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BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY NOTICES OF THE

AUTHOR.

THE literary career of a great author is public property, open to the observation of all; but the interior life is a more hidden mystery, in proportion to its difficulty of access, stimulating an eager desire to behold him in his daily life, divested of exterior pomp and circumstance. To this trying ordeal men of genius are especially subjected,-happy for them if their sins and weaknesses, instead of being pitilessly assailed, and opprobriously condemned, are allowed, like those of other men, to pass current as failings incidental to humanity. In this respect Moore has been unusually fortunate; for though in his early career, gay, brilliant, and impassioned, an enthusiastic lover of his country, and the bosom friend of some of those who in the stormy struggle for liberty perished in its cause, yet no shadow darkens his fame; the evil arrows have glanced aside, and with a name of which Ireland may well be proud, he now, at the close of a long and varied life, awaits in the bosom of domestic peace that inevitable hour which whenever it arrives will deprive the world of one in whom seemed concentrated the spirit of the ancient Minstrel Bards, and in whose various melodies and poems every passion finds embodiment and expression. As all personal reminiscences of one so distinguished cannot fail to awaken a powerful interest, we shall now make them doubly so, by transcribing from his own nar

ration.

The whole of the poems contained in the first, as well as in the greater part of the sec

ond volume, 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 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 color 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."1 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 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 intrusted 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 favorite 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 attempts 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 neighborhood 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 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, danced, 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 epochthat 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 Haydn'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."

While thus the turn I had so early shown for rhyme and song was, by the gay and sociable circle in which I lived, called so encouragingly into play, a far deeper feeling and, I should hope, power-was at the same time awakened in me by the mighty change then working in the political aspect of Europe, and the stirring influence it had begun to exercise on the spirit and hopes of Ireland. Born of Catholic parents, I had come into the world with the slave's yoke around my neck; and it was all in vain that the fond ambition of a mother looked forward to the Bar as opening a career that might lead her son to honor and affluence. Against the young Papist all such avenues to distinction were closed; and even the University, the professed source of public education, was to him "a fountain sealed." Can any one now wonder that a people thus wronged and trampled upon should have hailed the first dazzling outbreak of the French Revolution as a signal to the slave, wherever suffering, that the day of his deliverance was near at hand. I remember being taken by my father (1792) to one of the dinners given in honor of that great event, and sitting upon the knee of the chairman while the following toast was enthusiastically sent round-" May the breezes from France fan our Irish Oak into verdure."

In a few months after was passed the memorable Act of 1793, sweeping away some of the most monstrous of the remaining sanctions of the penal code; and I was myself among the first of the young Helots of the land, who hastened to avail themselves of the new privi

lege of being educated in their country's University,-though still excluded from all share in those college honors and emoluments by which the ambition of the youths of the ascendant class was stimulated and rewarded. As I well knew that, next to my attaining some of these distinctions, my showing that I deserved to attain them would most gratify my anxious mother, I entered as candidate for a scholarship, and (as far as the result of the examination went) successfully. But, of course, the mere barren credit of the effort was all I enjoyed for my pains.

It was in this year, (1794,) or about the beginning of the next, that I remember having, for the first time, tried my hand at political satire. In their very worst times of slavery and suffering, the happy disposition of my countrymen had kept their cheerfulness still unbroken and buoyant; and, at the period of which I am speaking, the hope of a brighter day dawning upon Ireland had given to the society of the middle classes in Dublin a more than usual flow of hilarity and life. Among other gay results of this festive spirit, a club or society was instituted by some of our most convivial citizens, one of whose objects was to burlesque, good-humoredly, the forms and pomps of royalty. With this view they es tablished a sort of mock kingdom, of which Dalkey, a small island near Dublin, was made the seat, and an eminent pawnbroker, named Stephen Armitage, much renowned for his agreeable singing, was the chosen and popular monarch.

Before public affairs had become too serious for such pastime, it was usual to celebrate, yearly, at Dalkey, the day of this sovereign's accession; and, among the gay scenes that still live in my memory, there are few it recalls with more freshness than the celebration, on a fine Sunday in summer, of one of these anniversaries of King Stephen's coronation. The picturesque sea-views from that spot, the gay crowds along the shores, the innumerable boats, full of life, floating about, and, above all, that true spirit of mirth which the Irish temperament never fails to lend to such meetings, rendered the whole a scene not easily forgotten. The state ceremonies of the day

were performed, with all due gravity, within the ruins of an ancient church that stands on the island, where his mock majesty bestowed the order of knighthood upon certain favored personages, and among others, I recollect, upon Incledon, the celebrated singer, who arose from under the touch of the royal sword with the appropriate title of Sir Charles Melody. There was also selected, for the favors of the crown on that day, a lady of no ordinary poetic talent, Mrs. Battier, who had gained much fame by some spirited satires in the manner of Churchill, and whose kind encouragement of my early attempts in versification was to me a source of much pride. This lady, as was officially announced, in the course of the day, had been appointed his majesty's poetess laureate, under the style and title of Henrietta, Countess of Laurel.

