ence in literature, and are even beaten back from gaining that, inspires no pleasurable feeling. We are speaking of the present, and perhaps shall not be believed: the present is reticent, sometimes the past speaks. It were fruitless to review the names of those who have gone down to despair all for want of a little sympathy a few friends; most of them are well known. When Chatterton was found in his garret, his torn MSS. strewn about, it was, and rightly, deemed, a deplorable thing, but was anything done to upbear his successors from the same fall? How near to it many have been, perhaps none but themselves know. In literature at the present day, unless a man has money and, almost consequently, friends, there are many things to be gone through, of a nature to injure his self-respect, almost to utterly break him down. What a young

aspirant feels the deepest need of, is experience; and to gain experience is the work of years. Is it a perfect Utopia, one of those pleasant dreams that pass us by, and go unrealized, that there should be some small institution where a man of the requisite ability and experience might be consulted as a right by the wouldbe poet, by the beginner of earnest study,' by the half-hopeful, who would know whether it is right for him to hope, or whether he be but leaning on a broken reed, trusting to a fruitless lyre? It appears to be in this one fact, that there is no individual, no institution upon which a young aspirant after literary honours has any claim, that the beginning of disappointment has for the most part arisen. It is the hopeless sense of isolation which lies with so drear a chill upon fine-wrought feelings, and there are abundant cases on record, in which the slight recognition implied in a few words of judicious advice, direction, and technical aid from a man of mature mind, would have saved years of heart-ache to the weary traveller of barren paths.

In Denmark, the young artist, the scholar who manifests the rare and delicate quality of genius, is aided by public money on his way to his necessary culture; when somewhat of this is gained, he is provided with means to travel, to enlarge his mind in other lands than his own. To produce a great work the mind must be taught up to greatness; the creative principle must learn what is the most perfect covering for its embodiments. Travel is particularly a necessity to the artist. This the government of Denmark provides: What does England? It were well for her artists to die in the hope, and that a slender one, of some scanty provision being made for their fatherless offspring. Yet there is no need of public money. Englishmen, if they will but try, will find that they can do without it. They are sufficient for themselves if only they will look to the old fable, oft

learnt, oft forgot, in these days again coming to life, of the sticks. scattered and fragile, bound together and strong. The hand-clasp is the strongest cord of all.

We have endeavoured to bring together a few particulars of the life of a disappointed man, who lived fifty years ago. Few will know his name, for his case was not an appalling one, but a mere ordinary linking together of neglect in life and oblivion after it. Let fifty years roll on, and some one may be taking pains to be informed respecting some case existing now, unknown, and not worth that trouble now. It is astonishing how death enhances the value of

a man.

Ismael Fitzadam was unfortunate, both during his life and afterwards. The carelessness of society pressed very heavily upon him; his writings were always in a dark corner, and although well deserving appreciation, met with no worthy support, and he may now be classed among those who have suffered through want of proper classification of literary valuables, for his name and works are alike unknown.

In the scanty records of his life we find several discrepancies, but after a lengthened correspondence with the existing members of his family, we believe that we have arrived at a true view of its events, however opposed it may seem to the few shreds of former notices.

That Ismael Fitzadam was a genius is unmistakeable; that he was greatly crippled by his position and disappointments, is also unmistakeable. In rating him as he is, ought we not to include in our estimate something of what he might have been? To sketch even the outlines of a complete biography is impossible, so very little is known about the manner of his life. For a long time it was matter of doubt among the very few who had heard of him, as to what was his real name. Some thought him Scotch, while others deemed him Irish. In Notes and Queries, of November, 1865, (p. 435,) Sir J. Emerson Tennent asked for light upon his history, being in doubt as to his very name. Fifty years before the same cloud had been upon him. In 1818, the Literary Gazette believed his title of "able seaman," to be an assumed one, and that he was probably more of an "able poet." The same periodical afterwards considered him to be some "Captain C- the brother of a noble lord;" and two years later, (Sept. 16, 1820,) it discovered him, “on anonymous but self-evidently respectable authority," to be actually what he describes himself-" an able seaman, on board a king's frigate." At the same time it was given as opinion that his poetry "would not have disgraced a writer of any eminence in station or literature."

"Ismael Fitzadam" of title pages, "J. Williams" of correspondence, was John Macken of actual cognomen. He was the eldest son of Richard Macken, a merchant of Brookeborough near Enniskillen ; and brother of Patrick Macken, A. B., of Trinity College, Dublin. From his nephew, Mr. J. M. McElroy, Barrister-at-law, of "Fermanagh Club," Enniskillen, and "Stephen's Green Club," Dublin, to whom we are indebted for many particulars previously unrecorded, we learn that he was born about the year 1780. From his earliest youth he aspired after poetry-as he says himself, "in defiance of opposition, in despite of circumstances, and in the midst of avocations every way unpropitious to its development." What were the unpropitious circumstances cannot now be learned. For a very short period of his early life, he carried on business of some sort at Ballyconnell, co. Cavan. He then came to Enniskillen, where he proposed the establishment, and was fellow-editor with his brother-in-law, of the Erne Packet, or Enniskillen Chronicle. The first number of this Journal was published 10th August, 1808, and to it Fitzadam contributed, both prose and verse, probably during several years. The Enniskillen Chronicle, we may suppose, afforded but small scope for genius, and in 1814 appeared, anonymously, Fitzadam's first book, "Minstrel Stolen Moments, or Shreds of Fancy," J. Cumming, Dublin; Constable & Co., Edinburgh, and Geo. Cowie & Co., London.

