PERIOD OF RESIDENCE ABROAD
Moore's residence on the Continent lasted three and a half years, and it
formed an interlude in his life, interrupting what was otherwise a very
continuous texture. The period was one of relative idleness, yet by no
means of rest; and although whatever he produced during it was in verse,
its close found the transition accomplished, from poet to man of
letters.
The interlude opened with a real holiday, which was in truth amply
deserved. After a fortnight's stay in Paris, spent in seeing theatres,
sights, and a deal of company, Lord John Russell and his travelling
companion posted off through France to Geneva; explored the associations
of Ferney under the guidance of Dumont, the translator of Bentham, and
sometime tutor to Lord Lansdowne; and then set out for the Alps. The
passage over the Simplon, and the sight of the Jungfrau with the
sunset-flush on its snows, so wrought upon Moore's emotions that he shed
tears. At Milan the travellers parted company, Lord John proceeding to
Genoa, while Moore's destinations were Venice and Rome. Travelling
alone, in the "crazy little calèche" which he had been advised to buy,
was no joy, and he gladly reached La Mira, Byron's country house, two
hours' drive from Padua. The friends met for the first time after a
separation of five years, and Moore's note of the occurrence is
curiously lacking in warmth. The Byron whom he had known and liked so
well was a different person from the Byron of Italy. Much had happened
in the interval, and with a great deal of Byron's later, and maturer,
work, Moore was very imperfectly in sympathy. Nor did the Countess
Guiccioli much impress him. Byron, who had put his Venetian palace at
Moore's disposal, commended him to his friend Scott, who showed the
traveller round the place. A day or two later Byron came to Venice, and
there was much intimate talk between the two men. On the 11th of
October, Moore paid a farewell visit to La Mira and the Countess; and
before the poets parted, a notable thing happened. Lord Byron handed to
Moore the Memoirs of himself, of which Moore had heard for the first
time a few days earlier.
From Padua to Ferrara and so to Florence we trace in the Diary rather a
homesick gentleman, who begins to affect the virtuoso a little, and at
the time to collect notes for an epistle on the cant of connoisseurs. In
Florence he found some acquaintances, and they were in shoals before him
at Rome, where he arrived in the end of October. During the three weeks
of his stay here, Chantrey the sculptor and Jackson the painter--to the
latter of whom Moore at this time sat--were his principal associates,
and he left Rome in their company. His impressions of Italy savour a
little too much of second-hand ideas to be of interest. Moore had,
evidently enough, no education in art and yet was so susceptible to
surrounding influences that his talk was all of pictures, statuary,
buildings and so forth. His judgments on the music which he heard are in
strong contrast, brief and confident--the utterance of a genuine taste.
But the friendship formed with Chantrey seems to have been sympathetic
and lasting, based on a common interest in human character.
On December 11th Moore arrived in Paris, and 'went as soon as I could
with a beating heart to enquire for letters from home.' There were none
of recent date, for the beloved Tom was ill, and Bessy would not write
till the crisis was over; moreover, the Longmans wrote that nothing had
as yet been settled in the Bermuda business, so that a return to England
was impossible. "This is a sad disappointment," Moore writes,--"my dear
cottage and my books. I must, however, lose no time in determining upon
bringing Bessy and her little ones over; and wherever they are, will be
home, and a happy one, to me."
Meanwhile, he took "an entresol in the Rue Chantereine at 250 fr. a
month," and saw a deal of society, English and French, with potentates
in plenty. But it did not console him. "I have no one here that I care
one pin for, and begin to feel, for the first time, like a banished
man," he wrote to Rogers; and a Christmas day apart from his family only
deepened his gloom. But on January 1st, 1820, Bessy and her young ones
landed safely in Paris, and things began to brighten singularly. "My
dear tidy girl," Moore writes, "notwithstanding her fatigue, set about
settling and managing everything immediately." Chief of the things
settled was a resolution not to go into society, "which was tolerably
adhered to for some time";--Moore meanwhile working at his "Fudge
Family in Italy," a first draft of the poetical impressions which he
published ultimately as _Rhymes on the Road_. After about a month, a
successful move was made to "a very pretty cottage in the Allée des
Veuves," somewhere in the Champs Élysées--"as rural and secluded a
workshop as I have ever had," says Moore.
