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.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
BOOK XI.—INITIAL CHAPTER.
It is not an uncommon crotchet amongst benevolent men to maintain that wickedness is necessarily a sort of insanity, and that nobody would make a violent start out of the straight path unless stung to such disorder by a bee in his bonnet. Certainly, when some very clever, well-educated person, like our friend, Randal Leslie, acts upon the fallacious principle that “roguery is the best policy,” it is curious to see how many points he has in common with the insane: what over-cunning—what irritable restlessness—what suspicious belief that the rest of the world are in a conspiracy against him, which it requires all his wit to baffle and turn to his own proper aggrandisement and profit. Perhaps some of my readers may have thought that I have represented Randal as unnaturally far-fetched in his schemes, too wire-drawn and subtle in his speculations; yet that is commonly the case with very refining intellects, when they choose to play the knave;—it helps to disguise from themselves the ugliness of their ambition, just as a philosopher delights in the ingenuity of some metaphysical process, which ends in what plain men call “atheism,” who would be infinitely shocked and offended if he were entitled an atheist. As I have somewhere said or implied before, it is difficult for us dull folks to conceive the glee which a wily brain takes in the exercise of its own ingenuity.
Having premised thus much on behalf of the “Natural” in Randal Leslie’s character, I must here fly off to say a word or two on the agency in human life exercised by a passion rarely seen without a mask in our debonnair and civilised age—I mean Hate.