Clarence Mangan was a man of as undoubted genius as William Carleton, and paid the same penalty. He led a life of industry and privation which the crowd to which genius is a puzzle would have honoured if it had not been associated with a weakness which completely mastered him at times. After such a misadventure he came to me in deep distress. I promised that a few friends would find him an adequate income for six months if he would pledge himself to refrain from intoxicating drink for that period. He was quite willing to promise, and honestly designed, I have no doubt, to keep his pledge, and we hoped that if such an experiment proved successful he might be finally rescued from the fiend.
"9, Peter Street, 8th June."My dear Duffy,—May God for ever bless you! I know you too well to suppose that you are one to keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope.
You spoke of getting up as much for me as might pay for half a year's board—though I consume, God knows, very little food indeed. Suppose you were to say a quarter's, instead of a half year's, and allow me the difference in hand to enable me to dispose of my poor half broken-hearted brother, and to settle with my landlord withal. If you do this you will rescue me from the depths of despair. M'Glashan has an Anthology (an Irish one) of mine in his hands, and he owes me about £2 on them. But as they have not yet appeared (though the Anthology is in type) I have an utter repugnance of asking him for any more money. I paid him the £7 10s. which he granted me at the same time with your liberal loan. Would to God that I had worked as zealously since for you, my best, my truest, my noblest-hearted friend! But I will yet retrieve the past in this respect, or may my name be blotted out for ever from the page of the Book of Life! To the point, however. I have, in my despair, begun a Polyglot Anthology, which I calculate on finishing within a week (for I translate at the rate of about eighty lines a day) …"
The end of this letter is missing, but no trafficking with Mr. M'Glashan was necessary to secure him the interval of
