LAMENT.
“Forget not the field where they perished,
The truest, the last of the brave!
All gone, and the bright hope we cherished
Gone with them, and quenched in their grave.
Oh, could we from Death but recover
Those hearts as they bounded before,
In the face of high heaven to fight over
This combat for freedom once more.”
The phrase used in the speeches of the late “Agitator,” till it grew ridiculous by the repetition, will be found in the following fine lines:—
“Remember thee! yes, while there’s life in this heart,
It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art,
More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom and thy showers,
Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours.
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free,
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea,
I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow,
But, oh, could I love thee more deeply than now?
No! thy chains, as they rankle, thy blood, as it runs,
But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons,
Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird’s nest,
Drink love in each life-drop that flows from thy breast.”
It would be cruel to ask for the evidence of all this tyranny—a link of the chains that rankle on the limbs of Ireland, or a drop of the blood that so perpetually oozes from her wounds. But poetry is privileged to be as “unhappy” as it pleases—to weep over sorrows unfelt by the world—and to fabricate wrongs, only to have the triumph of sweeping them away. We would tolerate half the harangues of the Irish disturbers for one poet like Moore.
Some of the most finished of those verses were devoted to the memory of Emmett, and they could not have been devoted to a subject more unworthy of his poetry. In Ireland, for the last five hundred years, every fault, folly, and failure of the nation is laid to the charge of England. The man who invents a “grievance” is sure to be popular; but if he is to achieve the supreme triumph of popularity, he must fasten his grievance on the back of England; and if he pushes his charge into practice, and is ultimately banished or hanged, he is canonised in the popular calendar of patriotism. This absurdity, equally unaccountable and incurable, actually places Emmett in the rank of the Wallaces and Kosciuskos;—thus degrading men of conduct and courage, encountering great hazards for great principles, with a selfish simpleton, a trifler with conspiracy, and a runaway from the first sight of the danger which he himself had created. Moore’s hero was a feeble romancer; his national regenerator a street rioter; and his patriotic statesman merely a giddy gambler, who staked his pittance on a silly and solitary throw for supremacy, and saw his stake swept away by the policeman! Totally foolish as Ireland has ever been in her politics, she ought to be most ashamed of this display before the world—of inaugurating this stripling-revolutionist, this fugitive champion, this milk-and-water Jacobin, among her claims to the homage of posterity. Yet this was the personage on whose death Moore wrote these touching lines:—
“O breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid;
Sad, silent, and dark, be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o’er his head.
But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Still brightens with verdure the grave where he sleeps,
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.”
On the death of the celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan, some of his Notes and Manuscripts were put into Moore’s hands, and the alliance constituted by the Whiggism of both was presumed to insure a satisfactory tribute to the remembrance of perhaps the most gifted man of the age. But their Whiggism was different; Sheridan’s was party, and Moore’s was prejudice. Sheridan had put on and off his Whiggism, with the grave affectation, or the sarcastic ease, of one who knew its worthlessness; Moore adopted it with the simplicity of ignorance, and the blind passion of the native character. The result was, a biography that pleased no one. Those whom Sheridan had lashed in the House of Commons, thought that it was too laudatory; while his admirers charged it with injustice. However, to those who cared nothing for the partisanship of either, the volume was amusing, occasionally eloquent, though less anecdotical than was to be expected from a career almost one anecdote from the beginning. On the whole, it sustained Moore’s reputation.
His Life of Byron, at a later period, had an increased popularity. The subject was singularly difficult; Byron had provoked a quarrel with the world, and was proud of the provocation. He had led a career of private petulance, which was deeply offensive to individuals, and he disclaimed all respect for those higher decorums which society demands. The power of his verse had thrown a shield over the living poet, but a severe tribunal apparently awaited the dead. Moore accomplished his task with dexterity, judicious selection, and still more judicious suppression, were exercised; and he was enabled to produce a performance at once faithful to the fame of the dead, and free from insult to the living.
A more reluctant glance must be given to Moore’s political writings. In this unhappy digression from the natural pursuits of a poet, Moore showed all the monomania of the Irish Papist. England is now familiar with the singular contradiction of fact to phrase, which exists in all the partisanship of Ireland. The first principle of the modern orator in Ireland is a reckless defiance of the common sense of mankind; facts fly before him, and truths are trampled under his heel. In the most insolent challenges to the law, he complains that he is tongue-tied; in the most extravagant license of libel, he complains of oppression; and in the most daring outrage against authority, he complains that he is a slave! Summoning public meetings for the purpose of extinguishing the Government, and summoning them with impunity, he pronounces the Government to be a tyrant, and the land a dungeon. The reader who would conceive the condition of Ireland from its Papist speakers must think that he is listening to the annals of Norfolk Island, or the mysteries of a French oubliette. Moore’s politics shared the monomania of his Popish countrymen.
But he suddenly turned to more congenial objects, and produced his popular poem of Lalla Rookh. The scenery of India gave full opportunity to the luxuriance of his style; the wildness of Indian adventure, and the novelty of Indian romance, excited public curiosity, and the volume found its way into every drawing-room, and finally rested in every library. But there its course ended; the glitter which at first dazzled, at length exhausted, the public eye. We might as well look with unwearied delight on a piece of tissue, and be satisfied with vividness of colour, in place of vividness of form. Moore’s future fame will depend on his National Melodies.
He received large sums for some of his volumes; but what are occasional successes, when their products must be expanded over a life! He always expressed himself as in narrow circumstances, and his retired mode of living seemed to justify the expression. Towards the close of his days, his friend the Marquis of Lansdowne obtained for him a pension of £300 a-year. But he had not long enjoyed this important accession to his income before his faculties began to fail. His memory was the first to give way; he lingered, in increasing decay, for about two years, till on the 26th of February he died, at the age of nearly 72.
His funeral took place in a neighbouring churchyard, where one of his daughters was buried. It was so strictly and so unnecessarily private that but two or three persons attended, of the many who, we believe, would have willingly paid the last respect to his remains.
Thus has passed away a great poet from the world—a man whose manners added grace to every circle in which he moved—animation to the gay, and sentiment to the refined. If England holds his remains, Ireland is the heir of his fame; and if she has a sense of gratitude, she will give some public testimonial of her homage to the genius which has given another ray to the lustre of her name.