[J] Trinity College, Dublin.—Thomas Moore, son of John Moore, merchant, of Dublin, aged 14, pensioner, entered 2d June, 1794. Tutor, Dr. Burrows.
[K] Alluding to a pamphlet-letter I had printed, addressed to Repealers, when the insanity of Repeal (now happily dead) was at fever-heat.
[L] "One of them (my chief muse) was a remarkably pretty girl; when I turned round to her, as she accompanied my triumphal ear, and said, 'This is a long journey for you,' she answered, with a smile that would have done your heart good, 'Oh, I only wish, Sir, it was three hundred miles!' There's for you! What was Petrarch in the Capitol to that?"—Journal, &c.—This "pretty girl's" name is ——, and, strange to say, she still keeps it.
[M] Moore was married to Miss Elizabeth Dyke, at St. Martin's Church, on the 25th of March, 1811.
[N] There were two who sought to throw filth upon the poet's grave, and they were his own countrymen,—Charles Phillips and John Wilson Croker. The former had written a wretched and unmeaning pamphlet, which he suppressed when a few copies only were issued; and I am proud to believe it was in consequence of some remarks upon it written by me, for which he commenced, but subsequently abandoned, proceedings against me for libel. The atrocious attack on Moore in the "Quarterly Review" was written by John Wilson Croker. It was the old illustration of the dead lion and the living dog. Yet Croker could at that time be scarcely described as living; it was from his death-bed he shot the poisoned arrow. And what brought out the venom? Merely a few careless words of Moore's, in which he described Croker "as a scribbler of all work," words that Earl Russell would have erased, if it had occurred to him to do so. Another countryman, Thomas Crofton Croker, assailed after his death the man whose shoe-latchets he would have been proud to unloose during his life. Moreover, his earliest slanderer was also of his own country,—an author named Quin. Of a truth it has been well said, A prophet is never without honor save in his own country. The proverb is especially true as regards Irish prophets. Assuredly, Moore was, and is, more popular in every part of the world than he was or is in Ireland. The reason is plain: he was, so to speak, of two parties, yet of neither: the one could not forgive his early aspirations for liberty, uttered in imperishable verse; the other could not pardon what they called his desertion of their cause, when he saw that England was willing to do, and was doing, justice to Ireland.
[O] A bronze statue of Moore has been erected in College Street, Dublin. It is a poor affair, the production of his namesake, the sculptor. Bad as it is, it is made worse by contrast with its neighbor, Goldsmith,—a work by the great Irish artist, Foley,—a work rarely surpassed by the art of the sculptor at any period in any country.
ON BOARD THE SEVENTY-SIX
[Written for Bryant's Seventieth Birthday.]
Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea,
Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side;
Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free,
Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide;
Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn,
We lay, awaiting morn.