The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-07 00:00:00

according to Charles Mtlckay's sarcasm,

" The way to get on in London town !"
Already we haVe seen how this fell out by the way
in reference more particularly to H. R. H. of
Wales, poor little Tom Moore sleekly rubbing his
harids with a gratified air as he writes to his
" dearest mother" about the Prince's affability in
addressing him. with " How do you do Moore ? I
am glad to see you ;" and such-like royal small-
talk—" buttered thunder," as Mr. Festus Bailey
might call it; from the Jovian lips of his, High
Mightiness,! It is pleasant to turn from him in his
court suit, spindling (with a sword between his legs)
over the carpets of St. James's—and find him erea
and manly in his natural attitude and homelier at-
tire—driving up to town in a coach with Curran
"in an uninterrupted fit of laughter all the way,"
or dining at Incledon's, and there getting "very
great" with Irish Johnson, or attending a " beauti-
fel little fOte champet re " at Mrs. Siddons's cottage,
or (yet a little later on) touching in one day, as he
says himself, " the two extremes of anarchy and
law," dining with Sir Francis Burdett, and gOing
in ie evening to Lord Ellenborough's. What
glimpses we obtain, too, both of small and large
celebrities—incidentally—as we turn over these
pages of garrulous Diary, and gossipping Corres-
pondence ! Here, in 1791, we come, for example,
upon big, burly, beastly old Peter Pindar, not feel-
ing at all surprised to find that Moore thinks him
"coarse both -in manners and conversation."
Here, again in 1812, we are brought, not by
any means for the only time in these pleasant
volumes, face to face with Sir John Steven-
son the Melodist, the exquisite composer, for
instance, of " Oft in the Stilly Night," who is
here said by Moore to have shown himself "as
boyish and .paradoxical as ever, making the grave,
matter•of-fact:Englishmen stare wherever he goes!"
At another moment our diarist is recording the
fact of his having once upon a time been placed
under the tuitiOn, at Trinity College, 'Dublin, of he Rev. -- Burrowes, author of celebrated
flash song, " The Night before Larry was stretched"
—meaning hanged ! Or awing us with the an--
nouncement of a visit paid to him in 1799, in Lon.
don—" by a very famous and very respectable
man," a Mr. Biggin—Moore adding, as he an-
nounces the circumstance to his mother—" By-
the-bye, it is from him the coffee.biggins take their.
name, and from :Them he has taken his money.".
An incident, at once recalling to mind that won-
. derful fellow who once introduCed himself to Dr.
'Johnson with a flourish, as " the great Twalmley,"
who had invented-flat-irons or some such rubbish
An occurrence, 'we take it, pretty familiar to every
reader of Boswell, and not to be remembered with-
out a smile by any one amongst them, even those
the least susceptible' to a joke. Writing from New
York in the May of 1804—not long before Napo-
leon changed his consular fasces into a sceptre,
and girt his brows with the imperial -dia-
dem —we find Moore writing to his mo-
ther—" The oddest things I have seen yet
are young Bonaparte and his bride"— a note
explaining these same odd things to be no other
than M. Jerome Bonaparte and Miss Patterson,
the former but just now happily recovered in 1856
from an alarming illness, and known and regarded
with profound interest far and wide throughout
Europe as his Imperial Highness the Prince Jerome-
Napoleon. Writing to Lady Donegal a year later
in London, we observe Moore recording then, in
1895, that he likes Rogers better every time he,
sees him—that same R )gers, then a man in middle
life, having survived until.only the other day, a
• memorable nonogenariae, remarkable in many ways,
but in none more remarkable than in that of being
—strangest of strange paradoxes !—a cynical
philanthropist 1 How wondrously the people Moore
met, too, contrast with each other. In 1811 ho
staying at Donnington ,Park "in clover," while
Monsieur is a guest of My Lord Meira's, and, with
Monsieur; the Prince de Conde and the Due de
Bourbon. Not many years previously he had
been sitting in his. Dublin chambers with poor
Robert Emmett, chatting, singing, playing the
piano. Here is a little miniature memento of his,
delineative of