66 you at once that it is not worth my while to remain here. I shall just stop to finish my work for Carpenter (the London publisher), which will occupy me till the spring months come in, when the passages home are always delightfully pleasant, and then I shall get upon the wing to see my dear friends once more. Before the year is out Tom, thoroughly disgusted with his occupation, is again on British shores. But, like a prudent young gentleman, he takes steps, both in Bermuda and at home, for securing his future welfare. "I have no doubt," he writes to his mother after his return, "that my situation at Bermuda will turn out something for me; the men I have appointed are of the most respect able in the island.” And as to his own prospect opened. On the 7th of August, | reluctantly;" but depart he must, if only to Moore, being on a visit to Lord Moira at ascertain the value of the appointment given. Donington, is informed by that important by Mr. Tierney to wipe out obligations." personage that Tierney had offered him the The registrar reaches Bermuda, and on the gift of a place which government had left at 19th of January, 1804, just four months after his (Tierney's) disposal, and now Lord Moira Moore sailed from Portsmouth, he writes offered it to Moore. Tom, knowing whose home thus: "Dear mother, I shall tell heart the intelligence will chiefly delight, writes off to his mother at once:- "It must be something far from contemptible, as Lord M. told me in confidence Tierney was under obligations to him, and that this was the first opportunity he had of in any manner repaying them.' Moore is only twenty-four, and his fortune is made outright. There is only one drawback to his otherwise unqualified satisfaction. The gold-mine is far off, – neither in England nor in Ireland, but across the seas. Well, what matter? An appointment which the government gives to Tierney, and which Tierney gives to Lord Moira to wipe off obligations, and which Lord Moira gives to Moore as a high mark of favor, must surely be considerable enough to enable the whole Moore family to emigrate together. So employments, Lord Moira, of course, will takə Tom thinks, and so he writes to his mother. care of them. "He assured me in the kindMr. Moore, senior, is full of becoming grat- est manner that he had not for an instant itude and approval. "For his particular lost sight of me. He could now give me a part, he thinks, with his son, that there is a situation immediately, but it would require singular chance, as well as a special interfer- residence abroad, and he added, 'We must once of Providence in getting so honorable a not banish you to a foreign garrison.' I situation at this very critical time." Tom answered, that as to occupations, I was goes to town from Donington with a letter ready to undertake any kind of business whatfrom Lord Moira to Mr. Tierney, and is in- ever.' 'Yes,' says he, but we must find formed that the valuable office is as distant as that business at home for you." Bermuda, and that the duties of the poet Two words of comment upon the above will be those of a registrar- to examine all interesting paragraph before we stop. the skippers, mates and seamen, who are pro"respectable" deputy whom Moore left to duced as witnesses in the causes of captured do his work in Bermuda turned out a scounvessels. Still Moore consoles himself. He drel, and all but ruined his principal; and "finds Bermuda is a place where physicians Lord Moira, oppressed with dignities himself, order their patients when no other air will never once raised a finger to help the sanguine keep them alive;"-how tempting a spot client who had unwisely built upon his lordly for a lively young gentleman, carolling from promises. morning till night in the silken lap of London Tom Moore was always a Liberal. Ho fashion! Well within a month of his ap-began life, as we have seen, the sympathizing pointment Moore sails. He reaches America companion of the ill-fated conspirators of on his way. The business-like character of Trinity College, Dublin, and he continued to the whole proceeding peeps out in a letter the last an adherent of the school of which addressed by Moore to his mother from Nor- his present noble biographer must now be aofolk, Virginia, Dec. 2, 1803: "It is extraor- counted the head. The poet was, however, dinary," he writes, "that I cannot, even too much petted by the great families to keep here, acquire any accurate information with his liberality as fresh and wholesome as it respect to the profits of my registrarship." might have been. Tom was a Liberal and The ladies cry when Tom leaves America, and something less. He had popular views with say "they never parted with any one so a decidedly aristocratic bias. He was a man - 999 The of the