Dark has her story been Wet with sad tears; Blest her dear name. Peace comes once more to her, Fame as of yore to her, Each breeze wafts o'er to her Praise and acclaim. TIMOTHY D. SULLIVAN. Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902) belonged to a family remarkable for the development of the poetic faculty in many of its members. He was the third son of Sir Aubrey de Vere, the wellknown author of Julian the Apostate, Mary Tudor, and other dramatic and poetic works, and was born in County Limerick. De Vere was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he came much under the influence of the eminent mathematician and thinker, Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Brought up in a charming part of rural Ireland, and of a contemplative turn, De Vere was early attracted by the poetry of Wordsworth. He subsequently made the acquaintance of the poet, whom he visited at Rydal in 1841. Later he was much interested in theological questions, became the friend of Newman and Manning, and in 1851 joined the Church of Rome. In 1842 appeared De Vere's first work, The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora, a lyrical drama, which was followed in 1843 by The Search after Proserpine, and other poems. His father's death in 1846, the great famine of 1847, and the religious preoccupations of the succeeding years apparently diverted De Vere's thoughts for a time from poetry; but Poems Miscellaneous and Sacred (1853) bear obvious marks of his religious experiences. This volume was followed in 1857 by May Carols. It was not until 1861 that De Vere entered on that series of poems inspired by Irish subjects by which, despite the essentially Wordsworthian character of his temper and intellect, he is best known and for which he will be longest remembered. These poems present a curious combination of bardic and ecclesiastical mediævalism. This vein the poet worked in Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland (1861), a poem intended to illustrate Irish history from the Norman Conquest to the era of the Penal Laws, and to embody the essence of a nation's history.' It was followed by The Infant Bridal (1864). In Irish Odes (1869) and The Legends of St Patrick (1872) De Vere again sought his materials in the same quarry; but Alexander the Great (1874) and St Thomas of Canterbury (1876) are semi-philo sophical dramas. In Legends of the Saxon Saints De Vere sought with less success to apply to English themes the methods he had used in his Irish poems. De Vere's voluminous works were collected in six volumes in 1884, but he subsequently published Legends and Records of the Church and Empire (1887) and Mediæval Records and Sonnets (1893). A volume of Selections was published in 1890. De Vere was all his life keenly interested in Irish affairs, and published several prose volumes on public questions, among which may be mentioned English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds (1848) and Ireland's Church Property and the Right Use of It (1867). His more strictly literary prose writings were collected in Essays, chiefly on Poetry (1887), and Essays, chiefly Literary and Ethical (1889). The long list of his publications closed with a volume of Recollections (1897), which contains many interesting memories of Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, Newman, Manning, and others of the poet's most eminent contemporaries. De Vere's poetry moves on a high plane of ethical contemplation, and is brightened by a rich imagination; but he lacked the lyrical gift, and his best work is to be praised chiefly as possessing a grave austerity of thought and a stately dignity in its diction. The True King, a Bard Song. Ere a year they had chased us to dens and caves; Our streets and our churches lay drowned in blood; The race that had sold us their sons as slaves In our Land as conquerors stood ! Who were they, those princes that gave away The kingdoms for ever live! The king rules all; yet the king hath nought: They were traitors, not kings, who sold their trust; They were traitors, not kings, who bought! Brave Art-MacMurrough!