Author: Macklin, Hugh George
Biography:
MACKLIN, Hugh George (1772-1819: ancestry.co.uk)
He was the eldest son of James Macklin, schoolmaster, of Derry (Londonderry, co. Armagh, Ireland). His mother’s name is not known. There is no record of a baptism and his age at death, forty-seven, is the only real clue to his date of birth (other than his age on entering college, which is not recorded and often had quite a range at Trinity College Dublin). He attended a boarding school in Derry where the master, Rev. Thomas Marshall, also taught his contemporaries John Jebb, Robert Torrens and Samuel Kyle (DIB) Latin and Greek. He proceeded to Trinity College Dublin (Sizar 1791, Scholar 1793, BA 1795),where Thomas Moore (q.v.) and Robert Emmet (DIB) were his younger contemporaries. Moore later recalled that he had a reputation for boasting and so had been nicknamed “Hugo Grotius Braggadocio,” and noted that he was one of the most “showy speakers” at the Historical Society. Moore also quipped that when he ran out of money he would threaten to publish his poems, which induced his friends to bail him out to prevent it. Like Moore, he proceeded to London to study law and was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1800. He then joined the EIC as a clerk, rising to barrister and later Advocate General of the Recorder’s Court, Bombay. He died, aged 47, from chronic liver disease, on 29 Sept. 1819, at Bombay. The BL copy (11641.c.44) contains the attribution H. G. Maclin (sic) together with his occupation, in a contemporary hand, but the catalogue does not identify him as Hugh George Macklin. (ancestry.co.uk 20 Feb. 2023; O’Donoghue; Bombay Gazette 6 Oct. 1819; East India Register and Directory [1820], 493; Globe19 Apr. 1820; Blackwoods June 1820, 343; Charles Foster, The Life of John Jebb [1836], 1: 28; Thomas Moore, Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence, ed. Lord John Russell [1853], 1: 67-8) AA