. Believing that he was reduced to this state by chokn^
the servants of the Board of Health placed the sufferer in their cart,
and conveyed him to the North Dublin Union cholera sheds. In this
miserable wreck of hunger and misery the attendant physicians recog-
nised James Clarence Mangan. Upon examination it was found that
his disease was not cholera, but absolute starvation. He was imme-
diately transmitted to the Meath Hospital, where everything that skill
and kindness could suggest for the purpose of reviving the expiring
spark of life was attempted — ^and attempted in vain. This unfortunate
child of genius sank hourly, and died shortly after his admission to the
hospital, exhibiting, to the last, his gentle nature, in repeated apok>*
gies for the trouble he ^ve, and constant thanks for the attentioDS and
assistance afforded to him."

There is, of course, some truth in the above narrative,
but when, many years later, it was repeated with embellish-
ments, in Time, a now extinct English magazine. Father
Meehan indignantly denied it He says Mangan was

*' taken from Bride Street by directions of the late Dr. Stokes to Meath
Hospital. I was at his bedside there ; and he received Extreme Unc-
tion from the then chaplain to Meath Hospital Mangan did not die
unknown. Dr. Stokes and Burton the painter watched over him.
Burton painted his portrait in the morgui of the hospital. Cholera was
his victor. The statement about the cart and the Liberties is a wretched
invention.*'

Father Meehan himself is wrong here in one or two
minor details — as, for example, in saying that Burton
watched over Mangan, but he is evidently correct in the
essential points.

Miss Margaret Stokes, the distinguished Irish artist
and antiquarian author, in a letter to the present writer^
says : —

^ My father watched over him lovingly for three days, till be died.
One morning he turned on his pillow and said to him, * Yoa are the
first man who has spoken a kind word to me for years."*

220 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

The poet's happy release from an intolerable life
occurred on the 20th, seven days after admission. James
Price says: —

** An affecting instance of * the nilbg passion strong in death * was
famished by poor Mangan. The only article he possessed when
brought to the hospital was a well-wom volume of German poetry.
Over this he pored fre<^uently while consciousness remained, and it
was found after death with him in the bed. • • • All the officials
paid him unremittinr attention, but on the seventh day, without a
trace of suffering, without a pang to tell the moment his spirit passed
away, he died. • • • His last words contained an expression of
fervent gratitude to Mr. Pan*! the resident apothecary, for his
kindness.**

This last incident is corroborated in Saunderi Niws^
litter of June 22nd, 1849 — the only notice of the actual
death in the Dublin papers of the time. It is brief, and
worth quoting : —

**Qarence Mangan is no more*. A few days ago he was found by
one of the few friends that remained to him in a most wretched lodging,
from whence he was removed to the Meath Hospital, where, under the
kind care of Dr. Stokes, he appeared to make a slight rally. About
ten o'clock on Wednesday ni^ht he had iust expressed his gratitude to
one of the officers in the mstitution for the kindness which he received,
when he turned round in his bed and expired, apparently without a
struggle.-

So ended the earthly career of one of the most gifted
and most unfortunate of men. The inexpressible sadness
of it must appeal to all, Irish or otherwise. Price de-
scribes his appearance in tlie bed at the hospital thus : —

*' There in that pauper ward, on that pauper bed, a shrunken and
attenuated fonn, a wan, worn, ghastly face arrests vour attention.
You read instinctively in the fearful emaciation and the pallor before
you, in the glassy ^e, almost fixed with the last glaring look upon this
world, that life and the present are no more for him who lies there^ a
sad human wreck, but Death and the Hereafter.**

It was Dr. Stokes who told Father Meehan that Mangan
earnestly wanted to see hinu

** On taking a chair at his besid^** says the priest, ** the poor fellow
playfullv said, * I feel that I am going, I know that I must go, *' un-
hottsd'a** and **unannealed,*' but you must not let me go *'unshriven'*

««mI MavnAAAinfMl.*" TliA f>ri«»«f in ttft*n/1an/^ tiAtncr f»^\\mA tt^awl Itis

and '^ananointed.*' ' The priest m attendance being called, heard his
coofcsskm and administered the Last Unction ; Mangan, with hands
crossed on his breast, and eyes uplifted, manifesting sentiments d

*J-'

t— .

»• -

'/ '

*>•*♦■

n r

? •

. f,- " .J

S--C

*<•.--.

PORTRAIT OP M4NGAN APTBR DBATH

r# Amt a mi

JAMES CLARENXE MANGAN. 231

most edifying piety, and, with a smile on hit lips» fiuntly cjaadatng,
•O Mary, Queen of Mercy."**

Mitchel adds the information that

" At his own request, they read him, during his last moments d
life, one of the Catholic penitential hymns.** ** In bis hat,** says
Hercules Ellis, " were found loose papers, on which his last efibfts
in verse were feebly traced by his dymg hand."

In Mr. John McCall's little sketch of Mangan's life, an
incident, obtained from one who claimed to know the fiicts,
is told, which may be summarized here. It would seem
that one of the physicians, noticing that his patient was
much given to writing in bed, using such scraps of paper
as came within his reach, gave directions that scribbling
materials should be placed near the bed, in order that
Mangan might write what he pleased. The nurse was also
instructed that the poet should not be disturbed whenever
so engaged When, after Mangan's death, the papers upon
which he had written were asked for by the physician, the
nurse replied that she had burned them all, as she had

f>reviously got into trouble for allowing pieces of paper to
ie about the ward. While Mangan's body was in the
morgue Dr. Stokes obtained a cast of his face, and Burton
drew his incomparable portrait Price and all who saw it
state that the poet's face was restored by death to its
natural beauty. Price's words are these : —

" Those who remember Clarence Mangan of late. • • • could
have no idea of how beautiful, yes, absolutely beautiful, he looked in
death. Nor physical pain nor mental anguish left a trace on his
intellectual face. Unwrinkled was his domelike forehead, fit temple
for the soul that had dwelt therein."

Sir Frederick Burton, happily still alive, then a young
and rising artist, known widely to his countrymen by
his " Blind Girl at the Holy Well '* and other paintings,
and in later days distinguished as the Director of Uie
National Gallery in London, and for an unrivalled know-
ledge of art, has kindly given me an account of the
circumstances under which he made the beautiful and
universally admired drawing of Mangan after death, and
it is subjoined :—

* One of hit best Geraian tnnslations is that of Simiock*s «*0 ICaik
Hegina MiieriGOidi«.*'

222 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

'* I did oot know Mangan personally, and think I met him but once
when he was alive — so that it is out of my power to give you any infor-
mation concerning him.

The occasion of my making a drawing of the poor fellow's features
came about in this way. One morning at breakfast time my friend,
the late Dr. Stokes, csdled upon me, and told me that Mangan, who
had died the day or night before, was lying in a mortuary of one of the
Dublin hospitals* and suggested that I should make use of the oppor-
tunity to preserve some record of the poet's appearance. There was
no time to be lost The dav w^ a sultrv one in summer or early
autumn, and interment could not be long deferred. I went at once to
the hospital, and made the drawing* which, at a later period, and at
the requrst of Mc Henry Doyle, I presented to the National Gallery
d Ireland.

The sight of poor Mangan, as he lay in the mortuary, with head
unsupportra* and the lone, psutially grey hair falleo back from the
fine and delicately shaped forehead, was intensely interesting and
pathetic.

I recollected that when I had seen him living some years before,
bis forehead was completely hidden by. an unkempt-looking mass of
hairt like a glibb, so that its beautiful structure was a surprise to* me
when I finally saw it. • • •

I remember having seen or heard read, very shortly before
Mangan's death, a very touching letter of his to Mr. Hau^hton, at
that time an ardent apostle of temperance, in which he was implored
by the writer to save him as he had lost all power even to make an
effort to save himselL One was reminded of Coleridge's helplessness
about opium.**

Father Meehan explains that the burial would have
taken place more promptly, but that, owing to the exten-
sive mortality, coffins were only procurable after some
delay. On Friday, the 23rd, he was buried in Glasnevin,
only five people, according to Brenan, (Father Meehan says
three) following his remains to the grave. Father Meehan
does not name the three, but they were apparently Michael
Smith, uncle of the poe^ Bernard FuUam, of the Irishman^
and himselfl He points out, however, that Mangan's best
friends were at this time scattered over the earth. Not a
single Dublin paper noticed the funeral in any way, except
the Irishman, which, in an indignant article, denounced the
absence of some of those who had professed much sympathy
and friendship for the unfortunate poet, but did not pay his
memory the small tribute of attendance at his funeral : —

* Lftdy Fcfgatoo, hi her life of her htis)>uid, meatiooi (VoL I., p^ 308), a
portnit cii the Emperor NiehdUs of Rmsia, which they mlw at the cattle of
ItobcnichwangeB, which doitly iweiiMed ** Boiton's drawing of MaagiB.*

t This was mlly a wi|^

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 223

** Where were these * sympathisers,* " it asks, ** from his foneral?
Five friends who knew the man and appreciated him — ^who were not
lip-friends, but heart-friends— attended nmi to his ^ve. Fiv$ humble
individuals formed the burial carUge of one who, m another country,
would have been attended by a royal following; ftve^ out of all to
whose pleasure and instruction his genius ministered for vears— a smaQ
number, passing small I Where were the 'friends' oi former days,
who made money of his mind?**

And so on. It must be said that, while the indignation of
the Irishman was to some extent justified, the general
apathy regarding Mangan's death and funeral may be
partly attributed to the epidemic then depopulating the
city, to the indifference to death of all classes who had
passed through the dreadful years of the famine and its
attendant calamities, and also to the fact that his admirers
did not then know of his death. But, with all reservations
and excuses, Mangan's small funeral, in a country like
Ireland, where ** a good funeral " is one of the consolations
of the people, is almost inexplicable.

Although his contemporaries in general regarded
Mangan as almost the first of Irish poets, and men like
Duffy, Brenan, Mitchel and others put him absolutely
first, there was surprisingly little comment in the Press
upon his death. A few paragraphs and a few poems were
all that such a calamity elicited. Not one of these last
was quite worthy of the subject. But they may be worth
quoting. His early acquaintance, James Tighe, in some
feeling lines upon his death, wrote : —

** Beside the turf that wraps thy clay
Shall kindred memoiy fondly wake^
And spite of all thy foes can say,
Shall love thee ior the Muse's sake.

• • • • •

And Pity, with a beaming eye

Forget the cause that laid thee low.
O'er thy low grave shall deeply sigh,

And moum thy pilgrimage of woe.

Still, redbreast, o'er the tuneful dead,
That sweetly soothing dirge prolong :

For his who owns this earthly bed —
His was as sad, as sweet a song."

And D'Alton Williams, true to the memory of his old
comrade of the Nation^ intoned a long sounding dirge over
the dead poet« Here are some of the verses : —

224 THE UFE AND WRITINGS OF

*Tes ! happyfriend, the cross was thine— 'tis o'er a sea of tears
Predestined sonls must erer sail to reach their native spheres.
May Christ* the crowned of Calvary* who died upon a tree*
BiKiueath His tearful chalice and His bitter cross to me.

The darkened land is desolate— a wilderness of grai _
Our purest hearts are prison-bound, our exiles on the waves :
Gaunt Famine stalks ttie blasted pUuns — the pestilential air
O'erhanigs the gasp of breaking hearts or stillness of despair.

No chains are on thy folded hands, no tears bedim thine eyes.
But round thee bloom celestial flowers in ever tranquil skies,
IVhile o^er our dreams thy mystic songs, faint, sad, and solemn* flow.
Like light that left the distant stars ten thousand years ago.
. • • . • •

Thou wert a voice of God on earth— of those prophetic souls
VHio hear the fesufiil thunder in the Future's womb that rolls»
And the warnings of the angels, as the midnight hurried past*
Rushed in upon thy spirit* Lke a ghost-o'er*laden blast

• •••••

If any shade of earthliness bedimmed thy spirit's wings,
Wen cleansed thou art in sorrow's ever-salutary springs ;
And even bitter suffering, and still more bitter sin.
Shall only make a soul like thine more beautiful within.

.... . .

*Tis sorrow's hand the temple-eates of holiness unbars :
By day we only see the earth* tis night reveals the stars.

Alas, alas ! the minstrel's fate ! his life is short and drear.

And if he win a wreath at last, 'tis but to shade a bier ;

His harp is fed with wasted life— to tears its numbers flow —

And strung with chords of broken hearts is dreamland's splendid woe.**

Joseph Brenan also, in a poem entitled "Compensa*
tion," paid tribute to the ill-fated poet, but it is not by
any means up to his usual level. Only a verse or two
need be quoted : —

** There was a man who walked this earth of ours,

Engirt with misery as with a shroud ;
Gathering, with eager hand, the wayside flow'rs.

