PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE FIRST VOLUME.

FINDING it to be the wish of my Publishers that at least the earlier volumes of this collection should each be accompanied by some prefatory matter, illustrating, by a few biographical memoranda, the progress of my humble literary career, I have consented, though not, I confess, without some scruple and hesitation, to comply with their request. In no country is there so much curiosity felt respecting the interior of the lives of public men as in England; but, on the other hand, in no country is he who ventures to tell his own story so little safe from the imputation of vanity and self-display.

The whole of the poems contained in the first, as well as in the greater part of the second, volume of this collection were written between the sixteenth and the twenty-third year of the author's age. But I had begun still earlier, not only to rhyme but to publish. A sonnet to my schoolmaster, Mr. Samuel Whyte, written in my fourteenth year, appeared at the time in a Dublin magazine, called the Anthologia,—the first, and, I fear, almost only, creditable attempt in periodical literature of which Ireland has to boast. I had even at an earlier period (1793) sent to this magazine two short pieces of verse, prefaced

• Some confused notion of this fact has led the writer of a Memoir prefixed to the "Pocket Edition" of my Poems, printed at Zwickau, to state that Brinsley Sheridan was my

by a note to the editor, requesting the insertion of the "following attempts of a youthful muse;" and the fear and trembling with which I ventured upon this step were agreeably dispelled, not only by the appearance of the contributions, but still more by my finding myself, a few months after, hailed as "Our esteemed correspondent, T. M.”

It was in the pages of this publication,where the whole of the poem was extracted, — that I first met with the Pleasures of Memory; and to this day, when I open the volume of the Anthologia which contains it, the very form of the type and colour of the paper brings back vividly to my mind the delight with which I first read that poem.

My schoolmaster, Mr. Whyte, though amusingly vain, was a good and kind-hearted man; and, as a teacher of public reading and elocution, had long enjoyed considerable reputation. Nearly thirty years before I became his pupil, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, then about eight or nine years of age, had been placed by Mrs. Sheridan under his care*; and, strange to say, was, after about a year's trial, pronounced, both by tutor and parent, to be " an incorrigible dunce." Among those who took lessons from him as private pupils were several young ladies of rank, belonging to some of those great Irish families who still continued to lend to Ireland the enlivening influence of their presence, and made their country-seats, through a great part of the year, the scenes of

tutor!" Great attention was paid to his education by his tutor, Sheridan."

refined as well as hospitable festivity. The Miss Montgomerys, to whose rare beauty the pencil of Sir Joshua has given immortality, were among those whom my worthy preceptor most boasted of as pupils; and his description of them, I remember, long haunted my boyish imagination, as though they were not earthly women, but some spiritual "creatures of the element."

About thirty or forty years before the period of which I am speaking, an eager taste for private theatrical performances had sprung up among the higher ranks of society in Ireland; and at Carton, the seat of the Duke of Leinster, at Castletown, Marley, and other great houses, private plays were got up, of which, in most instances, the superintendence was entrusted to Mr. Whyte, and in general the prologue, or the epilogue, contributed by his pen. At Marley, the seat of the Latouches, where the masque of Comus was performed in the year 1776, while my old master supplied the prologue, no less distinguished a hand than that of our "ever-glorious Grattan," furnished the epilogue. This relic of his pen, too, is the more memorable, as being, I believe, the only poetical composition he was ever known to produce.

At the time when I first began to attend his school, Mr. Whyte still continued, to the no small alarm of many parents, to encourage a taste for acting among his pupils. In this line I was long his favourite show-scholar; and among the play-bills introduced in his volume, to illustrate the occasions of his own prologues and epilogues, there is one of a play got up in the year 1790, at Lady Borrowes's private theatre in Dublin, where, among the items of the evening's entertainment, is "An Epilogue, A Squeeze to St. Paul's, Master Moore."

With acting, indeed, is associated the very first attempt at verse-making to which my memory enables me to plead guilty. It was at a period, I think, even earlier than the date last mentioned, that, while passing the summer holidays, with a number of other young people, at one of those bathing-places, in the neighbourhood of Dublin, which afford such fresh and healthful retreats to its inhabitants, it was proposed among us that we should combine together in some theatrical performance; and

⚫ Byron.

the Poor Soldier and a Harlequin Pantomime being the entertainments agreed upon, the parts of Patrick and the Motley hero fell to my share. I was also encouraged to write and recite an appropriate epilogue on the occasion; and the following lines, alluding to our speedy return to school, and remarkable only for their having lived so long in my memory, formed part of this juvenile effort:

Our Pantaloon, who did so aged look,

Must now resume his youth, his task, his book:
Our Harlequin, who skipp'd, laugh'd, danc'd and died,
Must now stand trembling by his master's side.

I have thus been led back, step by step, from an early date to one still earlier, with the view of ascertaining, for those who take any interest in literary biography, at what period I first showed an aptitude for the now common craft of verse-making; and the result is — so far back in childhood lies the epoch-that I am really unable to say at what age I first began to act, sing, and rhyme.

To these different talents, such as they were, the gay and social habits prevailing in Dublin afforded frequent opportunities of display; while, at home, a most amiable father, and a mother such as in heart and head has rarely been equalled, furnished me with that purest stimulus to exertion - the desire to please those whom we, at once, most love and most respect. It was, I think, a year or two after my entrance into college, that a masque written by myself, and of which I had adapted one of the songs to the air of Hadyn's Spirit-Song, was acted, under our own humble roof in Aungier Street, by my elder sister, myself, and one or two other young persons. The little drawing-room over the shop was our grand place of representation, and young. now an eminent professor of music in Dublin, enacted for us the part of orchestra at the piano-forte.

It will be seen from all this, that, however imprudent and premature was my first appearance in the London world as an author, it is only lucky that I had not much earlier assumed that responsible character; in which case the public would probably have treated my nursery productions in much the same manner in which that sensible critic, my Uncle Toby, would have disposed of the "work which the great Lipsius produced on the day he was born."