Gradually, however, virtue evaporated. The poet was beset with
invitations, and, moreover, he owns to a sense of depression before the
task of writing, "when the attention of all the reading world is
absorbed by two writers, Scott and Byron." He had also a consciousness
that his poetical essays in and upon connoisseurship were not the right
thing; and finally, in June, after the whole had been set up by a French
printer, it was decided to suppress the publication; Sir James
Mackintosh having advised the Longmans, that the incidental satire on
Castlereagh and other leading members of the Government would be
injurious to Moore's interest, at a time when it might be possible to
induce Government to drop its share of the claims against him; and Moore
himself being influenced by the wish to publish nothing new till he had
something of importance to produce.
In July the kindness of friends, M. Villamil, a Spanish gentleman, and
his wife, enabled the Moores to move for the summer into pleasant
quarters--a little _pavillion_ in the grounds of the Villamils' house
near Sèvres. Here the poet, still in pursuit of an important subject,
returned to an idea which first germinated in his mind after the
completion of _Lalla_--the story of a Greek who goes to Egypt in search
of some philosophic secret, and during a celebration of the Egyptian
priestly mysteries becomes enamoured of a young girl. She proves to be
a Christian, and the hero is thus introduced to the secret communion. It
is of course the basis of Moore's prose romance, _The Epicurean_, but
his collected works contain a considerable fragment of _Alciphron_, his
first sketch of it in verse, which dates from this time. Studies for the
work brought him into touch with French savants, and the more Moore read
upon the subject, the less he appears to have written. But the research
drew him to Paris and away from his quarters in the "pavilion"; and
when, in October, the household returned to its home in the Allée des
Veuves, and Moore and his wife dined at home with the little ones for
the first time since the beginning of July, "Bessy said in going to bed,
'This is the first rational day we have had for a long time.'"
Lord John Russell notes penitently on this passage, that he regrets his
part in persuading Moore to prefer France to Holyrood, for "his
universal popularity was his chief enemy." At no time did Moore suffer
so much from being lionised, for his home was in easy reach of Paris,
and in Paris French and English alike pursued this celebrity. _Lalla
Rookh_ was then at the height of its fame; was in the East being
translated into Persian, and in the West transformed into a kind of
masque which a troupe of royal amateurs presented at Berlin: and Lalla's
poet was naturally much courted. Further, in the close of the year,
there came a missive from Byron which was a fatal encouragement to
idleness and outlay. He forwarded the continuation of the Memoirs, with
the suggestion that Moore should sell the reversion of the MS. The
suggestion was acted on after a while, and Murray consented to advance
the large sum of 2000 guineas. Meanwhile engagements accumulated, and
Moore began to lose health as well as time. He went into the world more
and more as a bachelor, Bessy, as always, falling into the background
when expenses grew high; though, at first, in Paris he and she went
about a good deal together. Nevertheless, he wrote with all sincerity on
March 25th, 1821:--
"This day ten years we were married, and though Time has made his
usual changes in us both, we are still more like lovers than any
married couple of the same standing I am acquainted with."
