Chapter VI (2)

In 1793, at which time the French Revolution was suggesting to the kings of Europe a little leniency to their people, Moore was permitted by the repeal of a penal statute, to enter Trinity College Dublin—a Protestant University. Here, being always anxious to distinguish himself, he gave in a specimen of English verse at one of the examinations, and was gratified by the praise of the examiners and a copy of the Voyage of Anacharsis—a book which must have greatly helped to Orientalize the genius of Moore. His first step in regular authorship was the publication of the Translation of Anacreon the Greek poet. His sprightly facility of weaving verse had been exercised during his stay in College, on this congenial task; and in 1799, when nineteen years old, he went to London to keep his terms as a barrister at the Middle Temple, and to bring out his English Anacreontics. These last he was permitted, through the interest of some of his aristocratic Irish patrons, to dedicate to George, the Prince Regent—against whom, nevertheless, at a future period, Moore discharged some of his sharpest arrows of personal and political satire. After the publication of the lyrics, this young poet gradually gave up his idea of becoming a lawyer. Themis and her Courts were relinquished for _Musa lyræ solers et cantor Apollo_; law was completely driven out of his head by the gay society into which his poetical and musical qualities introduced him, and he seems to have looked more to the patronage of his titled friends and the trade of authorship than to any settled walk or profession. The Earl of Moira was his great patron, and the influence of this nobleman raised the young Irishman to a companionship with the highest and most refined societies of the land. And certainly, the son of a Dublin grocer—a Catholic, too—must have possessed, in a very wonderful degree, the accomplishments and amenities of the head and heart which could thus win the favor and friendship of a very exclusive and fastidious class. Moore’s temperament was, in fact, a happy one, and counseled as well by prudence as his love of pleasure, he exerted himself to the utmost to conciliate the partiality of the aristocracy and to live at ease among them.

About this time, 1801-2, he spent a good deal of his time at Donington Park, the seat of the Earl of Moira, “under whose princely roof,” as he says himself—(and great was the charm which these princely roofs ever had for the poet!) “I used often and long in those days find a hospitable home.” Here the young Irishman became somewhat intimate with kings and princes—members of Bourbon and Orleans families of France; for whom he was in the habit of playing and singing, and with whom he could bandy courtesies and converse. These were the Count of Provence, afterward Charles X.; Louis Philippe and his brothers Montpensier and Beaujolais—“all dismounted cavalry,” as Curran called them, in a whisper, when he first found himself sitting among them; and with these the Duke de Lorge, the Baron de Rolle, and many others of the emigrant _noblesse_. No wonder Moore’s ideas should be so redolent of sparkling wines, exquisite shapes of beauty, and all the perfume and rose-color of life. He lived at Donington in the happiest and most luxurious manner; and the range of a magnificent library was not wanting to complete the aristocratic charm of his existence at that period. Shut up in it for whole days he has felt, in the midst of his schemes of authorship, like Prospero in his enchanted island. How different was the fate of his old friend, Robert Emmett! At that very time the latter was plotting desperately against the English government, and preparing that rebellious uprising in which he perished.

In 1803, at the early age of 23, Moore began to reap some of the solid fruits of his connection with the English aristocracy. He got the place of Registrar of the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda, through the interest of the Earl of Moira, and went to the island to take possession of his office. But instead of doing the duties of it, he procured a deputy, and went rambling and rhyming over the islands and on the continent of America. He highly enjoyed the natural softness and beauty of the Summer Islands; but many a song and poetical epistle proved that “his heart was in Albion—his heart was not there”—that he was sighing for what he called

The flourishing Isle of the brave and the free,

the splendid hospitalities of Donington and the _pays de cocagne_ of the British aristocracy in general.

Passing from Bermuda, he came to Norfolk in Virginia, and thence made a pretty lengthened tour through the States, by Washington, Philadelphia, Buffalo and the lakes. The young votary of the Anacreontic muses—the musical pet of the higher English circles—did not like the American Democracy at all, and has left on record about as unfavorable an opinion and prophecy concerning the republic as has been written at any time since. Every thing seemed tough and unrefined; and when he made his bow to President Thomas Jefferson, he felt a mental shock from the sight of that simple man, wearing “Connemara stockings and slippers,” at the head of a nation. To be sure the society of British officers and Federal Whigs among whom he chose his friends and acquaintances was not calculated to impress him with any favorable idea of the democratic party. But, every allowance made, Moore said enough to show that, Catholic as he was, and come of plebeian forefathers (at least in an _immediate_ manner; for the name O’Moore is high on the old rolls of Irish peerage and rebellion) he never had any hearty sympathy with republicanism and the cause of the people. He was all for the glorious distinctions of rank and historic _prestige_—the pride, pomp and circumstance of lordly life; and, in fact, looked on America as a sort of moral wilderness. He had no hopes of it, indeed. He said society here was rotten to the core; and he wrote poetical prophecies of its speedy decay and disappearance from among the nations of the earth!