-Arise, 'tis morn! This true king who rights our wrong! From the heart of the nation her king is grown; He rules by right; he is bone of her might; Her flesh, and bone of her bone! The March to Kinsale. O'er many a river bridged with ice, The Princes of the North are come ! Lo! these are they that year by year And thus they sang, 'To-morrow morn And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!' Blithe as a boy on marched the host, With droning pipe and clear-voiced harp; At last above that southern coast Rang out their war-steeds' whinny sharp : And up the sea-salt slopes they wound, And airs once more of ocean quaffed; As though May touched them, waved and laughed. And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!' Beside their watch-fires couched all night Of moonlit crag, the priesthood prayed : And thus they sang, 'To-morrow morn Dirge of Owen Roe O'Neill. (A.D. 1649) So 'tis over. Lift the dead! Bear him to his place of rest, Broken heart and blighted head, Lay the Cross upon his breast., There be many die too late; There is one that died too soon: 'Twas not Fortune-it was Fate After him that cast her shoon. Toll the church bells slowly: toll! Crush the harp and burst the wire. Lords and priests, ye talked and talked 'Twas not on the field he fell! Sing his requiem, dark-stoled choir ! Let a nation sound his knell, God this day is wroth with Eire. The Graves of Tirconnel and Tyrone on San Within St Peter's fane, that kindly hearth Near them, within a church of narrower girth, The Empire and the Synagogue accurst, Clashed two ensanguined hands-like Cain-in one. Sleep where the Apostle slept, Tirconnel and Tyrone! The Little Black Rose. The Little Black Rose shall be red at last; What drove her forth but the dragon-fly? With her mild gold horn and her slow dark eye. The wounded wood-dove is dead at last! The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die! This song is secret. Mine ear it found In a wind o'er the plains at Athenry. C. LITTON FALKINER. John Mitchel (1815-75) is best known as a politician. But he has been admirably characterised by Mr Lecky as 'a man of great, but exclusively literary, ability;' and it is as a writer rather than as a politician that he will be longest remembered. Mitchel was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and was born in Dungiven, County Londonderry. His early life was spent in Newry, where his father had a congregation for many years, and where he imbibed the strongly Nationalist views which, in the Ulster of his boyhood, were still the inheritance of the descendants of the men of '98. In 1830 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, but he did not take a degree. He became a solicitor, and practised first at Newry and later at Banbridge. He married, after a romantic elopement, a young lady of great beauty and good social position, Miss Jane Verner. In 1842 the current of Mitchel's life of professional routine was entirely changed by his becoming acquainted with the young patriot Thomas Davis (page 364). He became closely associated with the Young Ireland movement, and as a contributor to the Nation at once began to attract attention by the vigour of his writings. On the death of Davis (1845), Mitchel accepted a position on the staff of the Nation, and removed to Dublin. This is not the place in which to trace the stirring events of Mitchel's political career, which culminated in his conviction on a charge of treasonfelony and a sentence of fourteen years' transportation. It is to his experiences as a political prisoner in Bermuda and at the Cape that we owe one of Mitchel's principal literary achievements, his Jail Journal-a work remarkable for the intense individuality it reveals, as well as for the great vigour of its style. This was followed by the most vigorous and successful of his writings, The Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps), published in 1860 in New York, where he resided from his release from prison until shortly before his death. A more ambitious work, The History of Ireland from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time, has little literary and no historical merit. At the election of 1874 Mitchel was returned for Tipperary, but declared incapable of being elected. At a second election he was again chosen, but died at Newry before the petition presented against his return could be heard. Mitchel was a vigorous and picturesque personality. Of the leaders of 'Young Ireland' he had, with the exception of Davis, the largest share of literary talent; and his writings, which in their style bear strong marks of Carlyle's influence, will always be valuable as illustrating the character of the movement with which he was so closely identified. C. L. F. Denis Florence MacCarthy (1817-82), a graceful and cultivated writer of poetry, was born in Dublin. Intended for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he was educated at Maynooth. He early commenced to contribute verse to Dublin periodicals, and was one of the celebrated band of writers for the Nation whose influence on the Irish politics of their day was so remarkable. Among the fruits of his interest in the Young Ireland movement was a collection of Irish ballads, which he edited with much judgment and taste. In 1850 appeared his first volume of original verse, Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics. This was followed by the The Bell-Founder (1857) and Under-Glimpses. Perhaps the work by which MacCarthy is best remembered is his ode on Thomas Moore, composed for the centenary of that writer. He was an accomplished Spanish scholar. His translations of Calderon have been highly praised, and he was awarded the medal of the Royal Academy of Spain in recognition of his work in this field. MacCarthy held for a short time the post of lecturer on English literature at the Catholic university in Dublin. In 1872 he published Shelley's Early Life, dwelling chiefly on the poet's visit to Ireland. His later years were spent in London. His health failed after 1864, and in 1871 he received a Civil List pension. A collected edition of poems, edited by his son, was published in 1884. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), poet, patriot, and publicist, was born in Monaghan. He was early attracted to journalism and to public affairs, and before he was of age was already the editor of a journal of some consequence in Belfast. In 1842, in conjunction with Thomas Davis and John Dillon, he founded the Nation, and thenceforward was the most active of the organisers of the Young Ireland movement. The story of Duffy's connection with Irish politics may be read in his admirable Young Ireland, a Fragment of Irish History; in The League of North and South; and in his Life of Thomas Davis (1890), in which he paid a warm and generous homage to the memory of his early associate. In 1852 he became member for New Ross; but, hopeless of effecting anything in Ireland, emigrated to Australia. Entering the Victorian legislature, Duffy exhibited remarkable parliamentary talents, and by 1871 had risen to be Premier of the colony. In 1873 he was knighted, and subsequently became Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. His career in Australia is fully described in a volume of reminiscences, My Life in Two Hemispheres (1894). Retiring in advanced years from colonial politics, Duffy returned to Europe. He spent his latter days mainly at Nice, but paid frequent visits to London, where he became the founder and first president of the Irish Literary Society. Duffy was perhaps more remarkable for his power of inspiring others to work than for the merit of his own performances. He was from the first keenly alive to the value of literature as an instrument for promoting the political purposes to which he was attached. While at work on the Nation he was, with Davis, active in stimulating the publication of books on Irish history and literature, and was the originator of 'The Library of Ireland,' a popular series of books for the people on Irish history and literature. His collection of the Ballad Poetry of Ireland has enjoyed an immense popularity in Ireland and America; and he contributed some vigorous original verse to the columns of the Nation. In his old age Duffy endeavoured to revive the same class of literature, devising and for some time editing the 'New Irish Library.' But this series was much less successful than its predecessor. Shortly before his death he presented to the Royal Irish Academy a valuable collection of manuscripts connected with modern Irish history. Though not a great writer, Duffy was a great journalist. His best work is buried in the files of the Nation. Few men exerted a wider influence in the Ireland of his day. In the verses he contributed to the Spirit of the Nation he expressed with considerable power and imaginative insight the ideas that lay at the root of the movement of which he was a principal author. C. L. F. Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-95), well known as a writer of hymns, was the daughter of Major Humphreys, an officer in the Royal Marines, and was born in County Wicklow. She was early attracted by the Oxford movement, and in conjunction with a lady friend published a series of tracts in which her first efforts in devotional poetry appeared. In 1846 Miss Humphreys published her Verses for Holy Seasons. This was followed in 1848 by Hymns for Little Children. For the latter work Keble wrote a preface. In 1850 she was married to the Rev. William Alexander, then a rector in the north of Ireland, and subsequently Bishop of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh (see below). Besides the works already mentioned, Mrs Alexander published several other volumes. But all that is best worth remembrance in her work has been collected in a single volume, Poems by Cecil Frances Alexander, edited by her husband after her death in 1895. She was the editor of a wellknown collection in the 'Golden Treasury' series, the Sunday Book of Poetry for the Young. It is for her hymns that Mrs Alexander best deserves remembrance. Many of these have become popular far and wide; and such admirable examples of her genuine poetical talent as 'The roseate hues of early dawn,' 'There is a green hill far away,' and 'Jesus calls us o'er the tumult' will always retain their place in collections of English hymns. 