The Sun.
London, England, 1852-03-03 00:00:00

THE

THE DEATH OF THOVAS MOORE.
(From the Chronicle.)
An event which has lone been anticipated has just
occurred. On Thursday last the poet Moore died at his
residence of Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes. For se-
veral years back the illustrious deceased had een alive
only in the body. Like Sir Walter Scott and Southey,
the tenacity of physical existence had, in him, outlived
the term of the mind. A year ago the poet was brought
to Bath without any consciousness of where he was, or
who were around him, and he passed peacefully away in
the same condition of semi-slumbering unconsciousness.
With Moore there is snapped the last tie, save perhaps
one, represented by the veteran Rogers, which connects
the present generation with the outburst of " all the
talents" which signalised the opening of the cen-
tury. That great kindling of genius—embracing al-
most all aides of imaginative literature, of criticism
and philosophy—is fast becoming more a thing of his-
tory than a thing of fact. Day by day, and year by
year, the lights are going out. Wordsworth
was the last extinguished before the present
event; and now, to all intents and purposes, the great
mental galaxy which poured out such a flood of blazing,
vivifying light upon the literature of fifty years ago—
which extinguished the school of Rosa Matilda fiction
and Della Crusoan poetry—which substituted true criti-
cism for technical carping upon philological points, and
established new styles in every branch of the belles
lettres—this great intellectual constellation may now be
said to have disappeared. One of the brightest, if not
of the largest stars, has long been obscured. It is now
extinguished.
What amount and what duration of fame Moore will
leave behind him is fairly a matter of discussion. It
cannot, we believe, be denied that much of his serious
and more ambitious verse, founded upon the promptings
of a more luscious and florid fancy than the present taste
inclines to admit—and no inconsiderable portion even
of his sweet lyric snatches, as being too wire-drawn,
and refined to attenuation—are by no means so much
read or admired as they were a score or thirty years
ago. A severer and a sterner school of poetry has suc-
ceeded to it—one of deeper feeling and more sober
thought; and the representatives of those who revelled
in " Lalla Rookh," and delighted in the strains of Mr.
Little, now generally address themselves to more staid
and philosophic poetic musings. The " Irish Melodies,"
too—exquisite as is their word-music—fanciful as is
their conception—delightful as is their playfulness—
and profoundly touching as is their pathos—even the
" Irish Melodies" we believe to be declining in popular
estimation. The reasons are not far to seek. In the first
place, the "Irish Melodies" are not particularly Irish;
they have perfect grace, high and sparkling fancy, deli-
cious feeling—but they are too fine-spun to do the work-
a-day duty of popular songs. As literary performances,
nine-tenths of Burns's songs are inferior to Moore's;
and all Dibdin's ditties are immeasurably and incal-
culably beneath them. Yet the strong probability
is that " When Willie brewed," and "Poor Tom
Bowling," will be in the fall tide of their popularity
and everyday use, where " Rich and rare," and " Oh,
breathe not his name," will be unsung and forgotten. In a
certain circle, and amongst people of a certain reading
and appreciation, Moore will live as long as the lan-
guage; but his genius was delicate and acute rather than
catholic and vast. He had a rich and vivid play of
fancy, but none of the soaring imagination of a Shelley
or a Byron. His mind, in fact, was a first-class second-
rate. It had no pretensions to stand in the foremost
line of the giants of our day. Brightly fanciful, rather
than continuously imaginative—teeming with poetic
imagery—loving to sparkle along the floweriest paths,
and beneath the balmiest skies—revelling always in
fays and flowers—in love and mingled intellectual and
sensual pleasures—playful in the extreme, and always
ready to stop to make mirth as joyous and as delightful as
the passion—Moore's muse, in his great romantic poems,
is the incarnation of a charming Epicureanism. And the
mirth and playful jollity could go a long step further.
Moore had wit, which sparkled as brightly as it could
cut deeply; and the humour, and sense of the ludic-
rens, which could be as well if not more effec-
,ually applied tf, living persona and actual things
than to the creations of his own fancy; and, accord-
ingly, we find him loving to turn from the
ettacratlizad voluptuousness of the " Loves of the An-
g,ls," or the mystic imaginings of the " Epicurean," to
the sharp and brilliant hitting of political and social
squibs—to the restless and biting satire with which, in
the " Fudge Family" and hundreds of ephemeral but not
the less clever lays, he quizzed his political and literary
opponents, abolished the Earl of Mountcasbell, or shot
stinging shafts of fun through the very hearts of the
Benthamites. It is, indeed, far from probable that
Moore's political and satiric poetry, little, perhaps,
as he thought of it at the time, will live after his
more ambitious works have been—not forgotten—
bat sunk into that chronic state of classicism, in which
books are labelled with an excellent character—and
shelved—turned, in fact, into the category of works
without which no gentleman's library is complete, and
accordingly doomed, not to actual obscurity, but to an
honourable retirement.