people, initiated into the rites by a upon the daily business of life to bestow even sprinkling of rose-water. No man living a passing thought upon its silken frivolities. could be more offended at Tory jobbery than The impression which the mind of Moore Tom Moore; yet he, alas! on the very first "received from the character and manner of opportunity, took, as we have read, a situa- these Republicans" suggested the chief epistion from the government, performed its tles found in the volumes of which we speak. duties for a month or two, and then quitted But the publication contained, also, poems of his post forever, leaving behind him a dep- a very different order. If we do not mistake, uty, about whom he made no further inquiries Moore, in the last edition of his collected until the victims of the said deputy's miscon- works, separated the transatlantic sketches duct thought proper to make the most from the other verses, and gave to the "Episurgent inquiries respecting him, Thomas tles and Odes" the new title of Poems relatMoore, the principal. The immediate fruit ing to America. But in the original edition of the Bermuda trip was the publication in the labors of Juvenal were frequently relieved the early spring of 1806 of Epistle, Odes, by the strains of Catullus, and it is by no and other Poems, dedicated to “ Francis, Earl means certain that the ingenuous youth of of Moira, General in His Majesty's forces, 1806 did not take quite as much harm from Master-General of the Ordnance, Constable the poet's amorous suggestions as they deof the Tower, &c.;" and it is amusing enough|rived profit from his more sonorous antito compare the sublime inscription with the Republican couplets. To the abuse which preface that immediately follows it, and with Moore received on account of the lighter the accents of disgust at Lord Moira's subse- compositions we are happily indebted for the quent neglect, which reveal themselves in the most interesting chapter in the poet's postcorrespondence, and to which we shall here- humous publication an inimitable chapter, after have occasi n more particularly to refer. for the sake of which we willingly pardon the It was impossible to panegyrize Lord Moira, shortcomings of all the rest. Many solemn wrote Tom in the dedication, because, as an and instructive discourses have been written honest Spartan once said of Hercules, no one against the bloody practice of duelling; but had ever thought of blaming him. It was we question whether any treatise ever pubvery much easier to abuse the Americans in lished is so calculated to convince mankind of the preface, because, we presume, no classic the utter absurdity of the unholy custom as authority had in their case ever furnished a Moore's simple narrative of his warlike meetprecedent for withholding censure. It is not ing with Jeffrey, who had openly declared in to be wondered that Moore, passing from the the Edinburgh Review, that "Thomas Moore, dazzling scenes of London fashion, in which in his Epistles and Odes, had made a deliberate he had reason to believe himself idolized, attempt to corrupt the minds of his readers." should have been struck and amazed by the fierce and resolute aspect of masculine life that suddenly encountered him in the United States; but we must express some concern when we find the friend of Emmet, the admirer of Fitzgerald, and the sympathizer with struggling freedom in every land, affecting to be shocked with "the rude familiarity of the lower orders in America," with "the unpolished state of society in general," and to believe that because the hardy Republicans were in 1806-not quite thirty years after independence had been won "still remote from the elegant characteristics of freedom, every sanguine hope of the future energy and greatness of America" must immediately be repressed. Had Moore acquired his liberal creed in the depths, and not in the heights, of London society, he would not so readily have despaired of a country too intent at the time Moore was twenty-seven years old at the time—an Irishman and a very fine gentleman, as we must all admit. The month was July, and he had just "come up to London from a visit to Donington Park, having promised my dear and most kind friend, the late Dowager Lady Donegal, to join her and her sister at Worthing." To Worthing he went, and put up at the inn; and there, in bed, the book with the blue and yellow cover reached him, containing the attack. The first impulse of the offended poet was to hasten to Edinburgh, and to demand satisfaction on the very spot where the insult had been offered. One contemptible but also very serious obstacle prevented this design from being carried out. The knight had not money enough to pay the journey. In fact, the emptiness of Moore's