Reference to the genius of Moore is needless. My object in this "Memory" is to offer homage to his moral and social worth. The world that obtains intense delight from his poems, and willingly acknowledges its debt to the poet, has been less ready to estimate the high and estimable character, the loving and faithful nature of the man. There are, however, many—may this humble tribute augment the number!—by whom the memory of Thomas Moore is cherished in the heart of hearts; to whom the cottage at Sloperton will be a shrine while they live,—that grave beside the village church a monument better loved than that of any other of the men of genius by whom the world is delighted, enlightened, and refined.
"That God is love," writes his friend and biographer, Earl Russell, "was the summary of his belief; that a man should love his neighbor as himself seems to have been the rule of his life." The Earl of Carlisle, inaugurating the statue of the poet,[O] bore testimony to his moral and social worth "in all the holy relations of life,—as son, as brother, as husband, as father, as friend"; and on the same occasion, Mr. O'Hagan, Q.C., thus expressed himself:—"He was faithful to all the sacred obligations and all the dear charities of domestic life,—he was the idol of a household."
Perhaps a better, though a far briefer, summary of the character of Thomas Moore than any of these may be given in the words of Dr. Parr, who bequeathed to him a ring:—
"To one who stands high in my estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his independent spirit, and incorruptible integrity."
FOOTNOTES:
[F] Mrs. Moore—writing to me in May, 1864—tells me I have a wrong impression as to Moore's father; that he was "handsome, full of fun, and with good manners." Moore himself calls him "one of Nature's gentlemen."
[G] Mrs. Moore write me, that I am here also wrong in my impression. "She was only a little grown out in one shoulder, but with good health; her expression was feeling, not suffering." "Dear Ellen," she adds, "was the delight of every one that knew her,—sang sweetly,—her voice very like her brother's. She died suddenly, to the grief of my loving heart."
[H] She was born in Wexford, where her father kept a "general shop." Moore used to say playfully, that he was called, in order to dignify his occupation, "a provision merchant." When on his way to Bannow in 1835 to spend a few days with his friend Thomas Boyse,—a genuine gentleman of the good old school,—he records his visit to the house of his maternal grandfather. "Nothing," he says, "could be more humble and mean than the little low house that remains to tell of his whereabouts."
I visited this house in the summer of 1864. It is still a small "general shop," situate in the old corn-market of Wexford. The rooms are more than usually quaint. Here Mrs. Moore lived until within a few weeks of the birth of her illustrious son. We are gratified to record, that, at our suggestion, a tablet has been placed over the entrance-door, stating in few words the fact that there the mother was born and lived, and that to this house the poet came, on the 26th of August, 1835, when in the zenith of his fame, to render homage to her memory. He thus writes of her and her birthplace in his "Notes" of that year:—"One of the noblest-minded, as well as most warm-hearted, of all God's creatures was born under that lowly roof."
[I] I find in Earl Russell's memoir the date given as the 26th of February; but Mrs. Moore altered it in my MSS. to February 25.