In November 1825 Sir Walter Scott writes in his diary: "I saw Moore
... There is a manly frankness and perfect ease and good breeding
about him which is delightful. Not the least touch of the poet or the
pedant ... His countenance is decidedly plain, but the expression is
so very animated, especially in speaking or singing, that it is far
more interesting than the finest features could have rendered it. I
was aware that Byron had often spoken, both in private society and his
Journal, of Moore and myself in the same breath, and with the same
sort of regard; so I was curious to see what there could be in common
betwixt us, Moore having lived so much in the gay world, I in the
country and with people of business, and sometimes with politicians;
Moore a scholar, I none; he a musician and artist, I without knowledge
of a note; he a democrat, I an aristocrat--with many other points of
difference; besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both
tolerably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a strong
one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what
is going forward than to maintain our dignity as lions; and we have
both seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls
the imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses
in the air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met in an
alehouse, and who called himself 'the _great_ Twalmley--inventor of
the floodgate iron for smoothing linen.' ... It would be a delightful
addition to life if T. M. had a cottage within two miles of one.--We
went to the theatre together, and the house, being luckily a good one,
received T. M. with rapture. I could have hugged them, for it paid back
the debt of the kind reception I met with in Ireland."
In these cordial words the great Scottish author compares himself with
the Irish national poet. The resemblance between their position, as
recognised and highly esteemed organs of the two dependent countries
united to England, makes the difference between them the more clearly
perceptible. There is, first of all, the dissimilarity produced by
the dissimilar relations of Scotland and Ireland to the dominant
race. Scotland's position was a subordinate one, but it was legally
established, and the country sent representatives to Parliament. The
Irish, on the other hand, divided by a much more marked difference of
race, and, as regarded the majority, of religion, from their English
masters, had been for six centuries under the rule of a Government in
which they had no more share than have the Hindoos or the Cingalese
in theirs. The Protestant Irish Parliament existed in its day in
Ireland like a hostile garrison in a conquered country. It was a body
of absolute rulers, governing and oppressing in the name of a foreign
power; any attempt at opposition on the part of its members was at once
put a stop to either by bribery or force. The Irish Protestant was not
in reality in a better position than his Catholic fellow-countryman;
he could purchase the favour of his masters only by sacrificing the
interests of his country, and enjoyed only the one pitiful privilege of
being at the same time vassal and master.
It has been a fortunate thing for the English people that their faults
as well as their virtues have ensured them success in the struggle
for political independence and power; their egoism and their pride
have been of almost as much service to them as their sober sagacity
and their energy. The Irish, on the other hand, seem, like the Poles,
to be condemned both by their virtues and their vices to political
subordination. Even making allowance for the fact that the character
of the conquered race is invariably maligned in the descriptions of
it given by the conqueror, it must be granted that the sprightliness,
ardour, and charm of the Irish, their turbulent bravery, their fitful
chivalry, their independent and, under certain conditions, rebellious
tendencies, co-existing with a love of the pomp and splendour of
royalty, form a bad foundation for a tranquil and independent
existence as a state. The virtues of the Irish are not the modern,
civic virtues, but those of an earlier age--their piety verges on the
blindest superstition; their fidelity consists, like that of their
Breton brothers, in a kind of vassal-fealty to the old nobility of the
country, and their splendid bravery is of an undisciplined, impetuous
nature. Long-continued oppression has, moreover, set its imprint
on their souls. They lack self-confidence, and have a tendency to
dissimulation and to indolence; they are too reckless of danger and too
easily intimidated when brought face to face with it; they cannot, when
liberty is granted them for a short time, make a good use of it, this
being an art which can only be learned by long practice.
There are inexperienced races just as there are inexperienced
individuals. One side of the Irish character has a strong resemblance
to the French (and the Irish have always had a warm sympathy for the
French), another reminds us of the Polish character, and there is a
third which is almost Oriental. In a poem entitled "The Parallel"
(one of the _Irish Melodies_), which Moore composed in answer to an
anti-Irish pamphlet written to prove that the Irish were originally
Jews, he compares the fate of the two nations:--
"Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken,
And fall'n from her head is the once royal crown;
In her streets, in her halls, desolation hath spoken,
And 'while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down.'"
And there undoubtedly is an Oriental quality in the race. Byron,
writing of Moore, says that the wildness, tenderness, and originality
of the Irish--the magnificent and fiery spirit of the men, the beauty
and feeling of the women, are the best proofs of the Oriental descent
which they claim. A race with such a character necessarily fell an easy
prey to a determined, cruel English despotism.
[Illustration: THOMAS MOORE]
A hasty glance at the history of Ireland during Thomas Moore's youth
will help us to understand how this man with the gentle nature and
the sweet lyric gift was the first to rouse English poetry from its
engrossed preoccupation with nature, to impress it into the service of
liberty, and to give the start to political poetry.
Moore was born in May 1779. The years of his early youth were the
period of the revolting events now to be related. From the time when
the English Government showed, by the appointment of Lord Camden as
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1795), that it had abandoned the humaner
policy of 1782, the Society of United Irishmen, a powerful political
organisation, which had hitherto aimed at the emancipation of the
country by lawful means, completely changed its character. The
separation of Ireland from England became its aim; it had dreams of
the establishment of an Irish Republic. But there were two powerful
elements of dissension in the country itself, namely, the existence
of two races, hostile to each other, and the strong animosity in the
lower classes between Protestants and Catholics. To put an end to the
disturbances and riots which were constantly resulting from these
internal dissensions, the Government formed a force of Protestant
constabulary, 37,000 strong. These troops were permitted, under the
pretence of searching for concealed weapons, to capture, torture,
and put to death any unfortunate person whom an enemy, or any
ruffian whatever, chose to accuse of suspicious behaviour. Hundreds
of unoffending people, who were guilty of no other offence than
professing the creed of their fathers, were flogged until they were
insensible, or made to stand upon one foot on a pointed stake, or were
half hanged, or had the scalp torn from their heads by a pitched cap.
