forgot him thenceforth and for ever. But the Bard had other friends and true; and, moreover, a little Anastasia, "not bigger than a twopenny wax doll," as he gaily says, and "a thing to be proud of," as he afterwards exclaimed, was added now to the family circle. With his household gods he removed to Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, and there during three winters, and amid other occupations, he built up that brilliant edifice which the world crowned with its admiration when in 1817 it appeared in its carefully wrought perfection, under the name of "Lalla Rookh." Three thousand pounds was the guerdon of the singer, a liberality which the Bard likened to the prodigality of tulip fanciers, who fling away fortunes on a flower. It was a little fortune, but when did bard treat good fortune so judiciously or so honestly? He devoted one thousand pounds to the sweeping away of all his debts; with the other two thousand he purchased an annuity for the mother he loved and the father he reverenced in the old house at home. They had been somewhat jealous that his marriage might prevent his visiting them as of yore with substantial affection. Moore was not the child to forget mother or father, and his excellent wife was not the woman to desire that he should do so. In the year of the publication of Lalla Rookh its author removed to his abiding tabernacle, pitched beneath the shadow of Bowood. Lord Lansdowne had lured the minstrel from his Derbyshire cot, and the hearth at which the latter now sat in Sloperton cottage was that at which some five and thirty years later he died full of years and honour, leaving one solitary mourner to dwell upon the tear-impelling memories of the chequered poet, and bear with "this bleak world alone." It was this happy home that was temporarily abandoned in 1819, when Moore became responsible for the frauds committed by his deputy at Bermuda. Lord John Russell took him by the hand, and set him safe from the law's pursuits by flight to the continent. We now come to the second and ore recently-published portion of this interesting work. The illustrious An travellers journeyed in pleasant companionship to Italy. The sight of Mont Blanc excited the sensitive poet to tears, the aspect of female Italian manners moved him to indignation, and the canals of Venice, "stinking beneath the mean Rialto, stirred up all he could feel of disgust. Moore was again in Paris in December 1819, where in the first month of the ensuing year he was joined by his long-expected wife and children. This residence in Paris continued nearly two years, and perhaps more gay dissipation than useful labour marked its course. entry in the diary to this effect, "Not very well: this company-going hurts and wearies me," speaks for itself. The poet, however, occasionally went to bed before the chimes struck at midnight, and then we find him, appropriately enough, "kept awake at night by the nightingales." The Bard, nevertheless, rises to address himself to his vocation; but again, albeit now and then he accomplished some of the most charming of his melodies, we find him too often making record of another idle day, and deploring that he is "so much at the beck of every one who chooses to have me." The exile at length returned home, under the assumed name of Mr. Dyke and the disguise of a pair of moustachios. Moore fondly hoped to settle the Bermuda claims by the proceeds arising from the profits of the Memoirs of Sheridan, on which he was now engaged. In the mean time he proceeded to visit Ireland, bearing with him as a present to his mother a 66 pocket book," which was poor gift enough in itself, but to which he gave inestimable value by inserting in them the well-known lines, than which loving child never paid to a proud mother more affectionate or more touching tribute. During this visit he sat to Mossop and Kirk, the Irish artists, and he half seriously half jocosely notes that "the protuberance I have in the forehead is remarked in heroes-Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and the rest of us!" The generous aid of Lord Lansdowne enabled him to free himself from the Bermudian responsibilities, and he exultingly records his delight at walking in open day, once more at liberty. "God bless you, my own La trim his task. ais e Luxi with him day day asserting- -“Jeaù tu an effectual struggle against engagetan to nenceforth, if I am." A. at it an be produced his - Loves of the Auges, a very cuarting apology for hechess, and his Rhymes on the Bowl, a work full of pen and ink wretches of immense vigour. The former gained for him 1,000l. the latter a good round sum; but he had eaten ha corn in the grass, as the French proverb says, and his publishers merely gave him credit for having discharged tor own claims upon him to that wmount. Indeed had the whole sum failen into his hands it would probably have all gone in paying the debts of gthere, in subscriptions to individuals, or in contributions to general charitable изныя His contempt for money upreme, Warm was the welcome that awaited bum when the family were once more Rembled round his cottage hearth at the close of the year 1822. His Sacred Bongs and Melodies, his Fables for the Moly Alliance, and his perpetual ex the Ettle luxury, In July of here the last of his 2: Bussel Moore then la caly to feel more than - tas pre-established har=cy of Losers Beauties servitude at But be returned from a tour to Ireland with Lori and Lady Lans1. was with such feelings of delight at cobe more reaching home," as to give alltinal rest to the alacrity with which be translated the Sirmio of Catanas, which echoed so sweetly sentiments of his own. The details of the destruction of the laemoirs of Byron, so honourable to Moore, will be read with great interest. We shall aliude to this circumstance at a later opportunity. We can here only narrate the leading incidents of the volumes before us; and we may add that, after perusing the record of the labour which he applied to perfecting his Memoirs of Sheridan in 1825, we are glad to accompany him on his visit to Sir Walter Scott in October of the year just named. On one of the joyous nights at Abbotsford the merry party assembled sang "Hey Tuttie Tattie!" "all of us standing round the table, with hands crossed and joined, and chorussing every verse with all our might and main." These hours of hearty mirth had been well earned by days and nights of labour and anxiety, and with their record the fourth volume of the series comes to an appropriate