Isaac Bickerstaffe (c. 1735-c. 1812) was an Irishman, whose name, strange to say, had no connection with the nom de guerre of the same style under which Swift had masqueraded in his outrageously satirical attacks on Partridge the almanac maker, or with the more celebrated imaginary Isaac Bickerstaffe under cover of whose personality Steele conducted the Tatler.  The real Bickerstaffe was a prolific playwright.  His best known pieces are The Sultan, The Maid of the Mill, Lionel and Clarissa, and Love in a Village.  In the last-mentioned occurs the famous song, beginning “We all love a pretty girl—­under the rose.”

William Drennan (1754-1820), who has been called the Tyrtaeus of the United Irishmen, was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, was born in Belfast, and was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, taking a medical degree from the latter.  He practised his profession in the north of Ireland.  When the Irish Volunteers were established, Drennan entered heart and soul into the movement.  Removing to Dublin in 1789, he associated with Tone and other revolutionary spirits, and became one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen, the first statement of whose objects was the product of his pen.  His Letters of Orellana helped materially to enlist the men of Ulster in the ranks of the Society.  He also wrote a series of stirring lyrics which, voicing as they did the general sentiment in Ireland at the time, became extremely popular and had a widespread effect.  These were afterwards (1815) collected under the title of Fugitive Pieces.  All his political hopes being blasted with the failure of the rebellion of 1798 and of Emmet’s insurrection in 1803, Drennan returned in 1807 to Belfast and there founded the Belfast Magazine.  “The Wake of William Orr”, a series of noble and affecting stanzas commemorating the judicial murder of a young Presbyterian Irish patriot in 1798, is one of his best known pieces.  He also celebrated the ill-fated brothers Sheares.  His song “Erin” was considered by Moore to be one of the most perfect of modern songs.  It was in this piece that he fixed upon Ireland the title of the Emerald Isle: 

      When Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood,
      God bless’d the green island, and saw it was good;
      The em’rald of Europe, it sparkled and shone—­
      In the ring of the world the most precious stone.

Mary Tighe (1772-1810), whose maiden name was Blachford, was born, the daughter of a clergyman, in Co.  Wicklow.  She contracted an unhappy marriage with her cousin who represented Kilkenny in the Irish house of commons.  By all accounts she was of great beauty and numerous accomplishments.  She wrote many poems:  her best, and best known, is Psyche, or the Legend of Love, an adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche from the Golden Ass of Apuleius.  The metre she employed in this piece was the Spenserian