"There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it." -- Charles MacKay
Charles Mackay (27 March 1814 – 24 December 1889) was a Scottish poet, journalist, and song writer.
He was born in Perth, Scotland. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father was by turns a naval officer and a foot soldier. He was educated at the Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but spent much of his early life in France. Coming to London in 1834, he engaged in journalism, working for the Morning Chronicle from 1835—1844 and then became Editor of The Glasgow Argus. He moved to the Illustrated London News in 1848 becoming Editor in 1852.
He published Songs and Poems (1834), wrote a History of London, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), and a romance, Longbeard. He is also remembered for his Gaelic Etymology Of The Languages Of Western Europe and later Dictionary of Lowland Scotch in which he presented his "fanciful conjectures" that "thousands of English words go back to Scottish Gaelic". The linguist Anatoly Liberman has described MacKay as an "etymological monomaniac" commenting that "He was hauled over the coals by his contemporaries and never taken seriously during his lifetime". His fame chiefly rested upon his songs, some of which, including Cheer, Boys, Cheer, were in 1846 set to music by Henry Russell, and had an astonishing popularity.
Mackay first visited and published his observations about America as Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857-58 (1859). He returned to act as Times correspondent during the American Civil War, and in that capacity discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy. He had the degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1846. He was a member of the Percy Society. He died in London.
His daughter became known as the novelist Marie Corelli.
"An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent.""He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done.""If happy I and wretched he, Perhaps the king would change with me.""Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.""Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.""War in men's eyes shall be A monster of iniquity In the good time coming. Nations shall not quarrel then, To prove which is the stronger; Nor slaughter men for glory's sake; - Wait a little longer."