Militia and yeomanry, as well as the regular troops, were billeted in
private houses; and this billet appears to have been construed as an
unlimited license for robbery, devastation, ravishment, and, in case
of resistance, murder. It was boasted by officers of rank that within
certain large districts no home had been left undefiled; and upon its
being remarked that the sex must have been very complying, the reply
was that "the bayonet removed all squeamishness."[1]
It was not surprising that the despair induced by such proceedings
drove numbers of the most peaceable and sensible Irishmen into the
arms of a secret society, which sent Lord Edward Fitzgerald (whose
biography Moore wrote with such warm admiration) as its deputy to
France, to arrange with General Hoche for the landing of a French army
in Ireland at the time appointed for a general rising of the Irish
rebels. Grattan, the old, passionless leader of the national party,
refused to countenance foreign interference, and retired from public
life in despair over the latest plans both of the rulers and the
oppressed. The Irish patriots elected a governing body, a species of
Directoire, which was negotiating with France for the loan of money
and troops, when all its plans were discomfited by the treason of a
single Catholic Irishman. His name, which deserves to be remembered,
was Reynolds. Moore undoubtedly had this man in his mind when he wrote
the description, in _The Fire-worshippers_, of the base betrayal of the
rebel chief to the Mohammedans.[2]
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was in bed when the soldiers forced their
way into the house where he lay hidden. A reward of £1000 had been
offered for his head. Although undressed, and with no weapon but a
sword, he defended himself for a long time against three fully armed
English officers, of whom one received three and another fourteen
wounds; the third disarmed him with a pistol-shot, and he was taken to
prison. Fitzgerald was acquainted with the most distinguished of the
French revolutionists; he was a friend of Thomas Paine; and his wife
was a charming daughter of Philippe Egalité. He carried on a steady
correspondence with France; and had he not died in prison, he would
have been executed. It speaks well for Moore's courage and independent
judgment, that, though he belonged to a circle in which Fitzgerald was
regarded as a traitorous madman, he paid him all the honour due to his
heroism.
The rebels having thus lost their leader, the prospect of a general
rising was at an end; but the Government took the opportunity to treat
persons suspected of sedition with a cruelty bordering on frenzy.
Martial law was proclaimed, and those employed to administer it are
described by English historians as "a set of ignorant, bloodthirsty
ruffians, who first, by torture and promises of pardon, converted
Catholic prisoners into witnesses against the accused, and then treated
them in the most shameful manner." The first notable man who fell a
victim to this species of justice was a peaceable member of the party
which desired reform by lawful means, Sir Edward Crosbie. He was
hanged, and his body mutilated afterwards. It was not the difference of
religion which excited the cruel passions of these torturers, for all
the best leaders of the United Irishmen (Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Harvey,
Thomas Emmet) were Protestants, who unselfishly embraced the cause of
their Catholic countrymen; it was the Anglo-Saxons' old race-hatred of
the Celts.
The Government chose as its chief tool a man who was known to be such
an ignorant, ferocious partisan that any degree of violence might be
expected of him. This was Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, a small proprietor,
who in 1799 was appointed High Sheriff. His plan of ingratiating
himself with his employers was to seize persons whom he chose to
suspect, and, by dint of the lash and threats of instant death, to
extort confessions of guilt and accusations of other persons. So abject
was the terror of the peasantry who were abandoned to the mercy of
this miscreant, that they fell on their knees before him. I give two
examples of his manner of proceeding, chosen from the many which were
made public during the lawsuit brought against him for having abused
his authority--the result of which was, of course, his acquittal with
honour.
He received a poor teacher of languages (Wright by name), who, hearing
that he was "suspected," had come to the court-house of his own accord,
with the order to fall upon his knees and receive his sentence. "You
are a Rebel," said the Sheriff, "and a principal in this rebellion. You
are to receive five hundred lashes, and then to be shot." The poor man
begged for time, and was so rash as to ask for a trial. This aroused
Fitzgerald to fury, and Wright was hurried to the flogging-ladders.
Fitzgerald himself dragged his fainting victim by the hair, kicked him,
and slashed him with a sword. Fifty lashes had been inflicted, when
an English Major came up and asked what Wright had done. The Sheriff
answered by flinging him a note, taken from Wright's pocket. It was in
French, a language of which Fitzgerald was wholly ignorant, and proved
to be an excuse for inability to fulfil a professional engagement.
Major Riall assured Fitzgerald that the note was perfectly harmless;
nevertheless the lash continued to descend until the victim's entrails
were visible through the flayed flesh. The hangman was then ordered to
apply his thongs to a part of the body which had not yet been torn.
This case of Wright's was one of those which created the greatest
sensation during the proceedings against the Irish High Sheriff.
But "the trial," says Massey, "would not have been complete had not
an Orange parson been called on the part of the defendant to swear
that this notorious bloodshedder, who throughout Ireland was called
'flogging Fitzgerald,' was a mild and humane man." The fact that the
Government, contrary to the principles of the constitution, had given
a special permission at the time of his appointment for the employment
of torture, made it easy for him to triumph over all his denouncers.
Addressing the jury as defendant, he actually boasted of having flogged
several persons under circumstances more aggravated than those before
the court. He mentioned one man who had cut his throat to escape the
horrors and ignominy of torture. It remains to be told that Judkin
Fitzgerald received a special pension as reward of his services, and
was, after the Union, made a baron of the United Kingdom.
One more specimen of the proceedings during the suppression of the
rebellion must be given; it furnishes an idea of the impressions
received by Moore during the years when he was ripening into
manhood.--"A part of the Mount Kennedy corps of yeomanry were, on an
autumn night in the year 1798, patrolling the village of Delbarg, in
the county of Wicklow. Two or three of the party, led by Whollaghan,
one of their number, entered the cottage of a labouring man named
Dogherty, and demanded if there were any bloody rebels there. The only
inmates of the cabin were Dogherty's wife, and a sick lad, her son, who
was eating his supper. Whollaghan asked if the boy was Dogherty's son,
and, being told that he was--'Then, you dog,' said Whollaghan, 'you
are to die here.' 'I hope not,' answered the poor lad; and begged, if
there were any charge against him, that he might be tried. Whollaghan,
with a volley of abuse, raised his gun and pulled the trigger twice,
but the piece missed fire. A comrade then handed him another gun; and
the mother rushed at the muzzle to shield her son. In the struggle
the piece went off, and the ball broke young Dogherty's arm. When the
boy fell, the assassins left the cabin; but Whollaghan returned, and
seeing the lad supported by his mother, he cried out: 'Is not the dog
dead yet?' 'O yes, sir,' cried the poor woman, 'he is dead enough.'
'For fear he is not,' said Whollaghan, 'let him take this.' And with
deliberate aim he fired a fourth time, and Dogherty dropped dead out of
his mother's arms. Whollaghan was tried for murder. The real defence
was that the prisoner and his companions had been sent out with general
orders from their officer to shoot any one they pleased. The court
seem to have been of opinion that such orders were neither unusual nor
unreasonable. They found 'that the prisoner did shoot and kill one
Thomas Dogherty, a rebel'; but acquitted him of any malicious or wilful
intention of murder."
