George Darley
			Dirge It Is Not Beauty I Demand Merlin's Last Prophecy Nepenthe Runilda's Chant Song The Anonymous Poet The Fallen Star The Mermaiden's Vesper Hymn The Moon and Sea The Solitary Lyre To Helene
							George Darley (1795-1846) was born in Dublin in 1795. His parents, who were gentle folks of independent means, emigrated to America, leaving the boy in charge of his grandfather at Springfield, Co. Dublin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1820; but an unfortunate stammer prevented him from going into the church or to the bar, and he establsihed himself in London, wher he published his first volume of poems, the Errors of Ecstasie, in 1822, and became a regular contributor to The London Magazine. He was intimate with Cary, the translator of Dante and Charles Lamb. In 1826 he published under the name of "Grey Penseval" a volume of prose tales and sketches, Labour in Idleness (1826), one of which, "The Enchanted Lyre," is plainly autobiographical. Sylvia, or the May Queen (1827, reprint 1892) a fairy opera, met with no success, but about 1830 he became dramatic and art critic to the Athenaeum. His other works are:  Nepenthe (1835, reprint 1897), his most considerable poem; introduction to the works of Beaumont and Fletcher (1840); with two plays, Thomas a Becket (1840), and Ethestan (1841). He died in London on the 23rd of November 1846. [Encyclodeia Brittanica, 1911 edition]      Darley also had a scheme for making money by publishing a series of mathematical textbooks:  A System of Popular Geometry (1826); A System of Popular Algebra (1827); A System of Popular Trigonometry (1827); The Geometrical Companion (1828); The Familiar Astronomy (1830).