Until he published his "poems," no one knew on what very slight grounds his Bardship rested. His book—a thin, ill-printed octavo, called "The Hippocrene,"—appeared, with a dedication, by permission, to "the most noble and warlike Marquis of Anglesea," and underneath the inscription is the quatrain,
"O dulce decus! thou art mine,
What can I more or less say?
Presidium! pillar of the Nine,
Illustrious chief Anglesea!!"
In order, also, that the world might know what manner of man his bardling was, he had put his portrait as a frontispiece, and, with that characteristic modesty which indicated that he certainly had kissed the Blarney Stone, had engraved beneath it,—
"Sweet bard! sweet lake! congenial shall your fame
The rays of genius and of beauty claim;
Nor vainly claim: for who can read and view,
And not confess O'Kelly's pencil true?"
The lake here alluded to, is that of Killarney. In the year 1791, O'Kelly wrote what he called "a Poem" on the romantic scenery of Killarney. It was written, but not published—recited by the bard, as the Iliad and Odyssey are said to have been by "the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle,"—handed about in manuscript among friends, like much of the verse of the present day, when (because every third man is an author) hard-hearted booksellers refuse to purchase valueless copyrights, or even to publish them, save at the sole expense and risk of the writers.
So, in 1791, was written, not published, the Bard's "Killarney,"—a poem which (as he was wont to speak of it) "has all the depth of the lake it immortalizes, with the clearness, freshness, and sparkling flow of its waters!" It may be thought a little egotistical for O'Kelly thus to praise his own writings—but, surely, a man is the best judge of his own merit, and best acquainted with his own talents. I put it to every man of sense—that is, to every person who completely coincides with my opinion,—whether, if a man does not think and speak well of himself, it can possibly be expected that any one else will? No; O'Kelly's self-praise was only a flourish to remind people what a genius they had among them—a Laputan flap to make the Irish world quite aware of the fact of his immeasurable merit.
There was a rumour—but I hate scandal—that the Bard (being a poet, and lame to boot, like the Grecian) had an ambition to be the new Tyrtæus of the Irish Rebels, in 1798. He has been seen to smile, rather assentingly, at "the soft impeachment," although, no doubt, while the insurgents were liable to punishment, he had very capital reasons for denying it. While the Civil War was raging, he went to the north-east of Ireland, and, his enemies say, with rebellious designs. But his own assertion,