Edward Quillinan

Edward Quillinan (12 August 1791 - 8 July 1851) was an English poet who was a son-in-law and defender of William Wordsworth and a translator of Portuguese poetry.

He was born at Oporto, Portugal, on 12 Aug. 1791, the son of Edward Quillinan, an Irishman of a good but impoverished family, who had become a prosperous wine merchant at Oporto. His mother, whose maiden name was Ryan, died soon after her son had been sent, in 1798, to England, to be educated at Roman Catholic schools. Returning to Portugal, he entered his father's counting-house, but this distasteful employment ceased upon the French invasion under Jean-Andoche Junot in 1807, which obliged the family to seek refuge in England.

After spending some time without any occupation, he entered the army as a cornet in a cavalry regiment, from which, after seeing some service at Walcheren, he passed into another regiment, stationed at Canterbury. A satirical pamphlet in verse, The Ball Room Votaries, involved him in a series of duels, and compelled him to exchange into the 3rd Dragoon Guards, with which he served through the latter portion of the Peninsular war. In 1814 he made his first serious essay in poetry by publishing Dunluce Castle, a Poem, which he followed with Stanzas by the author of Dunluce Castle (1814), and The Sacrifice of Isabel (a more important effort in 1816), and Elegiac Verses addressed to Lady Brydges in memory of her son, Grey Matthew Brydges (1817).

In 1817 he married Jemima, second daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges and subsequently served with his regiment in Ireland. In 1819 Dunluce Castle attracted the notice of Thomas Hamilton the original "Morgan O'Doherty" of Blackwood's Magazine, who ridiculed it in a review entitled Poems by a Heavy Dragoon. Quillinan deferred his rejoinder until 1821, when he attacked John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart, whom he erroneously supposed to be the writers, in his Retort Courteous, a satire largely consisting of passages from Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, done into verse. The misunderstanding was dissipated through the friendly offices of Robert Pearse Gillies, and all parties became good friends.

...
Wikipedia