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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.

"There is but little known with certainty of the life of Anacreon. Chamaeleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in the general wreck of ancient literature."

"Still the question I must parry, Still a wayward truant prove, Where I love I cannot marry, Where I marry cannot love."

No other poet for a hundred years had got such elasticity and gaiety out of English rhythms as were to be found in these two early volumes. One need not claim high rank for this sort of poetry, but it would be ignorant to overlook the service which Moore was doing to all who after him came to handle English metre.

"'Twas Reuben, but ah! he was deathly and cold, And fleeted away like the spell of a dream."

And so on, with cold carcases and other properties of this form of composition, to which the poet never returned--wisely recognising that it was not for him to make readers' flesh creep.

These expectations were not wholly disappointed. In August Lord Moira's interest secured for him a place as registrar of a naval prize-court at Bermuda--an employment whose profits depended upon an active state of war in and about the West Indies.

The idea of so complete a separation from his home distressed him, and he tried to keep the facts from his mother as long as possible--discussing the project only by letters to his father and uncle. But on August 16th, John Moore--wrote to his son an admirable epistle ,--which deprecated the attempt to keep Mrs. Moore in the dark:--

"There could be no such deception carried on with her where you, or indeed any one of her family, were concerned, for she seems to know everything respecting them by instinct. It would not be doing her the justice she well deserves to exclude her from such confidence.... For my particular part, I think with you, that there is a singular chance, as well as a special interference of Providence, in your getting so honourable a situation at this very critical time. I am sure no one living can possibly feel more sensibly than your poor mother and me do, at losing that comfort we so long enjoyed, of at least hearing from you once every week of your life that you were absent from us; for surely no parents had ever such happiness in a child; and much as we regret the wide separation which this situation of yours will for some time cause between us, we give you our full concurrence, and may the Almighty God spare and prosper you as you deserve."

Preparations went through quickly, and on September 22, 1803, Moore wrote, from Portsmouth, his "heart's farewell to the dear darlings at home." Carpenter, the publisher, had made advances which rendered departure possible, and so

"now all is smooth for my progress, and Hope sings in the shrouds of the ship that is to carry me. Good-by. God bless you all, dears of my heart."

This was just after Emmet's rising.

EARLY MANHOOD AND MARRIAGE

Bermuda itself seemed, at the first view, a kind of fairyland, as he has recorded in the Epistle to Lady Donegal:--

"The morn was lovely, every wave was still, When the first perfume of a cedar-hill Sweetly awaked us, and, with smiling charms, The fairy harbour woo'd us to its arms. Gently we stole, before the languid wind, Through plantain shades, that like an awning twined And kiss'd on either side the wanton sails, Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales; While, far reflected o'er the wave serene, Each wooded island shed so soft a green, That the enamour'd keel, with whispering play, Through liquid herbage seem'd to steal its way! Never did weary bark more sweetly glide, Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide! Along the margin, many a shining dome, White as the palace of a Lapland gnome, Brighten'd the wave;--in every myrtle grove Secluded, bashful, like a shrine of love, Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade; And, while the foliage interposing play'd, Wreathing the structure into various grace, Fancy would love, in glimpses vague, to trace The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch, And dream of temples, till her kindling torch Lighted me back to all the glorious days Of Attic genius; and I seem'd to gaze On marble, from the rich Pentelic mount, Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount."

The letter which sketches his first impressions adds a touch of disenchantment, which Moore, remote always from realism, was careful to exclude from his verse:--

"These little islands are thickly covered with cedar groves, through the vistas of which you catch a few pretty white houses, which my poetical short-sightedness always transforms into temples; and I often expect to see Nymphs and Graces come tripping from them, when I find, to my great disappointment, that a few miserable negroes is all 'the bloomy flush of life' it has to boast of."

What was more serious, the prospects of income also disenchanted him of his dream which was to make in Bermuda a home for himself and his family. So many prize-courts had been established, and so few causes were referred to his in Bermuda, that nothing but a Spanish war could hold out a prospect of large fees. Even that did not promise an income worth staying for, and Moore's decision was immediate--to finish the work he was engaged on for Carpenter, and then set out for home.

Festivities, as a matter of course, surrounded him, and he was happy as a king, but for one lack. Up till March 19th, no letter had reached him from Ireland.

"Now, my dear little fellow," he said, "here is a blank check, which you may fill up while I am away, for as much of that as you may want."

Moore, who declined the offer, as he declined many others of like nature, might well comment on a man's "bringing back the warmth of friendship so unchilled after an absence of five years." Nor was that the end of it. In 1814 Douglas, then Admiral on the Jamaica Station, offered Moore the Secretaryship, "in case of war a sure fortune," with a house and land to be at the poet's disposal; and, as Moore notes, the offer was not only friendly but courageous, for Douglas owed his appointment to Court interest, and at that moment the Whig satirist was in the worst odour with the Regent and all his surroundings.

