A
A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
OF THE
WORTHIES OF IRELAND.
MATTHEW CONCANEN,
A MINOR poet, of considerable abilities, and a miscellaneous writer of some note in his day, was a native of Ireland, and was descended from a good family in that kingdom. He was liberally educated by his parents, and was bred to the law, in which profession he seems not to have made any great figure. From some cause or other, he conceived an aversion to Dr. Swift, for his abuse of whom the world has taxed him with ingratitude. Concanen, it is true, had once enjoyed some degree of Swift's favour (who was not always very happy in his choice of companions); and it is said, he had an opportunity of perusing some of the Doctor's poems in manuscript, which he unhesitatingly thought fit to appropriate and publish as his own. But this story is by no means authenticated. As affairs did not prosper much with him in Ireland, he came over to London, in company with a Mr. Stirling, a dramatic poet of little celebrity; and deeming nothing so profitable or so likely to recommend him to public notice as political writing, he speedily commenced an advocate
