fine spirit and flowing style sufficiently indicate the poet and patriot from whose pen they come." iii. 224. The Examiner quoted some lines I had sent to Perry [of the Morning Chronicle] and added, "We think we can recognize whose easy and sparkling hand it is." I wonder he found me out. - ii. 183. Other persons might be in doubt whether there was not some other poet and patriot, and some other easy and sparkling hand in all England; but Moore has no doubt at all, and finds himself out directly. A flourishing speech of Shiel's about me in the Irish papers. Says I am the first poet of the day, and "join the beauty of the bird of Paradise's plumes to the strength of the eagle's wing." iv. 243. One is at first surprised to find copied into Moore's London Diary an extract from "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," about Mr. Jeffrey's dress at an evening party at Edinburgh. -A. D. 1819. It seems the last thing to be expected in another man's autobiography, and to be left by him for re-publication:- on looking closer we find the cause- He [Peter] says of Jeffrey's dress at some assembly, "In short he is more of a dandy than any great author I ever saw- always excepting Tom Moore."-ii., 357. Argal-Moore is, even by the hostile evidence of Peter, a great author! Going one night to Almack's, he asks a lady whether she did not think Lady Charlemont lovely-"Beautiful," replied the lady 80 notorious a truism that we doubt whether Moore himself would have thought of noticing it-if the lady had not added "as lovely as Lalla Rookh herself!" (ii. 333.) Of the conversation of a most accomplished gentleman and scholar, whom he mentions as Duncan of Oxford-and whom, of course, he had not had the good fortune to meet be- he can remember only his having said, after having heard a speech of Moore's at a Literary Institution at Bath, "I have had that sweet oratory ringing in my ears all night." (iv. 273.) fore 66 Mr. Bowles publishes one of his controversial pamphlets on Pope, which Moore used habitually to laugh at as twaddle - but Bowles, grown wiser than before," secures honorable mention of this one by an inscription transcribed from his fugitive title-page into the safer asylum of the Diary "inter Poetas suaves, suavissimo." (iv. 273.) that, on hearing Moore himself sing, the Duchess de Broglie had "exclaimed continually, Oh, Dieu! que c'est joli!" On the 28th Nov., 1818, he goes to dine with Mr. Rogers' brother and sister, at Highbury, and finds "Miss Rogers very agreeable.' No doubt; and we dare say the lady was always so; but what was the peculiar agreeability of that day? She mentioned that she had had a letter from a friend in Germany saying that the Germans were learning English in order to readMilton, Shakspeare?-No:Lord Byron and ME. "Bayly" takes him to an amateur play and fancy ball. Moore remembers but one detail: an allusion to me, in the epilogue by Bayly, as Erin's matchless son, &c., brought thunders of applause and stares on me." (iv. 274.) He meets Lady Cochrane at an assemblyis introduced to her- - finds her "pretty and odd," which he exemplifies by her having told him "that she would at any time have walked ten miles barefoot to see me. (iv. 290.) He dines with his old friend, Lord Strangford, at the Athenæum, and both are delighted with his renewal of their early habits. Two days after he meets his lordship, who, with ter he had had from Lady Strangford, saying true diplomatic tact, reads him part of a lethow pleased she was at his account of the love Moore as much as I have always admired "I shall henceforward meeting, and adding, him." His daughter's schoolmistress at Bath fails -and her pupils are sent home; another offers to take the child:- "terms would be ter of such a man as Moore!" (iv. 313.) a minor consideration indeed with the daugh When he has a mind to regale himself with some flattering recollections which do not exactly fall in with the thread of the which is with Moore a happy version of ù Diary, he drags them in with a by the byepropos de bottes : By the bye, was pleased to hear from Rogers that Luttrell said, If anybody can make such a subject (Captain Rock) lively, Moore will." By the bye, received a letter from a Sir John Wycherly, of whom I know nothing, apologizing for such a liberty with the first poet of the age. iii. 11. He meets Mr. Hutchison, just come from being made M. P. for Cork, where Moore laughs at the vanity of old Delille, who, on Lord Holland having paid him an the Poet, Patriot and Pride of Ireland. I am By the bye, they hipped and hurraed me as elaborate but well-turned compliment in becoming a stock toast at their dinners. Had French, answered "Savez vous, Milord, que seen this very morning an account of a dinner ce que vous dites-là est très joli" (iv. 276); to Mr. Denny of Cork, when I was drunk as the but he does not see anything ridiculous in Poet and Patriot with great applause.