There could hardly have been devised an apter vehicle for lively political satire than this gay travesty of monarchical power, and its showy appurtenances, so temptingly supplied. The very day, indeed, after this commemoration, there appeared, in the Dalkey state-gazette, an amusing proclamation from the king, offering a large reward, in cronebanes, | (Irish halfpence,) to the finder or finders of his majesty's crown, which, owing to his "having measured both sides of the road" in his pedestrian progress on the preceding night, had unluckily fallen from the royal brow.

any attention to my rhyming powers was my giving in a theme, in English verse, at one of the quarterly examinations. As the sort of short essays required on those occasions were considered, in general, as a mere matter of form, and were written, invariably, I believe, in Latin prose, the appearance of a theme in English verse could hardly fail to attract some notice. It was, therefore, with no small anxiety that, when the moment for judging of the themes arrived, I saw the examiners of the different divisions assemble, as usual, at the bottom of the hall for that purpose. Still more trying was it when I perceived that the reverend inquisitor, in whose hands was my fate, had left the rest of the awful group, and was bending his steps towards the table where I was seated. Leaning across to me, he asked suspiciously, whether the verses which I had just given in were my own; and, on my an swering in the affirmative, added these cheering words, "They do you great credit; and I shall not fail to recommend them to the notice of the Board." This result of a step, ventured upon with some little fear and scruple, was of course very gratifying to me; and the premium I received from the Board was a well-bound copy of the Travels of Anacharsis, together with a certificate, stating, in not very lofty Latin, that this reward had been conferred upon me, "propter laudabilem in versibus componendis progressum."

The idea of attempting a version of some of the Songs or Odes of Anacreon had very early occurred to me; and a specimen of my first ventures in this undertaking may be found in the Dublin Magazine already referred to, where, in the number of that work for Feb

It is not to be wondered at, that whatever natural turn I may have possessed for the lighter skirmishing of satire should have been called into play by so pleasant a field for its exercise as the state affairs of the Dalkey kingdom afforded; and, accordingly, my first attempt in this line was an ode to his Majes-ruary, 1794, appeared a "Paraphrase of ty, King Stephen, contrasting the happy state of security in which he lived among his merry lieges, with the "metal coach," and other such precautions against mob violence, which were said to have been adopted at that time by his royal brother of England. Some portions of this juvenile squib stil live in my memory; but they fall far too short of the lively demands of the subject to be worth preserving, even as juvenilia.

In college, the first circumstance that drew

Anacreon's Fifth Ode, by T. Moore." As it may not be uninteresting to future and better translators of the poet to compare this schoolboy experiment with my later and more labored version of the same ode, I shall here extract the specimen found in the Anthologia:

"Let us, with the clustering vine,

The rose, Love's blushing flower, entwine.
Fancy's hand our chaplet's wreathing,
Vernal sweets around us breathing,
We'll gayly drink, full goblets quaffing,
At frighted Care securely laughing.

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*Rose ! thou balmy-scented flower,
Rear'd by Spring's most fostering power,
Thy dewy blossoms, opening bright,
To gods themselves can give delight;
And Cypria's child, with roses crown'd,
Trips with each Grace the mazy round.
"Bind my brows-I'll tune the lyre,
Love my rapturous strains shall fire,
Near Bacchus' grape-encircled shrine,
While roses fresh my brows entwine,
Led by the winged train of Pleasures,
I'll dance with nymphs to sportive measures."

In pursuing further this light task, the only object I had for some time in view was to lay before the Board a select number of the odes I had then translated, with a hope,-suggested by the kind encouragement I had already received, that they might be considered as deserving of some honor or reward. Having experienced much hospitable attention from Doctor Kearney, one of the senior fellows,2 a man of most amiable character, as well as of refined scholarship, I submitted to his perusal the manuscript of my translation as far as it had then proceeded, and requested his advice respecting my intention of laying it before the Board. On this latter point his opinion was such as, with a little more thought, I might have anticipated, namely, that he did not see how the Board of the University could lend their sanction, by any public reward, to writings so convivial and amatory as were almost all those of Anacreon. He very good-naturedly, however, lauded my translation, and advised me to complete and publish it; adding, I well recollect, "young people will like it." I was also indebted to him for the use, during my task, of Spaletti's curious publication, giving a facsimile of those pages of a MS. in the Vatican Library which contain the Odes, or "Symposiacs," attributed to Anacreon. And here I shall venture to add a few passing words on a point which I once should have thought it profanation to question, the authenticity of these poems. The cry raised against their genuineness by Robertellus and other enemies of Henry Stephen, when that eminent scholar first introduced them to the learned world, may be thought to have long since entirely subsided, leaving their claim to so ancient a paternity safe and unquestioned. But I am forced, however reluctantly, to con

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fess that there appear to me strong grounds for pronouncing these light and beautiful lyrics to be merely modern fabrications. Some of the reasons that incline me to adopt this unwelcome conclusion are thus clearly stated by the same able scholar, to whom I am indebted for the emendations of my own juvenile Greek ode:-"I do not see how it is possible, if Anacreon had written chiefly in Iambic dimeter verse, that Horace should have wholly neg lected that metre. I may add that, of those fragments of Anacreon, of whose genuineness, from internal evidence, there can be no doubt, almost all are written in one or other of the lighter Horatian metres, and scarcely one in Iambic dimeter verse. This may be seen by looking through the list in Fischer."

The unskilful attempt at Greek verse from my own pen, which is found prefixed to the Translation, was intended originally to illus trate a picture, representing Anacreon conversing with the Goddess of Wisdom, from which the frontispiece to the first edition of the work was taken. Had I been brought up with a due fear of the laws of prosody before my eyes, I certainly should not have dared to submit so untutored a production to the criticism of the trained prosodians of the English schools. At the same time, I cannot help adding that, as far as music, distinct from metre, is concerned, I am much inclined to prefer the ode as originally written to its present corrected shape; and that, at all events, I entertain but very little doubt as to which of the two a composer would most willingly set to music.

For the means of collecting the materials of the notes appended to the Translation, I was chiefly indebted to the old library adjoining St. Patrick's Cathedral, called, from the name of the archbishop who founded it, Marsh's Library. Through my acquaintance with the deputy librarian, the Rev. Mr. Cradock, I enjoyed the privilege of constant access to this collection, even at that period of the year when it is always closed to the public. On these occasions I used to be locked in there alone; and to the many solitary hours which, both at the time I am now speaking of and subsequently, I passed in hunting through the dusty

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