Denis Florence MacCarthy

Well-known Irish poet of the nineteenth century, born in Lower 
O'Connell Street, Dublin, 26 May, 1817; died at Blackrock, Dublin, 
7 April, 1882. His early life, before he devoted himself to 
literary pursuits, calls for little remark. From a learned priest, 
who had spent much time in Spain, he acquired that intimate 
knowledge of Spanish, which he was later to turn to such good 
advantage. In April, 1834, before he was yet seventeen, he 
contributed his first verses to the "Dublin Satirist". He was one 
of that brilliant coterie of writers whose utterances through the 
"Nation" influenced so powerfully the Irish people in the middle 
of the last century. In this organ, started by Charles Gavan Duffy 
in 1842, appeared over the pseudonym of Desmond most of his 
patriotic verse. In 1846 he was called to the Irish bar, but never 
practised. In the same year he edited "The Poets and Dramatists of 
Ireland", which he prefaced with an essay on the early history and 
religion of his countrymen. He also edited about this time "The 
Book of Irish Ballads" (by various authors), with an introductory 
essay from his pen on ballad poetry in general. In 1850 appeared 
his "Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics", original and translated. His 
attention was first directed to Calderon by a passage in one of 
Shelley's essays, and thenceforward the interpretation of the 
"Spanish Shakespeare" claimed the greater part of his attention. 
The first volume of his translations, containing six plays, 
appeared in 1853, and was followed by further instalments in 1861, 
1867, 1870, and 1873. His version of "Daybreak in Capacabana" was 
completed only a few months before his death. Until 1864 he 
resided principally on Killiney Hill, overlooking Dublin Bay. The 
delicate health of some members of his family then rendered a 
change of climate imperative, he paid a prolonged visit to the 
Continent, and on his return settled in London, where he 
published, in addition to his translations, "Shelley's Early 
Life", which contains an interesting account of that poet's visit 
to Dublin in 1812. He had already for some months resettled in his 
native land, when death overtook him on Good Friday, 1882. 

His poems are distinguished by a noble sense of harmony and an 
exquisite sympathy with natural beauty. One of the most graceful 
of Irish lyrists, he is entirely free from the morbidity and 
fantastic sentiment so much affected by modern poets. Such poems 
as "The Bridal of the Year", "Summer Longings", and his long 
narrative poem, "The Voyage of St. Brendan", seem with the years 
but to increase in general esteem. The last-mentioned, in which a 
beautiful paraphrase of the "Ave Maria Stella" is inserted as the 
evening song of the sailors, is not more clearly characterized by 
its fine poetic insight than by that earnest religious feeling 
which marked its author throughout life. But it is by his 
incomparable version of Calderon that he has most surely won a 
permanent place in English letters. For this task--always beset 
with extreme difficulties--of transferring the poetry of one 
language into the poetry of another without mutilating the spirit 
or form of the original, he was qualified by the sympathy of his 
countrymen with the Catholic spirit of the Latin races, and 
especially with Spain as the mythical cradle of the Irish race. 
His success is sufficiently testified by Ticknor, who declared in 
his "History of Spanish Literature" that our author "has succeeded 
in giving a faithful idea of what is grandest and most effective 
in his [sc. Calderon's] genius...to a degree which I had 
previously thought impossible. Nothing, I think, in the English 
language will give us so true an impression of what is most 
characteristic of the Spanish drama, and of Spanish poetry 
generally". 

Freeman's Journal (Dublin, 10 April, 1882); Nation (Dublin, 15 
April, 1882); READ, Cabinet of Irish Literature, IV, 154; 
O'DONOGHUE, Poets of Ireland (Dublin), 140; CLERKE in Dublin 
Review, XL (1883), 260-93. 

THOMAS KENNEDY 
Transcribed by Dennis McCarthy