LONDON: HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.C. TORONTO: 25-27 RICHMOND STREET WEST 1910 INTRODUCTION A GREAT poet needs no biography: in fact (were it not for the future critic who will otherwise attribute his poetry to some one else) he is generally better off without it. Moore, however, is not a great poet and since in this hurried age minor poetry that pleased in its day is in sad danger of being undeservedly forgotten, it is fortunate that he is provided with an aid to immortality' in the shape of his own admirably readable Journal. When all is said and done, it is not a highly poetic personalityas most understand the somewhat vague term 'poetic '-which these records eventually reveal: and the reasons of Moore's immediate and widespread popularity as a poet remain only partially explained. It is not easy to recall any writer who has been admired by his public from the very outset of his career with so little to show for it at first, and in spite, as one might think, of actual obstacles to success. On the mere record of fact, he might be quoted as an encouragement to all young poetasters and literary adventurers seeking their fortune in the great world. The son of a small Dublin shopkeeper in an age when classes were as widely separated as they have been at any time in English history-a Catholic when the Penal Laws were still unrepealed, and to be a Catholic was to be in many respects a pariah-Moore came from Trinity College in Dublin (where his religion forbade him to compete with Protestants for academic distinction) into the world of London, with a cheerful temper and a vivacious intellect, but no actual literary credentials save his forthcoming translation of the so-called Odes of Anacreona work showing that he possessed a neat talent for versification, a voluptuous imagination, and a certain amount of classical scholarship. He was then, in 1799, only twenty years old. With as much literary equipment many an aspirant has ended in a Grub Street garret, or seeing in time the error of his ways has returned sadder and wiser to the paternal business. But Moore was born under a happier star. To begin with, he had a patron, Lord Moira, who was very ready to serve him if patronage was no longer of much value in the world of letters, it could do much in the way of social advancement: a youth of Moore's accomplishments was worth patronizing, and his cheerfulness and readiness to please and to be pleased made him friends everywhere. He had a perfect genius indeed for making friends, and (what has not been granted to all poets) the art of keeping them as well. In one way or another, Anacreon Moore became the fashion, as a singer who could make graceful trifles out of serious subjects, scribble tender and witty verses in ladies' albums, or write a good song and sing it himself. Many of the primitiae of this period were published among his 'juvenile' works as the Poems of Thomas Little: these are for the most part slight erotic trifles, many of which go even farther than the not very prudish mode of the day. Casual versifying, however, was hardly likely to provide a living, though it might gain the entrée of distinguished drawing-rooms. Moore had to find a profession; and when for want of anything better he accepted a position as Admiralty Registrar in Bermuda, it might well have been supposed that even the fame of a translator of Anacreon would not survive transportation across the Atlantic, and that London society would forget him and all his works as easily as it had taken him up. And no doubt this would have been the fate of any one else but Moore bore a charmed life. To him exile meant simply reculer pour mieux sauter. He did not indeed like Bermuda, and he detested the United States: nevertheless he made friends there, as he did everywhere: and his western experiences provided him with a great deal of new 'copy', or rather, a new and interesting setting for his usual theme of Wein, Weib und Gesang. The Odes and Epistles are mainly the outcome of his residence and travel abroad. (In the present edition (Moore's own arrangement) Poems relating to America stand by themselves, the remaining pieces from Odes and Epistles |