Flinging the roses to the expectant crowd —

But every rose had thorns. Men cried aloud
When they beheld the hand which blessed them red

With its own blood, which trickled, rich and proud.
From that great heart 'Behold, he bleeds P tney said—
Yet no one stanched the wound, although for them he bled

And still he plucked the roses— though he knew
That none beheld him with a loving eye ;

To his belief and to his mission true,
He wove rich garlands for Humanity.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 335

And he is dead I the solemn rites are done 1
The few who bore the coffin look their last —

The human clay is clay — ^the friends are gone-
He's sleeping with the worms and with the Past
No flowers of love upon his grave are cast ;

No legend tells his tale ; the earai is dumb ;
The Cloud* the Sunshine, and the Tempest-blast—

These are the only pilgrims to his tomb."

The poems by Tighe, Williains» and Brenan appeared
in the Irishman, The Nation^ which was revived a coaple
of months later, devoted a long critical article to Mangan^
writings in one of its early numbers, but did not print any
elegiac verses. It cannot be said Uiat the article referred
to is specially sympathetic or indulgent ; allowing no ex-
tenuating circumstances, it seems to adopt too literally the
worst view of his transgressions, as expressed in his lines :—

" Weep, weep, degraded one, the deed.
The desperate deed was all thine own I
Thou madest more than maniac speed
To hurl thine honours from their Uirone I **

Its allusion to Mangan's personal career is exceedingly
brief, and perhaps unnecessarily crude : —

'* Of Mangan*s personal history we have no heart to write. To be
meting out pity or blame, now when neither can avail him* were a sad
as well as useless chapter. Nor will we join in the common cry about
neglected talent and the world's ingratitude. It is a terrible but most
certain truth that him who will not save himself, all mankind banded
together cannot save. It is enough upon this to say that Mangan, a
man of great gifts and great attainments, lived a pauper and a drudge,
and died in an hospital To most he was but a voice which has now
ceased for ever . . .To death he had long looked forward."

Mangan's chief and indeed only failing having been the
effect of years of untold misery, of physical and mental
troubles without number, of bitter disappointments, of
acutely-wounding disillusions, all of which had predisposed
him to what is now recognised as a disease and treated
accordingly, the Nation writer, who undoubtedly knew the
facts, seems somewhat harsh in his allusions to the ill-
starred poet's weakness. The rest of the article is couched
in a very captious vein, presenting a remarkable contrast to
all the Nation's previous references to Mangan, and one may
be, possibly, not far wrong in assuming that the fact of his
close connection with the chief rivals of the Nation during
his last year or so, and especially to the Irishman^ may have
had something to do with the change in tone. However,

226 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

this is of no moinent. The hypercriticism of the Nation
notwithstanding, those who knew him best were the rea-
diest to acknowledge and to insist that though he had
sinned, he had been gprievously sinned against, and that his
sufferings deserved warmest consideration and sympathy.
No other vice than that of excess in taking stimulants \as
ever been alleged against him. He was admittedly weak
— terribly weak — in yielding so constantly to the allure-
ments of opium or spirit, but the new generation which
grew up in the great wave of temperance that swept over
Ireland in the forties treated him with too scant considera-
tion ; it saw only effects, and finding him unable or unwil-
ling to throw off his habits, gave him up completely for lost.
Father Meehan with full knowledge of the facts, says : —

** Poor fellow ! he did occasionally take what he ought not to have
taken,'* and he goes on ; ** Be his faults what they may have been, he
was ^purg man, never lowering himself to ordinary debaucheries or
sensuality of any sort • • • He praved and heard Mass almost everjr
day, and occasionally knelt at the Altar rail."

**The late Father Stephen Anster FarrelL S.J. (cousin to Dr.
Anster, the translator of Faust), mentioned to me," writes the Rev.
Matthew Russell, editor of the InsA Monthly , *' that Mangan (whom he
knew intimately) told him that, with all his wild excesses, he had kept
himself free from the vice of impurity* H is writings are ethereally pure.'

Both Father Meehan and James Price, who necessarily
knew more of Mangan's inner life than anyone else, were
emphatic in their refusal to consider his failing as deserving
of the severest condemnation. They, knowing all the
circumstances, and being aware of Mangan's innate refine*
ment and excellent disposition, defended him to the utmost
against the shallow observers and superior persons who
may have seen him in one of his more pitiable moments.
Mangan has, in his own manner, defended himself from
many charges which the unthinking or unsympathetic
might be inclined to bring against him. Not a few of his
indirect appeals to the consideration of future generations
have already been utilised in this work. Twelve years
before his death, in a poem more remarkable for its personal
nature than for its merit, Mangan described himself as he
admittedly was. He saw the future with all its misfortune
and possible obloquy : —

^ *Twere anavsuling now to examine whence
The tide of my calamities ma^ flow«
Enoqgh that in my heart its residence
Is pennaDeat and bitter— let me imiI«

Th« visions or my boyhood, than the fierce

Impulses of a breast that scarce would curb
One anient feeling;, even when all was gone

Which makes Life dear, and ever frowned npoo
Such monitors as ventured to disturb

III baleful happiness. Of this do more.
Mybcnison be on my native hills !

And when the sun shall shine upon the tomb
Where I and the remembrance of mine ills

Alike shall slumber, may his beams illume
Scenes happy as they oft illumed before,

Scenes happier than these feet have ever trod I
May [he green earih glow in the smile of God I

May the unwearying stars as mildly twinkle
As now — the rose and Jessamine exhale

Their frankincense — the moon be still at pale^
The pebbled rivulets as lightly tinkle —

The singing-birds in Summer till the vale
With lays whose diapasons never cloy I

May Love still garland his young votaries' browt
May the fond husband and his faithful spouse

List to the pleasant nightingale with joy I
May radiant Hope, for the soft souls that dream

Of golden hours, long, long continue brightetiiii^
An alas I traitorous Future with her beam.

When in forgotten dust my bones lie whileaing I
And, for myself, all I would care to claim

Is kindness to my memory— and to thote

Whom I have tried, and trusted to the closer
Would 1 speak thus — Let Truth but give to Fama

My virtues with my&ilings: ifthisbe.
Not all may weep, but none will blush for me :

And whatsoever chronicle of eood.

228 THE UFK AND WRITINGS OF

CHAPTER XIX.

1849— MANGAlf ^^ BCCBNTRICITY — HIS ISOLATION — NEGLXCT BY
HIS OOUNTRYMEN— LORD CARNARVON AND SIR GEORGE
TREVBLTAN — ^THE ''SPECTATOR" ON MANGAN— HIS POSI-
TION IN IRISH POETRY — MAIfGAN AND MOORI — HIS CULTURE
— POE AND MANGAN — GILBERTIAN FLAVOUR OP MANGAK'S
UGHTER VERSE— CONCLUSION.

** Oh, Death ! a welcome friend thou art

When Yoath, and Health, and Hope depart I
And a wondrous power in thine icj toach Get,
To heal the hrokenest heart I "— Mangan.

The year 1849 is a fateful one in the sad history of literary
genius. It saw the melancholy close of the lives of Edgar
Allan Poe, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Hartley Coleridge,
and — as an accomplished Irish writer has termed him,
''our higher and nobler and vastly more gifted Hartley
Coleridge " — ^James Clarence Mangan, with whom the rest
had at least some points in common. The lives of Poe and
Coleridge especially recall that of Mangan, but neither led
so unmixedly wretched an existence as he, who, from his
earliest years, was alone v/ithout hope. To none did Death
come in so welcome a guise as to poor Mangan. If the
final miseries of his career were in any degree a punish-
ment for his transgressions, heavy indeed was the retribu-
tion. Yet, with all its gloom, his was not altogether a life
made up of disappointments From childh(X)d he had
apparently foreshadowed the end of his hopeless and
helpless career. He had few illusions, and no great
ambitions. He never looked for reward of any kind,
never expected the homage of mankind, and was too keen
an observer, too extensive a reader, to indulge in any wild
imaginings, as so many smaller minds have done, Bi to t^e
privilq^es of genius.

** Humbly to isxpress
A penitential kmetiness,**

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 329

was an abiding characteristic of his, and his gentleness
and humility with all men was due as much to his
profound knowledge of the shortcomings of those en-
dowed with genius as to inherent mildness of dispositioiL
His early errors were hardly of themselves sufficiently
serious to have brought down upon him all his subsequent
sufferings. Once started on the downward slope, how-
ever, his irregularities brought with them ample affliction.
But it must be repeated that Mangan's wretchedness
was largely owing to the unfortunate phvsical conditioas
of his childhood. " Infirmity and misery, ' as De Quincey
well says, ^ do not necessarily imply guilt." And Mangan's
earliest excesses were aimed rather at the bare relief of pain
than at what the English opium-eater calls **the excit^
ment of superfluous pleasure.'' The severe moralist will
perhaps not the less severely condemn him; average human
nature must, however, look upon the case more qrmpa*
thctically. Once caught in the snare of the opium fiend,
so weak a will was bound to surrender. His was not the
nature to withstand such temptation, and the time speedily
came when, like a certain Waterford opium-eater, wbo
had been told that an early death was inevitable^ he would
reply : —

^ I care not how soon the lamp of life is extin^ished, pnmded that
while it lasts I can cause its flame to bum the bnghter.*

He has been greatly misunderstood — mainly, no doubt,
through the lack of information about him. In some
degree, what he says of Maturin will apply to his own
case: —

** He, in his own dark way, understood many people, bat nobod/
understood him in any way."

Even his most harmless eccentricities have been harshly
described, both during his life and subsequently. His
whimsicalities are, of course, not matters for praise, but
neither do they call for severe comment Quaintly enough,
Mangan has made a characteristic defence of eccentricity.
He contends that the eccentric are the only people who
can claim to have genuine opinions. Thus : —

** It is a senseless charge to bring against any eccentric gentleman
who prefers health to fashion, and comfort to costom, that he sets at
defiance the opinions of society. Society, as at present constituted,

230 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

has nsagesi bat not oi>tnioii8« The eccentric gentleman is dearly the
monopcSist of such opinions as are at all to be got at. It is society
that sets kis opinions at defiance.**

Although Mangan in his later years believed that there
was no escape for nim from a life of unvarying woe, he
, fiilly appreciated that there is a time for men of choosing
path they will take. He says somewhere : —

** Inner light and outer darkness — or outer light and inner darkness
•-take thy choice, O mortal! but remember that thou chusest for
eternity."

And he notes that while the genius of the Arabian
tales makes his first appearance in smoke, the poetical
genius ends in it Reading between the lines, one can
detect in almost everything he wrote a sense of abandon-
ment, a personal loss of friendliness and companionship,
a feeling that though he was in the world, he was not of
it. His world, he tells us often enough, was " all within."
He was neglected during his life for reasons which are
obvious to every reader of it — ^the most obvious of all,
perhaps, being his morbid feeling of shyness and timidity.
But no good reason has ever been given for the strange
neglect of his writings, the strange indifference to his fame
which has characterised the generations which have grown
up since his death. Nothing has ever been done to com-
memorate his genius in his native city. The miserable
headstone over his grave* is an eyesore to lovers of Irish
literature, and his birth place is still unmarked by tablet or
other memorial, though the project of placing one there
has often enough been talked of. Most Irishmen have
heard his name, and there are many who know something
of at least one poem of his. But even the inadequate collec-
tions of his poems now before the public do not excuse
the ignorance of his writings which prevails among too
many Irishmen. Several incidents might be recalled to
Qlustrate the extent of this ignorance. For example, when
the late Lord Carnarvon was Viceroy of Ireland, he had
occasion to visit one of the most important schools in
Dublin, and among other questions which he put to one or
two pupils was one about Mangan's poetry. To his
astonishment, the pupils whom he questioned knew
nothing whatever of Mangan or his writings, a result largely

^ Placed thm ombj jtut after his death by his uncki

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 23I

attributable to what officialism doubtless considered to be
the very politic and wise action of the Government in all
but banishing him from the national school-books.* It was
only a little while before the incident just referred to
happened that Mr. (now Sir George) Trevdyan, then Quel
Secretary, was heckled in the House of Commons as to the
reason why Mangan was unrepresented in the Irish school-
books. The Chief Secretary returned the proverbial soft
answer, acknowledging that there was no reason that he
could allege, except, perhaps, that Mangan was above the
heads of the scholars, endorsing the eulogy passed apoa
the poet by one of the Irish members, and adding that
he himself had only recently developed ** a strong feelii^
for Mangan's poetry."

