Under the original scheme, Moore was only to have been one of "several distinguished Literary Characters" from whom "Power has had promises of assistance." But his success precluded all competition. The twenty-four songs comprised in the first two numbers include some of his very best and much of his most popular work, and it is interesting to note that almost the whole of them must have been written in Ireland. His stay at Donington lasted till June, and during the earlier part of it he was certainly engaged on poetry. But except for an excursion to Tunbridge, to visit Lady Donegal and her sister, he went nowhere else in England, and he was back in Dublin by the end of August. In the remaining months of that summer he paid the visit to the Vale of Ovoca which gave occasion to his lyric, "The Meeting of the Waters." A footnote to the first edition of the first number explains that—
"'The Meeting of the Waters' forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow in the County of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested to me by a visit to this romantic spot in the summer of the present year (1807)."
It appears also, from a letter to Miss Godfrey, that in May 1807 his solitude at Donington was interrupted by the advent of a large house-party, and one may fairly say that, except for what he may have done in the space of about three months, the whole of the lyrics of the first two numbers were composed in the country where the airs themselves had their origin.
Moreover, during his stay at Donington, other work than the Melodies engaged him. He tells Lady Donegal, "to God's pleasure and both our comforts," that he is not writing love verses.
"I begin at last to find out that politics is the only thing minded in this country, and that it is better even to rebel against government than to have nothing to do with it; so I am writing politics."
The result of this determination was seen in the publication which appeared towards the end of 1808—Corruption and Intolerance, two more satirical essays in the Popian manner. These productions were issued by Carpenter in a thin octavo, eked out with a vast deal of notes. Moore had not yet arrived at his characteristic manner of expression in satire, and neither poem deserves much notice. Yet there was talent and to spare in lines like these:—
"Hence the rich oil, that from the Treasury steals,
Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play,
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far."
And at the close of the poem there is a note of unaccustomed fierceness in the reference to Castlereagh:
"See yon smooth lord, whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashion'd for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourish'd, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of Kings."
The lines on Intolerance were described as fragmentary—"the imperfect beginning of a long series of Essays upon the same important subject"; and the political attitude of the whole was sufficiently described on the title-page, where the lines were described as "Addressed to an Englishman by an Irishman."