It was by means such as these that tranquillity was restored in
Ireland, and that its people were ripened for the great administrative
change in which Castlereagh's cold, diplomatic keen-sightedness
saw the one chance of escape from the Irish deadlock, namely, the
discontinuance of the independent Irish Parliament which held its
sessions in Dublin, and its incorporation with the Parliament meeting
in London. The only opposition which required to be overcome was that
of the Irish Parliament itself, which, corrupt as it was, was not yet
pliable enough. Castlereagh, who was Secretary of State for Ireland,
and who does not seem in his capacity of Protestant Irishman to have
had a particularly high opinion of his Protestant countrymen, had
recourse to the simple expedient of purchasing one by one a sufficient
number of the votes of the Opposition. In every official letter which
he wrote to the Government at home between the beginning of 1799 and
the accomplishment of the Union in 1800, he insisted on the necessity
of bribery; and he received the Government's answer in the shape of
one million five hundred thousand pounds, of which he made the best
possible use. In their despair, the few patriots in the Parliament
resolved to try the only expedient which they thought likely to be of
any avail; they arranged that Grattan, who was still idolised by the
nation, but who had long kept silence and was now dangerously ill,
should suddenly appear in Parliament in the middle of the debate on the
Union. The scene was arranged with the Irish love of dramatic effect. A
vacancy having occurred a few days before the meeting of Parliament in
the representation of Wicklow, an arrangement was made with Mr. Tighe,
the patron of the borough, to return Grattan. Tighe himself took the
return, and, riding all night, arrived in Dublin at five o'clock in the
morning. Grattan, wasted by sickness, was taken out of bed, dressed,
wrapped in a blanket, and conveyed in a sedan chair to the Parliament
House. At seven in the morning, when the jaded House was half asleep,
the speech of an orator named Egan was interrupted by the voice of the
Speaker summoning a new member to the table to take the oaths. The
House started from its slumber as the spectral figure of Grattan paced
slowly up the floor. The man of 1782, the champion of the revolution
which had made Ireland a nation, had come back as from the grave to
rescue the independence of his country. He concluded his speech with
the words: "Against such a proposition, were I expiring on the floor, I
should beg to utter my last breath and record my dying testimony." When
Corry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dared to reply to these words
with an accusation of treason, Grattan answered with a challenge. A few
days afterwards they fought a duel with pistols; Corry, fortunately
for himself, was wounded in the arm; had he been the victor, he would
undoubtedly have been torn in pieces by the mob.
But even Grattan was powerless against the weapons employed by the
Government. The eloquence, the brilliancy and solidity of which were
compared by Moore to those of a precious gem, and which Byron declared
to be superior to that of Demosthenes, found no echo.[3] The day the
Union was decided on, the galleries were crowded with an anxious,
excited audience. But Castlereagh, who felt assured of success, awaited
the result with a smile on his lips. When the time for voting came, the
Speaker, dwelling on the words, said: "All who desire the Union hold
up their hands!" Member after member slowly and shamefacedly raised
his hand. For a moment the Speaker stood as still as a statue; then
crying: "The Union is carried!" he threw himself on his chair with a
gesture of disgust and anger. During this stormy debate, in the course
of which the most notable Irishmen of the day proclaimed opposition and
rebellion at the present juncture to be a duty--none of them, however,
with any intention of carrying their principles into action--there sat
in one of the galleries a youth with a pale face and sparkling eyes,
who meant all that the others only said, and swore in his heart that
he would be the liberator of his country. This young man was Ireland's
best and noblest son, Robert Emmet, the friend who, in all probability,
inspired Thomas Moore with most of the force and fire to be found in
the enchanting _Irish Melodies_.
The notable Irish poet who came into the world in the same year as our
Danish poet, Oehlenschläger, was the son of a Dublin wine-merchant.
He had a good father and an affectionate, capable mother, and spent
a happy childhood in the bosom of his family. He very early showed
himself to be an unusually clever and talented boy; he acted, wrote
and recited poetry, and sang with a peculiarly sweet voice, which he
retained all his life. In reading his own account of his boyhood,
we observe how early his peculiar poetic gift, which was that of
the improvisatore and singer, the lyrist proper, reveals itself. He
possessed the same talent which distinguished Bellmann, the Swede, that
of fusing words and music together into a whole; and along with this,
he had the actor's and singer's power of moving by his interpretation.
He was short, considerably under middle height; his brown hair curled
close to his head, and in his childhood he resembled a little Cupid.
His forehead was large and radiant, so interesting that it must have
been the delight of phrenologists. He had beautiful, dark eyes--the
kind of eyes, says Leigh Hunt, which we think of surmounted by a wreath
of vine leaves--a refined, merry mouth, a dimpled chin, a sensual nose,
slightly turned up, as if it were inhaling the fragrance of a feast
or an orchard. The little man as a whole produced an impression of
vitality and energy; he was of the stuff to have made a fiery raider
of the old Irish type; he was always high-spirited, and in his younger
days so quick-tempered that he challenged Jeffrey on account of the
latter's first review of his poetry, and afterwards Byron for jeering
(in _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_) at the bloodless endeavour at
a duel which was the result of the first challenge.
In spite, however, of this martial element in his disposition, it
is highly probable that Moore, if he had lived at a less critical,
distressing period, and had not come into personal contact with tyranny
and oppression, would never have risen to a higher rank as poet than
that of the sweet Anacreontic singer. His temperament inclined him in
this direction. But it was vouchsafed to him to do more for his country
than ever man had done for it before, more even than Burns had done for
Scotland, namely, to knit its name, its memories, its sufferings, the
shameful injustice done it, and the most admirable qualities of its
sons and daughters, to imperishable poetry and music.
At the early age of fifteen Moore was entered as a student at the
University of Dublin. The political leaven which was beginning to
leaven the whole of Ireland had penetrated the walls of the University.
A young man, destined to a great and tragic fate, was attracting
the attention both of his fellow-students and the professors. This
was the Robert Emmet already alluded to, a youth of singular purity
of character, who at the age of sixteen was already a distinguished
student of mathematics and physics, and a political orator of the first
rank. His speeches at the meetings of the "Historical Society," and the
deep impression made by them on Moore, a lad of his own age, but of a
much weaker and less developed character, have already been mentioned.
