C. G. Duffy compares MacNevin’s personal library with those of Thomas Davis and Denis Florence Mac Carthy (Young Ireland, 1896, Vol. I):

A man’s character may be read in his library. Davis’s books, which might be carried in a single waggon [sic], were as miscellaneous as his reading, but almost as motley as an old bookstall. Sismondi and Blackstone stood between Thierry and Percy’s Reliques; Flaxman’s Illustrations and Retzch’s Outlines were flanked by Carte’s “Ormond and Paul Louis Courier, Boulter’s Letters, Beranger, Wolfe Tone, Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, a Manual of Artillery, or a treatise on military equitation, jostled Philip van Artevelde and a rare collection of Street Ballads; and the fresh and dainty volumes of the Archaeological Society sprawled among Anti-Union pamphlets and the incredible Anti-Irish tracts of the Commonwealth. But there was order in the disorder; he could put his hand on the volume he wanted without a moment’s hesitation.

MacCarthy’s library formed a strange contrast with Davis’s. The books were as trim and neat as the gilded favourites of a boudoir; not a gap from the floor to the ceiling, no room apparently for another volume, and one less would spoil the graceful uniformity. No scholarly litter defaced the poet’s bower. The step-ladder, MacNevin used to say, had the air of a gentleman, and the very duster a touch of quality. At first sight it might pass for the boudoir of a “Blue”; but when you came to examine the books they were not of the class accustomed to be fondled by a fashionable lady. Dante, Rabelais, Goethe, Calderon, Boccaccio stood in the van of a long line of illustrious foreigners. Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Spenser, often handled, but looking as fresh and dainty as the last Forget-me-not, Shelley in many editions, poets of all nations, and scarcely a single volume of the working library of Davis.

MacNevin’s differed from both the others; it was a library of special studies. When his attention was fixed on any era, or question, he supplied himself immediately with the leading books, and studied them with intense industry. But if the inquiry was interrupted, as it was very liable to be, it was sometimes never resumed; and one volume, [136] carefully noted, stood perhaps next to its fellow whose leaves were still uncut. There was a large basis of law- for his father and brother, who were attorneys, did not allow him altogether to neglect the Four Courts - and a liberal supply of Irish books, some of them precious for their rarity or their pedigree (they came out of historic collections or had belonged to memorable men), but the bulk of the library was English literature and history, carefully studied and often curiously annotated. Though MacNevin was erratic in his fancies, his habits were orderly and even precise. His numerous family of special studies never got intermixed; and Lane insisted that they lived like a French household in “apartments” under the same roof, but having no common salon, and never interchanging visits.

A scrap from one of Davis’s notes to me at this time will indicate how little he was a mere politician in his studies: - “I leave with you a Hesiod [Flaxman’s Illustrations], and you can send me the volume you have. I think The Golden Age, and The Carrying of Pandora by Mercury, two of the most beauteous and true compositions I ever saw, and well worth ten Spirits of the Nation. Glory to Flaxman, though he was a Saxon!” A man might do all these things and be detested, but Davis did them and was universally loved. A human being so free from vanity or selfishness it has never been my good fortune to encounter, and the result was that his influence and his labours excited no jealousy.

MacNevin was a delightful talker, not of the order who harangue or lecture over the dinner-table, but delightful from the quickness of his fancy. His playful and enjoying nature, and the training he had given it, caused him to be likened to Sheil, but he had more heart and less imagination than Sheil. Among his comrades he was like a boy, as joyous and caressing, but sometimes as wayward and exacting. At the University he had been a close friend of Mr Keogh, and he was still liable to irregular fits of submission to that adverse influence, for as one of his admirers declared - “Willy Keogh could coax the birds off the bushes” - and during these intervals he was disturbed and unhappy. He was averse from details and regular labour, but he had fits of devouring industry. It is scarcely possible to conceive two honourable men united by the idem vdle and idem nolle who were more inherently different than Thomas Davis and Thomas MacNevin. “If I had Davis’s power of concentration,” the latter wrote to me at this time, “or what I consider the highest of all qualities, a sense of the reality and worth of things, I might do something. But my convictions are not strong, my thoughts are mere reveries, and my fancy is so barren that if she had a handmaiden I would be entitled to proceed as the patriarchs did in case of sterility.”

MacNevin, to whom a conviction often came as it comes to a woman of genius rather by intuition than by any process of reasoning, thought the experiment would fail. But like Camille Desmoulin, he threw out his thoughts disguised as pleasantries, and could not always get men to accept them seriously. “The Protestant gentry were excellent patriots,” he said, “when they had everything their own way in the country; and perhaps they will be excellent patriots again when they have nothing their own way; but if you expect them in a fit of enthusiasm to make such a surrender of privileges and monopolies as their class made in France, you must first bring them, like the French seigneurs, face to face with Revolution.”’

The Whigs, like the Duke, were also on the alert. The opinion was becoming general that Peel must fall in the coming session, and the legitimate result of the Irish movement would, they were of opinion, be accomplished when Lord John Russell returned to Downing Street. There was a secret fear among men who agreed in little else, that the success of the Whigs would be perilous to the national party. They could do so much to seduce and so much to intimidate. “They are like Dundrum Bay,” exclaimed MacNevin, “where one does not know whether most to fear the rocks or the sand-banks.” The Archbishop of Tuam hinted this fear in a letter to the Association, the scope of which was that there must be no compromise with Whigs or Tories. Mr Burke Roche echoed him; and MacNevin in the Nation recalled the offences of the Whigs as a party, and vehemently warned them that Ireland would be “as great a difficulty to Palmerston as to Peel.” Davis did not concur in the length to which this policy was carried in the Nation, and in August he wrote to me from Cork, where he had gone on an autumn excursion:

”MacN’s article on the Whigs has given great offence in many quarters. I think, to say truth, it said too much, and looked like a cruel attack, when the Irish Whigs at least were doing nobly in the House. Take some opportunity to distinguish that you did not mean them (S. O’Brien [173] and the like) in attacking the Whigs, and do not notice anything in the London Press on it. I speak advisedly. We have need of tolerants as well as allies for a while.’