The high opinion of Mangan's verse formed by so
distinguished a writer as the biographer of Macaulay and
Fox must have puzzled not a few of the membon of
Parliament — perhaps, even one or two of those who sat for
Irish seats, f

Quite recently an incident occurred which shows that if
some educated Irishmen, or those who are supposed to be
such, are ignorant of Mangan's name and works, many
humbler individuals are in the same position. A friend of
the writer, while engaged in photographing a house 10
which Mangan had occupied a garret for a week or two^
got into conversation with a respectable looking, but not
busily-occupied, man of the workman type, who was
standing near. As this onlooker was obviously curious as
to the reason for taking a photograph of such a mean
looking house, the friend in question thought he would
explain his object, which he did by saying : — ** Dkln't
Clarence Mangan live in that house ? " To which the other
replied, with the characteristic resolve of the Irishman not to
be caught napping in the matter of local knowledge: "Faidi,
he did that, and a good business he done there, too I **

It is to be feared that even many Irish people, to
whom his name is familiar, are ignorant of Mangan's
claims upon their admiration. But there are signs of
a welcome revival of interest in his life and works, and it b
pleasant to note that English and Scotch critics are awakeo-

* He is represented to a small extent in one of them.

t Especially when one remembers the story whidi b current that a vdl-
known Irish member wonderingly asked, not to kwg ago:— '* Who wn
Thomas Davis ? "

2$2 THE UFB AND WRITINGS OF

ing to a sense of his literary importance. He has been
worthily represented in several recent collections of modem
vtrsCf and the Spectator, in an 'article on Irish poetry,
jxrinted in January of the present year, uses these words of
praise >»

* Mangan was a trae poet, and* in our opinion, a great one. Put
lihe harp 6( his country into his hands, and be could make it sound a
note so dolorous* so mystioJ, so full of wild and dim imaginings that
it seems incredible that the poet was a man inhabiting a Dublin slum
only fifty years aga'*

Mangan's position in Irish poetry is a matter of dif-
ference of opinion among Irishmen. Even many of those
who admire his work extremely are not altogether disposed
to place him above Moore. Yet in lyrical power and
nnge, vigour of expression, variety of treatment, origin-
ality of form, mastery of technique, keenness of per-
ception, and in other qualities, Mangan seems to be
quite unapproached by any Irish poet. Some of these
qualities are possessed in a greater degree by other
Irish poets, but in none are they combined in such
perfection as in Mangan. Some attributes there are
which Mangan lacks, or possesses only in a slender
degree, and his perverseness in certain directions has been
to no small extent detrimental to his reputation ; but, with
ail deductions, it is perfectly certain that no other Irish poet
is his peer in sheer imaginative power or fertility of inven-
tion. Those who admire his writings at all must admire them
warmly ; indifference is impossible in such a case. Direct
comparison between him and other Irish poets is hardly
possible or serviceable, but an interesting, if not very close,
parallel which has been drawn between him and Moore by
Mr. William Boyle, a clever Irish writer, in a recent lecture
iipon Mangan, is well worth transcribing here : —

''The two men," he remarks, "in their lives and works, are
characteristic of the two extremes of Irish character — its brightness
and its gloom ; for while the wine and fragrance of the poet's comu*
copia fell abundandy to the one, the portion dealt out to the other
smacks of gall and wormwood. . . . Ot equal birth . . . to one, the
dignified society of all the ^reat and brilliant of his time, the sweetest
iMmers on the world's sunniest slopes ; to the other, the r^^nf slum, "
the cv3-smelling taj^room. the garret and the laxar-house. ToMoore^
the loving admiration of all men, high and low ; to Mangan, the
pitying approval of the few. • . • Though the general lera c^ his
peiibiinanoes Is by no means equal to that of the author of the * Irish
Jldodies,' yet at times he biases into an Oriental splendooc uiBAns-^

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 333

passed in 'Lalla Rookh,' and at other moments so«n to pure,
unsullied heights, as far above his brother-poet» as dawling, as iqf;
as prismatic, as Mont Blanc towering above the flowery vales of Ita^.

Mangan is certainly curiously unequal, but there i;i Ais
strange feature about his inequality — that it is when surveyed
as a whole, and not in detail, that his work is most dearijr
unequal When he adopts the banjo strain, he does it wi^
the most unquestionable deliberation. He does not htpn
a poem at a high level and unconsciously decline to badm.
Even Moore, like many other Irish poets, often falls below
the level of his opening lines, and quite a number of his lyrics
finish very weakly. Mangan, on the other hand, always
remains on the level he has chosen, and if a poem of his is
bad, it is always because he has struck too low a key, or per-
versely moves towards anti-climax. He is the most sub-
{*ective of all Irish poets. His curious personality is in all
le wrote. What a wide knowledge of human nature is in
his writings I The extent of his ^ profound and curiously
exquisite" culture — the circumstances being consktered,
must excite wonder. He, to use his own words^

'* bee*like, at a hundred sources
Gathered honeyed lore.*'

But his opportunities of acquiring knowledge, until he
entered the employment of Trinity College, were very few.
James Price states, however, that even at the scrivener^s
and attorney's offices he was noted for his passionate desire
for knowledge : —

** He was then a diligent German, French, and Italian student,
every unoccupied moment in his office— every hour that ought to have
been spent in recreation — being devoted to his darling pursuit of
language acquirement ... He has been frequendy seen to poll a
dog^s-eared German volume from his pocketi and in an instant to be-
come so deeply absorbed in its study that time and place were alike
forgotten."

The question of the similarity of his genius to Poe's
has often been mooted, and while several writers (notably
Joseph Skipsey, in his edition of Poe), have suggested that
the latter was indebted to Mangan for the recurrent refrains
and rhymes which are so characteristic of both poets, others
have implied that Mangan must have known of Poe's work.
The probabilities are, however, entirely against the latter
theoiy. Mangan was unquestionably first in point of
time, and even if Poe had invented bis haunting refrains

234 1*HE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

years before Mangan. the latter could hardly have known
of them. On the other hand, Poe must have been
acquainted with some of Mangan's writings, for in his
time the Dublin University Magazine was frequently
pirated, and constantly quot^ from in the United States,
and his journalistic opportunities would have brought
it under his notice. But, of course, there could be
no foundation for any charge of plagiarism against either
poet Each was sufficiently endowed with genius to
be independent of outside suggestion. If, as is possible,
Poe was the better artist, Mangan possessed indubitably
the truest inspiration, and it will be probably found that
his humait insight was deeper and the instinct of the poet
more firmly rooted. There is far more versatility in the
Irish poet, and the prophetic gift, which is only allied
with the highest poetical genius, was one of Mangan's
surest and most abiding possessions. He was the
Banshee of the famine period He is not without the
rhetorical gift which Irish poets inevitably develop, but
his finest work is not in the least rhetorical. One critic
has called him ** the most Pindaric writer in the English
language." And his humour and quaintness must not
be forgotten. His versatility is illustrated by the fact,
already noted by Miss Guiney, that he had the Gil*
bertian gift before W. S. Gilbert was born. Many passages
might be quoted in proof of the presence among his writ-
ings of verses with the touch of the author of the " Bab
Ballads * and the Savoy opera libretti. Here are a few
hurriedly chosen and not too favourable examples of this
peculiar flavour in Mangan's lighter effusions.

** Holidays these in which everyone cruises
Over what Ocean of Pleasure he chooses ;
Business is banished and Idlesse pursues his
Fancies unchecked in the Days of Nourooziz.

Raise the glad chorus in praise of Nourooziz !

Allah be blessed for the Days of Nourooziz !

Base is the niggard who counts what he loses

While he enjoys the gay Days of Nourooziz !

O yt dull doctors, who, shrouded like Druses,
Blind yourselves writing what no one peruses,
Drowsy-^ed chymists and poet-recluses,
Come and rejoice in the smiles of Nourooziz !
Raise the fflad chorus in praise of Nourooziz t
Allah be blessed for the Days of Nouroozis I
ChiU b the cell where Philosophy maseSf
Therefore be fools in the Days of Nourooiis I"

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 2}$

Again —

" That one brief glance foil of love for another*

Sped daggers and death to the heart of the Pole :
In vain his philosophy strove to smother
The serpents that jealously bred in his tool :
As backwara he staggered.
With countenance ha£gard»
And feelings as acid as beer after thunder,
'Twas plain that the dart
That had entered his heart,
Was rending his physical system asunder I ^

Or this—

'* £t mot, I like various contrarious

Assemblies — ^both punch-drinking bawlers
And sighers of sighs— both your gnnners and gmmblcn^
Grumblersy grumblers.
Your grinners and grumblers.
I have grins for your grinners and growb for your gmmblen I*

And finally —

** Vm a humdrum soul until treated to a cup»

And my visage has a puttyish color ;
But hand me the decanter and I soon flare up*

Till you'd swear old Democritus was duller ;
For I laugh and I quaff to the wonderment and awe

Of my purple-beaked entertainer,
Who never in bis time either listened to or saw

Sudi guffaws from a pottle^lrainer.

O what, after all, were this planet, let me ask.

But a stupid concern and a meanish.
If we couldn*t now and then get our fingers round a flask

Of that joUiest of beverages, Rhenish ? *'

This is in somewhat startling contrast to the sweeping
fire and trenchant sword of his loftiest utterances. But
the whimsical side of things appealed to him just as
often as the more dignified part Mr. Frank Mathew
quaintly remarks in the sketch of Mangan which he has
introduced into one of his books, that his life was not
useless, *' if it saved others from the curse of being
poets." So far as Mangan himself was concerned, life
could not possibly have been a more hopeless failure,
but literature, and especially Irish literature, is immeasur-
ably the richer for his having lived, and possibly for his
having lived in such misery. It will be fully rea^^nised
yet tluit he was one of the few poets of the period between

236 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

i830-'50 who can be said to have been really and
splendidly endowed with the highest attributes of genius.
He was, in the eloquent words of the writer who prefaced
the Nation supplement of his poems in 1852,

^a poet whose brilliant and elastic imagination had tried 'each
mode of the lyre, and was master of all ;' whose touch adorned the
grave and gay alike ; the prophetic fire of whose political odes was
not more stnldng than his vivid and picturesque skill of dramatic
description, his passionate pathos, his weird ghouMike melanchdv, or
his quaint and nntastic humour ; and the arabesque graces of whose
languase invented for themselves an exquisite accompaniment in the
magiau melody of his versification.**

His fame is secure, though he cared for it as little as maybe.
He was perfectly indifferent to popular appreciation, and
<Mie is sometimes tempted to believe, in ot^erving its
effects^ that his perversity was more or less due to 1^
delibmte wish to injure his literary reputation. His lack
of craving after fame is, as usual, acknowledged by him*
flel( for he says

'Sdber^fl toploftical disdain of human applause is the only great
dii&g about htm except his cloak.**

He has also said, and the words may serve as his
epit^^i —

** FareweO I the world may mock, may rave I
Me little move its woras or ways ;
Men*s idle scorn ks well can l»ave
Who never wooed their idler praise.**

APPENDIX

APPENDIX.

The following poems, not included in any collection of
Mangan's work, are given either because they have been
specially mentioned in the previous pages, or for their
personal interest

LAMENTATION OF JEREMIAS OVER JERUSALEM.
(A Paraphrasb prom Holy SotiPTUiB.)

*' And it came to pass, after Israel was carried into captivity, and Jemalem
was desolate, that Jeremias the prophet sat weeping, and moained with thb
lamentation over Jerusalem, and with a sorrowful mind, sighing and
he said".*—

How doth she sit alone
Ttie city late so thronged, how doth she sit in woe*

Bc{;irt with solitude and graves I
Oh ! how is she that from her Temple-throne,

Ruled o*er the Gentiles, now become

A widow in her dreary home !
How have her Princes fallen low,

And dwindled ir.:o slaves !

She weepeth all night long,
Forsaken and forgot : her face is dusk with tcnn ;

Her heart is rent with many throes.
Not one of all the once-adniiring throng

That sued and wooed her night and mom

But looketh down on her with scorn I
Her fondest friends of other years

Have now become her foes I

Iler dwelling-place is dark :
Her palaces lie waste : she feareth even to

Their bass-courts desolate and bare.
She hath become a byword and a mark

Among the nations : lorn and lone^

She seeketh rest and findeth Dooe.
Her persecuting foes, alas 1

liave caagnt her in their snare I

p APPENDIX.

Gkwm shxoadeth Sion's hftlls,
Ad4 trodden in the dust lie silver l«mp and bowL

Her golden gates are turned to day*
Her priests are now the godless Gentiksf thiaOs.

Her jTpnths walk wan and sorrow-woni;

Her filent virgins droop and moora.
Li hopeless Uttemess of sool

She sigheth all the day I

Behold the sad Bereaven !
Her enemies have grown to be her pStilen loids»

And mock her in her sore disgrace I
Her sins have risen in black array to Heaven ;

Therefore the Lord Jehovah hath

Rained on her head His chastening wiath ;
Tberefdre her sons go bound with onds •

Before the oppressors Isce I

How hath her glory fled !
iThe beauty is oat-blotted as a fallen star

Of her that whilom looked so fiur !
Her stricken Princes cower for shame and dread

Like wandering sheep^ that seek in vain

Their pasture ground o'er hill and pkia.
They stray abroad, thev flee afar,

Gnideless, and in despair I

Oh! lost Jerusalem
Where now be her mad hours of wantonness and wine?

