MOORE, Thomas, one of the most accomplished and versatile authors of the nineteenth century, and pre-eminently the poet of Ireland, was a native of Dublin, in which city his father carried on business as a small grocer and spirit-dealer. He was born on the 28th of May 1779. His parents were of genuine Celtic-Irish descent, Roman Catholics, devoted to poetry and music, and possessing the quick sensibilities and warm domestic affections common among their countrymen. The poet's mother (to whom he was fondly attached) seems to have been a woman of great vivacity and spirit; and she joined with his first school-master, Samuel Whyte (who had been the teacher of Richard Brinsley Sheridan), in cultivating in her son a taste for recitation, music, and theatrical performances, in which he early became distinguished. He was made a "show-child," as he confesses; and in a certain sense this character continued with him to the last, the scene being shifted from the gay social circles and private theatres of Dublin to the saloons of Holland House, Bowood, and other patrician mansions of the English aristocracy. Almost from infancy Moore had been accustomed to act, sing, and rhyme; and in his fourteenth year he appeared as a contributor to a Dublin magazine. His juvenile verses he afterwards characterized as "mere mock-birds' song," which is true of nearly all boyish rhymes; but in the department
of versification the Irish poet, guided by an exquisite ear, was from the first correct and harmonious.
In 1793 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were relaxed, and Moore was enabled to enter Trinity College as a student of his native university. The country was then agitated by political excitement, the offspring of the French revolution, acting upon a keen sense of national wrongs and humiliation. The poet sympathized with his oppressed Roman Catholic countrymen, and was intimate with Emmet and the other young and ardent spirits who rushed into the memorable conspiracy and outbreak of 1798; but he joined in none of their secret unions or wild revolutionary schemes. He completed his college course and took his degree of B.A. in 1798, after which he proceeded to London. Of the small sum of money which he carried with him, part, he says, was in guineas, carefully sewed in the waistband of his pantaloons by his mother, and along with the gold she had inclosed a scapular, or bit of cloth blessed by the priest! The good woman's prayers no doubt accompanied this treasure, and were more potent than the charm. In repairing to London, Moore had two objects in view—first, to study law in the Middle Temple, and then, as subsidiary to this professional purpose, to publish a translation of the Odes of Anacreon by subscription. With the law he made little progress; but his subscription was highly successful. He obtained an introduction to the Earl of Moira; the Earl introduced him to the Prince of Wales; and the poet's winning address, his scholarship, singing, and genial buoyancy of spirits, soon made him a favourite in fashionable and influential circles. His Anacreon appeared in 1800, dedicated by permission to the Prince. All who had listened to the "warbling" of the young translator, and who took an interest in his fortunes, were loud in praise of the work; while by critics and scholars it was considered as at least better than any preceding version of the Greek poet, with the exception of the few inimitable paraphrases by Cowley. "Anacreon Moore," as he was now called, ventured next year on a volume of original verse, which he put forth under the title of The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq. The name of "Little" was a thin disguise, thrown off after the first edition, and originally adopted in playful allusion to the poet's diminutive stature; for Moore, as Walter Scott observed, was the smallest of men, not to be deformed. He was, as Goldsmith said of Garrick, "an abridgment of all that is pleasant in man." The poems were amatory productions, elaborately polished, and remarkably melodious in style and diction; but the chief distinction and peculiarity of the volume was its Ovidian warmth and prurience, bordering on libertinism, which exposed its author to just and severe censure. Part was afterwards omitted from the collected edition of his works. Moore was not studiously immoral—his fancy played the profligate, not his heart; and one of his Irish friends, with a touch of native humour, compared him to "an infant sporting on the bosom of Venus." Through the influence of Lord Moira the poet obtained a government appointment—that of registrar to the Admiralty in Bermuda, which he took possession of in October 1804. The little islands, so delicious in climate, fruits, flowers, and foliage, appeared to him all fairyland; and his arrival was the signal for a succession of fêtes and gaieties. But when business was forced on his attention, it soon became obvious that the new appointment was no lucrative prize, and that even a Spanish war would not make his income worth staying for. Three months of Bermuda sufficed; a deputy was engaged, and the poet returned to England, travelling over part of the United States and North America, during which he visited, with a poet's enthusiasm, the Falls of Niagara. He reached London, after fourteen months' absence, in November 1804. The result of his journey was a volume of Odes and Epistles,