In this volume are several indications that its author was subject to continued ill-health. A sonnet is there addressed to Mr. Simon Macken, his uncle, as having saved his life while bathing one gusty morning at Bundoran, on the western coast, where both were sojourning, the poet seeking his lost health. Another poem in this volume, "A Fragment of Romance," is dictated from the bed of sickness to the author's amanuensis and brother, Thomas Macken, who was for twenty years sessional crown solicitor for Fermanagh. At the time of publication, which we are told had been contemplated some years before, but prevented by his loss of health, Fitzadam was "seeking the restoration of life's best blessing beneath another sun," and the editing devolved upon a friend. The volume is an octavo of nearly 170 pages; and in 1826 its author speaks of it as following various attempts in periodicals, which were the "productions of youth, and died upon their birth-day." We may fix the date of two poems in "Stolen Moments" to 1810, as referring to the "Lady of the Lake," which came out in May of that year. In the preface the editor alludes to the author's limited knowledge of the world, and also draws attention to the fact that the poems were composed during the hasty intervals of avocations, than which none could

What

easily be conceived more foreign or offensive to the Muse." ever these unpropitious circumstances may have been, if we add to them the almost constant ill-health of the poet, we may shadow forth the veil of disappointment which hangs over so many such lives, and whose dark influence we can discern all through Fitzadam's life.

In 1817 or 1818 he came to London with the manuscript of his second volume, "The Harp of the Desert." He was not wholly without money; but, most foolishly, as times went, he came up, “dreaming of patronage all the way." The "Harp of the Desert" is a poem, of about two thousand lines, on the Battle of Algiers, which took place on the 27th August, 1816, and which was naturally about this time a subject of great national congratulation. This volume was offered to Mr. Murray, as bookseller to the Admiralty; but he declined it, as "his hands were, just then, too full." Fitzadam afterwards met with Messrs. Whitmore and Fenn, who absorbed his scanty capital, and published (if so it might be called) this little volume. He immediately forwarded a copy, with a letter, to Lord Exmouth, the hero of Algiers (to whom with the officers under his command the book was dedicated), and hoped and waited for some reply. None ever came; no acknowledgment whatever was vouchsafed to the desponding poet. Such cases are, perhaps, not uncommon; but only those who have experienced the pangs of hope deferred can appreciate the disappointment that must have preyed upon him,-the bitterness, the wormwood of expectation thus "blown vagabond and prostrate." "All hope of acquiring either fame or profit as a poet," says he, "died within me." Some friend, however, sent a copy of the poem to Mr. Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty, for the Quarterly Review; but all that resulted from it was a "mutilated insertion of the title in the ensuing number." They omitted the distinctive part of the announcement-that it was on the Battle of Algiers. We may here dispose of the idea that Fitzadam was ever a sailor. The title-page of the "Harp of the Desert," it is true, runs thus: "by Ismael Fitzadam, formerly able seaman on board the — frigate ;" and the preface to "Lays on Land" is written to favour the same idea. As Fitzadam never published his real name, this was, doubtless, brought in to add to the interest of the former poem-a naval battle-piece. This poetical licence the few who knew him put down as fact. The "authority" of the Literary Gazette was "Philo-Nauticus," H. Nugent Bell, of whom more hereafter. Others followed suit to this idea; and we have it amplified by the Literary Gazette to this, that Fitzadam was discharged from the Navy "after long and honourable service, unfriended and unprovided for." Miss Landon, also, in the monody

His sister, also, Mrs.

she has given to his memory, lies under the same impression. There are also several other allusions to Fitzadam's naval service among the few contemporary notices of his poems. Against these we may bring, as evidence, an article in the Literary Magnet, vol. iii.,1827, p. 46, the information contained in which purports to be derived from Fitzadam's brother-in-law, the proprietor of the Enniskillen Chronicle. Here it is asserted that he never was a sailor. Duffy, the eldest of her family, although now too far advanced in years to afford many memories of so long ago, affirms positively that he was not at any period of his life in the service. In this opinion coincides an old gentleman who knew him very well, recently consulted by Mr. McElroy, to whom we have previously alluded as Fitzadam's nephew. Besides this, we can hardly find room for "long and honourable service," between dates already otherwise allotted. The misconception as to his ever having been a sailor is the more noteworthy, as the fact is taken for granted, so lately as December, 1865, when, in Notes and Queries, appeared several brief notes on his life and writings.

Fitzadam, on recognising that the "Harp of the Desert," had met with no echo of public response, went to Paris to "economise and forget." He took with him the remains of his small capital, thirtyfive napoleons. We have a most musical little poem, composed here in 1819, which we quote hereafter. From Paris, Fitzadam was induced to return to London, to assist in a literary undertaking, which promised much, but which ended in disappointment. This appears to have been the "Huntingdon Peerage," (Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy, 1821,) ostensibly edited by Mr. H. Nugent Bell, but which we are informed, was written and compiled by Fitzadam. He was to have been paid 500l. for this work, but received only a tenth of this sum. It is somewhat strange to examine this volume, which, composed after the manner of the poet, rather than of the lawyer, is yet a minute record of Mr. Bell's researches into the musty recesses where Hans Francis Hastings' title lay hid. Mrs. Bell, also, sometimes accompanied her husband on his searches for evidence, and if it were Fitzadam who produced the account of their wanderings, he must have possessed dramatic talent of a rather novel kind. Mr. Hastings was at Enniskillen when called upon to fill the vacant seat in the House of Lords.

A poem on the coronation of George IV. suggested itself to Fitzadam, doubtless in the hope of gaining some popularity from it which should assist him in other efforts. He says himself, "Circumstances will speedily break the spirit down to the level of expedients,