Her leprousness is on her hands.
So lately prankt with pearl and golden gem I

A captive Queen she sits, cast down

From Heaven to Earth, without her crown I
O Lord, my God, what grief is mine

To see her thus in bands !

She lieth overthrown.
Smitten of Thee, O Lord I and shrinking in her fear

Before the alien Gentilepowers,
Since Thou hast cast away Thy Charch» Thine own I

They violate her sanctuary.

Of whom command was given by Thee^
That they should ne'er adventure dear

Her Temple and its towers 1

Woe for the fidlen Queen!
Her people groan and die, despairful of relief

They famish and they ay for bread 1
No more her nobles walk in silken sheen I

Their gauds and rings, their predous things,

Are pawned for food ! Oh, God ! it wring*
My tool to see it ! Through my grief

I lie as one half dead 1

Oh, ve who travel by !
AD ye who pass this way, stop short awhile^ and see

If Earth have sonow like to mine ! I

Jndca*fl dark iniqoitict beli*

APPENDIX.

The fiuth she ftanteth in her God ;
And therefore are her people trod
In dust this day, and men tread mi
' As tieaders tread the wine 1

O, most mysterious Lord !
From Thine high place in Heaven Thoa Mndart fivt aad

Into my dry and withered bones 1
Thou searchest me as with an angry sword I

Thou spreadest snares aneath my feet 1

In Tain I pray, in vain entreat,
Tliott tumest me away with shame.

And heedest not my groans I

Thus waileth she aloud,
The God-forsaken one, in this her day of dote ;«•

*' My spirit fiuleth me ; mine eyes
Are filmed o'er with mist ; my neck is bowed

Beneath a yoke the live-long day,
^ And there doth lie a weight alway.

An iron hand, on my spent soul.

That will not let it rise 1

The Lord, the Lord is just !
His wrath is kindled fierce against me for my wnyi.

I have provoked the Lord, my God,
Therefore I make my darkling bed in dust.

Pity me, ye who see me, all !

Pity my sons, who pine in thrall !
Their spirit wastes, their strength decays,

Under the Gentile's rod.

I sought my friends to tell
The story of my woes ; alas ! they would not hear I

Disease drank up my princes' blood,
For Famine's hand lay black on them as welL

My priests, too, fainted on their feet ;

They feebly crawled from street to street.
Seeking all day afar and near,

A morsel of coarse food I

Behold, O Lord ! —behold I
Behold my wretchedness ! For I am overcome

By suffering — almost b^ despair !
My heart is torn with agonies untold I

The land expires beneath Thv frown ;

Abroad the red sword striketh down
Its tens of thousands ; and at home

Death reigneth everywhere I

My groanings are not hid.
All they who have hated me regard me with disdain I

They see the darkness of my face.
And mock it, for they know Thou hast forbid

My neaiest friends to help me now.

But Thou will yet avenge me, Thoa !
They shall lie low where I have lain

Who iooff at n^ disgrace I

r •-

APPENDIX. A

Then shall their eril Ikll
Od thdr own heads—for stUl 'tis evil in Thy iight»

And th^ shall moom as now I mourn,
And Thooy Lord, shalt make vintase of them all»

And tread them down eren as they

Thoiit for my sins* hast trodden me^
Thqrwho tOMlay deride and slight

The afflictions I have borne I *

^Irisk CaikM Mt^inim, 1847-

KHIDDER.

[This poem is foanded on the same idea as that of ** The World's Changes.**
tkkkr b supposed by Mangan to be the prophet Elias» whom the PerSant
' AiihB» or both, beliere to revisit the earth from time to time for the parpose
Movtaintng the condition of manldnd.]

Thus said or sung

Khidder, the ever-young ;
Journeying, I passed an ancient town—
Of lindens green its battlemenu bore a crowiw
And at its turreted gates, on either hand.

Did fountains stand, ..

In marble white of rarest chiselling, Ij

The which on high did fling
Water, that then like rain went twinkling down
With a rainbow glancing in the spray
As it wreathed in the sunny ray.
I marked where, 'neath the frown
Of the dark rampart, smiled a garden fidr ;
And an old man was there,
That gathered fruit " Good father," I begftOt
** Since when, I pray you, standeth here
This goodly dty with its fountains dear P "
To which Uiat agM man
Made answer — " Ever stood
The dty where it stands to-day.
And as it stands so shall it stand for aye,
Gmie evil days or good."

Him gathering frtut I left, and jonmeyed on ;

But when a thousand years were come and gonc^

Again I passed that way, and lo I

There was no dty, there were no

Foontains of '•^«^"«"g rarc^

No garden iair

Only

Aloody

Shepherd was piping there,

Whose little flock seemed less

In that wide pasture of the wildemeiB*

•«Good ftiesd,* qnoth I,

** How long hath the foir dtf passed away*

Tliat stood with gates so high,

WIdi fowitnins hri^it^ and gaidcni gqrt

APPENDIX. 243

Where now these sheep do stntj?"

And he replied^** What withers makes bat nam

For what springs np in verdiiroiis bloom<»

Sheep have graied ever here^ and here will giiM for uf,*

Him raping there I left, and joameyed on s

But when a thousand years were come and gOM^

Again I passed

That way, aud see ! there was a lake

That darkened in the blast.

And waves that brake

With a melancholy roar

Along that lonely shore.

And on a shingly point that nm

Far out into the Uke, a fisherman

Was hauling in his net. To him I said t

'* Good friend,

I fiun would know

Since when it is that here these waters flow? "

Whereat he shook his head.

And answer made, " Heaven lend

Thee better wit, good brother I Ever here

These waters floweiK, and so

Will ever flow :

And aye in this dark rolling wave

Men fished, and still fish,

And ever will fish,

UnUlfish

No more in waters swim.**

Him

Hauling his net I left, and journeyed on.

But when a thousand years were come and gone.

Again I passed that wav, and lo ! there stood.

Where waves had rolled, a green and flouridiing

Flourishing in youth it seemed, and yet was ol^—

And there it stood where deep blue waves had rolled^

A place of pleasant shade !

A wandering wind among the branches played.

And birds were now where fish had been ;

And through the depth of green,

In many a gush the golden sunshine streamed ;

And wild flowers gleamed

About the brown and mossy

Roots of the ancient trees.

And the cushioned sward so glossy

That compassed these.

Here, as I passed, there met

Me, on the border of that forest wide.

One with an axe, whom, when I spied,

Quoth I— ^'' Good neighbour, let

Me ask, I pray you, how long hath this wood

Stood,

Soreading its covert, broad and green,

Here, where mine eyes have seen

A royal city stand, whose battlements

Were like the ancient rocks ;

And then a place for shepherds' tents,

144 APPENDIX.

And rattnnife of flocki ;

AndUieo,

Rougheniog bennth the blasty

AYSSt

Dwk mere— a haunt of fisbennen?"

There was a oold swrpriie

In the man's eyes

While thns I spok% and, at I made an end.

This was his dij

Reply—

** Facedons friend.

This wood

Hath ever stood

Even where it stands to-day ;

And as it stands* so shall it stand for aje«

And here men catch no fidi — here tend

No sheep — to no town-markets wend ;

Bat aye m these

Green shtdes men felledt and still idl«

And ever will fell

Him with his axe I left, and joameyed on.

Bat when a thousand years were come and gone,

Again I passed

That way ; and lo t a town —

And spires, and domes, and towers looked proudly down

Upon a vast

And sonding tide of life.

That flowed through many a street, and surged

In many a market-place, and urged

Its way in many a wheeling current, hither

And thither.

How ruse the strife

Of sounds I the ceaseless beat

Of feet!

The noise of carts, of whips — the roll

Of duuriotSy coaches, cabs, gigs — (all

Who keep the last-named Yehide we call

KtsfeciaMi) — ^horse-trampings, and the toll

Of bells ; the whirl, the dash, the hubbub-mingling

Of voices, deep and shrill ; the datteringi jinghng.

The indescribable^ indefinable roar ;

The grating, creaking booming, clanking, thumping

And bumping, «

And stumping

Of folks with wooden legs ; the gabbling,

And babbling,

And many more

Quite namdess hdpingi

To the general effect ; dog-ydpings,

Laughter, and shout, and cry ; all sounds of gladncMb

Of sadness,

And madness,—

For there were people manyiqg,

And ochecB carrying

The dead they would have died for to the graTt—

^a^f th« chnfdi beU tolled

APPENDIX. :

When the yomg men were baring the old-*

More udly ipake that bodeful tongue

When the old were burying the young}*

Thus did the tumult rave

Through that hk dty— nor were wanting then

Of dandnp dogi or Mar,

Or needy Knife*

Grinder, or man with dismal wift^

That sane deplorably of **^mrUmfgrmm

And virSani Una$ms, oil wJUrgymau Dmm^m

Wiik tender Pkillida^ iJke nymfit, he Zppkt,

And ieftlf breaihe

The balmy meenbeamCt wreedke^

And amoreus tnrtle-deves ** —

Or other doleftil men, that Uew

The mehmcholiest tunes— the whieh tb^ OB^

On flutes* and other instruments of wind;

Or small dark imps, with hurdy-

Gurdy,

And mannoset, that grinned

For nuts, and might have been his brather.

They were so like each other;

Or man,

That danced like the god Puv

Twitching

A spasmr hot

From side to side with a* grace

Bewitching,

The while he whistled

In sorted pipes, all at his chin that bristled ;

Or fiddler, nddling much

For little profit, and a many such

Street musics most forlorn

In that too pitiless rout quite overborne^

Now, when as I beheld

The din, and heard the din of life once more

Swell, as it swelled

In that same place four thousand years before*

I asked of them that passed me in the throng

How long

The city thereabouts had stood.

And what was gone with pasture, lake, and wood ;

But at such question most men did but stares

And so pass on ; and some did laugh and shake

Their beads, me deeming mad ; but none wodd spart

The time, or take

The pains to answer me, for there

All were in baste — all busy — bent to make

The most of every minute,

And do, an if they might, an bourns work fai it

Yet as I gave not o'er, but pertinaciously

Plied with my question every passer-by,

A docen voices did at length reply

Ungraciously i

''What invest thou

Of pasture, lakc^ and wood ? As it is now

46 APPENDIX.

So WIS it ahrmys here, and so will be for sfe."
Tbon, bonyiiig there, I left, and joameyed
Bat wlien a thonsaiid years are come and gone,
AfB^ rU pass that way.

^DMin Univirsiiy MagoMimt AMgulf 1845*

GASPARO BANDOLLO.
An Anicdoti or the South or Italy.

(i8ao.)

£tbk m Mangan's last poem in the Dublin Unkmni^ M^ioiUtu^
^t 1^49-1

Once — twice —the stunning mnsquetry
Peals echoing down the dark ravine.

Serrini's blood wells forth like wine.
WesJc — footsore— faint as faint may be,
And powerless to resist or flee,
He drags him to a peasant's hovel.

** Ha ! GiambattisU I— thou, good boy ?
One short hour's shelter ! I can grovel
Unseen beneath yoc scattered sheaves.
So— there I Departing daylight leaves
This nook dark ; and, methinks, Uie spot
Is safe if thou betray me not
Let me but baffle those base hounds I • *

Kmifu plead not, Italia*s wounds
May— that Italia tAey destroy ! "

— He speaks, and crouches down, and gathers

Around his limbs the light, loose litter.

With one deep groan — O, God, how bitter 1
Given to the lost land of his fathers.

Hark I his pursuers follow after.

On bv the bloody track they follow.
Rings their fierce yell of demon laughter.

Upon the winds, adown the hollow,
Rinn loud exulting yell on yelL

**By Heaven I— see 1— here the miscreant feU
And rose again 1— apd, if these black
Leaves mock us not, here fiuls the track !
Ha, so 1— a hut t , The hunted rebel
Hath earthed him* here I Now, comradesi treble
Your care ! A thousand gold necchuU

Are on the head, alive or dead.
Of the outlaw Vascolo Sevrini I **

Half loth alike to leave or linger.
In burst the slaves dl Alien Law—
O mefnllest of sichts to see ! '
ICote stands yon trembler, but his finger
Points to the bkN)d-b^bbled straw, \

That Uashes for his ptffidy. ^

m-ftaned Seniai, woe for tiiee I

APPENDIX.

God be thj stay, thon Doomed One^ tlioa I
Strong hands and many are on thee now^
Through the long gorge of that steep nJley
They drag thee np Mount Bruno's brow ;
And thy best bravery little skills I
O t stood'st thou on Calabria's hills.
With naught beside thine own good sword.

With nothing save the soul that slumban
Within thee now, to quell this horde S—

But, bleeding— bound— o'erbome by
Thy day b by to strike and rally I
111 on fidlest by the hands of cravens

Rock-hardened against all renxMie ;
And Mom's red lays shall see the ravens

Fleshing their foul beaks in thy corse 1

But Heaven and Earth are hushed onoe
Young Giambattista's eyes are bent

In fearful glances on the floor.