And yet there were many things here to conciliate the fastidiousness of the young traveler. Among the other tokens of an exceptional civilization, was one which he himself recalls with an evident feeling of gratified pride. The American master of the packet in which he crossed Ontario—knowing that the young gentleman was a poet—the author of “Anacreon Translated,” and “Juvenile Poems and Songs”—refused to accept any money for his passage—would thus show his sense of what was due to literature! We believe very few ship-masters in any of the old countries would have done so courteously magnanimous a thing as that; and Moore himself probably thought so too. The poet was, in fact, much better pleased with the natural scenery than the people of the continent; and scattered through the verses occasioned by his visit will be found many tributes to the picturesque wildernesses he passed through. Speaking of Niagara and other grand scenes he says—

Oh lady, there are miracles which man
Caged in the bounds of Europe’s narrow span
Can scarcely dream of—which his eye must see
To know how wonderful this world can be.

Moore, as well as hundreds of others, has left us his first impressions on the sight of Niagara Falls. He says, “When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening, and I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract in my ears. The day following I consider a sort of era in my life: and the first glimpse I got of that wonderful cataract gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where a full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters folding smoothly over the edge of the precipice, and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality; and vast and wonderful as was the scene that then opened upon me my first feeling was that of disappointment. . . But in spite of the start thus got by imagination the triumph of the reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole mind, presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as well as elevating thoughts. . . I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking on the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum.”

In 1806 Moore republished his Juvenile Poems, along with the translations and those poems written at Bermuda and in America. But the Edinburgh Review came down upon the book with the sharpest force of sarcasm and severity. The first publication of his licentious love-songs, it said, might have been excused by the great youth of the poet, but the republication was atrociously prepense and unpardonable. The poor lyric butterfly was broken terribly upon the wheel; but not so much as to disable him (—we mean the _poet_—changing the figure) from challenging the Auld Reekie editor; and the bard and critic—Francis Jeffrey—met at Chalk Farm, to settle their differences by the duello. But the police officers were too quick for them, and arrested both; whereupon it was reported, amidst much laughter of the press and public, that there were no balls in the pistols! Moore went to the trouble of denying that he knew the state of his adversary’s engine or his own. In this violent business the poet’s feelings were sorely tried. But his publisher managed to thrive upon the business. The book had, of course, received a very unexpected advertisement. Moore’s vexations did not terminate with the foregoing. Over two years afterward, when young Lord Byron, then in his twentieth year, charged gallantly down upon all the poets, poetasters and critics of the English Parnassus, he laughed at the duel, among the other matters, and “Little’s leadless pistol.” Here was another outrage; and out came our poet once more with a challenge to the peer. But his lordship had gone off to make material for his Giaours and Childe Harolds in the East, and the letter remained unread till his return, near two years after. By this time, his “sensitive and surly” feelings had gone off, and he wrote to Moore a frank and good-natured reply. The latter, who had, in the interim, married his wife—Miss Dyke—and thus given hostages to fortune, felt how much pleasanter it would be to have the young baron’s friendship than his bullet in the body, and therefore wrote a very warm _Irish_ letter in return, which paved the way to their mutual friendship. On this occasion Rogers got Byron, Moore and Campbell together round his mahogany, and there they became acquainted with one another, and shook hands all round, for the first time.

In 1808 and 1809 Moore published his poems, “Intolerance” and “Corruption,” satires; one on the English Constitution, and the other on the English Church. They are fluent, but want vigor, and are read no longer. In the “Skeptic” he writes like a good Catholic who prefers ignorant obedience in all matters of Faith to the philosophy of Locke. But he now prepared to sing a loftier strain. His next publication was the First and Second Numbers of the Irish Melodies—a work which will secure to him whatever immortality awaits his name. The melodies became popular, at once, in England and Ireland alike. The sparkling grace and flexibility of his verse presented an agreeable contrast to the generality of songs sung at that period. The mixture of vivacity, pathos, and epigrammatic point in their composition placed their author at the head of modern song-writers; and, if the politics of poor Ireland were doomed to be disastrous, the poetry of her beautiful music now found itself vindicated and triumphant in the halls and palaces of the British aristocracy. There was a savor of rebellion in some of these songs which wonderfully took the fashionable fancy of the English; while in Ireland the repeated allusions to the ancient glories of the land, and the graceful sorrow which seemed to weep its many misfortunes, touched the popular heart, and led the people—(we mean the reading people)—to look on Moore as the genuine poet of Erin, and to applaud him accordingly.

As for the poet himself, it would seem that his sympathy with his native land was more a matter of sentiment than of practical reality. He could excite the finest feelings of drawing-room rebellion. But he was not a Tyrtæus to rouse up that deeper and more daring sentiment which prompts people to rush into the field. He was the friend and college-mate of Emmett and other disaffected spirits; and attended the Debating and Historic Societies in which these ardent and enlightened young men, mostly Protestants, spoke of the rights of man and the liberty of Ireland. They were members of United Irish Societies; but Moore never belonged to the last. The influence of his parents and relations was exercised against the malcontent spirit of the time; and when the unhappy rebellion was crushed, the young bard went to seek his fortune in the very heart of the English aristocracy. There Moore’s patriotism was subdued and refined; and it ever afterward delighted to exhibit itself in the language of polemics and lyric poetry. The Irish sentiment of the Irish Melodies is not strong enough to nourish any sort of rebellion upon. It is remarkable that, in all Moore’s historic allusions, he seldom or never speaks of the prowess of the Irish against the English—the struggles of the Desmonds, O’Neills, O’Moores, and so forth, against the Henries, Elizabeth, or the Stuarts. He goes back into the indistinct times of Milesian sway, the palace of Tara, and the stand of Brian or Malachi against the Danes. He passes over the recent and authentic, such as would come more home to the present period, and weeps or flushes, with remarkable prudence, among the legends and the whole Irish apocrypha. But it would be too much, perhaps, to expect that the little Catholic boy, whose early impressions were formed in the midst of the aristocratic societies of Dublin, to which he was admitted on sufferance, a gratified guest, could ever grow up a democrat or a rebel.

