Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/513

 admitted no weakening in his love of his country.

Meanwhile the death of his father in July 1846 and the experience of the Irish famine deepened De Vere's religious feeling, and from 1848 his sentiment inclined towards the Roman catholic church. Carlyle and other friends warned him in vain against the bondage which he was inviting. But in Nov. 1851 he set out for Rome in company with Henry Edward Manning, and on 15 Nov. was received into the Roman catholic church on the way in the archbishop's chapel at Avignon (see his explanatory letter to Mrs. Coleridge written the same day in, Aubrey de Vere, 1904, pp. 198, 199; and his own Religious Problems of the 19th Century, 1893).

In 1854 he was appointed by the rector, Newman, to be professor of political and social science in the new Dublin catholic university (cf., Cardinal Newman, i. 359, 1912). He discharged no duties in connection with the post, but he held it in name until Newman's retirement in 1858. At Pope Pius IX's suggestion he wrote 'May Carols,' hymns to the Virgin and saints (1857; 3rd edit. 1881), with an introduction explaining his conversion.

Thenceforth he lived chiefly in his beautiful Irish home, exchanging visits and corresponding with his friends and publishing much verse and prose. Tennyson had spent five weeks with De Vere at Curragh in 1848, and De Vere from 1854 onwards constantly visited Tennyson at Farringford and Aldworth. Always interested in Irish legend and history, De Vere published in 1862 'Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland,' illustrating the Irish annals of six centuries, and after another visit to Rome in 1870 set to work on 'The Legends of St. Patrick,' his most important work of the kind, which appeared in 1872. He made a first attempt at poetic drama in 'Alexander the Great' (1874), which was followed by 'St. Thomas of Canterbury' in 1876. The two dramas were designed to contrast pagan and Christian heroism.

Death of friends saddened his closing years. He published a volume of 'Recollections' in 1897, and next year he revisited the Lakes and other of his early English haunts. He died unmarried at Curragh Chase on 21 Jan. 1902, and was buried in the churchyard at Askeaton, co. Limerick. A coloured drawing of De Vere at twenty, showing a handsome countenance, and an oil portrait also done in youth by Samuel Laurence, are at Curragh Chase. An oil painting by Elinor M. Monsell (now Mrs. Bernard Darwin) when De Vere was eighty - seven is in her possession.

De Vere was a charming conversationalist; his grace of thought and expression was said to shed 'a moral sunshine' over the company of hearers, and he told humorous Irish stories delightfully. His verse is intellectual, dignified, and imaginative, but somewhat too removed from familiar thought and feeling to win wide acceptance. A disciple of Wordsworth from the outset, he had a predilection for picturesque and romantic themes. He was at his best in the poems on old Irish subjects, and in his sonnets some of which like 'The Sun-God' and 'Sorrow' reach a high standard of accomplishment. Sara Coleridge said of him that he had more entirely a poet's nature than even her own father or any of the poets she had known. His poetry enjoyed much vogue in America. An accomplished writer of prose, De Vere was judged by R. H. Hutton to be a better critic than poet. His critical powers are seen to advantage throughout his 'Critical Essays' (3 vols. 1887-9), but his correspondence with Sir Henry Taylor contains his best literary criticism.

Besides the volumes of verse cited De Vere wrote: Other prose works are:
 * 1) 'The Infant Bridal and Other Poems,' 1864; 1876.
 * 2) 'Antar and Zara, an Eastern Romance,' 1877.
 * 3) 'The Foray of Queen Meave,' 1882.
 * 4) 'Legends and Records of the Church and Empire,' 1887.
 * 5) 'St. Peter's Chains, or Rome and the Italian Revolution,' 1888.
 * 6) 'Mediæval Records and Sonnets,' 1893.
 * 1) 'Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey,' 2 vols., 1850.
 * 2) ' The Church Settlement of Ireland,' 1866.
 * 3) 'Ireland's Church Property and the Right Use of it,' 1867.
 * 4) 'Pleas for Secularization,' 1867.
 * 5) 'Ireland's Church Question,' 1868.
 * 6) 'Proteus and Amadeus: a Correspondence about National Theology,' 1878.
 * 7) 'Ireland and Proportional Representation,' 1885.