The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thomas Moore, by Stephen Gwynn
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Title: Thomas Moore
Author: Stephen Gwynn
Release Date: January 12, 2011 [EBook #34930]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS MOORE ***
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THOMAS MOORE
By
STEPHEN GWYNN
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1905
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I--Boyhood and Early Poems
CHAPTER II--Early Manhood and Marriage
CHAPTER III--"Lalla Rookh"
CHAPTER IV--Period of Residence Abroad
CHAPTER V--Work as Biographer and Controversialist
CHAPTER VI--The Decline of Life
CHAPTER VII--General Appreciation
APPENDIX
INDEX
THOMAS MOORE
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD AND EARLY POEMS
Sudden fame, acquired with little difficulty, suffers generally a period
of obscuration after the compelling power which attaches to a man's
living personality has been removed; and from this darkness it does not
always emerge. Of such splendour and subsequent eclipse, Moore's fate
might be cited as the capital example.
The son of a petty Dublin tradesman, he found himself, almost from his
first entry on the world, courted by a brilliant society; each year
added to his friendships among the men who stood highest in literature
and statesmanship; and his reputation on the Continent was surpassed
only by that of Scott and Byron. He did not live to see a reaction. Lord
John Russell could write boldly in 1853, a year after his friend's
death, that "of English lyrical poets, Moore is surely the greatest."
There is perhaps no need to criticise either this attitude of excessive
admiration, or that which in many cases has replaced it, of tolerant
contempt. But it is as well to emphasise at the outset the fact that
even to-day, more than a century after he began to publish, Moore is
still one of the poets most popular and widely known throughout the
English-speaking world. His effect on his own race at least has been
durable; and if it be a fair test of a poet's vitality to ask how much
of his work could be recovered from oral tradition, there are not many
who would stand it better than the singer of the Irish Melodies. At
least the older generation of Irishmen and Irishwomen now living have
his poetry by heart.
The purpose of this book is to give, if possible, a just estimate of the
man's character and of his work as a poet. The problem, so far as the
biographical part is concerned, is not to discover new material but to
select from masses already in print. The Memoirs of his Life, edited by
Lord John Russell, fill eight volumes, though the life with which they
deal was neither long nor specially eventful. In addition we have
allusions to Moore, as a widely known social personage, in almost every
memoir of that time; and newspaper references by thousands have been
collected. These extraneous sources, however, add very little to the
impression which is gained by a careful reading of the correspondence
and of the long diaries in which Moore's nature, singularly unsecretive,
displays itself with perfect frankness. Whether one's aim be to justify
Moore or to condemn him, the most effective means are provided by his
own words; and for nearly everything that I have to allege in the
narrative part of this work, Moore, himself is the authority. Nor is the
critical estimate which has to be put forward, though remote from that
of Moore's official biographer, at all unlike that which the poet
himself seems to have formed of his work.
Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 1779, at No. 12
Aungier Street, where his father, a native of Kerry, kept a grocer's
shop. His mother, Anastasia Clodd, was the daughter of a small provision
merchant in Wexford. Moore was their eldest child, and of the brothers
and sisters whom he mentions, only two girls, his sisters Katherine and
Ellen, appear to have grown up or to have played any part in his life.
His parents were evidently prosperous people, devoted to their clever
boy and ambitious to secure him social promotion by giving scope to the
talents which he showed from his early schooldays. The memoir of his
youth, which Moore wrote in middle life, notes the special pleasure
which his mother took in the friendship of a certain Miss Dodd, an
elderly maiden lady moving in "a class of society somewhat of a higher
level than ours"; and it is easy enough to understand why the precocious
imp of a boy found favour with this distinguished person and her guests.
He had all the gifts of an actor and a mimic, and they were encouraged
in him first at home, and then at the boarding-school to which he was
sent. Samuel Whyte, its head master, had been the teacher of Sheridan,
and though he discovered none of Sheridan's abilities, the connection
with the Sheridan family, added to his own tastes, had brought him into
close touch with the stage. He was the author of a didactic poem on "The
Theatre," a great director of private theatricals, and a teacher of
elocution. Such a man was not likely to neglect the gifts of the clever
small boy entrusted to him, and Master Moore, at the age of eleven,
already figured on the playbill of some important private theatricals as
reciting the Epilogue. He was encouraged also in the habit of rhyming, a
habit that reached back as far as he could remember; and before his
fifteenth year was far gone, he attained to the honours of print in a
creditable magazine, the _Anthologia Hibernica_. The first of his
contributions was an amatory address to a Miss Hannah Byrne, herself, it
appears, a poetess. The lines, "To Zelia on her charging the Author with
writing too much on love," need not be quoted (though the subject is
characteristic), nor the "Pastoral Ballad" which followed in the number
for October 1793. It is worth noting, however, that in 1794 we find
Moore paraphrasing Anacreon's Fifth Ode; and further that in March of
the same year he is acknowledging his debt to Mr. Samuel Whyte with
verses beginning
"Hail heaven-taught votary of the laurel'd Nine"
--an unusual form of address from a schoolboy to his pedagogue.
Briefly, one gathers the impression that Moore's schooldays were
enlivened by many small gaieties, while his holidays abounded with the
same distractions. The family was sent down to Sandymount, now a suburb,
but then a seaside village on Dublin Bay, and there, in addition to
sea-bathing, they had their fill of mild play-acting. Moore reproduces
some lines from an epilogue written for one of these occasions when the
return to school was imminent:--
"Our Pantaloon that did so agéd look
Must now resume his youth, his task, his book;
Our Harlequin who skipp'd, leap'd, danced, and died,
Must now stand trembling by his tutor's side."
And he notes genially how the pathos of his farewell nearly moved him to
tears as he recited the closing words--doubtless with a thrilling
tremble in his accents. Moore was always [greek: _artidakrous_]. But he
was a healthy, active youngster, and we read that he emulated Harlequin
in jumping talents, as well as in the command of tears and laughter; and
practised over the rail of a tent-bed till he could at last "perform the
headforemost leap of his hero most successfully."
School made little break in these pleasures; for while the family were
at the seaside, his indulgent father provided the boy with a pony on
which he rode down every Saturday to stay over the Sunday; "and at the
hour when I was expected, there generally came my sister with a number
of young girls to meet me, and full of smiles and welcomes, walked by
the side of my pony into the town." Never was a boy more petted. About
this time, too, his musical gifts began to be discovered; for Mrs. Moore
insisted that her daughter Katherine should be taught not only the
harpsichord, but also the piano, and that a piano should be bought. On
this instrument Moore taught himself to play; and since his mother had a
pleasant voice and a talent for giving gay little supper-parties,
musical people used to come to the house, and the boy had plenty of
chances for showing off his accomplishments, accompanying himself, and
developing already his uncanny knack of dramatic singing.
A young gentleman thus brought up was, one would say, in a fair way to
be spoiled, and Moore, looking back, is quick to recognise the danger.
Yet he is fully justified in the comment which closes his narrative of
the triumphant entries into Sandymount with schoolgirls escorting his
pony:--
"There is far more of what is called vanity in my now reporting the
tribute, than I felt then in receiving it; and I attribute very
much to the cheerful and kindly circumstances which thus surrounded
my childhood, that spirit of enjoyment and, I may venture to add,
good temper, which has never, thank God, failed me to the present
time (July 1833)."
Moreover, if his parents were interested in his pleasures, they were no
less concerned about his work. His mother, he writes, examined him daily
in his studies; sometimes even, when kept out late at a party, she would
wake the boy out of his sleep in the small hours of morning, and bid him
sit up and repeat over his lessons. Her affectionate care met with that
return from her son which was continued to the end of her life. There
was nothing in his power that Moore would not do to please his mother.
Nevertheless, touching as the relation was, it had its weak side, and
Moore in time realised it. In a notable passage of his diary, which
describes the pleasant days spent by him at Abbotsford in 1825, we read
how he congratulated Scott on the advantages of his upbringing--the
open-air life, field sports, and free intercourse with the peasantry.
"I said that the want of this manly training showed itself in my
poetry, which would perhaps have had a far more vigorous character,
if it had not been for the sort of _boudoir_ education I had
received." ("The only thing, indeed," he adds, "that conduced to
brace and invigorate my mind was the strong political feelings that
were stirring round me when I was a boy, and in which I took a deep
and most ardent interest.")
Part of this stirring manifested itself in a secret association under
John Moore's own roof; for the son had organised his father's two clerks
into a debating and literary society, of which he constituted himself
president. The meetings took place after the common meal of the
household was over, when the clerks retired to their bedroom, and Master
Thomas to his own apartment--a corner of the same bedroom, but boarded
off, fitted with a table, chest of drawers, and book-case, and decorated
by its owner with inscriptions of his own composition "in the manner, as
I flattered myself, of Shenstone at the Leasowes." The secret society
met at dead of night in a closet beyond the large bedroom, once or twice
a week; and each member was bound to produce a riddle or rebus in verse,
which the others were set to solve. And in addition to this more
literary part of the proceedings, the members discussed politics--Tom
Ennis, the senior clerk, being a strong nationalist.
Politics certainly played a great part in moulding Moore's feelings and
imagination, and it should be observed that his nonage almost coincided
with the duration of Ireland's independent Parliament. He was three
years old when the Volunteers established the freedom of the legislature
in College Green, and twenty-one when Pitt and Castlereagh purchased its
extinction. His father, as a Catholic, had naturally a keen interest in
the great question of reform and Catholic enfranchisement, and Moore
remembered being taken by him to a dinner in honour of Napper Tandy,
when the hero of the evening noticed the small boy. The Latin usher at
Whyte's school too, Mr. Donovan, was an ardent patriot, and in the hours
of special instruction which he devoted to the young scholar--for Moore
had early outstripped his class-fellows in Latin and Greek--he taught
his pupil more than the classics. But these influences bred at most a
predisposition. It was Trinity College that made Moore a rebel--or as
nearly a rebel as he ever became.
The measure of partial enfranchisement passed in 1793 admitted Catholics
to study in the University of Dublin, though its emoluments were denied
them. A curious point should be noted here. The entry under June 2,
1794, reads: "Thomas Moore, P. Prot," _i.e._ Commoner (pensionarius),
Protestant. Now Moore himself states that it was for a while debated in
the family circle whether he should be entered as a Protestant to
qualify him for scholarship, fellowship and the rest; he does not seem
to know that a preliminary step was actually taken, quite possibly by
his school-master. John Moore's political friends were mostly Protestant
("the Catholics," his son writes, "being still too timorous to come
forward openly in their own cause"); the atmosphere into which the
student entered was strongly Protestant, the friends whom he made were
of the dominant religion. But neither then nor at any time was Moore
prepared to change creeds for material advantage. This is the more
remarkable because the family's religion was none of the strictest.
Moore notes that while at college he abandoned the practice of
confession, his mother, after some protest, "very wisely consenting."
Whether owing to the lack of incentive, or because he had no taste for
science, then a necessary part of any honours course, Moore troubled
little about academic successes, and, after gaining a single premium in
his first year, decided to "confine himself to such parts of the course
as fell within his own tastes and pursuits." Incidentally he earned
distinction for a composition in English verse sent in instead of the
prescribed Latin prose; and, needless to say, was busy with less
authorised verse-writing. He did, however, in his third year, 1797,
present himself for the scholarship examination and was (he says) placed
on the list of successful candidates, though his religion disqualified
him for enjoyment of the privileges. Records show that on Tuesday, 13th
June of that year, thirteen exhibitions were given, supplementary to the
list of scholars published on Trinity Monday (the 12th), and on this
list Moore stands first. The award was presumably a solatium.
But the serious and lasting part of his university education was gained,
as so often happens, not from his tutors but from his associates. The
recall of Lord Fitzwilliam in March 1795--"that fatal turning-point in
Irish history," as Mr. Lecky calls it--had shattered the hopes of Irish
Catholics and made civil war a result to be eagerly urged by extremists
on both sides. "The political ferment soon found its way within the
walls of our university," writes Moore; and among his personal friends
was a young man destined to tragic fame.
"This youth was Robert Emmet, whose brilliant success in his
college studies, and more particularly in the scientific portion of
them, had crowned his career, as far as he had gone, with all the
honours of the course; while his powers of oratory displayed at a
debating society, of which, about this time (1796-7), I became a
member, were beginning to excite universal attention, as well from
the eloquence as the political boldness of his displays. He was, I
rather think, by two classes, my senior, though it might have been
only by one. But there was, at all events, such an interval between
our standings as, at that time of life, makes a material
difference; and when I became a member of the debating society, I
found him in full fame, not only for his scientific attainments
but also for the blamelessness of his life and the grave suavity of
his manners."
In the beginning of 1797 this debating club came to an end, and Emmet as
well as Moore transferred his energies to the more important Historical
Society. Here Moore, by his own account, distinguished himself only as
the author of "a burlesque poem called an 'Ode upon Nothing, with Notes
by Trismegistus Rustifustius,'" which earned first a medal by general
acclamation, and then a vote of censure by reason of the broad licence
of certain passages. Emmet, however, was a member of a different kind,
and the speeches delivered by him attracted so much attention that a
senior man was detailed by the governing Board to attend meetings and
answer the young orator. About the same time a paper called _The Press_
was set up by Emmet's elder brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, and other
leaders of the United Irishmen; and in this Moore published anonymously
a "Letter to the Students of Trinity College." The letter was, by
Moore's account of it, treasonable enough, and when, according to
custom, he read out the paper to his father and mother at home, they
pronounced it to be "very bold." Next day a friend called and made some
veiled allusion to the matter, which Moore's mother caught at, and she,
says Moore, "most earnestly entreated of me never again to venture on so
dangerous a step." Her son promised, and a few days later Emmet's
influence was added to the mother's. Moore's account of the circumstance
is so characteristic that it must be quoted.
"A few days after, in the course of one of those strolls into the
country which Emmet and I used often to take together, our
conversation turned upon this letter, and I gave him to understand
it was mine; when, with that almost feminine gentleness of manner
which he possessed, and which is so often found in such determined
spirits, he owned to me that on reading the letter, though pleased
with its contents, he could not help regretting that the public
attention had been thus drawn to the politics of the University, as
it might have the effect of awakening the vigilance of the college
authorities, and frustrate the progress of the good work (as we
both considered it) which was going on there so quietly. Even then,
boyish as my own mind was, I could not help being struck with the
manliness of the view which I saw he took of what men ought to do
in such times and circumstances, namely, not to _talk_ or _write_
about their intentions, but to _act_. He had never before, I think,
in conversation with me, alluded to the existence of the United
Irish societies in college, nor did he now, or at any subsequent
time, make any proposition to me to join in them, a forbearance
which I attribute a good deal to his knowledge of the watchful
anxiety about me which prevailed at home, and his foreseeing the
difficulty which I should experience--from being, as the phrase is,
constantly 'tied to my mother's apron-strings'--in attending the
meetings of the society without being discovered."
It will be seen that Moore makes no claim for heroic conduct. One may
assume with great certainty that in such a matter Emmet would not have
obeyed a mother's injunctions. But although Moore's parents desired that
their son should not go out of his way to incur risks, they were by no
means of opinion that he should seek safety at any price. In 1797, on
the eve of the rebellion, an inquisition was held within Trinity by Lord
Chancellor FitzGibbon. On the first day of the tribunal's sitting, one
of Emmet's friends, named Hamilton, refused to answer certain questions,
and was sent down with the sentence of banishment from the University,
carrying with it exclusion from all the learned professions. Moore went
home and discussed the situation that evening.
"The deliberate conclusion which my dear, honest father and mother
came to was that, overwhelming as the consequences were to all
their prospects and hopes for me, yet if the questions leading to
the crimination of others which had been put to almost all examined
on that day, and which poor Dacre Hamilton alone refused to answer,
should be put also to me, I must in the same manner and at all
risks return a similar refusal."
Next day Moore was called, and, after objecting to the oath, took it
with the express reservation that he should refuse to answer any
question which might criminate his associates. No such question was
asked, and his fortitude was not put to the proof, nor does it seem that
after this Moore dabbled in rebellion. Five years later, in 1803, when
Emmet's abortive rising was nipped in the bud and the young leader went
to his death, Moore was in London, preparing to depart for Bermuda. None
of the letters preserved from that time contain any reference to this
tragedy; but Moore's writings show again and again that the capacity for
hero-worship was evoked in him by this friend of boyhood as by no other
figure of his time. In the first number of the _Irish Melodies_,
published in 1808, an early place is given to the lyric:--
"O breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonoured his ashes are laid;
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.
"But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls."
Every one, in Ireland at least, who read these lines heard in them an
echo of the closing passage in Emmet's speech from the dock:--
"I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world. It
is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph. When my
country shall have taken her place among the nations of the earth,
then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written."
Emmet's words are established among the scriptures of the Irish people;
but it may well be allowed that their fame would be less had not Moore
caught up and amplified their thought with all his habitual felicity and
more than his habitual passion. Nor is this all. "The Fire Worshippers"
is the most characteristic of the four long poems set in the framework
of _Lalla Rookh_, and "The Fire Worshippers" is a glorification of
rebellion, which is merely made explicit in the following fine
passage:--
"Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word,
Whose wrongful blight so oft has stain'd
The holiest cause that tongue or sword
Of mortal ever lost or gain'd,
How many a spirit, born to bless,
Hath sunk beneath that withering name,
Whom but a day's, an hour's success,
Had wafted to eternal fame!"
More than that, the rebels glorified are men like Emmet, who take up
arms as a supreme protest, almost without hope of success.
"Who, though they know the strife is vain,
Who, though they know the riven chain
Snaps but to enter in the heart
Of him who rends its links apart,
Yet dare the issue,--blest to be
Even for one bleeding moment free,
And die in pangs of liberty!"
The affinity is not only between Emmet and the rebel hero Hafed. Hinda,
the beloved of Hafed, has many traits that recall Emmet's betrothed, the
beautiful and most unhappy Sarah Curran. For although John Philpot
Curran was a leading supporter of Grattan's principles, yet no man more
bitterly denounced Emmet's attempt; and Al Hassan himself, the fierce
Moslem chief, could not have dealt more harshly with Hinda, had he
detected her love for the Gheber, than did Curran when he was confronted
with the proofs that his daughter continued her affection to a declared
rebel. It is not hard to guess of whom Moore thought when he wrote the
moving and beautiful lines which describe Hinda's passion in the days
after her lover had been revealed to her for the foe of her father's
arms:--
"Ah! not the love that should have bless'd
So young, so innocent a breast;
Not the pure, open, prosperous love,
That, pledged on earth and seal'd above,
Grows in the world's approving eyes,
In friendship's smile and home's caress,
Collecting all the heart's sweet ties
Into one knot of happiness!
No, Hinda, no--thy fatal flame
Is nursed in silence, sorrow, shame.--
A passion, without hope or pleasure,
In thy soul's darkness buried deep,
It lies, like some ill-gotten treasure,--
Some idol, without shrine or name,
O'er which its pale-eyed votaries keep
Unholy watch, while others sleep!"
Hafed and Hinda are lovers who find themselves united by all the
attraction of their natures, yet separated irretrievably by external
circumstances which are, in no small part, of the hero's making. The man
is resolute to forfeit, not only life, but the fruition of declared
love, sooner than abandon a national cause, even when that cause is most
desperate;--the girl sees herself with "a divided duty," torn away by
imperious love from all her natural loyalties;--and such lovers also, in
Moore's own youth, were Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran. I have quoted the
famous lyric in which he consecrates the memory of the man who died for
the faith that was in him. Not less famous, and still more beautiful, is
the melody which preserves the memory of the surviving lover, and the
sad moods of retrospect which were evident in her broken life. Here,
more than perhaps in any other poem, Moore has fixed in his words that
plangent quality of voice, by which a hundred times he moved listeners
to tears.
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
"She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking:--
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking.
"He had lived for his love, for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwin'd him;
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.
"Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,
From her own loved island of sorrow."
With the terrible events of 1798 Moore had no personal concern. His
memoir notes that he was ill in bed when the long-expected revolt broke
out, and when folks in Dublin were scared by the going out of all the
street lamps on the night fixed for an attempt on the metropolis. Yet it
is strange how little trace is left in his writings by that bloodstained
year. Even in his Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, we seem to find the
result of subsequent reading and inquiry, rather than the narrative of
one who was almost a man grown when Lord Edward's tragic end moved pity
throughout the whole kingdom.
And in truth, though politics were always well to the front among
Moore's interests, they never dominated his life. The memoir of his
youth notes that even among his political associates other enthusiasms
were cultivated. Edward Hudson, one of the Committee of United Irishmen,
seized just before the rebellion broke out, was, Moore says,
"passionately devoted to Irish music," and had "collected and
transcribed all our most beautiful airs." To intercourse with him in
these days the poet ascribed much of his own early acquaintance with the
chief source of his inspiration. Further, Moore formally completed his
education by graduating in 1798, and before this time he had been
entered at the Middle Temple by the father of his friend Beresford
Burston, a young man of good family and of sporting tastes. But, while
still an undergraduate, he had already commenced the composition whose
success was to turn him from all serious thoughts of the bar.
The interest of another friend had procured him admission at all seasons
to Marsh's Library, and here he plunged deep in miscellaneous reading.
We read in the preface to his early volume, _Poetical Works of the late
Thomas Little_, that "Mr. Little" (the supposititious author) "gave much
of his time to the study of the amatory writers"; and it is safe to
conclude that Mr. Little's original read, in the fine library founded by
Archbishop Marsh, whatever the Latin and Greek writers had to say on the
subject of gallantry. Here also it is probable that he made acquaintance
with what the same preface calls "the graceful levity, the _grata
protervitas_ of a Rochester and a Sedley," and there probably he
acquired that knowledge of Olympia Fulvia Morata, Alessandra Scala, and
the other "Latin _blues_," which, long after, gave him the rare
opportunity "to show off to Macaulay all such reading as _he_ never
read." Moore was always a surprising devourer of books, and his parents
had profited by the presence of French émigrés to add a good knowledge
of modern tongues to his store of classics; a fine memory completed his
equipment for the academic side of literature.
Oddly enough, the desire for academic recognition seems to have prompted
his first undertaking. Given a young man possessing a good supply of
Greek and Latin, a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, a strong taste
for the amatory poets, and a remarkably neat turn with verse, it was
natural enough that he should turn to translation of the classics.
Anacreon, who had engaged his attention in schooldays, still held it:
and about the time of his graduating, Moore went to the Provost of
Trinity, Dr. Kearney, with a good handful of renderings from that poet,
and suggested that his industry should be recognised by "some honour or
reward." Dr. Kearney was sympathetic and flattering, but at the same
time "expressed his doubts whether the Board could properly confer any
public reward upon the translation of a work so amatory and convivial as
the Odes of Anacreon." Nevertheless, he strongly advised publication,
adding, with an agreeable touch of nature, "The young people will like
it." It may be added that, when publication came to be arranged, Dr.
Kearney was one of the only two subscribers found among "the monks of
Trinity," as Moore contemptuously called them; and further, that he
appears to have lent to the young poet his copy of Spaletti's
edition--one of two sent from the Pope to Trinity College by the
intermediacy of the Catholic Archbishop Troy.
This, however, is to anticipate. It was in the spring of April 1799 that
Mr. Thomas Moore set out to eat his first dinner at the Middle Temple.
The proceeds of the little grocery business--of which Moore never was
ashamed, and which never seems to have been a hindrance to him in
society--were now to be sharply taxed. Mrs. Moore had long been hoarding
against the journey to London, to gather the guineas which she now sewed
up in the waistband of the adventurer's pantaloons. In some other part
of the garments, "unknown to me" (Moore writes), "she had stitched in a
scapular, a small piece of cloth blessed by the priest, which a fond
superstition inclined her to believe would keep the wearer of it from
harm." The journey was accomplished successfully, and quarters were
found for the traveller at 44 George Street, Portman Square, by some
Irish acquaintances. Except for his Irish connections, most of them
people in a small way of life, apothecaries and the like, Moore was
rather friendless in town. The custom of the Temple obliging each
novice, as part of the form of initiation, to give a dinner to some
brother Templars, embarrassed him at first, since he did not know a
soul; and he was only relieved "by a young fellow, who, addressing me
very politely, offered to collect for me the number of diners generally
used on such occasions." It seems that he felt despondent, and a letter
to his father suggests that he wrote querulously, asking leave to return
home and give up the game. It is certain that he was immeasurably
homesick, and each one of his letters to "my dearest father" and "my
darling mother" teems with expressions of eagerness for the sight of
them.
Nevertheless he was making his way, and, before a month was over, could
write, "I need never be out of company if I chose it." He had formed
also one of the two or three connections which dominated his life.
Joseph Atkinson, secretary in Ireland to the Ordnance Board, who had
made friends with the young singer in Dublin, gave him an introduction
to Lord Moira (afterwards the second Marquis of Hastings). Moore, a few
days after arriving, called on the great man, and was invited to dinner;
the acquaintance must have progressed rapidly, for in the same year he
was invited to pay a visit to Donington Park, Lord Moira's country seat,
on his way back from spending the summer vacation in Ireland.
"This was of course at that time," Moore observes with that
good-humoured candour which is a characteristic of him, "a great
event in my life, and among the most vivid of my early English
recollections is that of my first night at Donington, when Lord
Moira, with that high courtesy for which he was remarkable, lighted
me himself to my bedroom; and there was this stately personage
stalking on before through the long lighted gallery, bearing in his
hand my bed-candle which he delivered to me at the door of my
apartment. I thought it all exceedingly fine and grand, but at the
same time most uncomfortable, and little I foresaw how much at home
and at my ease I should one day find myself in that great house."
After this visit, negotiations with a publisher for the issue of the
_Anacreon_, which had been begun during Moore's first sojourn in London,
were resumed, and probably the name of friendship with Lord Moira did no
harm. At all events the business was conducted to a successful issue by
Moore's friend, Dr. Hume; and on December 19, 1799, the new poet writes
rapturously of getting a good number of names for the subscription,
adding that he has "received two hard guineas already from Mr. Campbell
and Mr. Tinker, which I hope will be lucky. They are the only guineas I
ever kissed, and I have locked them up religiously." Dr. Lawrence, a
scholar of repute, reported favourably of the translation. Mrs.
Fitzherbert was added to the list of subscribers; and finally, to crown
all, Moore wrote--
"My dear Mother, I have got the Prince's name and his permission
that I should dedicate _Anacreon_ to him. Hurra! Hurra!"
And before the translator returned to the home where he was so eagerly
expected, he had been duly presented to "his Royal Highness, George
Prince of Wales." "He is beyond doubt a man of very fascinating
manners," the letter goes on (dated August 4, 1800); and indeed the
Prince's remarks, as Moore reports them, were vastly civil:--
"The honour was entirely _his_ in being allowed to put his name 'to
a work of such merit.' He then said that he hoped when he returned
to town in the winter, we should have many opportunities of
_enjoying each other's society_; that he was passionately fond of
music and had long heard of my talents in that way. Is not all this
very fine?"
Very fine indeed. "But, my dearest mother, it has cost me a new coat.
By-the-bye, I am still in my other tailor's debt." There one has in a
nutshell the epitome of Moore's life, if the life were to be written
from a hostile point of view. On the other hand, considered candidly,
there is nothing more surprising than the small degree of harm done to
Moore by his disproportionate success. For the son of a small Irish
tradesman to find himself at the age of one-and-twenty flattered by the
heir-apparent--at a time too when the heir-apparent was the
all-conquering leader of society--was indeed a dazzling promotion. And
from that day onwards, Moore never lost ground. He had through life his
choice of whatever was most brilliant in social intercourse, and his
choice showed a steadily growing sanity of judgment. Moreover, although
his intimates were always people set on a pinnacle, he never for an
instant wavered in his fidelity to the home where he had been brought up
with so much love. The end of the letter which describes his
introduction to the Prince deserves to be quoted for its natural
warmth:--
"Do not let any one read this letter but yourselves; none but a
father and a mother can bear such egotising vanity; but I know who
I am writing to--that they are interested in what is said of me,
and that they are too partial not to tolerate my speaking of
myself."
It is easy to see that Moore's success was mainly social at first rather
than literary. Throughout life he exercised an irresistible charm. An
infectious gaiety, joined to copious but never ill-natured wit, made his
company desired by all; and his physical presence, though not striking,
was always agreeable. Diminutive in size, and plain of feature, he
gained something approaching beauty by the constant play of expression
centred in his vivacious eyes and the mobile and beautiful mouth. More
distinctive still, in youth at least, was his hair, which curled in long
tendrils over his head. But the special charm which he exercised,--and
it was doubtless of greater importance in youth, before his powers as a
talker had matured--lay in a gift for singing, which appears to have
been something peculiar to himself. He sang always to his own
accompaniment, and the performance by all accounts approached
declamation rather than ordinary song. Moore is the only poet of modern
times who, like the ancient bards, lent to his own verses the added
charm of musical expression. Poet first, musician afterwards, he gave
the words for all they were worth, and he seems always to have counted
it a failure, if there were no wet eyes among his hearers.
To this gift, nearer the actor's than either the musician's or the
poet's, he owed probably the suddenness of his fame. It called attention
to his literature; but the attention was well deserved, for this boyish
production was notable, coming when it did.
In 1800, when the _Odes of Anacreon_ appeared, Wordsworth and Coleridge
had, it is true, published _Lyrical Ballads_. The revolution in taste
had begun. Yet these fighters in the van beat heavily upon an armed
opposition; and for the moment the tradition of Pope, as modified in
different directions by Gray and Goldsmith, was passionately upheld
against them. Burns, indeed, had already made a great breach in the
solid academic phalanx, and had won through to acceptance. But
newcomers, who preached such doctrines as were set out in the preface to
_Lyrical Ballads_, roused fierce hostility; they came with their mouths
full of arguments. Moore, on the other hand, troubled no man with
controversy, yet was hardly more academic than they. Like them, he
boldly discarded the eighteenth-century manner, still flourishing in the
hands of Crabbe. "The early poets of our language," says the preface to
Little's Poems, "were the models which Mr. Little selected for
imitation." A glance at the _Anacreon_ will show the truth of this
observation. Take the third ode--
Listen to the Muse's lyre,
Master of the pencil's fire!
Sketch'd in painting's bold display,
Many a city first portray,
Many a city revelling free,
Warm with loose festivity.
Picture then a rosy train,
Bacchants straying o'er the plain,
Piping, as they roam along,
Roundelay or shepherd-song.
Paint me next, if painting may
Such a theme as this portray,
All the happy heaven of love
Which these blessed mortals prove.
Here the suggestion, if not of Fletcher's manner, at least of some
manner contemporary with Fletcher, is unmistakable. But since the verses
were put forward without comment, no one thought of objecting. It is
like the fable of the Wind and the Sun: Moore's genial example relaxed
the bonds of 'correctness' by far more quickly than Wordsworth's austere
theorising.
The easy way is seldom so good as the hard way, and no one would put
Moore's early work into comparison with the wonderful volume that was
the fruit of the years spent by Wordsworth and Coleridge at Nether
Stowey. Yet it is only just to emphasise the fact that Moore was the
first to bring back to English that note of song, natural even in its
artificiality, which is heard all through the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but, except by Blake, was never sounded during the
eighteenth. One can readily imagine the delight with which a generation,
nursed on Cowper and Crabbe, turned to these facile yet not vulgar
harmonies. And the work, though seemingly so easy, was wrought with
delicate care; Lord Moira noted, and Moore gratefully recorded the
praise, that few among the best poets had been so strictly grammatical!
Always a careful craftsman, Moore never worked harder than on this first
attempt. But his labour detracted nothing from the flush of youth, the
zest for enjoyment, which pervades the lines. 'The young people will
like it,' probably in any generation, whenever they chance to read it.
Moore, however, could never reconcile himself to effacing altogether the
traces of his study. _Lalla Rookh_ testifies to his passion for
footnotes, and the same unfortunate itch displays itself already in the
_Anacreon_. We find him quoting, not only Ronsard and Lessing--a wide
range for one-and-twenty--but commentators and authors by far more
recondite--Cornelius de Pauw, the poetess Veronica Cambara, the Epistles
of Alciphron, together with Aulus Gellius and Angerianus. One must
remember, however, that Moore's age had a taste for what we should
dismiss as pedantry--witness the polyglot jesting of Father Prout; and
he doubtless obeyed a wise instinct when he opened his prefatory remarks
in a manner worthy of the gentleman whom Dr. Primrose met in jail:--
"There is but little known with certainty of the life of Anacreon.
Chamæleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in
the general wreck of ancient literature."
In the next publication, which followed rapidly upon the success of the
first, Moore dispensed with erudition. Censorious people shook their
heads over the _Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq._, and it
must be allowed that the censure had some justification. In the remarks
upon _Anacreon_, Moore had praised that poet because "his descriptions
are warm; but the warmth is in the ideas not the words." There is
certainly no grossness in the words of Mr. Thomas Little, but there is
considerable warmth in his ideas--and indeed what could be more natural?
Moore was an exceedingly healthy normal young man, strongly attracted
towards the other sex, but exempt from any vehemences of passion. The
tone of these lyrics is rather that of the Restoration poets than of the
earlier Caroline school; there is prettiness, elegance, gaiety, rather
than beauty; and, as in all his models, there is preoccupation rather
with a sex than an individual. It is amatory poetry, not love-poetry;
but in its own kind, it is as good as can be found. What could be better
than
"Still the question I must parry,
Still a wayward truant prove,
Where I love I cannot marry,
Where I marry cannot love."
