18442.7.25

HARVARD COLLEGE
Lept 9,1939

LIBRARY

Miss Katharine 7. Crothers

COPYRIGHT, 1895,

BY T. Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

THOMAS MOORE was born at No. 12 Little Longford Street, Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779.1

His father originally kept a small wine shop or grocery store, and afterwards was raised to the dignity of barrack-master. His mother's name was Anastasia Codd; his maternal grandfather a gouty Tom Codd. They were Roman Catholics. Both of his parents were amiable; his father not remarkable in any other way; his mother rather superior in wit and intelligence. They took great pride in their boy and made a show child of him. He early displayed a talent for recitation and music; his mother predicted that he would go on the stage.

When he was eleven he wrote an epilogue for a private exhibition at a summer bathing-place, and won great applause by his singing of the songs of Patrick in O'Keefe's farce, "The Poor Soldier." Long before that he had "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." When he was fourteen his first published verses appeared in the Anthologia Hibernica, a Dublin magazine, creditable, but short lived.

In 1793 the University and the Bar were thrown open to Roman Catholics, and the following summer Moore entered at Trinity College. He followed his tastes, and only by his natural quickness escaped the disgrace of failure. He became an intimate friend of Robert Emmett and other young conspirators, and narrowly evaded the judicial inquisition which made martyrs of so many of his friends. He was eighteen when he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He had already made a large part of his translation, or rather paraphrase, of Anacreon, and the Provost of the University advised him to publish it.

He went to London in the spring of 1799, and there entered the Middle Temple as a law student. Lord Moira was the first of the long list of his titled friends. Through him Moore made other fashionable acquaintances, and when the publisher to whom he submitted the Anacreon refused to publish the work without a guarantee, Moore easily secured a large number of influential subscribers, including the Marquis of Lansdowne, and-what was still more important permission to dedi cate it to the Prince of Wales. It was published in 1800, and brought him fame. His law studies suffered under the burden of his popularity; he often had six invitations for an evening, dined with bishops and lords; everywhere happy, gay, and Irish-careless.

The next year he published a volume of original poems under the title: "The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little." He lived long enough to be ashamed of the indecencies which marred them, but he did not at the time hesitate to dedicate the second edition over his initials to a Dublin friend.

Lord Moira got Moore appointed Poet Laureate, but his only official work in that capacity was one birthday ode. He quickly resigned it, and accepted the office of Registrar of the Admiralty Court of Bermuda. He left England in September,

1 A baptismal register extant gives the date as 1780. The doubt is of small moment.

1803, but he found the duties of the place uncongenial, and he undoubtedly longed for the gay society of London He appointed a deputy, and, after spending four months in travelling in the United States and Canada, he returned home with a volume of poems completed. The new volume of "Epistles, Odes, and other Poems" appeared early in 1806, and that same year he began the composition of his "Irish Melodies."

Jeffrey contemptuously reviewed Moore's poems in The Edinburgh Review, and called them "a public nuisance." Moore challenged Jeffrey, and just as the parties were about to fire off their pistols, which were charged blank, the police arrested them. This duel resulted in a warm friendship. Lord Byron made an allusion to "Little's leadless pistol," and the fiery young poet sent out a challenge to Byron. This also led to a life-long friendship. Moore was disappointed in not receiving high political preferment on the death of Pitt. He lived for several years at Lord Moira's house at Donington Park, writing his songs and going into the finest society, where his fascinating manners and his delightful talent for music made him the cynosure of all.

In 1802 a private theatre had been established at Kilkenny. The female parts were filled by professional actresses; the male characters by amateurs. Moore was frequently called upon to exercise his talent on that stage.

In 1809 a Miss Elizabeth Dyke was performing the part of "Lady Godiva " to Moore's "Peeping Tom." She was only seventeen, and extremely pretty. Moore fell in love with her, and married her clandestinely in March, 1811.

It proved to be a happy marriage. Moore's London friends received her cordially, and the parents of both the young people quickly forgave them the imprudent step. Moore was receiving from the publishers of his songs £500 a year, and that with a prospect of the engagement continuing indefinitely.

