Maginn, WILLIAM

Maginn, WILLIAM, one of the most brilliant writers of his day, born at Cork, 10th July 1793, the son of a schoolmaster, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1811, and left a brilliant reputation for precocious scholarship. At twenty-six he received his degree of LL.D. from his college, being the first who had ever received it so young. He taught in Cork for ten years, and in 1823 removed to London to pursue the life of letters. His first contribution to Blackwood's Magazine—a Latin translation of Chevy Chase—appeared in 1819, and from that date for nine years scarcely a number appeared without an article from his pen. In 1824 Murray started the short-lived Representative, a daily newspaper, and Maginn was sent to Paris to act as foreign correspondent. In 1828 he joined the staff of the Standard, and he was one of the originators of Fraser's Magazine in 1830. His contributions to Fraser were as 'lively, learned, and libellous' as those to Blackwood, and one led to a harmless duel between the author and the Hon. Grantley Berkeley. The remainder of Maginn's career was irregular and unhappy. His habits of intemperance gained the mastery over him, and he was often arrested and in jail for debt, without losing, however, in the least his brightness or good-humour. He wrote his Shakespeare Papers for Blackwood in 1837, and in 1840 he began his Magazine Miscellanies, by Doctor Maginn, which did not extend beyond ten numbers. In 1842 he was again imprisoned in the Fleet, and, having passed through the bankruptcy court, was reduced in fast failing health to a state of great poverty. Help came from Sir Robert Peel almost too late, for poor 'bright, broken Maginn' died at Walton-on-Thames, 21st August 1842. He wrote two forgotten romances, Whitehall, or the Days of George IV. (1827, a parody on the historical novel, and Horace Smith's Brambletye House in particular), and John Manesty (1844), completed after his death by Charles Ollier. His Homeric Ballads were published in 1849. A collection of his papers was edited by R. S. Mackenzie (5 vols. New York, 1855-57); and his Miscellanies, Prose and Verse, by R. W. Montagu (2 vols. Lond. 1885).