No other poet for a hundred years had got such elasticity and gaiety out
of English rhythms as were to be found in these two early volumes. One
need not claim high rank for this sort of poetry, but it would be
ignorant to overlook the service which Moore was doing to all who after
him came to handle English metre.
So much for his successes. The second volume is also interesting with
records of his failures. The "Fragments of College Exercises" show a
futile attempt to wield the heroic couplet with sonorous rhetoric. And
in two other poems, _Reuben and Rose and The Ring_, we find Moore
wandering off after the fashion of the German spectral ballad:--
"'Twas Reuben, but ah! he was deathly and cold,
And fleeted away like the spell of a dream."
And so on, with cold carcases and other properties of this form of
composition, to which the poet never returned--wisely recognising that
it was not for him to make readers' flesh creep.
In the meantime, while the _Anacreon_ was passing into its second
edition, and Little's Poems were making their appearance, Moore stayed
in England, and his connection with Lord Moira grew closer. A great
part of the year 1801 seems to have been spent by him at Donington,
sometimes alone, when he worked hard in the library, shot rooks,
repaired his complexion and slept sweetly, "not dreaming of ambition,
though under the roof of an earl." In 1802 he had hopes of Lord Moira's
coming into administration. But Lord Moira did not come in, and though
considerable sums were earned by the Poems, Moore was obliged to borrow
from his mother's brother. In the early part of 1803 a proposal was made
to him, by Wickham, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, on behalf of the
Irish Government. An Irish laureateship was to be established, with the
same salary as the English, for the young Irish poet; the movers in this
matter were Lord Moira and the always friendly Joe Atkinson. Our most
definite record of the transaction is a letter from Moore to his mother,
which makes it clear that he himself was prepared to accept the "paltry
and degrading stipend," but was deterred by a letter from his father,
which unfortunately we do not possess. The motive which he alleges was
"the _urging_ apprehension that my dears at home wanted it"; but since
he was reassured that they stood in no instant necessity, he declined
the offer. The letter however makes it perfectly clear that he looked
forward at this time to a post provided by Government: legal studies in
the meantime having lapsed.
These expectations were not wholly disappointed. In August Lord Moira's
interest secured for him a place as registrar of a naval prize-court at
Bermuda--an employment whose profits depended upon an active state of
war in and about the West Indies.
The idea of so complete a separation from his home distressed him, and
he tried to keep the facts from his mother as long as
possible--discussing the project only by letters to his father and
uncle. But on August 16th, John Moore--wrote to his son an admirable
epistle (the only one from his pen that is preserved),--which deprecated
the attempt to keep Mrs. Moore in the dark:--
"There could be no such deception carried on with her where you, or
indeed any one of her family, were concerned, for she seems to know
everything respecting them by instinct. It would not be doing her
the justice she well deserves to exclude her from such
confidence.... For my particular part, I think with you, that there
is a singular chance, as well as a special interference of
Providence, in your getting so honourable a situation at this very
critical time.[1] I am sure no one living can possibly feel more
sensibly than your poor mother and me do, at losing that comfort we
so long enjoyed, of at least hearing from you once every week of
your life that you were absent from us; for surely no parents had
ever such happiness in a child; and much as we regret the wide
separation which this situation of yours will for some time cause
between us, we give you our full concurrence, and may the Almighty
God spare and prosper you as you deserve."
Preparations went through quickly, and on September 22, 1803, Moore
wrote, from Portsmouth, his "heart's farewell to the dear darlings at
home." Carpenter, the publisher, had made advances which rendered
departure possible, and so
"now all is smooth for my progress, and Hope sings in the shrouds
of the ship that is to carry me. Good-by. God bless you all, dears
of my heart."
[1] This was just after Emmet's rising.
CHAPTER II
EARLY MANHOOD AND MARRIAGE
The _Phaeton_ frigate, on which Moore had procured a passage, left
Spithead on September 25th, and on November 5th we find him writing to
his mother from Norfolk in Virginia. The voyage, though rather rough,
had been a pleasant experience, and, after his fashion, Moore had made
friends with everybody on board. Thirty years later he was delighted
with a passage in the _Naval Recollections_ of Captain Scott, who had
sailed as midshipman on the _Phaeton_. Scott's observation was, that he
knew at that time nothing about Moore's poetry, but that the poet
"appeared the life and soul of the company, and the loss of his
fascinating society was frequently and loudly lamented by the officers
long after he had quitted us in America." Moore was justifiably proud of
having "left such an impression upon honest hearty unaffected fellows
like those of the gun-room of the _Phaeton_," who would naturally--as he
freely admits--have been prejudiced in the other sense. "I remember," he
notes, "the first lieutenant saying to me after we had become intimate,
'I thought you the first day you came aboard, the damnedest conceited
little fellow I ever saw, with your glass cocked up to your eye'; and
then he mimicked the manner in which I made my first appearance." The
first lieutenant's phrase is worth remembering as a frank piece of
description.
Till the end of 1803 Moore was delayed in Virginia, waiting for a ship,
and in the meanwhile writing long letters home full of the warmest
affection, and of "longing for news of all his dears." In January he was
lucky enough to get passage on another ship of war, the _Driver_, and
reached Bermuda after seven days' sail in very heavy weather. His
parting from Norfolk had been attended with the usual regrets; Mrs.
Hamilton, wife of the British Consul, in whose home Moore had been most
hospitably entertained, "cried, and said she never parted from any one
so reluctantly," and her husband wrote him all possible letters of
introduction.
Bermuda itself seemed, at the first view, a kind of fairyland, as he has
recorded in the Epistle to Lady Donegal:--
"The morn was lovely, every wave was still,
When the first perfume of a cedar-hill
Sweetly awaked us, and, with smiling charms,
The fairy harbour woo'd us to its arms.
Gently we stole, before the languid wind,
Through plantain shades, that like an awning twined
And kiss'd on either side the wanton sails,
Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales;
While, far reflected o'er the wave serene,
Each wooded island shed so soft a green,
That the enamour'd keel, with whispering play,
Through liquid herbage seem'd to steal its way!
Never did weary bark more sweetly glide,
Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide!
Along the margin, many a shining dome,
White as the palace of a Lapland gnome,
Brighten'd the wave;--in every myrtle grove
Secluded, bashful, like a shrine of love,
Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade;
And, while the foliage interposing play'd,
Wreathing the structure into various grace,
Fancy would love, in glimpses vague, to trace
The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch,
And dream of temples, till her kindling torch
Lighted me back to all the glorious days
Of Attic genius; and I seem'd to gaze
On marble, from the rich Pentelic mount,
Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount."
The letter which sketches his first impressions adds a touch of
disenchantment, which Moore, remote always from realism, was careful to
exclude from his verse:--
"These little islands are thickly covered with cedar groves,
through the vistas of which you catch a few pretty white houses,
which my poetical short-sightedness always transforms into temples;
and I often expect to see Nymphs and Graces come tripping from
them, when I find, to my great disappointment, that a few miserable
negroes is all 'the bloomy flush of life' it has to boast of."
What was more serious, the prospects of income also disenchanted him of
his dream which was to make in Bermuda a home for himself and his
family. So many prize-courts had been established, and so few causes
were referred to his in Bermuda, that nothing but a Spanish war could
hold out a prospect of large fees. Even that did not promise an income
worth staying for, and Moore's decision was immediate--to finish the
work he was engaged on for Carpenter, and then set out for home.
The precise nature of this engagement is not clear. He had from his
first year in London been writing songs which were set to music by John
Stevenson and others. In 1803 the poem from _Anacreon_, "Give me the
Harp of Epic Song," had been arranged by Stevenson as a glee, and its
performance by the Irish Harmonic Club so pleased Lord Hardwicke, then
Viceroy, that he conferred a knighthood on the composer. Moore's last
letter on leaving England contained directions for collecting his songs
to be published together, and the letters from Bermuda made constant
reference to this project, which, however, was never executed. In the
meantime, as his work testifies, he was busy writing verses; even aboard
ship, he had not been idle. And, as usual, his verse writing was largely
amatory. Later in life, he records with some amusement that a lady in
Bermuda was pointed out as the original "Nea" to whom several poems are
addressed, and he wonders if they had hit on the right person, adding
that there were at least _two_ who had a claim.
Festivities, as a matter of course, surrounded him, and he was happy as
a king, but for one lack. Up till March 19th, no letter had reached him
from Ireland.
"Oh darling mother," he cries, "six months now and I know as little
of _home_ as of things most remote from my heart and
recollection.... The signal post which announces when any vessels
are in sight of the island is directly before my window, and often
do I look to it with a heart sick 'from hope deferred.'"
In the end of April he left his post, having, in an evil hour, appointed
a deputy to discharge its duties and share the profits. The _Boston_
frigate took him to New York, and its captain, John Douglas, afterwards
admiral, formed a friendship with the poet of which proofs were given
again and again. In 1811, he met Moore in London, after five years had
passed without a word or a letter exchanged. Douglas had just come into
a legacy of ten thousand pounds, and was going to sea with seven hundred
pounds standing to his name in Coutts's.
"Now, my dear little fellow," he said, "here is a blank check,
which you may fill up while I am away, for as much of that as you
may want."
Moore, who declined the offer, as he declined many others of like
nature, might well comment on a man's "bringing back the warmth of
friendship so unchilled after an absence of five years." Nor was that
the end of it. In 1814 Douglas, then Admiral on the Jamaica Station,
offered Moore the Secretaryship, "in case of war a sure fortune," with a
house and land to be at the poet's disposal; and, as Moore notes, the
offer was not only friendly but courageous, for Douglas owed his
appointment to Court interest, and at that moment the Whig satirist was
in the worst odour with the Regent and all his surroundings.
The immediate boon, gladly accepted, of the passage from Bermuda to
America, and thence to England, was the more important, as it enabled
Moore to devote the money, which had been set aside for his passage, to
seeing the New World. He sailed from New York to Norfolk, and thence set
out for Baltimore; and the journey in American stage coaches appears to
have shaken out of him whatever remained of his early illusions about
the "land of the free." America at that time was beyond dispute
inchoate, amorphous, and ugly in all senses, and Moore's instincts were
anything but democratic. At Philadelphia, "the only place in America
which can boast of any literary society," he found his writings well
known, and met with a flattering reception, which pleased him; a Mrs.
Hopkinson in particular showed him attentions which elicited the poem,
"Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved." Returning to New York, he
found that the _Boston_ must go to Halifax, and could not sail before
August. This offered an opportunity of journeying to Canada overland,
and accordingly he sailed up the Hudson River, through "the most
bewildering succession of romantic objects that I could ever have
conceived." The Oneida Indians charmed him by their courtesy, the rivers
and virgin forests wrought upon his sensibilities, and when he came
within hearing of the roar of Niagara, it seemed to him dreadful that
"any heart born for sublimities should be doomed to breathe away its
hours amidst the miniature productions of this world without seeing what
shapes Nature can assume, what wonders God _can_ give birth to."
The sight, not so much of the falls as of "the mighty flow descending
with calm magnificence" towards them, moved him passionately; and the
journey, "seventeen hundred miles of rattling and tossing, through
woods, lakes, rivers, etc.," did him good. He reached Quebec much
gratified by many kindnesses. The captain of the vessel which carried
him across Lake Ontario refused to take money from the poet, and a poor
watchmaker at Niagara insisted that a job done should be accepted "as
the only mark of respect he could pay to one he had heard so much of but
never expected to meet with." At Halifax more proofs of what, later in
life, he called, with great justice, his "friendly fame," greeted him,
in the shape of courtesies from the Governors of Lower Canada and of
Nova Scotia. It is Moore's great distinction that he gave real pleasure
to all sorts and conditions of men; and they showed it by treating him
as if he had conferred obligations on them. The feeling which is to-day
so widespread among his countrymen animated in his lifetime all the
English-speaking world. Yet it is surprising to read such instances of
widespread celebrity when we remember that at this time he was the
author only of translations from a pseudo-classic, and of a small volume
of verses, not explicitly acknowledged, and by no means wholly decorous.
His American experiences ended about a year after he left Europe, and on
November 12, 1804, he dated his letter rapturously "Plymouth, Old
England once more." "Oh dear," he goes on, "to think that in ten days I
may see a letter from home, written but a day or two before, warm from
your hands, and with your very breath almost upon it, instead of
lingering out month after month without a gleam of intelligence, without
anything but dreams."
Nevertheless, a good many months elapsed before the returned exile could
make his way home. London held out open arms to him; the Prince was very
friendly; "every one I ever knew in this big city seems delighted to see
me back in it." And so, although in January 1805 he was hoping that six
weeks would see the end of his labours on the forthcoming volume that
was to clear off all obligations, August found him still urging the
necessity of finishing his work without any avoidable delay. It seems
that he went home to Dublin in the autumn, and Lord Moira, then
Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, wrote a letter accepting the dedication
of the forthcoming _Epistles and Odes_, in the most honorific language.
The next year, 1806, saw the formation of the Ministry of "All the
Talents," and for a moment it seemed as if Moira would be included. His
protégé's hopes ran high, but they were dashed. A small appointment was
offered to Moore, but refused by him on the ground that it would be
"better to wait till something worthier both of his generosity and my
ambition should occur"; and at the same time the young man suggested
that it would be a simpler matter to find an appointment for his father,
and that such a favour would earn even more gratitude. Lord Moira at
once acted on the suggestion, and John Moore was appointed to a
barrack-mastership in Dublin. But Moore by no means relinquished hopes
of the Irish commissionership which still dangled before his eyes, and
the letters to his most intimate friends of this period, Lady Donegal
and her sister, Miss Godfrey, abound with references to his
expectations. Nevertheless, he had fully made up his mind, once the new
poems were fairly launched, to return to Ireland and leave his interests
in Lord Moira's care, when an unforeseen event led to one of the
best-known passages in his life.
It arose from the publication in 1806 of the new volume, _Epistles,
Odes, and other Poems_. Carpenter evidently laid out money on the
production of this quarto, with its frontispiece representing the
_Phaeton_ under sail off the peak of the Azores; and his expectations
were not disappointed. The Epistles contained in the volume, nine in
number, were impressions of travel on shipboard and on land; the best
is certainly that to Lady Donegal (already quoted), which describes the
arrival at Bermuda; and perhaps the best known is that to Atkinson, from
which a few lines may be given:--
"'Twas thus, by the shade of the Calabash Tree,
With a few, who could feel and remember like me,
The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw,
Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you!
"Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour
Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower,
And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew,
In blossoms of thought ever springing and new--
Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim
Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him
Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair,
And would pine in elysium, if friends were not there?"
More immediate notice than was bestowed on these passages of mingled
description and sentiment fell to the three epistles in which Moore for
the first time tried his hand at satire,--moved to it by the corruptions
of the young Republic, where he found
"All youth's transgression with all age's chill
The apathy of wrong, the bosom's ice,
A slow and cold stagnation into vice."
These experiments in satire of the accepted type, written in Pope's
metre, have, however, no more permanent value than the two odes, equally
academic--one upon the "Fall of Hebe" and one described as a "Fragment
of a Mythological Hymn to Love." It is safe to say that the book owed
its very wide popularity to the songs and shorter lyrics. Two of the
songs had an immense vogue--"The Woodpecker" and the still popular
"Canadian Boat-song" ("Faintly as tolls the evening chime"), written to
an air suggested to Moore by the chant of his oarsmen as he travelled
down the St. Lawrence.
In addition to these were a number of amatory verses, some of them at
least as well calculated to scandalise as anything in the posthumous
works of Mr. Little. It is true that, read to-day, these do not seem to
call for any extreme censure. They are glorifications expressly of
fugitive loves, dwelling rather on pleasure than on passion, and one
might argue whether they were the more or the less dangerous on that
account. But there is no doubt that Moore maintained the reputation
which he had earned for licentious poetry. Those who wished to rebuke
Byron's first indiscretions called him "a young Moore." It is,
therefore, not to be wondered at that the _Edinburgh Review_, in its
character of _censor morum_, having passed over the _Anacreon_ and
Little's Poems, should come heavily down upon this renewed
offence--describing Moore as "the most licentious of modern versifiers,
and the most poetical of those who in our time have devoted their
talents to the propagation of immorality." But the second paragraph of
the article went beyond fair bounds when it attributed to Moore "a
cold-blooded attempt to corrupt the purity of unknown and unsuspecting
readers." Jeffrey had a right to say that the poet blended mere
sensuality with the language "of exalted feeling and tender emotion";
but no critic can endorse the offensive passage in which he describes
Moore as "stimulating his jaded fancy for new images of impurity." The
best apology for whatever in the book needs excuse, is that Moore gave
in his verse too ready an outlet to the ordinary exuberances of a
pleasure-loving young man's temperament, and that he seldom pretended to
conceal the transitory nature of his feelings.
And, in the sequel, Jeffrey admitted in writing that he had been too
severe. A good deal, however, had happened first. Moore's first impulse
does not seem to have been belligerent, and as the purpose of calling
Jeffrey out dawned on him, there dawned also a difficulty. Jeffrey was
probably in Scotland (a letter from Moore to George Thomson, editor of
_Select Scottish Airs_, etc., contains an inquiry as to his
whereabouts), and this seemed to involve a journey to Edinburgh for
which "the actual but too customary state of my finances" (Moore writes
in the memoir of this transaction) "seriously disabled me." But, on
coming to London, he learnt from Rogers that Jeffrey was also in town,
and on ascertaining the fact, immediately went to look for a second. The
friend to whom he first addressed himself having counselled delay, the
affair was entrusted to Dr. Hume, and a cartel was written in such terms
that there could be only one answer. Jeffrey referred Hume to Horner,
and a meeting was fixed for the next morning at Chalk Farm. But neither
combatant possessed pistols, and it was left for Moore to borrow them
from a friend. Moreover, on reaching the ground, Hume found that
Jeffrey's second knew nothing of firearms, and the task of loading both
pistols was entrusted to him; while in the meantime the two principals,
left together, walked up and down, conversing very agreeably. Presently
the seconds returned and placed their men; but, as the pistols were
raised, police officers jumped from an ambush. The lender of the pistols
had been indiscreet and revealed the secret over-night at Lord
Fincastle's dinner-table; Lord Fincastle had immediately communicated
with Bow Street, with the result that early next morning the poet and
his critic found themselves in durance till bail was given.
So far, nothing very remarkable had happened. But Moore, after going
away, remembered that he had left the pistols behind, and returned to
get them. The officer, however, refused to give them up, and made the
disagreeable explanation that foul play was suspected; a bullet having
been found in Moore's pistol, but none in that taken from Jeffrey. To
make matters worse, a report in the newspapers substituted the word
"pellet" for "bullet," and pleasantries were rife about author and
critic fighting with pellets of paper. Moore was furious, and persuaded
Horner to draw up an account of the matter, to be signed by the two
seconds, but Hume "took fright at the ridicule brought upon us by the
transaction" and refused to have any more to do with it. More than
thirty years elapsed before Moore was reconciled to the friend who thus
failed him, and his wrath was not unreasonable, since the explanation
published by himself in the _Times_ naturally carried little weight. Yet
it afterwards gave him ground for challenging Byron. Thus closely
connected are Moore's two attempts at duelling; and there is nothing
more characteristic of his life than the fact that in each case his
challenge was only the introduction to a friendship of the sincerest and
most honourable kind.
* * * * *
After the close of this episode Moore returned to Dublin,--some hackwork
for Carpenter on Sallust defraying his expenses--and remained there
till the spring of 1807, reading daily in Marsh's library for about
three hours and a half. "I have written nothing since I came here," he
tells Miss Godfrey--dating his letter Dublin, February 23rd--"except one
song which everybody says is the best I have ever composed." The
exception is notable, for this song may have been one of the first of
the _Irish Melodies_.
The inception of Moore's most famous work was due to a publisher's
suggestion. In 1797 (or perhaps a year earlier), Bunting's collection of
Irish Airs had been issued, and Moore tells us that his interest in them
was encouraged by his friend Edward Hudson. Even before his departure
for Bermuda the young Irish poet had shown his skill in fitting words
for singing; and songs by him had been issued by Carpenter, by Rhames of
Dublin, and by other firms. When he returned home after an absence which
extended from the summer of 1803 to the autumn of 1806, he returned with
fame greatly augmented by his latest volume, and presumably the vogue of
his singing was not less in Dublin than elsewhere. What the song was
that he refers to in his letter to Miss Godfrey, we do not know; but it
is exceedingly likely to have been the lines on Emmet, which occupied a
prominent place in the first number of the _Melodies_. One can very well
believe that the fame of some song by Moore on an Irish theme may have
suggested to William Power, owner of a music warehouse in Dublin, the
proposal which he made--namely, that Moore should collaborate with Sir
John Stevenson in producing a series of Irish Melodies.
The following prefatory letter, addressed by Moore to Stevenson, was
issued by the publisher in his preliminary announcement to the first and
second numbers:--
"I feel very anxious that a work of this kind should be undertaken.
We have too long neglected the only talent for which our English
neighbours ever deigned to allow us any credit. Our National Music
has never been properly collected; and while the composers of the
Continent have enriched their Operas and Sonatas with Melodies
borrowed from Ireland--very often without even the honesty of
acknowledgment--we have left these treasures, in a great degree,
unclaimed and fugitive. Thus our Airs, like too many of our
countrymen, have, for want of protection at home, passed into the
service of foreigners. But we are come, I hope, to a better period
of both Politics and Music; and how much they are connected, in
Ireland at least, appears too plainly in the tone of sorrow and
depression which characterizes most of our early Songs.
"The task which you propose to me, of adapting words to these airs,
is by no means easy. The Poet, who would follow the various
sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid
fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and
levity, which composes the character of my countrymen, and has
deeply tinged their Music. Even in their liveliest strains we find
some melancholy note intrude--some minor Third or flat
Seventh--which throws its shade as it passes, and makes even mirth
interesting. If Burns had been an Irishman (and I would willingly
give up all our claims upon Ossian for him), his heart would have
been proud of such music, and his genius would have made it
immortal.
"Another difficulty (which is, however, purely mechanical) arises
from the irregular structure of many of those airs, and the lawless
kind of metre which it will in consequence be necessary to adapt to
them. In these instances, the Poet must write, not to the eye, but
to the ear; and must be content to have his verses of that
description which Cicero mentions, _'Quos si cantu spoliaveris nuda
remanebit oratio.'_ That beautiful Air, 'The Twisting of the
Rope,' which has all the romantic character of the Swiss _Ranz des
Vaches_, is one of those wild and sentimental rakes which it will
not be very easy to tie down in sober wedlock with Poetry. However,
notwithstanding all these difficulties, and the very moderate
portion of talent which I can bring to surmount them, the design
appears to me so truly National, that I shall feel much pleasure in
giving it all the assistance in my power."
Leicestershire, _Feb._ 1807.
The date is curious. Moore, writing to Miss Godfrey on February 23rd
from Dublin, made no mention of this project. He certainly crossed in
the end of February, and took up his abode (as was now his recognised
privilege) in solitary state at Donington. From there he wrote to his
mother for a copy of Bunting's _Airs_, and also of Miss Owenson's--to be
got from Power. In April he sends her "an inclosure for Power" to be
forwarded immediately--and this was probably the prefatory letter. For
Mr. Andrew Gibson's researches have discovered in the _Belfast
Commercial Chronicle_ of May 28, 1807, a paragraph relating to Power's
projected "Collection of the best Original Irish Melodies," which
concludes by citing a portion of Moore's prefatory letter, and the date
affixed is "Leicestershire, _April_ 1807."
For what reason the month should be given as February in all published
editions of the _Melodies_, it is hard to conceive. But the result has
been a widespread bibliographical error, since the publication is always
assigned to 1807. Mr. Gibson, however, has unearthed various
announcements in the _Freeman's Journal_, of which two speak in October
of the work as "shortly to be published," and another, on April 8th,
1808, as "just published." The latter advertisement invited subscribers
for "the succeeding numbers"; names were to be given to the publisher,
William Power, in Dublin, or in London to his brother James Power, who
had recently established a similar place of business in the Strand.
Under the original scheme, Moore was only to have been one of "several
distinguished Literary Characters" from whom "Power has had promises of
assistance." But his success precluded all competition. The twenty-four
songs comprised in the first two numbers include some of his very best
and much of his most popular work, and it is interesting to note that
almost the whole of them must have been written in Ireland. His stay at
Donington lasted till June, and during the earlier part of it he was
certainly engaged on poetry. But except for an excursion to Tunbridge,
to visit Lady Donegal and her sister, he went nowhere else in England,
and he was back in Dublin by the end of August. In the remaining months
of that summer he paid the visit to the Vale of Ovoca which gave
occasion to his lyric, "The Meeting of the Waters." A footnote to the
first edition of the first number explains that--
"'The Meeting of the Waters' forms a part of that beautiful scenery
which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow in the County of Wicklow,
and these lines were suggested to me by a visit to this romantic
spot in the summer of the present year (1807)."
It appears also, from a letter to Miss Godfrey, that in May 1807 his
solitude at Donington was interrupted by the advent of a large
house-party, and one may fairly say that, except for what he may have
done in the space of about three months, the whole of the lyrics of the
first two numbers were composed in the country where the airs themselves
had their origin.
Moreover, during his stay at Donington, other work than the _Melodies_
engaged him. He tells Lady Donegal, "to God's pleasure and both our
comforts," that he is not writing love verses.
"I begin at last to find out that _politics_ is the only thing
minded in this country, and that it is better even to rebel against
government than to have nothing to do with it; so I am writing
politics."
The result of this determination was seen in the publication which
appeared towards the end of 1808--_Corruption and Intolerance_, two more
satirical essays in the Popian manner. These productions were issued by
Carpenter in a thin octavo, eked out with a vast deal of notes. Moore
had not yet arrived at his characteristic manner of expression in
satire, and neither poem deserves much notice. Yet there was talent and
to spare in lines like these:--
"Hence the rich oil, that from the Treasury steals,
Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play,
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far."
And at the close of the poem there is a note of unaccustomed fierceness
in the reference to Castlereagh:
"See yon smooth lord, whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashion'd for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourish'd, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of Kings."
The lines on Intolerance were described as fragmentary--"the imperfect
beginning of a long series of Essays upon the same important subject";
and the political attitude of the whole was sufficiently described on
the title-page, where the lines were described as "Addressed to an
Englishman by an Irishman."
Moore disclaimed in the preface any attachment to either English party,
and the publication was, at least formally, anonymous. Yet we find him
admitting that he had projected a journey to London to arrange for the
republication of these poems, reinforced by others in the same kind, "in
the hope that I _might_ catch the eye of some of our patriotic
politicians, and thus be enabled to serve both _myself_ and the
_principles_ which I cherish." Carpenter, however, threw cold water on
the scheme, and the rebuff touched the poet's susceptibilities so
sharply, that he determined not to trust himself again in London
"without the means of commanding a supply." For this, his past successes
were no resource, since it was always Moore's imprudent habit to sell
work outright. Little's Poems were being constantly reprinted, with no
benefit to their author; and as for the songs, he writes in August 1808,
"I quite threw away the Melodies. They will make that little, smooth
fellow's fortune."
In 1809 another thin octavo, called _The Sceptic_, and signed by "The
Author of Corruption and Intolerance," was issued by Carpenter: Rogers
(who from this period onward ranks high among Moore's advisers)
protesting against his continuance with this publisher. But the book
attracted little notice; and the lack of success which attended these
attempts in serious satire very naturally turned Moore back into the
work where his triumph had been most gratifying. In January 1810 he
published, with a dedication to Lady Donegal, the third instalment of
his _Irish Melodies_, and it bears the stamp of its birthplace. The
political passion is by far more openly declared than before, and in two
or three of the lyrics--notably "After the Battle" and "The Irish
Peasant to his Mistress"--it attains as high a pitch of poetry as is
reached anywhere in its author's work. Part of the former may be quoted,
if only to show the similarity between its motive and the central idea
of "The Fire Worshippers."
"Night closed around the conqueror's way,
And lightnings showed the distant hill,
Where those who lost that dreadful day
Stood few and faint, but fearless still!
The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal,
For ever dimmed, for ever crossed--
Oh! who shall say what heroes feel,
When all but life and honour's lost?
"The last sad hour of freedom's dream,
And valour's task, moved slowly by,
While mute they watched till morning's beam
Should rise and give them light to die."
The twelve lyrics of this number, together with the thin brochure of
_The Sceptic_, are all that Moore had to show for the months from July
or August 1808 to December 1810, which make up the only long continuous
period of his adult life spent in Ireland. We have little record of his
doings during that time, and the most significant part of it is to be
found in a little quarto, privately printed, which details the
performances of the Kilkenny Theatre. Published in 1825, this little
book was made the subject by Moore of an article in the _Edinburgh
Review_ for October 1827. Its preface sketches briefly the history of a
craze for private theatricals which pervaded Ireland in the years from
1760 onwards. But nowhere else does the passion appear to have
established itself so strongly as on the banks of the Nore, where a
company was got together in 1802 under the auspices of a local
gentleman, Mr. Richard Power. Originally the performances lasted for a
week, but soon the programme was arranged for a fortnight, and in one
case for three weeks. The event was annual till 1819, when the Kilkenny
Theatre was closed for ever--marking, as Moore says in his review, the
end of the social period in Ireland.
Moore, as we have seen, returned to Ireland in August 1808, and on the
10th of October following he made his _début_ at Kilkenny; not alone,
for Mr. Power in that year obtained two notable recruits. Isaac Corry,
one of Moore's most lasting and agreeable friends, joined the troupe,
and remained faithful for years; moreover, the genial Joe Atkinson, who,
we may guess, introduced these new actors, wrote the prologue. Moore was
only at this time a tentative member of the company, and played three
days out of the twelve. We find the _Leinster Journal_ (whose
exceedingly well-written notices of the performances are regularly
quoted in the volume) noting, to begin with, that "the Theatrical
Company have been favoured with the presence of Anacreon Moore." But on
the 22nd October the new recruit made his first appearance in the small
part of David in _The Rivals_, and "kept the audience in a roar by his
Yorkshire dialect and rustic simplicity." The success was renewed by
him as Mungo in _The Padlock_, and as Spado (a singing part) in _A
Castle of Andalusia_. Next year a list of plays that ran from the 2nd to
the 21st of October was produced, and we read that "the delight and
darling of the Kilkenny audience appears to be Anacreon Moore," who
wrote the prologue for the occasion, and "spoke it in his own bewitching
manner." "The vivacity and _naïveté_ of his manner, the ease and
archness of his humour, and the natural sweetness of his voice have
quite enamoured us." In the solid Shaksperian part of the programme--for
Mr. Power and his men did not shrink before _Macbeth_ and
_Othello_--this actor took no part. What he did play in was the farce
_Peeping Tom of Coventry_--and, let it be carefully observed, the Lady
Godiva was Miss E. Dyke. Miss E. Dyke was a beautiful girl, then aged
fourteen; her sister, Miss H. Dyke, had appeared the year before, and
both, it seems, were professional actresses. Of their talents the
recorder in the _Leinster Journal_ makes no mention, but he is eloquent
again and again on the successes of Mr. Moore, and the performances of
1809 appear to have marked an epoch. In 1810 Moore was again (and for
the last time) a performer. The critic inclines to cavil at the
slightness of the part given to this favourite, and emphasises Moore's
cleverness with enthusiasm. But, indeed, on two of the evenings Moore
had the stage entirely to himself, when, between the plays, he sat down
to a piano and spoke his _Melologue upon National Music_, verses which
he had written to be declaimed by Miss Smith at the Dublin Theatre for a
benefit night, and which were afterwards published in pamphlet form.
All this pleasant gaiety had two consequences, of which the less
important may be first noted. In January 1809, three months after
Moore's first appearance at Kilkenny, Rogers writes: "I am delighted
with your intention to make your debut on the stage--as an author I
mean. Of your fame as an actor, I have had many reverberations." Nothing
more came of the intention at the moment, but in December 1810 Moore
returned to London after a two years' absence, and writes of many visits
"from booksellers, musicsellers, managers, etc., with offers for books,
songs, and plays. I rather think," he adds, "I may give something to
Covent Garden." The result was that sometime in the following summer he
was trembling upon a manager's verdict, and on September 4th, 1811, saw
with no pleasurable feelings, the production of his opera, _M.P. or The
Blue Stocking_, at the English Opera House. The piece was a failure,
despite a friendly press; and the songs from it, all that Moore cared to
preserve, are by no means good examples of his work. For many years
afterwards the stage tempted him, as a means of earning money, but he
never returned to the charge.
The other sequel of the Kilkenny theatricals was of very different
character. In the end of 1808 Rogers, answering a letter, remarks, "Your
sketch of Ireland is most gloomy." Twelve months later, and after Miss
E. Dyke's first appearance in Mr. Power's company, Rogers writes, "I am
rejoiced to think you are happy, which indeed you cannot fail to be
while you are making others so; but don't let the Graces supplant the
Muses." It is hardly rash to infer that Moore had written a cheerful
account of the 1809 festival at Kilkenny. October 1810 saw the last
appearance in the Kilkenny bills of Mr. Moore and Miss E. Dyke. Early in
December Moore ran back to London to interview "booksellers,
musicsellers, managers, etc." In January he returned to Dublin for a few
weeks. February saw him in town again; and in March it appears that he
has "at last got a little bedroom about two miles from town where I
shall try now and then for a morning's work." On March 25th he was
married to Miss Dyke at St. Martin's Church; but the marriage was kept a
secret from his parents till the month of May following.
On the face of it, nothing could have seemed less promising than this
alliance. Moore had to live by his wits; he was now in his thirty-second
year, he had lived with people of expensive habits and, in a sense,
lived fast. Allowing for some rhetoric, one may take as a fair account
the description of his feelings which he wrote to Lady Donegal in the
summer preceding the last bout of theatricals at Kilkenny--when,
presumably, his fate was settled.
