Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/354

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to Trinity College, where he had been educated, Lord Sunderlia made it over to the Bodleian at Oxford, in the belief that it would there be useful to a larger number of persons than if sent to Ireland. His biographer says : " His countenance had a most pleasing expression of sensibility and serenity. . . He wore a light blue coat, white silk stockings, and I think buckles in his shoes. His hair was white, and tied behind." There are numerous references to him and his writings in Notes and Queries, especially in the 2nd Series.

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Slaloue, William, Rev., best known for his challenge to Protestant writers and Archbishop Ussher's reply, was born in Dublin about 1586. At an early age he was sent to Portugal, and then to Rome, where in his twentieth year he entered the order of Jesuits. After a sojourn in Ireland, he was sent for to Rome and appointed Rector of St. Isidore's College. He returned to Ireland as Superior of the Jesuit mission. He excited the suspicion of the Government and was arrested ; but contrived to make his escape to Spain, where he died Rector of the Irish College at Seville, in 1659, aged about 73. ^34

Manby, Peter, Rev., Dean of Deny, an Irish writer who flourished in the 1 7th century, was educated at Trinity College, became chaplain to Archbishop Boyle, and in 1672 was appointed Dean of Derry. In 1686 he embraced Catholicism, being permitted by James II. to retain his deanery. After the defeat of James in Ireland he removed to France and after- wards to London, where he died in 1697. He was the author of several controversial works, some of which were replied to by Dr. King, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. "8 339

Mangan, James Clarence, a distin- guished Irish poet, was born in Fishamble- street, J ablin, in the spring of the year 1803. Little is recorded concerning his parentage. Those who knew him in his later days had a vague sort of knowledge that he had a brother, sister, and mother still living, whose scanty subsistence de- pended partly on him. He received what scholastic training he ever had at a poor school in Derby-square, near his birth- place. For seven years he laboured as a copyist with a scrivener at a weekly salary, and afterwards passed two years in an attorney's oflice. " At what age he devoted himself to this drudgery, at what age he left it, or was discharged from it, does not appear. . . Those who knew him in after years can re- member -with what a shuddering and

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loathing horror he spoke, when at rare intervals he could be induced to speak at aU, of his labours with the scrivener and the attorney. He was shy and sensitive, with exquisite sensibility and fine impulses. . . At this time he must have been a great devourer of books, and seems to have early devoted himself to the exploration of those treasures which lay locked up in foreign languages. Mangan had no education of a regular and ap- proved sort ; neither, in his multifarious reading had he, nor could brook, any gui- dance whatever." ^^^ How he came by the brilliant acquirements he soon displayed is not recorded. How he made his unaided studies in the attorney's oflSce, or at the top of a library ladder so effective, is diffi- cult to understand. It is certain that he became a classical scholar, and that he was familiar with at least three modern languages — German, French, and Spanish — besides his own. During this obscure and unrecorded period of his life, he appears to have contracted an unhappy passion for a certain " Frances," whose name often appears in his poems. About 1830 we find him contributing short poems, usually translations from the German, or render- ings of literal translations from the Irish, to Dublin periodicals. He thus became acquainted with Dr. Anster, Dr. Petrie, and Dr. Todd, and through their influence was given employment suited to his tastes and acquirements, in the catalogue depart- ment of Trinity College Library. John Mitchel describes his appearance here : It was an unearthly and ghostly figure in a brown garment ; the same garment (to all appearance) which lasted till the day of his death. The blanched hair was totally un- kempt ; the corpse-like features stiU as marble ; a large book was in his arms, and all his soul was in the book. . . Here Mangan laboured mechanically, and dreamed, roosting on a ladder, for certain months, perhaps years ; carrying the pro- ceeds 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 in- deed, but was not available for board and lodging. All this time he was the bond- slave of opium." He found emplojonent in the Ordnance Survey. He also wrote for the Dublin Penny Journal, the Irish Penny Journal, and the University Maga- zine, and later for the Nation. When John Mitchel left the Nation, and started the Irishman, Mangan, who thoroughly sympathized with his revolutionary senti- ments, confined his writings almost ex- clusively to its columns. Nothing could