Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818), born in Dublin, was the son of a clergyman of like name who attained some literary eminence as the translator of Horace and as a political writer. After filling various important government positions, Philip Francis, the son, was in 1773 made a member of the Council of Bengal, where his relations with the governor-general, Warren Hastings, were of an extremely strained character, amounting at times almost to a public scandal. He returned to England in 1781, entered parliament, made a name as a speaker, took part in the impeachment of Hastings, and composed numerous political pamphlets. He is generally supposed to have been the writer of the celebrated Letters of Junius, which appeared at intervals in the Public Advertiser between January 21, 1769, and January 21, 1772. These letters are distinguished for their polished style, their power of invective, their galling sarcasm, their knowledge of state secrets, and their unparalleled boldness. Every prominent 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 Irish patriot in 1798, is one of his best known pieces. He also celebrated the ill-fated brothers Sheares. His song "Erin" was considered by Moore to be one of the most perfect of modern songs. It was in this piece that he fixed upon Ireland the title of the Emerald Isle:
When Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood,
God bless'd the green island, and saw it was good;
The em'rald of Europe, it sparkled and shone—
In the ring of the world the most precious stone.
Mary Tighe (1772-1810), whose maiden name was Blachford, was born, the daughter of a clergyman, in Co. Wicklow. She contracted an unhappy marriage with her cousin who represented Kilkenny in the Irish house of commons. By all accounts she was of great beauty and numerous accomplishments. She wrote many poems: her best, and best known, is Psyche, or the Legend of Love, an adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche from the Golden Ass of Apuleius. The metre she employed in this piece was the Spenserian stanza, which she handled with great power, freedom, and melody. Psyche, which first appeared in 1795, had a wonderful vogue, running rapidly through edition after edition. Among others to whom it appealed and who were influenced by it was Keats. Mrs. Tighe's talent drew from Moore a delicate compliment in "Tell me the witching tale again"; and in "The Grave of a Poetess" and "I stood where the life of song lay low", Mrs. Hemans bewailed her untimely death.
Edmund Malone (1741-1813), the son of an Irish judge, was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College. He was called to the Irish bar in 1767, but coming into a fortune, he abandoned his profession and gave himself over to literary work. In 1790 he brought out an edition of Shakespeare which was deservedly praised for its learning and research. His critical acumen led him to doubt the genuineness of Chatterton's Rowley Poems, and he was one of the first to expose Ireland's Shakespearean forgeries in 1796. Among other services to literature he wrote a Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds and edited Dryden. He also left a quantity of materials afterwards utilized for the "Variorum Shakespeare" by James Boswell the younger in 1821.
John O'Keeffe (1747-1833), a Dublin man, was at first an art student, but soon became an actor, and then developed into a playwright. His pen was most prolific; he published a collection of over fifty pieces in 1798. His plays are mostly comic operas or farces, and some of them had great success. Lingo, the schoolmaster in The Agreeable Surprise, is a very amusing character. The Positive Man, The Son-in-Law, Wild Oats, Love in a Camp, and The Poor Soldier are among his compositions. His songs are well known, such as "I am a friar of orders grey", and there are few schoolboys who have not sooner or later made the acquaintance of his "Amo, amas, I loved a lass". For the last fifty-two years of his life O'Keeffe was blind, an affliction which he bore with unfailing cheerfulness. In 1826 he was given a pension of one hundred guineas a year from the king's privy purse.