In the autumn, it was decided that Moore should come to England _sub
rosa_, and try to compromise the Bermuda claims with a lump sum out of
Murray's advance. He was met with dissuasion by his friendly publishers
the Longmans, and it transpired finally that Lord Lansdowne had left
£1000 with them to attempt a similar settlement. The kindness gratified
Moore's best qualities, as well as his mild vanity, and though he
declined to profit by it, he was greatly uplifted. From London he
crossed to Dublin to see his parents after three years' separation--but
the separation had made no breach, for Moore wrote twice every week to
his mother. The visit was a short one, and he had some fears for his
safety from arrest, as he had been widely recognised in Dublin. But on
his return to town the publishers met him with joyful news. The chief
claim had been settled for £1000, and he was free to "walk boldly out
into the sunshine," and show himself up Bond Street and St. James's. Of
this £1000, three hundred were extorted from Mr. Sheddon, uncle and
recommender of the defaulting deputy; the rest was settled (as a
compliment) out of Lord Lansdowne's money, but a draft on Murray was
immediately sent him to repay the loan.
For the present, however, Moore lacked the means to move back to
England, and he remained in Paris, where, in the summer of 1822, he at
last settled down to a serious piece of work--his _Loves of the
Angels_--"a subject," he says, "on which I long ago wrote a prose story
and have ever since meditated a verse one." The work went quickly, a
thousand lines were completed within two months; and in November, when
the poet's friends in Paris mustered to give him a farewell dinner,
allusion was made to the new poem as all but ready to appear. It was
actually out before Christmas. By that time Moore was back and
comfortably established at Sloperton (an intervening tenant having died
seasonably), and here he found his study enlarged, his family well, and
himself "most happy to be at home again." "Oh, quid solutis!"--he
exclaims, recalling the lines of Horace which tell of the joy it is to
shake off a load of care, and to rest after labours in a foreign land.
When the _Angels_ appeared, the press was favourable, but Lady Donegal
and a good many more protested vehemently against the application to
profane purposes of the scriptural legend, which tells of the sons of
God mating with daughters of men. Publishers are sensitive to this type
of criticism, and the Longmans jumped at Moore's offer to remodel the
poem, by giving it an Eastern cast, and "turning his poor Angels into
Turks." Accordingly a fifth edition was produced, in which the
metamorphosis was completed; but the disguise was soon abandoned, and
Moore appears to have been ashamed of his concession, for in his preface
to the poem in the 1841 edition, no mention is made of this recension.
_The Loves of the Angels_ never attained to the popularity of _Lalla
Rookh_, and yet it seems a much more praiseworthy composition. In the
first place, Moore had chosen a subject that fell more within his range.
Outside of light verse, his only themes were love and patriotism, and
here we have the amatory poet indulging his genius to the full. The
whole poem is about love-making--love-making _in excelsis_, and
surrounded with accessories so decorative that they remove all hint of
reality. One feels instinctively that the fierce accent of passion would
be out of place here, and, consequently, does not censure the absence of
it. His three fallen angels who meet and recall the loves for which they
lost heaven, furnish three types of love-story, distinguished with all
the care of a troubadour expert in _la gaye science_.
The first angel--one of a lower rank in heaven--is of look "the least
celestial of the three," and, before the crisis in his story, has tasted
"That juice of earth, the bane
And blessing of man's heart and brain."
He is the one whom woman resisted--for Woman is throughout the poem all
but deified; and his lady, to escape from the terrors of his love, as he
comes to her after the wine-cup, steals the spell-word from him, and
flies off to heaven, whither his wings can no longer follow. The second
angel, a spirit of knowledge, is wooed by woman rather than her wooer,
and at last is fated to destroy her with the death of Semele. Moore
evidently thought that much knowledge was a dangerous thing for the sex.
His ideal of womanhood is rather that depicted in the third story, of
which the third angel is the subject, not the narrator. In this angel--
"That amorous spirit, bound
By beauty's spell, where'er 'twas found,"
who fell--
"From loving much,
Too easy lapse, to loving wrong,"
we may, I think, fairly trace some lineaments of Moore's conception of
himself. For this seraph a gentler doom was decreed. He and his nymph
are first drawn together by the snare of music, a snare even though in
sacred song: for, as the poem tells--
"Love, though unto earth so prone,
Delights to take Religion's wing
When time or grief hath stained his own.
