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 VIII.

Author of "Psyche."

1772-1810.

T is a remarkable fact that hardly anything is known in Ireland about Mrs. Tighe, and yet she is doubly interesting from her wonderful beauty, as well as from her poem of "Psyche," which won the highest praise from competent critics. It was called "pure, polished, sublime, the out-pourings of an untrammelled soul, yearning to be freed from its uncongenial surroundings."

Sir James Mackintosh—no mean judge—pronounced the last three cantos to be "of surpassing beauty, and beyond all doubt the most faultless series of verses ever produced by a woman."

And yet if nine-tenths of the people, even in Wicklow—that county which inspired many of the descriptions in " Psyche "—were asked what they knew about Mrs. Tighe, of Rosanna, the answer would be "Nothing at all!" When William Howitt visited Ireland, in order to add the name