published in 1806, and dedicated to Lord Moira. The work was well fitted to extend the poet's reputation. The Epistles contain many passages of beautiful and striking description, and are animated by a glow of generous sentiment, and a display of refined scholarly taste and subtle imagination peculiar to Moore among all the poets of his age. Some of the lyrical pieces in the volume—as the "Canadian Boat Song" and "The Woodpecker"—were set to music and instantly became popular. The work, however, was attacked with great asperity in the Edinburgh Review. Moore had indulged in severe strictures on the republican institutions and society of America, and some of the poems were tinged with that licentious freedom characteristic of the "Little" volume. Jeffrey branded the poet as a deliberate corrupter of the public morals. Moore replied by sending a challenge, and a hostile but bloodless meeting took place (August 12, 1806), which furnished a topic for nine days' wonder and ridicule, and proved the commencement of an acquaintance and life-long friendship between poet and critic.
About this time a musical publisher, Mr Power, projected a collection of the best original Irish melodies, with characteristic symphonies and accompaniments, and with words containing as frequently as possible allusions to Irish manners and history. Moore entered cordially into this patriotic undertaking, which ultimately became an important work, both as respected his fame and emoluments, and was extended to ten numbers. He knew the difficulty of the task. "The poet," he said, "who would follow the various sentiments which the airs express must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity, which composes the character of his countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music." All this he felt and appreciated, and amply fulfilled. Burns alone has excelled Moore as a song-writer. If a third were added to form a lyrical trio, Béranger might be named; and all were intensely national, familiar with every shade of sentiment, prejudice, and feeling, in their countrymen. Moore has said that the real source of his poetic talent was the effort to translate into words the different feelings and passions which melody seemed to him to express; and his genius, thus inspired, ranged over all the fields of Irish song and story,—now swelling into heroic and martial verse, now revelling in joyous festivity, love, and wine, and now melting in strains of mournful regret, tenderness, and pathos. The union of poetry and music, their natural affinity and blended power, was never more felicitously exemplified than in these lyrics of Moore—the most universally popular, and, it may safely be predicted, the most imperishable of all his works. To the Irish Melodies were afterwards added National Airs, Sacred Songs, Legendary Ballads, Evenings in Greece, a Set of Glees (with music, also by the poet), and a number of separate songs and ballads. The lyric department of his poetry was at once the most voluminous and the most popular, and was constantly receiving additions.
For some years Moore was partially dependent on Lord Moira, and resided at his lordship's seat of Donnington Park. In 1811, however, he ventured on a step which gave a new turn to his feelings and prospects; he married a young Irish actress, Miss Dyke, the faithful "Bessy" of his Journal, who appears to have been every way worthy of his affection. Literature was now necessary as a profession; and in order that he might prosecute it with less interruption, Moore fixed his residence in an English village. He had an idea that the Irish neither fight nor write well on their own soil, and he seems never to have contemplated returning permanently to Ireland. He went to Kegworth in Leicestershire, but in the same year removed to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, in the county of Derby; and this spot may claim the honour due to scenes of poetical interest and vene-
ration, for there Moore composed the best of his Melodies, and the greatest of his poems, Lalla Rookh. There was still a lingering hope that Lord Moira might be able to obtain some favourable appointment for the poet. His lordship was not indisposed to exert his influence, but his power was small; and in 1812 the removal of this nobleman to India put an end to Moore's expectations. He was averse to any application being made in his behalf to the ministry, and was resolved, he said, to work out his independence by industry. He had a justifiable reliance on the facility and versatility of his pen, and only wanted prudence to be one of the richest, as he was one of the best rewarded, of modern authors.
