The substance of the "Introductory Memoir' appeared some years ago in the New Ireland Review, and the editor has to thank the proprietors of this periodical for permission to utilise the article here. The copy of the "Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore" in Wolfe's handwriting is reproduced by kind permission of the President and Council of the Royal Irish Academy. The editor's thanks for much kind assistance are especially due to the Rev. John Gwynn, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin.

September 1903.

C. L. F.

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR

DESCENDED from a family which from the middle of the seventeenth century had been settled in the County Kildare, Charles Wolfe was the son of Theobald Wolfe, of Blackhall, in that county. One of a family of eleven children, and the youngest of eight sons, he was born on September 14, 1791. His father died when Charles was but eight years old, too early to exercise any influence upon the mental development of his youngest son. Through him the poet might trace two vague connections with the atmosphere of Irish rebellion, in which his childhood was passed. It was from Theobald Wolfe that Theobald Wolfe Tone, the founder of the United Irishmen, derived his Christian names; and the poet's father was also first cousin to Arthur Wolfe, Viscount Kilwarden, who, when Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, was murdered in the Emmet rising. Of Wolfe's mother, a daughter of Rev. Peter

Lombard, the memories that remain are faint ; but she seems to have cherished a peculiarly warm affection for Charles, the clinging affectionateness of whose nature made the tie between mother and son even closer than usual. On the death, in 1799, of Theobald Wolfe, his widow removed with her family to England, remaining there for several years, and the poet's education commenced at a school in Bath, to which he was sent when ten years old. Extreme delicacy interrupted his early studies, but ultimately the boy was deemed strong enough to stand the ordeal of a boarding school, and in 1805 he was placed under the care of Mr. Richards, a house-master at Winchester. Here he remained until 1808, distinguishing himself by a special aptitude for the making of Greek and Latin verses, and manifesting even in those early days the same magnetic nature which subsequently charmed all who came within the sphere of its atttraction. A year after leaving this school Wolfe entered at Trinity College, Dublin.

Within the eight years which elapsed between his entrance at the University and his departure from Dublin on his ordination in 1817, the period of Wolfe's poetical fertility is almost altogether comprised. None, at least, of the pieces printed by his biographer Archdeacon Russell can be

assigned to a later date. His last years, spent in the absorbing labours of his ministry, dimmed by disappointment and darkened by failing health, were unmarked by literary activity of any kind other than what was directed to the composition of his sermons. But the years of adolescence were unclouded. In those early college days, when youth, and health, and the joy of existence were strong within him, Wolfe seems to have thrown himself heartily into the pursuits of the University, applying himself energetically to its graver tasks, and at the same time enjoying to the full the relaxations in which, with the best and most talented of his contemporaries, he loved to indulge. His ability as a classical student was proved by his obtaining a scholarship in his second year, and he then turned his energies to those scientific branches of knowledge to which the then conditions of academic success at Dublin University obliged him to yield a reluctant attention. In this department he was enabled, notwithstanding his natural disinclination to such studies, to win distinction, and at times even to wrest the highest honours from the most gifted mathematicians in his class.

It was, however, in the companionship of those whose tastes were akin to his own, and in the congenial pursuit of literature, that Wolfe's

special characteristics were most freely manifested. He quickly drew to himself the warm regard of a band of unusually talented fellowstudents, and became the centre of a circle most of whose members reached eminence in

their later careers. Among his immediate friends were Anster, the well-known translator of Faust, and the author of poems of not inconsiderable merit; Charles Dickinson and James O'Brien, both of whom ultimately ascended the episcopal bench; the brothers Samuel and Mortimer O'Sullivan, of whom the former was so well known in his day as a contributor to the Dublin University Magazine, and was much admired for talents to which he never did full justice; while the latter was equally noted for his skill as a controversialist and his brilliancy in the pulpit. These, with James Wills, the author of Lives of Illustrious Irishmen; John Sidney Taylor, eminent, during a career too soon ended, as philanthropist and publicist; Hercules Henry Graves, most promising of many talented members of a gifted family; and John Russell, afterwards his biographer, were the chief among the many associates with whom Wolfe loved to surround himself. Among them, as well in the social gatherings in their college rooms as in the public rivalry of the Historical Society-where talents and tastes,