—ii., having himself registered a few pages before 157. Forgot, by the bye, to take notice of some verses surprised at the legerdemain with which he of Lutterell's: pops it into his own mouth. Thus - Catalani visits Dublin when Moore happened to be there; a Mr. Abbott calling her la sœur d'Anacreon. By the bye, Mr. Stretch, with whom I walked yesterday [in Paris], said he had been told by We shall conclude these, after all, scanty the nephew of the Persian Ambassador that samples with one which takes the unusual Lalla Rookh had been translated into their lan- form of humility, and is, with its context, guage, and that the songs are sung about every-even more amusing. After a page of recawhere. iii. 167. pitulation of the various forms of compliment and odors of incense which he received at a Harmonic meeting at Bath, he concludes with the most amiable naïveté :· Moore, generally so profuse of proper names, omits to tell us those of the Persian Ambassador and his nephew - but we have little doubt they were of the illustrious house of Mamamouchi, which has had so long a tenure of Oriental embassies at Paris. Stretch, too, seems a singularly appropriate name for the retailer of such an Eastern story! This Mamamouchi report is, we suppose, Moore's authority for saying that Lalla Rookh Lady Saltoun told me that a gentleman had just said to her, "If Mr. Moore wished to be made much of-if Mr Moore wishes to have his head turned - let him go to Berlin; there is nothing talked of there but Lalla Rookh.' - iii. 219. This is rather hard on Bath, as we have just seen what pains the same little lion takes to let us know that he was making the same kind of stir all the world over- - in various shapes and distant regions—as a nightingale, a bird of Paradise, an eagle, and a dandy at Berlin, Cork, Ispahan, and the corner of Little Longford Street! In short, Moore reminds us in every page of what Johnson said of that caricature of authorly vanity, old Richardson the novelist -"That fellow could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation He meets Mr. and Miss Canning at a Paris without longing to taste the froth from every dinner, and observed. a circumstance which showed a very pleasant sort of intelligence between the father and the daughter.iii. 160. Our readers will by this time not be surprised at the " pleasant sort" of sympathy which Moore's ingenuity was on the watch to detect between these two brilliant intelligences. "6 'I," adds the diarist stroke of the oar." This excess of amour propre – - so judiciously veiled in society, but, as we now see, so active and industrious in turning the smallest circumstances to its own private account-was, of to which his fear or his fancy could give a course, as morbidly sensitive of anything less flattering color. These latter were obviously distastful matters, and not to be regis tered; but like action and reaction, the two opposite but inseparable principles were I told a story to Miss Canning, which the always at work. We have heard and seen father was the only one who overheard, and many individual complaints of the misrepreit evidently struck them both as very comical.sentation and malevolence of several passages - ib. in the Diary. Of the frequent misrepresentations there can be no doubt; but whatever there may be of malevolence (except always on party matters) we are inclined to attribute rather to the momentary impulses of the amour propre blessé, than to any predisposition to ill-nature or cynicism. The truth, we believe, is, that he was naturally kind and loving, but proportionately susceptible of petty jealousies and imaginary slights. And having,. as these volumes too clearly show, passed his whole life in a more habitual state of public - not being | nity to do so in the other. It may be thought, no doubt, an easier solution to suppose (with Jeffrey's learned biographer among others) that the pistols were fairly but loosely loaded, and that one bullet dropped out; but if that had been the case, there was no reason why Hume should have refused to attest Moore's statement. exhibition than any other person a professional performer that we ever heard of, he acquired much of the irritability of professional people-outwardly checked indeed, but internally sharpened by his anxiety to combine his artistic powers of amusing with the dignity of an author and the independence of a private gentleman. In society he played these united parts admirably. The Diary has now furnished us with a less satisfactory analysis of the elements. We are restrained, by considerations too obvious to require explanation, from entering into the individual complaints to which we have just alluded; but it would be a dereliction of our duty not to apprize our readers that they involve grave charges of inaccuracy misstatement, and culpable insincerity on his part. We have had an opportunity of examining the evidence in some of the cases and we regret to say, there must be, on all those counts, an unhesitating verdict against Moore. 