Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 6, June 1852

by Various

In 1806 Moore republished his Juvenile Poems, along with the translations and those poems written at Bermuda and in America. But the Edinburgh Review came down upon the book with the sharpest force of sarcasm and severity. The first publication of his licentious love-songs, it said, might have been excused by the great youth of the poet, but the republication was atrociously prepense and unpardonable. The poor lyric butterfly was broken terribly upon the wheel; but not so much as to disable him (—we mean the poet—changing the figure) from challenging the Auld Reekie editor; and the bard and critic—Francis Jeffrey—met at Chalk Farm, to settle their differences by the duello. But the police officers were too quick for them, and arrested both; whereupon it was reported, amidst much laughter of the press and public, that there were no balls in the pistols! Moore went to the trouble of denying that he knew the state of his adversary’s engine or his own. In this violent business the poet’s feelings were sorely tried. But his publisher managed to thrive upon the business. The book had, of course, received a very unexpected advertisement. Moore’s vexations did not terminate with the foregoing. Over two years afterward, when young Lord Byron, then in his twentieth year, charged gallantly down upon all the poets, poetasters and critics of the English Parnassus, he laughed at the duel, among the other matters, and “Little’s leadless pistol.” Here was another outrage; and out came our poet once more with a challenge to the peer. But his lordship had gone off to make material for his Giaours and Childe Harolds in the East, and the letter remained unread till his return, near two years after. By this time, his “sensitive and surly” feelings had gone off, and he wrote to Moore a frank and good-natured reply. The latter, who had, in the interim, married his wife—Miss Dyke—and thus given hostages to fortune, felt how much pleasanter it would be to have the young baron’s friendship than his bullet in the body, and therefore wrote a very warm Irish letter in return, which paved the way to their mutual friendship. On this occasion Rogers got Byron, Moore and Campbell together round his mahogany, and there they became acquainted with one another, and shook hands all round, for the first time.

In 1808 and 1809 Moore published his poems, “Intolerance” and “Corruption,” satires; one on the English Constitution, and the other on the English Church. They are fluent, but want vigor, and are read no longer. In the “Skeptic” he writes like a good Catholic who prefers ignorant obedience in all matters of Faith to the philosophy of Locke. But he now prepared to sing a loftier strain. His next publication was the First and Second Numbers of the Irish Melodies—a work which will secure to him whatever immortality awaits his name. The melodies became popular, at once, in England and Ireland alike. The sparkling grace and flexibility of his verse presented an agreeable contrast to the generality of songs sung at that period. The mixture of vivacity, pathos, and epigrammatic point in their composition placed their author at the head of modern song-writers; and, if the politics of poor Ireland were doomed to be disastrous, the poetry of her beautiful music now found itself vindicated and triumphant in the halls and palaces of the British aristocracy. There was a savor of rebellion in some of these songs which wonderfully took the fashionable fancy of the English; while in Ireland the repeated allusions to the ancient glories of the land, and the graceful sorrow which seemed to weep its many misfortunes, touched the popular heart, and led the people—(we mean the reading people)—to look on Moore as the genuine poet of Erin, and to applaud him accordingly.

As for the poet himself, it would seem that his sympathy with his native land was more a matter of sentiment than of practical reality. He could excite the finest feelings of drawing-room rebellion. But he was not a Tyrtæus to rouse up that deeper and more daring sentiment which prompts people to rush into the field. He was the friend and college-mate of Emmett and other disaffected spirits; and attended the Debating and Historic Societies in which these ardent and enlightened young men, mostly Protestants, spoke of the rights of man and the liberty of Ireland. They were members of United Irish Societies; but Moore never belonged to the last. The influence of his parents and relations was exercised against the malcontent spirit of the time; and when the unhappy rebellion was crushed, the young bard went to seek his fortune in the very heart of the English aristocracy. There Moore’s patriotism was subdued and refined; and it ever afterward delighted to exhibit itself in the language of polemics and lyric poetry. The Irish sentiment of the Irish Melodies is not strong enough to nourish any sort of rebellion upon. It is remarkable that, in all Moore’s historic allusions, he seldom or never speaks of the prowess of the Irish against the English—the struggles of the Desmonds, O’Neills, O’Moores, and so forth, against the Henries, Elizabeth, or the Stuarts. He goes back into the indistinct times of Milesian sway, the palace of Tara, and the stand of Brian or Malachi against the Danes. He passes over the recent and authentic, such as would come more home to the present period, and weeps or flushes, with remarkable prudence, among the legends and the whole Irish apocrypha. But it would be too much, perhaps, to expect that the little Catholic boy, whose early impressions were formed in the midst of the aristocratic societies of Dublin, to which he was admitted on sufferance, a gratified guest, could ever grow up a democrat or a rebel.