Indeed it is not difficult to discover from the tone of Moore’s writings that he had formed a low opinion of Irish nationality—entertained a poor notion of its past glories of all sorts, and little hope that Ireland would ever do any thing to right herself. Indeed, if Ireland had not her beautiful melodies, to suggest the weaving of lyric verse, and to give it some promise of immortality, we should not probably have had so much Irish reminiscence from Moore. It is, in fact, by a sort of poetic licence, that he allows himself, in some of his songs, to sing with an air of heroism or pathos, of those ancient men and things, in which he himself, as may be gathered from the pages of his History of Ireland, and from other places, had a very slender historical faith. But, after all, the Melodies are beautiful things, and deserve the fame they have won. They are full of felicities, and the hearts have been cold indeed that have been able to resist the fascination they exercise, in congenial moments, whether spoken or sung. The charm of an exquisite phraseology sparkles everywhere, and the feelings with which we hear them sung, seem incapable of more apt and musical expression.

In the intervals of several numbers of the Melodies Moore employed himself on other things. In 1812, he began to think of his great romance—his Opus Magnum—Lalla Rookh. Moore gives us the history of this poem, manufacture, sale and all; but the sale of it (in MS.) went before the manufacture. It was sold to the Messrs. Longman for 3000 guineas—not pounds: literary payments in England having been and being still made, by respectable publishers, in the more aristocratic coin. Mr. Perry, proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, made the bargain for his friend, the bard, and we suspect that without his influence and shrewdness, Moore would not have got that sum. For poets, and people of refined feelings, are the worst hands at a bargain in the world, as everybody knows. Perry said the poet of the Melodies should have the highest price ever given for any poetic work; and that being 3000 guineas, he held out for it and got it. The Longmans bought their pig in a poke, as the saying is. They were to take whatever poem Moore was pleased to write, and also to wait till it was written. This was a very pleasant sort of trade for the poet, and he went to work with that inspiration and cheerfulness of spirit which publishers, for their own sake, should do every thing to encourage in their writers. Moore retired to Mayfield Cottage, in Derbyshire, a little way from Donington Park and its library, and began to seclude himself from mankind. Having resolved that his romance should be Oriental, he crammed himself with every thing written about the East that he could, in any way, lay hands on—its manners, customs, history, religion, languages, geography, and so forth. He then began to write a long story called the “Peri’s Daughter;” but, after going a little way in it, his Pegasus stuck fast, and the attempt was put aside. He tried other ideas; but to little purpose. At last, an _Irish_ idea struck him—that of poor Catholics persecuted and kept down for their religion. By a happy dexterity he metamorphosed them into Guebres, and so, setting up the frame-work of the “Fire-Worshipers,” and clothing his Hibernian sentiments—half romance half religion—in all the sparkling phraseology of the East, he got on swimmingly. The monster, “Prophet of the Khorassan,” “Paradise and the Peri,” and the “Light of the Harem,” followed favorably; and in 1816, after three years’ incubation, he gave Lalla Rookh to the purchasers of the manuscript. To Moore’s honor, it must be said, that seeing the monetary and other embarrassments of that year, he offered to release the Longmans from their engagement, if they desired it. But they stuck manfully to their bargain; and it is pleasant to add, made handsomely by it.

Moore was now very famous. Lalla and the Melodies gave him a reputation only second to that of the noble young “Childe Buron” himself. His “Fire-Worshipers” was quoted with fervor in Ireland; the songs in his “Light of the Harem” had charmed all the world; a herd of imitators sprang up like mushrooms, and bulbuls, peris, roses, flashing swords, and sparkling goblets, were the general order of the day. In the meantime, Moore went with Mr. Rogers to Paris. There he gathered the materials of the Fudge Family, which he published on his return.

In 1819 he traveled again to Paris, in company with Lord John Russell; and both went thence to Italy. Lord John passed on to Genoa, and Moore proceeded to visit Lord Byron at Venice, where the noble exile lived in a very savage condition, drinking gin and water o’nights, and writing his heart out. There the poets passed some agreeable days together, riding along the Lido together, and going over the lagoons in a gondola. It was on this occasion that Byron confided to Moore his “Memoirs,” to be used as the latter should think fit. Moore afterward sold them to Murray for 2000 guineas. But when Byron died, his widow and family interfered, and induced Moore to withdraw and burn the manuscript—forfeiting the money, of course. Moore has been blamed for consenting to this sacrifice. But it is very likely he has preserved in his Life of Byron every thing of interest contained in the papers, and that very little was lost, except certain scandalous particulars, which the world would very willingly let die—though the offal-eating scandal-mongers of the day groaned horribly under the privation at the time. After leaving Venice, Moore went to Rome. He confesses that, in the midst of the ruins and splendors of past Roman civilization and art, he was painfully conscious of his own want of artistic taste and enthusiasm. He says that a sunset on the Simplon touched him with more admiration than any thing he had seen in the Italian galleries of art. This would hardly have been expected from Moore, who has been termed the poet of artificial things. After his return from this tour, he published his Rhymes on the Road and the Fables of the Holy Alliance.