In 1812 Moore began his satirical attacks on the Prince Regent and other political personages. Naturally they ruined his chances of obtaining office, though they diverted the Whig society of Holland House, and were popular in town. For twenty years he glibly poured out pasquinades, squibs, epigrams, and satires, full of audacious wit, not seldom vulgar and scurrilous, but as a rule marked by good temper. In 1813 appeared "The Twopenny Post Bag," which, incredible as it may seem at the present day, went through fourteen editions in a few months. In March of that year his second daughter Anastasia was born, and he moved to Ashburne in Derbyshire, where, during the following three years, he wrote his romance of "Lalla Rookh,” Even before he had put pen to paper he received £3000 from the Longmans. But it was some time after the arrangement was made before he actually got to work on the poems. The only sorrow that touched the young couple at their Ashburne cottage was the loss of their third daughter, Olivia, who died when only seven months old.

"Lalla Rookh" was published in May, 1817. A second edition was printed within a fortnight, and six or seven were exhausted within the year. He was enabled to pay off his debts, and to pension his father, who had lost his place as barrack-master.

He then accepted the banker-poet Rogers's invitation to visit Paris, and was so delighted with the gay city that he proposed to live there for several years. That little plan was abandoned, owing to the death of his oldest daughter, Barbara, a beautiful little girl of five. He took his family to Sloperton Cottage, near the estate of his friend, Lord Lansdowne. The rent was only £40 a year. That was his home during the rest of his life. He soon began the composition or his "Fudge Family in Paris," which turned out to be a satire on Lord Castlereagh and Sidmouth rather than what he had at first intended—an exposé of the absurd. ities of the English tourists visiting Paris after the war. Five editions came out in quick succession, and Moore's share of the profits was £350. But whatever

success he had in poetry and the products of his muse was absolutely counterbalanced by a great misfortune that now overwhelmed him. He still held his Bermuda office. It proved to be for him "the vex'd Bermoothes." His deputy, who sent him occasional remittances, was apparently left to his own unguided will. In April, 1818, he was found to be a defaulter and embezzler, and Moore was called upon to make good the £6000 missing.

The matter was carried into the courts, and while the suit dragged its slow length along Moore kept up his usual round of gay and innocent dissipations.

Now began that minute diary of his actions and sayings which fills so large a part of Earl Russell's portentous and ill-digested "Life of Moore."

At the end of a year, during which a son was born to him, he received word that the case was likely to go against him. Moore, for the first time in his life, confessed to feeling blue, and "wished he had a good cause to die in."

The adverse decision was rendered in July, and though hosts of his friends offered to help him out, and his publishers gladly volunteered to advance on account whatever sum he needed, he declined all such aid and ran off to the Continent in company with Lord John Russell. He spent ten days in Paris, then went to visit Lord Byron near Venice. After spending three months in Italy he returned to Paris, and wrote his wife to join him. He and his family settled in a pleasant cottage near the Champs Elysées. He tried hard to work and refrain from expensive society, but temptations were too much for him. His promised poems, "The Fudge Family in Italy," and his long delayed "Life of Sheridan" were suspended, and the only result of his labors was the first letter of Alciphron and a dozen melodies.

In 1821 he disguised himself with a pair of false mustaches and went to London under the name of Dyke. He called on his publishers and authorized them to offer the American claimant 1000 guineas. Then he ran across to Dublin and visited his parents. On his return he found the arrangements made. Lord Lansdowne advanced the greater part of the needed sum, an uncle of the absconded deputy contributed £300, and Moore was a free man.

Moore, during his visit to Italy, had received as a gift Byron's Autobiographical Memoirs. He offered them to Murray, who agreed to pay Moore 2000 guineas as editor of the memoirs and historian of Byron's life. A second agreement was made whereby Byron or Moore might, during Lord Byron's life, repay Murray the 2000 guineas advanced, and recover the manuscript. Otherwise Murray was free to publish the Memoirs within three months after Byron's death.

Shortly after this Moore finished his "Loves of the Angels," which was published in December, 1822, about a month after his final return to England.