But little weeneth he or weeteth

Of the deep cry his land repeateth
In million tones of one lament.

Nought pondereth he of wars of yore,

Of battling Ghibelline and Guelph,
And broken fights and trampled lands.
And Gallic swords and Teuton diains-«
His eye but marks yon dark-red stains.

Those red stains now bum on himself,
And in his heart, and on his hands 1

But sky and sea once more are still.

The duskier shades of Eventide
Are gathering round Mount Bruno's hilL
The boy starts up, as from a dream ;

He hears a low, quick sound ouuide.
Wrs it the running valley-stream ?
No 1 'twas his father's foot that trod.

Alas I poor, nerveless youth ! denied
The kindling fire that fires thy race
Dost thou not weep, and pray thy God

That Earth might ope' its depths, and
Thee from that outraged father's fiice ?

The eye is dark, the cheek is hollow
To-night, of Gasparo Bandollo ;
And his high brow shows worn and palc-^
Slight signs all of the inward strife

Of the soul's lightning, swift to strike
And sure to slay, but flashing never 1
For Man and Earth and Heaven alikc^

Seem for him voicefiil of a tale
That robs him of all rest for ever,
And leaves his own right hand to sever
The last link binding him to life I
Calm even to marble, stem and sad.

He eyes the spots of tell-tale hue^
Then, turning to the cowering lad,

With ttirless lips but asks fim, «« m#f "

•^
^

APPENDIX.

'* Oh, fiuhcr !" cried the boy— thent wild

With terror of lome dreadful doom.
He gmsped for breath—" Speak, wretched diSId 1
9Vkc sought my asylum, and from wHmm f *
•• O God 1 Semni I *•— '• From? "—••The Sbiiri."—
* The fogithre was wounded, weary ?"
** O fiOher 1 I— this dreaiy room—"

*' And thou betrayedst him ? "— " O Heairen 1 **— »

** And thou betrayedst him ? "— ** I— only "—

*' And thou betrayedst him ? "— " O I hew m^
VLy &ther ! 1 watch here so lonely
All dar, and feel, Oh I so bereaven,

With not a sight or sound to cheer me!

My mind — ^my — but I only pointed—
I spike not 1 — And with such disjointed 1 1

And feeble phrases, the poor youtfaC { •

Pb%rerles8 to gloss the ghastly truth, I ;

Sank on his knees with shridcs and tean I ^

Before the author of his years.

KjAJU? What throes his breast might itifl* 1 1

Were hiddsn as beneath a pall, I !

He merely turned him to tne wall, I r

And with closed eyes took down his rifle.
« Go forth, bof !**—*' Father! father! spurel**—

*' Go forth, boy 1 go ! Now kneel in prayer 1**

<* My God !.mv lather I " •' Ay, boy, rigkt 1
Hast now none other ! " — There is light
Enough still for a deed of blood.
Stem man, whose sense of nationhood
So Tanquishes thy love paternal—
And wilt thou, then, pollute this Temal
And rirgin sod with gore even now.
And a son's core? what answerest thou ?
"Kneel down ! *' A^, he wUl kneel, and fidlt

Will kneel, and Call to nse no more ;
But not by thee shall thus be sped
The spirit of yon trembling thrall !

Diost thou dream no«ight of this before?
Fate slayeth him. Thy child is dead 1

The chiM is dead of old Bandolfo^
And he, the sire, hath scarce to follow
Ha o&pring to the last dark barrow.
So much halh griefs long-rankling arrow
Forestalled for him that doom of Death
Which takes from sufieriug nought save bieatli-*
And nief that speaks, albeit untold.
And ures, where all seems dead and cold*
And finds no refoge in the Past,
And sees the Future overcast
With broader gloom than even the Present
Better that thou, unhappr peasant,
Hadst died in youth, and made no sigiv
Nor dicaat life's Day must have an Bvtn.

Better thy cfafld*fl fete had been thin«—

The best lot after alll for Heaven
Itat CMitk for nch weikling aooli^—

APPENDIX. m

Downwards in power the wide flood roOt

Whose thnnder-waves wake ever mon

The cavemed soul of each £u shore.
But when the midnight storm wind sweeps
In wrath abore its broken deeps»

What heart bat ponders darkly over

The mvriad wrecks those waters cover?
It is the lonely brook alone
That winds its way with masic*k tone

Bv orange bower and lily-blossomt 1

Ana sinks mto the parent wave |

Mot as worn Age into its grave.

But as pore Oiildhood on God's boeoaw

EPITAPH ON LEEH REWAAN.

[Thisy like the following short pieces, are pretended tniilittions km
Ottonan and other poets.]

Rests within this lonely maosoleamy

After life's distractions and fiuicttey
Leeh Rewaan, a man to hear and see whom

Monks and Meems journeyed many a Icagoni

Yet not Leeh Rewaan himselC but raflicr
Leeh Rewaan's worn-out and cast-off dieai^

He, the man, dweUs with his Heavenly Father
In a land of light and loveliness.

Shah of Song he was, and fond of laughter.
Sweet Sharaab * and silver-span^Ied shawls.

Stranger! mayest thou quaff with him hereafter
Lifers red wine in Eden's palace-halls I

ADVICE.

TVvnrerse not the world for lore I the sternest
But the surest teacher is the heart

Studying that and that alone, thou leamest
Best and soonest whence and what thoa art

TinUt not travel, 'tis which gives us ready
Speech, experience, prudence, tact and wit*

Far more lignt the lamp that bideth steady
Than the wandering lantern doth emit.

Moor, Chinese, Egyptian, Russian, Roman,
Tread one common downhill path of doom t

Everywhere Uie names are Man and Woman,
Everywhere the old sad sins find rp^m,

iTvi/ angels tempt us in all places.

What but sands or snows hath Earth to giv«?
Dream not, friend, of deserts and oKscs,

But look inwards and begin to Hm.

* Shrub or Sherbet

APPENDIX.

PHILOSOPHY.

Mike the round world thy Book of Examidet I
Man and his mind are a study for sages :

He who wonld mount to the firmament tramples
Under his feet the experience of ages.

Lore what thou hast with a willing devotion I
Drink of the stream, if thou meet not the fountain I

Though the best pearls lie low in the ocean,
Gold is at hand in the mines of the mountain.

TTiough Laughter seems, it never is, the antithesis to Tears :

The gayest births of Circumstance or Fancy
But minifter in masquerade to Sovereign Gna, who rears

Hb temple by that moral necromancy
VHiich fuses down to one dark mass all paniops of Life's yean t

And as from even adverse fects Vallanoey
Droved us mere Irish to be Orientals,

Matne makes Grinnning Scfaook turn men out Sentimentals.

RELIC

Slow thfottdi my bosom's veins their last cold Uood is flowing
Above my heart even now I feel the rank grass growing.
Henoe to the Land of Nought I the camvan is starting-
Its bdl already tolls the si^ial of departing.
Rqoioc^ my soul ! Poor bird, thou art at last delivered !
Ttif cage is crumbling fest ; Ite bars will soon be shivered.
FaicwA thou troubled world, where Sin and Crime run riot.
For ShaUbeaoeforthfetts In God'i own House of Quiet 1

Wt MEALY f BKTXM AMD WAUBB, DVBLHr.

D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

Press Opinionf.

The Poet8 of Ireland. A Biographical Dictionary with
Biographical Particulars. T. G. O'Donoghxje, 3 Bedfofd
Row, Aston's Quay, Dublin. In doth, price 3$. 6cL Only
a few copies left.

The Irish Monthly,— ** Vlt, O'Donoghue hts shown amazing dilimoe
and perseverance in gathering together the materials of this very original and
meritorious book. . . . There is hardly a page which does not fiimish much
interesting information that could not be found anywhere else."

Dublin Daily Exfress.^**l\f% O'Donoghue's * Dictionary of Irish
Poets ' is a work be/ore which the reviewer stands lost in wooder---
almost in admiration. . . . Occasionally, not frequently, there is
criticism, and very good criticism too. How one unaided mind, though armed
with unflagging industry, the strength of a horse, the endurance of an 01, and
the most perfect health, and stimulated by the most fervent enthusiasm, should
have executed this work is amazing. Mr. O'Donoghue may be described in
the language once used about Dr. Johnson, as ' a robust genius bom to wrestle
with whole libraries.' For it is quite evident, that the intellectual toil evidcat
here, is but a small visible result of the whole. Below these peaks lie whole
continents of literary industry, and of wide and exact informatioo of the sab*
iect on which he treats. . • • No one can deny that he has execafed this
labour of love in the most brilliant manner. ... It ma]r be safely alleged
that no one knows, or will know, as much about Anglo-Irish literatnre and
Hittraiiurs as Mr. O'Donoghue, who is even better acquainted with our mm
literature than with our poetic. . . • Ho is still a young man, aaa en-
dowed with such abilities and such amazing indostnr, tlut we expect him to
T>roduce some work of a more original character and better ctlcnlatBd to briag
hl4 native intellectiial power into action. We have seen ngMd artidci by "

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

oocuiomlly in the Irish Presi upon ?urkms liteimry fafajecta» tome, indeed, coo*
oefoed with Fiendi litentniey veiy interesting, and written in a bold, clear, and
attnctive style.**

Irish Daifyltubfmdent — ** Mr. ODonoghue has done his work thoroajghl/.

• • • It will DC absolntely necessary to all who write on Irish sab|ects^
and should be of much interest to all conoemed with them. . One
learns so nrach firom his pages, Uiat dictionary though it is, it ii ixCH of iiterest.
Tlie work was waiting to be done^ for tlie poetry of our land is scattered
broadcast, instead of Mins locked up in a gallery of great names. No one
conld have acquitted himsdf better ol the task than Blr O'Donoghae. . • •
He has done a work of true patriotism."

NoHmuU Prus. — " No librarian, in or out of Ireland, knows more about
Irish bibliography than he. Yet his knowledge is all his own ; self-trained,
voder inspiration of a lore for Ireland and her workers, his studies have taken
their own bent, and, in Irish literature, have reached a rare completeness.

• • Mr. O'Dono^ue's work has a distinct historical value, apart from
its litenuj interest. • . . The author is a mine of information on tnese sub-
jects. His book is unique ; ... it contains a large amount of fresh in-
ibrmation which it must have cost immense pains to collect . . •
Meantime, he has accomplished—almost without help— for Irish literature,
a work which it was a reproach to leave undooe."

TkM Lyceum. — ** We offer a hearty welcome to Mr. 0*Donoghne's work.
He deserves all credit for the patriotic feelings which prompted the under*
takisf, and for the indnstiy ana painstaking which have earned it to success.

• • • Nobody is better qualified to give this mformation than Mr. 01>onoghne,
whose knowledge of Irish writers and their works is really marvellous. In
cfiering to the public this compendk>us result of his researches, he has laid
voder deep dbligatioo his lUlow-conntrymen and all who are interested in our
natkioal hteratnre.*'

7%g iffsalnum.—*' Seems to be a very laborious piece of work very
ttosoogfaly executed. . . . It b an interesting undertakii^, and the first
atep towards an Irish literary biompbical dictionary." SieomdNotui. — ** Tbis
is a praiseworthr enterprise. lu chief fiuilt is on the right side." Tkird
IitAa4 — ^" A fidtuul patriotic bit of work, and, if it be mostly its own reward^
tiie reward will still not be wanting."

Tk» Uhrary Rtukm.^-'^ Mr. David J. (VDonosfaue commands the thanks
of an students of literatnre and bibliograirfiy, and especially of students of

DmUf CirvMJrJSK*— " The materials must have been accumulated at the cost
of fmmrnse laboor and with great industry. . . • (His) labours in Irish
biUiqgiaplqraio bearii^ fruit in his remarkable *"' '* **

VmUti JnNmi i ** A work of qoite national interest and importance
• . Most prove an invaluable book of reference, not alone to students of
Iridi fitemtarc^ but almost equally so to students of Irish history and biography.
Mr. D. T. (yOooog^ne is not a man to scamp work ; and, to carry out his
noject, he had to set himself grimly to an exhaustive study of the periodical
litefatui o of the eentnry. It is not everybodv who can undersUnd what
tUa oieant, but perhaps thoae who have read how Napoleon got over the
A^ aay cooce i ve him ooe man waded through the magaiines of a hundred
* JafwoifA^toSi—** Owing to the pressure of other matters on our spsca
' Uhdaj deal in any general or oomprdiensive manner with this most
landkaned conrnflatioiL . . . Some people seem to be under
thai this dktwMiy b a flMit diy-aa-dusi affiur for tht itydcBtt

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUB.

the historiaiii and the man of letters. Bnt there never was a greater flair
apprehension. The book is as readable from beginning to end as a dote-
▼olnme novel . . • There is no such panorama of genius in Irish Ulm>
ture, and even from the point of view of wnat the average man caUs 'good
reading,' we should advise a look through Mr. ODoopgnoe's book. • . •
WewUl make bold to say that this Dictiooarjr of Irish FOets is a work whkk
no educated Irishman can afford to confess himself unacquainted —^*^ **

CaiMic riMMj.— "This book meeU a want hitherto nnsnpplied, and fib
a gap in Irish biographical literature. ... It b well to Id tbe litccsiy
world, and all who Uke an interest in it, see at a glance what a large sImm
Irish brains and Irish pens have had in building up JEnglish litesatare. Mr.
O'Donoghue's book will be highlv valued." TkS^Natiu.'^** Mr. O'Dcoo^
has £urly earned the title of the historian of 'The Land of Song.' • • .
(He) has struck a rich vein of literature."

