MOORE, Dr John (1730-1802), born at Stirling in 1730, was one of the most prominent writers of travels and novels in the latter part of the 18th century. His novel Zeluco (published in 1789) produced a powerful impression at the time, and indirectly, through the poetry of Byron, has left an abiding mark on literature. The novel would in these days be called a psychological novel; it is a close analysis of the motives of a headstrong, passionate, thoroughly selfish and unprincipled profligate. It is full of incident, and the analysis is never prolonged into tedious reflexions, nor suffered to intercept the progress of the story, while the main plot is diversified with many interesting episodes. The character took a great hold of Byron’s imagination, and probably influenced his life in some of its many moods, as well as his poetry. It is not too much to say that the common opinion that Byron intended Childe Harold as a reflexion of himself cannot be cleared of its large mixture of falsehood without a study of Moore’s Zeluco. Byron said that he intended the Childe to be “a poetical Zeluco,” and the most striking features of the portrait were undoubtedly taken from that character. At the same time it is obvious to everybody acquainted with Moore’s novel and Byron’s life that the moody and impressionable poet often adopted the character of Zeluco, fancied himself and felt himself to be a Zeluco, although he was at heart a very different man. Moore’s other works have a less marked individuality, but his sketches of society and manners in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and England furnish valuable materials for the social historian. Like his countrymen Burnett and Boswell, he wàs a sagacious, penetrating, and in the main unprejudiced observer, with something of a natural historian’s interest in the human species; and he had exceptional opportunities of observation.
He was a doctor by profession, and the son of a Stirlingshire clergyman. After taking his medical degree at Glasgow, he served with the army in Flanders, then was attached to the household of the English ambassador at Paris, then practised for five years in Glasgow, next travelled on the Continent for five years with a young nobleman, settled for some years as a physician in London, accompanied Lord Lauderdale to Paris in 1792 and witnessed some of the principal scenes of the Revolution. All classes thus came under his observation, while his profession preserved him in an unusual degree from flippant bias. His works attest great shrewdness and sagacity of judgment, and show no small skill in literary presentation. He died at London in 1802.
MOORE, Sir John (1761-1809), the only English general who has gained lasting fame by the conduct of a retreat, was the son of Dr Moore (the subject of the preceding notice), and was born at Glasgow on 13th November 1761. It was his appointment as tutor to the young duke of Hamilton which procured for John Moore educational advantages by which he profited so much as to be called in after life the most cultivated officer in the army. It was then the fashion for young noblemen to travel from court to court, and Moore accompanied his father and the duke to all the chief capitals in Europe, until he was suddenly ordered in 1777 to join the 51st regiment, in which he had been appointed an ensign. He learned his drill at Minorca, and in 1779 was appointed lieutenant and paymaster in a new regiment recently raised by the duke of Hamilton, with which he served in America till the peace of 1783. In 1784 Moore, though but twenty-three years of age, was returned by the duke of Hamilton as member of parliament for the united boroughs of Selkirk, Peebles, and Linlithgow. In parliament he does not seem to have opened his mouth, though he always voted with the Government; but he made some useful friends, notably the duke of York and Pitt. In 1788 he was promoted to a majority in the 51st regiment, and in 1790 he became lieutenantcolonel and resigned his seat in parliament. He soon got his regiment in fine order, and in 1792 sailed with it for the Mediterranean. He was too late to assist at Toulon, but was engaged throughout the operations in Corsica, and especially distinguished himself at the taking of Calvi. After the expulsion of the French, Moore became very intimate with Paoli and many of the leading Corsican patriots, which intimacy was so obnoxious to Sir Gilbert Elliot, the viceroy, that Moore was ordered to leave the island in fortyeight hours. Sir Gilbert’s hasty conduct by no means met with approval in London, and Moore was gazetted brigadier-general, and ordered to proceed with his brigade to the West Indies. In April 1796 he reached Barbados, and at once became the right hand of Sir Ralph Abercromby, the commander-in-chief. The first enterprise was the reconquest of the island of St Lucia, which was completely occupied by an agent of Victor Hugues with a mixed force of Caribs, negroes, and Frenchmen. The key of the island was a fortified and almost impregnable height called the Morne Fortuné, which was at last stormed, though with great loss, by the valour of brigadier-generals Moore and Hope, who were to be comrades on a yet more memorable field. After this success, Sir Ralph left the island, and appointed Moore governor and commander-in-chief. A difficult post he found his government, owing to the swarms of Caribs and negroes in the woods; but just as he was on the point of triumphing he fell ill of yellow fever, and was ordered home. In 1798 he was well and again eager to be on active service, and he accompanied his friend Abercromby over to Ireland, where he received the command of the Bandon district. In the Irish rebellion of 1798 r he distinguished himself by his activity in saving Wexford from destruction after the battle of Vinegar Hill. His services were in universal request, and Abercromby insisted upon his serving with him in the expedition to the Helder in 1799, where he did creditably all that was creditably done in that ill-managed expedition. On his return from Holland he was made colonel of the 5 2d regiment, and in 1800 accompanied Abercromby to the Mediterranean as major-general.