66 There is one instance of the caution with which his most deliberate assertions of facts should be received that is innocuous and highly amusing." He was extremely sore on the subject of his ridiculous duel with Jeffrey, when the Bow Street officer who interupted the proceeding found that one at least of the pistols had no ball. We find in these volumes a formal account of the affair from his own pensome of which is certainly untrue, and most of it, we think, colored and discolored. We have no doubt of Moore's courage, or that he meant to fight, but we incline to suspect that his second, Doctor Thomas Hume,* always considered an honest and good-hearted man, saw the extreme absurdity of the quarrel, which Moore, in a very wanton and brag gadocio style, chose to fasten on Jeffrey, and being intrusted, as Moore admits, by Jeffrey's friend Horner-propter ignorantiam - with the loading of both pistols, very wisely omitted to insert any balls; and that this omission (unnoticed by the anxious and inexpert Horner) was the reason why the Irish doctor refused to sign a fine statement on the subject which Moore had drawn up- a refusal which, adds Moore, occasioned an estrangement of thirty years between him and that old friend. How it happened (as the police report seems to indicate) that a bullet was found in one of the pistols (Moore's), and in the other a paper pellet, we cannot explain, unless by the supposition that Hume, after the interruption, contrived to slip the bullet into one pistol and had not time or opportu*Not, as has been sometimes supposed, Dr. J. R. Hume, the friend and physician of the Duke of Wellington. Dr. Thomas Hume was for some time attached to the army in the Peninsulawhich accounts for this confusion of him with a more distinguished medical officer. But there are points of Moore's narrative which exhibit strong specimens of that species of rodomontade which throws doubt over all the rest. He says of the evening before the meeting I forget where I dined, but I know it was of providing powder and bullets, which I bought not in Hume had left to me the task company. in the course of the evening at some shop in Bond-street, and in such large quantities, I remember, as would have done for a score of duels."-i. 202. All a fable. We have before us a letter of his to Lord Strangford, then minister at Lisbon, written on the eve of the great encounter, which contradicts every syllable of the foregoing statement, and is curious also on other accounts: MY DEAR STRANGFORD-I have owed you a letter this long time, and now that I do write it will be perhaps for the last time. I have thought proper to call out Mr. Jeffrey, who has been so long abusing you and me, and we are to fight tomorrow morning at Chalk-farm. I am afraid, my dear Strangford, much as I value you, I should have forgot sending a valedictory word to you if it were not for a pretty little woman who has this moment reminded me of a promise I made to procure her letters from you for Madeira. The cloth has been but this instant taken from view of the bright sun, I shall (as soon as I have the table, and, though to-morrow may be my last finished this letter) drink to the health of my Strangford with as unaffected a warmth as ever I have felt in the wildest days of our fellowship. My dear fellow, if they want a biographer of me when I am gone, I think in your hands I should meet with most kind embalmment, so pray, say something for me: and now to the object of my letter. Mrs. W-, a very particular friend of mine, is ordered by her physicians to Madeira. and she thinks it would be pleasant to know some of the Portuguese grandees of the island; if you can get her letters from your friends at Lisbon, you will oblige me not a little. Who knows, my dear Strangford, but it may be a posthumous obligation? For fear of the worst, send the letand remember me as one who has felt your good ters enclosed to Mrs. W-, W- street, London, and social qualities, who at this moment recalls with pleasure the days he has spent with you, and who hopes that his good genius to-morrow will allow him to renew them hereafter. fine women have their glasses filled to your health. So good by. God bless you, yours while I live. T. MOORE Sunday, August 10th. We shall say nothing of the silly vaporing style of this letter, which would certainly be a most characteristic prelude to a mock duel. We need only observe that this was the day that Moore knows he did not dine in company, and this-Sunday-was the evening on which he went to a shop in Bond street to buy all that superfluity of ammunition. Which of the stories is true? or was either? We must further observe that, as the letter was written late on Sunday night, it could hardly have been posted till Monday, when