The very last of the political squibs and short poems
published by Mr. Moore were given to the world in the
columns of the Morning Chronicle, and referred princi-
pally to the earlier struggles of the Anti-Corn-law
League, the verses having in most cases been evidently
suggested by the passing political events of the day.
Thomas Moore died at the ripe old age of 72. He
was born on the 28th of May, 1780, in Angier-street
Dublin, where his father, a strict Roman Catholic, car-
ried on a grocery and spirit business. As a child, young
Moore is said to have been remarkable for personal
beauty, but his appearance in after life hardly carried
out the promise of infancy. He was short, with a heavy,
expressive, but not handsome face, which, how-
ever, lightened up wonderfully when engaged
in animated coaversation or singing his own
ballad poetry. Young Moore was educated at
Dublin, and ono of his first noted peculiarities
was a fondness and a talent for pri-
vate theatricals. Taking advantage of the boon, as it
was then considered, the young Roman Catholic was en-
tered at Trinity College. He could not, of course, ob-
tain a degree, but some English Verses tendered at an
examination, in lien of the usual Latin composition, pro-
cured a copy of the " Travels of Anacharsis" as a re-
ward. The wild times of the Irish rebellion were now
approaching, and the future poet was naturally to be
found in the ranks led by the Emmetta and Arthur
O'Connor; but his treasonable lucubrations in prose
and verse, though, as his own sister remarked, "rather
strong," were passed over without any measures being
taken against the enthusiastic young champion of Irish
liberty. Politics, however, were by no means the only
subject of his muse. At the age of 14 he published
poetry in a Dublin magazine, and afterwards composed
many semi-poetic semi-burlesque pieces for private re-
presentation.
In his twentieth year, giving up Republicanism
once and for ever, Moore came to London to study
at the Middle Temple. and to publish his transla-
tions, or rather paraphrases, of Anacreon. As may
be imagined, he attended much more strenuously to the
Greek than to " Coke upon Lyttleton," and a permis-
sion, obtained through the friendship of Lord Moria, to
dedicate the work to the Prince Regent, was the means
of Moore's introduction to those elevated circles of so-
ciety in which he was ever afterwards to move and
shine. The Anacreontic paraphrases, brilliantly and
w armly expressed, were highly successful. They were
speedily succeeded, iu 1801, by •' Poems and Songs, by
Thomas Little." Whatever objections may be raised
by the present generation to either of these works, there
can be no doubt of their vivid play of fancy, their great
grace of idea, even when that idea was not strictly
proper, and their exquisite melody of versification.
Moore's translations of the " Old Greek Lover," of
Women and Wine," are probably the finest and
richest versions of these often translated songs ira the
English language—always excepting the rough but
thoroughly racy version of the last of the lyrics in ques-
tion by quaint old Dr. Donne.
In the days of the Regency, ports came in for patron-
age, rind Mr. Moore, made registrar to the Court of
Admiralty at Bermuda—a; sincularly appropriate an
appointment as some we have seen in our own day—
went out to the islands, appointed a deputy, took a
glance at the States, and came home again. He then
published " Sketches of Travel and Society beyond the
At!aotic"—a satiric work in heroic verse, vigorously
written, but, polieically, miserably short-sighted. Soon
afterwards, a savage review in the Edinburgh, of a re-
publication of " Juvenile Songs," Sac., led to the cele-
brated rencontre between Moore and Jeffrey, at Hamp-
stead, when the great critic', as Byron asserted, stood
valiantly up:---
" When Little's leadless pistol met his eye,
And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by."
The affair was ultimately made up, mainly through
Byron
the intervention
!Lacy between the tubj
shortlyafterwards
of Mr. Rogers, and at his house Moore
made his first acquaintance with
of " Childe
and Campbell
eTcthce,f
iluonif
skaolitdohaauffedcttiohneataeuixoi;
Harold,"he which resulted from the meeting,
wo need not
to do more than allude to.
Moore had about this time
Miss Dyke, a lady of time married. His wife was a
strong sense and character, us
is unhadpaTiability. The last survivor
well as great beauty and
Of
Athecioruopfflesperifnpog 'Weld sZiryesfilooorfeuits°orge'reas note—oneo of
by the way, setting
Post Bag 0. bUndl
nnee—were '
p them,
aneg
followed sober b
ya and
famous earnest
4, 'f wo-PerTY
yric upon ignor
de a great hit, of rollicking satire
and fun. it ma a
and aetained a wid -
Not a 0 its Uthor a epo
pularity.
Stocking," next venture, a farce
damned
called the
"Blue ywith Byron andriat the Lyceum.
Moore's iniiinßaut-spoken tone of—thet was broken off
by the perfect t . - "Liberal," and
Vision of Judgment..
especially the " Moore thought
ono too far. What
that his friends had g , would. Carlton
By ton said,
House say? For it;as
3 how much more
rLetttle Tommy
dearly loved a lord," with.
blood royal? affection did
he worship a prieco of the
,s
nex,
The "Melodies" were Moore . .., and
, perhaps
. Charming as these word his most populer, eifora
their ideas -
meledies are, exquisitely happy in ..
intimation')and f lon as is three.lyrical work-
manship,., per ec 1
fl- übtee as to whether
, we agate repeat our --1-)
d the they have the intellectual stamina nli
heart-
rooted earaest,,ast both of which are requisite to make
songs immortal- Mere beauty fades iu words as well
as in flesh, and only the strongest heart and the man-
'jest brain produce offspring to suit all toe ftes and to last
all time. __ _