How near to Love's beguiling brink
Too oft entranced Religion lies!
While Music, Music is the link
They _both_ still hold by to the skies."
The lovers meet at the altar, but they appeal to the altar to consecrate
their vows. And thus the poem closes with a passage in celebration of
connubial love, which, even though it perhaps seemed to Lady Donegal too
bold a gloss on the text of Genesis, may very well have pleased the
poet's Bessy; for we can be very certain that the poet was thinking more
of Bessy than of Genesis when he wrote it. I shall quote the whole
passage, which contains some lines that have hardly their equal in
Moore's writings--notably the fine strain beginning, "For humble was
their love,"--and, further on, the closing period which recalls, yet not
by imitation, Wordsworth's scarcely more beautiful tribute to his
wife:--
"Sweet was the hour, though dearly won,
And pure, as aught of earth could he,
For then first did the glorious sun
Before Religion's altar see
Two hearts in wedlock's golden tie
Self-pledged, in love to live and die.
Blest union! by that Angel wove,
And worthy from such hands to come;
Safe, sole asylum, in which Love,
When fall'n or exiled from above,
In this dark world can find a home.
"And though the spirit had transgress'd,
Had, from his station 'mong the blest
Won down by woman's smile, allow'd
Terrestrial passion to breathe o'er
The mirror of his heart, and cloud
God's image, there so bright before--
Yet never did that Power look down
On error with a brow so mild;
Never did Justice wear a frown
Through which so gently Mercy smiled.
"For humble was their love--with awe
And trembling like some treasure kept,
That was not theirs by holy law--
Whose beauty with remorse they saw,
And o'er whose preciousness they wept.
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot,
Was in the hearts of both--but most
In Nama's heart, by whom alone
Those charms, for which a heaven was lost,
Seem'd all unvalued and unknown;
And when her Seraph's eyes she caught,
And hid hers glowing on his breast,
Even bliss was humbled by the thought--
'What claim have I to be so blest?'
Still less could maid, so meek, have nursed
Desire of knowledge--that vain thirst,
With which the sex hath all been cursed,
From luckless Eve to her, who near
The Tabernacle stole to hear
The secrets of the angels: no--
To love as her own Seraph loved,
With Faith, the same through bliss and woe
Faith, that, were even its light removed,
Could, like the dial, fix'd remain,
And wait till it shone out again;--
With Patience that, though often bow'd
By the rude storm, can rise anew;
And Hope that, ev'n from Evil's cloud,
Sees sunny Good half breaking through!
This deep, relying Love, worth more
In heaven than all a Cherub's lore--
This Faith, more sure than aught beside,
Was the sole joy, ambition, pride
Of her fond heart--th' unreasoning scope
Of all its views, above, below--
So true she felt it that to _hope_,
To _trust_, is happier than to _know_.
"And thus in humbleness they trod,
Abash'd, but pure before their God;
Nor e'er did earth behold a sight
So meekly beautiful as they,
When, with the altar's holy light
Full on their brows, they knelt to pray,
Hand within hand, and side by side.
Two links of love, awhile untied
From the great chain above, but fast
Holding together to the last!
Two fallen Splendours, from that tree,
Which buds with such eternally,
Shaken to earth, yet keeping all
Their light and freshness in the fall.
"Their only punishment, (as wrong,
However sweet, must bear its brand,)
Their only doom was this--that, long
As the green earth and ocean stand,
They both shall wander here--the same,
Throughout all time, in heart and frame--
Still looking to that goal sublime,
Whose light remote, but sure, they see;
Pilgrims of Love, whose way is Time,
Whose home is in Eternity!
