HARKIN, HUGH. — Monody on the Death of the late John Young, LL.D., first professor of moral philosophy in the Belfast Royal Academical Institution, Belfast, 1832, 8vo; Monody on the Death of a Gentleman in Coleraine; Epithalamium, on the marriage of Miss Tennant, of Belfast, to Mr. James Emerson (all three anonymously); No 1 of Proposed Series of Religious Poems (over name of “Henry Picken”), Coleraine, 1847, 8vo; Sacred Songs for the People, adapted to popular airs, and Occasional Meditations, in strict conformity with the teachings of the Church, York, 1849. The first three publications, and the one signed “Henry Picken,” were written by Harkin for the benefit of a poor old blind man of that name in Belfast, who sold them as his own by Harkin’s consent. That explains why so strict a Catholic as the poet wrote so appreciatively of Dr. Young, a Presbyterian. He was born at Magilligan, Co. Derry, on July 6, 1791, and became a teacher and a journalist. Wrote verse and prose for Belfast Vindicator (edited by Gavan Duffy), and also for Dublin Penny Journal, generally sketches of Irish life. He was an accountant in the Vindicator office for sometime, and then professor at the diocesan seminary of Down and Connor. He wrote a good number of poems in Nation anonymously, and over the letter “H,” and resided in Edinburgh and Leeds for some years between 1840-50. His was original editor of the Lamp, a Catholic periodical, and edited the Bulletin of York, also a Catholic paper, in 1852-3, and wrote a serial story and some poems for it. May have been “Heber” of that periodical. He also wrote a novel, entitled “Quarter-clift,” which appeared in parts in Belfast about 1840. An arithmetical work by one of his name was also published (1861). He died in Donegall Square, Belfast, on January 2, 1854, greatly regretted by the Belfast Catholics, whom he had well served by voice and pen. He was one of the strongest supporters of O’Connell, and did a great deal for the cause of Catholic Emancipation and Repeal, and was considered one of the best Irish orators of his time, some writers comparing him to Burke and Grattan. In Patrick O’Kelly’s “Hippocrene” (1831), there are several poems addressed to him by Harkin, from Coleraine, and in one of them he complains of Michael McCarthy’s plagiarism from O’Kelly (a notorious plagiarist). It is said that the famous “Doneraile Litany” was suggested, if not partly written, by Harkin. The latter’s signature in Belfast Vindicator was “Unexva.”