.
an
write
It was in 1812 that Moore determined tO .
alecildio a
anmptplieedm:the poet t,,
, Mr. Perry, of the Monning Chronicle,
the Meters. :Longman. and
through his intervention the great Sum Of 3,000
guineas was settled' as the price of .khe poem, no 3 one
word of which was as yet written. "Moore then retired
to Cottage, a desols.te place in iTh.inLhire,
and
and hard struggle sritti a cequetisli
muse, forth—after a three year,,' retirement—came
‘
The success was, immense ; tho
poem S!
alytefire a ld:
long d
through several editions, and Meere'6
tame stood upon a
higher and surer pedestal than
‘Lalla
ran R
rapidly through
ever. The bright fancy and immense command of

171 1 r "I!

LONDON,

imagery of the poet were now at their climax. The
tales were the triumph of poetic lusciousness, but
not a few old judges stigmatised their taste by
preferring Fadladeen and his criticisms even to the Fire-
worshippers or the tribulations of the Peri. We need
hardly say that the judgment of thc4o tough old critics
has now a far greater number of adherents than it once
commanded.

After a continental tour, Moore mote the clever and
popular " Fudge Family." In the following year he met
Byron in Italy, when the latter entrusted to him his me-
moirs for publication. These memoirs Moore sold to
Murray for two thousand guineas, but, as is well known
and a good deal regretted, the purchase-money was re-
funded, the papers re-obtained, and destroyed. Pecuniary
difficulties connected with the misconduct of his Ber-
muda deputy about this time compelled Moore to
seek a temporary refuge in Paris, and there the poet led
a pleasant social life, such as he loved, and composed
the "Loves of the Angels," which is not much more
than an elaborate and carefully wrought out repetition
of all Mr. Moore's previous love and flowery poetry.
The whole thing is dreamy, lulling, beautiful, but
vague and misty. The words tinkle like falling foun-
tains, and the essence of the closing poetry floats about
one like perfume; but this enervating species of com-
position is far from being high or true poetry, and ac-
cordingly the poem is now far oftener alluded to than it
is read.