Throughout the Egyptian expedition he commanded the reserve, and especially distinguished himself at the battle of Alexandria, when he was wounded in three places, and behaved with such distinction that he was recognized universally as the greatest English general, now that Abercromby was gone. The short interval of the peace of Amiens did not injure Moore’s prospects, and in 1803 he was appointed commandant of the camp at Shorncliffe. Here he proved his greatness as an organizer, for it was at this time that he organized those light regiments which were to form the reserve in his own campaign and the light division in the Peninsular War. While at Shorncliffe he renewed his intimacy with Pitt, who was then residing at Walmer Castle, and who on his return to office made Moore a knight of the Bath, and consulted him on every military project. Fox, when he succeeded to office, showed the same appreciation of Moore, and in May 1806 appointed him second-in-command to his brother, General Fox, who was ordered with a strong force to Sicily to supersede Sir John Stuart. Moore won but little credit at this time, for there was none to gain, but employed his time, according to Napier, in falling in love with Miss Fox, to whom, however, he never proposed, fearing to be accepted for his position and not for himself. In 1807 he was able to escape from the intrigues of the Sicilian court, and was ordered to Portugal, which he reached too late to make any defence of Lisbon, already in the possession of the French. He then went home, and had four months’ rest, the last he ever had. In May 1808 he was ordered with a force of 11,000 men to Sweden to assist the king against the united forces of France and Russia. The mad conduct of the Swedish king, however, who even went so far as to declare Sir John Moore under arrest when he refused to acquiesce in his plans, ruined any chance of successful co-operation, and the English general made his escape and returned to England. He was at once ordered to proceed with his division to Portugal, where Sir Arthur Wellesley had already landed · but the appointment of Dalrymple and Burrard to the chief commands was even more of a slight on Moore as a general of European experience than on Wellesley, whose laurels had hitherto been won in India. He regarded himself as personally insulted by the ministers, and especially by Lord Castlereagh, but deemed it his duty to go where he was ordered. He met his reward ; for when, after the excitement caused by the Convention of Cintra, Dalrymple and Burrard went home, he was left in command of the largest English army since the commencement of the war. Wellesley had appreciated him, and in an interesting letter (published in the Wellington Despatches') had expressed his desire to use his own great political influence to reconcile him to the ministers and the ministers to him.
Now began the glorious three months on which Moore’s reputation as a soldier and a statesman must rest. The Spaniards, flushed with their former success at Baylen, regarded Napoleon, who had in person crossed the Pyrenees, as another Dupont, and loudly summoned Moore to a share in their coming victories. Moore knew better what was the value of Napoleon’s genius, but he had been commanded to assist the Spaniards, and therefore gave the order to advance. His army marched in four distinct divisions, and on 13th November 1808 he concentrated at Salamanca, where he waited to see what would happen. He heard that a subsidiary force under Sir David Baird had arrived at Corunna, and ordered it up to join him. At Salamanca he remained a whole month watching the triumphant successes of Napoleon and his lieutenants, and learning how little Spanish reports or Spanish valour were to be relied on. Though irritated by the menaces and abuse of Frere, the English minister to the junta, he waited till the 13th December, hearing daily of Spanish defeats, and then he determined to draw off upon his own small force the weight of Napoleon’s power, and thus give Andalucia the winter in which to organize an army and prepare for another Baylen. With this intention he advanced through Toro and Mayorga, where Baird joined him, to Sahagun. He judged rightly that Napoleon would never advance into Andalucia and leave the English behind him, but that he would turn all his power against them. Having once drawn Napoleon’s attention to himself, he began his famous retreat and fell back quickly, fighting every day and invariably with success. He now could test the military spirit he had taught at Shorncliffe, for the reserve under Sir Edward Paget consisted entirely of his own light regiments. To detail each step of the retreat and every skirmish would be but to rewrite Napier; suffice it to say that, with great loss of life and material, Moore reached Corunna on 12th January 1809. But the fleet to take the army home was not there; and the English would have to fight Soult, whose army was even more weakened and demoralized than Moore’s, before they could embark. It was on 16th January that Moore fought his last battle; he fell early in the day, and knew at once that his wound was mortal. His last hours were cheered with the knowledge of victory, but were spent in recommending his old friends, such as Graham and Colborne, to the notice of the Government. Sir H. Hardinge’s description of these hours is in its way inimitable, and in it must be studied how a modern Bayard should die in battle, every thought being for others, none for himself.
