candour answered every question which a metaphysical imagination could suggest. While engaged in this process of self-introspection he was overheard by his friend in one of the passages of the Four Courts anxiously interrogating himself: "Well, truly, admiration is akin to love, but is the kindred close enough with me? I think it is: but let me see ;-if she were now to die, would it mar my future happiness? I am sure it would;—yes, I am in love, there's no denying it." Soon afterwards he made his proposals to the lady, which were accepted. She was the daughter of a merchant of respectability in Dublin, who had died not long before, leaving but a slender provision for his family. Mrs. O'Halloran was the sister of Colonel MacMahon, private secretary to the Prince Regent, through whose influence the Mastership of the Rolls had recently been conferred upon his brother. Whatever anticipations may have been formed as to the advantages of this connexion, it is certain that none, even of a professional kind, were derived from it by Mr. Sheil. When spoken to on the subject by others, Sir William MacMahon always excused himself, intimating pompously that "a sense of public duty rendered it impossible for him to identify himself with a person holding and expressing

such violent opinions." When it was suggested to him, two or three years later, that he might easily obtain a commissionership of bankruptcy for the husband of his niece, who there was reason to suppose if it were offered would accept it, although the emoluments were inconsiderable, he declined to interfere. No greater service could probably have been rendered to him whom it was intended to slight, than this refusal. The office was one calculated to lead to nothing in the way of professional advancement, while it was one that must have tended to withdraw the individual

who held it from any active participation in political life. But the neglect and indifference of the Master of the Rolls was not the less felt by the still briefless barrister, because some dim consciousness perhaps of a higher destiny, and a natural elasticity of temperament, rendered him more inclined to laugh at the solemn affectations of his judicial relative than seriously to resent his demeanour towards him. "The only thing which provokes me," he would say, "is that people should fancy I have never got anything out of him; it is quite untrue, he once asked me to breakfast."

Adelaide was performed on the 23rd of May, 1816, at Covent Garden. Mr. Young, Mr. C. Kemble, Miss O'Neil, and Miss Foote, sustaining the prin

cipal parts. Owing to some accidental circumstance, the house was thinly attended, and though many scenes excited applause, the performance, as a whole, went off flatly, and it does not appear to have been repeated.

During the winter of 1816, his thoughts were full of a second dramatic effort. The incidents he selected for the groundwork of the plot, were taken from the tragic story of the oppression suffered by the Moors in Spain, previous to their final extirpation. Persecution for political purposes, in the desecrated name of religion, had about this time been revived in the Peninsula, under Ferdinand VII., and the eager spirit which chafed daily at Catholic disfranchisement in his own land, gladly sought occasion to depict in unsuspected verse, the hatefulness of intolerance, as exhibited by a despot professing the Catholic creed. The interest of the play turns upon the love of Hemeya, the titular prince of the Moors of Granada, for the daughter of a Christian noble, who rejects his suit, as being that of an Infidel. Pescara, the tyrannical governor of the province, is, moreover, a rival, and to secure the unwilling hand of Florinda, produces a decree of Philip II., interdicting the marriage of a Mahomedan with a Christian. After a long struggle

between his faith and his affection, Hemeya declares himself ready to conform. A revolt, of which it was intended he should be the head, is disconcerted by the discovery of his apostacy. Filled with remorse by the reproaches of the veteran counsellor of his youth, he endeavours to persuade Malec to fly, and subsequently joins in the attempt to rescue him when condemned to death by the Inquisition. The faithful Moor escapes, while Hemeya is made prisoner, and Florinda is compelled to wed Pescara, as the only means of saving her lover's life, but dies by poison, that she may not violate her early vow. Hemeya, having slain his cruel rival, falls by his own hand.

In the spring of 1817, there were rumours at Covent Garden, of an expected tragedy by the author of Adelaide. The reputation of the young poet extended beyond the walls of the theatre, from the part he had already taken at public meetings in Ireland. Miss O'Neil expressed great interest in him, and augured well of future success. He came to town, accompanied by his young and accomplished wife, to whom he had been recently married, and an early day in April was named for the reading of the play. "When he began to read The Apostate in the greenroom, there was a disposition," says Mr. Macready,

"to smile at his very peculiar voice and manner, but its earnestness soon riveted attention, and the reading terminated to the satisfaction of all but myself, who had to undertake the disagreeable character of Pescara. I had met him the day before at Wallace's* chambers, and it was impossible to be in his company and not to like him. Our acquaintance soon ripened into friendship, which was never relaxed during his life.Ӡ

After due preparation The Apostate was produced on the 3rd May, 1817, Mr. Young, Mr. C. Kemble, Mr. Macready, and Miss O'Neil sustaining the principal parts. The anxiety with which an author witnesses the first representation of his play has passed into a proverb, and there never was any one, perhaps, who by natural temperament was doomed to suffer more intensely from the oscillations of hope and fear incident to such an occasion, than our youthful dramatist. With painful solicitude he watched the performance during the first and second acts. All went well, however. There was some applause, no murmurs, and at length, sick of his own misgivings, and conscious perhaps that he betrayed a certain want

* Wallace, the continuator of Sir J. Mackintosh's History of England. Lardner's Cyclopædia.

† Letter of Mr. Macready, January 28th, 1854.