"I wish," he says, "I could give you even a tolerable account of
what I have done; but I don't know how it is, both my mind and
heart appear to have lain for some time completely fallow, and even
the usual crop of _wild oats_ has not been forthcoming. What is the
reason of this? I believe there is in every man's life (at least in
every man who has lived as if he knew how to live) one blank
interval, which takes place at that period when the gay desires of
youth are just gone off, and he has not yet made up his mind as to
the feelings or pursuits that succeed them--when the last blossom
has fallen away, and yet the fruit continues to look harsh and
unpromising--a kind of _interregnum_ which takes place upon the
demise of love, before ambition and worldliness have seated
themselves upon the vacant throne."
One can easily imagine a gentleman who writes in this strain making,
some few months later, a match with a penniless and beautiful girl of
sixteen, whose situation had so little to recommend it that he kept the
whole affair dark even from his parents. It would not have been so
likely a guess that he would make her the most affectionate of husbands,
or that she would turn out to be the most helpful of wives. There are
few things more significant in a man's history than his choice of a
consort, and stress must be laid on this marriage. In the first place,
it should be remarked that Moore, with an equipment for the business
which might have made any fortune-hunter envious, never showed the least
inclination to marry for money. Secondly, although himself among the
most brilliant of talkers, finding his chief enjoyment in such talk as
was heard, for instance, at Holland House, he married a girl who
probably had little education and certainly possessed only the
intelligence of the heart. He married, doubtless, for beauty; but
probably not without discerning that this girl of sixteen had qualities
of prudence, order, and courage which amply justified his choice. She
must have possessed also a great charm, for the most difficult to please
among Moore's friends were immediately subjugated. Rogers, who had a
sincere and lifelong affection for the young poet, took her from the
first into his good graces, and his letters all contain some pleasant
word of remembrance to Psyche, as he christened her. In a later day,
Psyche and her babies were the guests of that rigidly celibate old
bachelor, and did not lack invitation to return. Miss Godfrey, another
shrewd and loyal well-wisher, wrote six months after the marriage:--
"Be very sure, my dear Moore, that if you have got an amiable,
sensible wife, extremely attached to you, as I am certain you have,
it is only in the long run of life that you can know the full value
of the treasure you possess. If you did but see, as I see with
bitter regret in a very near connection of my own, the miserable
effects of marrying a vain fool devoted to fashion, you would bless
your stars night and day for your good fortune, and, to say the
truth, you were as likely a gentleman to get into a scrape that way
as any that I know. You were always the slave of beauty, say what
you please; it covered a multitude of sins in your eyes, and I
never can cease wondering at your good luck after all is said and
done."
Certainly, Bessy Moore was as little of the "vain fool devoted to
fashion" as could be found. The two lived together, in Bury Street, for
a year, till after the birth of their first child,--Barbara--born in
February 1812. Soon after this, a parliamentary crisis raised Moore's
hopes of Lord Moira's advancement, and his own depending on it, to fever
height. They were soon dashed. Lord Moira was a staunch supporter of the
Catholic claims, and the ministry had decided to do nothing for the
Catholics. For the moment at least Moore took the defeat as final and
wrote with some bitterness to Lady Donegal:--
"In Lord Moira's exclusion from all chances of power, I see an end
to the long hope of my life; and my intention is to go far away
into the country, there to devote the remainder of my life to the
dear circle I am forming around me, to the quiet pursuit of
literature, and, I hope, of goodness."
Whatever spleen is to be traced in this letter soon vanished. On March
6, a letter to Miss Godfrey marks Moore's definitive breaking with his
old habit of precarious reliance upon the prospect of patronage.
Literary earnings, which he had hitherto regarded as a mere temporary
means of meeting embarrassments, were now to become the sole support of
himself and his family; and he bids good-bye with a cheerful courage to
"all the hope and suspense in which the prospect of Lord Moira's
advancement" had kept him for so many years.
"It has been a sort of _Will o' the Wisp_ to me all my life, and
the only thing I regret is, that it was not extinguished sooner,
for it has led me a sad dance."
Retirement from town was necessary, for the general curiosity "to see
Moore's wife" threatened to become ruinous; and one may be very sure
that if Bessy refused invitations "to the three most splendid assemblies
in town," it was her doing and not her husband's. In the choice of a
neighbourhood, access to a library had to be considered, and Moore
naturally enough looked for a home near Donington Park. It was
accordingly at Kegworth, a few miles from Lord Moira's seat, that he
installed himself; but the proximity was unfortunate, for the cabinet
crisis continued, and the Prince Regent's personal reliance on Lord
Moira sustained Moore's hopes. In the autumn came news that Moira was to
be Governor-General of India, and Moore's friends immediately settled it
that the poet would accompany him as secretary. The remaining months of
1812 were embittered by hope deferred, which some expressions let fall
by Lord Moira helped to quicken. But the great man and his household
came and went, making it clear to Moore that he could count on nothing
but continued good-will. The suggestion of an exchange of patronage made
by Lord Moira was fortunately put aside; Moore replying that he would
"rather struggle on as he was than take anything that would have the
effect of tying up his tongue under such a system as the present."
Thus, in January 1813, with Moira's departure for India, the long
relation between the patron and client ended, not without mutual
embarrassment. Yet Moore was grateful for the kindly attentions heaped
upon himself and his Bessy, who was then in a state to need them. Her
second confinement, again of a daughter, Olivia, took place in March;
and, as soon as she could be moved, Moore and she accepted willingly the
invitation of a cordial friend, one Mrs. Ready, and settled into her
house, Oakhanger Hall, for the summer. It had been decided to give up
the Kegworth cottage, and look out for some pleasanter home; and a plan
had also been arranged which made Moore glad to leave his wife in
friendly company during the months of the London season.
In 1811, a fourth number of the _Irish Melodies_ had been published, and
Moore's cumulative success as a song-writer had tempted the brothers
Power to make an offer which ensured to him and his at least a
livelihood for the term of the agreement. They were to pay £500 a year
for the monopoly of Moore's musical compositions.[1] The arrangement
thus entered into lasted for over twenty years, and was financially
Moore's backbone. But both Moore himself and the Powers recognised that
the vogue of these songs was largely due to Moore's own singing of them,
and it was consequently settled at Kegworth, that the singer should go
up to town alone for the month of May. Bessy was naturally reluctant at
first; "indeed," Moore wrote to Power, "it was only on my representing
to her that my songs would all remain a dead letter with you, if I did
not go up in the gay time of the year, and give them life by singing
them about, that she agreed to my leaving her." The practice, once
fixed, became habitual. For the next thirty years Moore was never long
enough absent from town to lose touch with the society which never
ceased to welcome him; while Bessy remained at home, minding the babies
and keeping down the bills. Few women, even without her beauty, would
have consented to the situation; but she accepted it cheerfully, and
regretted only the absences of her husband. She had her reward. Lord
John Russell writes in his introduction, concerning Moore's regard for
his wife:--
"From 1811, the year of his marriage, to 1852, that of his death,
this excellent and beautiful person received from him the homage of
a lover enhanced by all the gratitude, all the confidence, which
the daily and hourly happiness he enjoyed were sure to inspire.
Thus, whatever amusement he might find in society, whatever
literary resources he might seek elsewhere, he always returned to
his home with a fresh feeling of delight. The time he had been
absent had been a time of exertion and exile; his return restored
him to tranquillity and to peace. Keen as was his natural sense of
enjoyment, he never balanced between pleasure and happiness. His
letters and his journal bear abundant trace of these natural and
deep-seated affections."
It is, indeed, true that few men of whom one reads appear to have got
more pleasure out of their home than Moore, and the first home where he
really settled down to quiet domesticity was at Mayfield Cottage, "near
the pretty town of Ashbourne," "a little nutshell of a thing, yet with a
room to spare for a friend." The early letters abound in descriptive
touches, one of which shows Bessy busy superintending workmen, while the
head of the family and his little Barbara rolled in the hay outside. The
neighbourhood, too, was full of welcome and small gaieties. Bessy
appeared at a local ball and excited a great sensation by her beauty.
"She wore a turban that night to please me, and she looks better in
it than anything else; for it strikes almost everybody that sees
her, how like the form and expression of her face are to
Catalani's, and a turban is the thing for that sort of character."
It is as well to remember that this prudent little dame was then aged
eighteen--in spite of her two babies; and Moore, though getting up in
years by comparison, was youthful enough in spirits.
"You would have laughed to see Bessy and me going to dinner," he
writes to his mother. "We found in the middle of our walk, that we
were near half an hour too early, so we set to practising country
dances in the middle of a retired green lane, till the time was
expired."
[1] From this, however, deduction was made for part of the payments to
Sir John Stevenson, and afterwards to Henry Bishop. Moore's method (if
it could be called a method) was to draw on Power for what he wanted;
and these deductions amounted to much more than he supposed. The natural
result was a quarrel when in the long run accounts were made up.
CHAPTER III
_LALLA ROOKH_
There was scarcely a period in Moore's life when prospects looked
brighter for him than just after his settlement at Mayfield Cottage. He
had clearly decided on living in seclusion till he should have finished
the important work on which he had been engaged already, off and on,
during a full year. In the summer of 1812, enough of _Lalla Rookh_
existed to be shown to Rogers, when he and Moore took a tour together
through the Peak country; and Rogers's criticism left the poet rather
out of conceit with his work. Next year found him again dispirited, for
the _Giaour_ had appeared, and Moore writes:--
"Never was anything more unlucky for me than Byron's invasion of
this region, which, when I entered it, was yet untrodden, and whose
chief charm consisted in the gloss and novelty of its features; but
it will now be overrun with clumsy adventurers, and, when I make my
appearance, instead of being a leader, as I looked to be, I must
dwindle into a humble follower--a Byronian. This is disheartening,
and I sometimes doubt whether I shall publish it at all; though at
the same time, if I may trust my own judgment, I never wrote so
well before."
Things went from bad to worse. On August 28, 1813, Byron wrote to him,
"Stick to the East;--the oracle, Staël, told me it was the only
poetical policy." But the letter went on to announce Byron's project of
a story grafted on to the amours of a Peri and a mortal. Now, Moore had
already in his long-delayed work made the daughter of a Peri the heroine
of one of his tales, and spent much pains in "detailing the love
adventures of her aerial parent in an episode." He wrote at once, asking
only for fair warning, and Byron immediately disclaimed all commerce
with Peris; but, having done so, set to work upon the _Bride of Abydos_.
It is easy to judge of Moore's feelings when he read the new poem and
found that Byron had again, by pure accident, anticipated his friend.
One of the stories intended for insertion in _Lalla Rookh_ had been
carried some way, but it contained, says Moore, such singular
coincidences with the _Bride_, "not only in locality and costume, but in
plot and characters," that there was nothing for it but to give up.
The whole thing was pure and simple bad luck, and Byron's very sincere
correspondence is mainly directed to chiding his friend for the "strange
diffidence of your own powers which I cannot account for." But the blow
was heavy.
There is no doubt as to Moore's priority of idea. On September 11th,
1811, we find him writing to Miss Godfrey, after the failure of his
operetta, _M.P._: "I shall now take to my poem and do something, I hope,
that will place me above the vulgar herd both of worldlings and critics;
but you shall hear from me again when I get among the maids of Cashmere,
the sparkling springs of Rochabad, and the fragrant banquets of the
Peris." And Rogers, in the same month, refers to the projected epic:
"Are you now in a pavilion on the banks of the Tigris?" But Moore, for
all his apparent facility, was a slow and fastidious writer, and it
seems that, even in 1813, not a great deal was accomplished.
He was, however, resolute that nothing should divert him from his task,
and the proposal made by Murray through Byron, to establish him as
"editor of a review like the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_," was set
aside; as was also the suggestion from Power for an opera, which would
bring in money both from theatre and bookshops. His determination was
the more remarkable, because already his account with Power was
forestalled. So long as he could earn money, Moore refused persistently
to be indebted to any man (except Rogers, and that only in two
instances) for a loan; but with equal regularity he anticipated by long
periods all his earnings from publishers. His house-moving had involved
him in unlooked-for expenses, and, to meet these, he had exhausted the
supply from a first success in one of the two branches of literature
which he was to make peculiarly his own.
In March 1813 was published for Carpenter (through an understrapper in
the Row) _Intercepted Letters; or the Twopenny Postbag_. The preface
explained that the letters in question came from a bag dropped by a
Twopenny Postman, which had been picked up by an agent of the Society
for the Suppression of Vice, but abandoned, when it became clear that
the discoveries of profligacy which it indicated lay too high up to be
handled. The letters--eight in all--were attributed to correspondents
whose names were transparently disguised by initials, and who for the
most part belonged to the Prince Regent's circle. A supplementary group
of epigrams and occasional verses, reprinted from the _Morning
Chronicle_, eked out the thin volume. Thin as it was, it sold for a high
price, and it sold prodigiously; a year later Moore wrote a preface for
the fourteenth edition, which Carpenter now openly adopted. Moore,
however, did not write in his own name. The nominal author of the
preface, as of the book, was "Thomas Brown the younger." But the
authorship was never for a moment in doubt, as many of the squibs
reprinted had been correctly assigned on their first appearance in the
_Chronicle_; and Moore showed his certitude that the disguise would be
only formal by inserting, in the dedication to Woolriche, an assurance
that "doggerel is not my _only_ occupation." The preface to the later
edition contains some biographical matter of interest. It begins by
denying the rumour of collaboration or joint-authorship; and then passes
to what was a virtual avowal of identity.
"To the charge of being an Irishman, poor Mr. Brown pleads guilty;
and I believe it must also be acknowledged that he comes of a Roman
Catholic family.... But from all this it does not necessarily
follow that Mr. Brown is a Papist; and indeed I have the strongest
reasons for suspecting that they who say so are somewhat
mistaken.... All I profess to know of his orthodoxy is that he has
a Protestant wife and two or three little Protestant children, and
that he has been seen at church every Sunday, for a whole year
together, listening to the sermons of his truly reverend and
amiable friend, Dr. ----"[1]
Moore by no means conceived of tolerance only as a virtue to be
practised by Protestants for the benefit of Catholics. Long before his
marriage--indeed, when his Bessy was in very short frocks--he had
written, as an exhortation to Protestants:--
"From the heretic girl of my soul shall I fly
To find somewhere else a more orthodox kiss?"
And later, from the Catholic side of the question, he practised his own
doctrine conscientiously, when it came to falling in love, for Bessy
Moore was a Protestant. In spite of the phrase "it does not necessarily
follow that Mr. Brown is a Papist," there is no reason to suppose that
Moore ever meditated a change of religion. Later in life, his sister
Katherine did so, and he advised her to follow his example and remain
quietly a Catholic. But he said openly to her, and records it in his
diary: "My having married a Protestant wife gave me an opportunity of
choosing a religion at least for my children, and if my marriage had no
other advantage, I should think _this_ quite sufficient to be grateful
for."
But while in these respects he showed himself a Catholic of the least
rigid order, he was, naturally, all the keener in his hostility to
Protestant bigotry. And, having discarded the sonorous denunciation of
Corruption and Intolerance in heavy Popian couplets, he now, as Mr.
Thomas Brown the younger, attacked Addington, Eldon, Castlereagh and the
rest, in a spirited light gallop of verse. The occasion of the opening
epistle was afforded by a present of ponies which Lady Barbara Ashley
had given to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. Lady Barbara being a
Catholic, keen noses smelt Popery in the gift; and the letter attributed
to "the Pr----ss Ch----e of W---s," recounts a supposed Cabinet Council,
at which the crisis is discussed. A few lines may serve as an example
of this clever _jeu d'esprit_.
"'If the Pr-nc-ss _will_ keep them,' says Lord
C-stl-r--gh,
'To make them quite harmless, the only true way
Is (as certain Chief Justices do with their wives)
To flog them within half an inch of their lives;
If they've any bad Irish Mood lurking about,
This (he knew by experience) would soon draw it out.'
Or--if this be thought cruel--his Lordship proposes
'The new _Veto_ snaffle to hind down their noses--
A pretty contrivance, made out of old chains,
Which appears to indulge, while it doubly restrains;
Which, however high-mettled, their gamesomeness checks,'
Adds his Lordship, humanely, 'or else breaks their necks!'"
The bulk of the satire was, however, social rather than political, and
largely aimed at the Prince Regent--from whom Moore and all his friends
were now completely estranged. In the second Letter, some capital lines
describe--
"That awful hour or two
Of grave tonsorial preparation,
Which, to a fond, admiring nation,
Sends forth, announced by trump and drum,
The best-wigg'd P----e in Christendom!"
Even better work was to be found in the reprints than in the Letters.
The "Anacreontic to a Plumassier" is a very delicate piece of verse,
fluffy and feathery. Almost as good was the version, or perversion, of
Horace II. 11, "freely translated by the Pr--ce R-g--t":--
"Brisk let us revel, while revel we may;
For the gay bloom of fifty soon passes away,
And then people get fat
And infirm and all that,
And a wig (I confess it) so clumsily sits
That it frightens the little loves out of their wits."
Taking them as a whole, it would be hard to find better examples of
light-hearted satire. Moore had little of the _soeva indignatio_; his
touch was on the ridiculous rather than the disgusting; and even the
Prince of Wales could take fun out of the chaff directed against his fat
pretensions to comeliness. Probably no one was much the worse, or the
better, for Moore's satire, and it abounds so in topical allusion, of
the most ephemeral kind, that to-day the interest has evaporated. But
the reader can easily understand its immediate popularity, and it is
distressing to think that Carpenter should have reaped the lion's share
of the profit. From this onward Moore very wisely sought another
publisher.
His residence at Ashbourne lasted till March 1817, and the years spent
there were the most fertile of his existence. The period was terminated
by a move to the neighbourhood of London to supervise the publication of
_Lalla Rookh_, and virtually the whole of this poem may be said to have
been composed in Mayfield Cottage. In the same period, Moore produced
the sixth number of the _Irish Melodies_ and the first number of his
_Sacred Songs_, which rank next in importance to the _Melodies_ among
his poetical works. If he had never written a line after 1817, his
reputation as a poet would stand no less high than it does at present.
The volume of the _Melodies_ which Power issued in 1815 contains several
poems which throw an interesting light on the poet's state of feeling
towards politics, and especially towards his own country. One of the
most successful songs in the number (as indeed it deserved to be) was
the lyric in which the reproach of Catholic Ireland to the Prince who
had gone back on his early protestations is put as the complaint of a
forsaken woman:--
"When first I met thee, warm and young,
There shone such truth about thee,
And on thy lip such promise hung,
I did not dare to doubt thee.
I saw thee change, yet still relied,
Still clung with hope the fonder,
And thought, though false to all beside,
From me thou couldst not wander.
But go, deceiver! go,--
The heart, whose hopes could make it
Trust one so false, so low,
Deserves that thou shouldst break it."
And the closing refrain has a real energy:--
"Go--go--'tis vain to curse,
'Tis weakness to upbraid thee;
Hate cannot wish thee worse
Than guilt and shame have made thee."
Moore wrote to Power in the early part of 1815, after a visit to
Chatsworth, where he had spent his days in a whirl of fine company:--
"You cannot imagine what a sensation the Prince's song created. It
was in vain to guard your property; they had it sung and repeated
over so often that they all took copies of it, and I dare say in
the course of next week there will not be a Whig lord or lady in
England who will not be in possession of it."
The other notable number is the poem to the tune Savourneen Deelish,
which begins:--
"'Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking,
Like Heaven's first dawn o'er the sleep of the dead--
When Man, from the slumber of ages awaking,
Look'd upward, and bless'd the pure ray, ere it fled.
'Tis gone, and the gleams it has left of its burning
But deepen the long night of bondage and mourning,
That dark o'er the kingdoms of earth is returning,
And darkest of all, hapless Erin, o'er thee."
Moore wrote this after Napoleon had been sequestered in Elba, when the
Holy Alliance were left masters of the field. He was well pleased with
the verses, and his comment to Power is extremely typical of his
attitude at this period:--"It is bold enough; but the strong blow I have
aimed at the French in the last stanza makes up for everything." The
lines referred to are these:--
"But shame on those tyrants who envied the blessing!
And shame on the light race unworthy its good,
Who, at Death's reeking altar, like furies caressing
The young hope of Freedom, baptized it in blood!"
The same desire to conciliate English public opinion is shown by another
song which represents Erin as drying her tears:--
"When after whole pages of sorrow and shame
She saw History write,
With a pencil of light
That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington's name."
In one of the prefaces which Moore wrote, with ebbing faculties, for the
collected edition of his works, readers will find him claiming for this
lyric the spirit of prophecy, because Wellington ultimately
"recommended to the throne the great measure of Catholic Emancipation."
If indeed at last the Duke heeded the singer's closing injunction--
"Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame,"
it was with no good-will: and there is far more sincerity in Moore's
note somewhere in the journals that his song had been wholly wasted on
the recipient of the homage. Still, there is no good ground for bringing
against the poet a reproach of time-serving. His state of mind, if one
endeavours to realise it, must have been strangely complicated. In the
victories of Wellington, so largely won by the bravery of Irish
soldiers, he felt, no doubt, as did most Irishmen, a kind of proprietary
gratification; but the dethronement of Napoleon caused him no unmixed
joy. Like Byron, and many another man of that day, he had a fascinated
admiration for this prodigious master of legions; and moreover,
Napoleon's ruin meant the establishment of the Holy Alliance, and, as
one of many corollaries, the perpetuation of helotry in Ireland. Ireland
had reason to bless the movement towards liberty which came from France,
and not less to execrate the excesses which strengthened the hands of
liberty's opponents. There is nothing in the poem that requires defence;
what requires either apology or condemnation is Moore's attempt to
flavour with abuse of England's detested opponent an expression of his
own convictions--involving, as they did, a condemnation of English rule.
The truth is that the business of adapting Irish nationalist sentiment
to the taste of English drawing-rooms was perilous to sincerity; and,
in this period of his life, Moore was steadily losing touch with
Ireland. The number of the Melodies under discussion closed with the
beautiful lyric in which the singer bade farewell to this way of
poetry:--
"Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,
This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine."
The farewell, as it proved, was only temporary, but it indicates that
Moore felt the inspiration failing him; and, as a matter of fact, the
four later numbers of the Melodies are by far inferior to their
predecessors. Their inferiority, however, was due to no lack of
sympathy; it indicates only that the artist's instinct was right, and
that Moore's thought about Ireland, in later days, took naturally other
forms of expression.
But in 1815 he had been absent from his country for four long years,
during which his life had been engrossed with other things; and the
Catholic cause, which had always been foremost in his mind, was now
losing its attraction, for two reasons, sufficiently indicated in his
correspondence with Lady Donegal.
In the spring of 1815, his third child, a little girl, aged only a few
months, died at Mayfield; and, in hopes to soothe the mother by change
of scene, Moore decided to hasten on a long-projected visit to Ireland.
Lady Donegal wrote that she heard this with regret, "for it is not a
safe residence for you in any way"; and she pressed on him warnings
against the "Irish democrats." Moore replied, certainly with sufficient
emphasis:--
"If there is anything in the world that I have been detesting and
despising more than another for this long time past, it has been
those very Dublin politicians whom you so fear I should associate
with. I do not think a good cause was ever ruined by a more
bigoted, brawling, and disgusting set of demagogues; and, though it
be the religion of my fathers, I must say that much of this vile,
vulgar spirit is to be traced to that wretched faith, which is
again polluting Europe with Jesuitism and Inquisitions, and which
of all the humbugs that have stultified mankind is the most
narrow-minded and mischievous; so much for the danger of my joining
Messrs. O'Connel, O'Donnel, etc."
That was written in March, after the escape from Elba. A month after
Waterloo, Moore put sharply enough, to the same correspondent, his
detestation for the Bourbons, and his general dissent from Lady
Donegal's Toryism. But, although written from Ireland, the letter
expresses the sentiments rather of an English Whig than an Irish
Nationalist:--
"Reprobate as I am, I am sure you will give credit to my prudence
and good taste in declining the grand public dinner that was about
to be given me upon my arrival in Dublin. I found there were, too
many of your favourites, the Catholic orators, at the bottom of the
design--that the fountain of honour was too much of a _holywater_
fount for me to dabble in it with either safety or pleasure; and
though I should have liked mightily the opportunity of making a
treasonable speech or two after dinner, I thought the wisest thing
I could do was to decline the honour. Being thus disappointed in
me, they have given a grand public dinner to an eminent
toll-gatherer, whose patriotic and _elegant_ method of collecting
the tolls entitles him, I have no doubt, to the glory of such a
celebration. Alas! alas! it must be confessed that our poor country
altogether is a most wretched concern; and as for the Catholics (as
I have just said in a letter written within these five minutes),
one would heartily wish them all in their own Purgatory, if it were
not for their adversaries, whom one wishes _still further_."
Following that is a letter to Rogers, in which Moore writes of a visit
to the "foggy, boggy regions of Tipperary."
"The only thing," he goes on, "I could match you[2] in, is
_banditti_; and if you can imagine groups of ragged Shanavests (as
they are called) going about in noonday, armed and painted over
like Catabaw Indians, to murder tithe-proctors, land-valuers, etc.,
you have the most stimulant specimen of the sublime that Tipperary
affords. The country, indeed, is in a frightful state, and rational
remedies have been delayed so long that nothing but the sword will
answer now."
Very similar views would have been expressed by any member of the Whig
aristocracy, whose detestation of the Holy Alliance would certainly have
extended itself to the Holy Water fount, and who would have shared
Moore's fastidious dislike of O'Connell's method of raising party funds.
It must, however, be remembered that these passages represent Moore's
immature opinions; and against the description of the Shanavests as
murderous savages must be set the _Memoirs of Captain Rock_, which give
the natural history of agrarian crime, denouncing, not the Shanavests or
Whiteboys, but the circumstances which bred such crime, as naturally and
as regularly as filth breeds fever. For Moore wrote _Captain Rock_ after
reading Irish history and making something of an exhaustive tour through
the south of Ireland, while in 1815 his sense of Irish grievances was
largely theoretical. "I love Ireland," he wrote to his friend Corry,
"but I hate Dublin"; and it is not very cynical to say that when he
wrote this, Dublin was all he knew of Ireland. The influence of his
early association with Emmet and others, renewed periodically by his
visits to his home, was mainly an affair of sentiment, and spent itself
during his long sojourn away from contact with Irish minds. It revived
in him later, and it was nourished, by reading Irish history, into a
steady conviction. But the first impulse that revived in Moore the
enthusiasm for his own country was, I think, gratitude for its
recognition of his services; and one may not unfairly trace something of
his temporary alienation, if not from Ireland, at least from Irish
Nationalists, to his feeling that his merits were not adequately valued
among his own people. When he is blaspheming against the "low,
illiberal, puddle-headed, and gross-hearted herd of Dublin," it is
because his _Melologue_ "never drew a soul to the theatres in Dublin."
In England, during these years, his reputation was at its height. Byron
in 1814 dedicated _The Corsair_ to "the poet of all circles and the idol
of his own." Leigh Hunt the same year admitted, in his "Feast of the
Poets," only four to dine with Apollo, and Moore, with Scott, Southey,
Campbell, made the company. Stray pieces, such as the lines on
Sheridan's death--Moore's finest piece of satire--caught like wildfire;
and the _Edinburgh_, in reviewing the sixth number of _Irish Melodies_,
made ample amends for its earlier onslaught. More than that, Jeffrey
approached Moore, in the most honorific manner, through Rogers, to
enlist him as a contributor, and a contributor Moore accordingly became.
His first article, a review of Lord Thurlow's poems, was simply a light
piece of amusing criticism; but his second choice of subject astonished
Jeffrey. Taking for a peg Boyd's translation of Select Passages from
the patristic writings, Moore proceeded to hang upon it his views of the
Fathers and their works generally. These views are perhaps a little
remarkable as coming from a Catholic, and the tone of the article may be
fairly inferred from a passage:--
"At a time when the Inquisition is re-established by our 'beloved
Ferdinand'; when the Pope again brandishes the keys of St. Peter
with an air worthy of the successor of the Hildebrands and
Perettis; when canonisation is about to be inflicted on another
Louis, and little silver models of embryo princes are gravely vowed
at the shrine of the Virgin;--in times like these, it is not too
much to expect that such enlightened authors as St. Jerome and
Tertullian may become the classics of most of the Continental
Courts."
Nevertheless, even those who respect the Fathers most, will hardly deny
the wit of Moore's comment: indeed, few things enable us so well to
guess at the nature of his admitted brilliancy in conversation as these
early articles, coming from his unjaded pen. Another quotation may be
given:--
"St. Justin, the Martyr, is usually considered as the well-spring
of most of those strange errors which flowed so abundantly through
the early ages of the Church, and spread around them in their
course with such luxuriance of absurdity. The most amiable, and
therefore the least contagious, of his heterodoxies was that which
led him to patronise the souls of Socrates and other Pagans, in
consideration of those glimmerings of the divine Logos which his
fancy discovered through the dark night of Heathenism. The absurd
part of this opinion remained, while the tolerant spirit
evaporated. And while these Pagans were allowed to have known
something of the Trinity, they were yet damned for not knowing
more, with most unrelenting orthodoxy."
In any case, most readers will be of the same mind as Jeffrey, who wrote
that he "was far from suspecting" Moore's "familiarity with these
recondite subjects." But it must be remembered that Moore was always a
bookish man, a poet who derived his inspiration largely from
out-of-the-way literature--and this article contains references in which
we see the germinal ideas of his _Loves of the Angels_. I have noted a
touch of pedantry, oddly associated with exuberant youth, in his version
of _Anacreon_; and something of the same combination is to be found in
the _magnum opus_ which, for a while at all events, set the seal upon
his fame.
Nothing could more practically show Moore's position in the literary
world of his day than the negotiations for the copyright of _Lalla
Rookh_. In 1814 Murray offered two thousand guineas for it, but Moore's
friends thought he should have more, and, going to Longman, they claimed
that Mr. Moore should receive no less than the highest price ever paid
for a poem. "That," said Longman, "was three thousand pounds paid for
_Rokeby_." On this basis they treated, and Longman was inclined to
stipulate for a preliminary perusal. Moore, however, refused, and the
agreement was finally worded:--"That upon your giving into our hands a
poem of the length of _Rokeby_ you shall receive from us the sum of
£3000." This was in December 1814. The poem was ready for publication in
1816, but that year (in the confusion after Waterloo) being very adverse
to publishers, Moore generously offered the Longmans the chance to
postpone or rescind their bargain; and postponed it accordingly was till
May 1817.
It is worth noting that in the January of that year Moore writes to ask
Power if he can "muster me up a few pounds (five or six), as I am almost
without a shilling." A heavy blow had also fallen upon him, as the
retrenchments then proceeding had occasioned John Moore's removal from
the barrack-mastership in Dublin, with a consequent reduction of his
income from £350 to £200. But the publication of _Lalla Rookh_ set all
right for the moment. A thousand pounds was drawn to discharge all
Moore's liabilities; the other two thousand was to remain in the
publishers' hands, and they undertook to pay Moore's father a hundred
pounds a year as interest on it. Moore himself and his family moved up
to a new house at Hornsey in Middlesex, much more expensive than his
Derbyshire cottage; and here for two months he was busy with the proofs,
and naturally anxious. By May 30th he was clear of all scruples as to
the publisher's pockets, and with justice. A quarter of a century later
Longman still looked on _Lalla Rookh_ as "the cream of the copyrights."
One may take this moment for the height of Moore's prosperity. His
success was emphasised by many flattering offers, one of which was to
conduct a paper for the Opposition--a suggestion which Moore set aside,
partly on the ground that he had lost his taste for living in London. In
the middle of the first flourish of eulogy, Rogers, to whom _Lalla_ had
been dedicated, and who in June was housing Bessy and her young ones,
carried off the poet for a trip to Paris. Moore wrote in raptures with
the French capital; but that was the end of his good time.
Bad news recalled him: Barbara, the eldest little girl, was dangerously
ill from the effects of a fall, and a month after his return she died.
The loss fell heaviest on the mother, and it is noticeable that Moore
was then the one to assume control. This seems natural enough, when one
remembers that his wife was only three and twenty; but in later days,
the relation was very different. The family moved for a while to Lady
Donegal's house, 56 Davies Street, Berkeley Square, and thence Moore
made an excursion to look for a new home. A great Whig peer, the Marquis
of Lansdowne, had suggested that the poet's residence should be fixed
near Bowood and its library; and three houses were offered for his
inspection. Only one proved to be at all within the reach of his means,
a little thatched cottage with a pretty garden. Bessy went down a week
later, escorted by Power, to look at it, and returned delighted--very
probably with its cheapness, for it was offered to them furnished at £40
a year. Under these rather sad circumstances, Moore and his wife moved
into their definitive home. On November 19th, 1817, Moore wrote to Power
from "Sloperton, Devizes," to say that they were in possession, and that
he himself was just sallying out for his walk in the garden, with his
head full of words for the Melodies.