It may be possible in the face of his heroic death to exaggerate Moore’s actual military services, but his influence on the British army cannot be overrated. The true military spirit of discipline and of valour, both in officers and men, had become nearly extinct during the American war. Abercromby, who looked back to the traditions of Minden, was the first to attempt to revive it, and his work was carried on by Moore. The formation of the light regiments at Shorncliffe was the answer to the new French tactics, and it was left to Wellington to show the success of the experiment. Moore’s powers as a statesman are shown in his despatches written at Salamanca, and he had the truest gift of a great man, that of judging men. It may be noticed that, while Wellington perpetually grumbled at the bad qualities of his officers and formed no school, Moore’s name is associated with the career of all who made their mark. Among generals, Hope, Graham, Sir E. Paget, Hill, and Craufurd, all felt and submitted to his ascendency, and of younger officers it was ever the proud boast of the Napiers, Colborne, the Beckwiths, and Barnard that they were the pupils of Moore, not of Wellington. Nay more, he inspired an historian. The description of Moore’s retreat in Napier is perhaps the finest piece of military history in the English language, not only because the author was present, but because his heart was with the leader of that retreat; and, if Napier felt towards Wellington as the soldiers of the tenth legion felt towards Caesar, he felt towards Moore the personal love and devotion of a cavalier towards Montrose.
The great authority for Moore's life is the Life of Sir John Moore, by his brother, J. C. Moore (1833); see also Narrative of the Campaign of Sir John Moore in Spain, by his brother, J. C. Moore (4to, with plans, 1809); Napier, Peninsular W r ar, Bk. iv., and his Life of Sir Charles Napier. For views adverse to Moore's retreat, see Charmilly, Narrative (1810), and Sir Bartie Frere, Life of the Rt. Hon. J. H. Frere (published in vol. 1. of his works). Consult also Wilson, Campaign in Egypt, for Moore’s services there, and the Life of Gilbert Elliot, First Lord Minto, for the squabble in Corsica. (H. Μ. S.)
MOORE, Thomas (1779-1852), born at Dublin on 28th May 1779, fairly shares with Lord Byron the honour of being the most popular poet of his generation. Whatever may be thought now of the intrinsic qualities of his verse, this much cannot be denied. The most trustworthy of all measures of popularity is the price put upon a writer’s work in the publishing market, and when Moore’s friend Perry, in negotiating the sale of the unwritten Lalla Rookh t claimed for the poet the highest price that had up to that time been paid for a poem the publisher at once assented. Moore was then in the heyday of his reputation, but twenty years later publishers were still willing to risk their thousands on his promise to produce. Much of Moore’s success was due to his personal charm. This at least gave him the start on his road to popularity. There is not a more extraordinary incident in the history of our literature than the instantaneousness with which the son of a humble Dublin grocer just out of his teens, on his first visit to London, captivated the fashionable world and established himself in the course of a few months as one of its prime favourites. The youth crossed St George’s Channel in 1799 to keep terms at the Middle Temple, carrying with him a translation of the Odes of Anacreon, which he wished to publish by subscription. In a very short time he had enrolled half the fashionable world among his subscribers, and had obtained the permission of the prince of Wales to dedicate the work to him. The mere power of writing graceful and fluent amatory verses would not alone have enabled the poet to work this miracle. Moore’s social gifts were of the most engaging kind. He charmed all whom he met, and charmed them, though he was not a trained musician, with nothing more than with his singing of his own songs. The piano, and not the harp, was his instrument, but he came nearer than anybody else in modern times to Bishop Percy’s romantic conception of the minstrel. To find a parallel to him we must go back to the palmy days of Provençal song, to such troubadours and jongleurs as Arnaud Daniel and Perdigon, whose varied powers of entertainment made them welcome guests wherever they went. It was not merely the fashionable world that the young adventurer captivated; the landlady of his lodgings in London, a countrywoman of his own, offered to place at his disposal all the money of which she had the command.