it might have been suppressed as some other valedictory epistles were (i. 207), and a simpler request substituted, which would have spared Lord Strangford a long doubt of his friend's safety; but Moore, it seems, could not resist the temptation of sending it-nay, perhaps, of writing it on the Monday-as a proof of the anacreontic spirit with which he could face death while fine women were filling their glasses, and that, in the words of his own song; his last hour was dedicated to "smiles and wine." Next after his own self-worship-if indeed it was not a branch of it- there is nothing so prominent throughout the volumes as his adoration of his wife. Let us say, once more, that she seems to have been worthy of his affections; and there is no praise- prodigal as it may sometimes seem — which she does not appear, from the evidence of all who knew them, to have deserved; but, after this tribute of justice to the lady, we confess that there is something in the way in which Moore parades her throughout his Diary that we cannot understand, and that seems evidently artificial. Why have expended so much time and trouble in elaborating on paper the expression of a steady and habitual feeling, which he could find fresh and fresh in his own heart? What could be his motive for making such an étalage of what we must suppose was the daily bread of his happiness? We can have no doubt of the sincerity of Moore's attachment to and admiration of his wife, but we must observe that these ultrauxorious expressions occur with peculiar emphasis just before and just after some escapade from home; they are the honey with which he sweetens the edges of his absences. It is evident that Mrs. Moore saw the Journal (iv. 16); and we now have no doubt that of these flattering phrases were peace-offerings many to his Ariadne. The instances are too nu merous and too regularly recurring to be acci dental. We shall select a few here, just to direct our readers' attention to this ingenious de vice. Bessy my darling girl! 21st. Told L. Lansdowne I was going to town. ii. 218. 1819, Aug. 23d.-Employed in preparing for my departure. My darling Bessy bears all with me; but, please Heaven, we shall not be So sweetly, though she would give her eyes to go ii. 353. long separate. July 21st.. Making preparations for my sorts at my leaving her for so long a time departure. Bessy much saddened and out of but still most thoughtfully and sweetly preparing everything comfortable for me. "1825, Oct. 17th. - 97. - Bessy would not hear of my staying at home. Insisted that, if I did not go to France, I must go either to Scotland or Ireland to amuse myself a little. Dear, generous girl! there never was anything like her warm-heartedness and devotion. Other instances will occur in future extracts. that these tender expressions would not merely soothe the lady's feelings at the moment, but would also tell very much in his own favor as a model husband-when his Memoirs should come to be published; but they are accompanied, as we shall now show, by many miable contrast with the exuberant and pascircumstances which make a strong and unasionate expressions of his devotion to the tutelary angel at home. We have no doubt that Moore calculated John Russell Legal proceedings taken against Moore for the defalcation of his deputy in an office which he held in the Admiralty Court at Bermuda, obliged him to quit England; and Lord - not yet, we suppose, aware advised him to fix his temporary residence in of the besetting weakness of Moore's mind the delight of all his acquaintance, and wastParis, where he became, as he did everywhere, ed his time and his money-which in such circumstances could hardly be called his own that has been imputed to either of the im-in a style as giddy and extravagant as any provident classes, to both of which he happened to belong-of poets and Irishmen. to oc Veuves in the Champs Elysées, but in the His longest residence was in the Allée des summer months he was allowed by a Spanish gentleman of the name of Villamilcupy a small cottage, a dependence of a fine villa which he had at Sèvres. Nothing could be more convenient and promising. The and place was rural and extremely pretty, the retirement exactly suited for the various literary pursuits in which Moore was engaged. But though these were his only means of livelihood, he worked at them in a very desultory way; and whether in Paris or the country, spent more than half his mornings, and all his evenings, in a constant whirl of gayeties, alike inconsistent with study and econ omy. 1820. June. - Gave a good many dinners this month, till Bessy (whose three pounds a Napoleons. This economical scruple is dated week was beginning to run very short) cried out 8th September, 1820. Three days after, we for a relâche. Had Lady Davy, Silvertop, and find the following entry: Lord Granard together: the Storys another