Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Halpin, Nicholas John
HALPIN, NICHOLAS JOHN (1790–1850), miscellaneous writer, was born 18 Oct. 1790 at Portarlington. After a distinguished career at Dublin University, where he proceeded B.A. in 1815, he took orders in the Irish church, but devoted himself largely to literary pursuits, and was for many years editor of the ‘Evening Mail,’ the chief protestant paper of Dublin. He was a permanent member of the Royal Irish Academy. He died at Dublin 22 Nov. 1850. He married in 1817 Anne Grehan, who, together with three sons and four daughters, survived him; of the former, Charles Graham is noticed separately.
Halpin wrote: 1. ‘An University Prize Poem, on His Majesty King George the Third having completed the Fiftieth Year of his Reign,’ Dublin, 1811. 2. ‘Tithes no Tax,’ Dublin, 1823. 3. ‘Authentic Report of the Speeches and Proceedings of the Meeting held at Cavan 26 January 1827, for the purpose of forming a Society for Promoting the Reformation, to which are added Notes and Appendix,’ edited Dublin, 1827. 4. ‘The Impossibility of Transubstantiation.’ 5. ‘No Chimæra, or the Lay Reformation in Ireland,’ Dublin, 1828. 6. ‘Oberon's Vision in the “Midsummer Night's Dream,” illustrated by a comparison with Lylie's “Endymion,”’ London, Shakespeare Society, 1843, an attempt to prove that Shakespeare was covertly referring to current events connected with Queen Elizabeth and Leicester. 7. ‘Bridal Runaway, an Essay on Juliet's Soliloquy,’ London, Shakespeare Society, 1845. 8. ‘The Dramatic Unities of Shakespeare, in a Letter addressed to the editor of “Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,”’ Dublin, 1849. 9. ‘Observations on Certain Passages in the Life of Edmund Spenser,’ Dublin, 1850.
[Gent. Mag. August 1851, p. 212; Cat. of Dublin Graduates.]