"—————————Talents made
Haply for pure and high designs,
But oft like Israel's incense, laid
Upon unholy, earthly, shrines"—
though powerless enough for real harm,—his friend Atkinson, to whom the poems were addressed, speaks of the poet as a " child playing on the bosom of Venus"—had possibly been better unwritten.
Besides this, the tone of his remarks on the great and often misjudged country which he had so cursorily visited gave considerable offence to those who had given him a frank and hospitable reception. Washington Irving, long before he visited England and made Moore's personal acquaintance, wrote in his earnest production:—
"While in the parlour I delayed.
Till they their persons had array'd,
A dapper volume caught my eye,
That on the window chanc'd to lie;
A book's a friend—I always choose
To turn its pages and peruse:—
It prov'd those poems known to fame
For praising every cyprian dame;
The bantlings of a dapper youth,
Renown'd for gratitude and truth;
A little pest, hight Tommy Moore,
Who hopp'd and skipp'd our country o'er;
Who sipp'd our tea and lived on sops,
Revell'd on syllabubs and slops,
And when his brain, of cobweb fine,
Was fuddled with five drops of wine,
Would all his puny loves rehearse,
And many a maid debauch—in verse."[1]
I am afraid that gratitude was not one of the virtues of Tommy Moore. He never forgave Lord Moira and the Prince Regent for their early friendship and patronage. Like the daughter of the horse-leech he cried for "more" ; and when the former, with "All the Talents," came into office in 1806, he verily thought that his fortune was made. His noble patron did what he could, but it was not much. Fox had promised concurrence, but died. Lord Moira's influence vanished; and the disappointed patriot felt free, as he says with exultation, "to call a rascal a rascal wherever I meet him; and never," adds he, "was I better disposed to make use of my privilege." All this means that Moore then felt at liberty to libel those whose benefits had not kept pace with his demands, and from whom he had nothing more to expect. Then came, as a natural sequence, that series of scurrilous and personal attacks upon the Prince, inspired by an odium in longum jacens, which the poet, thus abandoning the lyre of Catullus for the mace of Juvenal, collected in 1813, in the little volume entitled The Twopenny Post Bag. These satiric verses, which had been produced under the immediate influence of Holland House, are at once easy, polished and witty. But they are flippant and malignant; and reflect deep discredit on their author, as directed against one whose notice he had once been proud to obtain, who had certainly conferred some favours upon him, and whose station, as
- ↑ Salmagundi; or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstajff, Esq., and Others. London, 1824, 8vo, p. 82.
