THE ROLLIAD, AND SOME OF ITS WRITERS.
(Vol. iii., p. 276.)
Mr. Dawson Turner asks for information regarding three writers in the Rolliad, viz.: Tickell, Richardson, and Fitzpatrick. Memoirs of the first two are given in Chalmers's Dictionary; but in Moore's Life of Sheridan, Mr. Turner will find several notices of them, far more attractive than dry biographical details. They were both intimately associated with Sheridan; Tickell, indeed, was his brother-in-law. One would prefer calling them his friends, but steady friendship must rest upon a firmer basis than those gifts of wit, talent, and a keen sense of the ridiculous, which prevailed so largely amongst this clever trio.
Tickell's production, Anticipation, is still remembered from its cleverness and humour; but when every speaker introduced into its pages has long been dead, and some of them were little known to fame, the pamphlet is preserved by a few solely from the celebrity which it once possessed.
His death in 1793 was a most melancholy one. It is described by Professor Smyth in in his interesting Memoir of Sheridan, a book printed some years ago for distribution among his friends, and which well deserves publication.
Independent of his contributions to the Rolliad,
Richardson did little as an author. His comedy of The Fugitive, acted and published in 1792, was well received, and is much praised. Why has this production so completely disappeared?
General Fitzpatrick was born in 1749, and died in 1815. He was the second son of John, Earl of Upper Ossory; twice Secretary-at-War; once secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Portland, but what he regarded as his highest distinction, and it is recorded on his tomb, was the friendship of Fox during forty years of their lives.
Some of his speeches on the union with Ireland will be found in the thirty-fourth volume of the Parliamentary History.
His epitaph, by himself, is inscribed on a sarcophagus in the church-yard at Sunning Hill, in which he describes himself—what his friends admitted to be truth—a politician without ambition, a writer without vanity.
Which is the true reading in the following lines by Fitzpatrick on Fox? In my copy the word "course" in the third line is erased, and the word "mind" is substituted.
"A patriot's even course he steered,
Mid Faction's wildest storms unmoved:
By all who marked his course revered,
By all who knew his heart beloved."
Sheridan says most justly:
"Wit being generally founded upon the manners and characters of its own day, is crowned in that day, beyond all other exertions of the mind, with splendid and immediate success. But there is always something that equalises. In return, more than any other production, it suffers suddenly and irretrievably from the hand of Time."
Still some publications, from their wit and brilliancy, are sufficiently buoyant to float down to posterity. The publication in question, the Rolliad, is one; the Anti-Jacobin another. You may not be unwilling, in your useful pages, to give a list of some of the writers in the latter publication. My own copy of it is marked from that belonging to one of the writers, and is as follows:—
Nos. 1. 4. 9. 19. 26, 27—33., by Mr George Ellis.
Nos. 6. and 7., by Messrs. Ellis and Frere.
Nos. 20, 21, 22. 30—36., by Mr. Canning.
No. 10. by M.; No. 13. by C. B.; No. 39. by N.
To the remaining numbers, neither names nor initials are affixed. Can any of your readers explain the initials, M., C. B., and N., and give us the authors of the remaining numbers?
In replying to Mr. Turner's Queries, I shall attend to the wish expressed by so old and so valued a friend, and substitute for initials, of which he disapproves, the name of
J. H. Markland.