It was always his habit to compose out of doors, and pilgrims to
Sloperton are still shown a little gravelled path round the garden,
which keeps the name of Poet's Walk. Such pilgrims can easily enough
imagine the house as Moore first knew it. The thatched roof has been
replaced by slates, probably when the addition was built on for Moore's
accommodation. This addition consisted of two rooms, a good-sized
sitting-room with windows opening on to the green lawn and garden, and
over it a bedroom to match--the room in which Moore died, and which,
according to tradition, his ghost still inhabits. This addition has an
ordinary sloping roof, joined on to the original front, which consists
of three gables. All about are great elms and chestnut trees, and the
whole countryside is rich in the beauty that Moore delighted
in--"sunniness and leanness," to quote his own happy phrase. The quiet
little country town of Devizes is three miles off to the north, and in
that direction Bromham, the hamlet which gives its name to the parish,
nestles among trees across a small valley. A roughly paved lane, deep
sunk between profuse hedges, leads from Sloperton to the lovely
fifteenth-century church in whose grave-yard Moore lies with his wife
and children, among generations of squires and yokels of a race not his
own.
From this valley the ground rises gently, and the road from Devizes to
Chippenham has to crest a hill or swelling ridge. Astride of the ridge
is Lord Lansdowne's demesne, and from Moore's house to the nearest entry
to the park, the distance must be something over a mile. Thence it is
another mile's walking through glades and lawns to the great
house--"dear Bowood," as Miss Edgeworth called it, famous in those days
for its hospitality to men and women of letters. Altogether the
neighbourhood was as pleasant as could be found, but at first Bessy
Moore was uncomfortable in it. She wanted "some near and plain
neighbours to make intimacy with and enjoy a little tea-drinking now and
then." The Lansdownes had every wish to be kind, but they and their
friends belonged to a set of which Moore had for years been a
privileged member, and if Bessy entered it, she found herself, as Moore
said, "a perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate."
She consoled herself however with works of charity, visiting the poor
about her, and helping them with her clever fingers. In the meantime
Moore was busy with another collection of light verse--_The Fudge Family
in Paris_, for which his visit to Paris with Rogers had given the
suggestion; and a seventh edition of _Lalla Rookh_ was printing within
less than a year after publication. Thus all omens seemed hopeful, when
suddenly a bolt from the blue came down.
Moore's deputy in Bermuda had proved thoroughly untrustworthy, repeated
letters having elicited no accounts from him for the last year of the
war. It appeared now that he had embezzled the proceeds of a ship and
cargo--representing a sum of £6000, which had been deposited with him,
pending an appeal to the Court at home. Moore was fully liable, and his
only hope lay in the conscience of a certain merchant, uncle of the
defaulter, who had recommended his nephew to Moore, and might therefore
feel bound in honour to make good the defalcation. Moore bore himself,
however, cheerfully enough, though anticipating sequestration in a
debtor's prison. The advice of business men in London reassured him
somewhat, and the _Fudges_ came out at the right moment with great
éclat, bringing in £350 to the author within the first fortnight.
Consolation of another kind was administered, when, in May of the same
year (1818), the poet ran over to Dublin, and for a fortnight lived in a
bustle of acclamation. A great public dinner was organised in his
honour, and when he appeared in the theatre, he was called repeatedly
during the performance to make his bow from the front of the box. All
this, he said, "was scarcely more delightful to me on my own account
than as a proof of the strong spirit of nationality of my countrymen."
Another great exultation helped to dispel the gloom of his Bermuda
prospects, for in October Bessy became at last the mother of a son.
Little comfort as this child proved to be in the long run, he was for
years the apple of Moore's eye. The god-parents were, as usual, a
strange and interesting assortment--Miss Godfrey, the shrewd and tried
friend of so many years, Lord Lansdowne, and old Dr. Parr, the famous
Grecian. This last was a recent acquaintance, sprung out of the work on
which, during the year, Moore had been engaged--a new literary departure
marking the incipient change in him from poet to man of letters.
His lines on the death of Sheridan showed plainly the hold which the one
brilliant Irishman had on the other's imagination, and Murray suggested
in 1817 that Moore should be Sheridan's biographer. By August 1818,
Moore was at work, visiting Sheridan's sister, Mrs. Le Fanu, in Bath;
and at her house he first met Dr. Parr, who warmed to the scholar in
Moore. They talked together of Erasmus, the Wolfian theory of Homer, and
such like things; hobnobbing generously the while.
Material in plenty for the Memoir was forthcoming, from a diversity of
sources, but difficulties arose as to the share in the prospective
profits claimed by the Sheridan family, and Moore occupied himself with
other researches: reading _Boxiana_, visiting Jackson the pugilist, and
studying other repositories of "flash" dialect, in order to fit himself
for the task of writing his new squib _Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress_,
in which a professional boxer, Crib, was the spokesman. It appeared in
the spring of 1819; the seventh number of _Irish Melodies_ had been
issued in the preceding year, so that it will appear that Moore's
industry was constant. Work on the _Sheridan_ continued briskly, as we
find by entries in his diary, it having been settled that Murray was to
be the publisher and to pay 1000 guineas for the book. In the meantime
Moore was turning over subjects for another poetical _opus magnum_, and
something in his omnivorous reading suggested a story drawn from ancient
Egypt--a first hint of the material which he ultimately wrought into his
prose romance, _The Epicurean_.
In the summer he made his usual visit to town, and Bessy with the
children went off by boat to Edinburgh to visit her mother and sisters.
The Dyke family appear to have dropped pretty completely out of Moore's
existence, but occasional references show that they continued to keep in
touch at least with Bessy, and to receive small sums. Moore's cause was
now at last up for hearing, and his sanguine nature had led him to hope
for a dismissal of it: but on July 10th the blow fell. He learnt that in
two months an attachment would be put in force against his person, and
therefore there was nothing left for it but to decide on a place of
retreat. The Liberties of Holyrood were suggested, and Moore had all but
decided on going there, when Lord John Russell--most unfortunately, as
he came to think--urged the alternative of a visit to the Continent in
his company, with a view to final settlement in Paris. The Longmans
backed the suggestion by saying that a few poetical epistles from places
of note would pay all expenses; and accordingly in the beginning of
September 1819, Moore set off for Dover in Lord John's coach.
This break-up of so pleasant a home was distressing, and friends were
eager to prevent the necessity. Promptest of them was Jeffrey, who,
immediately the report of the calamity came, made excuse for writing a
letter on business of the _Edinburgh_, and then went on:
"I cannot from my heart resist adding another word. I have heard of
your misfortunes and of the noble way you bear them. Is it very
impertinent to say that I have £500 entirely at four service, which
you may repay when you please; and as much more, which I can
advance upon any reasonable security of repayment in seven years?
"Perhaps it is very unpardonable in me to say this; but upon my
honour, I would not _make_ you the offer, if I did not feel that I
would _accept_ it without scruple from you."
Nothing could be more honourable to both men than such an offer, and
Moore long afterwards referred to it in his Memoir with deep feeling. It
was only one of a shoal of similar tributes. Leigh Hunt, then editor of
the _Examiner_, wrote to Perry of the _Chronicle_ to urge the opening of
a public subscription. Rogers pressed £500 of his own on Moore, as a
beginning towards some such fund: Lord Lansdowne offered security for
the whole; Lord John Russell proposed to set aside all future profits
from his _Life of Lord Russell_, just published, and forwarded inquiries
from his brother Lord Tavistock as to whether anything was doing to save
Moore from imprisonment. "I am very poor," Lord Tavistock wrote, "but I
have always had such a strong admiration for Moore's independence of
mind that I would willingly sacrifice something to be of use to him."
Moore recorded all this with legitimate pride, in his diary, but
continued steadfast in his determination to rely on no one but his
publishers; and the Longmans expressed the fullest readiness to advance
in the way of business any reasonable sum, to which he might, by
compromise, reduce the claims on him.
Nothing could more strongly indicate the general respect in which Moore
was held than this practical testimony. It is necessary to emphasise
that Moore impressed those in contact with him by no quality so much as
by his high-mindedness. Old Dr. Parr expressed the feeling of many, when
he left by his will a ring to Thomas Moore, "who stands high in my
estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his
independent spirit and incorruptible integrity." Men who saw how Moore
lived felt no doubt the greatness of the temptations to which he was
exposed. Private liberality was pressed upon him repeatedly; and if his
pride revolted from that, he had more than a common chance of public
rewards. Those anxious to serve the poet were by no means only of one
political colour; no man had more aptitude to conciliate, or stronger
motives for doing so. Early in his married life, at a time when his
professed patron, Lord Moira, took office under a government opposed to
the Catholic cause, which he, like Moore, had always supported, the poet
might easily have waived something of his scruples; and Miss Godfrey
insisted upon the reasons for his doing so, in language which would
probably have been endorsed by most of his Whig friends.
"As to your political opinions, it was very fine to indulge in them
and act up to them while there was a distant perspective in so
doing of fame or emolument, and at the same time a feeling that the
triumph of such opinions, and the success of the party you belonged
to, might be conducive to the prosperity of your country. But now,
when those opinions have less and less influence, and that party
less and less consideration--when your family is increasing and
your wants, of course, increasing with it--don't you think prudence
should have its turn? Would not your love for your wife and anxiety
for the welfare of your children reconcile you to some little
sacrifice of political opinions?"
The same line of argument was used to Moore at many junctures in his
life and he always had the same answer. "More mean things," he told
Rogers, "have been done in this world under the shelter of wife and
children than under any pretext that worldly-mindedness can resort to."
The fact that the argument was so often used indicates that he lived
always in the range of temptation; and many would blame him because he
never had the inclination to sever himself from the connections which
made it almost impossible for him to live frugally. Yet, apart from the
argument that he helped the popularity of his music by singing his songs
as no one else could sing them, it is clear that for much of his
work--for all the satirical side of it--close touch with society was
essential. Hardly less essential was it for the work of which his
_Sheridan_ was only the first instalment--his contribution to the
literature of memoirs. On the other hand, it is clear that as the
satirist, the observer, the historian, and the politician strengthened
in him, they crowded out the poet. Life near Bowood meant life in
contact with the leading politicians and thinkers of the day: Sloperton
was very different from the seclusion of Mayfield. The question
naturally arises, whether Moore, by encouraging his interest in
contemporary events, and, generally speaking, in the prose side of life,
stifled a higher gift, or whether he simply obeyed a sound and healthy
impulse. The answer cannot be given without some detailed consideration
of the work by which he took rank in his own generation--his equivalent
for Scott's lays and Byron's romances.
Like them, Moore relied upon the charm of an exciting narrative, laid in
unfamiliar scenes, and furnished with highly-coloured descriptive
passages. But, whereas Scott wrote of the Border where he had been bred,
and Byron of the East where he had travelled in days when the traveller
was obliged to become a real part of every scene in which he moved,
Moore laid his stories in a country known to him only through books, and
he derived them from a literature remote and alien from all European
sympathies. The natural consequence is that, whereas Scott's and Byron's
descriptions savour of actual experience, Moore's reek of the lamp; and,
with astonishing lack of judgment, he spoilt whatever illusion might
exist, by the constant interposition of footnotes to explain the
fragments of Eastern custom, tradition, or natural history, which he had
laboriously wrought in. Nothing could more strongly stamp the artificial
character of the whole. The truth, which Moore unhappily did not
realise, is that poetry should be made, not out of things new but of
things old; out of the familiar, not the unfamiliar. His research for
novelty of subject was fatal to him; the attractions which he sought to
give his work are those which poetry in the true sense must dispense
with. Scott handled material wrought over a hundred times in Border
ballads. Byron indeed made poetry from the novel, the strange, the
obviously picturesque. But what keeps Byron's poetry alive is the
element of personal emotion which Byron contributed to the subject. In
so far as anything survives of _Lalla Rookh_, the same is true of Moore.
The introductory pages prefixed to _Lalla Rookh_ in the 1841 edition of
Moore's poems bear out this view. Moore relates his difficulties--his
many attempts, begun and thrown aside. In one of these rejected stories,
and only one, he writes, "had I yet ventured to involve that most
homefelt of all my inspirations which has lent to the story of 'The Fire
Worshippers' its main attraction and interest"--that half-veiled
reference to Irish history and Irish aspirations, of which mention has
already been made. Moore shrewdly observes that the absence of this sort
of feeling in the other preliminary sketches--
"was the reason doubtless, though hardly known at the time to
myself, that, finding my subjects so slow in touching my
sympathies, I began to despair of their ever touching the hearts of
others.... But at last--fortunately, as it proved--the thought
occurred to me of founding a story on the fierce struggle so long
maintained between the Ghebers, or ancient Fire Worshippers of
Persia, and their haughty Moslem masters. From that moment a new
and deep interest in my whole task took possession of me. The cause
of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and the spirit that had
spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at home in the
East."
It found itself about as much at home, I should say, as is the ordinary
European in oriental costume at a masked ball. To wear Eastern clothes
like an Eastern is possible, for one who has assimilated the Eastern way
of life; otherwise, incongruities reveal themselves with every gesture.
Byron, happier than Moore in his choice, wrote of an East that touches
the West, of the clash between Frank and Moslem.
Worse still, Moore was an amatory poet, he had made successes by writing
about love; and accordingly, he determined to rely in his poems--as
Scott, wiser than he, had not done--on the love interest. He
misunderstood his own temperament. Love poetry of the serious order
demands passion, and Moore is the poet of dalliance, not of passion. The
passion--if it can be called a passion--of pity, the passion of
political enthusiasm, he had; but the violence of exclusive desire,
whether lasting or temporary, which Byron so often rendered, was a chord
outside of Moore's range.
The poets of Moore's own day, who knew and liked Moore, never cared for
_Lalla_; and Leigh Hunt, an excellent critic, spoke the truth about it.
Condemning the poem gently as "too florid in its general style," though
allowing to it exquisite passages, he goes on:--
"You are so truly, by birth, a poetical animal, out of the pale of
book-associations and a free inhabitant of the most Elysian parts
of nature, that the more you resolved to speak and to feel out of
the sincerity of your own impulses, without thinking it necessary
to search for ideas, the more to your advantage I am persuaded it
would be. You are a born poet and have only to claim your
inheritance--not to be heaping up a multitude of anxious proofs
which, though mistaken by some for ostentation, are in reality
evidences of a diffidence of pretension which you ought not to
feel."
No man could give better advice. Moore had written narrative poetry, one
may safely say, because the fashion of the day was for narrative. He had
caught at Rogers's suggestion of poetry on an Eastern theme, which was
to give him a new field. As he worked on, he felt his theme alien, and
tried to make himself at home in it by taking into the subject what
really belonged to another atmosphere; and further, he decided that "he
must try to make up for his deficiencies in _dash_ and vigour by
versatility and polish." Not in this way is poetry written; the poet who
tries to accommodate himself to the taste of the public is destroying
his art.
Moore had earned his fame by writings, amatory, political, and
satirical, which it came natural to him to produce, because he was "a
poetical animal"; _Lalla Rookh_ was, in great measure, work done against
the grain, and relying for its success on the secondary qualities of
elaborate finish, profusion of ornament, and variety of interest. These
qualities, however, were present in no common degree, and the poem's
success is not to be wondered at. The dose of novelty in style was just
sufficient to attract, without offending by its revolt against "the
Popish sing-song." It was indeed so perfectly in the fashion of its
time, as to be inevitably demoded after a lapse of years. The florid
loops and curves of the Regency period in decorative art have their
equivalent in Moore's profuse and lengthily elaborated metaphors.
Certain features of the work must be unreservedly condemned. The prose
narrative in which the four poems are set is deplorable--sprightly
beyond endurance; and in the _Veiled Prophet_ Moore tears one passion
after another to tatters in bursts of sheer rhetoric. Yet even here good
lines are plenty, though they are all in metaphors, or some other
excrescence; for instance--
"Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread
Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan
The flying throne of star-taught Soliman."
In _Paradise and the Peri_ we have a production more within the poet's
range. A prettier example of an _Arabian Nights Tale_, done into
springing, easy verse, it would be difficult to find. The idea, neat and
graceful, could have been treated within the compass of a song, which
should tell how the exiled Peri was promised admittance if she brought
"the gift that is most dear to Heaven"; how she tried first the patriot
hero's life-blood--(shed in vain); then the last sigh of the maiden who
chose to share the death of her true love; and, last of all, how she won
home with the tear of repentance from a Byronic sinner. All through the
poem there is the suggestion of singing, and, as Scott said, "Moore
beats us all at a song."
From "The Fire Worshippers" I have quoted already the best passages,
those which express most fully the germinal idea. One may add an
energetic denunciation, which had its full application, for instance, to
Leonard McNally, Emmet's advocate, who defended most of the Irish
political prisoners during a long period of time, and regularly sold the
secrets of his defence to the Government.
"Oh, for a tongue to curse the slave,
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the councils of the brave,
And blasts them in their hour of might!
May life's unblessed cup for him
Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim,--
With hopes, that but allure to fly,
With joys, that vanish while he sips,
Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips!
His country's curse, his children's shame,
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame,
May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parch'd desert thirsting die,--
While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh,
Are fading off, untouch'd, untasted,
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!
And, when from earth his spirit flies,
Just Prophet, let the damn'd-one dwell
Full in the sight of Paradise,
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell!"
Last of all, and most lavishly decorated, is the story of the Feast of
Roses at Cashmere. The opening passage is a good example of Moore's
high-wrought effort after Eastern local colour:--
"Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave,
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?
"Oh I to see it at sunset,--when warm o'er the Lake
Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws,
Like a bride, full of blushes, when ling'ring to take
A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes!--
When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half-shown,
And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own.
Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells,
Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging,
And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells
Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.
Or to see it by moonlight,--when mellowly shines
The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines;
When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars,
And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars
Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet
From the cool, shining walks where the young people meet.--
Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes
A new wonder each minute, as slowly it breaks,
Hills, cupolas, fountains, call'd forth every one
Out of darkness, as they were just horn of the sun,
When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day,
From his harem of night-flowers stealing away;
And the wind, full of wantonness, wooes like a lover
The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over.
When the East is as warm as the light of first hopes,
And Day, with his banner of radiance unfurl'd,
Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes,
Sublime, from that Valley of bliss to the world!"
But one finds a more real example of Moore's poetry in this quatrain:--
"There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright,
Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer day's light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till Love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour."
If one compares passages like these with, for instance, Cowper's
anapaests, even in so beautiful a poem as "The poplars are felled,
farewell to the shade," it will be seen that Moore helped on the
extraordinary advance in poetical technique which marks the years from
1795 to the rise of Tennyson. Moore's sense of style is always
faulty--witness the very next couplet:--
"This was not the beauty--_oh, nothing like this!_
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss."
But he had a fine ear for metre, and in this poem he displayed all his
resources, changing the rhythm half-a-dozen times, with interpolating
bursts of song.
When, in addition, we remember that the most indolent reader could never
for an instant mistake his meaning--that the volume of thought was
always light as compared with the faculty of expression--that every
harshness was carefully smoothed away, and condensation always
sacrificed to limpidity--it is not hard to understand the poem's
popularity. Yet, when all has been said, the last word is that _Lalla
Rookh_ is a work of very secondary merit, and retains its place in
literature mainly as an example of an extinct taste. Twenty years after
it was written, Moore knew this, and told Longman that, "in a race to
future times (if any thing of mine could pretend to such a run), those
little ponies, the _Melodies_, will beat the mare _Lalla_ hollow." And
indeed, if it were not for the _Melodies_, nobody would now give an eye
to their stable companion.
[1] Parkinson.
[2] Alluding to Rogers's poem "Italy."
CHAPTER IV
PERIOD OF RESIDENCE ABROAD
Moore's residence on the Continent lasted three and a half years, and it
formed an interlude in his life, interrupting what was otherwise a very
continuous texture. The period was one of relative idleness, yet by no
means of rest; and although whatever he produced during it was in verse,
its close found the transition accomplished, from poet to man of
letters.
The interlude opened with a real holiday, which was in truth amply
deserved. After a fortnight's stay in Paris, spent in seeing theatres,
sights, and a deal of company, Lord John Russell and his travelling
companion posted off through France to Geneva; explored the associations
of Ferney under the guidance of Dumont, the translator of Bentham, and
sometime tutor to Lord Lansdowne; and then set out for the Alps. The
passage over the Simplon, and the sight of the Jungfrau with the
sunset-flush on its snows, so wrought upon Moore's emotions that he shed
tears. At Milan the travellers parted company, Lord John proceeding to
Genoa, while Moore's destinations were Venice and Rome. Travelling
alone, in the "crazy little calèche" which he had been advised to buy,
was no joy, and he gladly reached La Mira, Byron's country house, two
hours' drive from Padua. The friends met for the first time after a
separation of five years, and Moore's note of the occurrence is
curiously lacking in warmth. The Byron whom he had known and liked so
well was a different person from the Byron of Italy. Much had happened
in the interval, and with a great deal of Byron's later, and maturer,
work, Moore was very imperfectly in sympathy. Nor did the Countess
Guiccioli much impress him. Byron, who had put his Venetian palace at
Moore's disposal, commended him to his friend Scott, who showed the
traveller round the place. A day or two later Byron came to Venice, and
there was much intimate talk between the two men. On the 11th of
October, Moore paid a farewell visit to La Mira and the Countess; and
before the poets parted, a notable thing happened. Lord Byron handed to
Moore the Memoirs of himself, of which Moore had heard for the first
time a few days earlier.
From Padua to Ferrara and so to Florence we trace in the Diary rather a
homesick gentleman, who begins to affect the virtuoso a little, and at
the time to collect notes for an epistle on the cant of connoisseurs. In
Florence he found some acquaintances, and they were in shoals before him
at Rome, where he arrived in the end of October. During the three weeks
of his stay here, Chantrey the sculptor and Jackson the painter--to the
latter of whom Moore at this time sat--were his principal associates,
and he left Rome in their company. His impressions of Italy savour a
little too much of second-hand ideas to be of interest. Moore had,
evidently enough, no education in art and yet was so susceptible to
surrounding influences that his talk was all of pictures, statuary,
buildings and so forth. His judgments on the music which he heard are in
strong contrast, brief and confident--the utterance of a genuine taste.
But the friendship formed with Chantrey seems to have been sympathetic
and lasting, based on a common interest in human character.
On December 11th Moore arrived in Paris, and 'went as soon as I could
with a beating heart to enquire for letters from home.' There were none
of recent date, for the beloved Tom was ill, and Bessy would not write
till the crisis was over; moreover, the Longmans wrote that nothing had
as yet been settled in the Bermuda business, so that a return to England
was impossible. "This is a sad disappointment," Moore writes,--"my dear
cottage and my books. I must, however, lose no time in determining upon
bringing Bessy and her little ones over; and wherever they are, will be
home, and a happy one, to me."
Meanwhile, he took "an entresol in the Rue Chantereine at 250 fr. a
month," and saw a deal of society, English and French, with potentates
in plenty. But it did not console him. "I have no one here that I care
one pin for, and begin to feel, for the first time, like a banished
man," he wrote to Rogers; and a Christmas day apart from his family only
deepened his gloom. But on January 1st, 1820, Bessy and her young ones
landed safely in Paris, and things began to brighten singularly. "My
dear tidy girl," Moore writes, "notwithstanding her fatigue, set about
settling and managing everything immediately." Chief of the things
settled was a resolution not to go into society, "which was tolerably
adhered to for some time";--Moore meanwhile working at his "Fudge
Family in Italy," a first draft of the poetical impressions which he
published ultimately as _Rhymes on the Road_. After about a month, a
successful move was made to "a very pretty cottage in the Allée des
Veuves," somewhere in the Champs Élysées--"as rural and secluded a
workshop as I have ever had," says Moore.
Gradually, however, virtue evaporated. The poet was beset with
invitations, and, moreover, he owns to a sense of depression before the
task of writing, "when the attention of all the reading world is
absorbed by two writers, Scott and Byron." He had also a consciousness
that his poetical essays in and upon connoisseurship were not the right
thing; and finally, in June, after the whole had been set up by a French
printer, it was decided to suppress the publication; Sir James
Mackintosh having advised the Longmans, that the incidental satire on
Castlereagh and other leading members of the Government would be
injurious to Moore's interest, at a time when it might be possible to
induce Government to drop its share of the claims against him; and Moore
himself being influenced by the wish to publish nothing new till he had
something of importance to produce.
In July the kindness of friends, M. Villamil, a Spanish gentleman, and
his wife, enabled the Moores to move for the summer into pleasant
quarters--a little _pavillion_ in the grounds of the Villamils' house
near Sèvres. Here the poet, still in pursuit of an important subject,
returned to an idea which first germinated in his mind after the
completion of _Lalla_--the story of a Greek who goes to Egypt in search
of some philosophic secret, and during a celebration of the Egyptian
priestly mysteries becomes enamoured of a young girl. She proves to be
a Christian, and the hero is thus introduced to the secret communion. It
is of course the basis of Moore's prose romance, _The Epicurean_, but
his collected works contain a considerable fragment of _Alciphron_, his
first sketch of it in verse, which dates from this time. Studies for the
work brought him into touch with French savants, and the more Moore read
upon the subject, the less he appears to have written. But the research
drew him to Paris and away from his quarters in the "pavilion"; and
when, in October, the household returned to its home in the Allée des
Veuves, and Moore and his wife dined at home with the little ones for
the first time since the beginning of July, "Bessy said in going to bed,
'This is the first rational day we have had for a long time.'"
Lord John Russell notes penitently on this passage, that he regrets his
part in persuading Moore to prefer France to Holyrood, for "his
universal popularity was his chief enemy." At no time did Moore suffer
so much from being lionised, for his home was in easy reach of Paris,
and in Paris French and English alike pursued this celebrity. _Lalla
Rookh_ was then at the height of its fame; was in the East being
translated into Persian, and in the West transformed into a kind of
masque which a troupe of royal amateurs presented at Berlin: and Lalla's
poet was naturally much courted. Further, in the close of the year,
there came a missive from Byron which was a fatal encouragement to
idleness and outlay. He forwarded the continuation of the Memoirs, with
the suggestion that Moore should sell the reversion of the MS. The
suggestion was acted on after a while, and Murray consented to advance
the large sum of 2000 guineas. Meanwhile engagements accumulated, and
Moore began to lose health as well as time. He went into the world more
and more as a bachelor, Bessy, as always, falling into the background
when expenses grew high; though, at first, in Paris he and she went
about a good deal together. Nevertheless, he wrote with all sincerity on
March 25th, 1821:--
"This day ten years we were married, and though Time has made his
usual changes in us both, we are still more like lovers than any
married couple of the same standing I am acquainted with."
In the autumn, it was decided that Moore should come to England _sub
rosa_, and try to compromise the Bermuda claims with a lump sum out of
Murray's advance. He was met with dissuasion by his friendly publishers
the Longmans, and it transpired finally that Lord Lansdowne had left
£1000 with them to attempt a similar settlement. The kindness gratified
Moore's best qualities, as well as his mild vanity, and though he
declined to profit by it, he was greatly uplifted. From London he
crossed to Dublin to see his parents after three years' separation--but
the separation had made no breach, for Moore wrote twice every week to
his mother. The visit was a short one, and he had some fears for his
safety from arrest, as he had been widely recognised in Dublin. But on
his return to town the publishers met him with joyful news. The chief
claim had been settled for £1000, and he was free to "walk boldly out
into the sunshine," and show himself up Bond Street and St. James's. Of
this £1000, three hundred were extorted from Mr. Sheddon, uncle and
recommender of the defaulting deputy; the rest was settled (as a
compliment) out of Lord Lansdowne's money, but a draft on Murray was
immediately sent him to repay the loan.
For the present, however, Moore lacked the means to move back to
England, and he remained in Paris, where, in the summer of 1822, he at
last settled down to a serious piece of work--his _Loves of the
Angels_--"a subject," he says, "on which I long ago wrote a prose story
and have ever since meditated a verse one." The work went quickly, a
thousand lines were completed within two months; and in November, when
the poet's friends in Paris mustered to give him a farewell dinner,
allusion was made to the new poem as all but ready to appear. It was
actually out before Christmas. By that time Moore was back and
comfortably established at Sloperton (an intervening tenant having died
seasonably), and here he found his study enlarged, his family well, and
himself "most happy to be at home again." "Oh, quid solutis!"--he
exclaims, recalling the lines of Horace which tell of the joy it is to
shake off a load of care, and to rest after labours in a foreign land.
When the _Angels_ appeared, the press was favourable, but Lady Donegal
and a good many more protested vehemently against the application to
profane purposes of the scriptural legend, which tells of the sons of
God mating with daughters of men. Publishers are sensitive to this type
of criticism, and the Longmans jumped at Moore's offer to remodel the
poem, by giving it an Eastern cast, and "turning his poor Angels into
Turks." Accordingly a fifth edition was produced, in which the
metamorphosis was completed; but the disguise was soon abandoned, and
Moore appears to have been ashamed of his concession, for in his preface
to the poem in the 1841 edition, no mention is made of this recension.
_The Loves of the Angels_ never attained to the popularity of _Lalla
Rookh_, and yet it seems a much more praiseworthy composition. In the
first place, Moore had chosen a subject that fell more within his range.
Outside of light verse, his only themes were love and patriotism, and
here we have the amatory poet indulging his genius to the full. The
whole poem is about love-making--love-making _in excelsis_, and
surrounded with accessories so decorative that they remove all hint of
reality. One feels instinctively that the fierce accent of passion would
be out of place here, and, consequently, does not censure the absence of
it. His three fallen angels who meet and recall the loves for which they
lost heaven, furnish three types of love-story, distinguished with all
the care of a troubadour expert in _la gaye science_.
The first angel--one of a lower rank in heaven--is of look "the least
celestial of the three," and, before the crisis in his story, has tasted
"That juice of earth, the bane
And blessing of man's heart and brain."
He is the one whom woman resisted--for Woman is throughout the poem all
but deified; and his lady, to escape from the terrors of his love, as he
comes to her after the wine-cup, steals the spell-word from him, and
flies off to heaven, whither his wings can no longer follow. The second
angel, a spirit of knowledge, is wooed by woman rather than her wooer,
and at last is fated to destroy her with the death of Semele. Moore
evidently thought that much knowledge was a dangerous thing for the sex.
His ideal of womanhood is rather that depicted in the third story, of
which the third angel is the subject, not the narrator. In this angel--
"That amorous spirit, bound
By beauty's spell, where'er 'twas found,"
who fell--
"From loving much,
Too easy lapse, to loving wrong,"
we may, I think, fairly trace some lineaments of Moore's conception of
himself. For this seraph a gentler doom was decreed. He and his nymph
are first drawn together by the snare of music, a snare even though in
sacred song: for, as the poem tells--
"Love, though unto earth so prone,
Delights to take Religion's wing
When time or grief hath stained his own.
How near to Love's beguiling brink
Too oft entranced Religion lies!
While Music, Music is the link
They _both_ still hold by to the skies."
The lovers meet at the altar, but they appeal to the altar to consecrate
their vows. And thus the poem closes with a passage in celebration of
connubial love, which, even though it perhaps seemed to Lady Donegal too
bold a gloss on the text of Genesis, may very well have pleased the
poet's Bessy; for we can be very certain that the poet was thinking more
of Bessy than of Genesis when he wrote it. I shall quote the whole
passage, which contains some lines that have hardly their equal in
Moore's writings--notably the fine strain beginning, "For humble was
their love,"--and, further on, the closing period which recalls, yet not
by imitation, Wordsworth's scarcely more beautiful tribute to his
wife:--
"Sweet was the hour, though dearly won,
And pure, as aught of earth could he,
For then first did the glorious sun
Before Religion's altar see
Two hearts in wedlock's golden tie
Self-pledged, in love to live and die.
Blest union! by that Angel wove,
And worthy from such hands to come;
Safe, sole asylum, in which Love,
When fall'n or exiled from above,
In this dark world can find a home.
"And though the spirit had transgress'd,
Had, from his station 'mong the blest
Won down by woman's smile, allow'd
Terrestrial passion to breathe o'er
The mirror of his heart, and cloud
God's image, there so bright before--
Yet never did that Power look down
On error with a brow so mild;
Never did Justice wear a frown
Through which so gently Mercy smiled.
"For humble was their love--with awe
And trembling like some treasure kept,
That was not theirs by holy law--
Whose beauty with remorse they saw,
And o'er whose preciousness they wept.
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot,
Was in the hearts of both--but most
In Nama's heart, by whom alone
Those charms, for which a heaven was lost,
Seem'd all unvalued and unknown;
And when her Seraph's eyes she caught,
And hid hers glowing on his breast,
Even bliss was humbled by the thought--
'What claim have I to be so blest?'
Still less could maid, so meek, have nursed
Desire of knowledge--that vain thirst,
With which the sex hath all been cursed,
From luckless Eve to her, who near
The Tabernacle stole to hear
The secrets of the angels: no--
To love as her own Seraph loved,
With Faith, the same through bliss and woe
Faith, that, were even its light removed,
Could, like the dial, fix'd remain,
And wait till it shone out again;--
With Patience that, though often bow'd
By the rude storm, can rise anew;
And Hope that, ev'n from Evil's cloud,
Sees sunny Good half breaking through!
This deep, relying Love, worth more
In heaven than all a Cherub's lore--
This Faith, more sure than aught beside,
Was the sole joy, ambition, pride
Of her fond heart--th' unreasoning scope
Of all its views, above, below--
So true she felt it that to _hope_,
To _trust_, is happier than to _know_.
"And thus in humbleness they trod,
Abash'd, but pure before their God;
Nor e'er did earth behold a sight
So meekly beautiful as they,
When, with the altar's holy light
Full on their brows, they knelt to pray,
Hand within hand, and side by side.
Two links of love, awhile untied
From the great chain above, but fast
Holding together to the last!
Two fallen Splendours, from that tree,
Which buds with such eternally,
Shaken to earth, yet keeping all
Their light and freshness in the fall.
"Their only punishment, (as wrong,
However sweet, must bear its brand,)
Their only doom was this--that, long
As the green earth and ocean stand,
They both shall wander here--the same,
Throughout all time, in heart and frame--
Still looking to that goal sublime,
Whose light remote, but sure, they see;
Pilgrims of Love, whose way is Time,
Whose home is in Eternity!
Subject, the while, to all the strife
True Love encounters in this life--
The wishes, hopes, he breathes in vain;
The chill, that turns his warmest sighs
To earthly vapour, ere they rise;
The doubt he feeds on, and the pain
That in his very sweetness lies:--
Still worse, th' illusions that betray
His footsteps to their shining brink;
That tempt him, on his desert way
Through the bleak world, to bend and drink,
Where nothing meets his lips, alas!--
But he again must sighing pass
On to that far-off home of peace,
In which alone his thirst will cease.
"All this they bear, but, not the less,
Have moments rich in happiness--
Blest meetings, after many a day
Of widowhood passed far away,
When the loved face again is seen
Close, close, with not a tear between--
Confidings frank, without control,
Pour'd mutually from soul to soul;
As free from any fear or doubt
As is that light from chill or stain,
The sun into the stars sheds out,
To be by them shed back again!--
That happy minglement of hearts,
Where, chang'd as chymic compounds are,
Each with its own existence parts,
To find a new one happier far!
Such are their joys--and, crowning all,
That blessed hope of the bright hour,
When, happy and no more to fall,
Their spirits shall, with freshen'd power,
Rise up rewarded for their trust
In Him, from whom all goodness springs,
And shaking off earth's soiling dust
From their emancipated wings,
Wander for ever through those skies
Of radiance, where Love never dies!"
There is nothing else in the poem at all so good as this. And even this
would gain considerably by condensation, even by simple excisions. But
the writing is consistently polished, easy, and--short of
inspiration--even excellent. The opening may be quoted for a fine
example:--
"'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory, and young Time
Told his first birthdays by the sun;
When, in the light of Nature's dawn
Rejoicing, men and angels met
On the high hill and sunny lawn,
Ere sorrow came, or Sin had drawn
'Twixt man and heav'n her curtain yet!
When earth lay nearer to the skies
Than in those days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw without surprise,
In the mid air, angelic eyes
Gazing upon this world below."
Moore had abandoned the heroic couplet, and also the anapæstic measure,
in favour of the eight-syllabled iambic, used with skilful variations of
rhyme. And it is a proof of his matured judgment, that there is none of
the tendency to melodrama which disfigures _Lalla Rookh_. He had
realised that horror was not for him to convert to beauty; he tears no
passion to tatters. Indeed, in the one instance where he plunges into a
melodramatic subject, describing the fate of Lilis shrivelled to ashes
by the embrace of her lover, and her unblest kiss, printed with "Hell's
everlasting element," the vehemence is more impressive because more
restrained.
At the same time, it does not seem probable that any current of taste
will bring back either the _Loves of the Angels_ or _Lalla_ into
popularity. Everywhere, even in the beautiful passage on wedlock's
consolations, ornament is pushed to redundancy; there is no
concentration in the style. The same looseness of texture may be
observed in Scott and Byron, but Scott and Byron have behind their work
a weight of personality which is lacking in Moore. They are moreover
closer in touch with reality than Moore, who attributes to himself in
the Diary "that kind of imagination which is chilled by the real scene
and can best describe what it has not seen, merely taking it from the
descriptions of others." He quotes Milton and Dante as instances where
this kind of imagination produces the noblest work. One can only
say--and Moore would have been prompt to agree--that Thomas Moore was
neither Dante nor Milton; and for poets of a lower order we want close
touch with fact. Moore's gift, indeed, was not imagination. His highest
talent lay, like that of Horace, in giving expression to common
emotions, which belong rather to a race, or a class, than to an
individual, and which are consequently very general, though not very
poignant, in their appeal.
A much higher rank may be claimed for him as a writer of satiric verse
than of romantic narrative. The satiric inspiration with him long
outlasted the other, for the _Loves of the Angels_ was virtually the
last poem published under his own name.[1] But under his other
incarnation, as Thomas Brown the Younger, he contributed squibs to
various newspapers and issued volumes for another dozen of years. The
_Odes on Cash, Catholics, and other matters_, collected in 1828, show
him to advantage, and we find something of the "wonted fires" even in
_The Fudges in England_, published so late as 1835, after his brain had
begun to flag. But for the top of his achievement in this kind one would
always turn to the volume published a few months after The _Loves of the
Angels_. This was the _Fables for the Holy Alliance and Rhymes on the
Road_, comprising the work which he had cast and recast so often in
Paris, together with a considerable handful of occasional verses.
From this general laudation, the _Rhymes on the Road_, Moore's
impressions of Switzerland and Italy, must be excepted. Nothing in them
repays perusal but the "Introductory Rhymes," with their ingenious and
erudite discussion of the places and methods in which poets may
compose--where Moore incidentally alludes to a favourite theory and
practice of his own, which he supported by the example of Milton, as
well as that here cited:--
"Herodotus wrote most in bed,
And Richerand, a French physician,
Declares the clockwork of the head
Goes best in that reclined position."
There is also a good skit on the ubiquitous English tourist, which ends
with the vision of
"Some Mrs. Hopkins, taking tea
And toast upon the wall of China."
But for the rest, we have serious lucubrations--a long, long way after
_Childe Harold_--upon Venice, Florence, the first view of Mont Blanc,
Rousseau's abode, and other such moving themes. It is a vast relief to
turn to the _Fables_, of which there are eight; and if one reader thinks
the first the best, with its description of all the royalties at dinner
in an Ice Palace on the Neva, and the general confusion when the Ice
Palace takes to melting, it is odds but the next will choose another for
his favourite. Most of them have a Proem, and one may quote the Proem
and part of the Fable of "The Little Grand Lama."
PROEM.
Novella, a young Bolognese,
The daughter of a learn'd Law Doctor,
Who had with all the subtleties
Of old and modern jurists stock'd her,
Was so exceeding fair, 'tis said,
And over hearts held such dominion,
That when her father, sick in bed,
Or busy, sent her, in his stead,
To lecture on the Code Justinian,
She had a curtain drawn before her,
Lest, if her eyes were seen, the students
Should let their young eyes wander o'er her,
And quite forget their jurisprudence.
Just so it is with Truth, when _seen_,
Too dazzling far,--'tis from behind
A light, thin allegoric screen,
She thus can safest teach mankind.
FABLE.
In Thibet once there reign'd, we're told,
A little Lama, one year old--
Raised to the throne, that realm to bless,
Just when his little Holiness
Had cut--as near as can be reckon'd--
Some say his _first_ tooth, some his _second_.
Chronologers and Nurses vary,
Which proves historians should be wary.
We only know th' important truth,
His Majesty _had_ cut a tooth.
And much his subjects were enchanted,--
As well all Lama's subjects may be,
And would have giv'n their heads, if wanted,
To make tee-totums for the baby.
Throned as he was by Right Divine--
(What Lawyers call _Jure Divino_,
Meaning a right to yours, and mine,
And everybody's goods and rhino,)
Of course, his faithful subjects' purses,
Were ready with their aids and succours;
Nothing was seen but pension'd Nurses,
And the land groan'd with bibs and tuckers.
Oh! had there been a Hume or Bennet,
Then sitting in the Thibet Senate,
Ye Gods, what room for long debates
Upon the Nursery Estimates!
What cutting down of swaddling-clothes
And pin-a-fores, in nightly battles!
What calls for papers to expose
The waste of sugar-plums and rattles!
But no--If Thibet _had_ M.P.'s,
They were far better bred than these;
Nor gave the slightest opposition,
During the Monarch's whole dentition.
But short this calm:--for, just when he
Had reach'd th' alarming age of three,
When Royal natures, and, no doubt,
Those of _all_ noble beasts break out--
The Lama, who till then was quiet,
Show'd symptoms of a taste for riot;
And, ripe for mischief, early, late,
Without regard for Church or State,
Made free with whosoe'er came nigh;
Tweak'd the Lord Chancellor by the nose,
Turn'd all the Judges' wigs awry,
And trod on the old Generals' toes:
Pelted the Bishops with hot buns,
Rode cockhorse on the City maces,
And shot from little devilish guns,
Hard peas into his subjects' faces.
In short, such wicked pranks he play'd,
And grew so mischievous, God bless him!
That his Chief Nurse--with ev'n the aid
Of an Archbishop--was afraid,
When in these moods, to comb or dress him.
Nay, ev'n the persons most inclined
Through thick and thin, for Kings to stickle,
Thought him (if they'd but speak their mind,
Which they did _not_) an odious pickle.
Praed himself never equalled the ease and gaiety of these admirable
compositions, and their only defect as satire is that they are too gay
and too good-humoured, though certainly not too respectful. Moore's
shafts have no poison: there is no strength of hatred to drive home the
barb. Yet the sincerity is real, and here and there the wit leaps into
real poetry, as in this stanza from "The Torch of Liberty"--
"I saw th' expectant nations stand,
To catch the coming flame in turn;--
I saw, from ready hand to hand,
The clear, though struggling, glory burn."
For finish and force these productions are far ahead of the earlier
verses of the _Postbag_ and _Fudge Family in Paris_: they are also clear
of the rhetoric which occasionally overloads the latter. But none of
them quite reaches the pitch attained in the lines on the Death of
Sheridan (reprinted in the 1823 volume) which were based on the report
that the Prince of Wales, after repeated neglect of entreaties, sent at
last a gift of £200 to the dying man, who, knowing it too late, returned
the missive. A few stanzas must be cited.
"How proud they can press to the fun'ral array
Of one whom they shunn'd in his sickness and sorrow;--
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket, to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!
"And Thou, too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream,
Incoherent and gross, even grosser had pass'd,
Were it not for that cordial and soul-giving beam,
Which his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness cast:--
"No, not for the wealth of the land, that supplies thee
With millions to heap upon Foppery's shrine;--
No, not for the riches of all who despise thee,
Though this would make Europe's whole opulence mine;--
"Would I suffer what--ev'n in the heart that thou hast--
All mean as it is--must have consciously burn'd,
When the pittance, which shame had wrung from thee at last,
And which found all his wants at an end, was return'd."
There is a real anger inspiring the phrase, worthy of Dryden at his
best, which stigmatises the Prince's life--"a sick epicure's dream,
incoherent and gross." But Moore was too easily moved by kindness, and a
civil word or action from Eldon or from Canning exempted them for ever
from his attacks. Except Castlereagh, in whom he saw with justice the
inveterate enemy of Ireland--and that enemy a renegade from Grattan's
principles--he pursued no man relentlessly, and no institution moved him
to continued hatred except the Church of Ireland. "Could you not
contrive," said Sydney Smith to a portrait painter at work on a head of
Moore, "to throw into the features a little more hostility to the
Establishment?" Enough hostility certainly was thrown into the verses
which he continued for years to contribute to the papers; and he pleased
himself vastly with one address to a shovel hat:--
"Gods! when I gaze upon that brim,
So redolent of Church all over,
What swarms of Tithes, in vision dim,--
Some pig-tail'd, some like cherubim,
With ducklings' wings--around it hover!
Tenths of all dead and living things,
That Nature into being brings,
From calves and corn to chitterlings."
It is not a long way from verse of this kind on this subject to the
prose of "Captain Rock." The distance, no doubt, covers a descent. But
it may fairly be urged that if Moore after the year 1823 was only in a
secondary sense a writer of verse, and primarily occupied with prose,
the reason is, not that prose was easier or paid better, but because he
was increasingly preoccupied with matter which he could not handle
except in prose--matter of serious controversial argument--and matter
which he was impelled to handle by a growing desire to serve his own
country.
[1] _Alciphron_, issued in 1839, was, as has been said, a rehandling of
a fragment composed during his residence in Paris, and has in any case
no importance.
CHAPTER V
WORK AS BIOGRAPHER AND CONTROVERSIALIST
After his return from Paris to England, once the task was accomplished
of seeing his two books of verse, serious and comic, through the press,
Moore turned naturally to resume the _Life of Sheridan_ which he had
been obliged to drop during his stay on the Continent, remote from all
the living sources of information. But the business of collecting
material was a long one; the claims of the Sheridan family for a share
in profits were not yet settled; and in the summer of 1823 Moore
accepted an invitation which led to a new literary undertaking, carried
through before the _Sheridan_. This was a proposal from the Lansdownes
that he should accompany them on a tour through Ireland.
The party met in Dublin, and a characteristic little episode is recorded
in the Diary. Moore's mother wanted to see her son's distinguished
friend, but was shy of a visit from him; so it was arranged that Lord
Lansdowne should be walked past the windows where the old couple sat at
watch, while he and the poet waved their salutations.
On the way south Moore revived memories of his courtship by a visit to
Kilkenny. "Happy times!" he notes, "but not more happy than those which
I owe to the same dear girl still." Further south, alarming rumours
began to come in, telling of secret organisation among the peasantry,
and of the ascendency of "Captain Rock," a mysterious individual in
whose name orders and threatening letters were then issued. Killarney
charmed Moore with its loveliness, but we find sympathetic observations
also concerning Lord Lansdowne's trouble with his Kerry tenants,
occasioned by their habits of sub-letting, rearing large families, and
so forth. Altogether, the Journal is written by one who sees keenly the
oppression of tithes, but on all other matters wears a landlord's
spectacles; and this criticism was made sharply, and with justice, in an
answer to the book which resulted from this journey.
Moore came back with his head full of material, and set to work reading
for a projected narrative of his tour; but after a couple of weeks, the
brilliant idea occurred to him of converting it into a _History of
Captain Rock and his Ancestors_. The project expanded a good deal as he
wrote, and six months' work resulted in a considerable volume, of which
the first part was a review of Irish history, which showed with
ingenious irony how well English policy, from the first enactments of
Henry II. against Irish dress, has been adapted to perpetuate the type
and breed of Captain Rock. It was the first book which Moore had written
in prose, and nowhere else in his prose writings was he so lavish of
wit. I may cite a couple of examples.
"My unlucky countrymen," says Captain Rock (for the Captain was the
nominal author of his own Memoirs) "have always had a taste for
justice--a taste as inconvenient to them, situated as they have
always been, as a taste for horse-racing would be to a Venetian."
"Our Irish rulers have always proceeded in proselytism on the
principle of a wedge with its wrong side foremost.... The courteous
address of Launcelot to the young Jewess, 'Be of good cheer, for
truly I think thou art damned,' seems to have been the model on
which the Protestant Church has founded all its conciliatory
advances to Catholics."
The broad facts of English misrule in Ireland were not then staled by
much repetition, and Moore's statement of them was read with eagerness.
In execution the book was faulty, the irony being ill sustained towards
the latter part, where it touched contemporary topics. But the success
was brilliant, and from Almack's to Holland House Moore heard nothing
but its praises. Naturally enough, it made its way in Ireland; "the
people through the country are subscribing their sixpences and shillings
to buy a copy," a Dublin bookseller wrote; and the Catholics of Drogheda
forwarded a formal expression of gratitude, which pleased Moore the
better as he "rather feared the Catholics would not take very cordially
to the work, owing to some infidelities to their religion which break
out now and then in it." And, in truth, the tone is throughout that of
one who rather deplores the employment of tyranny to frighten Irish
Catholics out of their religion than dislikes the idea of a change of
faith. Politically speaking, however, the tone of the book was firm
enough. Moore, like most Irishmen, had little knowledge of Irish
history, and only began to read it when he had to instruct others in its
lessons. Whether because of its effect on his mind, or because _Captain
Rock_ gave him a reputation in Ireland, which he dearly valued, as the
champion of Irish liberties, it is certain that from this time onward
the direction of his mind was increasingly towards Irish subjects.
He had felt the attraction earlier. A letter to Corry, written when
_Lalla Rookh_ was nearly completed, says: "I have some thoughts of
undertaking a very voluminous work about Ireland (if properly encouraged
by _patres nostri_--the Longmans), and this will require my residence
for at least two or three years in or near Dublin." Nothing came of the
project, which was perhaps not strongly formed; and in any case he was
drawn away from it by the enforced move to France. And although one can
trace, from the publication of _Captain Rock_ onward, a steady bent of
purpose in him to use his pen in the service of his country, he was a
second time driven out of his course by an unforeseen event. In the
midst of the Captain's triumphs, while editions were rapidly succeeding
each other, a great stroke of misfortune fell on Moore. Byron died; and
the depositary of his Memoirs was immediately plunged into a most
embarrassing situation.
The case about this famous document may be briefly stated. In October
1819, Byron handed Moore the first portion of it, as a gift which would
ultimately be of value; and in 1821 he sent the remainder to his friend
in Paris, making the suggestion that money might be raised on it by
anticipation. This was accordingly done, and, in September 1821, Murray
agreed to pay two thousand guineas, and took the manuscript into his
keeping. Part of this money was applied in settlement of the Bermuda
claims, and in November of that year Moore signed a deed making over the
property. This deed was submitted to Byron, and Byron signed an
assignment of the manuscript to Murray. Scarcely was the transaction
completed, when scruples were aroused in Moore by Lord Holland's saying
that he wished the money could have been got in any other way. Lord
Holland's objection, as Moore states it (though expressly in his own
words) was, that it seemed like depositing in cold blood a quiver of
poisoned arrows for use in future warfare upon private character. Moore
protested against this view of the document, and Lord Holland, who had
read the manuscript, could recall nothing admitting of such a
description, except a passage relating to Mme de Staël, and a charge
against Sir Samuel Romilly--both of which, Moore pointed out, could be
omitted or neutralised in editing for publication, as he had reserved
the right to do. Nevertheless, the scruple wrought in him, and in the
following April (1822) he approached Murray with a request that the deed
of sale should be cancelled, and replaced by an agreement converting the
transaction into a loan, with the manuscript held as security till Moore
should be able to repay. An agreement on these lines was accordingly
drawn up, and Moore's conscience was relieved. He expresses strongly in
his Diary his feeling of satisfaction that the control of the matter was
again in his own hands.
In the succeeding year he appears to have arranged that the Longmans
should take over the debt (and presumably the security), advancing him
the means to repay Murray; and on May 13th one of the firm mentioned
that the money was ready. On the 14th it was too late; news of Byron's
death reached London; and that evening Moore received a note from
Douglas Kinnaird "anxiously inquiring in whose possession the Memoirs
were, and saying that he was ready on the part of Lord Byron's family
to advance the £2000 for the manuscript, in order to give Lady Byron and
the rest of the family an opportunity of deciding whether they wished
them to be published or no."
Moore soon learned that Murray, immediately on hearing the news, had
gone to Wilmot Horton, offering to place the Memoirs at the disposal of
the family, without recognising that Moore had any voice in the matter.
Moore went to Hobhouse and explained his view of the situation, which
was that nothing could be done without his consent; and he substantiated
his view by recalling a clause which he had inserted in the
draft-agreement. This gave him a period of three months, in case of
Byron's death, in which to raise the money. The agreement had never been
formally completed, and the draft could not be found. But Murray
admitted in principle Moore's claim, and expressed himself ready to
comply with the arrangement, provided his money were repaid in full,
with interest. The manuscript could then be disposed of, as Moore
suggested, by placing it in the hands of "Lord Byron's dearest friend,
his sister, Augusta Leigh."
From the proposal that the work should be placed at the disposal of Lady
Byron, Moore dissented altogether; it would be treachery, he said (and
Hobhouse agreed), to Byron's intentions and wishes. He also strongly
opposed the view, put forward by Hobhouse and Kinnaird, that Mrs. Leigh
ought "to burn the manuscript altogether without any previous perusal or
deliberation." This, he said, was to treat it as if it were a pest-bag,
whereas, "although the second part was full of very coarse things, the
first contained (with the exception of about three or four lines)
nothing which on the score of decency might not be safely published."
Matters were at this point on May 15th, and on the 16th a meeting took
place at Murray's between Moore, Hobhouse, and Mr. Wilmot Horton and
Colonel Doyle, the last two representing Mrs. Leigh. The agreement
between Moore and Murray had not yet been found, and discussion was
conducted on the assumption that Moore had a controlling voice in the
matter. Thus, although, as it was subsequently decided, Byron's formal
sanction of the assignment of the property to Murray would have rendered
the later agreement inoperative, Moore has full right to praise or blame
for the consent which he gave to the step taken at this memorable
meeting; when, as the world knows, after a very quarrelsome scene, the
manuscript was formally destroyed by Mrs. Leigh's representatives.
It does not appear that any one of the parties concerned in the act felt
in the least that they were depriving Byron of a posthumous
justification of his own career. Moore, in all the references to this
Memoir, treats it solely as a piece of literature, and Lord John
Russell, who had read most, if not all, of the composition, simply says
that it "contained little trace of Byron's genius and no interesting
details of his life." Those who were eager for suppression appear to
have been influenced by the desire to avoid scandal; and the notion was
widespread, for Moore, after the affair, was congratulated on having
"saved the country from a pollution." His most serious objection to
destroying the MS. rested on the support which such an action would give
to this view of what Byron had written.
But the objection was not strong enough to induce him to jeopardise his
own character. Moore's hands were tied in the transaction by the fact
that he stood to lose two thousand guineas if the MS. were destroyed,
and would avoid this loss if his own opinion, favouring publication,
were adopted. Whoever opposed publication in the discussion at Murray's,
had merely to hint that Moore's advocacy was interested, and pride would
at once constrain the needy poet to consent to the holocaust.
The two persons who stood to lose in the matter were Moore and Murray,
and both made a creditable sacrifice. Murray resigned his chances of a
considerable profit. But Moore incurred deliberately a ruinous burden of
debt. Even so, his sensitive conscience was not quite clear as to the
justification of his act; but Hobhouse appears to have decided him by
saying that Byron had more than once expressed a regret at having put
the Memoirs out of his own power, and had only been prevented from
reclaiming them by his dislike to taking back a gift.
Moore's need for consulting on points of honour did not end with the
burning of the MS. Byron's family were anxious to repay him the money
which he had paid to Murray before the cremation; and, not unnaturally,
Lord Lansdowne and other friends urged him to accept. But he refused
persistently to do so, though one adviser after another forced him to
postpone for a week the irrevocable step of publishing his account of
the transaction in the papers. His view was, that his duty had been to
surrender the trust into the hands most proper to receive it, and that
he could keep at least the credit of having made a sacrifice in order to
do so. With this credit he refused to part; and he notes that he had
little trouble in bringing his men of business, the Longmans, to take
his view of the matter, but could not so easily persuade Lord Lansdowne,
with Rogers and the rest, that a poor man ought to act on the same
principles as if he were rich. It should be remembered to Moore's credit
that he on many occasions followed his own sense of honour when he might
have pleaded the advice of most honoured and honourable persons for
adopting another course.
Friends of Moore's fame will rejoice that he acted in so scrupulous a
spirit, but the necessity is to be deplored. The heavy load of debt thus
thrown upon him forced him into producing too much. It also made it
practically inevitable that he should recoup himself for this loss by
undertaking the most lucrative task that offered--namely, a biography of
Byron; yet he was uncertain for a considerable time whether the thing
ought to be done, and, if done, whether he was the right person to do
it. Even when his mind was clear of these perplexities--which Hobhouse
strengthened by dissuading him from the task--there was a long period of
suspense for which Murray was answerable. During three years Moore was
distracted, anxious, and uneasy, unable to settle down to any important
work.
For the present, however, once the Byron business was settled, his mind
and his hands were full. It had been finally settled that the Longmans,
and not Murray, should be the publishers of the _Life of Sheridan_; they
undertaking, not only to pay Moore a thousand guineas, but to give the
Sheridan family half profits, once 2500 copies had been disposed. Moore
went resolutely to work, and in October of the next year the book made
its appearance, and succeeded beyond expectation. The Longmans expressed
their sense of its merits by adding £300 to the stipulated thousand.
The _Life of Sheridan_ did not interest contemporaries mainly as a piece
of biography. Many references to traits and stories of the dramatist and
statesman, which occur in the Diary, make it plain that Moore had
conceived an opinion of Sheridan by no means wholly favourable, and
biography of the unsparing order was not a task which he would have
undertaken. His aim was to outline Sheridan's career, rather than to
paint the man, and consequently the book's main value lay in the
historical view which it gave of the past fifty years. On this Moore was
congratulated by so good a judge as Jeffrey, and he had a right to feel
that his claim was established to rank with serious political thinkers.
Yet even before this, he was by no means regarded merely as a person of
quick fancy and lively talent. It was proposed that he should join
Jeffrey in editing the _Edinburgh_; and, still more remarkable, in 1822
the proprietors of the _Times_ invited him to replace Barnes for six
months in conducting their paper. Moore refused the offer (which was
made at the suggestion of Rogers), but felt highly gratified; and from
his return to England he was a constant contributor to the _Times_,
sending there all his satiric verses. Their popularity was so great that
the proprietors authorised Barnes to pay Moore a retainer of £400 a
year; and up to 1828 this source of income, with the annuity from Power,
was his main revenue. It was precarious, however; for the _Times_
sometimes took a tone in handling Irish topics which made it difficult
for Moore to continue the connection, and in 1827 he formally closed it.
It was renewed, however, after Barnes made a tour in Ireland (carrying
introductions from Moore), and returned ready "to support the Irish
cause with all his might."
Indeed, the best work of the three years 1825-8 is to be found in the
_Odes on Cash, Corn, and Catholics_, nearly all of which were
contributed to the _Times_. The first "evening" of _Evenings in Greece_,
and the fifth and sixth numbers of _National Airs_, which were the work
done for Power at this period, have little in them but fluent verse; and
even less can be said for the work which Moore took up as a _pièce de
résistance_, his discarded Egyptian story, which he now completed as a
prose romance. In _The Epicurean_ we have the last and by no means
sprightly runnings of the vein which produced _Lalla_ and the _Loves of
the Angels_: an imagination feeding itself on marvels read of in books,
and producing literature which appealed to curiosity more than to any
other instinct. The description of the Egyptian mysteries seen by the
young philosopher, who goes to the land of pyramids and catacombs in
search of new truth, is frigid in the extreme; and the flashes of
genuine poetry which redeem _Lalla_ and _The Angels_ find no place in
this very bad example of deliberately poetic prose. Nevertheless its
oversweetened eloquence found plenty of readers, and the book realised
£700 to its author,--of which, however, £500 had already been
anticipated, independently of the main debt, the two thousand guineas.
One may note here a very curious scruple of literary conscience which
Moore adhered to with surprising consistency. Although heavily in debt,
and forced to make every penny by sheer production, he constantly set
aside a means, which for at least ten years was constantly open to him,
of earning money with little labour. His reputation then stood at its
highest point; he was not only high in favour with the frequenters of
Holland House, but also with the whole fashionable world and its far-off
imitators. A single trait--which, with his usual naïve pleasure in
instances of his own popularity, he records--may illustrate the matter.
At a country ball, a young lady who was fortunate enough to shake hands
with the poet "wrapped the hand up in her shawl, saying no one else
should touch it that night." Fame of this sort is very marketable, and
to-day would bring its owner big offers from the popular magazines.
Their equivalent in those days was found in the annuals of the type of
the _Forget-me-not_, _Souvenir_, etc.; and request after request was
made to Moore for his name either as editor or contributor. The Longmans
proposed to undertake such a publication, and tempted him with the
prospects of £500 to £1000 a year if he would edit it. He replied, not
with a direct refusal, but with a letter stating his views concerning
literature of this class, which not only convinced the firm that he
personally would injure his reputation by accepting, but decided them to
abandon the scheme. Again, about 1827, Heath the engraver offered, first
£500 and subsequently £700 a year to Moore if he would edit a new album
or magazine, and at the same time tried to force on him a cheque for a
hundred pounds as the price of a contribution of a hundred lines. But
Moore was not to be tempted. Only once in his career did he depart from
what his sense of the dignity of letters demanded, and that was at a
time when he had brought himself low in purse by writing books to
express his convictions, and refusing commissions that would have
brought in large sums. His scruple, which nowadays seems strangely
demoded, is the more respectable because he never hints a word of blame
for those who did not share that "horror of Albumising, Annualising, and
Periodicalising which my one inglorious surrender (and for base money
too) has but confirmed me in." Characteristically enough, however, he
did for courtesy what he so often refused to do for profit, and waived
the scruple in favour of his old and beautiful friend Lady Blessington,
to whom he thus expressed himself. He sent her some verses for her _Book
of Beauty_, which are among the latest and by no means the worst that he
wrote.
In 1827, however, at a time when nothing was yet settled as to the _Life
of Byron_, his refusal of the inducements held out by Heath and the
Longmans was not his only example of constancy to a point of honour.
Letters apprised him in December 1826 that his father's death could not
be long deferred, and when he reached Dublin the old man was too far
gone to see or recognise his son. It is characteristic of Moore that he
counted this to be a great relief, "as I would not for worlds have the
sweet impression he left upon my mind when I last saw him exchanged for
one which would haunt me, I know, dreadfully through all the remainder
of my life." This morbid shrinking from actual physical impressions of
pain or horror was a marked trait of the man, and not a manly one; it
was doubtless closely connected with his temperamental liability to
uncontrollable bursts of emotion. Nevertheless it was a thing hardly
more within his will-power than is the common tendency to turn faint at
the sight of blood; and in other respects he made up for it by
exhibiting a noble staunchness. The death of his father was a heavy
blow, as making the first gap in a family so closely linked by
affection; but a man at forty-seven must be prepared to lose his
parents, and the actual trouble of so quiet a death in the fulness of
age would soon have passed naturally. But John Moore's pension died with
him, and his son, already sufficiently embarrassed, found his mother and
sister added to his other charges. The burden could have been avoided;
for Lord Wellesley, then Viceroy, at once signified a wish to continue
the half-pay pension to Moore's sister, out of a fund which he, as
Lord-Lieutenant, could dispose of without reference to England, where
the King might reasonably be presumed unfriendly to such a favour. "All
this," Moore notes, "very kind and liberal of Lord Wellesley; and God
knows how useful such an aid would be to me, as God alone knows how I am
to support all the burdens now heaped upon me; but _I could not_ accept
such a favour. It would be like that _lasso_ with which they catch wild
animals in South America; the noose would only be on the _tip_ of the
horn, it is true, but it would do."
He found himself again approved in his action by men of business (Power
the publisher and various Irish friends) but censured by Lord Lansdowne.
His answer was ready, however. _The Life of Sheridan_, with its
outspoken strictures on certain passages in Whig policy, had not been
altogether relished at Bowood, and Moore was for once not sorry, since
the lack of approbation proved the independence of his attitude. And it
was now easy for him to say that, since Lord Lansdowne had described his
last published book as too conciliatory to the Tories, any favour coming
to its author from a Tory government would certainly be construed by
unfriendly judges as the price of this civility.
At last, however, the long negotiations about Byron's Life and Letters
came to a conclusion. Moore, whose debt was to the Longmans, and who was
moreover bound to them by gratitude for much real friendliness, inclined
to write the _Life_ for them, and an arrangement to that effect was
made. But in February 1828, when Murray, who held the great bulk of the
material, finally made up his mind to secure Moore's services, if
possible, both as editor and biographer, the Longmans, with their
accustomed liberality, waived their claim. It was settled that Moore
should receive 4000 guineas, of which sum half was to be advanced, to
pay off his debt to the Longmans. And thus, after many efforts, he got,
for a time at least, level with the world.
The work once undertaken went on fast--Moore working, he writes, "as
hard as it is in my nature to work at anything"--and by the end of 1829
the first of two quarto volumes was ready for publication. In his
prefatory note to the second volume, which shortly followed, Moore--whom
Byron called "the only modest author he had ever known"--attributed the
success of the work to the interest of the subject and the materials.
There is no denying that his modesty was in this case justified. The
_Life of Byron_ has probably been more read than any biography in the
language, with the single exception of Boswell's; yet it has no claim to
rank, for instance, with Lockhart's masterpiece as a literary
achievement. Moore's task was simply to weave together a chain of
narrative from the copious materials presented to him by the poet's
journals, letters, and, not least, by his poems. His work was, however,
hampered by the necessity of sparing sensibilities, and we have
frequently to wish that he had been less discreet. Nevertheless, upon
the whole, a very difficult undertaking was carried through with supreme
tact, with well-practised dexterity, and, above all, with a most
commendable absence of pretension. Beyond the skilled selection and
grouping of materials, Moore's part is very considerable. It amounts to
a very acute exposition of the Byron whom he had known--a man wholly
unlike the popular conception of him. Naturally enough, the work has the
character of a defence or justification, and as such it is loyal and
sincere. Moore never goes back on his friend. But there were in that
friend's character certain elements which he disliked, and in his
intellect ranges which he did not fully comprehend; and we feel always
that the Byron whom Moore best understands is the Byron of earlier days,
the writer of vehement romance and impassioned soliloquy--a Byron who
had not yet come to the full scope of his powers. This also was natural
enough, for Moore's personal intercourse with Byron practically ended
when Byron married.
Their friendship began, drolly enough, as has been already mentioned,
out of a cartel resulting from another challenge. In 1809, Moore saw
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, and had no special cause to
quarrel with the attack upon his own work. Little,
"The young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay,"
might regard the attack as verging on a tribute; and indeed Little's
poems were among Byron's earliest favourites and models in verse. But
Moore was choleric; he did not like to hear himself entitled the
"melodious advocate of lust"; and further on he came upon a passage
which touched him on a sensitive point. His abortive duel with Jeffrey
furnished too obvious material for the satirist to miss--above all, when
Jeffrey was the special mark--and accordingly Moore found the following
reference to it:--
"Can none remember that eventful day,
That ever glorious, almost fatal fray,
When Little's leadless pistol met the eye,
And Bow Street's myrmidons stood laughing by?"