The fragment of autobiography in which Moore draws a softly-coloured picture of his early life in Dublin lets us into the secret of the seeming miracle of his social conquest. Externals apart, the spirit of his social surroundings in Little Aungier Street had much in common with the society to which he was introduced in London. He was born in the proscribed sect of Catholics, whose exclusion from the society of the Castle produced a closer union among their various ranks, and thus, from the first, Moore was no stranger to the more refined gaieties of social intercourse. It was, upon the whole, a gay life in Catholic society, though the conspiracy of the United Irishmen was being quietly formed beneath the surface. Amateur theatricals was one of their favourite diversions, and gifts of reciting and singing were not likely to die for want of applause. Moore’s schoolmaster was a leader in these entertainments, a writer of prologues and epilogues and incidental songs; and at a very early age Master Thomas Moore was one of his show-boys, ardently encouraged in all his exercises by a very affectionate mother at home. Before he left school he had acquired fame in his own circle as a song-writer, and had published, in the Anthologia Hibernica, verses “to Zelia on her charging the author with λvriting too much on love.” This was in 1793. In that year the prohibition against Catholics entering Trinity College was removed, and next year Moore took advantage of the new freedom. As one of the first Catholic entrants, he had an exceptional stimulus to work, and there industriously acquired that classical scholarship with which he won the hearts of such learned Whigs as Lansdowne and Holland, while he charmed fashionable ladies with the grace of his songs. Young Moore’s social atmosphere was, of course, strongly charged with patriotism and hatred of the excesses of English despotism. Some of his closest friends in Trinity were deep in the conspiracy of 1798. But even for his patriotism—a genuine passion which he never sought to disguise—Moore found plenty of sympathy among the Whig political leaders, when he made their acquaintance in the first years of the century.
Moore was fairly established in London society in the first year of the century, and from that time the hope of its applause was the ruling aspiration of his life and its judgment the standard of his work. In his letters to his mother, which are delightful prose lyrics and show the most charming side of Moore’s character—he wrote to her constantly and with warm affection in his busiest weeks— we find him, even in 1800, declaring himself surfeited with duchesses and marchionesses, and professing his readiness at any moment to exchange all his fineries for Irish stew and salt fish. But he never did make the exchange, even for more potent attractions than the fare of his youth. He could not bear the shortest banishment from fashionable drawing-rooms without uneasy longings. The dignity and ease, the luxury, the gaiety, the brightness of fashionable life, wholly satisfied his joyous and self-indulgent nature. When men of rank courted his company, when princesses sang his songs and peeresses wept at them, Moore was too frank to affect indifference; he was in the highest heaven of delight, and went home to record the incident to his relatives or transmit it to posterity in his diary. If prudence whispered that he was frittering away his time and dissipating his energies, he persuaded himself that his conduct was thoroughly worthy of a solid man of business: that to get a lucrative appointment from his political friends he must keep himself in evidence, and that to make his songs sell he must give them a start with his own voice. But his mind was seemingly not much troubled either with sordid care or with sober prudence; he lived in the happy present, and he liked fashionable company for its own sake,—and no wonder, seeing how he was petted, caressed, and admired. Swift’s saying that great men never reward in a more substantial way those whom they make the companions of their pleasures was often in Moore’s mind. It was verified to some extent in his own case. Through Lord Moira’s influence he was appointed registrar of the admiralty court in Bermuda in 1803. He went there to take possession, but four or five months of West India society, jingling pianofortes, and dusky beauties bored him excessively, and he appointed a deputy and returned to London, after little more than a year’s absence. The office continued to bring him about £400 a year for fourteen or fifteen years, but at the end of that time embezzlement by the deputy, for whom he was responsible, involved him in serious embarrassment. This was all that Moore received from his great political friends, —no great boon as things went in the days of patronage. He had hopes from Lord Moira in the Grenville ministry in 1806,—hopes of an Irish commissionership or something substantial, but the king’s obstinacy about Catholic emancipation destroyed the ministry before anything worth having turned up. The poet’s long-deferred hopes were finally extinguished in 1812, when Lord Moira, under the Liverpool administration, went out as governor-general to India without making any