work not in the best way possible. They have not the true Celtic touch either in joy or in sorrow. They are entirely devoid of mysticism; they never belong to fairy-land; and Moore did not conceive for a moment the haunted, obscure, and majestic darkness of the Celtic ancientry. Their patriotism is mostly on the surface-a sympathy more dainty than passionate, nurtured more by soft music than by salt tears. But a certain amount of patriotic feeling they do reach, as much as Moore, cossetted by English society, was capable of supporting. To as much of it as he felt, he was faithful, and openly faithful; and this is a courage for which we may give him credit. He did more for Ireland than we think. He made her music charm the world. He brought by his singing of the Melodies (and though he had no power in his voice, he had a manner of singing which enchanted and thrilled his hearers) the wrongs and sorrows of Ireland into the ears and consideration of that class in society which had not listened to or cared for them before. It is not too much to say that Moore hastened Catholic Emancipation by his Melodies. Moreover, a natural sweet tenderness which was of the very essence of the man, but which rarely appears in his poetry, emerges and surprises in some of the IRISH MELODIES. How far this naturalness, sincerity, and pathos were due to the effect of the music upon him I cannot quite determine. I only know,' he says, 'that in a strong and inborn feeling for music lies the source of whatever talent I may have shown for poetical composition, and that it was the effort to translate into language the emotions and passions which music appeared to me to express that first led to my writing any poetry at all deserving the name.' This is as modest as it is true, and it supplies us with the best definition and criticism of all his serious poetry. That poetry is the translation of music into as pretty and melodious words as possible; and the poetry varied in form, thought, and emotion as the music varied. LALLA ROOKH is the representation in words of the florid, fanciful music which pleased his time. When in the Irish music he touched a sadder, wilder, tenderer, and more imaginative

music-which in its mirth was broken into plaintiveness, and in its plaintiveness turned on itself with laughter, which mingled with its note of joyous defiance the passionate pain of the exile for the home where so many brave men had died under oppression-he was lifted by the music into a higher region of poetry. What he heard, he wrote. Music was first, and poetry followed. This is not the case with a great poet. Music may illustrate his work, not create it. Poetry is first. That it was not first with Moore places him in a unique position among the poets, and accounts for that strangeness in his work which differentiates it from all the poetry which appeared in his time-indeed, from any other English poetry. It had no resemblance to Scott; it was wholly unaffected by the revival of naturalism in Wordsworth and Coleridge. The influence of Byron may be traced in it and in its subjects, but it was devoid of Byron's power and of his poetic passion. It was like nothing else; and we may at least grant him the praise of originality. To this strangeness may perhaps be traced some of his amazing popularity; LALLA ROOKH ran in a short time through twenty editions. His tragedies are absurd. The 'Veiled Prophet' is transpontine. Where the 'Fire Worshippers' has power, it is derived from his Irish hatred of intolerance and the remembrance of the oppression of his country. 'Paradise and the Peri' is melodious, but curiously insincere; and 'Nourmahal' just suited Moore's prattling tenderness in love and his delight in ornamental description. It is a really pretty story of true love, told sometimes with grace and charm, and sometimes with irritating sentimentality. As to the prose insertions, which weave the various poems into a romance, they are not unworthy. They have the gilded quality of the poetry, but, like the poetry, they are readable in certain moods. It is easy to criticise LALLA ROOKH, like Fadladeen; but it is pleasanter far, when the temper seizes us for that sort of thing, to pass into another age and listen to it, not for long, as the Princess listened to Feramorz.

In 1817 his visit to Paris awoke again his satirical Muse,

6

and the FUDGE FAMILY had nearly as much success as LALLA ROOKн. He travelled then, and his RHYMES ON THE ROAD are only bad prose fringed with rhyme.' Owing to pecuniary difficulties, he lived in Paris till 1822, when the LOVES OF THE ANGELS, the FABLES FOR THE HOLY ALLIANCE, and the kindness of some friends freed him from his trouble. The EPICUREAN, a prose tale, originally conceived as a poem-in which Egyptian, Greek and Christian philosophy are pounded together, as in a mortar, with Athenian gardens, pyramids, Nile temples, the Thebaid desert and mystic marvels-ended his poetic career. He lived to write a few more songs, the LIFE of Lord Byron, and an almost worthless HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Moore is neither a truly Celtic nor a truly English poet. The deep things in the Irish nature were not in him. No mysticism made him dream; no hunger for the spiritual world beset him; no fairyland, sometimes gracious, but chiefly terrible, was more real to him than the breathing world. No sadness without a known cause, no joy whose source was uncomprehended, influenced him. Nature did not speak to him of dreadful and obscure powers, or of beauty and love and eternal youth beyond mortal reach but not beyond immortal desire. The love of his country was no passion; it was more that political hatred of intolerance and oppression which any honest Whig might feel, but which Moore felt deeply as a Catholic. None of these Celtic elements belonged to him, and they and others are at the roots of Irish imagination. Nor did he replace them by the elements of English imagination. His poetry is no more English than Irish in character. It does not grow naturally out of the tree of English poetry; it is a graft upon it. He does not descend from any poetical ancestors in England, and he has had no influence on any of the English poets that followed him. He stands, as I have said, curiously alone. Had he had imagination, he would have been in brotherhood with either English, Scottish, or Irish poets. But he is a curious instance of a poet who never, save perhaps in one or two songs, deviates into imaginative work. On the other hand, he is a master in fancy, a poet so full of that power which