pockets, and his magnificent mode of life in spite of it, give to his portrait a fine Rembrandt effect on all occasions. We done, and the pistols secured, he proceeded remember that when he was first introduced to a friend's house, and there, in order to to the Prince of Wales we were very nearly avoid suspicion, passed the night. losing the important ceremony altogether, Tom slept pretty well, and the morning imply because Tom's coat had " grown dawned. His friend, Mr. Hume (not Joconfoundedly shabby;" and he had not seph), had taken care to provide a surgeon, money enough to buy another. What would and in good time both were on the ground. have happened if a speculative tailor had not Jeffrey and his party were, however, before consented to make a new coat for two them. The Edinburgh reviewer was not only guineas and an old one, we fear to think. accompanied by his second, but by a group In the midst of his fashionable whirl we find of anxious friends, who hovered uneasily him praying that his poems may sell fast about the spot, miserable on his account. enough to enable him to buy a few neces- Moore and Jeffrey met face to face. They sary shirts and cravats; and he makes pro- had never seen each other before, and they tracted visits to great houses, where he stays might never see each other again. Dreadful "much longer than he wished or intended, moment! Jeffrey " was standing with the simply from not having a shilling in his bag which contained the pistols in his hand, pockets to give the servants on going away," while Horner was looking anxiously around." being forced at last to beg the necessary A few minutes more and the preliminaries gratuity as a temporary loan from his pub-were arranged. Horner thought he detected lisher in town. But to the duel. Not being able to travel to Edinburgh, the angry poet goes moodily to London, and there, as the fates contrive, Jeffrey arrives at the very same time. Moore writes to a friend to join him in town as soon as possible, and tells the reason why. The friend is a sensible man, and will not stir. Tom has then re-together. course to another, who, not being sensible, undertakes his delicate mission. Tom provided him with his credentials. The "friend" was to be the bearer of a letter to Mr. Jeffrey containing the reviewer's imputations, and the following unmistakable reply to them by Moore himself: You are a liar; yes, sir, a liar; and I choose to adopt this harsh and vulgar mode of defiance in order to prevent at once all equivocation between us, and to compel you to adopt, for your own satisfaction, that alternative which you might otherwise have hesitated in affording to mine. The satisfaction required by the fiery little man was, the reader will allow, that of a 66 gentleman ;" ;" but the language in which it was demanded is decidedly that of a vintner. Poor Mr. Jeffrey, fifty years ago, had but one course to take. He referred Moore's friend to his own friend (Mr. Horner); arrangements for mortal combat were instantly made, and the meeting was fixed for the following morning at Chalk Farm. Moore dined alone on the preceding evening, and after his meal went forth and purchased, at a shop in Bond street, powder and bullets enough for a score of duels. This business some suspicious-looking fellows lurking about What could the two creatures do, thus left to amuse each other, and so capable of affording mutual entertainment? Both were men of ardent imagination, of strong feelings and generous impulses; the time was an exciting one; and it would have been strange indeed if they had permitted the solemn character of their meeting to interfere at all with the current of their kindly natures. We, of course," writes Moore 66 the first words I recollect to have passed between Had bowed to each other on meeting; but us was Jeffrey's saying, on our being left together, "What a beautiful morning it is!" "Yes," I answered with a slight smile, "a morning made for better purposes;" to which his only response was a sort of assenting sigh. As our assistants were not, any more than ourselves, very expert at warlike matters, they were rather slow in their proceedings; and as Jeffrey and I walked up and down together we came once in sight of their rather apropos to the purpose, what Billy Egan, operations; upon which I related to him, as the Irish barrister, once said, when, as he was sauntering about in like manner while the pistols were loading, his antagonist, a fiery little fellow, called out to him angrily to keep his ground, "Don't make yourself unaisy, my dear fellow," said Egan; sure, is n't it bad enough to take the dose without being by at the mixing up?" Jeffrey had scarcely time to give a sickly smile at the story before the two seconds be delivered to some of his aristocratic