The sight, not so much of the falls as of "the mighty flow descending with calm magnificence" towards them, moved him passionately; and the journey, "seventeen hundred miles of rattling and tossing, through woods, lakes, rivers, etc.," did him good. He reached Quebec much gratified by many kindnesses. The captain of the vessel which carried him across Lake Ontario refused to take money from the poet, and a poor watchmaker at Niagara insisted that a job done should be accepted "as the only mark of respect he could pay to one he had heard so much of but never expected to meet with." At Halifax more proofs of what, later in life, he called, with great justice, his "friendly fame," greeted him, in the shape of courtesies from the Governors of Lower Canada and of Nova Scotia. It is Moore's great distinction that he gave real pleasure to all sorts and conditions of men; and they showed it by treating him as if he had conferred obligations on them. The feeling which is to-day so widespread among his countrymen animated in his lifetime all the English-speaking world. Yet it is surprising to read such instances of widespread celebrity when we remember that at this time he was the author only of translations from a pseudo-classic, and of a small volume of verses, not explicitly acknowledged, and by no means wholly decorous.

His American experiences ended about a year after he left Europe, and on November 12, 1804, he dated his letter rapturously "Plymouth, Old England once more." "Oh dear," he goes on, "to think that in ten days I may see a letter from home, written but a day or two before, warm from your hands, and with your very breath almost upon it, instead of lingering out month after month without a gleam of intelligence, without anything but dreams."

The next year, 1806, saw the formation of the Ministry of "All the Talents," and for a moment it seemed as if Moira would be included. His prot?g?'s hopes ran high, but they were dashed. A small appointment was offered to Moore, but refused by him on the ground that it would be "better to wait till something worthier both of his generosity and my ambition should occur"; and at the same time the young man suggested that it would be a simpler matter to find an appointment for his father, and that such a favour would earn even more gratitude. Lord Moira at once acted on the suggestion, and John Moore was appointed to a barrack-mastership in Dublin. But Moore by no means relinquished hopes of the Irish commissionership which still dangled before his eyes, and the letters to his most intimate friends of this period, Lady Donegal and her sister, Miss Godfrey, abound with references to his expectations. Nevertheless, he had fully made up his mind, once the new poems were fairly launched, to return to Ireland and leave his interests in Lord Moira's care, when an unforeseen event led to one of the best-known passages in his life.

"'Twas thus, by the shade of the Calabash Tree, With a few, who could feel and remember like me, The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw, Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you!

"Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower, And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew, In blossoms of thought ever springing and new-- Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair, And would pine in elysium, if friends were not there?"

More immediate notice than was bestowed on these passages of mingled description and sentiment fell to the three epistles in which Moore for the first time tried his hand at satire,--moved to it by the corruptions of the young Republic, where he found

"All youth's transgression with all age's chill The apathy of wrong, the bosom's ice, A slow and cold stagnation into vice."

These experiments in satire of the accepted type, written in Pope's metre, have, however, no more permanent value than the two odes, equally academic--one upon the "Fall of Hebe" and one described as a "Fragment of a Mythological Hymn to Love." It is safe to say that the book owed its very wide popularity to the songs and shorter lyrics. Two of the songs had an immense vogue--"The Woodpecker" and the still popular "Canadian Boat-song" , written to an air suggested to Moore by the chant of his oarsmen as he travelled down the St. Lawrence.

And, in the sequel, Jeffrey admitted in writing that he had been too severe. A good deal, however, had happened first. Moore's first impulse does not seem to have been belligerent, and as the purpose of calling Jeffrey out dawned on him, there dawned also a difficulty. Jeffrey was probably in Scotland , and this seemed to involve a journey to Edinburgh for which "the actual but too customary state of my finances" "seriously disabled me." But, on coming to London, he learnt from Rogers that Jeffrey was also in town, and on ascertaining the fact, immediately went to look for a second. The friend to whom he first addressed himself having counselled delay, the affair was entrusted to Dr. Hume, and a cartel was written in such terms that there could be only one answer. Jeffrey referred Hume to Horner, and a meeting was fixed for the next morning at Chalk Farm. But neither combatant possessed pistols, and it was left for Moore to borrow them from a friend. Moreover, on reaching the ground, Hume found that Jeffrey's second knew nothing of firearms, and the task of loading both pistols was entrusted to him; while in the meantime the two principals, left together, walked up and down, conversing very agreeably. Presently the seconds returned and placed their men; but, as the pistols were raised, police officers jumped from an ambush. The lender of the pistols had been indiscreet and revealed the secret over-night at Lord Fincastle's dinner-table; Lord Fincastle had immediately communicated with Bow Street, with the result that early next morning the poet and his critic found themselves in durance till bail was given.

