THE HISTORY OF A FAMOUS LYRIC.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 210, 13 April 1877, Page 13

THE HISTORY OF A FAMOUS LYRIC.

(Written for the New Zealand Tablet.)

In a biographical sketch of John Sidney Taylor by the Rev. Samuel O'Sullivan, is this passage. " One there was who is already known to fame by the accident of a stray leaf of his journal finding its way into the public papers. We mean the author of the ' Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore,' and who was the happiest and gayest, as well as the purest and most richly gifted of the little group, who found at that period, in each other's society, within our college walls, so much of inexhaustible enjoyment.." That man was Charles Wolfe, and he was all that his friend here describes him to have been. Most truly, and in the highest sense of the words, he was "in wit a man, simplicity a child." His name has been mistaken for that of Stephen Woulfe, a. Catholic { student, his contemporary, who was afterwards Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. But they were in no degree related. Even their names were spelled differently. Charles Wolfe belonged to the old Protestant house of Forenaght, in the county of Kildare, a member of which — Lord Kilwarden — was murdered in Thomasstreet on the night of Emmet's insurrection in 1803 He (Charles) was elected a scholar of Trinity College, and he died at an early age, a clergyman of the Established Church. The "accident" of publication I can explain better than any one now living, for the poem was first brought into public notice by myself. One morning in the year 1816, 1 was with my friend, Samuel O' Sullivan, at his rooms in No. 26 Trinity College, when he produced a written paper, saying, " Here are some pretty verae3 of Charles Wolfe's. He was here a few evenings since, and I read to him, from the Edinburgh Annual Register*, a graphic account of the burial of Sir John Moore, which we both agreed must have been written by Walter Scott. Wolfe was greatly moved, and remained for a good while silent and thoughtful. His mood, was altogether changed from that boyish tone and flow of spirits, which make his presence so delightful wherever he is. At last he brightened again and said, • I have been trying to give a rhythmical colouring to that beautiful picture. Just hear how it runa ; ' and he poured forth rich fragments of these verses, which he presented to me on the following day in their perfect form." O' Sullivan allowed me to take a copy, which, in the spring of the following year, when I served the curacy of SathfriLind in the county of Down, I gave to Mr. Stewart, the editor of the Newry Telegraph, and he published the verses in his paper, with the author's initials " C.W." subscribed. Not a little disturbed was Wolfe, vhen l)r. Davenport, his college tutor, showed him the provincial journal, and challenged him, by those letters, as the author. He looked upon the thing as an " unconsidered trifle," not worthy to be flaunted before the public eye; and when I acknowledged that I had been the means of bringing him out in that way, he was displeased. " You should not," he said, " have put my initials to those verses without knowing whether I should like my name to be identified with them." I own it was an unwarrantable liberty which I had taken; I cannot even now justify it. But seeing that by that happy "accident" I was the means of disclosing a flower which might else have remained for ever unseen, the offence will be as readily condoned by readers of the present day, as it was pardoned by him who had most cause to be offended. His wrath did not last long. Indeed, whatever his provocations may have been, I believe he never let the sun go down upon that troublesome passion. And, finally, when Maturin, the author of Bertram, then in the sunshine of his popularity, proclaimed at the Dublin Library his admiration of the verses, he became quite reconciled to the exposure. They were afterwards copied into the Gentleman? s Magazine, and there lost out of sight for nearly the Horatian period of nine years. Their resuscitation was a posthumous work of Lord Byron, of whom it is related in Captain Medwyn's " Conversations," that, during a discussion on lyrical poetry, the noble bard produced from his portfolio an ode, which, in his opinion, was one of the finest in the English language — <r Such an ode as only Campbell, of known writers then living, could have written;" and then he read poor Wolfe's one claim to stand among the foremost of those whom the Muse forbids to die. Until Captain Medwyn's book appeared, Charles Wolfe's name lay hid in night ; but that day he got up famous. All England rang at once with the praises of a poem, which, for nine years, had been as completely ignored by all England (and by all Ireland too, for that matter) as if it were one of Stephen Duck's lucubrations. Critics contended about its paternity. The general voice, echoing that of Lord Byron, said that Campbell, the " Bard of Hope," was the man. Others named Tom Moore and Walter Scott. But one critic, w ; ser than the rest, who " knew all qualities with, a learned s^trit of human dealings," affirmed that Byron himself was the author, because — such was the nature of the man, that he would never have bestowed those hyperbolical praises upon the lines if they had come from any other pen than his own ! The ingenuous critic was a certain Captain Basil Hall, a noted traveller, who, boasting of his personal intimacy with Lord Byron, left this record of the value, to a great man's memory, of " a candid friend." Mauk Pkeetn, Black Eock, Dublin. Preb. of Taghaaxon, Dio. Tuam.