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INDEX

THOMAS MOORE

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.

"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 ag?d 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 . 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 ."

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.

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.

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 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 , 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 , 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."

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."

"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."

"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.

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" , "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 . 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."

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 ; and indeed the Prince's remarks, as Moore reports them, were vastly civil:--

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.

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.

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