But his return did not extend to England. He knew that country was no place for him, just then. He had made a blunder in his business of the Bermuda registrarship, the consequences of which had now reached him. He had taken no security of the deputy he had appointed to do the duties of that office. The latter, in the course of time and trade, fell into temptation—the easy carelessness of Moore led him, perhaps, into it—and he made way with the proceeds of some American cargoes, and then, with himself—leaving the unprophetic little bard, in the heyday of his glory, to be responsible for near six thousand pounds. The terrible Court of Admiralty now issued a law process against “the smiling bard of pleasure,” which the latter did not think it wise to confront in person, and so stopped short at Paris, where—along with his family, which had joined him—he remained till the close of 1822. His friends, in the mean time, came forward to the rescue; and if, for a moment, he wronged his better genius by hard thoughts against the honor or honesty of his fellows, he was soon brought round to the nobler and better human creed, by generous offers of gifts, loans, etc. Thus, sustained in his exile, he passed his time pleasantly enough, at La Butte Coaslin, near Paris, singing Spanish songs to the guitar in the evening, in company with Madame V——, a neighbor, and spending the mornings of the two summers he remained in France, wandering through the noble park of St. Cloud, spinning and polishing verses and jotting down new ideas in his memorandum-book. His exile was, certainly, pleasanter than that of his erotic, erratic brother, Ovid, lamenting his frost-bitten muses, long ago, on the inhospitable shores of the Black Sea. Moore had a great many visitors at Coaslin, among them our Washington Irving, “who still, I trust,” he says, “recollects his reading to me some parts of his then forthcoming work, ‘Bracebridge Hall,’ as we sat together on the grass walk that leads to the Rocher, at La Butte.” To meet his awkward liabilities, Moore had agreed with Messrs. Murray and Wilkie to write a Life of Sheridan; but finding himself too distant from documents and authorities, he went on with his customary business of verse, and projected an epistolary romance, with Egyptian characters. But this romance was postponed: and it appeared afterward, done in prose, as the “Epicurean.” He also took up the allegory of “The Loves of the Angels,” and working away with his usual octosyllabic facility, he had soon woven it into shape. For this poem he was allowed one thousand guineas by his publisher.

On Moore’s return to England, he found that his friends had negotiated the Americans down to a thousand pounds; and that the uncle of the faithless deputy had been induced, in a grumbling way, to contribute _£_300 of that sum. A friend had deposited the balance in the bank to Moore’s credit, for the canceling of the Bermuda claim; and the poet was happy to hand him an order on his publisher for that amount. In this connection, Moore records (without naming the giver, but with a quotation from Ovid, to the effect that “gifts are agreeable which are made precious by him who makes them,”) a present of £300, made him at that time of difficulty—the proceeds of a maiden-work—a biography—which had been just published. The donor was Lord John Russel; the firm friend of the poet to the end of his life.

Mr. Moore now went to live at Sloperton, two miles from Devizes, and not far from the country seat of the Marquis of Lansdowne. His dwelling was at first a somewhat rude cottage, in a wooded lane. But, on taking it, the new occupants made it very comfortable and pleasant, by means of enlargements and other improvements. In 1824, Moore published his “Memoirs of Captain Rock,” in which he set forth the misgovernment of England since the conquest of the island by Strongbow. In this book he never forgets the manner for the matter: he is full of point and learned illustration, and festoons his deplorable facts with many felicities of metaphor and arguments of theology. But no Irishman, how hot-headed soever, could take the Memoirs as the text-book of rebellion, or feel his blood excited by them. Mr. Moore’s learning and imagery, in fact, weakened his theme, as the accompaniment of rich, heavy baggage used to obstruct the movements of the great historic armies, long ago. The “Memoirs” are obsolete, though the Irish sufferings seem to be much the same as usual.

At Sloperton, Moore wrote, also, his History of Ireland and the Biographies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Lord Byron—the last the best of the three, a biography ranking with Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and Lockhart’s Life of Scott. After his “Captain Rock,” Moore published the “Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion,” in which he girds at all Protestant doctrine, with his usual power of theologic reading and pointed argument; and then gave to the world his “Epicurean;” in which he intertwines his favorite ethics of religion with the frame of a very dull story. Moore’s mind had a strong devotional tendency, and seems to revert—with a sense of its own insufficiency—to the problem of existence beyond the last scene of all that ends the strange eventful history of life. His doubtings, if he ever had any, seem to have taken ultimate refuge in Catholic orthodoxy. He was, in fact, a dutiful son of mother Church: and great was the uneasiness he exhibited, lest his friend, Lord Byron, should adopt, in all their force, the atheistical ideas of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom his lordship had become very intimate, in Italy. Moore earnestly expostulated with Byron on the project of the “Liberal” newspaper, got up by the restless Childe and supported by Hunt, Shelley, and Hazlitt. He told his lordship that such a conjunction, with such a radical purpose, was very far from respectable—not by any means respectable enough for an English nobleman to engage in.