'The Burial of Moses,' first published in the Dublin University Magazine (1856), is the best known of Mrs Alexander's pieces other than her hymns. Perhaps Mrs Alexander's chief gift was the power of blending vivid and picturesque imagery with devotional sentiment. William Alexander, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, was born in 1824. Though his entire life has been passed in the service of the Church of Ireland, the Most Rev. Dr Alexander has, all through his career, evinced strong leanings towards literature. In 1867, not long before his elevation to the Irish episcopate, this bent was even strong enough to lead to his being a candidate for the chair of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Born in Londonderry, Dr Alexander was educated at Tunbridge School, and later at Exeter and Brasenose Colleges, Oxford, where he graduated in 1845. Though he had published no formal volumes of verse, he had, in his own phrase, been 'suspected all his life of poetry,' and was thus selected in 1853 to deliver the Inaugural Ode on the installation of the Earl of Derby as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. This poem is an unusually happy specimen of stately verse. Other commemorative poems in the same kind show a felicitous facility for commemorative verse; and Dr Alexander may be said to have the laureate faculty for ornate ceremonial poetry in a degree which all laureates have not attained to. In 1858 appeared The Death of Jacob; followed by Specimens, Poetical and Critical (1867); Lyrics of Life and Light (1878); and The Finding of the Book. In 1886 was published the author's most considerable volume of poetry, St Augustine's Holiday, and other Poems; and it is in this that the poet's best work will be found. A new edition, which appeared in 1900 under the title of The Finding of the Book, and other Poems, contains many poems not to be found in the earlier volume. Dr Alexander's prose, as those who know his eloquence are aware, is often poetry; but his poetry is certainly not prose. To a natural splendour of diction he unites a real imaginative vision and a sensibility which is from the heart. And if, to use the phraseology he has himself employed in his preface to St Augustine's Holiday, he had not been called to be 'a governor of the sanctuary and of the house of God,' the Irish Primate would certainly have become one of the brethren who prophesy with harps, and are instructed in the songs of the Lord.' As it is, a poet's temperament and a scholar's taste make themselves felt in all his verse. Besides the works mentioned, Dr Alexander has been the author in recent years of a number of poems published in the magazines and elsewhere, but not hitherto collected. Appointed Bishop of Derry by the Crown in 1867, prior to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, Dr Alexander was nearly thirty years later called by the votes of his brethren on the Episcopal bench to the Archbishopric of Armagh and Primacy of All Ireland. C. L. F. William Gorman Wills (1828-91), one of the most successful dramatists of the later half of the nineteenth century, was the son of the Rev. James Wills (see page 350), and was born in Dublin. Through his mother he was connected with the gifted families of Bushe and Plunket. He early exhibited a strong artistic bent, and, like his countryman Lover, his energies were first spent on painting, to pursue which art he seems to have abandoned his college career without taking a degree. His first effort in literature was a novel, Old Times, published in an Irish periodical, which showed promise of distinction. In 1862 Wills settled in London, where he took to writing for the magazines, and produced several stories, but without making any striking hit. Nor for some time was he more successful as a dramatist, in which capacity he made his first attempt in 1865 with A Man and his Shadow. The stimulus which was needed to make Wills do his best was supplied by his father's death, which threw on him the charge of his mother's support. He succeeded in 1871 in obtaining the appointment of dramatist to the Lyceum, and produced for that theatre in 1872 and 1873 Medea in Corinth, Charles I., and Eugene Aram. The two last-named plays, with Sir Henry Irving in the leading rôles, achieved a wide popularity, and thenceforward Wills's fame was assured. A succession of plays followed, among which may be mentioned Jane Shore, Buckingham, Nell Gwynne, and the remarkably popular Olivia, in which Ellen Terry scored one of her greatest triumphs. Wills continued for nearly twenty years the profession of playwright, and maintained his popularity as a dramatist