Although he had been warned against allowing himself to be seen in the
streets with Emmet, Moore was soon connected with him by the ties of
warm admiration and close friendship. And little wonder! It was the
Irish national hero whom the Irish poet had met, in the springtide of
their youth. Neither of them had any prevision of the other's future
greatness, but the instinct which unites harmonious minds kept them
together long enough for the poet to receive his consecration from the
hero. "Were I to number," says Moore, "the men among all I have ever
known, who appeared to me to combine in the greatest degree pure moral
worth with intellectual power, I should, among the highest of the few,
place Robert Emmet."[4]
Robert Emmet was born in 1780. His elder brother, Thomas, was one of
the leaders of the rebellion of 1798, and, after its failure, was first
imprisoned and then banished. Robert's earliest emotions were hatred
of English tyranny and love of the Irish martyrs. Even as a boy he
displayed a strength of character which foreshadowed the greatness of
soul that he displayed as a man. At the age of twelve he was already
absorbed in the study of mathematics and chemistry.[5] One day,
immediately after making a chemical experiment, he sat down to solve a
difficult mathematical problem, and, absently putting his hand to his
mouth, poisoned himself with a corrosive sublimate which he had been
handling a few moments before. The violent pains which he immediately
felt, informed him of his danger. The fear of being forbidden to make
such dangerous experiments in future led him to suppress anything of
the nature of a cry. He went downstairs to his father's library, looked
up the article on "Poison" in an encyclopædia, and found that chalk
was recommended as an antidote in such cases as his. Remembering that
he had seen a piece of chalk in the coach-house, he went there, broke
open the door, which was locked, found the chalk, prepared and drank a
solution of it, and returned to his mathematical problem. He appeared
at breakfast next morning with a face so altered that it was hardly
recognisable, and then confessed to his tutor that he had suffered
excruciating tortures during the night, but added that one good result
of his sleeplessness was that he had solved his problem.
A boy with courage and composure of this quality was sure to grow into
a man with a powerful influence over others.
One of those whom Emmet influenced most strongly was Thomas Moore.
The simplicity of appearance and manner which, in combination with
the most delicate consideration for others, distinguished the young
politician, changed, when the spring was touched that set his feelings,
and through them, his intellect in motion, into an air of intellectual
nobility and superiority which enchained the sympathy of the poet to
be. "No two individuals," writes Moore, "could be much more unlike
to each other, than was the same youth to himself, before rising to
speak, and after;--the brow that had appeared inanimate, and almost
drooping, at once elevating itself to all the consciousness of power,
and the whole countenance and figure of the speaker assuming a change
as of one suddenly inspired. Of his oratory, it must be recollected, I
speak after youthful impressions; but I have heard little, since, that
appeared to me of a loftier or purer character." Moore further asserts
that Emmet's influence over his surroundings was due quite as much to
the blamelessness of his life and the grave suavity of his manners as
to his scientific attainments and his eloquence.
In 1797 a newspaper named _The Press_ was started by the brothers
Emmet, O'Connor, and other Irish popular leaders; and Moore was not
a little eager to see something of his own in its patriotic and
widely-read columns. But his mother's constant anxiety about him
made him fearful of hazarding anything that might agitate her, so he
resolved to write anonymously, at any rate to begin with. He sent in an
imitation of Ossian, which was printed, but excited no attention. Then,
with trembling hand, he entrusted to the post a _Letter to the Students
of Trinity College_, which, as he himself observes, was richly seasoned
with treason; it was a witty satire on Castlereagh, who, as long as he
lived, was the butt of Moore's wit.
"I hardly expected," writes Moore, "that it would make its appearance;
but, lo and behold, on the next evening of publication, when seated,
as usual, in my little corner by the fire, I unfolded the paper for
the purpose of reading it to my father and mother, there was my own
letter staring me full in the face, occupying a conspicuous station
in the paper, and, of course, one of the first and principal things
that my auditors wished to hear." Overcoming his emotion, he read the
letter aloud, and had the gratification of hearing it much praised by
his parents, who, however, pronounced both language and sentiments to
be "very bold". On the following day, Edward Hudson, the only friend
entrusted with the secret, paid a morning call, and had not been long
in the room conversing with Mrs. Moore, when he looked significantly
at Tom and remarked: "Well, you saw--." "That letter was yours, then,
Tom?" cried the mother; and new entreaties to be cautious followed on
Tom's confession.
"A few days after," writes Moore, "in the course of one of those
strolls into the country which Emmet and I used often to take together,
our conversation turned upon this letter, and I gave him to understand
that it was mine; when with that almost feminine gentleness of manner
which he possessed, and which is so often found in such determined
spirits, he owned to me that on reading the letter, though pleased with
its contents, he could not help regretting that the public attention
had thus been called to the politics of the University, as it might
have the effect of awakening the vigilance of the college authorities,
and frustrate the progress of the good work (as we both considered it)
which was going on there so quietly. Even then, boyish as my own mind
was, I could not help being struck with the manliness of the view which
I saw he took of what men ought to do in such times and circumstances,
namely, not to _talk_ or _write_ about their intentions, but to _act_.
He had never before, I think, in conversation with me, alluded to
the existence of the United Irish societies, in college, nor did he
now, or at any subsequent time, make any proposition to me to join in
them, a forbearance which I attribute a good deal to his knowledge
of the watchful anxiety about me which prevailed at home.... He was
altogether a noble fellow, and as full of imagination and tenderness of
heart as of manly daring."
It is plain enough that Robert Emmet, though he was sincerely attached
to Moore, felt that he was not of the stuff of which a man must be made
who is to stake his future and his life on the success of a rebellion.
But he had a high opinion of the young poet, and often sought his
society; he was doubtless conscious of the resonance of his own ideas
and dreams in the harp of Moore's soul. He used frequently to sit by
him at the pianoforte whilst he played over the airs from Bunting's
Irish collection; and Moore as an old man still remembered how one day,
when he was playing the spirited air, "Let Erin remember the day!"
Emmet exclaimed passionately: "Oh that I were at the head of twenty
thousand men marching to that air!"
This was in 1797, shortly before the discovery of the great Irish
conspiracy. The discovery came, with all its attendant horrors. One
of its first results was a regular court of inquisition, held within
the walls of the University. The roll was called, and the students
were examined one by one. Most of them knew little or nothing about
the plot, but there were a few, among them Robert Emmet, whose absence
revealed to their comrades how much they had known of the betrayed
and defeated plans. The dead silence which followed the daily calling
out of their names made a profound impression on Moore. He himself
proved at this trial what a high-spirited little fellow he was; he
told the dreaded Lord Fitzgibbon to his face that, in taking the oath
demanded of him, he reserved to himself the power of refusing to answer
any question calculated to get a comrade into trouble; and he bore
with manly composure the outburst of anger which followed. As he was
not a member of the Society of United Irishmen, and had evidently no
knowledge of their plans, he was dismissed at once.
It was during the years immediately following this incident that Moore
began to appear before the public as a poet. The horrors attendant on
the suppression of the rebellion did not provide him with any of his
themes; they were still too near. Emmet was away, and his influence
in abeyance; and, indeed, political poetry was for the moment an
impossibility in Ireland. So the young poet, whose temperament
naturally inclined him in the direction of light, sprightly verse,
followed the course prescribed by his tastes and his age. He prepared
an English version of the Odes of Anacreon, which he published before
he was twenty, with a dedication to the Prince Regent, who was at that
time the hope of the Liberals; and in 1801 he published, under the
title of _Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq_., a volume
of poems, for the most part of an erotic, youthfully sensuous, and
slightly licentious character. The Irish licentiousness reminds one
of that which is not at all uncommon in Swedish erotic poetry; it has
also, like the Swedish, a national stamp.
