Life
1686-1765 [known as ‘Premium Madden’]; b. 23rd Dec., Dublin;
nephew of William Molyneux, his mother being a Molyneux of Castle Dillon;
ed. TCD, ord. 1721; living at Drumraully, nr. Newtownbutler; DD, 1723;
visited London, 1729; published Themistocles, the Lover of His
Country (Lincoln Fields, Feb. 1729), a tragedy dedicated to Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh; established premiums
for learning at Trinity College, Dublin and Royal Dublin Society [RDS],
which he founded with Thomas Prior, 1731; offered £50 for the author of
an Irish invention improving any useful art or manufacture; paid Samuel
Johnson £10 in London to improve a poem; issued Memoirs Of the Twentieth
Century [sic] (1733), suppressed by the author at the instance of
Sir Robert Walpole and now very rare; Reflections and Resolutions Proper
for the Gentlemen of Ireland (1738), containing 32 anti-absenteeist
resolutions; d. Fermanagh; Mary Delany has left an account of him in her
Letters, while his bounty was still remembered in an oration of Dr. Thomas
Sheridan’s oration (6 Dec. 1757); Dr. Johnson wrote, ‘his was
a name which Ireland ought to honour’; there is a portrait by R.
Hunter and R. Purcell in the National Gallery of Ireland and another by
Stephen Slaughter; also, an unattributed head of Madden sculpted in marble
in the RDS Members’ Room (Ballsbridge, Dublin). CAB DNB PI DIB
DIW [FDA]
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Works
Themistocles; The Lover of His Country (Dublin: S. Power 1729),
[x], 63, [ii]pp., Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen
of Ireland (Dublin 1738; rep. 1816); Memoirs Of the Twentieth Century
(1733). See also Letters of Lord Chesterfield to Faulkner, Dr
Madden, &c (1770), as Supplement [now Vols. III & IV
of Stanhope’s edition of Chesterfield’s Works].
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Criticism
T.
de Vere White, Anglo-Irish (1972), p.62-3.
Mairead Dunlevy, ‘Samuel Madden and the Scholarship for Encouraging Useful Manufactures’, in Agnes Birnelle, ed., Decantations: A Tribute for Maurice Craig (Dublin: Lilliput 1993), pp.21-28.
Caroline Robbins, Eighteenth-century Commonwealthman (1961).
Douglas Hyde, Literary History of Ireland (1901 edn.), p.623ff.
Terence de Vere White, The Anglo-Irish (London: Gollancz 1972), pp.62-63.
Notes
Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography [rev. edn.]
(Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), church living at Newtownbutler, Co.
Fermanagh, nr. family estate inherited in 1703; his tragedy Themistocles
(1729) successfully produced in London; ‘Premium Madden’; Reflections
&c. as to their conduct for the Service of their Country
(1738); Johnson, a friend, said ‘his was a name which Ireland ought
to honour;’ also reputedly friend of Swift.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, notes under Thomas Prior that he co-fnd. [Royal Dublin Society [RDS]. DNB gives the date 1732 for his Reflections [err.].
Belfast Central Library holds Memoir of the Life of the late Rev. Peter Roe (1864); and, Reflections, and resolutions proper for the gentlemen of Ireland as to their conduct for the service of their country (1864) [Chk] Belfast Linenhall Library holds Madden’s Reflection (1738).
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Notes
Mary Delany gave a personal
account of Samuel Madden; see Angélique Day, ed., Letters from
Georgian Ireland, Correspondence of Mary Delany, 1731-68 (Friar’s
Bush Press 1991), p.139.
Portraits: Two portraits are known to have been done by Robert Hunter, the first a 3/4-length portrait now in Trinity College, Dublin; the other (dated 1755), untraced but known from a mezzotint by Richard Purcell (obiit. 1766).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)