to the end of his life, in spite of an extraordinary carelessness in matters of business and an apparent indifference to fame. The number of his acted plays is as many as thirty-three. Besides his plays and his early stories Wills wrote a blank-verse poem, Melchior, of some merit, and he had a distinct facility as a song-writer. In this last form of composition the familiar 'I'll sing thee songs of Araby' is his best-known effort. Wills was a man of varied talent and singular personal charm, who, despite his remarkable success as a playwright, never did full justice to his powers. It will be long before the best of his plays cease to hold the stage. Few of them have been printed, and criticism is therefore difficult; but it is doubtful if many of them would bear reading. He has written little that will be remembered as literature, in spite of a turn for epigram and a remarkable facility of expression. This last quality was admirably illustrated in his definition of indecency, given on the spur of the moment, in cross-examination in a court of justice, which is perhaps the most familiar phrase Wills ever coined, 'That which would bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, or excite strong passions in a man.' C. L. F. Dion Boucicault (1820?-90), actor and dramatist, was born in Dublin, but receiving his education in London at the hands of an uncle, his early years were passed mainly in England. Early evincing an aptitude for the stage, Boucicault joined his countryman Macready, and made his first appearance on the boards at Bristol in Jack Sheppard. His talents as an actor were of a high order, and he was considered by competent judges the best 'stage Irishman' of his generation. Acting plays quickly led by an easy transition to writing them. In 1841 London Assurance, a fiveact comedy produced at Covent Garden by Charles Mathews, met with immediate success. It was followed by a rapid succession of pieces in which, without exhibiting many of the higher qualities of a dramatist, Boucicault gave proofs of remarkable adroitness as an adapter; and his pieces were always 'actable.' In 1860 he entered, in The Colleen Bawn, a play founded on Gerald Griffin's novel The Collegians, on the field of Irish melodrama, with which his name is chiefly associated. The Colleen Bawn was followed by a number of dramas with Irish titles, of which the best-known and most successful were Arrah-na-Pogue and The Shaughraun. Alike as actor and dramatist, Boucicault pursued for above forty years a brilliant, though not commercially prosperous, career. though few playwrights of the nineteenth century have been more prolific, few authors of equal But volume have written with so little distinction. He will be longest remembered by his Irish plays, which, though conventional in form, strike, in some scenes at least, a fairly high note of pathos. C. L. F. George John Whyte-Melville (1821-78) was born at Mount Melville close to St Andrews, the son of a Fifeshire laird. Educated at Eton, in 1839 he entered the Coldstream Guards; retired in 1849 as major; but during the Crimean War joined the cavalry of the Turkish contingent (1855-56). His literary work began with a verse translation of Horace (1850). From 1850 onwards he published over a score of novels, four or five of them historical, but the best devoted to fox-hunting, steeplechasing, and country-house life generally, subjects he knew so intimately as to be always beyond reproach on the score of accuracy-he was even a supreme arbiter on sporting matters. But his stories have a charm for those who rarely read sporting novels the morale of his heroes, men and women, was higher than in many works of the kind; as stories they are lively and entertaining, the humour being better than the pathos; and some of his songs (such as 'Drink, puppy, drink') appeal to an equally wide circle. Whyte-Melville met his death in the hunting-field, in the Vale of Aylesbury. Of his novels, the most popular were Captain Digby Grand (1853); Kate Coventry (1856); Market Harborough (1861); Tilbury Nogo (1861); The Queen's Maries (1862); The Gladiators (1863); A Losing Hazard (1870); Satanella (1873); Katerfelto (1876); Black but Comely (1879). The True Cross (1873) was a religious poem; his Songs and Verses were published in 1869. John Francis Campbell (1822-85), of Islay, educated at Eton and Edinburgh University, held for a time an office at court, and was afterwards secretary to the lighthouse and coal commissions. An enthusiastic Highlander and profound Gaelic scholar, he is chiefly remembered by his Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols. 1860-62), a most important contribution to the study of folktales which greatly vivified Celtic studies in Britain, and made a subsequent 'Gaelic revival' possible. |