In 1813 Moore produced a political satire, Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-Bag, a series of light yet pungent rhyming epistles, suggested, perhaps, by Anstey's New Bath Guide, and which hit the public taste so well that thirteen editions were called for in a twelvemonth. The new and successful vein thus laid open was well cultivated in after years. Moore had previously tried the stately or Juvenalian style of satire; and in the years 1808 and 1809 produced three poems, Corruption, Intolerance, and The Sceptic, but they were heavy productions, and excited no attention. The lighter form of weapon to which he now betook himself was not only, he said, more easy to wield, but more sure to reach its mark. Up to the close of his poetical career Moore continued to throw off political squibs or satires on the topics of the day, and they are unsurpassed in our whole literature for wit, ingenuity, and brilliancy. They were published in the columns of the Morning Chronicle and Times, and seem to have brought their author an income of £400 or £500 a year. His imagination, he said, was the sole or chief prompter of this satire. It was possible, he conceived, to shower ridicule on a political adversary without allowing a single feeling of real bitterness to mix itself with the operation. Without a lively and fertile imagination such things could not indeed have been written; but Moore was a partisan as well as a poet; he felt keenly on all questions affecting his Irish Roman Catholic brethren, he was in daily association with the Whig leaders, and he had, besides, the natural antipathy of wit and genius to official dulness and pretence. But perhaps the main cause why a poet so little prone to bitterness should have so often and so long persisted in the use of this "flying artillery" of party warfare, was the unexampled popularity of his satires, and the large sums of money he obtained for them. When a few hours' occasional labour, that partook as much of amusement as of task-work, produced a cheque for a hundred pounds, and elicited immediate congratulation and applause, little else was required to stimulate the imagination. Moore was a man of quick rather than of strong or deep feeling; to such indignation or hatred as that of Swift he was a stranger. The political wrongs and injustice that lacerated the soul of Swift only awakened the poetical fancy and exercised the lively satirical ingenuity and wit of Moore.
The circumstances attending the publication of Lalla Rookh form an interesting chapter in literary history. In December 1814 the Messrs Longman, publishers, stipulated to give Moore the sum of £3000 for a poem of the same length as Scott's Robey. They had seen no part of the work, and had to encounter, of course, the risk of failure; but they placed implicit trust in the genius and honour of Moore, and in the almost unbounded popularity of his name. After more than two years' delay the transaction was completed by the publication, in May 1817, of this eastern romance; and it is gratifying to be able to add that the enterprising and confiding publishers were fully compensated for their liberality and boldness, the poem having in the first year gone through seven editions. It possessed, indeed, all the elements of instant and decided success. Lalla Rookh
abounds in picturesque and highly-wrought delineations of Eastern scenery and manners. It has the interest and attraction of four romantic tales, happily linked together by a small golden thread of narrative; it has a profusion of similes and sparkling imagery, and in some of the characters and incidents there are pictures of the loftiest heroism and the tenderest love. The versification is varied, spirited, and harmonious. The poet moves in the fetters of rhyme, whether in the heroic measure of Dryden or in the octo-syllabic verse of Scott, with the ease and grace of Ariel himself; and Ariel could not have desired a greater command of voluptuous sweets—of bowers of roses and nightingales, crystal fountains and fragrant groves, made radiant by the Houris of the East. The subject justified a large amount of this ornamental splendour and sensuous beauty; and the poet drew his materials from diligent study of oriental histories and books of travel. All is correct in external embellishment, costume, and decoration. The defect of the poem is its very riches. There is too much glitter and perfume; too many startling contrasts of loveliness and deformity, of rapture and agony; too visible a presence of art and preparation. The reader is lost in admiration, but gets fatigued as in a picture-gallery or hot-house, and sighs for the fresh breeze and simple aspects of nature.
