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Life
1786-1820 [pseud. ‘Polypus’; ‘Cervantès Hogg’; ‘Scrutator’]; b. Cork, ed. TCD; studied law, Middle Temple, London; his anonymous verse satire on the Whig administration, All the Talents (1807), a satirical poem by ‘Polypus’ facetiously dedicated to the Emperor of China which ran to 20 editions and bestowed its title as the name of the short-lived Whig cabinet in question; incls. verses on R. B. Sheridan, Andrew Cherry and Thomas Moore - amplified in later editions; Barrett founded the satirical newspaper Comet, 1808 and publ. Woman and Other Poems (1810) which includes the celebrated lines, ‘She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave / Last at His cross and earliest at His grave’; he also wrote a comedy, My Wife, What Wife? (1815), and The Heroine (1822, rep. 1909), a burlesque novel parodying popular fiction; d. of tuberculosis [‘a bursting blood vessel’: DJO’D], Glamorganshire, Wales, 20 March; he was a descendant of Swift’s executor Eaton Stannard. CAB ODNB JMC DIW RAF ODQ OCIL DIL
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Works
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All the Talents (on R. B. Sheridan): ‘Nature intended Mr. Sheridan for a mere writer of farces ... all I am astonished at is, that in his hasty decisions he should never do right by a blunder’. (On Andrew Cherry:) ‘Small Cherry, thus, huge op’ras manufacture; / Amphibious thing, ‘twixt dramatist and actor!’
Woman: ‘Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung, / Not she denied him with unholy tongue; / She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave / Last at his cross and earliest at his grave.’ (Pt. I, 1822 Edn.; cited with var. from 1810 Edn., in Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, p.284.)
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References
Dictionary of National Biography: bio-dates 1786-1820; b. Cork; ed. TCD; a barrister whose satirical poem on the Whig Administration, All the Talents (1807) went into many editions; used the pseudonyms Polypus and Cervantes Hogg, F.S.M.; among other works a comedy, My Wife, What Wife? (1815) and Woman (1810), were successful.
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets Of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912), lists Barrett’s satirical poems incl. All the Talents 1807, on British political figures; also The Second Titan War; or The Talents Buried under Portland Isle (1807); The Talents Run Mad, or 1816 (1816); The Tarantula or The Dance of the Fools (1809), all satirical verse; ed. TCD. d. Wales. The lines on Moore’s daughter’s grave, attrib. to Atkinson [q.v.] are by him. Note that O’Donoghue attribs. his death to ‘a bursting blood vessel’ in Humour of Ireland (1894).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. I, remarks on Eaton Stannard Barrett, another anti-romantic, and his pastiches of novel of terror and Ossianic genre. Viz., The Heroine, or Adventures of Cherubina (1814), in which: “it was on a nocturnal night in autumnal October; the wet rain fell in liquid quantities, and the thunder rolled in an awful and Ossianly manner [...]’ (Heroine, p.20). Further remarks that Barrett’s eponymous poem gave a whole government their name ‘of all the talents’ (p. 23). Rafroidi, Do. (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2 gives details: abandoned law for literature at the time of his first satirical poem which gave the government the name of ‘Ministry of All the Talents’; d. of tuberculosis, Wales. All the Talents, a satirical poem in three dialogues (Lon, JJ Stockdale, 1807), xii, 99pp., pseud. ‘Polypus’; 18th ed. same year, ill. Rowlandson, xvii, 152pp., ‘[...] to which is added a pastoral epilogue’; All the Talents in Ireland, satirical poem, with notes (Stockdale, 1807), viii, 44pp., pseud. ‘Scrutator’; The Rising Sun, serio-comic satiric romance (London: Appleyards 1807), 2 vols, pseud. ‘Cervantes Hogg’; The Second Titan War, or The Talents Buried Under Portland-Isle, by the Author of The Rising Sun (H Colburn 1807), ii, 63pp.; The Comet, by author of All the Talents (Stockdale 1808), 86pp. [a pseudo-newspaper, with satirical tracts, prose and verse]; The Mis-Led General, a serio-comic, satiric, mock-heroic romance by the author of The Rising Sun (London: H Oddy 1808), 197pp.; The Setting Sun, or Devil Amongst the Placemen, [with] a New Musical Drama, being a parody on The Beggar’s Opera (London: Hughes 1809), 3 vols., pseud. ‘Cervantes Hogg’ [in prose and verse]; The Tarantula, or The Dance of Fools, a sat. work (Hughes 1809), 2 vols.; Woman, a poem (Murray 1810), xv, 85pp.; later ed., Woman, A Poem [and] Occasional Poems (London: H. Colburn, 1818), 121pp.; The Heroine, or The Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader (London: Colburn 1813), 3 vols. [a parody in the framework of an epistolary novel], 2nd ed. The Heroine, or Adventures of Cherubina (London: Colburn 1814), 3 vols. [considerable additions and alterations]; My Wife? What Wife?, comedy in 3 acts (Chapple 1815), 60pp.; The Talents Run Mad, or Eighteen Hundred and Sixteen, sat. poem by author of All the Talents in three dialogues, with notes (London: Colburn 1816); Six Weeks at Long’s, by a Late Resident (printed for the author, London 1817; also 3rd ed. 1817); also attributed to him are Henry Schultze, a tale, and The Savoyard. Rafroidi holds that The Hero, or the Adventures of a Night, another parodical novel, is not by Barrett. Rafroidi suggests pages in E. Railo, The Haunted Castle, and E. Birkhead, The Tale of Terror as a critical resource.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: CUA 1904)m contains “Montmorenci and Cherubina”, an extract from The Heroine. Likewise excerpted in Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature (1876-78).
Libraries: Belfast Public Library holds copies of All the Talents, and Woman. University of Ulster Central Library holds The Heroine (1822, 1909).
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Notes
Epitaph: The lines on the grave of Thomas Moore’s daughter, customarily ascribed to Joseph Atkinson, are actually by Barrett.
Eaton Stannard: Laetitia Pilkington’s poem “Advice to the People of Dublin in the Choice of Their Recorder” refers to an ‘O. Stannard’, taken to be Eaton Stannard (c.1685-1755), barrister and MP for Middleton, Co. Cork, recorder in 1733, and an executor of Jonathan Swift’s will. (Cited in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. S. Deane, 1991, Vol. 1, ftn., p.483.)
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