The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-17 00:00:00

THOMAS MOORE%

!ir.inTirs of Tiv,c-ilas ?"corn. E,11!-el by tht, 117j4,it
Hon. Lord John Russell. 8 vols. Longman
and Co.

(FIFTH NOTICE

Spirat adhuc amor at the commencement—Finis
coronat opus at the conclusion—it is accomplished !
Moore's Memoirs are at length completed : at last
'l7Lord John Russell has found himself enabled to
consummate the final tribute of a faithful friend-
ship—a friendship so intrinsically real and earnest
that it has discovered for itself the means of being
thus posthumously perpetuated. A friendship
knitting together during their lifetime the sympa-
thies of a Whig Duke's son and of the son of a Dub-
lin grocer—coupling together, after their separa-
tion by death, the names of the poet Moore and the
patrician Russell—the once Prime Minister of Eng-
land, assuming in regard to the Irish melodist the
delicateand responsible office of his biographer. In
discharging the duties of that office Lord John after
-all, wo cannot but.think, has acquitted himself very
judiciously. Notwithstanding the sneers of sonic
and the snarls of others, lie has contrived to Call-
' duct the Memoirs gradually to their conclusion in
a spirit of mingled reserve and candour, manly can-
dour and adroit reserve, preserving from first to last
as editor of the papers committed to his charge for
the purposes of collation and selection, an amiable
and, it must be added, sometimes a most
magnanimous equanimity. Sometimes—namely,
when a writer of fiercer paSsions, or of more atra-
bilious temperament might have been roused to '
retort—stung into indignation by the brutal taunts
or coarse scurrility of a mind in itself naturally
spiteful, but rendered by the lap :le of time and
the consequent growth of suspicion more than
usually malevolent, at the very period when
other men are endeavouring to cultivate at
least the appearances of amenity, or the affec-
tation of dignified indifference. Serenely unin-
fluenced by mockery or by misrepresentation,
the editor of these eight volumes giving us the
Memoirs, journal, and correspondence of Thomas
Moore, has brought them in due course of time to
a state of completion, and, in doing so, has added
to our national store of literature a voluminous
contribution, replete in almost every page with the
ripe materials, not the raw materials, but the ripe
materials, of interest and entertainment. Already
in our previous notices of the attractive work
under review, we have spoken of it in general
terms, as a production distinguished, among
other qualities, by two very prominent and
acceptable characteristics, those of memoirs abound-
ing in delightful anecdote and agreeable reminis-
cences. The latter of these two conspicuous cha-
racteristics we have already illustrated by detailed
allusion to the numerous and motley crowd of
celebrities introduced to our acquaintance, so to
speak, in kit-kat or full-length, in profile or three-
quarters, in life-size or iu miniature, now in a ran-
dnui sketch, now in a mere silhouette by the
piquant Diary of the observant melodist-humorist !
Even the anecdotal liveliness of the pro.
duction, we have taken occasion, here and
there, as opportunity tempted us, to in-
dicate incidentally by a casual bon mot or some
weui
rt t i
ec ibsji
ene
tparentheticallynow,however, ttroo daufic.,ed )
rd. lutr
readers
evidence, somewhat more minute and explicit, of
the charm appertaining to Moore's memoirs as a
repository of anecdote. _

A rather pleasant enterprise—we take it—seeing
that the "good things," in this way, with which
the Diary in particular is stored, happen to be, for
the most part, very good things indeed, and very
plentiful to boot. Apropos des bottes by the way,
the specimens we shall have to give will require
to be introduced—in other words " tumbled in "
neck and heels, like a swarm of merry androws,
leaping the garter on the saw - dust of au
amphitheatre—these specimens of fun and frolic,
quip and crank, drolleries the direct agtithosis of
what the Dunciad has stigmatised as--

" All that on Folly Frenzy could beget
Fruits of dull heat and sooterkins of wit."

