Mahony

Mahony, FRANCIS, better known by his famous pen-name, 'Father Prout,' was born at Cork in 1804, and educated for the priesthood at a Jesuit college in Paris, and subsequently in Rome, where he remained for two years and received ordination. He taught in a Jesuit college, was chaplain to a Cork hospital, but ceased to exercise the clerical calling about 1834, and joined the staff of Fraser's Magazine, his contributions to which were republished under the title of Reliques of Father Prout in 1836. He contributed also to Bentley's Magazine from 1837. For two years he acted as Roman correspondent to the Daily News, and his letters were collected and published in 1847 as Facts and Figures from Italy by Don Jeremy Savonarola, Benedictine Monk. During the last years of his life he lived in Paris, and was correspondent to the Globe newspaper till his death, May 18, 1866. Mahony possessed great scholarship and a rich fund of genial humour. Amid all the convivialities of the 'Fraserians,' he preserved his reverence for religion without allowing it to cloud the brightness of his wit. 'His fun is essentially Irish—fanciful, playful, odd, irregular, and more grotesque than northern fun. In one of his own phrases, he is an Irish potato, seasoned with Attic salt, and oblivion has no poppy for the exquisite pathos of verse like 'The Bells of Shandon' and 'The Lady of Lee.' A volume of Final Reliques of Father Prout was published in 1876 by Mr Blanchard Jerrold; and there is an edition of his works, with a Life, by Charles Kent (1881).