friends issued forth, placed their men, and deposited in the event of his being left dead at Chalk the weapons in their hands. The friends Farm. retired the pistols were raised blood was In April, 1807, Moore's friends were out about to flow-rivers of ink were about to of office, and he was miserable in consebe spared, when some police officers, at a quence. He had not yet perfect faith in given signal, rushed out from behind the himself, but hung ignobly at the skirts of trees, knocked the pistols into the next field, the great, literally singing his best in order seized the combatants, conducted them to to induce the powerful to drop their supertheir carriages, and, acting in the interests fluous crumbs into his basket. It was a of humanity and the booksellers, conveyed them instantly to Bow street. One important fact was elicted by Moore on the way. Poor Horner, who knew nothing about pistols, had asked Hume to load both weapons, and Hume had accordingly performed the two operations. fruitless effort, as it deserved to be. For why should genius such as his sell itself for dross? The majority of Moore's letters in 1807 are dated "Donington Park;" but the burden of them is still mournful enough in spite of the locality. "I am made very comfortable," he writes, "but the main point is still wantArrived at Bow street, all the offenders ing -il me donne des manchettes he is were shown into a sitting-room, while mes- speaking of Lord Moira —“et je na'i point sengers were despatched for "bail." The de chemise." In 1807 the publication of the police officers, supposing that dire malignity Irish Melodies commenced. In 1808 Moore burnt in the bosoms of the antagonists, offered magnified the offence he had already committo separate them; but they had taken an ted in the volumes of Epistles, Odes, &c., by enormous fancy to each other on the field, publishing, under the name of Thomas Little, and desired nothing so much as to continue a collection of verses, the best apology for the interrupted discourse. Every man has which is "that they were all productions of experienced the gush of pleasant emotion an age when the passions very often give a that follows upon escape from visible and coloring too warm to the imagination.” In imminent danger. It overflowed in the 1811 the poet took a desperate step, and breast of the released and happy Jeffrey. married. This certainly not unimportant fact Fluent at all times, he became voluble at in the poet's life is communicated to the Bow street, and fairly charmed his new-found reader en passant at the foot of the page, friend by "dressing his subjects out in every and not another syllable is said on the subvariety of array that an ever rich and ready ject. "Mr. Moore," writes Lord John Ruswardrobe of phraseology could supply." The sell in a note, was married to Miss Dyke bail being forthcoming, the culprits were free on March 25, 1811, at St. Martin's church, to depart; but before they could do so another in London." His lordship might have writcause of detention had arisen. On examin- ten as much had he been editing the life and ing the pistols it was found that Moore's had correspondence of Bowles, of Rogers, or of a bullet in it, but in Jeffrey's there was none. any other man of Moore's acquaintance. Do It was a horrible discovery; for had not we complain unreasonably when we assert Hume, Moore's second, confided to his prin- that greater dereliction of editorial duty never cipal on his way to Bow street the important was committed than in such instances as secret that with his own hand he had loaded this? The wife of Thomas Moore proved a both ? Fortunately for all parties, Horner had seen Hume put the bullet into Jeffrey's pistol the lead had, no doubt, fallen out of the pistol into the field; explanations were deemed satisfactory, and Moore and Jeffrey became fast friends forever. The worst that happened was, that the newspapers of the day cruelly announced that "in the pistol of one of the parties a pellet was found, and nothing at all in the pistol of the other," and that Moore had to burn a series of sentimental effusions which he had written, to VOL. I. 2 CCCCLXIII. LIVING AGE. 66 solace, a support, and a joy to her husband throughout his life-his best and fondest companion in the days of his strength -a priceless comforter in the time of calamity and during the last hours of mental gloom. She survives her illustrious partner, and merits something more than the mere record which Lord John Russell would surely have vouchsafed to Moore's merest acquaintance. There was the greater reason for a few words of explanatory comment, inasmuch as the very letter that follows the editor's an nouncement of Moore's marriage contains a Thirteen years have elapsed since the