7X# 5/ar.— " Ackcowledged by the Irish Press to be the most industrioM
worker in the hitherto neglected fiield of Irish literature."

Irish r/iPMr.— "The work will be a valuable additkm to the shdvcs ofdK
Irish library."

Cork Niraid,— "One of the best oontributkms to Irish literature of kter
years is this work. ... It b a comprehensive one, and should fiad s
place in every Irishman's library."

Cork Exammtr* — " Bfr. O'Dooo^hue needs no introduction to the biik
public. Hb contributions to Irish biographical and bibliographical Uterahne
nave marked him out as a sealous worker m Uiose important fields, and he hss
written no article in which keen sympathy and deep research are not pRxaiiMa!
characteristics. Thb work fulfib an aspiration which must have often escaped
those who were desirous of seeing Irun biographical literature a more pmct
record. "

Cork Historical and ArtkaologicaiJoumaL — ** A monument of loving laboor

and painstaking research."

F. Frankfort Moore in Bil/ast News'lMter,^"* The result of the hLboun of
the compiler b a marvel of industry and research. In no biographiaJ
dictionary have we noticed such absolute freedom from inaccuracy, upoo
every psi^ some curious and recondite information b fi|iven regarding the poets
and their productions. The work b certain to renuun unique, for no one b
likely to spend a lifetime in those researches in which Mr. O'Doooghoe seems
to have had unlimited enthusiasm."

Universi,—** ' The Poets of Ireland ' will prove of high utility to the
student" . . . Socond Noiico.—*^ We have read it wim intense interest
.... It b quite a monumental storehouse of accurate ioformation, and
should find a welcome comer in every Irish student's library." TUri
Notici, — '* Altogether thb work ii oonsdentions and exhaustive— « perfiset
marvel of painstaking assiduity."

Weikly Frtinum, — " Mr. 0*Donoghue has rendered most valuable service
to Irish Uterature in the compilation of thb most useful and timely work.
. . . The author gives evidence of havin^gone to Uie greatest trouble to
produce a meritorious and successful work. That he has reached the end ia
view will be patent to those who read hb book, and we would reoommead
eyeiTone interested in Irish literature to get it and give it a deserving pUce in
hb Ubrary. . . . Hb work must remain as a standard publicatioii, vniqafr
He b deserving of all honour and praise lor hb snoooflsfid and
learned efibrt"

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

Bt^asi M^ntmi Newn Hn a leader). — *' Mr. (VDonoghne is well qualified
lor the task he has undertaken, and we shall be surprised if the new work
pnyre to be other than an undoubted success." Suwii Noiie$, — " Must be of
the utmost serrice to the world at large and to Irishmen in a very spedal
degree; . • • Personal researdi and a constant reference to original
Kinicei have enabled him to classify and arrange with unerring fidelity, and
tiie result justifies us in assuming that it will be worthy both of our gifted
ypuu^ oountrypum and of the memories inspired by the poetry of North and
South, East and West We bespeak ior ' The Poets of Ireland' a cordial

Nmrik WtsUrm ClfVff^i^ (St Paul's, Minnesota^'* *The Poets of Ireland'
viD get warm welcome firom the lovers of Irish genius at home and abroad."

Mmtnal Thte Witmss.'^** Mr. (VDonoghue has done a noble work \ he
has rendered an niestimable service to the cause of Irish literature, and he
has placed eveiy lover of Celtic poetry under an undying obligation to him.
• . • It ii indispensable to tne Irish student, the writer, the lecturer,
the lover of Irish song and poetry, and the admirer of Irish geninsb • .

daeaff CHiaem (in a leader). — " A colossal work, which is sure to fill a long-
ttt void in Irish litemtnre. . . . It is a compilation that must have a profound
interest, not only for the Irish scholar and iittiratiur, but also for the Irish
piblic at laige. . . . Mr. CyDonoghue himself deserves the sincere and
hearty congratulations of Irishmen for the success with which he has acoom-
flished this great literary enterprise." Third Naiu,^** BIr. O'Donoghue has
iiglitly earned a place in the van of Irish publicists."

Irish CaihoHc.^^ It is br no means an easy matter to do ample justice to
ih a work ; beyond doubt it is all but impossible to fitly commend the
tirdcn industry and marvellous patience of research which have enabled the
author to bring together and put into shape the strange wealth of material—
i u if i o i tant , oeculiar, (juaint, ud curious — ^which fills us pages. ... At
a record oi Irish wnters and their achievements it' is invaluable. It leads
«i to some quaint literary byeways. There is no writer who will foil to find
both quaint sjid interesting lore in hb psges." Stcond Noiice.'^" To certain
UtCEiry workers the marshalled array of (acts within it will be the means of
aaving days of toil and trouble. It is the key to a hundred matters that we all
to have at hand; in fiict, it is Irish literary research made easy."

Thi Irish Tiochiramd Irish EdtuationaiJ&umal,^*' Mr. O'Donoghue has
camcd the gratitude of Iridimen in all parts of the world for the courage he has
ahowB in undertaking such a labour A love, and for the manner in which he
has performed it. ... To teachers andlit erary men generally Mr.
O^Doooghuc^s work will be invaluable tor reference."

Mdhamrm itfAiMsiSc— "It is literally crunmed with information not easily
acBfiaWf. . . • A colossal enterprise. . • . • It will certainly serve
at a staadaid work of reference."

Ammts ^ Otsr Ltdy €f th§ 5kwrtt/ ZTavf (New York>— " It certainlv fills
a np hi uish biographical literature. . . . Persons who have read Mr.
O'Dono^hac'i able pmn on Irish literary subjects in the N^tiamal Prtss
no asffnaaoe of Ui co mp etency to ocal inth< hb present task In a

•

MimMtitma Ck«ft^—" He has aooomplbbed hb task with masteriy ability. *
WecBBDoC too stroo^ fi^n-'T'*^ the faidustry and energy which the author
dbpbfid ia eoHVahV hb vorib • . • Whea we coosidflr the scant

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

materialji whidi existed for compiling the work, we CAnnoC tpak too wvaly
oftheenthor."

Gia^§w Oksirver* — "No work has been more needed by Irish leidci^
• • . and spttking with the experience of one who has devoted more tha
twenty years to the study of Irish literature in all its phases, I hate 09
hesitation b saying that there b no one liTiog so competent for the tvk
which he has nndertaken as is Mr. O'Donoghne. He has boandlest endnsHB
for hb subject ; his fiiculty for taking pains, and for nnwearring icscard^ h
simply inaediUe; and hb knowledge of Irish writers and their works vm*
equalled in the present^ and has not, I belie?e^ been ever exceeded,"

DuhKn Figar0,^**ShaiM be in the hands of all who take an interot b
Ireland. The work b most copious, and evinces a vast aoKmnt of csie nd
reseurch.**

Swtdqv S$m,'-^**A most painstaking and exhaustive work, for whidi die
author will earn the thanks of ail who take an interest in Irish literatve.''

GMi.-^" Hb literary caree r s o £u as it has gone— has been an
tionally brilliant one.*'

Caik^Uc Unum ami Tiwus (BuffiUo, N.Y.).— '< Mr. (yDonQg^ has pro-
duced a work which b at once a tribute to hb country and a mcwMmsny to
himself • • • Itbaperfectgold-mineofinformatioii for literary

Deny /oumal.'^*^ The painstaking literarv toil evidenced ia the prod a c ti ci
of such an elaborate, yet accurate, comf^tion b remarkable, and worthy of
the greatest praise. • . • Mr. O'Donoghne deserves well of hb

men.'

7^ Zo^.— " Mr. 0*Donogfaue has done hb work with coospicnoos esrs
and ability, and the amount ofiDforroation that he has gathered firom aU parti
of the world b at once an example of unparalleled industry and untiring e&efgy."

Academy, — "We congratubte Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue on having completed
hb Biographical Dictionary of the 'Poets of IrelancL' . . . Marvellous in-
dustry ana ingenuity, too, has been vpent in identifying the authorships of
so much fugitive verse, and in discovering the detaib of obscure '^~^ "

United Ireland ( Third Notiee), — "We have no hesitation ia saving again,
even in a more pronounced way than before, that thb b one of the greatest
contributions to Irish literature of our generation. • . • Ireland owes a bi^
big debt of gratitude to Mr. O'Donognue."

Boston niot.^** An important work, . . . will be warmly wdconcd in
many an Irish home." Second Notice, — "To every Irishman proud of hb
country's genius, thb book should be a source of gratificatioo. To the
student of Irish literature, as well as to literary men of all classes, it ahould
be indbpensable."

Evening TeUgrafk (Dublin).—'^ In view of the enormous difficoltiet whtdi
the author bad to face, he b marvellousl]r accurate." TUhi N^Hu. — *'As
a book of reference, thb book b unique in its own qphere. ... It r e quir ed
extraordinary perseverance and mat steadfJMtness of purpose to punne so
trying a Ubour as this, without fiJtering to the end ; and b^ indeed BMt be
the reward if it b commensurate to the work."

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

Thm Humour of Ireland. Edited by D. j.

ODoNOGHXTS. With Forty lUustiatioiit by Ouvkr Paqui.
Ootb, gQt, 31. 6d«, pott free.

JktOy CXrwiJeZb— ^Doet aU that nidi a ^unt potiibiy oould do for the
gouBS with which it papplcti**

SMti Mmmitfi T4kirapk,r^**'WSl form a most acceptable Iriih gift-

Sftakir^^^lX b a moet oootdentioailyt exhanstlTely, excellently corn-
book ; the editor could not have done his work better, that it qoite
The lelection is eridently a most representative one."

N§Hk British DmOf MaiL — ** In none of the oievioos volnmes do we
find sodi rich* racj* spootaneoos fon. • . • Mr. u'Donoghue is to be con-
patalated npon the socoem with which he has gathered a collection so widelT
lepicsentative and so racy of the soiL . • • The introduction is weU
worth reading."

IriA DmOy IndepimdimL^*'CtiXMan\j the most representative oompiUtion
cf Irish bmnoiir that has yet appeared. . . • There is no reason that we
ihookl not derive as much enjoyment as is possible from our past and present
Iw u n o ii s t^ and one of the beit and readiest methods of doing so is to obtain
end read Mr. O'Dooo^ne's fine collection. • . . Capitally written intro-

Aberditn Fru Pnss. — '' Mr. O'Donoghne has traversed a wide field in
iidi of his materish, and has succeeded m producing a very mirth-p|rovoking
book. • • • Would prove an admirable companion in weary railway joumejrst
and in sodal circles it should help to fill the long winter evenings with glee.
It gyves a better glimpse into the brighter side of Irish character and the
iM u noto us element in Irish literature Aan dozens of ordinary books could

tMui frglnuL^" Ont of the best things in the volume b Mr. 0*I>on-
ocfane's own introduction. It treats of the question of Irish humour, not
•me with sense and judgment, but with very |[reat learning. . . . The book

• . . b a very considerable contribution to Irish literature, and I can hardlv
dunk that any Irishman who once gets possession of it will willingly allow it
to stsqr from hb book-shelves."

71# 53rar.—'* Nothing could be more suggestive of our debt to Ireland in
fbm mj of humorous literature than a gUmce down the table of contents.

• . . Thb delicious medley of laughing bncv. ... An editor with such
BWterial r eso ur ce s to draw upon could hardly bil to produce an amusing
book ; bat the volume for which Mr. O^Dono^ue b responsible b more than
that A wide knowledge of Irish literature in all its forms, and a keen
•ppredatioQ of what b most pecoliarly Irish therein, has enabled Mr.
OlXsmghne lo present to us the most representative selection of witty
flfeoffies^ parodies, vcncs, and ana that has ever been published. It b a booK
to sevel m and roar over."

71# 5bMb— " It most be readily grsnted that Mr. ODonoghue knows every
iodi of hb ground. . • . Fkom the days of fireside lore and nroverb Mr.
OTkma^xm comes by easv stages. In thb ssQge oi diangeml centsiieo
VAl hamow taken omiiy ffig^ts and tnas."