day; Sullivan, Dr. Yonge, Heath (my old friend the engraver), and his travelling companion Mr. Green, &c. The day that Heath dined with us was one of the few hot days that we have had this summer, and we had dinner out of doors under the shade of the trees, which with champagne and vin de Grave well frappé, was very luxurious. Frequent parties, too, to plays and gardens. Saw a man go up in a balloon from Tivoli, which brought tears into my eyes, being the first I have seen since I was a little child. iii. 124. There were matters nearer and more urgent which might have brought less irrational tears into his eyes. But when any gleam of reflection as to his position did occur, it was hardly ever to awaken a proper sense of his own imprudence, but only to make him wonder that his friends in England were not more thoughtful and more active about him than he showed the least inclination to be about himself. 1821. June 14th. · A letter from the Longmans, which makes me even more downhearted than I have been for some days, as it shows how dilatory and indifferent all parties have been in the Bermuda negotiation, and how little probability there is of a speedy, or indeed, any, end to my exile.iii. 242. 1820. Sept. 11th - Went into Paris at twelve, in order to take Bessy to the Père la Chaise before the flowers are all gone from the tombs. The dear girl was, as I knew she would be, very much affected. Gave them moulin [a poor starving Irishman, who soon Bessy, Duafter died in an hospital], Miss Wilson [we believe a governess], Anastasia [his own little child], and Dr. Yonge's little girl -a dinner at the Cadran bleu, and took them afterwards to the Porte St. Martin [a melodrame theatre]. Iced punch on our way home. The whole cost to have reserved for the Voyages de Pythagore. me about three Napoleons, just what I ought Bessy, however, told me when we came home that she had saved, by little pilferings from me at different times, four Napoleons, and that I should have them now to buy those books. — iii. 146–7. All this-the Père la Chaise and the Cadran bleu- the funereal flowers and the Porte St. Martin -the iced punch and the Voyages de Pythagore-reads like a mere farce, but the smile it creates is a bitter one when we reflect on poor Bessy's honestly-pilfered Napoleons, so wantonly squandered. At last the season drives them back to Paris : 1820. Oct. 16th. We took our leave of La Butte, after three months and a half's residence; If his friends in England could have guessed and, as far as tranquillity, fine scenery, and what the Diary has now revealed to us of the sweet sunshine go, I could not wish to pass a life of the Exile of Erin, they would not have more delightful summer. Our déménagement thought it any great hardship. Dinners, con- was, as usual, managed so well and expeditiously certs, operas, theatres two or three of an by Bessy, that I felt none of the inconvenience evening, suppers, balls, &c., occupied almost of it, and we are now reinstated comfortably in every day and night. Visiting with a childish our home in the Allées des Veuves. impatience and enjoyment the public gardens the 1st of July, which was a great treat to both alone with our little ones for the first time since of Beaujon-Tivoli - Jardin Suisse carefully registering when and how often he the first rational day we have had for a long of us; and Bessy said, in going to bed," This is went down in the cars of the Montagnes time." Russes, and what ladies were the companions of these flights-strange ones, we think, for a father of a family aged 43; for instance: and 1821. May 7th. - Went to the Beaujon; descended in the cars three times with each of the [Miss] Kingstons, and four times with Mrs. S. - iii. 229. No ["Bessy."] 1821. Aug. 19th.At Beaujon; went down the cars ten or twelve times with the young Scotch girl.-265. ["No Bessy."] 1822. Aug. 11th.With Lucy [Miss Drew, it seems] to the Jardin Suisse: very pretty: went down in the cars. -365. [No Bessy."] On this Lord John adds a note -saying very coolly: Mrs. Moore was quite right. In reading over the diary of dinners, balls and visits to the theatre, I feel some regret in reflecting that I had some hand in persuading Moore to prefer France to Holyrood. His universal popularity was his chief enemy. - Ed., iii. 157. This appears to us altogether inadequate to the occasion, and laying the chief blame on Moore's popularity is a poor evasion of the real state of the case, which was his inability While he was living in this way, the idea to refrain from such self-indulgence. We of writing The Epicurean most appropriately say self-indulgence, for it is remarkable, in all presented itself to him. To read up for this this tourbillon at Paris as well as in his Engprojected work, he wanted Les Voyages de lish life, both in town and country, that Pythagore, but hesitated at the price-three" Bessy's" share in all external gayeties was |