greal." Whether James Clarence Mangan, whose most famous poem is
"Dark Rosaleen," a musical and mystic celebration of the charms and
wrongs of Erin, is a great poet to whom Saxon jealousy has refused
greatness for political reasons, or a not ungifted but not consummately
distinguished singer who added some study to the common Irish gift of
fluent, melodious verse-making, is a question best solved by reading his
work and judging for the reader's self. It is not by any sane account so
important that to dismiss it thus is a serious _rifiuto_, and it is
probably impossible for Irish enthusiasm and English judgment ever to
agree on the subject. Of "L. E. L." Sir Henry Taylor, Hood, and Praed,
some more substantive account must be given.

Although it is not easy, after two generations, to decide such a point
accurately, it is probable that "L. E. L." was the most popular of all
the writers of verse who made any mark between the death of Byron in
1824 and the time when Tennyson definitely asserted himself in 1842. She
paid for this popularity (which was earned not merely by her verse, but
by a pretty face, an odd social position, and a sad and apparently,
though it seems not really, mysterious end) by a good deal of slightly
unchivalrous satire at the time and a rather swift and complete oblivion
afterwards. She was born (her full name being Letitia Elizabeth Landon)
in London on 14th August 1802, and was fairly well connected and
educated. William Jerdan, the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ (a man
whose name constantly occurs in the literary history of this time,
though he has left no special work except an _Autobiography_), was a
friend of her family, and she began to write very early, producing
novels and criticisms as well as verse in newspapers, in the albums and
_Souvenirs_ which were such a feature of the twenties and thirties, and
in independent volumes. She was particularly active as a poet about
1824-35, when appeared the works whose titles--_The Improvisatore_, _The
Troubadour_, _The Golden Violet_--suggested parodies to Thackeray. Her
best novel is held to be _Ethel Churchill_, published in 1837. Next year
she married Mr. Maclean, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle; and, going
out with him to that not very salubrious clime, died suddenly in about
two months. All sorts of ill-natured suggestions were of course made;
but the late Colonel Ellis, the historian of the colony, seems to have
established beyond the possibil