eventsuspicion avowed by the poet, that his choice ful evening when Lord Moira lighted him to had not proved agreeable to his humble his couch, and substantial aid from that high parents, who, up to this very time, had been quarter is still as far off as ever. His lordsharers in the small earnings of their gifted ship is still excluded from power, and in son. What marriage can this be, upon that factwhich the vintner and his wife look coldly and without the cordiality and interest which they owe to their child and benefactor? We refer for an answer to the biographer, who should be the best vindicator of his friend's I see an end (writes Moore) to the long hope of my life. My intention is to go far away into the country, there to devote the remainder of my life to the dear circle I am forming around me, to the quiet pursuit of literature, and, I hope, of goodness. He repeats the manly and becoming determination to another correspondent, The truth is (he says), I feel as if a load were taken off me by this final termination to all the hope and suspense which the prospect of Lord Moira's advancement has kept me in for so many years. It has been a sort of Will-o'-the-wisp to that it was not extinguished earlier, for it has led me a sad dance. My intention now is to live and to be as happy as love, literature and liberty in the country upon the earnings of my brains, can make me; and, though I shall have but few to talk to me, I will try to make many talk of me. inemory, and his lips are sealed. We are sorry to say that we can find a better reason for old Mr. Moore's coldness than for Lord John Russell's silence. Tom had taken unto himself a girl after his own heart, but without a penny in her pocket. No wonder that the old couple, who had looked for a countess at least for their distinguished and much flat-me all my life, and the only thing I regret is tered boy, and who had regularly received a portion of his scanty gains, should have taken alarm at the step which threatened to cut off the supplies, and which decided forever as marriage does decide - the social position of the newly-married pair. It is due to Moore to say that such alarm was not suffered to exist for an instant in the minds of his parents, for he writes off at once, bidding them rely upon him for the future, and to draw immediately upon his publishers for money if they stand in need of present assistance. We are loath to search for reasons for neglect of duty in one particular when the whole publication before us exhibits negli-lishers of his songs, in virtue of which he gence of no common order; but when we remember how much space is generally devoted by biographers to prove the creditable descents of their heroines and heroes, we cannot but suspect that, had Mrs. Moore belonged to any one of the families whom Moore delighted to honor, we should have had from Lord John Russell something more than the brief and, because brief, disparaging notice of the poet's marriage with a lady who was only a stage dancer, although remarkable for her beauty and esteemed for her vir tues. In due time a little girl is born to Moore, and the natural anxieties of a parent warn him of the necessity of buckling on his armor manfully for the fight of life. He has wealth within him if he will but turn his gaze inward and withdraw it utterly from the gewgaws which have hitherto dazzled his eyes only to mislead his judgment. In 1812 glimpses of his duty come to him. It was a wise resolve, and the poet acted bravely upon the suggestions of his better genius. He hired a small cottage at Kegworth, in Leicestershire, at no great distance from Castle Donington a vicinity to be valued for the sake of a good library, if for no other reason entered into an agreement with the Messrs. Power, of London, the pub was to receive 500l. a year for the space of seven years—and from time to time to send forth into the world from his happy retreat those exquisite strains which will render the name of Moore famous wheresoever musie enchants and the perfect language of song can find its way to the human heart. Now and then the modest retirement of the cottage was exchanged for magnificent visits to the castle itself, and then, you may be sure, the felicity of Tom was at its height. Hear the poor fellow when he writes to his mother, after having accompanied his "sweet Bessy for a drive in one of my lord's own carriages!· I think (he says), it would have pleased you to see my wife in one of Lord Moira's carriages, with his servant riding after her, and Lady Loudon's crimson travelling cloak round her to keep her comfortable. It is a glorious triumph of good conduct on both sides, and makes my heart happier and prouder than all the best worldly connexions could possibly have done. The dear |