provision for him. From that time Moore set himself in earnest to make a living by literature, his responsibilities being increased by his marriage in 1811. From his boyhood to 1812 may be called the first period of Moore’s poetical activity. He had formed the design of translating Anacreon while still at college, and several of the pieces published in 1801 under the nom, de plume of “Thomas Little” were written before he was eighteen. The somewhat ostentatious scholarship of the notes to his Anacreon, the parade of learned authorities, he explained by his habit of omnivorous reading in Trinity College library. Throughout his literary life he retained this habit of out-of-the-way reading and clever display of it. Moore had really abundance of miscellaneous scholarship as well as great quickness in the analogical application of his knowledge; and, though he made sad havoc of quantities when he tried to write in Greek, there was probably no scholar of his time who would have surpassed him in the interpretation of a difficult passage. He seems to have spent a good deal of time in the libraries of the great houses that he frequented; Moira, Lansdowne, and Holland were all scholarly men and book-collectors. It might be asked,—What had “passion’s warmest child,” whose “only books were women’s looks,” to do with obscure mediaeval epigrammatists, theologians, and commentators? But it would seem that Moore took the hints for many of his lyrics from books, and, knowing the great wealth of fancy among mediaeval Latinists, turned often to them as likely quarters in which to find some happy word-play or image that might serve as a motive for his muse. The public, of course, were concerned with the product and not with the process of manufacture, and “Little’s” songs at once became the rage in every drawing-room. He found his songs in Virginia when he landed there on his way to Bermuda. And not only were his songs sung but his poems were read, passing rapidly through many editions. The bulk of them were simple fancies, gracefully, fluently, and sometimes wittily expressed, the lyrist’s models being the amatory poets of the 17 th century from Carew to Rochester. Carew is the only eminent poet of that century with whom Moore will bear comparison. The highest praise that can be given to his amatory lyrics is that he knew his audience, wrote directly for them, and pleased them more than any of his competitors. His publication of 1806 was savagely reviewed in the Edinburgh by Jeffrey, who accused him of a deliberate design to corrupt the minds of innocent maidens with his wanton fancies, and who had in consequence to figure in a ludicrous attempt at a duel—ludicrous in its circumstances, though Moore was ferociously in earnest. We may well acquit Moore of the diabolic intention attributed to him, but Jeffrey’s criticism of his poetry as poetry was just enough. The only parts of the volume that Jeffrey praised were the satirical epistles. The vein essayed in these epistles Moore pursued afterwards in his Corruption, Intolerance (1808), and The Sceptic, a philosophical satire (1809); but as long as he kept to the heroic couplet and the manner of Pope he could not give full scope to his peculiar powers as a satirist. It may be remarked in passing that the result of the hostile meeting with Jeffrey is a striking evidence of the impressiveness of Moore’s personality; in the course of a few minutes’ conversation he changed a bitter critic into a lifelong friend. Of all the poetical enterprises that Moore undertook, either at this period or later, none was so exactly suited to his powers as the task proposed to him by the publisher Power of supplying fit words to a collection of Irish melodies. The first number appeared in 1807, and it was so successful that for twenty-seven years afterwards writing words to music was one of Moore’s most regular occupations and his steadiest source of income, Power paying him an annuity of £500. Six numbers of Irish melodies were published before 1815; then they turned to sacred songs and national airs, issuing also four more numbers of Irish melodies before 1834. Moore entered into this work with his best and most practised powers and with all his heart. From his boyhood he had been in training for it. The most characteristic moods of Irish feeling, grave and gay, plaintive and stirring, were embodied in those airs, and their variety touched the whole range of Moore’s sensitive spirit, carrying him far beyond the shallows of his «purious Anacreontic sentiment, namby-pamby when not prurient; he wrote with full inspiration, unreserved sincerity, and thoroughly roused faculty. Divorced from the music, many of them are insipid enough, but they were never meant to be divorced from the music; the music was meant, as Coleridge felt when he heard them sung by the poet himself, to twine round them and overtop them like the honeysuckle. Moore accomplished this with exquisite art. His most conspicuous failures may be traced to his habit of taking as his starting-point not an emotional incident but some unmanageable intellectual conceit. Hence arose intellectual discords, incongruous and imperfectly harmonized fancies, which even the music can hardly gloss over.
