Memoir of Thomas Furlong

[From the Dublin Penny Journal, Vol. 1, No. 6, August 4, 1832]

Thomas Furlong, the translator of Carolan's remains, and other ancient relics, was born in the county of Wexford - a portion of Ireland which has also given birth to Thomas Moore. Furlong's father was a respectable farmer. Our poet was born in the year 1794, at a place called Scarawalsh, a romantic part of the country, midway between Ferns and Enniscorthy. His education qualified him for a Counting-house, and, at fourteen, he was apprenticed to a respectable trader in the Irish Metropolis. The ledger, however, had less attraction for him than the muses; yet though he "lisped in numbers," he did not let his passion for poetry interfere with his more important duties. This is a feature in his character which should not be overlooked. Through life he retained the friendship of his employer; and when that gentleman died, Furlong vented his feelings in a poem, which, though it is one of his earliest productions, has the folllovving impressive stanzas:

These are the breathings of a poet, who though he did not excite a wonderful degree of attention during his lifetime, was yet possessed of all the qualifications of genius.

Mr. Furlong certainly escaped much of the miseries of a poet's life. He either had more common sense, or Providence better guided him - for his career, though short, does not exhibit any of those wild and wayward vagaries which at one and the same time, interest and pain us in reading the lives of some of the children of song. During the most valuable part of his life, he was in the employment of Mr. Jamieson, an eminent distiller of Dublin - a man of enlarged and liberal views - and it reflects great credit both on the poet and his employer, that Mr. Jamieson wept like a child on the day of Furlong's funeral.

Our poet was a large contributor to the New Monthly Magazine, and he projected, in 1822, the New Irish Magazine, which was printed in Dublin. During the years 1825 and 1826, he was employed occasionally in writing the Doom of Derenzie, a descriptive poem which was published, after his death, by Robins, of London. This poem was warmly eugolized by his friend, the late Rev. charles maturtn, with whom he had long been on habits of the closest intimacy. The following letter is a proof of the intimacy, and is interesting, as being written a short time before the death of the eccentric and talented Maturin.

"Wednesday.- I trust the melancholy circumstance of my poor father's death will excuse my not writing to you lately. I am confined with an inflammation in my eyes, for which I am undergoing a severe mercurial course ; but if you can have the charity to sit with a blind invalid, come and drink tea with me this evening, from seven till ten. Bring your poem with you. I write this with great difficulty. You see I have some chance of fame in being ranked with ' Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,' though I confess it is the last particular in which I wish to resemble those worthies.
Faithfully yours,
C. R. MATURIN."

Such was the friendship and intercourse between the author of "Bertram, "Women, or Pour et Centre," "Melmoth," &c. and the translator of Carolan - for it is in this light we wish to regard Furlong. Yet when his aid was first solicited, (as Mr. Hardiman tells us in his Irish Minstrelsy,) to undertake the translation, he at first smiled at the idea of finding any thing of merit extant in the Irish language. But inspection convinced him that he was labouring under the common prejudice of the day; and his fine taste soon appreciated the worth of those old relics. Since we commenced this Journal more than one individual has called at the office, complaining that the translation given in the first number was very incorrect. We laboured to convince them that it was a poetic translation - in fact it ought to have been stated that it was translated by Furlong. But nothing would satisfy our worthy friends - who, being intimate with the Irish language, and but imperfectly acquainted with English, could not appreciate the meaning of a poetic translation, and insisted on a literal one. Furlong in his translations, endeavoured to enter into the spirit of the bard, and to express himself in English as he conceived the writer would have done, had he been acquainted with that language.

Mr. Furlong died in the year 1827, in the thirty-third year of his age. He thus did not live long enough for the expansion of his powers, or the maturing of his intellect; but he has left behind him proof sufficient that he was a poet of no mean order. He was interred in the church-yard of Drumcondra, near Dublin, and over his grave, which lies near that of the celebrated antiquarian Grose, his friends have erected a handsome monument, with the following inscription: -

The following lines were the last which issued from the pen of Mr. Furlong, written a few days before his death:-