The following prefatory letter, addressed by Moore to Stevenson, was issued by the publisher in his preliminary announcement to the first and second numbers:--

"I feel very anxious that a work of this kind should be undertaken. We have too long neglected the only talent for which our English neighbours ever deigned to allow us any credit. Our National Music has never been properly collected; and while the composers of the Continent have enriched their Operas and Sonatas with Melodies borrowed from Ireland--very often without even the honesty of acknowledgment--we have left these treasures, in a great degree, unclaimed and fugitive. Thus our Airs, like too many of our countrymen, have, for want of protection at home, passed into the service of foreigners. But we are come, I hope, to a better period of both Politics and Music; and how much they are connected, in Ireland at least, appears too plainly in the tone of sorrow and depression which characterizes most of our early Songs.

"The task which you propose to me, of adapting words to these airs, is by no means easy. The Poet, who would follow the various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity, which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their Music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some melancholy note intrude--some minor Third or flat Seventh--which throws its shade as it passes, and makes even mirth interesting. If Burns had been an Irishman , his heart would have been proud of such music, and his genius would have made it immortal.

Under the original scheme, Moore was only to have been one of "several distinguished Literary Characters" from whom "Power has had promises of assistance." But his success precluded all competition. The twenty-four songs comprised in the first two numbers include some of his very best and much of his most popular work, and it is interesting to note that almost the whole of them must have been written in Ireland. His stay at Donington lasted till June, and during the earlier part of it he was certainly engaged on poetry. But except for an excursion to Tunbridge, to visit Lady Donegal and her sister, he went nowhere else in England, and he was back in Dublin by the end of August. In the remaining months of that summer he paid the visit to the Vale of Ovoca which gave occasion to his lyric, "The Meeting of the Waters." A footnote to the first edition of the first number explains that--

"'The Meeting of the Waters' forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow in the County of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested to me by a visit to this romantic spot in the summer of the present year ."

It appears also, from a letter to Miss Godfrey, that in May 1807 his solitude at Donington was interrupted by the advent of a large house-party, and one may fairly say that, except for what he may have done in the space of about three months, the whole of the lyrics of the first two numbers were composed in the country where the airs themselves had their origin.

"Hence the rich oil, that from the Treasury steals, Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels, Giving the old machine such pliant play, That Court and Commons jog one joltless way, While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car, So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far."

And at the close of the poem there is a note of unaccustomed fierceness in the reference to Castlereagh:

"See yon smooth lord, whom nature's plastic pains Would seem to've fashion'd for those Eastern reigns When eunuchs flourish'd, and such nerveless things As men rejected were the chosen of Kings."

The lines on Intolerance were described as fragmentary--"the imperfect beginning of a long series of Essays upon the same important subject"; and the political attitude of the whole was sufficiently described on the title-page, where the lines were described as "Addressed to an Englishman by an Irishman."

"Night closed around the conqueror's way, And lightnings showed the distant hill, Where those who lost that dreadful day Stood few and faint, but fearless still! The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal, For ever dimmed, for ever crossed-- Oh! who shall say what heroes feel, When all but life and honour's lost?

"The last sad hour of freedom's dream, And valour's task, moved slowly by, While mute they watched till morning's beam Should rise and give them light to die."

The other sequel of the Kilkenny theatricals was of very different character. In the end of 1808 Rogers, answering a letter, remarks, "Your sketch of Ireland is most gloomy." Twelve months later, and after Miss E. Dyke's first appearance in Mr. Power's company, Rogers writes, "I am rejoiced to think you are happy, which indeed you cannot fail to be while you are making others so; but don't let the Graces supplant the Muses." It is hardly rash to infer that Moore had written a cheerful account of the 1809 festival at Kilkenny. October 1810 saw the last appearance in the Kilkenny bills of Mr. Moore and Miss E. Dyke. Early in December Moore ran back to London to interview "booksellers, musicsellers, managers, etc." In January he returned to Dublin for a few weeks. February saw him in town again; and in March it appears that he has "at last got a little bedroom about two miles from town where I shall try now and then for a morning's work." On March 25th he was married to Miss Dyke at St. Martin's Church; but the marriage was kept a secret from his parents till the month of May following.

On the face of it, nothing could have seemed less promising than this alliance. Moore had to live by his wits; he was now in his thirty-second year, he had lived with people of expensive habits and, in a sense, lived fast. Allowing for some rhetoric, one may take as a fair account the description of his feelings which he wrote to Lady Donegal in the summer preceding the last bout of theatricals at Kilkenny--when, presumably, his fate was settled.