Subject, the while, to all the strife
True Love encounters in this life--
The wishes, hopes, he breathes in vain;
The chill, that turns his warmest sighs
To earthly vapour, ere they rise;
The doubt he feeds on, and the pain
That in his very sweetness lies:--
Still worse, th' illusions that betray
His footsteps to their shining brink;
That tempt him, on his desert way
Through the bleak world, to bend and drink,
Where nothing meets his lips, alas!--
But he again must sighing pass
On to that far-off home of peace,
In which alone his thirst will cease.
"All this they bear, but, not the less,
Have moments rich in happiness--
Blest meetings, after many a day
Of widowhood passed far away,
When the loved face again is seen
Close, close, with not a tear between--
Confidings frank, without control,
Pour'd mutually from soul to soul;
As free from any fear or doubt
As is that light from chill or stain,
The sun into the stars sheds out,
To be by them shed back again!--
That happy minglement of hearts,
Where, chang'd as chymic compounds are,
Each with its own existence parts,
To find a new one happier far!
Such are their joys--and, crowning all,
That blessed hope of the bright hour,
When, happy and no more to fall,
Their spirits shall, with freshen'd power,
Rise up rewarded for their trust
In Him, from whom all goodness springs,
And shaking off earth's soiling dust
From their emancipated wings,
Wander for ever through those skies
Of radiance, where Love never dies!"
There is nothing else in the poem at all so good as this. And even this
would gain considerably by condensation, even by simple excisions. But
the writing is consistently polished, easy, and--short of
inspiration--even excellent. The opening may be quoted for a fine
example:--
"'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory, and young Time
Told his first birthdays by the sun;
When, in the light of Nature's dawn
Rejoicing, men and angels met
On the high hill and sunny lawn,
Ere sorrow came, or Sin had drawn
'Twixt man and heav'n her curtain yet!
When earth lay nearer to the skies
Than in those days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw without surprise,
In the mid air, angelic eyes
Gazing upon this world below."
Moore had abandoned the heroic couplet, and also the anapæstic measure,
in favour of the eight-syllabled iambic, used with skilful variations of
rhyme. And it is a proof of his matured judgment, that there is none of
the tendency to melodrama which disfigures _Lalla Rookh_. He had
realised that horror was not for him to convert to beauty; he tears no
passion to tatters. Indeed, in the one instance where he plunges into a
melodramatic subject, describing the fate of Lilis shrivelled to ashes
by the embrace of her lover, and her unblest kiss, printed with "Hell's
everlasting element," the vehemence is more impressive because more
restrained.
At the same time, it does not seem probable that any current of taste
will bring back either the _Loves of the Angels_ or _Lalla_ into
popularity. Everywhere, even in the beautiful passage on wedlock's
consolations, ornament is pushed to redundancy; there is no
concentration in the style. The same looseness of texture may be
observed in Scott and Byron, but Scott and Byron have behind their work
a weight of personality which is lacking in Moore. They are moreover
closer in touch with reality than Moore, who attributes to himself in
the Diary "that kind of imagination which is chilled by the real scene
and can best describe what it has not seen, merely taking it from the
descriptions of others." He quotes Milton and Dante as instances where
this kind of imagination produces the noblest work. One can only
say--and Moore would have been prompt to agree--that Thomas Moore was
neither Dante nor Milton; and for poets of a lower order we want close
touch with fact. Moore's gift, indeed, was not imagination. His highest
talent lay, like that of Horace, in giving expression to common
emotions, which belong rather to a race, or a class, than to an
individual, and which are consequently very general, though not very
poignant, in their appeal.
A much higher rank may be claimed for him as a writer of satiric verse
than of romantic narrative. The satiric inspiration with him long
outlasted the other, for the _Loves of the Angels_ was virtually the
last poem published under his own name.[1] But under his other
incarnation, as Thomas Brown the Younger, he contributed squibs to
various newspapers and issued volumes for another dozen of years. The
_Odes on Cash, Catholics, and other matters_, collected in 1828, show
him to advantage, and we find something of the "wonted fires" even in
_The Fudges in England_, published so late as 1835, after his brain had
begun to flag. But for the top of his achievement in this kind one would
always turn to the volume published a few months after The _Loves of the
Angels_. This was the _Fables for the Holy Alliance and Rhymes on the
Road_, comprising the work which he had cast and recast so often in
Paris, together with a considerable handful of occasional verses.