plays with grace and brightness on the surface of Nature and man but which never penetrates, that few if any have ever showed so well what fancy could do, when quite alone, and enjoying herself, apart from her nobler sister, imagination. And Moore helped his fancy by collecting, with infinite care, heaps of material on which she could work. He ransacked classical and Oriental history, philosophy, botany, legendary lore, religion, dress, jewels; everything to supply his fancy with illustrations, with subjects which she could entertain herself with ornamenting. No copiousness, no fertility is greater, in this region, than Moore's. And he brought to the help of his fancy a wit, an esprit, which made everything he touched with it sparkle and sing. Lastly, owing to his love of music, he gave to his poetry all the tenderness of which fancy is capable, and a melodious movement. a metrical flexibility, which delighted his contemporaries, and which has the power still of pleasing our later and more fastidious time.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin, 1779. His father was a native of County Kerry, his mother of Wexford. He was educated, like Sheridan before him, mainly at Samuel Whyte's excellent grammar-school. He entered Trinity College in 1794, the year after the partial repeal of the Penal Laws permitted a Roman Catholic to do so. Here Robert Emmet was one of his closest friends, and he was very nearly being involved with him in the United Irish conspiracy. In 1799 he went to London, bringing with him the reputation which his wonderful singing and playing had gained for him in Dublin society and the volume of translations from Anacreon which was his first published work. The introduction to the Prince of Wales set him on the high road to success, and his POETICAL WORKS OF THE LATE THOMAS LITTLE (1801) was much applauded and admired. He was appointed Admiralty Registrar at the Bermudas in 1803, and after a short visit to the island placed the duties of the office, after the usual practice of the day, in the hands of a deputy, and went on a tour through the United States and Canada. He returned to London in the winter of 1804. In 1806 appeared the ODES AND EPISTLES, which, on a severe review in the Edinburgh, led to an abortive duel with Jeffrey, afterwards one of Moore's closest friends. In the following year, 1807, began the publication of the IRISH MELODIES with music, arranged by Stevenson. The airs were taken chiefly from the collections of Bunting and Holden, and were mercilessly altered

(whether by Moore or his collaborator is unknown) to suit the musical taste of the day. In the admirable edition of the MELODIES in which the original airs have been at last restored by the hand of Dr. C. Villiers Stanford it is suggested in the preface that Stevenson, who was much under the influence of Haydn, 'imported into his arrangements a dim echo of the style of the great Austrian composer. He could scarcely,' adds Dr. Stanford, have chosen a model more unsuited for the wildness and ruggedness of the music with which he had to deal. This probably led to the alterations of scales and characteristic intervals (such as the flat seventh) which are the life and soul of Irish melodies.' The publication of the MELODIES went on at irregular intervals till 1834, Moore receiving a hundred guineas for each song, or 12,810. in all. In 1811 he married a young actress, Miss Bessie Dyke. Save for the untimely death of all the five children born of their union, his domestic life appears to have been one of unclouded happiness, as it was certainly one of enduring affection on both sides. The young couple settled first at Keyworth in Leicestershire; afterwards at other places in the country. About this time Moore engaged to write a long narrative poem for Longmans, and that publisher, before a line of the work was written, undertook to pay 3,000/. for it-the highest sum ever as yet offered for a single poem. Moore shut himself up with a library of Eastern books, and in 1815, after many unsuccessful attempts, had written enough of LALLA ROOKH to submit to the opinion of the publisher, who however declined to read it. In 1816, the year following the battle of Waterloo, when England was passing through an epoch of the deepest commercial depression, Moore with the scrupulous honour which he carried into all business transactions volunteered to let the publisher off his bargain. The latter, however, refused to accept the offer, and LALLA ROOKH came out in 1817, achieving an immediate and striking success and winning for its author a European fame. Shortly afterwards a severe financial disaster befell him. His deputy at the Bermudas turned out a rogue, and Moore found himself liable to the Admiralty for 6,000/. of defalcations. Ultimately the debt was reduced to 1,000/., which was settled by a wealthy friend of the poet, Lord Lansdowne, and shortly afterwards repaid to him by Moore. His NATIONAL AIRS (1815) and SACRED SONGS (1816) had begun to rival the success of the MELODIES. In 1817 a trip to the Continent gave the motive for he FUDGE FAMILY IN PARIS and the other satires of the same series.

The LOVES OF THE ANGELS appeared in 1822, and FABLES FOR THE HOLY ALLIANCE in 1823. In the following year Moore was the chief actor in one of the most singular and mysterious episodes of literary history. During a visit to Venice in 1819 Byron had presented Moore with his memoirs, a striking testimony to the honour and discretion of his friend. The death of Byron occurred in April 1824. Moore had in 1821 sold the