One can easily imagine a gentleman who writes in this strain making, some few months later, a match with a penniless and beautiful girl of sixteen, whose situation had so little to recommend it that he kept the whole affair dark even from his parents. It would not have been so likely a guess that he would make her the most affectionate of husbands, or that she would turn out to be the most helpful of wives. There are few things more significant in a man's history than his choice of a consort, and stress must be laid on this marriage. In the first place, it should be remarked that Moore, with an equipment for the business which might have made any fortune-hunter envious, never showed the least inclination to marry for money. Secondly, although himself among the most brilliant of talkers, finding his chief enjoyment in such talk as was heard, for instance, at Holland House, he married a girl who probably had little education and certainly possessed only the intelligence of the heart. He married, doubtless, for beauty; but probably not without discerning that this girl of sixteen had qualities of prudence, order, and courage which amply justified his choice. She must have possessed also a great charm, for the most difficult to please among Moore's friends were immediately subjugated. Rogers, who had a sincere and lifelong affection for the young poet, took her from the first into his good graces, and his letters all contain some pleasant word of remembrance to Psyche, as he christened her. In a later day, Psyche and her babies were the guests of that rigidly celibate old bachelor, and did not lack invitation to return. Miss Godfrey, another shrewd and loyal well-wisher, wrote six months after the marriage:--

"Be very sure, my dear Moore, that if you have got an amiable, sensible wife, extremely attached to you, as I am certain you have, it is only in the long run of life that you can know the full value of the treasure you possess. If you did but see, as I see with bitter regret in a very near connection of my own, the miserable effects of marrying a vain fool devoted to fashion, you would bless your stars night and day for your good fortune, and, to say the truth, you were as likely a gentleman to get into a scrape that way as any that I know. You were always the slave of beauty, say what you please; it covered a multitude of sins in your eyes, and I never can cease wondering at your good luck after all is said and done."

Certainly, Bessy Moore was as little of the "vain fool devoted to fashion" as could be found. The two lived together, in Bury Street, for a year, till after the birth of their first child,--Barbara--born in February 1812. Soon after this, a parliamentary crisis raised Moore's hopes of Lord Moira's advancement, and his own depending on it, to fever height. They were soon dashed. Lord Moira was a staunch supporter of the Catholic claims, and the ministry had decided to do nothing for the Catholics. For the moment at least Moore took the defeat as final and wrote with some bitterness to Lady Donegal:--

"In Lord Moira's exclusion from all chances of power, I see an end to the long hope of my life; and my intention is to go far away into the country, there to devote the remainder of my life to the dear circle I am forming around me, to the quiet pursuit of literature, and, I hope, of goodness."

Whatever spleen is to be traced in this letter soon vanished. On March 6, a letter to Miss Godfrey marks Moore's definitive breaking with his old habit of precarious reliance upon the prospect of patronage. Literary earnings, which he had hitherto regarded as a mere temporary means of meeting embarrassments, were now to become the sole support of himself and his family; and he bids good-bye with a cheerful courage to "all the hope and suspense in which the prospect of Lord Moira's advancement" had kept him for so many years.

Retirement from town was necessary, for the general curiosity "to see Moore's wife" threatened to become ruinous; and one may be very sure that if Bessy refused invitations "to the three most splendid assemblies in town," it was her doing and not her husband's. In the choice of a neighbourhood, access to a library had to be considered, and Moore naturally enough looked for a home near Donington Park. It was accordingly at Kegworth, a few miles from Lord Moira's seat, that he installed himself; but the proximity was unfortunate, for the cabinet crisis continued, and the Prince Regent's personal reliance on Lord Moira sustained Moore's hopes. In the autumn came news that Moira was to be Governor-General of India, and Moore's friends immediately settled it that the poet would accompany him as secretary. The remaining months of 1812 were embittered by hope deferred, which some expressions let fall by Lord Moira helped to quicken. But the great man and his household came and went, making it clear to Moore that he could count on nothing but continued good-will. The suggestion of an exchange of patronage made by Lord Moira was fortunately put aside; Moore replying that he would "rather struggle on as he was than take anything that would have the effect of tying up his tongue under such a system as the present."

Thus, in January 1813, with Moira's departure for India, the long relation between the patron and client ended, not without mutual embarrassment. Yet Moore was grateful for the kindly attentions heaped upon himself and his Bessy, who was then in a state to need them. Her second confinement, again of a daughter, Olivia, took place in March; and, as soon as she could be moved, Moore and she accepted willingly the invitation of a cordial friend, one Mrs. Ready, and settled into her house, Oakhanger Hall, for the summer. It had been decided to give up the Kegworth cottage, and look out for some pleasanter home; and a plan had also been arranged which made Moore glad to leave his wife in friendly company during the months of the London season.

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