A note was appended, stating that, in the duel at Chalk Farm, "on
examination, the balls of the pistols were found to have evaporated."
The satire being anonymous, Moore, though sufficiently vexed, took no
steps; but when a second edition was issued with Byron's name, he wrote
from Ireland to the author, saying that in the note "the lie was given"
to his own public statement, published in the _Times_ concerning the
duel, and demanding to know whether Byron would "avow the insult."
This letter, as Moore soon learnt, had not reached its address, for
Byron had gone abroad; but he was told that Hodgson had undertaken to
forward it. Nothing more was heard, and Moore let things rest till a
year and a half later, when Byron returned from abroad. Moore had in the
meantime married, and was about to become a father; he was therefore, as
he admits, inclined to be conciliatory, but none the less determined to
push the matter to an explanation. Referring to the previous letter,
which he assumed to have miscarried, he re-stated his grievance in
writing, but then continued:--
"It is now useless to speak of the steps with which it was my
intention to follow up that letter. The time which has elapsed
since then, though it has done away neither the injury nor the
feeling of it, has in many respects materially altered my
situation; and the only object which I have now in writing to your
Lordship is to preserve some consistency with that former letter,
and to prove to you that the injured feeling still exists, however
circumstances may compel me to be deaf to its dictates at present.
When I say 'injured feeling,' let me assure your Lordship that
there is not a single vindictive sentiment in my mind towards you.
I mean but to express that uneasiness under (what I must consider
to be) a charge of falsehood, which must haunt a man of any feeling
to his grave, unless the insult be retracted or atoned for."
Byron answered stiffly enough, that he had never seen Moore's denial,
and therefore had never intended "giving the lie"; but that he could
neither retract nor apologise for a charge of falsehood which he never
advanced. He was ready, he said, "to accept any conciliatory proposition
which did not compromise his own honour"--or, failing that, to give
satisfaction. Moore, in his account of the affair, admits freely that he
had shown a want of tact in talking of friendly advances, while
demanding an explanation; and he expresses his admiration for Byron's
conduct in the difficulty. It is certain that the younger man showed
more sense and less inclination to take offence, and the final proposal
that a friendly meeting should be arranged was Byron's. The place fixed
on was Rogers's table, and Campbell was of the company; and the dinner
(though complicated by Byron's unexpected wish to dine on biscuits and
soda water--neither of which was forthcoming) had the happiest results.
Byron formed a lasting friendship with Rogers; but between him and Moore
an intimacy of the closest kind ripened rapidly--the more so because
Byron's state was then one of considerable isolation. A few months
later, the blazing success of _Childe Harold_ only confirmed the
friendship, as it made the new poet the lion of a society where Moore's
position was already firmly fixed. Jealousy was none of Moore's vices,
or he had ample ground for it in that sudden leap past him, into a
region of fame which, as he always knew in his heart, he could never
occupy. But even a jealous nature might have been conciliated by Byron's
frank enthusiasm. "I am too proud of being your friend," he wrote, "to
care with whom I am linked in your estimation"; and the fragmentary
"Journal" which he kept in 1813 expresses the grounds of his admiration
very fully.
"Moore has a peculiarity of talent, or rather talents--poetry,
music, voice--all his own; and an expression in each, which never
was, nor will be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still
higher nights in poetry. By the bye, what humour, what--everything,
in the 'Post Bag'! There is nothing Moore may not do, if he will
but seriously set about it. In society he is gentlemanly, gentle,
and, altogether, more pleasing than any individual with whom I am
acquainted. For his honour, principle, and independence, his
conduct to...[1] speaks 'trumpet-tongued.' He has but one
fault--and that one I daily regret--he is not _here_."
Byron had also, what was no impediment in such a friendship, a great
admiration for his friend's work, and his letters teem with inquiries
after the progress of _Lalla_. Moore's abandonment of the story which
resembled too closely the _Bride of Abydos_, he thought unnecessary, and
was sincerely grieved to have stood in the light. Indeed, it is
sufficiently evident that Byron's feeling for Moore was a good deal
warmer than Moore's for Byron; not unnaturally, considering that Moore
was newly married and deep in love with his wife. Byron is always the
more frequent correspondent; it is he who has to reproach the other with
slackness. But, it must be insisted again, the friendship had been begun
when Moore was already rich in friendships and happy in a home, while
Byron was moody and lonely in a world against which he cherished
grievances; and this new companionship filled a large space in his life.
The sympathy between the two is easily understood, if one remembers not
only that each in his way exercised an extraordinary attraction for men
as well as women, but that their tastes coincided. The days when Moore
knew Byron well were Byron's period of dandyism, and Moore was always
something of a dandy. Both belonged to Watier's, the dandies' club _par
excellence_, and, being the only persons in the set who were men of
letters as well as men of fashion, they were naturally drawn together.
Moore's removal from town, too, detracted in no way from their
intimacy, since whenever he returned to London, he came now as a
bachelor. In 1814 they were almost daily together during his stay, and
the letters give us pleasant hints of their joint festivities, from fine
assemblies to lobsters and brandy and water at Stevens's in Bond Street.
Their friendship was so close that it permitted of Moore's advising
Byron not only to marry, but to make a particular choice--and one other
than that which he disastrously made. Further, when the choice had been
made, it was to Moore that Byron confided first his rejoicings and
afterwards something of his perplexities.
Nevertheless Byron's marriage ended their comradeship, and the friends
did not meet in the months when Lady Byron's unexplained departure and
obdurate silence loosed a storm of obloquy on her husband. Moore was
quick in sympathy, and Byron wrote him a letter such as could only be
written to a trusted intimate. And when finally his departure was fixed
on, verse spoke his feelings much better than the rather pompous
dedication in prose which he had prefixed to the _Corsair_ in January
1814:--
"My boat is on the shore
And my bark is on the sea;
But before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee.
"Were't the last drop in the well
As I gasped upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
'Tis to thee that I would drink.
"With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Should be--peace with thine and mine
And a health to thee, Tom Moore."
Of their meeting in Italy, three years after this was written, something
has been already said. To the end of the chapter Byron was the more
constant correspondent of the two. There are not wanting in Moore's
Diary remarks respecting Byron in which other things than liking can be
perceived; sharp disapprobation (and merited) for his writing to Murray
details of a Venetian intrigue which would enable the woman to be
identified; and later, a distinct touch of spleen occasioned by the
disparaging estimate of all recent poetry which Byron paraded in his
controversy with Bowles. Yet these are only hints of a passing mood, and
it is clear that Moore was always proud of the friendship; he is quick
to write down Lord Clare's assurance (which is supported by a letter of
Byron's own) that Clare and he were the people whom Byron cared most
for. It is also most clear that Byron's death, incurred in the cause of
a nation's freedom, set him on a pinnacle in Moore's estimation, and, in
the eyes of that always generous critic, more than redeemed whatever was
amiss in his career. The _Life_ did effectively what it was meant to do:
it presented a favourable view of Byron's character, all the more
convincing because the means used were chiefly quotations of Byron's own
words. It is a great praise in a task so difficult to say that Moore
never offends us; and on many occasions his comment is not merely sane
and generous, uniting the tolerance of a man of the world with the
insight of a poet; it is also instinct with dignity. For an excellent
example of such moments, and of Moore's prose style at its best, the
conclusion of the memoir may be given:--
"The arduous task of being the biographer of Byron is one, at
least, on which I have not obtruded myself: the wish of my friend
that I should undertake that office having been more than once
expressed, at a time when none but boding imagination could have
foreseen much chance of the sad honour devolving to me. If in some
instances I have consulted rather the spirit than the exact letter
of his injunctions, it was with the view solely of doing him more
justice than he would have done himself; there being no hands in
which his character could have been less safe than his own, nor any
greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what
he affected to be for what he was. Of any partiality, however,
beyond what our mutual friendship accounts for and justifies, I am
by no means conscious; nor would it be in the power, indeed, even
of the most partial friend to allege anything more convincingly
favourable of his character than is contained in the few simple
facts with which I shall here conclude--that through life, with all
his faults, he never lost a friend;--that those about him in his
youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants, remained
attached to him to the last;--that the woman, to whom he gave the
love of his maturer years, idolises his name; and that, with a
single unhappy exception, scarce an instance is to be found of any
one, once brought, however briefly, into relations of amity with
him, that did not feel towards him a kind regard in life and retain
a fondness for his memory.
"I have now done with the subject, nor shall be easily tempted into
a recurrence. Any mistakes or misstatements I may be proved to have
made shall be corrected;--any new facts which it is in the power of
others to produce will speak for themselves. To mere opinions I am
not called upon to pay attention--and still less to insinuations or
mysteries. I have here told what I myself know and think concerning
my friend, and now leave his character, moral as well as literary,
to the judgment of the world."
No sooner was the work on Byron completed than the prospect of another,
no less lucrative, offered itself. A proposal was made, with Lady
Canning's approbation, that Moore should write the Life of Canning. "The
importance of the period, the abundance of the materials I should have
to illustrate it, and my general coincidence with the principles of
Canning's latter line of politics," as well as the money, all tempted
Moore greatly, but he decided against it for a characteristic reason.
"An obstacle presented itself in the person of Lord Grey, of whose
conduct, during the period in question, it would be necessary to
speak with such a degree of freedom as both my high opinion of him,
and my gratitude to him for much kindness, would render impossible.
If left to myself, I might perhaps manage to do justice to all
parties without offending any; but under the dictation of Lady
Canning the thing would be impracticable."
The scruple was honourable, but it illustrates the growing difficulty of
Moore's position. Bound by ties of long alliance to the Whigs, he was,
in reality, less and less at one with either English party; and he
claimed and exercised a perfect freedom of expression in so far as
principles at least were concerned. But his regard for persons
constantly hampered him, and, conscious of this personal loyalty, he did
not cease to consider himself as one having claims on party rewards.
Lord Lansdowne came into office under the coalition in 1827, and the
Whig party were fully in power from 1830 onwards; yet Moore went
unrewarded, and a trace of bitterness is clearly perceptible in his
tone. Were it not that from 1829 onwards the Diary has been a good deal
expurgated by its editor, we should probably hear more of this note. We
have no direct expression of Moore's feelings either on the Act
emancipating the Catholics or on the Reform Bill. It is sufficiently
evident, however, from other passages, that Moore deprecated the
tumultuary agitation by which the Duke of Wellington was persuaded to
reverse the traditional policy of his party; it is probable that he
considered the surrender as none the Less ignominious because he
rejoiced to see it made. As to Reform, we have his mind plainly enough
given in several later jeremiads. "We are now hastening to the brink
with a rapidity which, croaker as I have always been, I certainly did
not anticipate." That is again and again the burden of his song, and
again and again he deplores that concessions were made in block, and not
doled out by minimum doses. As Lord John Russell neatly observes, had
Reform never passed, Moore would have lived and died a staunch Reformer.
But the passing of Reform showed him for what he really was--an Irish
politician of Grattan's school, hostile to every kind of Radicalism, but
strong in defence of two things--the principle of religious toleration
and the principle of nationality.
The result of all this was to associate Moore increasingly, both as
student and politician, with Irish controversy and Irish personages. He
declined to write the Life of Canning because it would necessitate
personal criticism on Lord Grey, and he felt no call to give utterance
to this criticism. But when it came to a question of speaking or holding
his peace on the subject of his own country, Moore declined to be
influenced by personal considerations. Once free to choose a subject,
his choice is notable. Having declined the Canning proposal, he set to
work immediately on a very different theme, the _Life of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald_, and worked on it with enthusiasm, although the hope of a
lucrative success was in this case slight indeed. More than that, as the
Whig party settled down to the task of administration, they found, as
usual, trouble in Ireland; and first Lord Holland, then Lord John
Russell, urged Moore to let alone the biography of an Irish rebel till
such time as Ireland should be quiet. Moore answered that this would be
to rival the rustic in Horace, who waited till the stream should be done
flowing by; and further, that it was a question of principle with him to
publish. Lord Lansdowne's considerate silence weighed more with him than
these intercessions, but the book came out in July 1831, with little of
the éclat to which its author was now accustomed. It is nevertheless the
best of his prose writings, and conveys with great moderation the
essential truths about the series of measures and events which led up to
the terrible crisis of 1798. What is still better, it gives an extremely
vivid impression of the young rebel chief, who had much that specially
endeared him to Moore in his warm and impulsive affections and his very
generous nature. There was nothing in the subject outside Moore's
sympathy or comprehension, and this was scarcely true either in the case
of Sheridan or of Byron.
No sooner was this work out of hand than a new one was put on the
stocks, arising again directly out of Moore's tastes and
pre-occupations. This was the very curious _Travels of an Irish
Gentleman in search of a Religion_, which leads naturally to some
discussion of Moore's own beliefs.
We have seen that he went to college as a Catholic (though not without
some consideration of the other possibility), and was thus shut off from
the rewards of proficiency; but also that, while in college, he
abandoned the practice of confession and that his intimates were mainly
Protestants. More than this, he married a Protestant, and allowed the
children of the marriage to be brought up in their mother's religion,
and for a considerable period attended church with his family--as is
proved by various entries in the Diary down to 1824, or thirteen years
after his marriage. And in 1825 there occurs this curious note. Lord
Lansdowne, referring to a magazine article, in which Moore's songs were
mentioned, said, "They take you for a Catholic." "I answered," Moore
writes, "they had but too much right to do so."
It is evident that his Catholicism was, to say the least of it,
unobtrusive in these days; and, although a note in the journals of
travel mentions the effect always produced on him by the celebration of
Mass, he seems rather inclined to endorse the distaste for so much gaudy
ceremonial which his Bessy owned to when first he took her to a Catholic
service. The most important passage, however, bearing upon his views
occurs in his account of the family interview after his father's
death:--
"Our conversation naturally turned upon religion, and my sister
Kate, who, the last time I saw her, was more than half inclined to
declare herself a Protestant, told me she had since taken my
advice, and remained quietly a Catholic.... For myself, my having
married a Protestant wife gave me an opportunity of choosing a
religion, at least for my children, and if my marriage had no other
advantage, I should think this quite sufficient to be grateful for.
We then talked of the differences between the two faiths, and they
who accuse all Catholics of being intolerantly attached to their
own would be either ashamed or surprised (according as they were
sincere or not in the accusation), if they had heard the sentiments
expressed both by my mother and sisters on the subject."
Taking all these things into account, I think it is not unfair to put an
autobiographical construction on the _Travels of an Irish
Gentleman_--which, although dedicated to the People of Ireland as a
"defence of their ancient national faith by their devoted servant the
Editor of 'Captain Rock's Memoirs,'" is, like that earlier work, couched
in a tone of irony, and opens with a "Soliloquy up Two Pair of
Stairs:"--
"It was on the evening of the 16th day of April, 1829--the very day
on which the memorable news reached Dublin of the Royal Assent
having been given to the Catholic Relief Bill--that, as I was
sitting alone in my chambers, up two pair of stairs in Trinity
College, being myself one of the everlasting 'Seven Millions' thus
liberated, I started suddenly, after a few moments' reverie, from
my chair, and taking a stride across the room, as if to make trial
of a pair of emancipated legs, exclaimed, 'Thank God! I may now, if
I like, turn Protestant.'"
It would be wrong to say that Moore, after emancipation had freed him
"not only from the penalties attached to being a Catholic, but from the
point of honour which had till then debarred me from being anything
else," seriously contemplated a change of religion. I think, however,
that on examining his consciousness, he found that up till this period
he had defended his religious position to himself solely by the point of
honour, and that, now the point of honour was removed, he felt it
incumbent on him to be able to speak with his enemies in the gate. I
believe also that the effect of his reading was to substitute for a
somewhat vague Christianity a definite attachment to Catholicism. His
earlier attitude of mind is well expressed by the following passage in
his Diary--not the only one of its kind:--
"I sat up to read the account of Goethe's _Dr. Faustus_ in the
_Edinburgh Magazine_, and before I went to bed experienced one of
those bursts of devotion which perhaps are worth all the
churchgoing forms in the world. Tears came fast from me as I knelt
down to adore the one only God whom I acknowledge, and poured forth
the aspirations of a soul deeply grateful for all His goodness."
That was written in Paris some five years before the conversation with
his sister Kate. It seems to me improbable that, after the reading and
writing which went to the _Travels of an Irish Gentleman_, he would have
expressed himself quite in the same way as to the advantage of being
able to make his children Protestants. And it is certain that in later
life, though on the friendliest terms with the rector of his parish, he
never attended service at the church.
The intention of the _Travels_ was, however, rather to furnish a weapon
than to establish faith. In a passage of the Diary (which, by the way,
deprecates the complete identification of himself with his hero), he
says:--
"My views concerning the superiority of the Roman Catholic Religion
over the Protestant in point of antiquity, authority, and
consistency agree with those of my hero, and I was induced to put
them so strongly upon record from the disgust which I feel, and
have ever felt, at the arrogance with which most Protestant parsons
assume to themselves and their fellows the credit of being the only
true Christians, and the insolence with which weekly from their
pulpits they denounce all Catholics as idolaters and anti-Christ."
In short, this book, which he speaks of in a letter to Sir William
Napier, his friend and neighbour, as "purely the indulgence of a hobby,"
was designed rather to annoy than to persuade. It was the attempt of an
Irish Catholic, who felt increasingly his right and power to speak for
his nation, to retort upon uncivil opponents not merely with argument
but with derision. And for this purpose no plan could have been more
effectual than the one which he chose of setting his young gentleman in
the first instance, after his decision to be a Protestant, to search for
the one true Protestantism.
Further than this it is unnecessary to go into the consideration of a
forgotten piece of polemics, which only those will read who find, like
Moore himself, "no subject so piquant as theology." His attainments in
this branch of learning were considerable for a layman. We have seen
that in 1814 he surprised Jeffrey by his article for the _Edinburgh_ on
the Fathers of the Early Church; and in 1831, while the _Travels_ were
in preparation, Murray astounded Milman by revealing to him that Moore
was the author of an article on _German Rationalism_. Moreover, these
appear to have been the only two of Moore's numerous contributions to
the Whig quarterly in which he took pleasure. Reviewing, in the ordinary
way, he describes as "work which I detest, and in consequence always do
badly." But recondite learning always had a fascination for him, and the
scholar in him grew with years.
The scholarly taste for historical research was unhappy in one of its
consequences. As early as 1829, the Longmans projected a group of
histories of the British Isles, in which England was to be treated by
Sir James Mackintosh in three volumes, while Scott and Moore sketched,
in a volume apiece, the story of their respective countries. Lord John
Russell observes judiciously that had Moore kept to the restriction, the
result might have been an easy, agreeable, and readable work. Unluckily,
however, he obeyed rather his sense of what was needed in a history of
Ireland than a perception of what he himself was fit to do, and the
task, undertaken with alacrity, became a burden. Instead of one volume,
it dragged out to four, of which the first appeared in 1835, and the
last in 1846; and the work is wholly devoid of any original merit, bald
and colourless. "His time," says Lord John, "was absorbed by it, his
health worn, and his faculties dragged down to a wearisome and
uncongenial task."
Yet this is to blame unreasonably Moore's choice of a subject. The truth
is that, when he engaged on it, his mind had lost its elasticity and
freshness of invention, from a variety of circumstances which must be
considered in a review of the last period of his life.
At the same time, it was an honourable end to that long literary career.
The easy singer of light loves closed his ceaseless activities with a
long period of drudgery, spent, says Lord John Russell, in "the critical
examination of obscure authorities upon an obscure subject." But the
obscure subject was the history of the singer's own country, and Moore
was at least well justified in holding that urgent need existed for
spreading among the English, and still more among the Irish, a knowledge
of the history of Ireland.
[1] Probably Lord Moira. _See_ above, p. 55.
CHAPTER VI
THE DECLINE OF LIFE
I have now sketched to its close the later period of Moore's literary
career; there remains to be set out the sad list of domestic troubles
under which his health and intellect finally gave way. But first, it is
pleasant to dwell upon some of the brighter circumstances which made
middle age for him not the least enjoyable period of a life rich in
enjoyment--and above all upon the indications, which he so highly
valued, of Ireland's growing enthusiasm for her own poet.
Moore liked always "digito monstrari et dicier, 'Hic est'"; and his
Journal abounds with records of his ingenuous satisfaction in such
tributes. Here is an agreeable passage, which brings not only the little
poet, but his very adoring (and adorable) wife, before us:--
"Oct. 15, 1829. To Bath with Bessy, to make purchases, carpets,
chimney pieces, etc., etc. In the carpet shop (in Milsom St.) where
I gave a cheque for the money, and my signature betrayed who I was,
a strong sensation evident through the whole establishment, to
Bessy's great amusement; and at last the master of the shop (a very
respectable-looking old person), after gazing earnestly at me for
some time, approached me and said, 'Mr. Moore, I cannot say how
much I feel honoured, etc., etc.,' and then requested that I would
allow him to have the satisfaction of shaking hands with one 'to
whom he was indebted for such etc., etc.' When we left the shop,
Bessy said, 'What a nice old man! I was very near asking him
whether he would like to shake hands with the poet's _wife_ too.'"
A far more conspicuous instance, however, of his "friendly fame" is
afforded by the narrative of his expedition to Scotland, in the autumn
of 1825, when the publication of his _Sheridan_ entitled him to a
holiday, and Bessy insisted that he should take one. The purpose of the
journey was to visit Sir Walter Scott, whom Moore had only once met,
some twenty years earlier. There was no other guest in the house at
Abbotsford, and Sir Walter, as Lockhart testified afterwards, enjoyed
having Moore to himself, and gave up his mornings, usually sacred to
work, in honour of the occasion. The liking between the two men was
immediate, but none the less profound; and on the third day, the Diary
notes that Scott said, "laying his hand cordially on my breast, 'Now, my
dear Moore, we are friends for life.'" Neither friend had ever power to
serve the other, but there is no passage in Moore's memoirs more
evidently sincere than that in which he expresses (only a few months
later) his "deep and painful sympathy" in the news of Scott's financial
misfortune:--"For poor devils like me (who have never known better) to
fag and to be pinched for means, becomes, as it were, a second nature;
but for Scott, whom I saw living in such luxurious comfort, and
dispensing such cordial hospitality, to be thus suddenly reduced to the
necessity of working his way, is too bad, and I grieve for him from my
heart."
But in 1825 all went gaily at Abbotsford, and Scott lionised his guest
with enthusiasm--Jeffrey helping. In the Law Courts at Edinburgh Moore
found himself "the greatest show of the place, and followed by crowds";
but the main demonstration took place when Scott conducted his guest to
the theatre, and the whole pit immediately rose at them. Moore was
compelled to bow his acknowledgments for two or three minutes, and the
orchestra played Irish melodies after each act; all this to the vast
delight of Scott, who, just fresh from cordialities in Ireland, was glad
to see his countrymen return the compliment.
But it was in Ireland itself that Moore found himself fêted and honoured
with a kind of welcome such as seldom has been accorded to any man of
letters. In 1830, the research for reminiscences of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald gave him a reason to cross to Dublin for a long visit, and
take his wife and boys to see his mother. Here, for the first and only
time, Moore made a public appearance before a gathering of his
countrymen assembled for a political purpose. A meeting had been called
to celebrate the recent Revolution in France, and the poet was set down
to second one of the resolutions. Eloquence was one of his
accomplishments, and he appears to have enjoyed the excitement of
feeling that "every word told on his auditory," who overwhelmed him with
applause.
The meeting had special significance, as marking a definite political
connection, which the character of his book on Lord Edward only
emphasised when it came to be published. He had been brought into close
touch with the leading Repealers, and expressed a general approbation of
their objects--though he thought O'Connell's agitation for Repeal both
premature and ill-judged. He was, in truth, hardly more in complete
sympathy with the Irish leader than with his Whig friends, who seemed to
display in office (which they now held) all the qualities which he had
disliked in their predecessors. In Ireland, however, there was every
disposition to minimise differences of opinion, and the public
enthusiasm for his character and achievements expressed itself, in 1832,
by an effort to induce him to enter Parliament.
Moore replied with a refusal, on the ground that his means were narrow
and precarious, and that he could not spare the time; as indeed he might
well say, for in this year he had been forced, not only to accept
Marryat's offer of £500 for contributions to a magazine, but even to
borrow (for the second time in his life) from a friend, Rogers.
Curiously enough, a second proposal of the same kind came to him from a
very different quarter. Lord Anglesey, then Viceroy, conveyed through a
third person his wish that Moore should stand for Dublin University, and
promised him all the Government support. In declining this offer on the
same grounds as he had alleged to the Limerick electors, Moore added a
very plain statement that, with the views he entertained, he could not
enter parliament under the sanction of that Government. The Whigs had
resorted to coercion, and "As long," he wrote, "as the principle on
which Ireland is at present governed shall continue to be acted on, I
can never consent to couple my name, humble as it is, with theirs."
The matter dropped then, so far as Government was concerned. But the
Limerick constituency was not so easily put off, although Moore had
explained to O'Connell--who was anxious to have the poet's
support--that he should never think of entering parliament except as a
purely unfettered representative. Such was the eagerness, that a scheme
was formed of purchasing an estate worth £300 a year in the county, and
presenting it to the poet; and after this proposal had been communicated
by letter, Gerald Griffin, author of _The Collegians_, came, along with
his brother, in person to Sloperton to urge its acceptance.
Moore was not prepared for the visit, but welcomed his guests. Part of
Gerald Griffin's account may be cited as showing an exceedingly able
young Irishman's attitude of mind towards the poet (_the_ poet), and the
impression which Moore left on him:--
"Oh, my dear L----, I saw the poet! and I spoke to him and he spoke
to me, and it was not to bid me 'get out of his way,' as the King
of France did to the man who boasted that his majesty had spoken to
him; but it was to shake hands with me and to ask me 'How I did,
Mr. Griffin?' and to speak of 'my fame.' _My_ fame! Tom Moore talk
of my fame! Ah the rogue, he was humbugging, L----, I'm afraid. He
knew the soft side of an author's heart, and perhaps he had pity on
my long, melancholy-looking figure, and said to himself, 'I will
make this poor fellow feel pleasant if I can,' for which, with all
his roguery, who could help liking and being grateful to him?...
..."We found our hero in his study, a table before him, covered
with books and papers, a draw half opened and stuffed with letters,
a piano also open at a little distance; and the thief himself, a
little man, but full of spirits, with eyes, hands, feet, and frame
for ever in motion, looking as if it would be a feat for him to sit
for three minutes quiet in his chair. I am no great observer of
proportions, but he seemed to me to be a neat-made little fellow,
tidily buttoned up, young as fifteen at heart, though with hair
that reminded me of 'Alps in the sunset'; not handsome perhaps, but
something in the whole cut of him that pleased me; finished as an
actor, but without an actor's affectation; easy as a gentleman, but
without _some_ gentlemen's formality; in a word, as people say when
they find their brains begin to run aground at the fag-end of a
magnificent period, we found him a hospitable, warm-hearted
Irishman, as pleasant as could be himself, and disposed to make
others so."
Nothing but civilities resulted from the interview. We learn from
Moore's Diary that he gave them dinner, and told them his opinion of
Repeal--which was, that separation must be considered as its inevitable
consequence. This startled his guests, and they disclaimed "all thoughts
and apprehensions" of such a result. "What strange short-sightedness!"
Moore exclaims. It may be noted that Moore was always exaggerated in his
estimate of consequences, and foretold the most prodigious upheavals as
a result of the Reform Bill. It is also to be noted, that in his
opinion, "so hopeless appeared the fate of Ireland under English
government, whether of Whigs or Tories," that he "would be almost
inclined to run the risk of Repeal even with separation as its too
certain consequence, being convinced that Ireland must go through some
violent and convulsive process before the anomalies of her present
position can be got rid of, and thinking such riddance well worth the
price, however dreadful would be the pain of it." So far was Moore from
thinking that Catholic Emancipation settled Ireland's claims in full.
His refusal to represent an Irish constituency was however definitely
conveyed to the envoys in a letter, written for publication, which after
grateful acknowledgment of the honour done him, and of the kindness
which had proposed a national subscription to provide him with the
necessary qualification, ended as follows:--
"Were I obliged to choose which should be my direct paymaster, the
government or the people, I should say without hesitation, the
people; but I prefer holding on my free course, humble as it is,
unpurchased by either; nor shall I the less continue, as far as my
limited sphere of action extends, to devote such powers as God has
gifted me with to that cause which has always been uppermost in my
heart, which was my first inspiration, and shall be my last--the
cause of Irish freedom."
Moore's friends with one accord congratulated him not only on the taste
of his letter, but on his decision. And indeed, quite apart from
considerations of money, his position in Parliament would have been
impossible. In agreement neither with Whigs nor Tories, he was hardly
more in sympathy with O'Connell's party; and he gave strong expression
to his feelings in a remarkable lyric included in the tenth and last
number of the _Irish Melodies_, published in 1834:--
"The dream of those days when first I sung thee is o'er,
Thy triumph hath stain'd the charm thy sorrows then wore;
And ev'n of the light which Hope once shed o'er thy chains,
Alas, not a gleam to grace thy freedom remains.
"Say, is it that slavery sunk so deep in thy heart,
That still the dark brand is there, though chainless thou art;
And Freedom's sweet fruit, for which thy spirit long burn'd,
Now, reaching at last thy lip, to ashes hath turn'd.
"Up Liberty's steep by Truth and Eloquence led,
With eyes on her temple fix'd, how proud was thy tread!
Ah, better thou ne'er hadst lived that summit to gain,
Or died in the porch, than thus dishonour the fane."
A footnote pointed the meaning in these words.
"Written in one of those moods of hopelessness and disgust which
come occasionally over the mind, in contemplating the present state
of Irish patriotism."
Not unnaturally, O'Connell was angry, and his friend Con Lyne wrote to
Moore, entreating "an alleviating word." Moore replied, the Journal
notes--
"that I was not surprised at O'Connell's feeling those verses, as I
had felt them deeply myself in writing them; but that they were
wrung from me by a desire to put on record (in the only work of
mine likely to reach after-times) that though going along, heart
and soul, with the great cause of Ireland, I by no means went with
the spirit or the manner in which that cause had been for a long
time conducted."
He admitted that, though the verses were addressed to Ireland, O'Connell
had a right to take them to himself, "as he is and has been for a long
time, to all public intents and purposes, Ireland." That was just what
Moore complained of. He disliked the removal of "all independent and
really public-spirited co-operators"; he regarded the position of this
"mighty unit of a legion of ciphers" as a threat to freedom, certain to
lead to an abuse of power. "Against such abuse of power, let it be
placed in what hands it might," he "had all his life revolted and would
to the last revolt." From the dignity of this really serious criticism
he detracted somewhat by adding that O'Connell's resolution against
duelling had done much "to lower the once high tone of feeling in
Ireland"; for he omitted to make the necessary observation that, when
O'Connell forswore duelling, he by no means forswore personal
vituperation. The letter contained no allusion to a feeling which
certainly was in Moore's mind when he wrote the verses--namely, his
dislike of the "annual stipend from the begging-box." But even without
this, it was an explanation ill calculated to alleviate, and Moore
thought that public feeling in Ireland might probably run strong against
him.
Ireland, however, was constant to her poet. In the next summer (1835) he
crossed to Dublin, when the British Association was meeting there, and
the demonstration when he was first seen in the theatre went beyond all
customary bounds and was not to be checked without a brief speech from
the box. But a more ceremonious ovation was to come. Moore decided to go
to Wexford to visit the home of his grand-parents, and he was to be the
guest of a Mr. Boyse who lived at Bannow. On the approach to this town
from Wexford--where Moore was met by his host--the party was encountered
by a cavalcade bearing green banners, and so escorted formally to a
series of triumphal arches, where a decorated car awaited the poet, with
Nine Muses ("some of them remarkably pretty girls") ready to place a
crown on his head. It had been arranged that the Muses should follow on
foot; but as the crowd pressed in, Moore made three of them get up on
the car. As they proceeded slowly along, with a band playing Irish
melodies, and the tune set to Byron's "Here's a health to thee, Tom
Moore," the hero turned to the pretty Muse behind him and said, "This is
a long journey for you." "'Oh, sir,' she exclaimed, with a sweetness and
kindness of look not to be found in more artificial life, 'I wish it was
more than three hundred miles.'"
Speeches followed, with dancing in the evening, and a green balloon
floated over the dancers, bearing to the skies, "Welcome, Tom Moore."
That evening there came an express from the Lady Superior of the
Presentation Convent at Wexford, begging for a visit to her community.
Thither accordingly Moore was taken next day, and, for a crowning
ceremony, planted with his own hands--"Oh Cupid, prince of gods and
men!"--a myrtle in the convent garden. No sooner was the plant in the
earth, than the gardener proclaimed, while filling up the hole, "This
will not be called _myrtle_ any longer, but the _Star of Airin_!" Well
may Moore ask, "Where is the English gardener chat would have been
capable of such a flight?"
Demonstrations of this organised character did not recur; but the
spontaneous outbursts of feeling manifested themselves, publicly and
privately, in ways often a little ridiculous, but not less often really
touching. When Moore next visited Ireland (in 1838) he went to the
theatre evidently with the purpose of making a speech, and the
opportunity was furnished with éclat: "There exists no title of honour
or distinction," he told them, "to which I could attach half so much
value as that of being called your poet--the poet of the people of
Ireland." Certainly the title was not grudged; and the people of Ireland
claimed a sort of proprietary right in their bard, as he found when he
embarked at Kingstown for his return.
