had always been a time of exertion and exile; his return restored him to tranquillity and peace."[1]
In the year after his death (1853) appeared his Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence (8 vols. 8vo), by the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, his life-long friend, to whom the task had been confided by will. We have also: Thomas Moore: His Life, Writings and Contemporaries. By H. R. Montgomery, London, 1860, 8vo, pp. 208; and a later gathering: The Hitherto Uncollected Writings of Thomas Moore, Prose and Verse, Humorous, Satirical and Sentimental, chiefly from the Author's MSS., and all hitherto Inedited and Uncollected, edited by Richard Horne Shepherd, 1877, 8vo.
There are portraits of the poet by Sir M. A. Shee; Maclise; Jackson; Richmond; F. Sieurac (engraved in Galignani's excellent edition of the Poetical Works; and Sir Thomas Lawrence,—the last work of the artist, if I mistake not—who has perhaps best succeeded in conferring upon his subject the aristocratic and dignified air which nature had denied him. He was, indeed, but a little fellow at the best;—"What a pity we cannol make him bigger!" ejaculated Lady Holland. The poet Campbell termed him "a fire-fly from heaven"; and N. P. Willis, in the glare and glitter of one of Lady Blessington's soirées, was struck by the appearance of Moore " with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head."—By the way, there is also a scarce caricature etching of the poet, as a winged Grecian youth, by his countryman, Thomas Croften Croker.
The classical reader may care to be reminded that the Irish Melodies—which brought him in £500 a year from James Power, the musicpublisher, and of which his own exquisite vocalization was a thing unique in its way—have been admirably translated into Latin verse under the title of Cantus Hibernici Latine redditi, quibus accedunt Poëmata quædam Anglicorum auctorum item Latine reddita. Editore Nicolas Lee Torre, Coll. Nov. apud Oxon. olim Socio. Leamington, 1856-8-9. 3 vols. 8vo. Mr. Torre was assisted in his task by some of the most elegant scholars of the day, among whom may be mentioned the unfortunate J. Selby Watson, M.A.
I do not think that, after all, it can be said that this gifted man, "the poet of all circles and the idol of his own," as Byron termed him,—the pet alike of peers, peeresses, publishers and public,—
"——who, in all names could tickle the town,
Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Browne,"[2]
—was illiberally treated by the British Government. As early as 1835 or 1836, the head-clerkship of the State Paper Office, with a salary of £300 a year, Avas placed at his disposal by Lord John Russell. This was, very properly, declined by the poet, who felt that the honour was nil, the emolument small, and that time, which he could more profitably and agreeably employ, would be consumed in dull and tedious routine. Very shortly after, a letter from Lord Lansdowne announced that a pension, involving no duties, had been actually conferred upon him, of like amount.
The library of Thomas Moore was, in 1855, presented by his widow to the Royal Irish Academy, "as a memorial of her husband's taste and erudition."
- ↑ Memoirs, Pref. xi.
- ↑ Byron, "To Thomas Moore."
