MR. DAWSON TURNER asks for information regarding three writers in the _Rolliad_, viz.: Tickell, Richardson, and Fitzpatrick. Memoirs of the first two are given in Chalmers's _Dictionary_; but in Moore's _Life of Sheridan_, MR. TURNER will find several notices of them, far more attractive than dry biographical details. They were both intimately associated with Sheridan; Tickell, indeed, was his brother-in-law. One would prefer calling them his _friends_, but steady friendship must rest upon a firmer basis than those gifts of wit, talent, and a keen sense of the ridiculous, which prevailed so largely amongst this clever trio.
Tickell's production, _Anticipation_, is still remembered from its cleverness and humour; but when every speaker introduced into its pages has long been dead, and some of them were little known to fame, the pamphlet is preserved by a few solely from the celebrity which it once possessed.
His death in 1793 was a most melancholy one. It is described by Professor Smyth in in his interesting _Memoir of Sheridan_, a book printed some years ago for distribution among his friends, and which well deserves publication.
Independent of his contributions to the _Rolliad_, { 334} Richardson did little as an author. His comedy of _The Fugitive_, acted and published in 1792, was well received, and is much praised. Why has this production so completely disappeared?
General Fitzpatrick was born in 1749, and died in 1815. He was the second son of John, Earl of Upper Ossory; twice Secretary-at-War; once secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Portland, but what he regarded as his highest distinction, and it is recorded on his tomb, was the friendship of Fox during forty years of their lives.
Some of his speeches on the union with Ireland will be found in the thirty-fourth volume of the _Parliamentary History_.
His epitaph, by himself, is inscribed on a sarcophagus in the church-yard at Sunning Hill, in which he describes himself--what his friends admitted to be truth--a politician without ambition, a writer without vanity.
Which is the true reading in the following lines by Fitzpatrick on Fox? In my copy the word "course" in the third line is erased, and the word "mind" is substituted.