The last productions of Moore were those light and satirical verses which appeared in the Morning Chronicle and other papers, up to 1837. They are the happiest things of their kind, in the world, and to those who can admire the gay dexterities of wit, woven into the tapestry work of rhyme, they possess an interest surviving the subjects of them. In the interweaving of pointed and witty things with the flow of colloquial phraseology, Moore has shown himself more skillful than any of his contemporaries, and no writer of the present day can match him.

A bright, sensuous, Celtic genius dies with Tom Moore. As a poet, he will be chiefly remembered for the undying melodies of his native land, with which his words are beautifully identified. His translations of Anacreon are clever school-boy exercises—very free versions and amplifications of the original, and contain many points and prettinesses which the old Cyclic bard never thought of. The juvenile and erotic songs which obtained for Moore the name of the modern Catullus, are very slight things—mere floating gossamers of literature—flashing a little in the light—“the purple light of love,” and then fading away from the general appreciation. But these songs were, nevertheless, greatly in vogue in their day, and the pathos or gayety of them found echoes in the hearts of ten thousand festive saloons. Never was the youth of any poet spent in the midst of greater incitements of love, friendship, and song, than those that solicited Moore on every side during the heyday of his years, in the high society of England. It was therefore morally impossible that his verse should be any thing but “brilliant and light,” full of all the levities and luxuries of sentiment. The real arduousness, effort, and pain of life find no expression at all in Moore. The poems respecting America and his West India voyage, exhibit his want of sympathy with republicanism, and his ceaseless longing after the grand associations and lordly homes of England. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that he found some congenial persons and things on this continent. He has recorded the enjoyment of his sojourn in our own city of “brotherly love,” where, in the society of Mr. Dennie’s family, he almost forgot he was in a republic. His recollections of Philadelphia were happy ones.

LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA.

Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
And he gazed on the flowery banks with a sigh.

Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain
Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet;
Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,
Till the threshold of home had been pressed by his feet.

But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,
And they loved what they knew of so humble a name;
And they told him with flattery welcome and dear
That they found in his heart something better than fame.

The stranger is gone, but he will not forget
When, at home, he shall talk of the toils he has known,
To tell with a sign, what endearments he met
When he strayed by the wave of the Schuylkill alone.

The “Canadian Boat Song,” composed on the St. Lawrence, is the most popular of the songs written at the earlier period of life—indeed, at any period of his life. It is more frequently heard in society than any thing else he has composed—the finest of the Melodies not excepted. As regards these last, it has been said they are not Irish. It is, indeed, true that Moore modified the native airs a good deal—retrenched most of the wild cadences and free modulations which indigenously belong to them. This, however, may not be such a very great loss after all, seeing that, if some of the melodies, with his arrangement, would not be intimately recognized at wakes and cow-milkings, etc., they were all the better liked, for the curtailment and polish, in the dining-rooms and drawing-rooms. Certainly no modern festive song-writer has produced the effects which usually accompanied the singing of Tom Moore’s lyrics. He was eminently the poet of the saloons. Burns was the lyrist of Love and the lowly hearts and homes of the people. But Moore’s songs were sung in the most splendid halls of English-speaking land, where he himself, of all guests or sojourners in lordly dwellings, was ever the most welcome and caressed. And when we consider the low birth, _Irishism_ and uncompromised Catholicity of the man, we cannot possibly over-estimate those talents of graceful conviviality, good-humor and brilliant wit which could secure for him such social honors and triumphs through life. Well might Byron have called him “the poet of all circles and the idol of his own.” Moore had an exquisite musical taste, and sung some of his own melodies in the most delightful manner. His voice was rather low, and without compass, but it had great softness, and the expression with which he half-chaunted, half-recited, while accompanying himself at the piano, in “Go Where Glory Waits Thee,” “Fly Not Yet,” and others, was a thing to be enjoyed and remembered. On some occasions when he has gone to the piano, the servants of the house—Devonshire House, we believe—have been permitted to come and stand at the doors to listen, along with the delighted crowd of noble listeners. Moore’s performance was considered one of the best treats of the evening at such gay reunions; and Mr. N. P. Willis speaks of the little bard’s appearance, at Lady Blessington’s piano—for a singing-while—as if his singing in this way were an expected gratification which he was too well-bred or too good-natured to refuse to his friends. A touching instance of the effect he could produce on these occasions is given in a fact to which he himself alludes. The beautiful young daughter of Colonel Bainbridge, who was married at Ashbourne Church, in Derbyshire, in 1815, died, a few weeks afterward, of fever. During the delirium that accompanied her illness she sung several hymns from Moore’s collection of “Sacred Songs” which she had heard the poet himself sing in the course of the preceding summer. Alluding to her, he says, in the song “Weep not for Those”—

Mourn not for her, the young bride of the vale,
Our gayest and loveliest, lost to us now,
Ere life’s early lustre had time to grow pale,
And the garland of love was yet fresh on her brow.

