nt man
connected with the government was attacked: even the king himself was
not spared. As revised by their pseudonymous writer in a reprint made
in 1772, they number 70; a later edition, in 1812, contained 113
more. Their authorship has been the subject of much controversy, nor
is the question yet finally settled. In his _Essay on Warren
Hastings_, written in 1841, Macaulay went to considerable trouble to
prove, by the cumulative method, that Francis was the writer, and
since then that opinion has been generally, but not universally,
maintained.

Isaac Bickerstaffe (c. 1735-c. 1812) was an Irishman, whose name,
strange to say, had no connection with the _nom de guerre_ of the
same style under which Swift had masqueraded in his outrageously
satirical attacks on Partridge the almanac maker, or with the more
celebrated imaginary Isaac Bickerstaffe under cover of whose
personality Steele conducted the _Tatler_. The real Bickerstaffe was
a prolific playwright. His best known pieces are _The Sultan_, _The
Maid of the Mill_, _Lionel and Clarissa_, and _Love in a Village_. In
the last-mentioned occurs the famous song, beginning "We all love a
pretty girl--under the rose."

William Drennan (1754-1820), who has been called the Tyrtaeus of the
United Irishmen, was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, was born in
Belfast, and was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh universities,
taking a medical degree from the latter. He practised his profession
in the north of Ireland. When the Irish Volunteers were established,
Drennan entered heart and soul into the movement. Removing to Dublin
in 1789, he associated with Tone and other revolutionary spirits, and
became one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen, the
first statement of whose objects was the product of his pen. His
_Letters of Orellana_ helped materially to enlist the men of Ulster
in the ranks of the Society. He also wrote a series of stirring
lyrics which, voicing as they did the general sentiment in Ireland at
the time, became extremely popular and had a widespread effect. These
were afterwards (1815) collected under the title of _Fugitive
Pieces_. All his political hopes being blasted with the failure of
the rebellion of 1798 and of Emmet's insurrection in 1803, Drennan
returned in 1807 to Belfast and there founded the _Belfast Magazine_.
"The Wake of William Orr", a series of noble and affecting stanzas
commemorating the judicial murder of a young Presbyterian