After leading a tolerably aimless existence for a year or two in
London, where his talents and his Irish charm of manner made him a
favourite in the best society, Moore was obliged by his poverty to
go as Admiralty Registrar (a post procured for him by Lord Moira)
to the Bermudas. It was, as one can easily imagine, an appointment
very unsuited to his tastes, and after a short time he entrusted his
duties to a deputy, made a tour in America, and returned to England.
The deputy, in course of time, embezzled a considerable sum of
Government money, and thus Moore, like Scott, became responsible for
the payment of a heavy debt. He also, like Scott, received numerous
offers of assistance; and he discharged his liabilities, partly with
the assistance of wealthy friends, partly by his own industry and
strict economy for several years. His tour in America lasted from
October 1803 to November 1804. He brought home with him the American
Epistles, and poems which are to be found in the second volume of his
works, and which contain descriptions of nature as remarkable for their
correctness as for their wealth of glowing colour. With his genuine
English Naturalism, he was, however, more anxious to be truthful
than to be brilliant, and was very proud of the many testimonies he
received both from natives and travellers as to the correct impression
he conveyed of country and people. The well-known English traveller,
Captain Basil Hall (who visited Scott at Abbotsford and who, when ill
in Venice, was taken care of by Byron), asserts that Moore's Odes and
Epistles give the most beautiful and correct description of Bermuda
that is to be found; and he draws attention to the fact that both the
words and tune of the prettiest of the songs, the "Canadian Boat Song,"
are close imitations of what one actually hears in the boats out there,
the poet having, however, rejected whatever was neither beautiful nor
characteristic. Moore himself tells how exactly he kept to reality in
his descriptions of landscapes and even trees. Referring to the lines:
"'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash-tree,
With a few who could love and remember like me,"
he relates how, twenty-five years after writing them, he received
from Bermuda a cup made from a shell of the fruit of the identical
calabash tree alluded to, on the bark of which his name had been found
inscribed. The unaccustomed natural surroundings of these regions had
a fecundating effect on the mind of a young poet who was susceptible
to luxurious, festal impressions. The democratic and republican
institutions of the United States were much less to the taste of the
refined writer on whom the general reaction against the eighteenth
century, which was now beginning, was already producing its effect.
His Epistles on the state of society in America prove that he was
alive only to the defects of the Republic. He had an audience of the
President; but we perceive that Jefferson's slovenly dress--slippers
and blue stockings formed part of it--gave the young poet an
unfavourable impression of the man who had drawn up the Declaration
of Independence. What shocked him more than anything else in America
was to find French philosophy, which he, the true child of his day,
regarded as sinful and poisonous, so widely spread throughout the young
republic.[6] He referred many years afterwards to this time as being
the one period during which he had felt doubtful of the wisdom of the
liberal political faith in which he might almost literally be said to
have begun his life, and in which he expected to end it.
It almost seemed, for a moment, as if the impressions received by the
poet in his oppressed native island during his childhood and youth were
extinct, dead and buried under Anacreontic sentiments, reminiscences
of travel, and the pleasures of life as lived in the most fashionable
and frivolous circles of London society. But in 1807 appeared the first
Number of the _Irish Melodies_, the work which is Moore's title-deed
to immortality. Everything that his unfortunate country had felt and
suffered during the long years of her ignominy--her agonies and sighs,
her ardent struggles, her martial spirit, the smile shining through
her tears--we have them all here, scattered about in songs which are
written in a mood of half-gay, half-mournful levity and amorousness.
It was a wreath this, woven of grief, enthusiasm, and tenderness, a
fragrant wreath, such as one binds in honour of the dead, which Moore
placed on his country's brow. Not that Ireland is often mentioned;
there are as few names as possible in these poems--it was not safe to
print Irish names. But now the singer would celebrate his mistress
in such terms that no one could fail to recognise her as Erin, now
the dearly beloved would speak with a majesty which showed her to be
no mortal woman; and, as in the old Christian allegorical hymns, the
mysticism increased the poetic effect.
What had happened in the interval between the appearance of Moore's
wanton, frivolous poetry and the conception of these wonderful songs?
They themselves answer the question by suppressing the answer. The
fourth Melody begins:
"Oh, breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid:
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head!"
There was, then, one whose name might not be named, whose body lay
dishonoured in a grave where it might be wept over only in the darkness
of night.
In the next song, again without any mention of a name, we read:
"When he who adores thee has left but the name
Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
Oh! say, wilt thou weep when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resigned?
Yes, weep, and however my foes may condemn,
Thy tears shall efface their decree;
For Heaven can witness, though guilty to them,
I have been but too faithful to thee!"
That the beloved of these lines is Ireland, we can see at the first
glance; but once more a dark veil of anonymity is cast over the man
whose reputation was destroyed by his enemies, but who, though declared
guilty by them, had been so faithful to the object of his worship.
Let the reader turn over a few pages, and he will come upon a poem
which is closely connected with the two just quoted. It is a sweet, sad
portrait of the betrothed of the anonymous dead hero.
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers around her are sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,
Every note that he loved awaking.--
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking!
He had lived for her love, for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwined him;
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,
From her own loved Island of Sorrow!"
The reader has already divined that the young hero of these touching
laments is no other than Moore's old college friend, Robert Emmet. It
was undoubtedly this young man's tragic fate which inspired the finest
of the songs of freedom contained in the _Irish Melodies_.
Robert's elder brother suffered a term of imprisonment after the
revolution of 1798, and was then banished; Robert himself escaped
imprisonment, and continued to employ his liberty in the service of
the cause which had cost his brother so much, and was to cost his own
life. In 1802 he went to Paris, and had an interview with the First
Consul, who appeared to him "to care as little for Ireland as he did
for the republic or for liberty," and several with Talleyrand, whom he
considered no more satisfactory, for the purpose of making arrangements
for the proclamation of an independent Irish Republic, supported by an
alliance with the French Republic. The moment was an opportune one, for
the friendly relations which had been re-established for a short time
between France and England by the Peace of Amiens were on the point
of giving way to renewed hostility. Bonaparte seems actually to have
for a moment contemplated a landing in Ireland (he lamented at St.