‘I think’ - he wrote in the gay, airy badinage which he loved - ‘I think our task is to work the virgin mine of nationality; but not, I submit, the nationality of Ollam Fodlah and other gentlemen before or immediately after the Flood. Or of Dathi (that antique hero whom Mr Holebrook depicts on the volunteer’s card in a yeoman’s uniform). Our task is to elevate the character of the people, raising up, in fact, their bump of self-esteem and suppressing the bumps of servility and fury. Drawing these fabulous heroes from their murky hiding-place is like Lane singing inane songs solely because they are older than Eman an Knuc’s hills. [Ftn. i.e., Eamon of the Hills, a noted outlaw.] We must be cosmopolitan, and deviate occasionally from our native bogs. We shall have a better chance of success by being less Irish, though not on that account less nice. James Duffy has agreed to publish a volume of biographical essays on the great men of European history; will you let us make it a joint book by you and me as a little memorial of regard? Let us no longer [101] press poor Jacobo Duffei to the earth with records of centuries which no one will read, and, O pessime! which no one will buy. These pre-Adamite fictions are the Sabine bracelets and helmets which smother the Roman virgin of Wellington Quay.’ [Ftn. MacNevin to Duffy.]

Ibid., Vol. II, ppp.98-99.

‘[...] In short, the Sacred College sent a Rescript to the Irish clergy, declaring that whereas it had been reported to His Holiness that many of them devoted themselves too much to politics, and spoke too rashly in public concerning affairs of State, they were thereafter to attend to their religious duties. It was carefully given out, in the English Press, that the Pope had denounced the Repeal: if he had done so, nobody would have minded it, because Catholics do not admit his jurisdiction in temporal affairs. Hear how MacNevin, a young Catholic lawyer, spoke of this fulmination on its first appearance, and while yet it was generally believed to be directly aimed against the Repeal agitation:

“By whom was the Holy Father informed that certain prelates were ‘nimium addicti politicis negotiis et minus prudentes de republica’ which I translate Repeal (cheers)? By whose whisperings did he learn that the Bishop of Ardagh or the Priest of Clontibret were too prominent or too imprudent? We are informed, sir, that there is an English emissary, - shall I say spy? It is now an established English functionary, - at Rome (loud cheers). Is his the discretion which guides the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda! Do not suppose, for a moment, that I question the supremacy of the Pope in religious matters. Surely nothing is farther from my mind. But, sir, I do question his right to dictate to an Irish clergyman the degree of prominence or prudence with which he shall serve his country. I hope I am not irreverent in doing so. I shall continue to hold my opinion until I am authoritatively informed that he has the right, - hen I shall be silent. But I never heard before, and it will be a singular doctrine, in my view of the case, that his holiness can take cognizance of the political movements of the Irish people, and use his influence to disarrange the powers we bring to bear in favour of our liberty (cheers). Now, mark who will applaud this repressive movement the most: - why, the men who for centuries have denounced you, and falsely denounced you, as being under the influence of the temporal power of Rome. They made it high treason to communicate with Rome; they sank to the mean vulgarity of withholding the usual diplomatic relations between European courts; they invented a praemunire to keep out the corruption of the Seven-hilled City; but they are now moving every engine to induce the Pope to lend a hand at suppressing Repeal. I beg to tell them, neither he nor they can do it (tremendous applause). If our liberty depended on a monarch or [79] a mob — if it waited on the dictum of a prelate or a Pope - if it could be wrested from us by intrigue- if it were not a thing to be won and kept by honour, and courage, and fidelity, - I would prefer to see the country remain the comfortable servant of England, with a little better food, and a degree of higher wages (cheers).”

‘It was soon settled, however, that the Rescript had no such power, and presumed that it had no such intention, on the part of the Pope; yet a certain prudent reserve began to be observable in the Repeal speeches of the clergy. So far the Premier’s [Robert Peel] Roman policy had succeeded.’

Before quitting this personal topic, I shall tell you how it fared with MacNevin. Brilliant, accomplished, and vivacious, with a pungent dash of sarcasm, he would probably never have been anything but a wit, of the sneering species, if he had not known Davis. Not one of our company was more devotedly attached to Davis, nor so entirely dependent on him, possessed by him. Though assuredly MacNevin was no intellectual pauper, and with strong literary ambition, yet he took his literary tasks submissively at the hand of his friend; and almost saw and felt as the more potent nature willed that he should see and feel. To him Davis had assigned to write for the Library a narrative of the “Plantation of Ulster” and he was far off at Rose Park, in Galway, — his father’s house, — busy on his history when Davis died. A few days after, on October 2d, he wrote to me, inquiring about some authorities for his book; and suddenly remembering, he exclaims -

“Poor Davis! how his overflowing treasury would have opened to my importunacy! The more I think of this death — and day by day it grows even more terrible - the more I am afraid to look its effects on the country and ourselves in the face. How well we could have spared a million lives for that bright, pure, manly spirit!”

 Thus, throughout the letter, he interrupts himself with outbreaks of despair. The book was written. MacNevin seemed to regard it as a sacred task, imposed on him by the dead: but almost immediately after its publication his intimates perceived that his tasks in this world were over. He was going mad. From the moment of his friend’s death, he had been drifting like a ship without a helm; his compass was lost; his pole-star gone out. At last he whirled into the vortex, hopelessly insane, and died in a lunatic asylum.