71s i6rsri^|;r-^^y a kog wqrtho best of the tflrifli to whkh U beknci.*

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

MatukisUr CWrMr.— ** Undoabtedly, this b the best irolone tlut htt»
frr appeared in the Libraiy of Hmnour. Perhaps the nbject may daim toae
U the merit, tmt still more b doe to skill displajed in the lelectioa, aad k
may safely be said that if all the eood Irish stories are not here preKOt, mm
bat the good ones find a plaee. Mr. CyDonoghve b eridcntly a master ef lii
mbiect Hb introdnctian b an able piece of critidsm."*

ManehMsUr Ctarim.^''A rich and rare coUectioo of tbe tpdfjbOf irid*
lectoal wantonness of Hibenia.*'

Hortkim ffii^.— "The book b indicatiTe of a careful and happy choiet of

MamhisUr GtuardiaH,''^ Mr. ODonoglrae's preparatorr i
written, and not uacriticaL • . . We have Ibond the book mr mosercadsUi
tl&an any other of the series, and it b worth possessing as a repertory of i
good things which* though known, are only to be mad ia widely — "
places."

Skd/fUU Daify Til^nr^k.-'** A very enjoyable work to pick «p at aiy
time to brighten a dull hour, or to haTe by one's skle when a Mik wtm
•ending home feathered with airy wit"

B0«JksiiUr,'^*'Tht seeker for Irish hnmoor will find hcse ■nficiwr Is
compensate him for the search.**

Belfast lUwf'Leitir.'-^* The ▼dome before vs will show how wdl worf^
oar country b of the reputation she has acquired."

5isr/ri.— '*The selection b the best that has appeared in the series."

Black and Wkite,-^** Mr. O'Donoghue may be praised for the way he bai
carried out his task. . . . Hb selections show Tery considerable dbcrinioa*
tion and a just sense of what constitutes real humour, very ciscntisl to ths
editor of sucn a work. . . • It b a splendid gallery."

CalholU Tiftus,^^** Lovers of Irish pleasantry and livelT fimcy, of fan aad
frolic, satire and cynicbm, quip and airy proverb, will thank Blr. O'Dooog^ae
for careful and patient bbour, whose result b thb volmne."

Saturday Biview. — " To say that thb book of Irish hnmoor b the best of
the series b not to say much for its equality. With extracts from Ma|pba,
Lover, Carleton, Lever, and other genume products of the soil^ Irish hnmosr
makes a goodly show.*'

Scotsman, — " A book well representative of its subject, and ddightfid to
dip into here and there at odd moments."

sors."

7^ JVarid,-^'* A more satisfactory compilation than any of its p tede ce s-

PtMishif's Circular. — "The light-hearted, fun-loving Irish people srs
represented in Englbh literature by a number of notable wiu and humoorists.
. • • There b much here that b full of wit and humour, and certain of
giving enjoyment to all who in any way care for literaiy fun."

Hew Ag9,~^** The ' Humour of Ireland,' selectedby Mr. D. J. 0*DoiiQghac^
b well done. He has shown some of that marvelloos indortiy which went
to the compilation of hb * Dictionair of Irish Poets.* • • . With poetry
and prose, song and story, proverbial wisdom aad joOy km^ttery *T1m
Humoar of Ireland ' makes a good show."

7 8

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

CgrkSiraU, — 'Ajudicioiis,represenUtiTe collection of the written humour
•flidaiML • . • The book i» an admiimble coiitribatSoo to Iriih litcratnic**

V-** From Goldsmitli to Benuod Shaw, from Dean Swift
ID Tom Moofc^ Camiiiig to Leianiiy Sterne to Lover and Lever, the literaiy
hat provided a wooderM eBtertainment'*

Cwe irA fc f Orwdclb— ^ExoeUcnt telectkiL • • • SpedaUy well

Msk ATnar.— "Ita veiy title is in itself allnring — < The Humoor of

id*— what entrancing visions, gay, surprising wUd, and various, do not

magic words call to life, as at the wave of a fairy wand I • . •

"k aU the rojAering fen and frdie, the side-splittins pranks, and hair*

adventue^ the flashing mtiie, the cutting irony, the thousand ouaint

rioci, conceits and comicalities, the laughter, lore^ jibing, fignting,

^ sporting, the drinking, raking, drollery, and grotesqneness— >

^■Migii it all nms the multitudinous subdued half-tones and tmts, darkling in
Ac Ti**^***»^ as with the, light of tears, those tremulous touches of tenderness,
iMim Cram the core of a living heart, Uiose delightlul thrills of human feelins.
• • « that are ever appropriate and ever harmonious, because fresh, natural,
and tnsL • • • The diffiailt task of selection could not have been entrusted
to abler hands. • • • The selections are all hi^ily characteristic and in
pcdect tastCb"

TXf frisk Dmfy ImdepnuliHt (second notioe>— ** Mr. O'Donoghue has
O v erly varied hb contents and has given us a frmh and diverting book. He
coBtoibtttes an excellent prefitce, and has given us a book of oonsideratioQ
a km competent editor might have made a collection of bufibnerie^**

C»Hk £s&miii4r,'-'"The selection is Terr large and evidences a wonderful
depth of research on the part of Mr. Ol)onoghue, than whom there are
few in Ireknd better equipped for the task. • • • We willingly cede to
llSi 0*Donoghae our admiration.'*

SL Jmmtf BtidgH.'^^ We are duly grateful for the reminder which we
Iwvn in the present volume • • • that some of the raciest things in our
B lf tTi^ir f were the work of Irishmen. Here we renew acquaintance with
lihe hreesy pages of Lever, lau|^ anew over the audacious fun of Lover, and
yet once more make agreeable acquaintance with the grim satire of Swift ;
^rUle ever delightful Ohver Goklsmith opens his large good-natured heart to
«iinn wqr whidi appeals as strongly as of yore to our interest*

Limrp9$i Ponm pim ^ — "A capital volume . • • Tery charming, and
embraces selections from all the writers from the early Celtic days down to
dbe present time.**

5k. Aa/r^-^'Thc selections are judidouily made.'*

5ArfUtfiM!^«Md6M/.--<* Swift, Steele, Lever, Lover, Ljrsaffht, Maginn,
~ a host of others are represented in these pages, which oubble over with

CUluu9 C^uttt^^^ Am adflsinble coIIbcIIoo of humorous tslfs, poems*

^^ igyiiafc-^- A tieaiufi to lovewol mirth and bright sayings.*

Cif>rffr ^Mm md Timm QMMoK— '* A most enteitafaii^ book,*

WORKS BY IX ;. O'DONOGHUE.

•

LiUrary IP#WU1— "The editor liai not confined himfelftonnjoot pvti-
caUr line; «ad homoor or wit is the one pestport to hit ne^ • • .
Mr. O1>onoh^hne is to be eongimtnUted on nis sabject and his hendHiy cf
it^ a task wmch by the venr prolttsion of possible material most have IbvqM

a mat dad of hard editorial labour, in aoidition to the ' — ' .*- i^.-

cntical fiicoltics and nice •--• • "

AWv /f«^bfM#^#p^«.— **The woik if exhaustive to htffti with,
tive in the second place, and in the third, takes something like a csidd
historical sarrer or nrd's eye view of Irish humoorists from ttit eaifiotdM
• • • The Younae is a happy, a dieering, a meny one. • • • A wsskk
of gennindy Irish pages to wander Ofcr, and amiiy measmes of
to qnaC • • • A special word most be said far hb introdoctioo.
Is the neatest and most snsgestiTe piece of writing we hav« yet had from
Pursoing and widening £e cooises he has here taken, ha eonld gbe m a
little book, or, faideed, a big one, which would be a imy wdcoms addUoi
to Irish criticism and Irish researdi.*

iMprpfiitf'/Vf/.—'' There Is ample proof • • • la the pre
that Ireland can iiinish the best soft ofUteniture of thb partioBiar klad.

The Llfi» of William Carletoiip IndoiBog aa

Unfinished Autobiography, l^th a ContinnatioD to Ini
Death. By D. J. O'Donoghus. Two Volt. 8vo, Goth,
with two Portraits. Published at 25s.

W. B. Yeats in Bookman. — ** The autobiography, the discovery of which
we owe to iu editor, Mr. O'Donojghue, does not come bevond Carletoo^ yoath
and early manhood. The rest ot his life is told, and told admirably, by Mr.
O'DoDoghue. . . . The author of the ' Traits and Stories ' was not aa
artist, but he was what only a few men have ever been, or can ever bc^ the
creator of a new imaginative world, the demiurge of a new tradidoQ.**

Athenaum, — ^^This autobiogradby should rekindle interest (in Cai*eton);
it is delightful readixig. . . . The biography is, hap{>ily, content to depkt
him as he was— a gitted Celtic peasant, lull of vivadty* ov er flow in g with
affection, but lacking in the steadier and sterner virtues,**

LUtrary fT^Zt/.— " Carleton's gift of shrewd observation, his im p ression*
ableness, the minute accuracy wiui which he records his impressMMS^ his
intimacy with the life he details, make him one of the most fertile and
inimitable of story-tellers. • • • His autobiographv is as strange a bit of
writing as any he has given us. • • • Mr. CDonoghue's work is admimhly
done, m that he presents us with a real biography, not a fictitious one.*

DaHy CkroHicU,^**To Mr. 01>onoghue, then, are doe oor beartiat
thanks for this most thorough, keen, and fasdnating book, and if he coold
complete his benefactions uj giving us an edition of Carleton*s best worio^
whioi are at present partly unprocurable, Carleton, hot-tempered and ' difi-
cult ' as he was, would have no grievance lA to perturb htt spiritt • ■• •
The *Traits and Stories* is, without donU or qncatioQ, vmaog the gRfft
books of the century.**

WORKS BY D. J. O'DONOGHUE.

^SNdMir.— **Tb€ wofk b highly crediUble to the writer't criticil judg-
He If one of the mott impartial of biographen. It would be a
daj far Gailetoo's fiuae if a popular editioo of hit best tales were to
the inMor, and in Mmie c«se% offiensiTe stories which now hamper

/WSrAhM;— ''la maiij ways, if not fai all, WnUam Carleton was the
at Irish writer who ever spoke the Saioo speech. It may thereibre
itnnge that morethan a qoarter of a oentoir shoold have elapsed since
lb dialh without anr attempt having been made to write his life. Mr«
OTDoMghae^ care&l work sappties, we think* an adequate eiplanation.
• •• He has lakl vs aU wider a hesvy obligatioo.''

UMAf 5lMt^— ** How he drifted to literature, how he fiued, how he
tifi— |A*^ here and failed there^ how he fretted, stormed, Uughed, and
qnifffTlnl to the end. If r. CyDonoghne tells in a most reliable volume.
• • . Heb fidl of enthusiasm for the portion that was great and true in hb
tnljeelfs work. • • . He knovrs hb theme and hb ground, and he will
^CB^F ^P ^ nany to a proper understanding of Carleton.*'

IHsk Tima,^* A book which will be welcomed by aU classes of the
Udi public^ and wiU, in particular, be treasured by those who remember
in Us best days the author of ' Traits and Stories,' 'Valentine M'Qutchy/
•no Blade Plophet,' etc.**

7IuM9>— " The story of thb peasant lad, the youngest of fourteen children,
who was in the end enabled to do justice to hb real literaiy gift, and to
write stories of lUs peasant brethren, wliich were read all over the world, b
— of unusual interest."

Setismam, — "The biographer has done fhb work) with a freedom and
£scriminatioo which are not always apparent in such works."

CUt^gow SeraltL^^Ht (the biographer) has enriched the literature of
Irdaad with a work which b as racy of the soil as ' Valentine M'Clutchy '
itadt Hb own part of the work — the biographical continuation, which fills
iKe second volume- has been done with thoroughness, and with a dear
critied diaoerameat wfaidi avoids dike the hut AimtUUma and the superior

Fngmmis JaumaL'^^ Mr. 0*Ooooghue deserves the thanks of dl lovers
•f Irish Uteiature both for hb own share in thb remarkable work, and
onecially for giving to the world the fragment of Garleton's autobiogniphy
wmdi Mrms its first volume. • • . It b a wonderfol lifo«picture— vivid
aynd fosodd as any of its author's fiction. Mr. O'Donoghue's portkm of the
work b admirably done, represents a vast ded of conscientious labour wortlqr
«€ aU pidse^ and supplies a missnig chapter of Irish biography. . • •' The
b foil of liteimiy interest."

Irish DttUf Imd^imimt.^^ It b worthy the gratitude and deserves the
■qipoft it b sure to secure.

Jpisk Wmkfy iniiptmdemi^* QuXdbofah own narrative b worthy of the
pen whUtk gave us the ' Traits and Stories. It b vivid, movingp and carries
us with it. • • • We don't intend here to attempt anything like a
cdddsm of Garleton's wo rks w e are heartily in accord with Mr. O'Donoghua
• • • No one b mote competent to the task (of editing Carletoo) than
Mr. IX J. O^Doaofl^nc We fed we can give him unstinted pidse wt the
*n TTt t»T»> hflwif ^cffff*r4if>»^ thb ' i« ^ fff Ca rittfln.' "

WORKS OF D. J, O'DONOGHUE.