Helena that he had not gone to Ireland instead of to Egypt), and Robert
Emmet returned in November 1802 to his native island with a distinct
promise from the French authorities that the landing of their army
should take place in August 1803. With untiring audacity he prepared
for a new rebellion throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. He
was persuaded that that of 1798 had failed because it had not had
sufficient support in the capital. His great aim, therefore, was to
get possession of Dublin, and more particularly of the Castle, the
gates of which stood open till late in the evening. Day and night he
superintended the preparations of the conspirators. In different parts
of the town they rented a number of houses, where they established
secret manufactories of weapons and ammunition. Emmet had a staff of
fifteen men, almost all of the lower class, to assist him in the task
of superintendence. Such rest as he granted himself was taken lying on
a mattress on the floor of one of the powder-magazines.
Although more than a thousand persons were concerned in the conspiracy,
there was not one traitor among them, and the merciless Government
had not the slightest idea of what was impending. Emmet's private
fortune was entirely expended on the necessary preparations, although
the men who served him received no payment for their work. One of
them, conversing many years afterwards with the author of _The United
Irishmen_, told him that they worked, not for money, but for the cause;
that they had perfect confidence in Robert Emmet, and would have given
their lives for him. But in the month of July an accident occurred;
one of the powder-magazines blew up, killing two men, one of whom died
in Emmet's arms. The following day a Protestant newspaper informed the
Government that it was sleeping on a mine.
There could now be no question of waiting for the French; half-prepared
as the conspirators were, they had either to make their attempt at
once or accept the certainty of annihilation without a struggle. On
the morning of the 23rd of July a manly proclamation to the people
of Ireland, drawn up by Emmet himself, was discovered posted up in
the streets of Dublin. But when evening came, and Emmet attempted the
surprise of the Castle, he proved to his sorrow how unreliable his
countrymen were at a dangerous and decisive crisis. The number of his
followers steadily diminished as they approached the Castle, and by
the time its gates were reached it was clear that any attack which the
mere handful of faithful enthusiasts left, could make on the now alert
and well-armed enemy was doomed to defeat. In the first confusion the
rebel leaders succeeded in escaping to the hills of Wicklow, where
they were able to hold a council the following day. Most of them were
certain that their cause was anything but a lost one; let them but
give the signal, and the whole of Ireland would rise like one man,
&c, &c. Robert Emmet alone had lost all his illusions. He succeeded
in convincing his friends that to continue their endeavours at this
juncture, and without other forces than the undisciplined rebels who
alone were at their service, would lead to nothing but more shedding of
the blood of a people who had already suffered so much. At the moment
of parting, all the others entreated Emmet to take advantage of an
opportunity which presented itself of escaping from the country at once
in a fishing-boat belonging to one of the rebels. But, with a slight
confusion of manner, he told them that he could not possibly leave
Ireland for an unlimited number of years without first returning to
Dublin to take leave of a lady, who was so dear to him that he must see
her again if he "had to die for it a thousand times."
In Dublin the military were on his heels. His faithful housekeeper,
a young, brave girl, was covered with bayonet pricks and underwent
"half-hanging"; but nothing would induce her to betray her master's
hiding-place. At last he was found and arrested, a pistol-shot in
the shoulder preventing any attempt at escape. When the officer who
arrested him was making an excuse for this shot, the prisoner said
shortly: "All is fair in war."
A few days after his imprisonment, Robert Emmet wrote to the young lady
for whose sake he had risked his life. This was Miss Sarah Curran, a
daughter of the eminent and highly respected barrister, John Philpot
Curran, who is so often named in Byron's poetry, and who had been the
eloquent, undaunted defender of the political prisoners tried after the
rebellion of 1798. Young Emmet had been a welcome visitor at Curran's
house; but when Curran discovered the attachment between the two
young people, he separated them, as he feared that Emmet's political
opinions augured ill for his future; and the correspondence between
them had been carried on without his knowledge. The jailer demanded a
large sum from Emmet for conveying his letter to its address, and then
took it straight to the Attorney-General. Fearing possible injurious
consequences to the lady whom he loved, Emmet at once wrote to his
judges, and, knowing that his eloquence was dreaded, offered to plead
guilty and not say one word in his own defence if, in return, they
would make no reference, in the hearing of the case, to his letter to
Miss Curran. The offer was made in vain. The very next day, the arrival
of the police to search his house informed the furious Curran of the
relations between his daughter and Emmet.
Of the result of the trial no one had any doubt; the accused knew his
fate. When the governor of the prison came upon him one day plaiting a
lock of hair which Miss Curran had given him, he looked up and said:
"I am preparing it to take with me to the scaffold." On his table was
found a carefully executed pen and ink drawing--an excellent portrait
of himself, the head severed from the body.
The trial began at 10 A.M. After the Attorney-General had made a
speech, in which he affirmed that the only results of the conspiracy
had been to elicit stronger proofs than had before existed of the
attachment of Ireland to its King, Robert Emmet requested that, as
his only answer, the following paragraph from the proclamation of the
provisional government, as drawn up by him, might be read aloud: "From
this time onward flogging and torture are forbidden in Ireland, and
may not be reintroduced on any pretext whatever." Hereupon followed
a speech by a hateful Irish renegade, Mr. Plunket, who had formerly
belonged to the party of rebellion, but who now, as King's Counsel,
overwhelmed Emmet with abuse. Then Emmet himself stood up, and, with
the prospect of certain and almost immediate death before his eyes,
defended himself in a speech with which every Irishman to this day is
familiar. He began by saying that if he were to suffer only death after
being adjudged guilty, he should bow in silence to his fate; but the
sentence which delivered his body to the executioner also consigned his
character to obloquy, and therefore he must speak. The judge roughly
interrupting him in the middle of his speech, he calmly said: "I have
understood, my Lord, that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear
with patience, and to speak with humanity," and continued his speech in
such a loud voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the
court-house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing
boisterous in his manner. Those who heard him declare, says Madden,
that his accents and cadence of voice were exquisitely modulated. He
moved about the dock as he warmed in his address, with characteristic,
rapid, and not ungraceful motions. Even after the lapse of thirty
years, the witnesses of the scene could not speak without emotion of
the graceful majesty with which he defied his judges. A correspondent
of the _Times_, who unconditionally condemned the rebellion, wrote of
Emmet as follows: "But as to Robert Emmet individually, it will surely
be admitted that even in the midst of error he was great; and that the
burst of eloquence with which, upon the day of his trial, with the
grave already open to receive him, he shook the very court wherein he
stood, and caused not only 'that viper whom his father nourished' (Mr.
Plunket) to quail beneath the lash, but likewise forced that 'remnant
of humanity' (Lord Norbury, who tried him), to tremble on the judgment
seat, was an effort almost superhuman."