In 1825 Moore paid a visit to Scott, at Abbotsford.
The author of " Waverley" pronounced the Irish
melodist to be the " prettiest warbler" he had ever
heard. One evening Scott and his guest visited the
theatre at Edinburgh. Soon after their at first un-
marked entrance, the attention of the audience, which
had till then been engrossed by the Duchess of St.
Albans, who was present, was directed towards the new
corners; and according to a newspaper report, copied
and published by Mr. Moore in one of his last prefaces,
considerable excitement immediately prevailed. " Eh!"
exclaimed a man in the pit, " eh, yon's Sir Walter wi'
Lockhart and his wife; and wha's the wee body wi' the
pawkie ee? Wow, but it's Tam Moore just." " Scott,
Scottl—Moore, Moore!" immediately resounded through
the house. Scott would not rise; Moore did, and bowed
several times with his hand on his heart. Scott after-
wards acknowledged the plaudits of his countrymen, and
the orchestra during the rest of the evening played alter-
nately Scotch and Irish airs.
Soon after this period Moore was established, by the
kind offices of his old and staunch friend the Marquis of
Lansdowne, in Sloperton Cottage, where he passed the
remainder of his days, and where he ended them. It
was here that the poet commenced his career as a bio-
grapher, and produced successfully the memors of Lord
Edward Eitzgerald, of Lord Byron, and of Sheridan.
The two latter are too well known and too highly ap-
preciated to demand more than to be alluded to here.
It was in the previous year that the poet had first
come out as a prose writer in the " Memoirs of
Captain Rock," a bitter and unfair account of—or
rather commentary on—English misgovernment of
Ireland, and a curious instance of how warped
and twisted become the views of even a man of the
world like Moore, if he be an Irishman, in writing on
an Irish subject. The next serious work of the poet—
he continued his squibs and light sparkles of occasional
verse, as before—was " The Travels of an Irish Gentle-
man in search of a Religion"—in which he sought to
show that the doctrines and practices of the Roman Ca-
tholic Church date from the apostolic period. The last
of Moore's prose works, and That which has attained a
greater sale, we believe, than any of them was the ro-
mance of "The Epicurean." Here Moore's style, al-
ways too rich, effloresced into eolith of tawdry
rhetoric, which are only here and there redeemed
by passages of great eloquence and natural feeling.
There was mush out-of-the-way learning in the book,
but the pompous march of cumbrous ornamentation
overlaid everything. The book had a great success,
but one not likely to be lasting. It partook of what
Mr. Carlyle calls the " wind-bag " nature. The wind
inside was very highly perfumed, and sighed with very
p:;:asing murmurs, but, after all, it was only wind, and,
as such, will ocza out and away, to the collapsing of the
bag and the disappearance of the t` Epicurean."
Of late years the political and social squibs to which
we hare alluded were the only literary occupations to
which Mr. Moore devoted himself, until, gradually and
fitfully, mental darkness came down upoa him, and the
quick and fanciful brain throbbed with thick-coming
tancies no more. _ _ _

: -
Peace be with the poet! He led a long, a pleasant,
and a prosperous lite. His poetic genius was not of the
deep, enthusiastic cast. He could write wailing stanzas
over the fate of Curran's daughter on Treasury paper,
and became sentimental over the wrongs of Ireland
while an English plaoeman. Universally courted and
flattered in society, Moore fluttered from one brilliant
coterie to the other, and was always in his most perfect
element at the two great Whig resorts—in Berkeley-
square and Kensington-park. In every one of his cha-
racteristics the poet, was formed for society. A lover of
pleasure, with a.lceen appreciation of its every refine-
ment, intellectnai, social, and sensuous, Moore must
have enjoyed to the very top of his bent every gra-
tification which the greatest popularity in the most
brilliant circles could heap on him. His nature was
to enjoy, to amuse, to excite, and to be amused and to
be excited. Successful in almost every literary effort,
accounted as brilliant a conversationalist as he was a
port, as charming a singer as he was a song writer—a
privileged person in a sphere to which his mind, by its
very nature, looked up with longing for notice and for
praise—few men have had a career so correspond-
ing with their wishes and their ambition as Thomas
Moore.

The death of the poet coming so shortly after the
setting of the public life of his good and constant
friend the Marquis of Lansdowne, is a curious and touch-
ing coincidence. The ex-Minister will lament the de-
parture of him who was so long the lyrist and the
minstrel of his party; but to Moore the world was for
years uncared for and unknown, and it is better that the
spirit is released than that it should linger on in the
midst of melancholy and hopeless darkness.

THE LONDON GAZETTE, March 2.
ST. JAMES'S PALACE, FEB. 29.
The Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour
of knighthood upon Charles Crompton, Esq., one of the
Judges of her Majesty's Court of Queen's Bench.
_ _

ST. JAIKES'S PALACE, MARCH 1.
The Queen has; been pleased to appoint Wilbraham
Taylor, Esq., to be one of the Gentlemen Ushers Quar-
terly W alters in Ordinary to her Majesty, in the room
of Captain the la onourable Mortimer Sackville West,
promoted.
BOARD OF G.:REEN CLOTH, BUCKINGHAM
PALACE, FEB. 27.
The Queen has been pleased to appoint his Grace the
Duke of Montrose, K.T., Lord Steward of her Majesty's
Household, vice Vue Most Hon. the Marquis of West-
minster, resigned.
The Queen has also been pleased to appoint the Right
Hon. Claude Halm Men (commonly called Lord Claude
Hamilton), Treasurer of her Majesty's Household, vice
the Right Hon. t othur Marcus Cecil Hill (commonly
called Lord Marcus Hill), resigned.
The Queen ha e. also been pleased to appoint the
Right Honourabtle George Cecil Weld Forester
Comptroller of he r Majesty's Household, vice the Right
Honourable George Augustus Constantine Phipps (com-
monly called Earl cif Mulgrave), resigned.