"The packet was full of people coming to see friends off, and
amongst others was a party of ladies, who, I should think, had
dined on board, and who, on my being made known to them, almost
devoured me with kindness, and at length proceeded so far as to
insist on, each of them, _kissing_ me. At this time I was beginning
to feel the first rudiments of coming _sickness_, and the effort
to respond to all this enthusiasm, in such a state of stomach, was
not a little awkward and trying. However, I kissed the whole party
(about five, I think) in succession, two or three of them being,
for my comfort, young and good-looking, and was most glad to get
away from them to my berth, which through the kindness of the
captain (Emerson) was in his own cabin. But I had hardly shut the
door, feeling very qualmish, and most glad to have got over this
osculatory operation, when there came a gentle tap at the door, and
an elderly lady made her appearance, who said that having heard of
all that had been going on, she could not rest easy without being
also kissed as well as the rest. So, in the most respectful manner
possible, I complied with the lady's request, and then betook
myself with a heaving stomach to my berth."
A more modest and less embarrassing act of homage was brought to Moore's
notice in London by Panizzi. Among the labourers at work on the
buildings of the British Museum was a poor Irishman, who, learning that
Moore was sometimes to be seen there, offered a pot of ale to any one
who would point him out. Accordingly, next time Moore came, the Irishman
was taken to where he could get a sight of the poet, as he sat reading.
Such was his pleasure at being able to say "I have seen," that he
doubled the pot of ale to his conductor. Again, in 1842 Moore was coming
away from a public dinner with Washington Irving, and they found rain
falling and themselves in sore need of cab or umbrella.
"As we were provided with neither," Moore writes, "our plight was
becoming serious, when a common cad ran up to me and said: 'Shall I
get you a cab, Mr. Moore? Sure, ain't _I_ the man that patronises
your Melodies?' He then ran off in search of a vehicle, while
Irving and I stood close up, like a pair of male Caryatides under
the very narrow projection of a hall door-ledge, and thought at
last that we were quite forgotten by my patron. But he came
faithfully back, and while putting me into the cab (without minding
at all the trifle that I gave him for his trouble) he said
confidentially in my ear: 'Now mind, whenever you want a cab,
Misthur Moore, just call for Tim Flaherty, I'm your man.' Now this
I call _fame_, and of somewhat a more agreeable kind than that of
Dante, when the women in the street found him out by the marks of
hellfire on his beard."
Green balloons, effusive elderly spinsters and the rest, all had their
ridiculous side, and Moore was not slow to see it. But, taking these
merely as symptoms of a very genuine affection, one may conclude that he
had a fair right to feel in his country's gratitude a deep source of
strength and consolation. For the rest, the pleasures of friendship and
of society never failed him so long as he was able to enjoy them; and
his English friends, in the time when he most needed it, did him a real
service.
We have seen that he neither liked the measures of the Whig
administration--which included two of his intimates, Lord Lansdowne and
Lord John Russell, with many others of his friends--nor was in the least
disposed to conceal his dislike of them. Lord John wrote to say that he
was glad of Moore's decision not to enter Parliament, as it would pain
him to find his friend going into the opposite lobby. But he was none
the less inclined to serve Moore, and his first step showed an extreme
anxiety to propitiate the poet's easily alarmed scruples. He approached
Lord Melbourne, then Premier, with a proposal to bestow a pension on
Moore's sons. Melbourne replied, with great justice, that to make a
small provision for young men was only an encouragement to idleness, and
that whatever was done, should be done for Moore himself. When the
administration was reconstructed in July 1835, Lord John offered his
friend a place in the State Paper Office, which was declined, and Lord
Lansdowne then wrote, approving this refusal, but urging in the
strongest terms Moore's acceptance of a pension, "which," he said, "no
human being can blame the government for giving or you for accepting.
The administration is one of a more popular character as respects your
Irish opinions than any which has existed or is likely to exist; and
your literary reputation is so established that there is not a country
under the sun where literary rewards or distinctions exist in which you
would not be recognised as the first and most deserving object of them."
To this Moore replied that he would trust himself entirely to Lord
Lansdowne's guidance, and accordingly a letter reached him in Dublin,
saying that a pension of £300 a year had been granted him--the first
granted by the Administration. On his return from the festivities in
Bannow, a letter from Bessy awaited him, which is copied in the
Journal:--
"My dearest Tom,--Can it _really_ be true that you have a pension
of £300 a year? Mrs., Mr., two Misses and young Longman were here
to-day, and tell me it is really the case, and that they have seen
it in two papers. Should it turn out true, I know not how we can be
thankful enough to those who gave it, or to a Higher Power. The
Longmans were very kind and nice and so was _I_, and I invited them
_all five_ to come at some future time. At present I can think of
nothing but £300 a year, and dear Russell jumps and claps his hands
for joy.... If the story is true of the £300, pray give dear Ellen
£20, and _insist_ on her drinking £5 worth of wine _yearly_ to be
paid out of the £300 a year.... Is it true? I am in a fear of hope
and anxiety and feel very oddly. No one to talk to but sweet Buss,
who says, 'Now, Papa will not have to work so hard, and will be
able to go out a little.' ... _N.B._--If this good news be true, it
will make a great difference in my _eating_. I shall then indulge
in butter to potatoes. _Mind_ you do not tell this piece of
gluttony to _any_ one."
It is pleasant to think of this climax to all the exultation of the
Wexford processions. Moore was entitled to say to himself that he had
done yeoman's service to the principles for which a Whig administration
then stood, and yet had shown his complete independence of persons. What
he received, no man could say had been gained by any compromise with his
convictions; and it came at a time when it was much needed, for his
power of literary production had largely spent itself. The comic
inspiration had not indeed wholly run dry, for in 1835 Moore published
_The Fudges in England_ (a work even more unworthy of its predecessor
than most sequels); and in 1836 he entered into an agreement to supply
the _Morning Chronicle_ with squibs--his _Times_ connection having long
dropped. But except for this, and the furbishing up in 1839 of
_Alciphron_, his first draft in verse of the Egyptian story, nothing
more appears to have been produced by him, except the volumes of his
_History of Ireland_, which appeared respectively in 1835, 1836, 1840,
and 1846.
In fact, within the last seventeen years of his existence, Moore wrote
little or nothing but these volumes of history, for which he appears to
have received £500 apiece. It will be seen how timely was the succour of
the pension.
One other resource, however, and a considerable one, was afforded by a
project on which Moore's heart had long been set, and which finally
matured in 1837--that of collecting his poetical works into a complete
edition. The copyrights of his early Poems had returned to him, but the
great bulk of his lyrics was held by Power's widow--for the little
publisher had died in 1836, not before disputed accounts had altered the
long and friendly relation between him and the author of the _Irish
Melodies_. Longmans now bought out her rights for £1000, and paid Moore
another thousand for the task of collecting and arranging the poems and
writing prefaces, many of which contain interesting biographic detail.
It was a long labour, but the edition was finally completed in 1841.
Unhappily in that year, he was in no case to be concerned for its
success or failure; the Diary hardly refers to this event, of such
importance in a man's literary life. Troubles, which had long been heavy
and insistent upon him, then fairly culminated.
* * * * *
In spite of his love and talent for society, Moore was essentially a
domestic animal; and, as he advanced in life, his home ties were
stronger and stronger. The welfare of his children and their health--for
they were all delicate--preoccupied him with a constant and painful
anxiety, which was, however, more than compensated by the pleasure which
he derived from them as they grew up.
He was indeed no baby-worshipper, and notes profanely after one birth:
"Bessy doing marvellously well, and the little fright, as all such young
things are, prospering also." The first death in his household, that of
an infant girl, Byron's goddaughter, affected him mainly as a cause of
grief to his wife; and even when he lost his eldest daughter in 1817,
truly and deeply though he sorrowed, it is evident enough that the
weight of the blow fell on Bessy rather than on him. He was then the one
of the two to take thought for the other; not perhaps that he cared
less, but that his temperament was then more natural and healthy.
Eight years later he notes the first symptom of what was doubtless a
growing infirmity. About a fortnight after his father's death he spent
the evening in Dublin with some old friends, and sang a good deal for
them.--"In singing 'There's a song of the Olden Time,' the feeling which
I had so long suppressed" (for he had been active in endeavouring to
keep up his mother's spirits) "broke out; I was obliged to leave the
room, and continued sobbing hysterically on the stairs for several
minutes." From this onward, the same proclivity manifested itself at
intervals with growing vehemence. After any stress of emotion, the
plangent quality of his own voice in singing tended to produce one of
these outbursts, when it seemed as if his chest must burst under the
strain. Yet he always fought against the weakness, and notes more than
once how, after a sudden collapse of this kind, he made an effort, and
returned to the piano, laughing at himself, while he rattled off gay
songs.
But the wrench which of all others seems to have done most to shatter
him, came not long after this first breakdown (which dates from the end
of 1826, his forty-seventh year); and it found a man strangely altered
from what he had been ten or twelve years earlier. His eldest girl's
death had left the second, Anastasia, to inherit a double share of
affection, and her chronic delicacy kept her parents continually
anxious. At last the beginning of the end came early in 1829, just at
the moment when Moore was receiving news that Catholic emancipation was
a certainty. "Could I ever have thought," he writes, "that such an event
would, under any circumstances, find me indifferent to it? Yet such is
almost the case at present." Even when he wrote this, he did not realise
the worst; the truth was not forced on him till his wife had been
"wasting away on the knowledge of it" for three weeks. We have his
detailed account of the last fortnight, during which the parents could
do nothing but make their child's last days as happy as they
could--spending the evenings together with the girl, playing little
games, reading aloud and so forth. His description of the end must be
quoted:--
"Next morning (Sunday 8th) I rose early, and, on approaching the
room, heard the dear child's voice as strong, I thought, as usual;
but on entering, I saw death plainly in her face. When I asked her
how she had slept, she said 'Pretty well,' in her usual courteous
manner; but her voice had a sort of hollow and distant softness,
not to be described. When I took her hand on leaving her, she said
(I thought significantly), 'Good-bye, papa.' I will not attempt to
tell what I felt at all this. I went occasionally to listen at the
door of the room, but did not go in, as Bessy, knowing what an
effect (through my whole future life) such a scene would have on
me, implored me not to be present at it.... In about three quarters
of an hour or less, she called for me, and I came and took her hand
for a few seconds, during which Bessy leaned down her head between
the poor dying child and me, that I might not see her countenance.
As I left the room, too, agonised as her own mind was, my sweet
thoughtful Bessy ran anxiously after me, and, giving me a
smelling-bottle, exclaimed, 'For God's sake, don't you get ill.' In
about a quarter of an hour afterwards, she came to me, and I saw
that all was over. I could no longer restrain myself; the feelings
I had been so long suppressing found vent, and a fit of loud
violent sobbing seized me, in which I felt as if my chest were
coming asunder."
Avoiding, after his habit, the actual sensations of horror, Moore took
his wife out for a drive while the funeral was going on. There is no
doubt, as I have said already, something unmasculine in all this
shrinking from the physical impression, and one may trace something of
the luxury of grief in the detailed recital. But the note with which it
closes has the true accent of tragedy:--
"And such is the end of so many years of fondness and of hope; and
nothing is left us but the dream (which may God in his mercy
realise), that we shall see our pure child again in a world more
worthy of her."
Gradually, however, time healed the rawness of the wound, and in June of
the same year, a new interest was added to Moore's London visits. His
eldest boy, Tom, was installed at the Charterhouse, on a nomination
secured through Lord Grey, and from this onward the Diary is full of
references to the boy's charming (but idle) ways. Moore records dinners
with Master Tom,--"who, bless the dear fellow, was more amusing than any
of the _beaux esprits_,"--compliments on his beauty, valued all the more
because a likeness was noted to his mother, and, in short, gives every
instance of parental fondness. We read less perhaps about the other boy,
Lord John Russell's godson and namesake, who entered the same school a
year or two later, Sir Robert Peel this time giving the nomination. But
of both his boys Moore was mighty fond and proud, and it was a moment of
great happiness in his life when, in 1830, he conveyed Bessy and the
pair of them to Dublin for a visit to his other home in Abbey Street.
"My sweet sister Nell, just the same gentle spirit as ever; both in
great delight with our boys; and my dear Bess never looked so
handsome as she did sitting by my mother, with a face bearing the
utmost sweetness and affection, all for my sake. Had a most happy
family dinner."
The happiness lasted through the visit of six weeks. It was fifteen
years since Bessy Moore had been in Ireland, and then she had not lived
in the same house with her husband's folk, who consequently knew her
mainly by report. "They have now, however," Moore writes, "had her with
them as one of themselves, and the result has been what I never could
doubt it would be."
Six months later an urgent summons from his sister prepared him for the
severing of the closest and oldest of all ties. But when he reached
Dublin he found his mother rallied, and her doctor (Crampton) quoting
Mother Hubbard at her. After three or four days her strength was so far
restored that he felt able to return. But her parting from her son was
that of one taking the last farewell. She told him--and indeed she had
good right to--that he had always done his duty, and more than his duty,
by her and hers. Twelve months later she died, and the news was
announced by letter. The effect upon Moore was not that of shock, but
rather of deep and saddening depression, which continued for some days
and seemed more to be a bodily indisposition than any mental affliction.
"To lose such a mother was," he said, "like a part of one's life going
out of one."
There was, however, one consolation for this great loss. Moore's sister,
Ellen, became a yearly visitor to the Sloperton household, and was drawn
fairly into the home circle. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm of his
countrymen, and the good help of the pension, brightened matters; and,
as the boys grew up, Moore's pleasure in their society increased
steadily.
He had procured, under the most distinguished auspices, their admission
to a first-rate school; and, fond as he was, he enforced in some matters
a standard of conduct more rigid than usual. He set his face against
their taking money from any one but their parents, and expressed
righteous indignation when Lord Holland defended to him the practice of
tipping. Still more indignant was he when the head master represented to
him that the elder boy could get an exhibition worth about £100 a year
to take him to college, and that Moore need only add an allowance of
£150! It seems, however, that exhortations against extravagance
prevailed less than the example of spending money freely, which was set
to the young Tom by those with whom his father led him to associate. The
younger son, Russell, was steadier in character, but decided, like his
brother, for the army; and Moore was accordingly put to the heavy
expense of outfitting both and launching them in this costly profession.
Once launched, however, he was sanguine enough to expect that they could
live on their pay.
Tom was gazetted to the 22nd regiment in 1837, and was given six months
to study French in Paris, where his father established him under
pleasant conditions. Having joined his regiment in 1838 at Cork, he was
shortly transferred to Dublin, and here his presence was a pleasure to
his aunt, Moore's favourite sister; the news of this made a happy break
in the anxieties at Sloperton, where Bessy Moore, always delicate, had
just come through a severe illness. In the summer, Moore joined his son
and his sister, and was, as we have seen, enormously applauded by his
countrymen at the theatre. Next day the father and son were to have
dined with Lord Morpeth, the Irish Chief Secretary, but by one of the
lapses of memory which began to be habitual with Moore, they presented
themselves instead at the Vice-Regal Lodge and were half through dinner
before the guest realised what he had done, only to be overwhelmed with
expressions of delight at the mistake. It was no doubt a little
difficult for a young man with a father who was on such terms with both
the people and the rulers of Ireland to realise that he was only the son
of a needy and struggling worker, always at straits to make ends meet:
and probably Tom himself took the view, expressed to Moore by a friend
newly come from Ireland, that such an allowance should be made to the
young soldier as would enable him to "live like a gentleman." Moore was
angry, and it is easy to sympathise with his disappointment; easy also
to condemn his want of foresight.
Tom's regiment was ordered to India, and to India also went the younger
son, Russell, for whom a cadetship in the Company's Army had been
secured. The younger boy sailed in April 1840, and, although the
parting was a heartbreak (above all to the mother), Moore felt at every
turn what he calls gratefully "the value of a friendly fame like mine."
Directors of the Company, officers aboard ship, governors of provinces,
all vied with one another in services; and when the lad reached
Calcutta, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General, gave him a room in
Government House.
Little good came of all these good offices. Lord Auckland's sincere
kindness could only manifest itself in looking after an invalid and
writing cordial letters to the parents. Russell Moore's health was quite
unequal to the profession he had chosen, and eighteen months after he
had reached India, news came that he had been dangerously ill and was
ordered home.
In the meanwhile the other son, though keeping his health, was incurring
debts. There is a note from Bessy, copied into the Diary, surely as
heartbroken a cry as could come from a wife and mother. Enclosing a bill
for £120 drawn by Tom upon his father, she writes that she can hardly
bring herself to send it:--
"It has caused me tears and sad thoughts, but to _you_ it will
bring these and hard _hard_ work. Why do people sigh for children?
They know not what sorrow will come with them. How _can_ you
arrange for the payment? and what could have caused him to require
such a sum? Take care of yourself; and if you write to him, for
God's sake, let him know that it is the very last sum you will or
_can_ pay for him. My heart is sick when I think of you, and the
fatigue of mind and body you are always kept in. Let me know how
you think you can arrange this."
A second draft for £100 followed quick on it, and early in the next
year, still worse news. The young man had sold his commission and was on
his way home. £1500 in all had been spent in fitting him out and
purchasing, first an ensigncy, then a lieutenancy; and this was the
upshot of so much anxiety and outlay. And the second boy, who had done
all that could be hoped of him, was on his way home too, to a sad
meeting. "It seemed all but death," Moore writes, "when he stepped out
of the carriage exhausted with the journey, and wasted with lung
disease." There was a rally for a few months, during which Moore was
busy trying to shape some new future for the prodigal Tom, who was
remaining in France. Four hundred pounds would have preserved his
lieutenancy (being the money actually paid down out of the price of his
commission), but Moore refused to find it. He was already reduced to
borrowing from a friend, Mr. Boyse, his Wexford host; and though Rogers,
Lord Lansdowne, and probably many others would, as Lord John Russell
regretfully comments, have willingly advanced the larger sum, they heard
nothing of the need. Moore's own object was to secure his son a
commission in the Austrian service, but Tom himself wrote from France
suggesting the Légion Étrangère. Interest was quickly made with Soult
through Madame Adelaide, who received the prodigal and made much of him
for his father's sake--"a continuation of that spoiling process," Moore
writes sadly, "to which poor Tom (as my son) has been from his childhood
subjected." The thing was settled accordingly, not without another draft
for a hundred and odd pounds to enable the son to leave for Algiers. A
few days before he set out for the new dangers and hardships of Africa,
his brother had died peacefully at home. It was only the last straw in a
load of trouble that the one remaining child could not even get leave
for a farewell visit home, before he launched, under no good omens, into
a new career and clime.
The record of the nest year (1843) is short and uninteresting--notes of
engagements for the most part. One is characteristic enough to quote:--
"_March_ 23. Breakfasted at Rogers's to meet Jeffrey and Lord
John--two of the men I like best among my numerous friends.
Jeffrey's volubility (which was always superabundant) becomes even
more copious, I think, as he grows older. But I am ashamed of
myself for finding any fault with him."
_"Lenior et melior fit accedente senecta"_ is a phrase that has full
application to this veteran of letters. The year closed with a cruel
hoax (the crueller as it coincided with fresh demands from Tom). Some
one in Ireland wrote to inform Moore that £300 had been left him as a
testimony of regard. Moore had suspicions, but he adds:--
"There was an air of truth and reality which half lured my poor
Bess and myself into hailing it as a providential God-send.
Already, indeed, her generous heart was apportioning out the
different presents it would enable her to make to my sister, to the
poor H----s, etc. Alas! alas! I wish no worse to the ingenious
gentleman who penned the letter than an exactly similar
disappointment."
I shall add the next entry in the Diary, Moore's farewell to the year
1843:--
"A strange life mine; but the best as well as pleasantest part of
it lies _at home_. I told my dear Bessy, this morning, that while I
stood at my study window, looking out at her, as she crossed the
field, I sent a blessing after her. 'Thank you, bird,' she replied,
'that's better than money'; and so it is. Bird is a pet name she
gave me in our younger days, and was suggested by Hamlet's words,
'Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come'; being the call, it seems,
which falconers use to their hawk in the air, when they would have
him come down to them."
What one feels on reading these passages, and contrasting them with many
earlier ones, is perhaps best expressed by assenting to the view of Miss
Berry, recorded in the Diary. Moore had taken the liberty of an old
friend in going unasked to one of her famous _soirées_, and on his
saying something of this:--
"She reverted in her odd way to the early days of our acquaintance,
and said, 'I didn't so much like you in those days. You were
too-too--what shall I say?' 'Too brisk and airy perhaps,' said I.
'Yes,' she replied, taking hold of one of my grizzly locks, 'I like
you better since you have got these.' I could then overhear her,
after I left her, say to the person with whom I had found her
speaking, 'That's as good a creature as ever lived!'"
The light and buoyant nature, which had been so sorely battered,
received its final shock soon after the date to which I have brought
this story. 1844 was spent in scriving over the _History_,--Moore
repelling now the friendly advances even of his Bowood neighbours, yet
with difficulty repelling them. The task was finished at last in the
spring of 1845, but there remained the need of a preface, and Moore
records that after various endeavours he left this, "in utter despair,"
to the publishers to provide. Later in the year, the annual visit from
his sister Ellen made a brightness in the house, now so quiet; and after
she had gone, there came letters from Tom asking for money for a trip
home. It was sent, and he wrote back rejoicing at the prospect, but
explaining that he should not come before spring owing to a cough which
he had contracted. The words were ominous, and both his parents almost
made up their minds that they were never to see him again.
The foreboding was only too well justified. But the first blow which
fell was one little looked for. Ellen Moore died suddenly in her bed. A
month later came from Africa "a strange and ominous-looking letter which
we opened with trembling hands, and it told us that my son Tom was
dead." I add one last quotation from the Diary.
"The last of our five children now are gone and I am left desolate
and alone. Not a single relative have I now left in the world."
That is practically the end of Moore's life. A severe illness followed,
and "when he recovered," says Lord John Russell, "he was a different
man." "Nothing seemed to rest upon his mind," and, with his memory, his
wit had gone also. He made an excursion to town in 1846 to superintend
the production of the last volume of his history, and one year later
still, to be the guest of Rogers, who was to Moore, at any rate, a most
considerate, loyal, helpful, and constant friend. But what he wrote to
this friend from Sloperton was true: "I am sinking here into a mere
vegetable." So, peacefully at the last, after five years of mere
breathing, in which neither joy nor sorrow touched him, he faded out of
life; watched over to the last by the woman who had grown more necessary
to him with every year.
He left her unprovided with money, yet not without provision. The
Memoirs which he, himself a great lover and reader of such literature,
had scrupulously kept for a period of close on thirty years, were always
designed to be a posthumous resource; and he had confided them by a will
made many years earlier to the care of Lord John Russell. Had he
foreseen that the friend of whom he asked this office would be charged
with the cares of an Administration, when it fell to be accomplished,
the request would probably not have been made; but being made, it was
duly honoured, and Moore, who had always liked impressive auspices for
his children at the font,[1] had himself a Prime Minister for his
biographer.
The work might perhaps have been better done by a man less fully
occupied, but the purpose for which the Memoirs were written could not
have been more fully served. The Longmans offered £3000 for the Memoirs,
if Lord John would edit them, and it was found that for this sum an
annuity could be bought, equal to the pension which had for the last
part of Moore's life been the sole resource of the household. Bessy
Moore lived and died in Sloperton, and was laid in the churchyard beside
her husband and her children; and old men in the little Wiltshire hamlet
remember her and her good works--the only one of her lifelong pleasures
and occupations which was left to this good woman, whom it is impossible
to think of as lonely. The record of her life and her husband's--for the
two are inseparable--may close with as touching a little attention as
was ever paid by an elderly man to his elderly wife. In 1839, when
money was no way plenty with him, Moore sent five pounds to a friend,
which the friend was to forward anonymously to Bessy for her poor--thus
giving her the pleasure which he judged she would most value, without
the distress of thinking that he must labour more to make up the little
outlay.
[1] Lady Donegal, Byron, Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, and Dr. Parr
were among the sponsors.
CHAPTER VII
GENERAL APPRECIATION
Of Moore's personal qualities not much remains to be said; but we may
endeavour to account for the fact that he became the fashion when he was
one-and-twenty, and retained an undiminished vogue for a matter of forty
years.
His singing undoubtedly first brought him into notice; a late passage in
the Journal recalls, across a gulf of years, one evening at a musical
assembly, when people laughed and stared to see a little Irish lad
brought out to sing after some distinguished professionals; and how the
contemptuous wonder was changed to wonder of a very different kind when
the singer had produced his effect. Hard upon these successes, and
helped by them to succeed, came his _Anacreon_, a volume of easy,
springing and melodious verse, flushed with prodigal youth; and the
combination of the two gifts excited such widespread admiration, that
their fortunate possessor was much sought out. In these early days Moore
was no doubt largely what is called a ladies' man, and the genius for
friendship which he possessed showed itself a good deal with women. From
these years dates the long intimacy with Lady Donegal and her sister,
Miss Godfrey--an intimacy which his marriage in no way ended. These
friends continued for years to correspond with him and to advise on his
affairs. But after marriage, he formed no new friendships with women.
His delight in feminine society never left him, but it was of a special
order.
Moore was by universal consent the very best of company; a talker who
delighted in the give and take of conversation, and was at least as well
pleased with other people's wit as his own. He had perhaps the less
occasion to be jealous, having in his singing a resource which made him
unrivalled. This talent, however, he would only use in a mixed
company--"hating this operation with he-hearers," as he notes somewhere
of a men's dinner when he was forced to depart from his habit. To women
and for them he sung, while his singing powers lasted; but it is not
unfair to say that he valued women in society chiefly as decorative
accessories and as an audience. Among the innumerable good things noted
in his Diary, hardly one is credited to a woman. And, well as he liked
singing to a mixed audience, it is clear that his chief pleasure, as he
advanced in life, lay in the society of men.
With men, his intimacies were numerous enough, for Moore was as popular
in clubs as in drawing-rooms, and most of his intimates were persons of
title. Byron said that "Tommy dearly loved a lord"; and a hundred people
know this saying, for one who has seen Byron's sincerer utterance (not
published in Moore's edition of the _Life and Letters_):--"I have had
the kindest letter from Moore. I do think that man is the
best-hearted--the only _hearted_ being I ever encountered; and his
talents are equal to his feelings." It is therefore worth while to note
that Moore by no means loved any or every lord. He did, however,
certainly desire to associate with those who possessed hereditary
station and had the brains to make a generous use of it, both in
acquiring power and in drawing to their houses men like Moore
himself--or Sydney Smith, whom Moore loved better to meet than any lord,
except perhaps Lord John Russell. His deliberate opinion, stated more
than once in the Diary, was that in his time the most agreeable and also
the purest tone of society was to be found at the top of the social
ladder. And in point of fact he was admitted to intimacy with the Whig
aristocracy in its most brilliant day. Bowood and Holland House, as
Moore knew them, were probably the best things of their kind that
England has ever seen.
For a description of the charm which made him not only welcome but
courted in these great houses, it would be hard to better that set down
by Haydon the painter, in his autobiography:--
"Met Moore at dinner, and spent a very pleasant three hours. He
told his stories with a hit-or-miss air, as if accustomed to people
of rapid apprehension. It being asked at Paris who they would have
as godfather for Rothschild's child, 'Talleyrand,' said a
Frenchman. _'Pourquoi, Monsieur?' 'Parce qu'il est le moins
chrétien possible.'_ Moore is a delightful, gay, voluptuous,
refined, natural creature; infinitely more unaffected than
Wordsworth; not blunt and uncultivated like Chantrey, or bilious
and shivering like Campbell. No affectation, but a true, refined,
delicate, frank poet, with sufficient air of the world to prove his
fashion, sufficient honesty of manner to show fashion has not
corrupted his native taste; making allowance for prejudices instead
of condemning them, by which he seemed to have none himself; never
talking of his own work from an intense consciousness that
everybody else did; while Wordsworth is talking of his own
productions from apprehension that they are not enough matter of
conversation. Men must not be judged too hardly. Success or failure
will either destroy or better the finest natural parts. Unless one
had heard Moore tell the above story of Talleyrand, it would have
been impossible to conceive the air of half-suppressed impudence,
the delicate light-horse canter of phrase, with which the words
floated out of his sparkling anacreontic mouth."
To the personal notability which his social talent secured him, Moore
owed much of his later successes as a prose writer: in part because of
the access which it afforded to sources of information; in part because
everybody knew him, and read with expectation whatever he wrote. But as
a poet, his fame was a thing wholly independent of personal charm.
People knew that the writer whose songs they had by heart was courted in
the most brilliant world; they knew also that he had shown in various
difficult junctures a high spirit of honour and independence. But they
knew these things mainly because they liked his poetry. Prom all this
contemporary fame of the poet, one must try to analyse what remains.
Moore himself--except during his stay in Paris, when much adulation led
him to question whether he might not perhaps really deserve to rank with
Scott and Byron--always regarded his poetry as unlikely to last. His
modesty was real; for not only did he feel himself overshadowed by Scott
and Byron, but, placed in the difficult position of knowing himself
popular and Wordsworth all but unread, he never hesitated in recognising
Wordsworth's as by far the greater talent. His growing admiration for
this poet is all the more remarkable, because at many meetings his sense
of ridicule was frequently stimulated by Wordsworth's egotism and
"soliloquacious" habit of conversation. Coleridge he could neither like
nor understand, and it seems that he did not care much for Shelley. But
throughout his Diary, one finds him manifesting, in many passages, the
conviction that these men, the unread, were better artists than himself;
and he notes with exceptional pleasure any word of praise from them, as
if he expected only dislike and disapprobation for his facile and
popular verses. Not less should it be noted, that none of them praised
his longer poems, but all (except of course Wordsworth) spoke with
sincere enthusiasm of his lyrics. The opinion of Landor and of Shelley
was, in effect, that expressed by Moore himself: that of his whole work
the _Irish Melodies_ alone were likely to last into future times. But
both Shelley (as reported by his wife) and Landor agreed in attributing
to Moore's lyrics the highest poetical merit. How far critical opinion
may ultimately bear out this estimate must remain to be seen; but
probably the depreciation of Moore's work, which prevails at present, is
hardly more judicious than Lord John Russell's extravagant over-praise.
The last century has been one of increasing virtuosity in the management
of lyric metres. From Cowper and Crabbe to Mr. Swinburne, is a strange
distance; and it has not been sufficiently realised that Moore is very
largely responsible for the advance. Many critics have noted the change
from the strictly syllabic scansion of Pope's school to metres like
those of Tennyson's _Maud_, and a hundred later poems, in which syllabic
measurement is wholly discarded. It has been noted also that, even in
the freer metres of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, lyric
writers confined themselves to variations of the trochee or iambic, and
that an anapæstic or dactylic measure is hardly found before Waller. But
it has hardly been recognised that till Moore began to use these triple
feet, no poet used them with dexterity and confidence.
Coleridge, it is true, and Scott had employed a broken rhythm,
substituting the temporal for the syllabic ictus, to vary the monotony
of the eight-syllabled narrative verse. But, to judge of the best that
could be done before Moore's time with a purely anapæstic measure, one
may refer to Wordsworth's "At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight
appears." These verses are sufficiently destitute of the lyrical quality
which is so constantly present in any work of Shelley's. But Moore had
done all but all his best work, before Shelley had written six poems
worthy of remembrance.
Going back, as we have seen, to the seventeenth century for his
inspiration in style, Moore began by using only the trochaic and iambic
measures. In the _Epistles and Odes_, we find one epistle (that to
Atkinson) written in well-managed anapæests, but more notable is the
very delicate rhythm of the Canadian Boat Song--inspired by a tune. It
is Moore's great distinction that he brought into English verse
something of the variety and multiplicity of musical rhythms. When the
_Irish Melodies_ began to appear, it is no wonder that readers should
have been dazzled by the skill with which a profusion of metres were
handled; and the poet showed himself even more inventive in rhythms than
in stanzas.
The most curious part of the matter is that Moore was really importing
into English poetry some of the characteristics of a literature which he
did not know. He had not a word of Gaelic, and (like O'Connell) desired
to see it die out. He observes that Spanish alone of European metrical
systems employs "assonantic" instead of consonantic rhyme, though he was
bred in a country where rhyme of this order had been brought to an
extraordinary pitch of perfection. But he based his work upon Irish
times, composed in the primitive manner, before music was divorced from
poetry. One may say, virtually, that in fitting words to these tunes, he
reproduced in English the rhythms of Irish folk song.
The thing was not done completely: for instance, in the first number of
the _Melodies_, the song "Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eye," is
to the tune of "Eileen Aroon," and the Irish words (which survive in
this instance and, I am told by my friend Mr. O'Neil Russell, in only
one other), do not correspond in metre with Moore's. He has varied the
tune, and is consequently using a different stanza, which corresponds
with the Irish only in the last three lines of the refrain. In the other
instance, that of "O blame not the bard," there is a general
correspondence in metre, but here the Irish metre is one not very
different from an ordinary English stanza--though, as usual in Irish
folk-poetry, the line is measured by time and not by syllables.
The need for fitting metre to music forced Moore into employing a wide
variety of stanzas; and his example was of service in a day which had
been little used to anything but the couplet and quatrain of three or
four well-worn types. But by far more remarkable was the achievement in
three separate poems of a metrical effect wholly new in English. Of
these, one is probably the most beautiful lyric that Moore ever wrote:--
"At the mid hour of night, when the stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky!
"Then I sing the wild song 'twas once such pleasure, to hear,
When our voices, commingling, breathed, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, O my love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear."
