THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852) BY THOMAS WALSH LTHOUGH of late years, through the gradual change of taste, the importance of Thomas Moore to the critical reader has grown to be more that of a personality than that of a poet, yet, in large and steady demand at the libraries, his works outrank those of Byron, Scott, and all other popular poets. Whether this be a tribute to his sentimentality or his music, there can be no doubt that Moore, who came of the people,— his father a small grocer and liquor-dealer of Dublin,-understood their feelings better than he is generally supposed to have done; and while he was singing to the languishing ladies of London, never forgot the less fashionable though no less sentimental audience beyond. For it is by his songs that his name has made its place in the poet's corner of the heart: not by his elaborated pictures of an Orient that he never beheld; his loves of angelic (and too earthly) spirits; nor his high-flown and modish Evenings in Greece.' Fate has its ironies, and this is one of them: Tom Moore, the darling of English aristocracy, the wit of fashionable Bohemia, lives for us principally as the pretty Irish lad from Dublin; his boyish fad of Anacreon and Thomas Little forgotten, and only the songs that came from his heart remembered. Born in a humble though decent quarter of Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779, he inherited that love of country which is so characteristic of his race. Ireland has cause indeed to be grateful to Moore. It is true that his tastes and his friendships were placed far from her unfortunate shores. But in those days she offered no future to a literary man; and it required more than ordinary courage to espouse her cause when even sympathy with her was considered treasonable to England. Among his English friends, who thought Ireland synonymous with barbarity and ignorance, he moved about amiably patriotic, striking down the barriers of intolerance with the shafts of his conciliating wit. Sunday after Sunday, though his controversial works in favor of Catholicism would fill many volumes, he was to be found in an Anglican chapel. While Moore never deserted or neglected his humble parents, of whom he was justifiably proud, nor forgot his early friends and THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852) BY THOMAS WALSH LTHOUGH of late years, through the gradual change of taste, the importance of Thomas Moore to the critical reader has grown to be more that of a personality than that of a poet, yet, in large and steady demand at the libraries, his works outrank those of Byron, Scott, and all other popular poets. Whether this be a tribute to his sentimentality or his music, there can be no doubt that Moore, who came of the people,— his father a small grocer and liquor-dealer of Dublin,-understood their feelings better than he is generally supposed to have done; and while he was singing to the languishing ladies of London, never forgot the less fashionable though no less sentimental audience beyond. For it is by his songs that his name has made its place in the poet's corner of the heart: not by his elaborated pictures of an Orient that he never beheld; his loves of angelic (and too earthly) spirits; nor his high-flown and modish Evenings in Greece.' Fate has its ironies, and this is one of them: Tom Moore, the darling of English aristocracy, the wit of fashionable Bohemia, lives for us principally as the pretty Irish lad from Dublin; his boyish fad of Anacreon and Thomas Little forgotten, and only the songs that came from his heart remembered. Born in a humble though decent quarter of Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779, he inherited that love of country which is so characteristic of his race. Ireland has cause indeed to be grateful to Moore. It is true that his tastes and his friendships were placed far from her unfortunate shores. But in those days she offered no future to a literary man; and it required more than ordinary courage to espouse her cause when even sympathy with her was considered treasonable to England. Among his English friends, who thought Ireland synonymous with barbarity and ignorance, he moved about amiably patriotic, striking down the barriers of intolerance with the shafts of his conciliating wit. Sunday after Sunday, though his controversial works in favor of Catholicism would fill many volumes, he was to be found in an Anglican chapel. While Moore never deserted or neglected his humble parents, of whom he was justifiably proud, nor forgot his early friends and |