The anniversary of the birth of Thomas Moore is celebrated in Dublin every summer, and a programme of his “Irish Melodies” is sung by local musicians—sweet old-fashioned ballads like “The Harp That Once through Tara’s Halls,” “Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms,” and others like them. The proceeds of the concert are devoted to a fund which is to be raised to erect a monument in memory of this most popular of Irish poets, whose songs are heard in every cottage in Ireland. His most pretentious poem, a Persian epic called “Lalla Rookh,” brought $15,000,—the highest price ever paid for a poem. Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” and some of Tennyson’s and perhaps Kipling’s poems and other poets’, have received larger sums in royalties, but no other man was paid so much for his verses in advance of their publication.
Moore was born in a little house on Aungier Street, Dublin, which is unfortunately now a filthy saloon. He was educated in a little grammar school in Johnston’s Court, off Grafton Street, near the Shelbourne Hotel, where Richard Brinsley Sheridan was also a pupil. Petty, the first great Irish scientist, who was also a physician and surveyor, was educated there. His book of surveys made for Oliver Cromwell is still used by the authorities.
Tom Moore was a chum of Robert Emmet at Trinity College. After graduation he entered journalism and was connected with the London Times and the London Chronicle. He went to Bermuda as British consul in 1803, and visited the United States before he returned. He was lionized everywhere because his plaintive Irish ballads, which he set to the music of the oldest peasant airs, were in the portfolio of every musician in the civilized world, and his social attractions made him a welcome guest. When he returned to England he was given a pension of $1,000 a year until his death.
Volumes might be written concerning the literary reminiscences of Dublin. Addison was private secretary to the notorious viceroy Wharton, and the evidence indicates that his behavior was not so blameless as the readers of Macaulay’s sketch of his life would infer. His official correspondence shows that he was not exempt from the usual weaknesses of humanity and not above making an honest penny out of his office. He seemed to be avaricious, and, although holding a position of the closest confidence to the lord lieutenant, took an interest in several commercial ventures that were not entirely beyond criticism.
Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, those two greatest of all delineators of Irish character, were both born and educated in Dublin and did most of their work there. Their graphic sketches of Irish life may have been accurate in their day, and now and then, I am told, appears one of the rollicking types of the Irishman they describe; but, while the character of the race may not be changed, its habits and customs are quite different from those of the period they describe. There’s a grammar school at which Tom Moore and Richard Brinsley Sheridan both received their education. Sheridan was born on the same block, and the house is marked by a tablet. Another tablet near the entrance of a house only a few steps distant shows where Sir William Hamilton, the great Irish mathematician, lived. Mrs. Hemans, that gentle hymn writer, whose lines were much more familiar to the reading public half a century ago than they are to-day, lived and died in the same neighborhood, and was buried in St. Anne’s Church, near by. Her epitaph, taken from one of her own serene poems, reads:
“Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Fair spirit, rest thee now!
Even while with us thy footsteps trod,
His seal was on thy brow.”