The regent’s desertion of the Whigs in 1812 cut them off from all hope of office for many years to come, and Moore from his last hope of a snug sinecure, when Lord Moira also was practically “oblivious” of him. There was at once a marked increase in his literary fertility, and he broke ground in a new field, which he cultivated with pre-eminent success—political squib-writing. Moore was incapable of anything like rancour, but he felt the disappointment of his hopes enough to quicken his fancy and sharpen the edge of his wit. The prince regent, his old friend and patron, who was said to have begged all Lord Moira’s appointments for personal favourites, was his first butt. The prince’s defects and foibles, his fatness, his huge whiskers, his love for cutlets and curaçoa, for aged mistresses and practical jokes, were ridiculed with the lightest of clever hands. Moore opened fire in the Morning Chronicle, and crowned his success next year (1813) with a thin volume of “Intercepted Letters,” The Twopenny Post Bag. A very little knowledge of the gossip of the time enables us to understand the delight with which Moore’s sallies were received in the year which witnessed the imprisonment of Leigh Hunt for more outspoken attacks on the regent. Moore received every encouragement to work the new vein. He was at one time in receipt of a regular salary from the Times ; and his little volumes Of squibs published at intervals,— The Fudge Family in Paris, 1818 ; The Journal of a Member of the Pococurante Society, 1820; Fables for the Holy Alliance, 1823; Odes on Cash, Corn, Catholics, and other Matters, 1828; The Fudges in England, 1835—went through many editions. The prose Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824) may be added to the list. Moore’s only failure was Tom Cribb , s Memorial to Congress (1819), for which he had made an elaborate study of thieves’ slang. It was of course on the side of the Whigs that Moore employed his pen, and his favourite topics were the system of repression in Ireland and the disabilities of the Catholics. He made rather too serious a claim for his pasquinades when he spoke of “laying the lash on the back of the bigot and the oppressor.” It was not exactly a lash or a scourge that he wielded. It was in happy, airily malicious ridicule of personal foibles that his strength lay; he pricked and teased his victims with sharp and tiny arrows. But, light as his hand was, he was fairly entitled to the enthusiastic gratitude of his countrymen for his share in effecting Catholic emancipation.
The disappointment of 1812, which started Moore on his career as a squib-writer, nerved him also to a more sustained effort in serious verse than he had before attempted. Lalla Rookh would never have been written if the author’s necessities had not compelled him to work. To keep himself at the oar, he contracted with the Longmans to supply a metrical romance on an Eastern subject, which should contai» at least as many lines as Scott’s Rokeby, and for which the publishers bound themselves to pay three thousand guineas on delivery. The poem was not published till May 1817. Moore, as was his habit, made most laborious preparation, reading himself slowly into familiarity with Eastern scenery and manners. He retired to a cottage in Derbyshire, near Lord Moira’s library at Donington Park, that he might work uninterruptedly, safe from the distractions of London society; and there, “amid the snows of a Derbyshire winter” as he put it, he patiently elaborated his voluptuous pictures of flower-scented valleys, gorgeous gardens, tents, and palaces, and houris of ravishing beauty. The confidence of the publishers was fully justified. Moore’s contemporaries were dazzled and enchanted with Lalla Rookh. It was indeed a wonderful tour de force. There was not a single image or allusion in it that an ordinary Englishman could understand without a foot-note. High testimonies were borne to the correctness of the local colouring, and the usual stories were circulated of Oriental natives who would not believe that Moore had never travelled in the East. Moore was less successful in realizing Oriental character than he was in details of dress and vegetation. His fire-worshipper is an Irish patriot betrayed by an informer, his Zelica a piously nurtured Catholic maiden brooding over unpardoned sin, his Mokanna a melodramatic stage monster,—though they are so thickly covered with Oriental trappings that their identity is considerably disguised. Of the four tales put into the mouth of Feramorz, the “Veiled Prophet” was the least suited to Moore’s Turkey-carpet treatment. We can understand the enthusiasm with which Moore’s Orientalism was received as “the best that we have had yet,” and we can honour the honest labour with which he achieved this success; but such artificial finery, as the poet himself had the sense to suspect, could have only a temporary reputation. He deliberately sacrificed the higher qualities of poetry for accuracy of costume and soft melody of rhyme and rhythm, and he had his reward. His next Orientalism, the