In the second, the same structure is used for the line, but with a
different and simpler stanza:--
"Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer'd my way,
Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round me lay;
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burn'd;
Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turn'd;
Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free,
And bless'd even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee.
"Thy rival was honour'd, whilst thou wert wrong'd and scorn'd,
Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows adorn'd;
She woo'd me to temples, while thou layest hid in caves,
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas! were slaves;
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be,
Than wed what I love not, or turn one thought from thee.
"They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail--
Hadst thou been a false one, thy cheek had look'd less pale,
They say too, so long thou hast worn those lingering chains,
That deep in thy heart they have printed their servile stains--
Oh! foul is the slander--no chain could that soul subdue--
Where shineth _thy_ spirit, there liberty shineth too!"
In these verses we have of course an allegory. By a fashion common in
Irish poetry, the poet expresses as a love song his political
allegiance--though here the Catholic Church, rather than Ireland, is the
"Dark Rosaleen" or "Kathleen ni Houlihan," to whom the passion is
addressed. The third of this remarkable group has been quoted already:
it is Moore's rebuke to Ireland, or to O'Connell, "The dream of those
days when first I sung thee is o'er"; and it is very notable that for
such an occasion he should have chosen his most distinctively Irish
manner. The peculiarity of these metres--the dragging, wavering cadence
that half baulks the ear--is the distinctive characteristic of Irish
verse. No English poet, so far as I know, has caught it; but Mangan gave
this character to some of his finest renderings from the Irish, and in
our own day Mr. Yeats has shown an increasing tendency towards this
subtle and evasive beauty.
It is I think mainly as an artist in metre that Moore still holds an
importance in the history of English poetry; and any one considering the
poems just quoted will see how individual and original were his
achievements. But the admirable qualities in his verse by which he
impressed his contemporaries were rather those of lightness and
swiftness: its sweetness, of which much was made, is a good deal less
admirable. For this, however, the nature of his best lyric work was
largely responsible.
He wrote songs to be sung; and the best verse is not that which sings
best. Language has to be softened down for singing, as it need not be
for speech; and this softening approaches to emasculation. The habit of
writing for music injured Moore's versification even when he wrote
narrative verse; and we have the result in the excessive smoothness of
_Lalla Rookh_.
Even more unfortunately did the medium of production affect his style.
Moore's conception of singing was certainly not one in which the words
were to be sacrificed to the music; but he wrote his words to be sung;
and words for singing must carry their meaning easily through the ear to
the intelligence--for what is sung can never be caught so easily as what
is spoken. He was led, therefore, to use a strict economy of ideas; to
expand rather than condense his meaning. Take such a verse as this (from
"Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour"):--
"Let Fate do her worst; there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy,
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And tiring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd!
Like the vase, in which roses have once been distill'd--
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still"--
and set beside it Shelley's:--
"Music when soft voices die
Vibrates in the memory:
Odours when sweet violets sicken
Live within the sense they quicken;
Rose leaves when the rose is dead
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on."
There is no doubt of Shelley's superiority; but on the other hand
Shelley's words, if sung, would not carry their sense so easily as
Moore's. The mind would lose itself in the quick succession of
metaphors; and it is noticeable in the _Melodies_ how often the whole
song is merely the skilful and deliberate evolution of a single
metaphor--an art akin to the rhetorician's. This is true even of the
famous "Oh breathe not his name"; and, indeed, it is not less true that
Emmet's utterance was the real poem--Moore's only an ingenious
amplification of the thought--or rather of a part of it.
One must bear in mind, then, that Moore's lyrics are verse written for
public utterance, designed to produce their impression instantly, and
not to sink slowly into the mind: and it is useless to compare them with
the packed thought of Shakespeare's sonnets, Wordsworth's odes, or
whatever else is in the highest category of lyric poetry.
There is, however, a class of verse to which hardly anything can be
preferred, and in it are not only the songs of Shakespeare, but some of
Scott's and many of Burns's; music as simple as a bird's, dealing in the
simplest emotions, free from all taint of rhetoric. In that class I do
not think that anything of Moore's can be placed. But one must remember
when Moore wrote. He wrote under the influence of the eighteenth
century, when the reaction towards a style less coloured by convention
had barely set in. He wrote, it is true, when Scott did, and not long
after Burns; but both Burns and Scott (whenever Scott is at his best)
had the guiding inspiration of a perfect style in the Lowland vernacular
poetry, never sophisticated by criticism, or by the intrusion of a
dialect of polite prose. And if one compares Moore's lyrics with the
best that Burns wrote _in English_, when liable to the influence of Gray
and the rest, I do not think it is to Burns that the preference will be
given--by the impartial arbiter, who should be neither Scot nor Irish.
It is, however, unreasonable to talk about Moore's lyrics as a whole,
for the work falls into two distinct categories, and in one of these
Moore must be pronounced the equal of any man who ever lived. The
lighter numbers breathe the very spirit of gaiety, united to a real
distinction of style:--
"Drink to her, who long
Hath waked the poet's sigh,
The girl who gave to song
What gold could never buy."
Still more characteristic perhaps is another, so melodious and so
roguish:--
"The young May moon is beaming, love,
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love,
How sweet to rove
Through Morna's grove,
When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!
Then awake!--the heavens look bright, my dear,
'Tis never too late for delight, my dear,
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."
Neither Prior nor Praed, nor any other master of the lighter lyric, has
equalled these; and better still, perhaps, is the well-known verse:--
"The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light that lies
In woman's eyes,
Has been my heart's undoing.
Though Wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorn'd the lore she brought me.
My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly's all they've taught me."
But it should be noticed that the gay metre, which fits this last humour
like a glove, is on the very next page applied to a serious theme, which
it dishonours, none the less for the refrain tacked on:--
"Oh, where's the slave so lowly,
Condemn'd to chains unholy,
Who, could he burst
His bonds at first,
Would pine beneath them slowly?
What soul, whose wrongs degrade it,
Would wait till time decay'd it,
When thus its wing
At once may spring
To the throne of Him who made it?
Farewell, Erin,--farewell, all,
Who live to weep our fall."
The tune no doubt demanded the double rhyme, and in Irish, it must be
remembered, double rhymes do not involve a jingle, being only an
assonance of the vowels ("weepeth" for instance would be a full rhyme to
"meeting"). Moore, writing English, was profuse in double rhymes, and
did not even shrink from the device, proper only, with few exceptions,
to trivial and comic verse, of forming the rhyme with two words. Thus,
for instance, we find him destroying a fine opening in the lyric:--
"Avenging and bright fall the swift sword of Erin
On him who the brave sons of Usna betray'd--
For every fond eye he hath waken'd a tear in,
A drop from his heart-wounds shall weep o'er her blade."
All this criticism is of course from the standpoint of a reader.
Considered as compositions to be sung, the _Melodies_ are probably
little injured by this defect in style, and the rhetorical effect of--
"Where's the slave so lowly
Condemned to chains unholy,"
may even gain by the amplitude of the ending.
Throughout, I think, it can hardly be denied that the poetry of Moore's
lyrics lies very close to eloquence and is remote from that distinctive
quality of the highest poetic expression which transcends rhetoric
altogether. A proof lies in the fact that these songs are among the most
translatable of all poetry--and among the most translated. Their charm
lies, like that of French poetry (before the Romantic movement), in the
felicitous expression of an apt or moving thought. It might be difficult
to express the idea so well in another language; but no one would feel
it impossible. Take such lines as:--
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,"
and the most careless will feel that, beyond the idea expressed, there
is an accent, and a suggestion as if of gesture, somehow incorporated
with the actual words and inseparable from them. An effect of this kind
is rarely achieved by Moore. His words always clearly convey the
definite thought, but they hardly ever convey anything more. We have, in
the most characteristic examples of his art, a quite extraordinary
eloquence, in such poems as those on Emmet and on Emmet's betrothed, or
that on Lord Edward ("When he who adores thee"), or "The Prince's Song"
("When first I met thee"); or again in the fierce strain of "Sad one of
Sion." The last stanzas of this may be quoted; they compare the fate
that was Judea's with the fate that may be Ireland's.
"Yet hadst thou thy vengeance--yet came there the morrow,
That shines out, at last, on the longest dark night,
When the sceptre that smote thee with slavery and sorrow,
Was shiver'd at once, like a reed, in thy sight.
"When that cup, which for others the proud Golden City
Had brimm'd full of bitterness, drench'd her own lips;
And the world she had trampled on heard, without pity,
The howl in her halls, and the cry from her ships.
"When the curse Heaven keeps for the haughty came over
Her merchants rapacious, her rulers unjust,
And, a ruin, at last, for the earthworm to cover,
The Lady of Kingdoms lay low in the dust."
Nothing could be more complete and rounded as the expression of an
emotion than "The Harp that once"; but I find less rhetoric and even
more poetry in the lovely address to the spirit of Irish music which
closed the sixth number of the _Melodies_, and should have closed the
series. Familiar as it is, Moore has become so far obsolete, for English
readers, that it may be given here:--
"Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long,
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song!
The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness
Have waken'd thy fondest, thy liveliest thrill;
But so oft hast thou echo'd the deep sigh of sadness,
That even in thy mirth it will steal from thee still.
"Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,
This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine!
Go, sleep with the sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers,
Till touch'd by some hand less unworthy than mine:
If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover,
Have throbb'd at our lay, 'tis thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind, passing heedlessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own."
Except in the _Sacred Songs_ there is nothing in Moore's work fit to
stand beside such lyrics as these; and the finest of these _Songs_
breathes an inspiration very like that of the _Melodies_:--
"Fall'n is thy throne, O Israel!
Silence is o'er thy plains;
Thy dwellings all lie desolate,
Thy children weep in chains."
Another opens with a very beautiful verse:--
"The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs,
And silent thoughts my only prayers."
But here, in the working out of the idea, one feels, as so often in
Moore, rather sated with sweetness. For an extreme example of this
cloying ornament, to which he owed so much of his popularity, one would
quote:--
"Oh! had we some bright little isle of our own,
In a blue summer ocean far off and alone,
Where a leaf never dies in the still-blooming bowers,
And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers;
Where the sun loves to pause
With so fond a delay,
That the night only draws
A thin veil o'er the day;
Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live,
Is worth the best joy that life elsewhere can give."
There is no flaw in such work, but the taste is too florid.
Occasionally, however, we find his taste wholly at fault in the choice
of a phrase, as in "Sir Knight, _I feel not the least alarm_," or the
still worse "Believe me, if all those _endearing young charms_,"--a
lapse into the worst dulcification of confectionery.
There is of course a fashion in verse as in anything else, and Moore's
excellences are precisely the least congenial to the current taste in
criticism. There is a fashion for nakedness of expression, and Moore
always shrank from brutality; there is a fashion for strained uses of
language, and Moore was always studiously accurate and lucid. But it may
be questioned whether, setting aside the opinion of professed and
professional critics, Moore's poetry would not be found to retain a
vigorous life. He was never, and never wished to be, in the least
esoteric; his object was to be understood by all. A poet who insists
upon this aim must perhaps sacrifice something, but he may also achieve
something not common. Oddly enough, there is no poet in English except
Goldsmith who appeals to simple people so much as Moore. These two can
often bring poetry home in triumph where even Shakespeare would never
find an entrance.
But Moore's importance in the history of literature lies in his
connection not with English but with Irish literature. It was not for
nothing that Ireland hailed him for her first national poet. Nowadays,
even English readers probably know that poetry of a class not inferior
to Moore's was being written in Ireland in Moore's lifetime. He was the
younger contemporary of Seaghan Clarach, the full contemporary of
Raftery. But the nation which stood behind Grattan--that fused,
bi-lingual people welded into a unity during the years that led up to
1782, yet not so closely welded but that a wedge could be driven
in--accepted English as the language of political leadership; and it
caught eagerly at any manifestation of its national unity. Deprived of a
parliament, it found a poet of its own. It heard for the first time in
the _Irish Melodies_ a song that came from the heart of Ireland, uttered
in a language which nine out of every ten Irishmen could understand. A
journalist, writing in 1810, says: "Moore has done more for the revival
of our national spirit than all the political writers whom Ireland has
seen for a century." The other Irishmen who had shown great literary
talent--Burke, Goldsmith, and Sheridan--belonged body and soul to
English letters. Moore's case was different. Almost without knowing it,
he wrote primarily for his own countrymen, and in return they honoured
him, not perhaps on this side idolatry, but with a sane instinct,
because he had done for Ireland, what neither Seaghan Clarach nor
Raftery, nor all the bards of Munster and Connaught, could at that
moment do for her. He had given a voice to Ireland; he had put into her
mouth a song of her own.
Standing apart now, from the times and circumstances in which Moore
wrote, we can see that what Ireland got from him was not all gain. The
literature produced so profusely in the days of Young Ireland, and
modelled mainly upon him, echoes only too faithfully his declamatory
tone; and worse than that, it is flooded by the exuberance of sentiment,
which was Moore's besetting weakness. Other models, and, it is to be
hoped, better ones, now are rapidly replacing those of Moore and his
followers; with the younger generation, even in Ireland, he has lost his
hold. But in Ireland his poetry is still, as a matter of course,
familiar to all Irishmen of the nationalist persuasion, young and old.
And for the older men, he has lost none of his magic. To them such
criticism as is found in this book will seem, one must fear, a kind of
impiety and certainly of ingratitude; for they remember the days when
many and many an Irish peasant, leaving his country for the New World,
carried with him two books--_Moore's Melodies_ and the _Key of Heaven_.
And certainly it is no small title to fame for a poet that he was in his
own country for at least three generations the delight and consolation
of the poor. Tattered and thumbed copies of his poems, broadcast through
Ireland, represent better his claim to the interest of posterity than
whatever comely and autographed editions may be found among the
possessions of Bowood and Holland House.
APPENDIX
DATES OF MOORE'S PUBLICATIONS
The kindness of Mr. Andrew Gibson allows me to reprint from a privately
circulated pamphlet the following catalogue, compiled by him for his
Lecture (delivered in Belfast), on "Thomas Moore and his First
Editions"[1]:--
List showing the order in which the various Editions were taken up in
the course of Mr. Gibson's Lecture; and giving, together with the sizes,
the actual or supposed dates of publication.[2]
_Works with music are distinguished by an asterisk._
1. The Odes of Anacreon. 4to. 1800.[3]
2. The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq. 8vo. 1801.
3. Sheet Songs*:[4]
(a) Published by F. Rhames, No. 16 Exchange Street,
Dublin, before Sir John Stevenson received
his knighthood in 1803:--
Buds of Roses, Virgin Flowers, a chearful Glee,
for 4 voices, the poetry translated from
Anacreon by T. Moore, Esqr. The Music
composed (& respectfully dedicated to the
Honble. Augustus Barry) by J.A. Stevenson,
Mus. D. Price Is. 6d. British.
Though Fate, my Girl, a Canzonet with an
Accompaniment for the Piano Forte or Harp,
the Poetry by Thos. Moore, Esqr. The Music
Composed by J.A. Stevenson, Mus. D.
Price 1/1.
Dear! in pity do not speak, a Canzonet for
two Voices, with an Accompaniment for the
Piano Forte or Harp, the Poetry by Thos.
Moore, Esqr., set to Music by J.A. Stevenson,
Mus. D. Price 1s.
Scotch Song [Mary, I believ'd thee true] with an
Accompaniment for the Piano Forte or Harp,
the Poetry by Thos. Moore, Esqr., the
Music Composed by J.A. Stevenson, Mus. D.
Price 6d.
(b) Music as well as words by Moore. Published by
Carpenter, Old Bond Street, London:--
Oh Lady Fair! A Ballad for Three Voices.
Dedicated to the Rt. Honble. Lady Charlotte
Rawdon. 1802.
When Time who steals our years away. A Ballad
dedicated to Mrs. Henry Tighe of Rosanna.
Fly from the World O Bessy to me.
Farewell Bessy.
Good Night.
Friend of my Soul.
(c) "Dublin, Published by F. Rhames, 16 Exchange
Street. Price 3 British Shillings":--
Give me the Harp. A Chorus Glee, with an
Accompaniment for two Performers on one
Piano Forte. Sung with great applause at the
Irish Harmonic Club on Wednesday, the 4th
May, 1803, when that Society had the Honor
of entertaining His Excellency Earl Hardwicke.
The Words translated from Anacreon
by Thomas Moore, Esqr. The Music composed
by Sir John A. Stevenson, Mus. Doc.
(d) "London, Printed for James Carpenter, Old Bond
Street. 1805":--
A Canadian Boat Song [Faintly as tolls the
evening chime] Arranged for Three Voices.
By Thomas Moore, Esqr.
4. Epistles, Odes, and other Poems. 4to. 1806.
5. Irish Melodies. First Number. Fol. [1808]*.[5]
6. Irish Melodies. Second Number. Fol. [1808]*.
7. Corruption and Intolerance: two Poems. 8vo. 1808.
8. The Sceptic: a Philosophical Satire. 8vo. 1809.[6]
9. Irish Melodies. Third Number. Fol. [1810]*.
10. A Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin. 8vo. 1810.
11. A Melologue upon National Music. ?Fol. [1811]*.[7]
12. M.P. or The Blue Stocking. Sm. fol. [1811]*.
13. M.P. or The Blue-Stocking. 8vo. 1811.[8]
14. Irish Melodies. Fourth Number. Fol. [1811]*.[9]
15. Intercepted Letters; or, The Twopenny Postbag. 8vo. 1813.
16. Irish Melodies. Fifth Number. Fol. [1813]*.[10]
17. A Collection of the Vocal Music of Thomas Moore.
Sm. fol. [1814]*.
18. Irish Melodies. Sixth Number. Fol. [1815]*.[11]
19. The World at Westminster. A Periodical Publication.
2 vols. 12mo. 1816.
20. Sacred Songs. First Number. Fol. [1816]*.[12]
21. Lalla Rookh. 4to. 1817.
22. The Fudge Family in Paris. 8vo. 1818.
23. National Airs. First Number. Sm. fol. 1818*.[13]
24. Irish Melodies. Seventh Number. Fol. 1818*.[14]
25. Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress. 8vo. 1819.
26. National Airs. Second Number. Sm. fol. 1820*.
27. Irish Melodies, with a Melologue upon National Music.
8vo. 1820.
28. Irish Melodies. Eighth Number. Fol. 1821*.[15]
29. Irish Melodies, by Thomas Moore, Esq. With an
Appendix, containing the Original Advertisements
and the Prefatory Letter on Music. 8vo. 1821.[16]
30. National Airs. Third Number. Sm. fol. 1822*.
31. National Airs. Fourth Number. Sm. fol. 1822*.
32. The Loves of the Angels, a Poem. 8vo. 1823.
33. The Loves of the Angels, an Eastern Romance. The
Fifth Edition. 8vo. 1823.[17]
34. Fables for the Holy Alliance, Rhymes on the Road,
etc., etc. 8vo. 1823.
35. Sacred Songs. Second Number. Fol. [1824]*.
36. Irish Melodies. Ninth Number. Fol. [1824]*.
37. Memoirs of Captain Rock. 12mo. 1824.
38. Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard
Brinsley Sheridan. 4to. 1825.
39. National Airs. Fifth Number. Sm. fol. [1826]*.
40. Evenings in Greece. First Evening. Sm. fol. [1826]*.
41. The Epicurean, a Tale. 12mo. 1827.
42. National Airs. Sixth Number. Sm. fol. [1827]*.
43. A Set of Glees. Sm. fol. [1827]*.
44. Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and other Matters. 8vo. 1828.
45. Legendary Ballads. Sm. fol. [1830]*.
46. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: with Notices of
his Life. 2 vols., 4to., 1830.[18]
47. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 2 vols., 8vo. 1831.
48. The Summer Fête. Sm. fol. [1831]*.
49. Evenings in Greece. [Second Evening]. Sm. fol. [1832]*.
50. The Works of Lord Byron: with his Letters and
Journals, and his Life. 17 vols., 8vo. 1832-33.
51. Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion.
2 vols., 8vo. 1833.
52. Irish Melodies. Tenth Number. [With Supplement]. Fol. [1834]*.
53. Vocal Miscellany. Number 1. Sm. fol. [1834]*.
54. Vocal Miscellany. Number 2. Sm. fol. [1835]*.
55. The Fudge Family in England. 8vo. 1835.
56. The History of Ireland. First Volume. 8vo. 1835.
57. The History of Ireland. Second Volume. 8vo. 1837.
58. Alciphron, a Poem. 8vo. 1839.
59. The History of Ireland. Third Volume. 8vo. 1840.
60. The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. Collected by
himself. 10 vols., 8 vo. 1840-41.
61. The History of Ireland. Fourth Volume. 8vo. 1846.[19]
[1] I have altered the dates given for the first and second numbers of
Irish Melodies in accordance with Mr. Gibson's recent discoveries.--S.G.
[2] Copies of all the editions were exhibited, with the exception of
Nos. 8, 11, 13, and 46.
[3] A copy of the second edition, 2 vols. 8vo., 1802, also was shown.
[4] These were only given as a selection.
[5] This edition ends at page 68. Copies of the first reprints, ending
at page 51, also were exhibited.
It is to be understood that copies of the Dublin editions and the London
editions (both copyright), up to the seventh number, were shown.
[6] A copy is in the British Museum.
[7] This is advertised in William and James Power's trade lists of the
period. It is thus referred to in a letter from Moore to his mother,
dated "Saturday, May 1811":--"I have been these two or three days past
receiving most flattering letters from the persons to whom I sent my
Melologue." Kent, in his edition of "The Poetical Works of Thomas
Moore," makes the "Melologue" an integral part of the "National Airs,"
and states the following in reference to the latter:--"Another
collection of songs, not unworthy of being placed in companionship with
the Irish Melodies, appeared from the hand of Moore in 1815." But the
"Melologue" was produced in 1811, as has now been shown, and the first
number of the "National Airs" did not make its appearance until 1818,
while the last one was only originally published in 1827.
[8] A copy is in the British Museum.
[9] In the London edition the Advertisement is dated "Bury-Street, St.
James's, Nov., 1811," whereas in the Dublin edition it is dated
"London,--January, 1812."
[10] The London and Dublin editions have each the following "Erratum"
annexed to the Advertisement:--"The Reader of the Words is requested to
take notice of an alteration (which was made too late to be conveniently
printed) in the first verse of the first Song, 'Thro' Erin's Isle'; he
will find the verses, in their corrected form, engraved under the Music,
Pages 2 and 3."
[11] In the London edition the Advertisement is dated "Mayfield,
Ashbourne, March, 1815." In the Dublin edition it has "April" instead of
"March."
[12] The London edition imprint reads:--"London, Published by J. Power,
34, Strand." The Dublin edition imprint reads:--"Dublin. Published by W.
Power 4 Westmorland St."
[13] The London edition imprint reads:--"London, Published April 23rd,
1818, by J. Power, "34, Strand." The Dublin edition imprint
reads:--"Dublin, Published 6th July 1818, by W. Power 4 Westmorland
Street."
[14] The London edition imprint reads:--"London, Published October 1st
1818, by J. Power, 34, Strand." The Dublin edition imprint
reads:--"Dublin, Published 9th Decr. 1818, by W. Power, 4, Westmorland
Street."
[15] The Symphonies and Accompaniments in the London edition are by
Henry R. Bishop. Those in the Dublin edition are by Sir John Stevenson.
I exhibited copies of both editions, and read to my audience a telling
Advertisement by William Power in the Dublin edition, in which he states
that "with _him_ originated the idea of uniting the Irish Melodies to
characteristic words."
Moore had already entered into a new agreement with James Power, who had
not permitted his brother to share in it; and in July 1821, "James
Power, of the Strand, London, Music Seller, obtained an injunction to
restrain William Power, of Westmorland Street, Dublin, from publishing a
pirated edition of the Eighth Number of Moore's Irish Melodies"--_vide_
"Notes from the Letters of Thomas Moore to his Music Publisher, James
Power," page 88.
[16] The manuscript of the Dedication and the Preface, in Moore's
handwriting, also was exhibited. It is the property of Mr. William
Swanston.
[17] The copy shown belongs to Mr. Robert May.
[18] A copy of the third edition, 3 vols. 8vo., 1833, was exhibited. I
have since obtained a copy of the first edition.
[19] Having spoken for nearly two hours, I found it necessary to refrain
from also referring to the following, together with several other
works:--
1. Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by the
Right Honourable Lord John Russell, M.P. 8 vols. 8vo., 1853-56.
2. Notes from the Letters of Thomas Moore to his Music Publisher, James
Power (the publication of which was suppressed in London). 8vo. [1854].
3. Prose and Verse, Humorous, Satirical and Sentimental. By Thomas
Moore. With suppressed passages from the Memoirs of Lord Byron. Chiefly
from the Author's own Manuscript, and all hitherto inedited and
uncollected. 8vo. 1878.
The last-named publication includes the contributions of Moore to the
_Edinburgh Review_, between 1814 and 1834.
INDEX
A
"After the Battle" (quotation).
_Alciphron_.
Alliance, The Holy.
_Anacreon, Odes of_ (Moore's Translation).
Anglesey, Lord.
_Anthologia Hibernica_.
Atkinson, Joseph.
Auckland, Lord.
B
_Belfast Commercial Chronicle_.
Bermuda.
Bishop, Sir Henry.
Blake.
Blessington, Lady.
Boswell.
_Bride of Abydos, The_ (Byron).
"Brown, Thomas".
Burke.
Burns.
Byron.
Byron's Memoirs.
Byron, Lady.
C
Campbell.
"Canadian Boat-song".
Canning.
-----, Lady.
_Captain Rock, History of_.
Carpenter (publisher).
Castlereagh, Lord.
Catholicism.
Catholic Emancipation.
Chantrey.
Charlotte, Princess of Wales.
_Childe Harold_ (Byron).
Church of Ireland.
Clarach, Seaghan.
Clare, Lord.
Coleridge.
_Corsair, The_ (Byron).
_Corruption and Intolerance_.
Corry, Isaac.
Cowper.
Crabbe.
Curran.
-----, Sarah.
D
Dante.
"Dear Harp of my Country" (quotation).
Donegal, Lady.
Doyle, Colonel.
"Drink to her who long" (quotation).
Dryden.
Dyke, Miss E..
-----, Miss H..
E
Edgeworth, Miss.
_Edinburgh Review, The_.
_Emancipation, Catholic_.
Emmet, Robert.
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (Byron).
_Epicurean, The_.
_Epistles and Odes_.
"Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eye".
_Evenings in Greece_.
_Examiner, The_.
F
_Fables_.
"Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour" (quotation).
"Feast of Roses at Cashmere, The" (quotation).
"Fire Worshippers, The" (quotation).
_Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, Life of_.
FitzGibbon, Lord Chancellor.
Fitzwilliam, Lord.
Fletcher.
_Fragments of College Exercises_.
_Freeman's Journal_.
_Fudge Family in Paris, The_.
_Fudge Family in Italy, The_.
_Fudges in England, The_.
G
George, Prince of Wales.
_Giaour, The_ (Byron).
Gibson, Mr. Andrew.
Godfrey, Miss.
Goethe's _Dr. Faustus_.
Goldsmith.
Grattan.
Gray.
Grey, Lord.
Griffin, Gerald.
Guiccioli, Countess.
H
Hardwicke, Lord.
"Harp that once, The".
Haydon (painter).
Heath (engraver).
Hobhouse.
Holland.
Horace.
Horton, Mr. Wilmot.
Hudson, Edward.
Hume, Dr. (Moore's friend).
Hunt, Leigh.
I
_Intercepted Letters; or The Twopenny Postbag_.
_Ireland, History of_.
Irish folk-songs.
_Irish Melodies_ (see _Melodies_).
"Irish Peasant to his Mistress, The.
Irish verse.
Irving, Washington.
J
Jackson (painter).
Jeffrey (_Edinburgh Review_).
K
Kearney, Dr.
Kinnaird, Douglas.
L
_Lalla Rookh_.
Landor.
Lansdowne, Marquis of.
Leigh, Mrs..
_Leinster Journal, The_.
Lessing.
"Little, Mr."
_Little, Poetical Works of the late Thomas_.
"Little Grand Lama, The".
Lockhart.
Longmans (publishers).
_Loves of the Angels, The_.
_Lyrical Ballads_ (Wordsworth).
M
Mackintosh, Sir James.
Mangan.
McNally, Leonard.
Marryat.
_Maud_ (Tennyson).
"Meeting of the Waters, The".
Melbourne, Lord.
_Melodies, Irish_.
_Melologue upon National Music_.
Milman.
Milton.
Moira, Lord.
Moore, Thomas,
birth and family history_;
precocious boyhood;
early verses;
schooldays;
Trinity College;
association with Robert Emmet;
entered at Middle Temple;
literary activity;
acquaintances in London;
presented to the Prince of Wales;
increasing social success;
publishes _Odes of Anacreon_;
_Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little_;
_Fragments of College Exercises_;
connection with Lord Moira;
goes to Bermuda;
visits America; widespread fame;
returns to England;
_Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems_;
attacked by _Edinburgh Review_;
challenges Jeffrey to a duel;
returns to Dublin;
inception of the _Irish Melodies_;
_Corruption and Intolerance_;
_The Sceptic_;
writes opera _M.P. or The Blue Stocking_;
marriage;
retires to the country;
commences _Lalla Rookh_;
_Intercepted Letters_;
_Sacred Songs_;
his reputation at its height;
contributes to the _Edinburgh Review_;
_Lalla Rookh_;
retires to Sloperton;
_The Fudge Family in Paris_;
financial troubles;
birth of a son;
begins the _Life of Sheridan_;
leaves England to escape imprisonment for debt;
declines offers of assistance from his friends;
life on the Continent;
visit to Byron;
lionised abroad;
end of his financial embarrassments;
_Loves of the Angels_;
returns to England;
_Odes on Cash, Catholics, and other matters_;
_The Fudges in England_;
_Fables for the Holy Alliance_;
_Rhymes on the Road_;
makes a tour through Ireland;
_History of Captain Rock and his Ancestors_;
difficulties with regard to Byron's Memoirs;
_Life of Sheridan_;
contributes to _The Times_;
death of his father;
story of his quarrel with Byron;
his friendship with Byron;
_Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald_;
_Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion_;
_History of Ireland_;
end of his literary career;
visit to Sir Walter Scott;
honoured in Ireland;
invited to enter Parliament;
receives a pension of £300 a year;
domestic troubles;
culmination of his sorrows;
illness and death; general appreciation;
Reputation on the Continent;
popularity;
causes of his popularity;
his own estimate of his work;
his wide reading;
literary models;
a careful craftsman;
characteristics of his verse;
his failures;
licentiousness of his poetry;
methods of composition;
limitations and defects of his poetry;
essentially an amatory poet;
his satiric verses;
his lyrics;
ease and variety of his rhythms;
source of his rhythms;
his finest lyrics;
an artist in metre;
comparison with other poets;
supremacy in the writing of lighter lyrics;
uses of rhyme;
his poetry understood by all;
connection with Irish literature;
musical gifts;
politics;
religious views;
devotion to his parents and home;
personal appearance;
charm of manner;
friendships;
his acting;
financial affairs;
independence and high-mindedness;
love for Ireland;
a ladies' man;
intimacy with persons of title.
_Moore, Memoirs of_ (Lord John Russell).
-----, John (father).
-----, Mrs. (mother).
-----, Katherine (sister).
-----, Ellen (sister).
-----, Mrs., Bessy, _née_ Dyke (wife).
Moore, Barbara (daughter).
-----, Olivia (daughter).
-----, Anastasia (daughter).
-----, Thomas (son).
-----, Russell (son).
_Morning Chronicle, The_.
Morpeth, Lord.
_M.P. or The Blue Stocking_.
Murray (publisher).
N
Napier, Sir William.
Napoleon.
_National Airs_ (of Ireland).
O
"O breathe not his name" (quotation).
O'Connell.
_Odes on Cash, Catholics, and other matters_.
"Oh, Where's the slave so lowly" (quotation).
P
Panizzi.
_Paradise and the Peri_.
Parr, Dr.
Peel, Sir Robert.
Pope.
_Postbag, The_,.
Powers (music publishers).
Praed.
Prior.
Protestantism.
Prout, Father.
R
Raftery.
"Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word" (quotation).
Reform Bill.
_Reuben and Rose_.
_Rhymes on the Road_.
_Ring, The_.
_Rock, Captain, History of_.
Rogers, Samuel.
_Rokeby_ (Scott).
Romilly, Sir Samuel.
Ronsard.
Russell, Lord John.
S
_Sacred Songs_.
"Sad one of Sion" (quotation).
_Sceptic, The_.
Scott.
Shakespeare.
Shelley.
"She is far from the land" (quotation).
Sheridan.
_Sheridan, Life of_.
"Sheridan, Death of" (quotation).
Sloperton.
Smith, Sydney.
Southey.
Staël, Madame de.
Stevenson, Sir John.
"Sweet was the hour" (quotation).
Swinburne.
T
Tandy, Napper.
Tavistock, Lord.
Tennyson.
"Time I've lost in wooing, The" (quotation).
_Times, The_.
_Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress_.
_Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion_.
Trinity College, Dublin.
Troy, Archbishop.
"'Twas thus by the shade" (quotation).
"'Twas when the world was in its prime" (quotation).
U
Union, Repeal of.
V
_Veiled Prophet, The_.
W
Wellesley, Lord.
Wellington, Duke of.
"When first I met thee" (quotation).
"When he who adores thee" (quotation).
Whyte, Samuel.
"Woodpecker, The,".
Wordsworth.
Y
Yeats.
"Young May moon is beaming, love, The," (quotation).
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