From this general laudation, the _Rhymes on the Road_, Moore's
impressions of Switzerland and Italy, must be excepted. Nothing in them
repays perusal but the "Introductory Rhymes," with their ingenious and
erudite discussion of the places and methods in which poets may
compose--where Moore incidentally alludes to a favourite theory and
practice of his own, which he supported by the example of Milton, as
well as that here cited:--
"Herodotus wrote most in bed,
And Richerand, a French physician,
Declares the clockwork of the head
Goes best in that reclined position."
There is also a good skit on the ubiquitous English tourist, which ends
with the vision of
"Some Mrs. Hopkins, taking tea
And toast upon the wall of China."
But for the rest, we have serious lucubrations--a long, long way after
_Childe Harold_--upon Venice, Florence, the first view of Mont Blanc,
Rousseau's abode, and other such moving themes. It is a vast relief to
turn to the _Fables_, of which there are eight; and if one reader thinks
the first the best, with its description of all the royalties at dinner
in an Ice Palace on the Neva, and the general confusion when the Ice
Palace takes to melting, it is odds but the next will choose another for
his favourite. Most of them have a Proem, and one may quote the Proem
and part of the Fable of "The Little Grand Lama."
PROEM.
Novella, a young Bolognese,
The daughter of a learn'd Law Doctor,
Who had with all the subtleties
Of old and modern jurists stock'd her,
Was so exceeding fair, 'tis said,
And over hearts held such dominion,
That when her father, sick in bed,
Or busy, sent her, in his stead,
To lecture on the Code Justinian,
She had a curtain drawn before her,
Lest, if her eyes were seen, the students
Should let their young eyes wander o'er her,
And quite forget their jurisprudence.
Just so it is with Truth, when _seen_,
Too dazzling far,--'tis from behind
A light, thin allegoric screen,
She thus can safest teach mankind.
FABLE.
In Thibet once there reign'd, we're told,
A little Lama, one year old--
Raised to the throne, that realm to bless,
Just when his little Holiness
Had cut--as near as can be reckon'd--
Some say his _first_ tooth, some his _second_.
Chronologers and Nurses vary,
Which proves historians should be wary.
We only know th' important truth,
His Majesty _had_ cut a tooth.
And much his subjects were enchanted,--
As well all Lama's subjects may be,
And would have giv'n their heads, if wanted,
To make tee-totums for the baby.
Throned as he was by Right Divine--
(What Lawyers call _Jure Divino_,
Meaning a right to yours, and mine,
And everybody's goods and rhino,)
Of course, his faithful subjects' purses,
Were ready with their aids and succours;
Nothing was seen but pension'd Nurses,
And the land groan'd with bibs and tuckers.
Oh! had there been a Hume or Bennet,
Then sitting in the Thibet Senate,
Ye Gods, what room for long debates
Upon the Nursery Estimates!
What cutting down of swaddling-clothes
And pin-a-fores, in nightly battles!
What calls for papers to expose
The waste of sugar-plums and rattles!
But no--If Thibet _had_ M.P.'s,
They were far better bred than these;
Nor gave the slightest opposition,
During the Monarch's whole dentition.
But short this calm:--for, just when he
Had reach'd th' alarming age of three,
When Royal natures, and, no doubt,
Those of _all_ noble beasts break out--
The Lama, who till then was quiet,
Show'd symptoms of a taste for riot;
And, ripe for mischief, early, late,
Without regard for Church or State,
Made free with whosoe'er came nigh;
Tweak'd the Lord Chancellor by the nose,
Turn'd all the Judges' wigs awry,
And trod on the old Generals' toes:
Pelted the Bishops with hot buns,
Rode cockhorse on the City maces,
And shot from little devilish guns,
Hard peas into his subjects' faces.