While enjoying this new accession of fame and of release from the responsibility of an anxious engagement, Moore accepted an offer from Mr Rogers to accompany him to Paris. They spent a month in the French capital, and it furnished matter for Moore's next work, The Fudge Family in Paris, a satire which, he says, "prospered amazingly—five editions in less than a fortnight, and his share of the profits for that time £350." The Marquis of Lansdowne had long wished the poet to take up his abode somewhere in his neighbourhood, and Moore removed to Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes, which was within an easy walking distance of Bowood. His settlement in this neat and modest poetical mansion (a thatched cottage, with garden, rented at £40 a-year) was followed by what seemed at first to be a serious and almost irremediable misfortune. His deputy at Bermuda proved faithless, having not only kept back part of the receipts of the office, but appropriated to his own use the proceeds of a sale of ship and cargo, deposited in his hands by some American merchants. The poet was involved, it was feared, to the extent of £6000; and a suit was instituted against him in the Admiralty Court. Attempts were made at a compromise with the crown and the American creditors; and while these were pending, the poet, ever sanguine and light-hearted, resumed his literary labours and social festivities. His next poem was a "flash satire," entitled Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress, published in March 1819. In July the Bermuda cause was finally decided in court, and an attachment was issued against Moore's person. One friend advised him to seek an asylum for a short time in Ireland, another recommended a retreat to the sanctuary at Holyrood, and a third counselled him to fly to France. All offers of pecuniary assistance from his friends he steadily declined. He went to France; and shortly after his arrival in Paris (Sept. 1819) he went with Lord John Russell on a journey to Italy. They travelled together as far as Milan, the poet having by the way "shuddered and shed tears" over the mighty panorama of the Alps, which he saw in all its sunset glory. Lord John took the route to Genoa, and Moore proceeded alone on a visit to Lord Byron at his villa near Venice. He subsequently extended his tour to Rome, and was fortunate enough to fall in with two eminent English artists, Chantrey and Jackson, with whom he returned to Paris. This tour called forth a volume of Rhymes on the Road—miscellaneous pieces of unequal merit, but embodying the poet's impressions of the magnificent ascent of the Simplon, the appearance of Venice, and the glories of ancient art.
On all such subjects the inferiority of Moore to Byron, thus made apparent, was strikingly manifest. Some reviewing for Jeffrey, and some additional Melodies for Power, helped to supply the exigencies of life in Paris; but Moore's celebrity and multifarious acquaintance were fatal to anything like severe study. Had he taken refuge in Holyrood he would have been saved many temptations, but he would also have missed much enjoyment; and his satirical poetry would perhaps have lost some of the Attic point and polish which familiarity with high life and public affairs in different countries was fitted to impart. At length, in September 1822, Moore received the welcome intelligence that he might safely return to England. The Bermuda claims had been reduced to a thousand guineas: towards this sum the uncle of the deputy contributed £300, and the Marquis of Lansdowne deposited the remaining portion (£750) in the hands of a banker, to be in readiness for the final settlement of the demand. Moore allowed the deposit to be thus applied, but immediately reimbursed his noble friend by a cheque on his publishers for the amount. And thus the harassing claim which had hung as an ominous cloud over the poet's household for more than three years was easily and independently liquidated.
