fact works of his own, like Twenty Golden Years Ago, attributed to a certain Selber. His connection with The Dublin University Magazine was terminated because his habits rendered him incapable of regular application. He was friends with the patriotic journalists Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel, who would write his biography. His poems were published in their newspaper The Nation. Mangan was for a time paid a fixed salary, but, as on former occasions, these relations were broken off, though he continued to send verses to "The Nation" even after he had cast in his lot with Mitchel, who in 1848 began to issue The United Irishman. Although his early poetry was often apolitical, after the Famine he began writing patriotic poems, including influential works such as Dark Rosaleen, a translation of Róisín Dubh and A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century. His best known poems include Dark Rosaleen, Siberia, Nameless One, A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century, The Funerals, To the Ruins of Donegal Castle, Pleasant Prospects for the Land-eaters and Woman of Three Cows. He wrote a brief autobiography, on the advice of his friend Charles Patrick Meehan, which ends mid-sentence. This must have been written in the last months of his life, since he mentions his narrative poem of the Italian Gasparo Bandollo, which was published in the Dublin University Magazine in May 1849. Mangan was a lonely and often difficult man who suffered from mood swings, depression and irrational fears, and became a heavy drinker and opium user. There are many descriptions of his personal appearance at this time, all of them dwelling on his spare figure, his tight blue cloak, his witch's hat, his inevitable umbrella. He was described by the artist William Frederick Wakeman as frequently wearing "a huge pair of green spectacles", padded shirts to hide his malnourished figure, and a hat which "resembled those which broomstick-riding witches are usually represented with". In 1849, weakened by poverty, alcoholism and malnutrition, he succumbed to cholera aged only 46. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. Style Mangan's poetry fits into a variety of literary traditions. Most obviously, and frequently, his work is read alongside such nationalist political authors as John Mitchel, as they appeared in The Nation, The Vindicator and the United Irishman newspapers; or as a manifestation of the 19th-century Irish Cultural Revival. It is hard not to acknowledge Mangan's debts to