Sp$akir.'^**Mt. O^otioAat hms rendered a splendid terTiee to Irisk
litemmre by difoorering and pubUshing Carleton't nnfiniihed antobiogmphy.
. He ^»^^ an admirable bio^pber. His capedty for taking puis
is monnmenuL . . . A big, towenng, gloomy, satimdne figwe, hmoiws
with the humour which Is akin to tears; a renins of eztraoRlmary matf
and richness, a personality over which the stadent of hnnan aatore wiD poR
ttfdnted-Hdl these are contained within the 'life of Car k t o n. * The iatCRit
b so great that one detoiirs the pages from first to last. Mr. O'Oonoglhn^
with Qkrleton's own sssistsnrr, has made vs a book which oaglht to liiFe.*

F^niMh Jfndnp,—''' Mr. O'Douog^e has rendered a service to Iridi
literature by this work."

Uedt Mtrtufy. — ''Mr. 01>onoghae has performed hb work
diligence and success. Both the autobiography and the second
wmch is written bw Mr. O'Donoghue, will be read with much interest. . . .
Mr. O'Donofi^ue's biographjr is one of the most valuable and important
worics on Irish literature that has been published lor some time.**

/Uweastle Daaj^ Liodtr.--'" Now that the story of William Garleton*s fife
has been told, it has been told so fully and interestingbr that the narrative

•itself will rank as literature. A curious hiatus in literary history is adminblj
bridged over by the two volumes before us. • • . His biography b at
once lively and most painful reading. It is, however, one of books that ssake

■ themselves read. We are mtefiil to Mr. O'Donoghue. He has done hb
work thoroughly, on the whole sympathetically, and in such a way as mnt
give Carleton and hb works a quite new interest**

UmUd fnloitd,^'* That b not a judicious student of Irish life, or Irbh
hbtory, or Irish literature, who will not feel deeply grateful to Mr. D. J.
O'Donoghue for these two volumes. The aotobiogra^y b a document of
the most intense interest, merely as a contribution to the history of humanity ;
as a contribution to the literature of Ireland, it b almost without a rivaL . . .
Mr. O'Donoghue has done hU work well, as he always does. There b no
more careful or pdnstaking writer on Iri^ subjects. ... He bu pro-
duced a most readable, interesting, and impartial volumct which every stndent
of Irish literature will value and thank him for."

Ahv Ireland Heviiw,'^* Vit. O'Donoghue continues the long story of
Carleton through hb literary years, and with characterbtic industry and
energy. . . . Where he essays criticism he says certain things that are so

just and true, tactful and very painstaking.'

Manchester Guardian, — " The autobiography b Irish to the corey fall of
alternations of hope and despair, humour and pathos, crowded with aaeodotes
and characters, many of which readers of Carleton's works will recognise
as old acquaintances. In the second volume Mr. O'Donoghue fimtnwft
Carleton's life, and the task b performed meritoriously. • • , Mr.
O'Donoghue deserves the warmest thanks for reviving the memory of the
greatest of all Irish novelbts."

AWvj^fm/.— "Thb b a book which should be in evoy drculating Ubnry,
which should find a sacred spot amongst the first editions of coUectotiv <Ad
should gain immortality. There b not a dull page from first to last * • .
Mr. O'Sonoghue b a biographer who has not an equal amongst wiilen of
to-day. He writes, sitting in the barkground | whilst OarlctOQ stank
a towering figure."

WORKS BY D. J. O^DONOGHUE.

Mminmi P§si^**yLmStk credit if due to liCr. O'Donoghne'^ ^^^ ^^ ••
wdl as his tactfal trefttment of a difficult theme. He deserrct thuikt for the
Aeooverf of the antofaiogiaphj, the writing of which wu William Cwleton'e
iMt taak, end for the impartiel mamier in which he hae depicted the ktter
portioo of the Iiiih DOfdiat't cheqnerad career."

i^ to^ifrgil^--^The lile-hiitory of this poor IriAnofdirt inth

h i m a nlly , in whidi pathoi^ poetrv and hnmonr. like the Galwaj aalmon,
poiilifcljjoitleooeaMtb^'*

P W<>— "One if glad to find an aoooont of Carleton*f career put into &
pw— «wit and attiaotiTe fhape. • • • The reaolt if a memorial which
wi& aerve to rcacM ita fohject firon the obliYion I7 which it was threatened."

Tirmlts and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.

By William Carlbion. In Four Volames. Edited, with
Introductioii, Notes, and a FuU Glossary, by D. J. (yDoMOO-
flus. l^th two Portraits of Carleton, two Pictures of his
Residences (etched by CrickmoreX and all the Original
ninstiations of ** Phiz.** The Four Vols. Post Free for 15s.

JSoflftflMNL— *' Mr. D. J. ODoDo^ne haa edited (them) with eveiy mark of
can and intereK in hia tabjecL . • • The new ime detervea to be
popelar.'*

/M^iVhptr.— *< We are riad to aee that Mewi. Dent ft Co. have taken
wp the moat typical of Iridi writeta— Carleton. Memn. Dent k Ca have
a hig^ reputation for the neatncm of their reprinta.*

BftTw/aytoe P^f.— '*The work oonld not be p rese nte d in a more en-
Joyable ibnn than Memn. Dent with their nnfidling aitiitic aenae and tore of
good workmamhip, haTO here {iren na.*

Ltidt iMnmvrw— ^Mr. ODonoghnet who edits tUa admirable editk»» saya
JHtlf that Cadeton it Iriih through and through." >

• >

PMuk€^i Ciftmiar^"^ That b room for a reime of Carictoii'a stories^

hmStf Memn. Dent k Ca have recogniaed the dcL We have aeen the

iotvoinneoi what prooaiaea to be a rcal^ charming edition of worlcs that

toolittk known in England. • • • We gyuilj wdcooae tUa new

•«Theever^teli^tfU «Tkait8 and Storiea of the
•' • • • Iff. ODonoghM^ thoodi an aidant admirer* ia

AMUL—^One la glad to aee them (Oie pabUihen) take in hand
Cideton*s gyeat work. • • • The editorial work has bean
by Iff. D. T. <XX>0Mg{bM.*

^ -

r
I

WORKS BY D. J. CDONOGHUK.

' jjUrmry W^U.^^'^t «re gltd to difloover that the hope CAa r eM e d bjr a

f Teriewer in thcM oolmnns in the coane ofa notice of Mr. D. J. (/Doooghnc'i

! Life of WnuOfflcton' has been so early realiied'*

I Bt i^tffftr — " We may hope that their re-introduction to the reading pablie

1 in this new and attractiTe dress, and nnder the guardianship oC Mr. D.J.

* O'Donoghae, may gain for them a new lease of popaUr &voiir, a

whidi the efforts of editor and pablishen entirely deserre."

lUmstraiid Limdon Nims,-^** Mr. O'Donoghae has done his editorial work
well in this new edition, which is beaatifiilly got up."

/U7 JfoX^ ^?^nctf>.--''WiU be welcomed hv a genenUion to wl^
b little more than a name, and to whom htt tuei oi^ght to be as fimiiliar as
Scott's."

UniUd Ir^and,^** It Is not too much to say that sach a pablicatian,

edited by sadi a scholar, is a treat. • . • It is no e xa gge i alioii to say thst

it (the introduction) is the best bit of work Mr. ODonoghne has yet done-*

a sane, well-balanoed, happily e xpr e ss ed, competent, and in many nspfOM

y most enlightened criticism.*'

\ Sahtrd^ RtvUm.-'^ This Is an excellent reprint of a work wMdi can

iiever be superseded, and Is never likely to be forgotten. • • . Garlcton
has no riTsL He isatonoe the prose Bums and the Walter Scott of Irdbml
A new edition of his masterpiece was certainhr needed. Mr. O'Oonoglme hss

I done his work as an editor fciy competcntqr; his introdactico b intcRStipg

and to the point"

• % 9

Atiufumm.'-^* Thb b a really charming editkm of Carieton' tales, . . .
The introduction b just what such an introduction should be— an impartbl yet
kindly summary of the author's gifts, shortcomings, work, and life.'*

Poll Mall Gautte (second notice).—" Carefully edited as it has been by Mr.
D. J. O'Donoghue, it b a wordiy tribute to the Irish novelist, and a dcsarafak
acquiritioo to any library."

(TfAinfiiM.— Messrs. Dent and Co. are to be congratulated on having r»>
published Carleton*s ' Tndts and Stories ' in so handy and pretty a iocm.
• • • There b besides an e x c el l ent introduction by the editor, which slionid
be read."

ASrw York CriHc.'~-^Tht editkm b one that for genend aocuacy and
beauty ofcxccutioa b worthy of all praise."

WORKS BY a J. O^DONOGRUE.

Other Works.

In London (1887). By F. A. Fabt and D. J. ODonoghub.
la d^itj cfaupCcn. (Oatof print.)

lonqtioo of Bamoy Mai^ono (1894). Edited bj J. S. Ciokk

cad F. J. BiGGBi* with Memoir bj D. J. O'Donoghub. ii. and at.

^WPdoroushn« tho MIsor. By Wm. Caklbton (1895), with
I tio d ect b tt by IX J* ODowoGHUi, 31. 6d.

nftinso of Jamoo Flntan Lalor (1896). With Introductioa
byJOBif OHiBAKTyandaMemoirby D.J. CDonoghub. it-andai.

rirti Pootry of tho NInotoonth Oontury (1894). A Lectue
^h B ieie d before the Royal Society of literatme, London: 32 pp»
{PdnledbyR^.L.)

Off I9SOO Irish ArtlotS. From the Earliest timet to the Pteient
Ik^ (To be hidaded hi "Iriih Artists," a Biographical Dictionaiy,
Mjnsfmwtim), is pp. Post btt, i^d.

ProphOti By William Caklbton. lUastrated by J. B.
Tftaa% wkk an Introdnctioii by D. J. CDonoohub. (/h tk$fm$.)

T. G. O'DONOQHUE,

3 Bedford Row, Aston's Quay»

DUBLIN.

I, -

«' :i
/ ■

:lf

PATRICK 6EDDES & COLLEAGUES.

BOB

11l0 WMmrz^rmmn \ A Northern SeasonaL Now complete, in Four
Atftst Spring. Autumn, Summer, Winter. Eadi Pnrt in Kmb otwd
Leather Cover, 5s. net } the Foot Parts, complete in Caic^ aii.

I THE CELTIC LIBRARY.

TH% 8ln«Eater : and other Tales. By Fiona BIacliod. Cloth, 8vo^ 61.

Lyra Ooltlea : An AntholoQr of Celtic Poetry. Edited bj Euzabbth
A. Sharp. Cloth, 8vo, 6t.

Th« Fiddler of Oarna : A Romance. By E&nist Rhys. Ooth,
8vo, 6t.

Th« Washer of th# Ford. By Fiona Maclbod. Qoth, 8to, 61.
ThO Shadomr of Arvor : Breton Legendary Romances. Retold fay

E. WiNGATB RiNDBlU Cloth, 8vo, 6t.

From tho Hills of Dream : Mountain Songs and Island Runes^
By Fiona Macxjkod. Cloth, 8to, 4s. net.

The Poems of Osslan: MacPherson's Translation. Edited and
i re-arranged, with Introductory Note, by WiLUAM Sharp. Qoth, 8vo^ 6a.

i Re-issue of Miss Fiona IVlacleod's Shorter Tales. Re-

arranged from The Sin-Eater and The IVasker of tkd Ford, with added
Tales. In Three Volumes : I. Spiritual Tales; II. BarlMtrio
t Tales; IIL Trac^ic Romances. Bound in Artistic Paper

\ Covers, separately, at 2s. 6d. each net ; or the Three in Box, ys. 6d. net.

Sonffs and Tales of St. Columba and His A^^e. Third

Edition. Containing Contributions by Fiona MaC|JK>d and J. ARTHUR
) Thomson. Large Paper, 4to, 6d. net

Delrdre : The Feis Ceoil Prize Cantata, Dublin, 1897* The' words by
i T. W. RoLLESTON. With an Illustration by Althra Gyues. Large

/ P^per, 4to, IS. net.

PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES,

THE OUTLOOK TOWER, OASTLEHILL,

EDINBURGH.

• 1

This book should be returned to
the Library on or before the last date
stamped below.

A fine is incurred by retaining it
beyond the specified time.

Please return promptly.

H 1346; M 4«

H -nw 1H* ana wfiUnB* o« JaniM ClK

1 iiiliiiiiiiiiH

■ 3 2044 086 849 429 j

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan"

See other formats