Lalla Rookh is a splendid and elaborate romance. Hazlitt said Moore should not have written it for three thousand guineas. This was Moore’s own affair, not Hazlitt’s; and we question if the latter would have refused such a sum, under such circumstances. Nevertheless, Lalla Rookh seems below the pretensions of the poet of the Melodies. Its themes and characters are oriental and the interest they excite is feeble. There is a forced and exotic air over the whole performance which fails to win our sympathies; and, in spite of the beauty of the imagery and all the sparkling artifice of the versification, no one, we believe, was every cordially disposed to read this romance a second time. The rythmus of the “Veiled Prophet” is eloquently rhetorical, but loosely constructed, and it offends our sense of what the heroic couplet is, in the hands of Dryden, Shelley, Goldsmith and Byron. Moore’s metre, in this grave mode, is a continuous outrage against the cæsural canons, and reads with a certain prosaic effect—eloquent enough, to be sure; but prosaic, nevertheless: “The Fire-Worshipers” has been considered the best portion of Lalla Rookh. It contains a great deal of impassioned eloquence and shows great mastery and music of versification; but the impression it leaves is vague and uncongenial, and the catastrophe is painful, merely—like that of the “Veiled Prophet”—both with a melodramatic and impossible air about them. “Paradise and the Peri” has the merit of a more attractive human interest—though almost overlaid by ornament and orientalism. We think the “Light of the Harem” the most agreeable of all. It is perfectly in character—a picture of Eastern luxury from beginning to end—a feast of roses and a flow of fountains, in which we look for nothing but sighs and perfumes—and we find them in all customary Mooreish prodigality. The verse of this little poem is woven music. The portrait of Nourmahal is a piece of lyric gracefulness which aptly exemplifies the art of Moore’s sensuous and harmonic genius:

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 splendor.
This was not the beauty—oh, nothing like this,
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss!
But that loveliness, ever in motion, which plays
Like the light upon Autumn’s soft shadowy days,
Now here and now there—giving warmth as it flies,
From the lip to the cheek, from the cheek to the eyes.
When pensive, it seemed as if that very grace,
That charm, of all others, was born with her face!
And when angry—for even in the tranquillest climes,
Light breezes will ruffle the blossoms sometimes,
The short, passing anger but seemed to awaken
New beauty, like flowers that are sweetest when shaken.
If tenderness touched her, the dark of her eye
At once took a darker, a heavenlier dye,
From the depth of whose shadow, like holy revealings
From innermost shrines came the light of her feelings.
Then her mirth—O, ’twas sportive as ever took wing
From the heart with a burst like the wild-bird in spring,
Illumed by a wit that would fascinate sages,
Yet playful as Peris let loose from their cages;
While her laugh, full of glee, without any control,
But the sweet one of gracefulness, rung from her soul,
And where it most sparkled no glance could discover,
In lip, cheek or eyes, for she brightened all over;
Like any fair lake which the breeze is upon
When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun!

No wonder “the magnificent son of Acbar” should be set excessively beside himself on account of such a miracle of womanhood.

Moore shows himself very incapable of sustaining himself in any flights of imagination to compare at all with the soaring of Shelley or Byron. The sight of his mind is less keen and ardent than theirs, his thoughts feebler and his verse less vigorously constructed. But in his own genial sphere—on the lower sunny slopes of the mountain, he can snatch a thousand warbling graces beyond the art of these louder instruments.

His is the lay that lightly floats,
And his are the murmuring, dying notes
That fall as soft as snow on the sea,
And melt in the heart as instantly;
And the passionate strain, that, lightly going
Refines the bosom it trembles through
As the musk-wind, over the waters blowing,
Ruffles the wave but sweetens it too!

Moore has happily expressed the pathetic morals, gayeties and tendernesses of sentiment. But we think he has been still more happy in those humorous, satirical, wit-elaborated performances in which it was his wont to assail the public men and things of English government and English society. His metrical onslaughts on the Tory party, the Prince Regent, the Church Establishment—individually or collectively—have been among the most genial and applauded things he has written. In the other walks of poetry he had overpowering rivals—in this he was unrivaled—“within this circle none durst walk but he.” He was well aware of the power of satire to influence the gravest argument in the world, and felt that

A song may reach him who a sermon flies.

Much of his sarcasm was launched against the English Church Establishment. Its existence in Ireland has long been a just cause of popular complaint, and thousands of pamphlets have been written _pro_ and _con_ in the matter. The witty little poet took the hackneyed question, put it into his lyric mill, and having given it a few turns, brought it out in the following manner—intelligible to all comprehensions—answering as well the cause of his Catholic countrymen as the cause of simple truth and justice:

A DREAM OF HINDOSTAN.

“The longer one lives the more one learns,”
Said I, as off to sleep I went,
Bemused with thinking of tithe concerns,
And reading a book, by the Bishop of Ferns,
On the Irish Church Establishment.
But lo! in sleep not long I lay
When fancy her usual tricks began,
And I found myself bewitched away
To a goodly city in Hindostan:
A city, where he who dares to dine
On aught but rice, is deemed a sinner:
Where sheep and kine are held divine,
And, accordingly, never drest for dinner.