Emmet ended with these words: "My lord, you are impatient for the
sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial
terrors which surround your victim--it circulates warmly and unruffled
through its channels, and in a little time it will cry to heaven. Be
patient! I have but a few words to say--I am going to my cold and
silent grave--my lamp of life is nearly extinguished--I have parted
with everything that was dear to me in this life, and for my country's
cause with the idol of my soul, the object of my affections. My race
is run--the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I
have but one request to ask at my departure from this world--it is
_the charity of its silence_. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no
man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or
ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace, my memory
be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times
and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her
place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my
epitaph be written. I have done."
The sentence was pronounced. Robert Emmet was, on the following day,
first to be hanged, and then beheaded. When the prisoner was removed
from the dock it was about ten o'clock at night. As he passed the
grating of a cell in which a friend was confined, he called to him: "I
shall be hanged to-morrow." He was allowed no peace during his last
hours. The Government became alarmed lest an attempt might be made to
rescue him, and an order was sent to convey him to Kilmainham jail, two
miles and a half away. Not till he reached there did a humane jailer
take off the irons which had been put on so roughly that they had drawn
blood. The same man gave him something to eat, no food having been
provided for him since before the trial began, at ten in the morning.
Emmet then slept soundly for a short time. On awaking he employed the
time left him in writing letters to his brother in America, to Miss
Curran's brother, and to herself. He was interrupted by a friend, who
came to bid him farewell. Emmet's first inquiry was after his mother,
and his friend was obliged to tell him that she had died the day before
of grief. She had borne with fortitude the banishment of one of her
sons for his devotion to the cause of Ireland, and she had encouraged
Robert in all his proceedings; but when she knew that he, the pride of
her heart, was doomed, in his twenty-third year, to such a terrible
death, her heart broke. Robert received the news composedly, and said,
after a silence of some moments: "It is better so." In his letter to
young Curran he wrote: "I did not look to honours for myself--praise
I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished
to read in the glow of Sarah's countenance that her husband was
respected." His writing in this letter is as firm and regular as usual.
At one o'clock, escorted by the sheriffs and followed by the
executioner, he was led to the scaffold. So great was the power of his
gentleness and charm over wild, rude natures, that one of the warders
burst into tears at parting from him. Emmet, whose arms were bound,
bent forward and kissed the man on the cheek; and the jailer, whom
twenty years of service had hardened, and inured to prison scenes, fell
senseless at his prisoner's feet. Before mounting the scaffold Emmet
entrusted to one of his friends the letter which he had written to Miss
Curran; but the friend was arrested and imprisoned, and this letter,
like the other, did not reach its destination. Emmet took off his
neckerchief himself, and assisted in adjusting the rope round his neck.
After his head was struck from the body the executioner held it up to
the crowd, proclaiming in a loud voice: "This is the head of a traitor,
Robert Emmet!" Not a sound was heard in answer.
Next day the readers of the _London Chronicle_, the Government organ,
were told: "He behaved without the least symptom of fear, and with all
the effrontery and nonchalance which so much distinguished his conduct
on his trial yesterday. He seems to scoff at the dreadful circumstances
attending on him, at the same time, with all the coolness and
complacency that can be possibly imagined, though utterly unlike the
calmness of Christian fortitude. Even as it was, I never saw a man die
like him; and God forbid I should see many with his principles.... The
clergyman who attended him endeavoured to win him from his deistical
opinions. He thanked him for his exertions, but said that his opinions
on such subjects had long been settled, and that this was not the time
to change them." Thus spoke the official press. Oppressed Ireland kept
silence at the scaffold of her young hero, and, faithful to his wish,
carved no epitaph on his tomb.
But when Moore's _Irish Melodies_ appeared, it was as if the grief and
wrath of a whole nation had suddenly found expression; in these songs
it rose and fell, whispered and shouted, moaned and murmured, like the
waves of the sea, and with the irresistible force of a natural element.
Soon there was not a peasant in Ireland, as there is not one today,
unfamiliar with the song: "When he who adores thee." To this day Robert
Emmet's last speech is read in American schools. It is the gospel of
the Irish struggle for independence. But, strangely enough, Emmet's
heroic death contributed less to his fame among his countrymen than did
his touching love story. His betrothed, regarded by the Irish people
as their hero's widow, became the object of silent veneration. Her
unhappiness was increased by her being obliged to live amongst people
who sided with England, and who considered, much as they pitied him,
that Emmet had deserved his fate. Some years after Emmet's death Miss
Curran made the acquaintance of an English officer, a Captain Sturgeon,
who, touched by her forlorn position and attracted by her many charms,
offered her his hand. After long hesitation she married him. As she
was beginning to show symptoms of decline, he took her to Italy. Her
appearance, says Admiral Napier, who saw her at Naples, was that of "a
wandering statue." She died, not long after her marriage, in Sicily,
"far from the land where her young hero sleeps." Washington Irving has
described her in his _Sketch Book_, in the beautiful tale called "The
Broken Heart." But her most worthy monument is the song: "She is far
from the land."[7]
In the _Melodies_, however, the griefs of the individual are but
a symbol of those of the nation, an embodiment of the universal
suffering. We come upon songs in which we seem to hear all the sons
and daughters of Ireland lamenting over the fruitlessness of the
great French Revolution and the disappointment of the hopes which all
nations, but theirs above all others, had set upon the stability and
victory of the Republic. Such a song is the touching:
"'Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking";
with its wild lament that the first ray of liberty, welcomed with
blessings by man, has disappeared, and by its disappearance deepened
the darkness of the night of bondage and mourning which has again
closed in over the kingdoms of the earth, and darkest of all over Erin.
Truly noble and lofty is the flight of this verse:
"For high was thy hope, when those glories were darting
Around thee, through all the gross clouds of the world;
When Truth, from her fetters indignantly starting,
At once, like a sunburst, her banner unfurled.
Oh, never shall earth see a moment so splendid!
Then, then, had one Hymn of Deliverance blended
The tongues of all nations; how sweet had ascended
The first note of Liberty, Erin, from thee!"
And the poem ends with maledictions on the "light race, unworthy its
good," who "like furies caressing the young hope of freedom, baptized
it in blood." Other poems are of a more threatening nature, although
the threat is always poetic and half-concealed. Read, for example, the
song, "Lay his sword by his side."
"Lay his sword by his side,--it hath served him too well
Not to rest near his pillow below;
To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell,
Its point was still turn'd to a flying foe.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet pause--for, in fancy, a still voice I hear,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And it cries, from the grave where the hero lies deep,
'Tho' the day of your Chieftain for ever hath set,
'Oh, leave not his sword thus inglorious to sleep,--
'It hath victory's life in it yet!'"
The poem which is directly aimed at the Prince Regent is the most
severe and most high-toned of them all. It is the one which begins:
"When first I met thee, warm and young." The Prince's name is not
mentioned, but the verses can only be understood when it is known
that it is to him they refer. Erin, speaking as a woman, describes
her belief in him, her faith in the promises he made when "young and
warm" and her continued reliance on him even when she saw him change.