It is observable throughout that Moore had a natu
ral relish for the ridiculous. He had a ready laugh
for anything at all partaking of the facetious :
whether he hoard of an absurd fellow meet-
ing a friend running through the rain with
an umbrella over him, and calling out, to him as,
ha passed, " Where are you running to in such a
hurry like a mad mushroom?" or listened .to the
good old story of the Irishman in the Marshalsea
having heard his companion brushing his teeth the
last thing at night, and then, upon Waking, at the
same work in the morning : " Ugh, a weary
night you must have had of it, Mr. Fitz-
gerald !" Among the multifarious anecdotes re-
lated by Moore, there are no lack, by the way,
of those setting forth the drollery of his fellow-
countrymen in a light of peculiar ridiculousness.
As for example, that recounted of a visitor asking
a servant—"ls your muter at home ?"--:" No
sir, he's out." " Your mistress ?"—" No, sir, she
is out." " Well, I'll just go in and take an air of
the fire till they come." "Faith, sir,that's out tool" Or
that of the man asked by a friend to come and dine
with him off boiled beef and potatoes: and who
replied "That I will," says he, and it's rather
odd it should be exactly the same dinner I had at
home for myself, barring the beef!" Or, again, that
story of laittrell's about the Irish lady who had
been travelling with her family, and on being asked
whether they had been at Aix, answered, " Oh,
yes ! indeed ; very much at our ase everywhere 1"
Or best of all, perhaps, as indicative of the pre-
posterous slips of the tongue peculiar, not to John
Bull, but to Pat Bull ! that related by Moore as
having occurred actually within his own experience
when suddenly coming one morning (with an uncle
of his) upon the dead body of a poor wretch lying
upon the highroad between Dublin and Sandy
mount. "He had been shot," says Moore, "just
under the eye, and there was no other mark than
the small hole through which the bullet had en-
tered. An old woman who was looking down at
the body at the same time with us, said, 'lt was
the blessing of God it didn't hit his eye !'" Not a
few among the anecdotes and witticisms related by
the Irish melodist come back to us, of course, as
very old friends, known, years ago, familiarly.
Some of them, indeed, regular "Old Joes" very
much fumbled, and towzled, and dogseared, and
threadbare. Scarcely any one, for example, re-
quires to be reminded of the uncleanly whist player
to whom it was said, " I say if dirt was
trumps, what hands you would have I"—the same
individual, one might conjewure, of whom it was
remarked (epitaph-ically) by Kenny, that he "died
of a cold caught by washing
_his face."_ Almost.
dVeryouSia
I.4galri,has an, intimate personal acciriaint
.ep,.
an.oo=e_ sbana problem, discoverable, -Ave-
should fancy, soinew,hero..or.other in, the-pages of
Miller- " Given the tonnage of a ship and the
course she is upon ; required the name of the cap-
tain, !" While the same, doubtless, mightbe said
with equal truth of that capital old story of the
man brimming over with ill-temper, coming out of
a room where he had lost all his money at play,
and seeing a person (a perfect stranger to him)
tying his shoe at the top of the stairs ; ".D.—n you
(says he), ou're always tying your shoe' and kicked
him down stairs. Not less familiar too are some of the
theatrical legends here revived for our amuse-
ment. As, for instance, that of the actor saying
by mistake—
" How sharper than a serpent's thanks it is,
To have a toothless child ! "

Or that one of old Parker, who used always to
say " coison'd pup" instead of " poison'd cup "
a ludicrous lapsus linguce here mentioned by Moore
with a laughable addition (new to us), to the effect
that one night when old Parker spoke it right,
the audience said " No, no ! " and called for the
ether reading ! Something of the same kind, is
the absurd blunder related elsewhere by our
Diarist—about John Kemble parforming one night
at some country theatre one of his favourite parts,
and being interrupted from time to time by the
squalling of a child in one of the galleries—until
at length, angered by this rival performance,
Kemble walked with solemn step to the front of
the stage, and, addressing the audience in his most
tragic tone, said "Ladies and genttemen, unless
the play is stopped the child cannot po,ssibly go on, !"
A French theatrical anecdote told to Moore by an
actual 'ear-witness of it, np other than Lord John
Russell himself, is, to our thinking, in its way, ab-
solutely delicious. Seated next a man at the
Theatre Francais, who was very much discontented
at the way in which the play (" Cinna ) was acted,
Lord John heard him, on the following line being
spoken, Ou laissez-moi refiner, ou laissez-moi
mutter, "On laissez-mot st,gler, ou laissez-moi
sortir ! " Several delightful stories, by the by, are
told here about that Princeof French wits, Charles
Maurice Talleyrand--one whose sayings would
have tickled the risible muscles of Voltaire, and
have been dear to the memory and the note-book
of the Chevalier Bouffiers 1 Hear that story of
somehody who squinted asking him Comment vont
les affaires, and his answering Comore veus voyez !
Listen to him one day when Bobus Smith hap-
pened somehow in conversation
.to speak of the
beauty of his mother, saying C'etott done votre pere
qui n' etoit pas bten ! Hearken to that laughter-
moving reminiscence of his correspondence—the
story about the lady who wrote to him (Talley-
rand), informing himin high-flown terms of
her grief on the death of her husband, and
expecting an eloquent letter of condolence in
return ; his answer only being Belas ma-
dame. Votre affecttone, &c., Talley rand ! In less-
than a year another letter from the same lady in-
formed him of her being married again; to which he
returned an answer in the same laconic style—Oh,
oh, Madams ! Votre affectione, dc., Talleyrand. A