But how is this? I wondering cried,
As I walked that city, fair and wide,
And saw, in every marble street,
A row of beautiful butchers’ shops—
“What means, for men who can’t eat meat,
This grand display of loins and chops?”
In vain I asked—’twas plain to see
That nobody dared to answer me.

So on from street to street I strode:
And you can’t conceive how vastly odd
The butchers looked: a roseate crew,
Inshrined in _stalls_, with naught to do:
While some on a _bench_, half dozing, sat,
And the sacred cows were not more fat.

Still posed to think what all this scene
Of sinecure trade was _meant_ to mean,
“And pray,” asked I, “by whom is paid
The expense of this strange masquerade?”
“The expense—oh, that’s of course defrayed”
(Said one of these well-fed hecatombers)
“By yonder rascally rice-consumers.”
“What! _they_, who mustn’t eat meat?”—“No matter:”
(And, while he spoke, his cheeks grew fatter,)
“The rogues may munch their _Paddy_ crop,
But the rogues must still support _our_ shop:
And depend upon it, the way to treat
Heretical stomachs that thus dissent,
Is to burden all that wont eat meat
With a costly Meat Establishment.”

On hearing these words so gravely said,
With a volley of laughter loud I shook:
And my slumber fled, and my dream was sped,
And I found myself lying snug in bed,
With my nose in the Bishop of Ferns’s book.

In spite of the _prestige_ of Moore’s earlier poetry, the world has regarded him, and very justly, as a moral man and a good Catholic. In the domestic relations of life, as well as the social, he seems to have gone through the world blamelessly. For the last ten years or so of his life, he was in receipt of _£_300 a year from the British Government, procured for him by his friends the Marquis of Lansdowne and Lord John Russell.

Moore died on the 26th of last February, and was buried, according to his desire, in the church-yard of Bromham, between Devizes and Chippenham, where two of his children were buried before him—Anastasia Mary, who died in 1829 aged sixteen, and John Russell, who died in 1848 at the age of nineteen. Another son of the poet died in the French service at Algiers. He had, we believe, four children, all of whom passed away before himself. Doubly dark, indeed, was the close of a life begun so hopefully and enjoyed so much in its middle course.

If the poet had died in Ireland, he would have had a good funeral. As it was, but a single coach, containing four persons, went to the grave with the hearse which carried his remains. Byron reached Huckwell, in 1824, pretty much in the same way; but, we believe, with a somewhat larger attendance—not much, however. Moore attended his noble friend’s funeral to the bounds of London, as the slender _cortège_ passed through, but went no farther.

Moore was of small stature. “He is a little, very little man,” says Sir Walter Scott, speaking of him in 1825. Hunt said of him in 1820: “His forehead is long and full of character, with bumps of wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist: his eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine-leaves.” The poet’s face was, in fact, very plain, and only redeemed by the brightness of his eyes. Irish festivity and enjoyment formed the prevailing expression of his aspect, in his better days when he was the delight and pride of every society he appeared in—the gayest, happiest, most appreciated wit of his time. Poor Tom Moore! He was always called _Tom_ Moore; except in cotemporary criticisms of his poems or polemics, nobody thought of calling him _Mr._ Moore. We cannot fancy him a man of seventy-two! There is an incongruity in the idea which we cannot get over. Old and insane. Alas for the brightest vaunt of human intellect and glory! But Tom Moore will be ever freshly remembered with the undying melodies of his native land.

* * * * *

A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.

BY G. P. R. JAMES.

[Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the
District Court of the United States for the District of
Massachusetts.]

(_Continued from page 494._)

LONDON, FIFTY YEARS AGO.

There was a night coach to London, and I was very anxious to arrive in the great city; but Father Bonneville was now feeling strongly the effects of age, and I would not expose him to the fatigue of a long night journey. We set off therefore on the following morning, and I can hardly express the effect produced upon my mind by the first sight of the vehicle which was to convey us. It was the stage-coach in its utmost perfection, light, small, and compact, beautifully painted, newly washed, with leather harness, and four bay horses, which seemed, to my eyes, fitted for the race-course. It was so unlike any thing I had ever seen in Germany, in France, or in America, so light, so neat, so jaunty, so rapid, so perfect in all its parts and appointments, that it stood out at once from every thing else in my mind, as a pure and unadulterated bit of England—an exponent, as it were, of the habits of the country and the mind of the people. When we came to get in, indeed, and take our seats, we found ourselves a little cramped for room. The back, too, was stiff and rigid, and our legs had but little space to stretch themselves out, intertwined with those of our fellow passengers.

“This, too, is a bit of England,” I thought.

When at length the coachman had mounted the box—when the reins were gathered up, and the first smack of the whip given, poor Father Bonneville looked more nervous and uneasy than he had done while I was driving him down the hill over the frontier of France. On we went, however, at a pace which seemed to take away his breath, rattling in and out amongst carts and wagons, and horses and dogs, touching nothing, though seeming every moment about to be dashed to pieces against some great lumbering dray, or to kill a score or two of old people and children. The coach was heavily laden on the top: men’s legs and feet were hanging down in all quarters, and we seemed to sway from side to side with a terrible inclination to precipitate ourselves into the window of some early-risen shopkeeper in Portsmouth.