When she heard of his follies, she persisted in discovering, even in
his faults, "some gleams of future glory." But now that the attractive
qualities of youth have departed, and none of the virtues of maturity
have replaced them, now that those who once loved him avoid him,
and even his flatterers despise him, Erin would not give one of her
"taintless tears" for all his guilty splendour. And the day will come
when his last friends will forsake him, and he will call in vain on her
whom he has lost for ever. She will say:
"Go--go--'tis vain to curse,
'Tis weakness to upbraid thee;
Hate cannot wish thee worse
Than guilt and shame have made thee."
Wordsworth addressed declarations of love to England when she was
victorious and great; Scott sang the praises of Scotland at a time when
she was beginning to take her place as a flourishing nation by the side
of a sister kingdom; but Moore addressed his heartfelt, glowing strains
to a country which lay humiliated and bleeding at its torturers' feet.
He writes:--
"Remember thee! yes, while there's life in this heart,
It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art;
More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers,
Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours.
Wert thou all that I wish thee,--great, glorious, and free--
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea,--
I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow,
But, oh! could I love thee more deeply than now?"
And in everything that Moore wrote, there is a remembrance of Ireland.
His great Oriental poem, _Lalla Rookh_, which appeared in 1817, was
prepared for by the most conscientious study. There is not an image,
not a description, or name, or historical incident or reference, which
has any connection with Europe. Everything, without exception, bears
witness to the familiarity of the author with the life and nature
of the East. Nevertheless we know that the subject did not begin to
interest him until he saw a possibility of making the struggle between
the Fire-worshippers and the Mohammedans a pretext for preaching
tolerance in the spirit of the song, "Come, send round the wine," which
he had addressed to his countrymen in the _Irish Melodies_. And the
interest of the reader, too, is not really awakened until he begins
to divine Ireland and the Irish under these Ghebers and their strange
surroundings. Hence it is that _The Fire-Worshippers_ is the only
entirely successful part of the poem. The very names Iran and Erin melt
into each other in the reader's ear. Moore himself says that the spirit
which spoke in the _Irish Melodies_ did not begin to feel at home in
the East till he set it to work on the _Fire-Worshippers_; and the
beautiful poem, whose hero is a noble and unfortunate rebel, and whose
heroine lives amongst people who speak of her lover with detestation,
might well have been inspired by the memory of Robert Emmet and Sarah
Curran. Some of the incidents recall their story. Before Hafed calls
the Ghebers to revolt he has been wandering, an exile, in foreign
lands; Hinda, devoured by anxiety for him, hears every day of massacres
of the rebels. And when, learning that her lover has been burned, she
drowns herself, the poet bewails her fate in a song, entire verses of
which might, if _Erin_ were substituted for _Iran_, be added to "She is
far from the land" without introducing a perceptibly foreign element.
Take, for instance, the verse:
"Nor shall Iran, beloved of her Hero, forget thee--
Though tyrants watch over her tears as they start,
Close, close by the side of that Hero she'll set thee,
Embalmed in the innermost shrine of her heart."
And so exact is the resemblance between the spirit of the _Irish
Melodies_ and that which reigns in this Asiatic epic, that it was
possible to employ a sentence from the latter, without the change of a
single word, as motto for the collection of documents relating to the
Irish Rebellion which was published in the Fifties under the title:
_Rebellion Book and Black History_. The lines are as follows;--
"Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word,
Whose wrongful blight so oft has stained
The holiest cause that tongue or sword
Of mortal ever lost or gained.
How many a spirit born to bless
Hath sunk beneath that withering name,
Whom but a day's, an hour's success
Had wafted to eternal fame!"
It was Moore's polemical position as an Irishman that made it
impossible for him to see European politics in the same light as
they appeared to the Lake School and Scott. He directed a shower
of the arrows of his wit against the Holy Alliance. In the _Fables
for the Holy Alliance_, which he dedicated to Lord Byron, he jests,
good-humouredly but audaciously, at the European reaction. He dreams,
for example, that Czar Alexander gives a splendid ball in an ice-palace
which he has erected on the frozen Neva, on the plan of that built
by the Empress Anne. To it are invited all the "holy gentlemen" who,
at the various Congresses, have shown such regard for the welfare of
Europe.
"The thought was happy, and designed
To hint how thus the human mind
May--like the stream imprisoned there--
Be checked and chilled till it can bear
The heaviest Kings, that ode or sonnet
E'er yet be-praised, to dance upon it"
Madame de Krüdener has pledged her prophetic word that there is no
danger, that the ice will never melt. But, lo! ere long an ill-omened
dripping begins. The Czar goes on with his polonaise, but so glassy has
the floor become that he can hardly keep his legs; and Prussia, "though
to slippery ways so used, was cursedly near tumbling." But hardly has
the Spanish fandango begun when a glaring light--"as 'twere a glance
shot from an angry southern sun"--begins to shine in every chamber
of the palace. Then there is a general "Sauve qui peut!" Instantly
everything is in a flow--royal arms, Russian and Prussian birds of prey
and French fleur-de-lys, floors, walls, and ceilings, kings, fiddlers,
emperors, all are gone. Why, asks Moore,
"Why, why will monarchs caper so
In palaces without foundations?"
It is evident that he hoped great things from the Spanish Revolution,
which had just begun.
In another fable he tells of a country where there was a ridiculous law
prohibiting the importation of looking-glasses. What was the reason
of this prohibition? The reason was that the royal race reigned by
right of their superior beauty, and the people obeyed because _they_
were declared, and believed themselves to be, ugly. To hint that the
King's nose was not straight, was high treason; to suggest that one's
own neighbour was as good-looking as certain persons in high position,
was almost as great a crime; and the subjects, never having seen
looking-glasses, did not _know themselves_. Certain wicked Radicals
arranged that a ship with a cargo of looking-glasses should be driven
ashore on this country's coast--and the reader guesses the rest. In
a third fable the poet returns to his old symbolic characters, the
Fire-worshippers. Less tolerant here than in _Lalla Rookh_, he makes
the Fire-worshippers throw the whole corps of "extinguishers," who
have been appointed to obstruct them in the peaceful exercise of their
religious rites, into the flames which they will not allow to burn.
The work which shows Moore's humour and satire at its best, _The Fudge
Family in Paris_, is full of witty sallies against the new, incapable
Bourbon Government, but strikes at England in bold, dead earnest. We
find such lines as:
"Everywhere gallant hearts, and spirits true,
Are served up victims to the vile and few;
While E----, everywhere--the general foe
Of truth and freedom, wheresoe'er they glow--
Is first, when tyrants strike, to aid the blow!"