The following May appeared the "Fables for the Holy Alliance." The two volumes together reduced his indebtedness to Murray by the handsome sum of £1500. The same month his second son, the last of his children, was born.

In April, 1824, Lord Byron died. Moore claimed the manuscript of the memoirs. The story of the final destruction of the manuscript is told most interestingly in the recently published life of Murray the publisher. Moore certainly in this matter showed a very noble and lofty sense of honor.

In 1825 his life of Sheridan, on which he had been so long engaged, was published. During the last months of its preparation he wrote many songs for Powers, who was glad to renew the engagement. In October he made a trip to Scotland, spending three or four days with Scott at Abbotsford, and nine or ten with Jeffrey. He was innocently delighted to find himself the greatest man in Scotland. At the theatre the whole pit rose and cheered him vociferously.

His principal occupation on his return was in writing "The Epicurean," which he had planned while in France. It was published in June, 1827, and four editions were sold in eight months, bringing him in £700. Meantime he was adding to his

precarious and varying income by writing songs and satires, as pot-boilers, which sold readily.

In February, 1828, he arranged with Murray to write the life of Byron. Besides putting a large amount of material in his hands, Murray offered him £4000, advancing for the Longmans upwards of £3000, settling Moore's debts in that quarter.

The task occupied Moore three years: the first volume was issued in January, 1830; the second in the following December. The publishers lost on it, owing principally to the popular dislike of Byron.

In 1830, he wrote a life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which was published in midsummer, 1831; and the following year a subscription was set on foot for the purchase on his behalf of an estate in Limerick, the electors of that place having expressed a desire to return him to Parliament. He was also proposed as a member to represent Trinity College. But Moore wisely declined,

The latter part of Moore's life was saddened by misfortunes. In 1832 his mother died, saying with her dying breath: "Tom, you have from the first to the last done your duty, and far more than your duty, by me and all connected with you." When he was fifty-five the arrangement for furnishing songs to Powers came to an end. The following year he was given a government pension of £300. In 1840-41 the ten volumes of his poetical works were published. The only other literary work of consequence was his history of Ireland, which had dragged along unsatisfactorily for years. The first volume was published in 1835: he received £750 for it; for the three other volumes he got £500 apiece.

Moore's sons brought him sorrow and disappointment: 't was a sad story of illness and premature death, of unworthy behavior and reckless extravagance.

Moore himself gradually lost the use of his faculties, and died on the 26th of February, 1852. During his feeble condition his wife, by patient economy, paid his debts, and when he died, with the £3000 which Longmans had paid for his diary and letters, and a crown pension, she was enabled to end her days in comfort. Tom Moore was a little man: Gerald Griffin thus described him in 1835:"A little man, but full of spirits, with eyes, hands, feet, and frame forever in motion, looking as if it would be a feat for him to sit for three minutes quiet in his chair. I am no great observer of proportions, but he seemed to me to be a neat-made little fellow, tidily buttoned up, young as fifteen at heart, though with hair that reminded me of Alps in the sunset; not handsome, perhaps, but without an actor's affectation; easy as a gentleman, but without some gentlemen's formality."

N. P. Willis, who met him in 1834, declared himself surprised at the diminutiveness of his person:

"He is much below the middle size, and with his white hat and long chocolate frock coat, was far from prepossessing in appearance."

He was "near-sighted, and had the frank, merry manner of a confident favorite.” He thus describes meeting him at Lady Blessington's:

"Moore's head is distinctly before me while I write, but I shall find it difficult to describe his hair, which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike any body else's in the world, and which, probably, suggested his sobriquet of Bacchus,' is diminished now to a few curls, sprinkled with gray, and scattered in a single ring above his ears. His forehead is wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent development of the organ of gayety, which, singularly enough, shines with the lustre and smooth polish of a pearl, and is surrounded by a semicircle of lines drawn close about it, like intrenchments against Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners, and there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight and changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip-a determination of the muscles to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legibly, with the imprint of political success. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as it he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking on him. The slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates."