The Life and Writings of .Tames Clarence Mangan. By D.
J. O'Donoghue. (Patrick Geddes and Co., Edinburgh. 7s. 6d.)—Mr. O'Donoghue begins his introduction by remarking that "to write a life of Mangan is one of the most difficult tasks a biographer could possibly undertake." One cause of this difficulty is more than admitted, though not stated in so many words,—what Mangan said about himself, and he said a good deal at various times and in various ways, cannot be implicitly trusted. He describes, for instance, the house in which he lived in Chancery Lane (Dublin) :
"It consisted of two wretched rooms or rather holes connected by a steep and almost perpendicular ladder
door or window there was none to the lower chamber." Such a place could not have existed in Chancery Lane, Dublin, any more than it could in Chancery Lane, London. Equally impossible is his account of his employment in a scrivener's office. He was "bound to one spot from early morning till near midnight;" "amid thick smoke, sulphur, blasphemies, and obscenities worse than blasphemies." It was all fiction the long hours and the bad company. The office was conducted by the Rev. R. Kenrick for the benefit of his brother's widow ; one of the brother's sons had just left it to study for the priesthood, another was a fellow-clerk with Mangan. Both brothers became Roman Catholic Archbishops in the States. The greater part of Mangan's life was spent in writing for the Press. He contributed many papers to the Comet, a clever newspaper of the time, and afterwards to C. G. Duffy's organ, the Nation. He also wrote frequently in the Dublin University Magazine. His verse was of kinds ranging from the most doleful elegy to the brightest comedy. We lately reviewed at length a selection- from Mangan, but will now quote from " The Nameless One," a poem of great power. The poet implores his song to tell what he had suffered :- " And he fell far through that pit abysms'.
The gulf and grave of Magian and Burns, And pawned his soul for the devil's dismal Stock of return& But yet redeemed it in days of darkness, And shapes and signs of the final wrath, When death in hideous and ghastly starkness Stood on his path.
And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow, And want and sickness, and homeless nights, He bides in calmness the silent morrow That no ray lights.
And lives he still, then ? Yes, old and hoary At thirty-nine, from despair and woe, He lives enduring what future story Will never know.
Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, Deep in your bosoms. Then let him dwell He, too, had pity for all souls in trouble Here and in hell!"
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