The first publication of Moore, after his return to his Wiltshire cottage, was another romantic poem, The Loves of the Angels, founded on eastern story and rabbinical fictions, that allegorized the fall of the soul of man from its original purity. He next resumed satire in poetry and prose, having published Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823) and Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824). The latter is a lively epitome of Irish history, in which, under the name of a celebrated Irish chieftain, he detailed the violence and insurrection that had sprung from systematic oppression. Though bearing the character of a party pamphlet or special pleading, this volume evinced considerable research and a happy talent for dealing with historical and statistical facts. The same qualities were more strikingly displayed in his Life of Sheridan, published in 1825. As a work of contemporary history and biography, illustrated by personal anecdote and criticism, Moore's Life of Sheridan told much that was new and interesting; it was fairly and candidly written, presenting passages of powerful reasoning and eloquence; and was only objected to on the ground that it was too full of ornament and metaphor, the author having intruded poetry into the sober domain of historical prose. His next work was still more ornate, but there embellishment was graceful and appropriate. The Epicurean, a Tale, published by Moore in 1827, is the story of a young Epicurean philosopher who, in the reign of Valerian, visits Egypt, falls in love with an Egyptian maid, and ultimately, through her counsels and martyrdom, becomes a convert to Christianity. The philosophy and pathos of this little tale, and its exquisite descriptions, render it unique and unrivalled for brilliance among our works of fiction.
In 1830 appeared The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore, 2 vols. 4to. Thus modestly was ushered into the world a work that had cost Moore infinite trouble and anxiety, and which forms by far the most important and valuable of his prose productions. The noble poet had written memoirs of his own life—an autobiography, more or less complete, up to 1820—which he presented to his friend for publication after his death. Pressed as he always was by pecuniary necessities, Moore in 1821 sold the Byron manuscript to Mr Murray for 2000 guineas. In 1824 that event occurred which fell upon all Europe with grief and surprise—Byron suddenly died; and his friends became alarmed on account of the disclosures that might be made in the memoirs. Mr Murray expressed his willingness to give up the manuscript on repayment of his money with interest, and Moore unhappily was led into an arrangement by which the 2000 guineas were refunded,
and the manuscript reclaimed and burnt. That he acted from honourable and chivalrous feelings cannot be doubted. The pecuniary loss was to him a heavy sacrifice; but it must ever be matter of regret that he was precipitated into such a step. Byron had intrusted his defence to his hands; he owed a solemn duty to the memory of his friend and benefactor, and the public had a right to know
What desolating grief, what wrongs had driven
That noble nature into cold eclipse.
Whatever was objectionable in the memoirs (not amounting, according to Lord John Russell, to more than three or four pages) could easily have been expunged, or the publication might have been deferred for years, like the memoirs of Walpole, but now all was lost; and the rash act of destruction was equally a fraud on the memory of Byron and on the public. But though thus swayed by a fastidious delicacy and deference to Lord Byron's family and early friends, Moore was afterwards enabled to erect a suitable and lasting memorial of his friend. His Life of Byron is one of the most interesting and instructive of biographies, conceived in a right spirit, and executed with singular ability, care, and judgment. Considered merely as a composition, this work deserves, as Lord Macaulay has remarked, "to be classed among the best specimens of English prose which our age has produced." And as the fame of Moore was thus placed on its highest pinnacle, his fortunes were no less benefited. For the copyright of the Life of Mr Murray gave the large sum of 4000 guineas, besides furnishing no inconsiderable part of the letters and journals with which the work is enriched.
With the Life of Byron may be said to close the happy and brilliant portion of Moore's literary career. He still held on his course, however, though with subdued vigour, and, until his faculties were clouded by mental disease, was rarely a day without some effort at composition. His social celebrity also continued. In 1831 he published a slight poetical performance, The Summer Fête, commemorating a holiday gathering at Boyle Farm in Ireland; and the same year he issued Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the weak but amiable victim of Irish insurrection. In 1833 he ventured on a polemical, but to him congenial, subject, Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion. Moore, though indifferent to mere forms of faith, still adhered to his old Roman Catholic creed, and vindicated what he conceived to be its superiority to all others in truth and antiquity. In 1835 appeared the first volume of his History of Ireland, written for Lardner's Cyclopaedia, and extending to four volumes. He bestowed pains and research on this work, but without success adequate to his labour: it was too long and close for a popular digest, yet not sufficiently critical or learned to render it an authority on Irish history. In 1841 and 1842 he collected his poetical works, writing short prefaces to each volume, and adding some additional verses. He still occasionally threw off a squib or song, and he contemplated writing the life of Sydney Smith, a task well suited to his powers had it been required ten years earlier; but disease was now dealing with the accomplished and indefatigable worker. A softening of the brain took place, as in the cases of Swift, Scott, and Southey, and he sank by slow degrees into a state of helpless infirmity and childishness, though happily free from pain. The latter years of the poet had been darkened by domestic grief and calamity. His three children had predeceased him—one of his sons having by his imprudence seriously embarrassed his father, and occasioned to both parents the most poignant distress. In 1835 a pension of L.300 per annum was conferred on Moore, and in 1850 a pension of L.100 was settled on his wife, "in consideration of the literary merits of her husband, and his infirm state of health." The poet lingered on for two years longer, lost to the world, and died at Sloperton Cottage on the 26th of February 1852, being
then in the seventy-third year of his age. It is a touching and characteristic trait of his last illness that he "warbled" or sung on the day of his death.
The Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence of Moore, edited by Lord John Russell, have been published in eight volumes; and a volume of Notes from his letters to his music-publisher James Power, has also been given to the public. The best excuse for the voluminous, unconnected, and unsatisfactory work of Lord John Russell, is the fact that Moore left his papers for publication by his noble friend in order that some provision might be made for his family after his decease; and that Lord John obtained for the MSS. a sum of L.3000, which was invested for the benefit of the poet's widow. Lord John did little as editor; at least one-half of the diary should have been thrown out, and explanatory notes added to much of the remainder, if not the whole recast; but what he has written of his friend is honourable to his taste, judgment, and feelings. From the diary and other biographical materials we know more of the Irish poet, of his outer and inner life, than of any other of his illustrious contemporaries. His daily round of existence was of a very uniform tenor. His mornings were chiefly spent in study, his best poetry being composed in his garden or in the neighbouring fields. His evenings were devoted to society, and no poet—not even Pope—ever lived more among the great. In the country he enjoyed the refined intellectual hospitalities of Bowood; in London his company was eagerly courted in all circles. His table was covered with invitations. Authors, artists, booksellers, and musicians, ran after him. His journal for weeks together, through successive years, is little else than a record of morning visits, dinners, balls, the opera and theatres. The time and money thus spent kept him perpetually in difficulties. He could rarely leave home without forestalling the fruits of his brain by drawing on the Messrs Longman, on Power (his friendly banker on all occasions), or on the editor of the Times, and his literary tasks were in this way often delayed, and at last hurriedly finished. He saw the folly of such a course of splendid dissipation, and throughout it all he retained a relish for the quiet pleasures of home. But he could not resist the fascination of popular applause—the tumultuous delight with which his presence was hailed by the great, the beautiful, the witty, and accomplished; and the tears which were profusely shed over the songs he sung with so much sweetness. Never was vanity more fully gratified, or life more thoroughly enjoyed. No shadow could remain long on so bright and sunny a nature—his elastic gaiety of spirit was an overmatch for fortune! With most men this kind of existence would have led to a coarse unamiable selfishness; it did so with Sheridan and Byron, and we do not say that Moore escaped from it without injury—his vanity, like his demands on publishers, was apt to be exorbitant and unscrupulous. It was too much at times for his truth and affection. But altogether Moore was a man cast in a kindly, generous, and happy mould. In his intercourse with the great, though fed with soft flatteries all day long, and "dearly loving a lord," as Byron said, he preserved in a remarkable degree his independence, his frank cordiality, and freshness of feeling. He was, like Pope and Gray, devotedly attached to his mother (to whom he wrote two letters a week), he loved his wife and children, took a warm interest in all cheap and innocent pleasures, and tried to make every one about him happy. His love of Ireland was a principle or passion of a nobler stamp. Her he served with all his soul and strength, uplifting her banner in the hour of darkness and danger; and with the names of Grattan and Curran as Irish patriots, that of Thomas Moore will be for ever associated. (u. c—s.)