defiance of the poet laureate of that time to match his stupendous rhymes—
"Malmsey- and Sack-swilling Southey! I'm happy to see you so gloomy—
Dare you stand forward, you shoeboy! and dare you attempt to outdo me?
Were you to go for to think, for to try for to beat me at lyrics,
Men would drop dead with the laughter, and women go off in hysterics!"
The achievement he had just completed was not a tragedy or an epic poem, but an acrostic—
"There! it is said and done—oh! my enchained, enchanted
Spirit! what is the value of all that folly has vaunted?
Poet, or doctor, or philosoph; Magian, or Mason, or Gnostic,
Never, I stake my word, transacted so prime an acrostic!"
And the poet demanded an adequate reward for his successful labour—
"Waiter, I solemnly charge you to vanish and make yourself handy;
And the simplest way to do that is to cadge me a bottle of brandy!
If you've no pitcher, you sumph! haul in a half-gallon decanter
Haul it in here by the neck, in style, in state, and instanter."
In another extravaganza he discoursed of philosophy in this style—
"I've studied sundry treatises by spectacled old sages,
Anent the capabilities and nature of the soul, and
Its vagabond propensities from even the earliest ages,
As harped on by Spinosa, Plato, Leibnitz, Chubb, and Toland;
But of all systems I've yet met, or p'rhaps shall ever meet with,
Not one can hold a candle to (videlicit compete with)
The theory of theories Pythagoras proposes,
And called by that sublime old smudge
In Greek—metempsychosis."
This delightful and unhappy man of genius has had his life made the subject of strange and fantastic speculations, especially about the event which made him an unhappy lover, which has been accounted for on half a dozen diverse theories, all of them wrong. As the facts are familiar to me, it is better, perhaps, that I should state them here. Shortly after our acquaintance commenced he brought me to visit a County Clare family, Mrs. Stacpoole and her daughters, living, I think, in Mount Street. I found them agreeable and accomplished, and repeated my visit several times, always with Mangan. One night, coming away, he