At length, much to my satisfaction, we were out of the town; and after passing over some wide and curious-looking downs, unlike any thing else I had ever seen in other lands, we entered upon a richer and better cultivated country, and the real face of England—old England—merry England, as it has been endearingly called, spread out before me like a garden. And it is a garden—the garden of the world. I know not why, but the very heaths and moors—and we passed several of them—seemed to have an air of comfort and sunny cheerfulness, superior to the cultivated fields of other lands. From time to time when we stopped to change horses, though it was done with a marvelous rapidity, which allowed but little time for questions, I asked an ostler or a waiter the names of various places we had passed; and I remarked that the English must be very fond of the devil, as they had made him god-father to every place for which they could not well find an epithet. I heard of Devil’s dykes, and Devil’s punch-bowl, and Devil’s jumps, at every step.

We paused to dine, as it was called, at a small town, beautifully situated amongst some fine sweeping hills, and on asking the name, found that it was called Godalming.

“_Gott Allgemein_,” I said, turning to Father Bonneville, who nodded his head. But it was an unfortunate speech; for one of our fellow-travelers, a great, fat, black-looking man, dressed in mourning, who had never opened his mouth during the day, but who had continued reading a book, let the coach rattle and roll as it would, now fixed upon me as an antiquary, and tormented me during the whole of the rest of the journey with a dissertation upon pottery, and sepulchral urns, and Roman coins, when I wished to observe the country, and gain information regarding the new land which I had just entered. He evidently took me for an Englishman; but my companion he soon found out to be an emigrant, and compensated in some degree for his tiresomeness, by giving us the names of several good inns—“Where,” as he added, with a gentle inclination of his head toward Father Bonneville, “there were waiters who could speak French.”

My good old friend was a little mortified, I believe; for he flattered himself that his English was without accent.

Night fell while we were yet some distance from London, and still we rattled on at the same velocity, till our heavy friend in the corner thought fit to inform us that we were entering London. It did not seem to be an agreeable entrance at all; for the dark streets, lighted by very dim globe lamps shining through a fog, into which we seemed to plunge, had a somewhat forbidding aspect to the eye of a stranger, and the multitude of figures hurrying along on both sides of the way, now seen, now lost, as they came under the lamps, or passed the blazing shop-fronts, looked like phantoms of the dead pursued by some evil spirit. The noise too was intolerable; for vehicles were running in every direction, making an awful clatter as we clattered by them, while through the whole was heard a dull, everlasting grumble, as if the city suffered under one continual thunder-storm.

At length, we dashed up to the door of an inn, and every one began to jump out or down, and to scramble for trunks or portmanteaus, as best he might.

I cannot say that our first night’s residence in London was peculiarly agreeable; for besides being both heated and tired, stiff and cramped, we had the delight of being half-devoured by bugs till dawn of day.

Poor Father Bonneville rose late, nearly as much fatigued with his night’s rest as with his day’s journey. But immediately after breakfast, we set out to seek for better accommodation. I proposed that we should go to one of the inns which had been mentioned; but he advised, strongly, that we should take a small lodging, adding—“London, when I recollect it, was the greatest place for lodgings in the world.”

So we still found it; for in many streets as we walked along, we saw “Furnished lodgings to let,” written on a piece of paper, and stuck up in the window of almost every other house. Some of these we passed by, as likely to be too fine and expensive for our purposes. We looked at others, and were not satisfied. In one, dirt and smoke were too evident to both eye and nose. At another, the young ladies of the mansion appeared not such as we wished to dwell amongst. In other places, again, we were not fortunate enough to give satisfaction ourselves. One stout lady, to whom Father Bonneville addressed some inquiries, stuck her large, bare, blue arms akimbo, and said she would not let her lodgings “to foriners,” adding—in not a very indistinct tone—“They’se all on um so dirty.”

The good Father, the cleanest man upon the face of earth, was deeply mortified at this insinuation, and turned away indignant. I laughed and followed; and at length we found a little place, which seemed to suit us well, in a street running from the Haymarket, westward. For a guinea and a half a week, we were to have two bed-rooms and a sitting-room. The lady of the house, or her she helot, was to cook for us for five shillings per week more, and all promised very well, when I had nearly spoiled the whole bargain by inquiring if there were any bugs.

“Bugs!” cried the indignant dame. “Bugs! If you think there are any bugs, you had better not come here, young man.”

I found afterward that no house in London is ever admitted to have bugs during the day, however potently they may make their existence known during the night. She was quieted down at length, however, and seemed quite pacified, when I paid her down the first week’s rent before hand, so as to secure her revenue whether there were bugs or not; and when she saw four or five very respectable looking trunks of American manufacture brought to the house from the inn, she became exceedingly reverential, and, to do her all justice, remained so till the end of our stay.

To finish with bugs, however, at once and for ever, I may as well add that, two days after our arrival, I found a very unpleasant looking gentleman, in a brown coat, walking over my dressing-table, and calling the landlady, I pointed it out to her.

“Good lauk-a-daisy!” she exclaimed, in a tone of sweet simplicity: “What can it be? I never saw such a thing in my life. If it’s a bug, sir, you must have brought it from the inn with your pokemantles. That would be a sad case to have the house stocked with um.”