The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-12
CLIMPSES OF THE WORK OF
THE POET THOMAS MOORE
BY DR.. THEODORE BRYANT KINGsBuRY.

grown dim. and as the years nave
flashed by their names even have
airy annals. Very many authors might
be named who had at one time 9
numerous clientage, but whose writ
ingS are never read now save by the
curious who explore libraries for the
hidden remains of the departed
worthless. While such immortal
geniuses as Homer Dante, Shakes
peare Milton, Goethe and Words
worth have greater regulations now
than they enjoyed among their con-
temporaries or for decades after, other
famous authors have suffered from
neglect as the years have gone by.
Even as great poets as Dryden, Pope,
Byron and others have lost ground
among the more cultivated and critical
readers of the last quarter of a CEN
fury, and even longer. Great or high
" gifted prose writer's have lost their
hold to a large extent upon the peo-
pie of education and reading within
thirty or forty years. Not many peo-
pie in the hundred thousand now read
Bacon, Addison, Swift, Bolingbroke,
Johnson, Goldsmith, Hazlitt. Lander,
Carlyle, Montaigne, Sainte Beuve, and
others of the greatest of writer's. A
few lovers of the best literature read
them with exceeding relish and intel
lectual reward
attract now as they formerly did is
Thomas Moore. the once very ia
nous Irish poet. / remember that
when / was a lad his name was as
familiar as household words, and the
young and the older readers delight
ed in this most interesting and one
of the most fertile of the poets of his
time with perhaps two or three ex-
ceptions. But who reads Moore now
among the lovers of the great litera-
lures of the ages? Beyond a few
songs and the love-sick youth of both
sexes who pore over "Lallah Rookh'
that was the delight of the English
reading world fifty or sixty years
agone, there are found very few in
deed who seriously take to Moore.
And yet he is true poet, with real
gifts and in much variety, and among
living poets who use English as their
medium of expression there are not
many who really equal him in genius
or in the versatility and attractiveneSs
of production.
Thomas Moore was born in Dublin
in Ireland on 2Sth May. His parents
were plain. obscure people, but the son
when famous always loved them and
aided them and was never ashamed
of his origin, which showed the man.
His mother was of a somewhat higher
ciScle than his father who was
small grocer. Thomas was well edu-
Gated, and was a student in Trinity
College, Dublin, but not without some
endorsements. His family were
Roman Catholics. and he shared with
his countrymen in the discontents
grievous and mostN offensive, of that
time. He went to London when but
nineteen. and entered the Temple as
a student of law. He took with him
his boyish volume, his first venture
in literature, which was regarded as
clever as to scholarship and facility
of poetic composition. 1t was a body
of metrical TRANSACTIONS of the "Odes'
of a Greek poet of fame, Anacreon.
Imperfect as they must have been,
and young as he was, the volume gave
him fame in the great city. 1t was
dedicated. with permission, to the
Prince of Wales His knowledge of
Greek was equal to the demands upon
him, 1T is said, and the translations
gave credit to shis proficiency rather
than to anything like an accurate re-
production of the qualities of the
original. 1t was said that sit is more
interesting as Moore than as Ana
creon; it is Irish rather than Greek"
In a little while the young and aspir-
ing Irishman, was town-talk, and in
the whirl of London society. A writer
in the New York Saturday Review
of 18th February, writes as follows of
his simple advance in the then social
life of England:
THE doors of the best houses swung
open to him, and he became the pet
of London drawing rooms; Princesses
sang his songs. and peeresses wept
and languished over them. Great
men welcomed him, even courted him.
and esteemed him as valued friend.
Bowood and Holland House were the
best things of their kind that Eng
land has produced, and in both houses
Moore was perfectly at home.
"Moore's intimates throughout his
life were to be people set on pin
nacle. OF his friendships with great
or famous men, that with Byron is
the most notable
That able, calm, penetrating Scotch
critic Prof. William Mimic, LII. D., of
the University of Aberdeen, says that
Moore impressed London society by
his personality. Of his first effort he
thinks of but little merit, and refers
to the TRANSACTIONS as "a profuse dis
play of petty, sham jewelry." He says
so Astounding are these "shams" that
Eve are soon surfeited with such SEN
timent, and disposed to laugh at it's |
artificialty." But they became the |
vogue, and Prof. Minton says that |
Moore's pettiness was always ex- |
pressed in soft and melodious verse" |
His next volume was called Poems
by Thomas Little" They were too |
amorous and loose in tone for even |
the public taste of that no very
decorous age. Mimic says the "little |
poems were generally spun |
up to some glittering conceit, as |
commonplace as it is glittering," and !
thinks them very poor in thought |
and vulgar in sentiment SO if the |
poems of "Tom Little had been the /
best output of his poetic faculties, it |
is probable that in a few years Moore |
would have been completely forgotten. |
and would have deserved such q fate |
but there was more in the young /
1rishman than such imperfect trans |
lations and such gausy and very inn
perfect poetic tinsel indicated
He held an office in the islands of |
the Bermudas, and lost his place |
through the rascality of one of his |
employees. This greatly worried him, |
and it was with difficulty that he ex-
tricated himself from the prosecution
of the government He published a
volume about this time called "Odes
and Epistles," which gave promise of
his oiffS a ordc oI1o aitaer Ixy 10 |