Indeed it is not difficult to discover from the tone of Moore’s writings that he had formed a low opinion of Irish nationality—entertained a poor notion of its past glories of all sorts, and little hope that Ireland would ever do any thing to right herself. Indeed, if Ireland had not her beautiful melodies, to suggest the weaving of lyric verse, and to give it some promise of immortality, we should not probably have had so much Irish reminiscence from Moore. It is, in fact, by a sort of poetic licence, that he allows himself, in some of his songs, to sing with an air of heroism or pathos, of those ancient men and things, in which he himself, as may be gathered from the pages of his History of Ireland, and from other places, had a very slender historical faith. But, after all, the Melodies are beautiful things, and deserve the fame they have won. They are full of felicities, and the hearts have been cold indeed that have been able to resist the fascination they exercise, in congenial moments, whether spoken or sung. The charm of an exquisite phraseology sparkles everywhere, and the feelings with which we hear them sung, seem incapable of more apt and musical expression.

In the intervals of several numbers of the Melodies Moore employed himself on other things. In 1812, he began to think of his great romance—his Opus Magnum—Lalla Rookh. Moore gives us the history of this poem, manufacture, sale and all; but the sale of it (in MS.) went before the manufacture. It was sold to the Messrs. Longman for 3000 guineas—not pounds: literary payments in England having been and being still made, by respectable publishers, in the more aristocratic coin. Mr. Perry, proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, made the bargain for his friend, the bard, and we suspect that without his influence and shrewdness, Moore would not have got that sum. For poets, and people of refined feelings, are the worst hands at a bargain in the world, as everybody knows. Perry said the poet of the Melodies should have the highest price ever given for any poetic work; and that being 3000 guineas, he held out for it and got it. The Longmans bought their pig in a poke, as the saying is. They were to take whatever poem Moore was pleased to write, and also to wait till it was written. This was a very pleasant sort of trade for the poet, and he went to work with that inspiration and cheerfulness of spirit which publishers, for their own sake, should do every thing to encourage in their writers. Moore retired to Mayfield Cottage, in Derbyshire, a little way from Donington Park and its library, and began to seclude himself from mankind. Having resolved that his romance should be Oriental, he crammed himself with every thing written about the East that he could, in any way, lay hands on—its manners, customs, history, religion, languages, geography, and so forth. He then began to write a long story called the “Peri’s Daughter;” but, after going a little way in it, his Pegasus stuck fast, and the attempt was put aside. He tried other ideas; but to little purpose. At last, an Irish idea struck him—that of poor Catholics persecuted and kept down for their religion. By a happy dexterity he metamorphosed them into Guebres, and so, setting up the frame-work of the “Fire-Worshipers,” and clothing his Hibernian sentiments—half romance half religion—in all the sparkling phraseology of the East, he got on swimmingly. The monster, “Prophet of the Khorassan,” “Paradise and the Peri,” and the “Light of the Harem,” followed favorably; and in 1816, after three years’ incubation, he gave Lalla Rookh to the purchasers of the manuscript. To Moore’s honor, it must be said, that seeing the monetary and other embarrassments of that year, he offered to release the Longmans from their engagement, if they desired it. But they stuck manfully to their bargain; and it is pleasant to add, made handsomely by it.

Moore was now very famous. Lalla and the Melodies gave him a reputation only second to that of the noble young “Childe Buron” himself. His “Fire-Worshipers” was quoted with fervor in Ireland; the songs in his “Light of the Harem” had charmed all the world; a herd of imitators sprang up like mushrooms, and bulbuls, peris, roses, flashing swords, and sparkling goblets, were the general order of the day. In the meantime, Moore went with Mr. Rogers to Paris. There he gathered the materials of the Fudge Family, which he published on his return.