Loves of the Angels, published in 1822, was hardly less popular than Lalla Rookh. The artificiality of the manufacture was shown by the ease with which, after a few editions, he changed his angels from Jews into Turks, to evade a charge of impiety which was supposed to impede the sale of the work. Immediately after the completion of Lalla Rookh Moore changed his residence to Sloperton Cottage in Wiltshire, to be near Lord Lansdowne and the library at Bowood, his next literary project being a life of Sheridan. His plans were interrupted by the consequences of the rascality of his deputy at Bermuda, which has been already mentioned. To avoid arrest for the sum embezzled, Moore retired to the Continent, and fixed his residence at Paris. He could not return till November 1822, when the affair was compromised. His friends lamented that the attractions of Paris occupied so much of his time, but, though his diary contains almost daily records of visits to operas, fêtes, and fashionable entertainments, it shows also that he was busier than he seemed. He wrote a goodly number of squibs during his exile, besides composing the Loves of the Angels and accumulating materials for his prose tale of the Epicurean— a fair amount of production considering his slow and painstaking habits of composition. His alertness of mind, self-possession, and steadiness of purpose enabled him to work as few men could in the midst of diversions and distractions; and, although he himself took a brilliant part in conversation, we can see, from a comparison of his diary with his published writings, that he kept his ears open for facts and witticisms which he afterwards made his own. The darling of the drawing-room was as much bee as butterfly. On his return to England he resumed work steadily at his memoirs of Sheridan, writing Captain Rock as a jeu d'esprit by the way. The Sheridan triumphantly despatched in the autumn of 1825, Moore’s next important work was the Life of Byron. The first volume of this was published early in 1830, and the second was ready by the end of the same year. In 1831 he completed a memoir of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, for which he had been collecting materials for some time. Moore’s biographies call for no comment, except that they were faithful and conscientious pieces of work. He spent much industry in the collection of characteristic anecdotes, for which his position in society gave him exceptional opportunity. His connexion with the burning of Byron’s autobiography is too complicated a question to be discussed here. His own version of the circumstances is given in his diary for May 1824.
It was a misfortune for the comfort of the last twenty years of Moore’s life that he allowed himself to be drawn into a project for writing the “History of Ireland” in Lardner's Cydopεedia. Scott and Mackintosh scribbled off the companion volumes on Scotland and England with very little trouble, but Moore had neither their historical training nor their despatch in writing. Laborious conscientiousness and indecision are a fatal combination for a man who undertakes a new kind of task late in life. The history sat like a nightmare on Moore for fifteen years, and after all was left unfinished on the melancholy collapse of his powers in 1845. From the time that he burdened himself with it Moore did very little else, beyond a few occasional squibs and songs, the last flashes of his genius, and the Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion, although he had tempting offers of more lucrative and, it might have been thought, more congenial work. Moore’s character had a deeper manliness and sincerity than he often gets credit for; and his tenacious persistence in this his last task was probably due to an honourable ambition to connect himself as a benefactor with the history of his country, by opening the eyes of the English people to the misgovernment of Ireland. It was a misjudgment altogether; the light irony of Captain Rock was much more effective than the minute carefully-weighed details of the history. Moore’s last years were harassed by the weakness and misconduct of his sons, and by pecuniary embarrassments. An annual pension of £300 was conferred upon him in 1833, and he had always received large sums for his work; but, while waiting for the sinecure which never came, he had contracted an unfortunate habit of drawing upon his publishers in advance. After the death of his last child in 1845, Moore became a total wreck, but he lingered on till 26th February 1852. The diary, which he seems to have kept chiefly that it might be the means of making some provision for his wife, and which contains so many touching expressions of his affection for her, was edited by Lord John Russell with his letters and a fragment of autobiography in 1853- 56. The charge of vanity has often been brought against this diary from the writer’s industry in recording many of the compliments paid him by distinguished personages and public assemblies. It is only vanity that is annoyed by the display of vanity in others. (w. μ.)