In short, such wicked pranks he play'd,
And grew so mischievous, God bless him!
That his Chief Nurse--with ev'n the aid
Of an Archbishop--was afraid,
When in these moods, to comb or dress him.
Nay, ev'n the persons most inclined
Through thick and thin, for Kings to stickle,
Thought him (if they'd but speak their mind,
Which they did _not_) an odious pickle.
Praed himself never equalled the ease and gaiety of these admirable
compositions, and their only defect as satire is that they are too gay
and too good-humoured, though certainly not too respectful. Moore's
shafts have no poison: there is no strength of hatred to drive home the
barb. Yet the sincerity is real, and here and there the wit leaps into
real poetry, as in this stanza from "The Torch of Liberty"--
"I saw th' expectant nations stand,
To catch the coming flame in turn;--
I saw, from ready hand to hand,
The clear, though struggling, glory burn."
For finish and force these productions are far ahead of the earlier
verses of the _Postbag_ and _Fudge Family in Paris_: they are also clear
of the rhetoric which occasionally overloads the latter. But none of
them quite reaches the pitch attained in the lines on the Death of
Sheridan (reprinted in the 1823 volume) which were based on the report
that the Prince of Wales, after repeated neglect of entreaties, sent at
last a gift of £200 to the dying man, who, knowing it too late, returned
the missive. A few stanzas must be cited.
"How proud they can press to the fun'ral array
Of one whom they shunn'd in his sickness and sorrow;--
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket, to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!
"And Thou, too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream,
Incoherent and gross, even grosser had pass'd,
Were it not for that cordial and soul-giving beam,
Which his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness cast:--
"No, not for the wealth of the land, that supplies thee
With millions to heap upon Foppery's shrine;--
No, not for the riches of all who despise thee,
Though this would make Europe's whole opulence mine;--
"Would I suffer what--ev'n in the heart that thou hast--
All mean as it is--must have consciously burn'd,
When the pittance, which shame had wrung from thee at last,
And which found all his wants at an end, was return'd."
There is a real anger inspiring the phrase, worthy of Dryden at his
best, which stigmatises the Prince's life--"a sick epicure's dream,
incoherent and gross." But Moore was too easily moved by kindness, and a
civil word or action from Eldon or from Canning exempted them for ever
from his attacks. Except Castlereagh, in whom he saw with justice the
inveterate enemy of Ireland--and that enemy a renegade from Grattan's
principles--he pursued no man relentlessly, and no institution moved him
to continued hatred except the Church of Ireland. "Could you not
contrive," said Sydney Smith to a portrait painter at work on a head of
Moore, "to throw into the features a little more hostility to the
Establishment?" Enough hostility certainly was thrown into the verses
which he continued for years to contribute to the papers; and he pleased
himself vastly with one address to a shovel hat:--
"Gods! when I gaze upon that brim,
So redolent of Church all over,
What swarms of Tithes, in vision dim,--
Some pig-tail'd, some like cherubim,
With ducklings' wings--around it hover!
Tenths of all dead and living things,
That Nature into being brings,
From calves and corn to chitterlings."
It is not a long way from verse of this kind on this subject to the
prose of "Captain Rock." The distance, no doubt, covers a descent. But
it may fairly be urged that if Moore after the year 1823 was only in a
secondary sense a writer of verse, and primarily occupied with prose,
the reason is, not that prose was easier or paid better, but because he
was increasingly preoccupied with matter which he could not handle
except in prose--matter of serious controversial argument--and matter
which he was impelled to handle by a growing desire to serve his own
country.
[1] _Alciphron_, issued in 1839, was, as has been said, a rehandling of
a fragment composed during his residence in Paris, and has in any case
no importance.