In 1819 he traveled again to Paris, in company with Lord John Russell; and both went thence to Italy. Lord John passed on to Genoa, and Moore proceeded to visit Lord Byron at Venice, where the noble exile lived in a very savage condition, drinking gin and water o’nights, and writing his heart out. There the poets passed some agreeable days together, riding along the Lido together, and going over the lagoons in a gondola. It was on this occasion that Byron confided to Moore his “Memoirs,” to be used as the latter should think fit. Moore afterward sold them to Murray for 2000 guineas. But when Byron died, his widow and family interfered, and induced Moore to withdraw and burn the manuscript—forfeiting the money, of course. Moore has been blamed for consenting to this sacrifice. But it is very likely he has preserved in his Life of Byron every thing of interest contained in the papers, and that very little was lost, except certain scandalous particulars, which the world would very willingly let die—though the offal-eating scandal-mongers of the day groaned horribly under the privation at the time. After leaving Venice, Moore went to Rome. He confesses that, in the midst of the ruins and splendors of past Roman civilization and art, he was painfully conscious of his own want of artistic taste and enthusiasm. He says that a sunset on the Simplon touched him with more admiration than any thing he had seen in the Italian galleries of art. This would hardly have been expected from Moore, who has been termed the poet of artificial things. After his return from this tour, he published his Rhymes on the Road and the Fables of the Holy Alliance.

But his return did not extend to England. He knew that country was no place for him, just then. He had made a blunder in his business of the Bermuda registrarship, the consequences of which had now reached him. He had taken no security of the deputy he had appointed to do the duties of that office. The latter, in the course of time and trade, fell into temptation—the easy carelessness of Moore led him, perhaps, into it—and he made way with the proceeds of some American cargoes, and then, with himself—leaving the unprophetic little bard, in the heyday of his glory, to be responsible for near six thousand pounds. The terrible Court of Admiralty now issued a law process against “the smiling bard of pleasure,” which the latter did not think it wise to confront in person, and so stopped short at Paris, where—along with his family, which had joined him—he remained till the close of 1822. His friends, in the mean time, came forward to the rescue; and if, for a moment, he wronged his better genius by hard thoughts against the honor or honesty of his fellows, he was soon brought round to the nobler and better human creed, by generous offers of gifts, loans, etc. Thus, sustained in his exile, he passed his time pleasantly enough, at La Butte Coaslin, near Paris, singing Spanish songs to the guitar in the evening, in company with Madame V——, a neighbor, and spending the mornings of the two summers he remained in France, wandering through the noble park of St. Cloud, spinning and polishing verses and jotting down new ideas in his memorandum-book. His exile was, certainly, pleasanter than that of his erotic, erratic brother, Ovid, lamenting his frost-bitten muses, long ago, on the inhospitable shores of the Black Sea. Moore had a great many visitors at Coaslin, among them our Washington Irving, “who still, I trust,” he says, “recollects his reading to me some parts of his then forthcoming work, ‘Bracebridge Hall,’ as we sat together on the grass walk that leads to the Rocher, at La Butte.” To meet his awkward liabilities, Moore had agreed with Messrs. Murray and Wilkie to write a Life of Sheridan; but finding himself too distant from documents and authorities, he went on with his customary business of verse, and projected an epistolary romance, with Egyptian characters. But this romance was postponed: and it appeared afterward, done in prose, as the “Epicurean.” He also took up the allegory of “The Loves of the Angels,” and working away with his usual octosyllabic facility, he had soon woven it into shape. For this poem he was allowed one thousand guineas by his publisher.

On Moore’s return to England, he found that his friends had negotiated the Americans down to a thousand pounds; and that the uncle of the faithless deputy had been induced, in a grumbling way, to contribute £300 of that sum. A friend had deposited the balance in the bank to Moore’s credit, for the canceling of the Bermuda claim; and the poet was happy to hand him an order on his publisher for that amount. In this connection, Moore records (without naming the giver, but with a quotation from Ovid, to the effect that “gifts are agreeable which are made precious by him who makes them,”) a present of £300, made him at that time of difficulty—the proceeds of a maiden-work—a biography—which had been just published. The donor was Lord John Russel; the firm friend of the poet to the end of his life.

Mr. Moore now went to live at Sloperton, two miles from Devizes, and not far from the country seat of the Marquis of Lansdowne. His dwelling was at first a somewhat rude cottage, in a wooded lane. But, on taking it, the new occupants made it very comfortable and pleasant, by means of enlargements and other improvements. In 1824, Moore published his “Memoirs of Captain Rock,” in which he set forth the misgovernment of England since the conquest of the island by Strongbow. In this book he never forgets the manner for the matter: he is full of point and learned illustration, and festoons his deplorable facts with many felicities of metaphor and arguments of theology. But no Irishman, how hot-headed soever, could take the Memoirs as the text-book of rebellion, or feel his blood excited by them. Mr. Moore’s learning and imagery, in fact, weakened his theme, as the accompaniment of rich, heavy baggage used to obstruct the movements of the great historic armies, long ago. The “Memoirs” are obsolete, though the Irish sufferings seem to be much the same as usual.