close. As far as the work has hitherto gone the effect produced by it on the reader is one highly favourable to its especial hero. His faults were few, and are forgotten. To some his political opinions were sins; but they who hang delighted over his poetry think as little about his politics as a bishop thinks of Milton's private opinions when he is studying Paradise Lost, or as the most ultra of Conservatives thinks when he reads the Ode to the Nightingale, of the radicalism of poor Keats. The volumes we are now considering abound in evidences of Moore's exemplary conduct as a son. His mother's letters are welcomed by him because they bring to him the "odour of home." The sight of her, he says, will "put spurs to the heel of my heart." That heart, with head and hand, ever found it a labour of love to toil for means that should lighten the anxieties of both his parents. In the midst of his new joy as a husband he writes to his mother that her counsel shall always be his guide, as of old. If his means temporarily fail his generosity and substantial gratitude never diminish. He half chides that there should be a reluctance to take what he is so ready to yield, and when necessity presses at his father's heart the noble son gives the consolation which is required, with promptitude alike of heart and of purse. The mother might well be proud of such a son, and pardonable was the vanity which made her desirous of seeing one of the evidences of her boy's greatness-his intimacy with the great by birth. "My mother," he says, "expressing a strong wish to see Lord Lansdowne without the fuss of a visit from him, I engaged to manage it for her. Told him that he must let me shew him to two people who considered me as the greatest man in the world, and him as the next, for being my friend. Very good-naturedly allowed me to walk him past the windows, and wished to call upon them, but I thought it better thus." the same hand and heart; and Moore not only found blessings scattered around him, but recognised them as especially strewn by the hand of affection, where he might best see and best profit by them. He records with delight too her active sympathy for the poor in their vicinity. Dear generous girl," he writes of her, "there never was anything like her for warmheartedness and devotion." This pleasing sort of testimony is often given in the diary, but we turn therefrom to a letter to his mother (1813), in which he says, “you would have laughed in seeing Bessie and me in going to dinner. We found in the middle of our walk that we were near half an hour too early for dinner, so we set to practising country dances in the middle of a retired green lane, till the time was expired." Some future Watteau will doubtless limn this pleasant incident for the benefit of our grandchildren; and the Royal Academy catalogues of the next century will abound with illustrations of the gaiety of heart of the young mother and her happy husband. "Moore and Bessie" for who will then speak formally of Mrs. Moore ?— will be seen again and again on canvass going through the jocund dance, while they awaited dinner, in the green lane. At all events the incident was not forgotten by him many years subsequently. Its memory lives in the graceful lines which adorn, if we remember rightly, the last number of the Melodies:" melancholy which came over him in those solitary and pious visits purify the heart." To that heart the birth of each child was a source of exuberant joy. Over one alone, his eldest son, he seems to have hesitated in his gladness, yielding rather to anxiety. "I have much fear about him, there is a premature meaning in his eyes, which is often I fear a sign of premature decay. Heaven spare him to his fond mother!" and in a day or two after he adds despondingly, " Poor little fellow! with a mother that can give him no milk, and a father that can give him no money, what business has he in this world?" And yet when this "son and heir in partibus," as the father writes it, was born the latter thus records the fact, and what followed thereon:"Never had I felt such anxiety about my darling Bessie. I walked about the parlour by myself, like one distracted; sometimes stopping to pray, sometimes opening the door to listen; and never was gratitude more fervent than that with which I knelt down to thank God for the dear girl's safety when all was over; the maid, by the bye, very near catching me on my knees." More than once does he exclaim, with as much feeling as truth, that parental anxiety almost slays parental enjoy ment, and as he speaks of the loving and lovable nature of his child Anas tasia, the father bursts forth with a prayer-"God protect her, and keep her innocent!" Naturally gay of disposition as was the bard, his spirit, as his well-known lay informs us, was not without its pang of depression. "Summer will come again, but where may I be? Where may those be who are dear to me? These are thoughts that haunt me through my happiest moments." And again thus characteristically speaks the diary: "A sadness over me, sometimes like that of my young days, and so far pleasant, but sometimes mingled with self reproach, and so far painful." Anon, he wishes that he "had a good cause to die in." He was easily moved to tears. Mont Blanc in his majesty thus excited him; but the mimic misfortunes of Clari equally touched his heart; and the sight of a balloon ascending as readily unlocked the fountains, simply because he remembered having years before witnessed a similar spectacle in company with his mother. His susceptibility of feeling is evidenced in the fact that the mere sight of the beautiful daughter of Canning made him resolve never again to satirize the sire of so fair a girl. His sentiment, indeed, sometimes took a queerly un-sentimental turn. Thus when "poor Dumoulin" died, and Williams, his friend, opened the body, Moore, who was intimate with both, remarks, "What a world it is! Here are two men whom I saw drinking wine together a few months ago, and now one of them is cutting open the other!" Sunshine and healthy sentiment, however, always predominate when he is alluding to his beloved wife. While sojourning alone in Ireland he loves, as he says, to revisit the localities of "the days of my courtship, when I used to walk with Bessie on the banks of the river. Happy times! but not more happy than those which I owe to the same dear girl still." And again, at the Rotunda Gardens, he "should like to have sauntered there a little longer, listening to the music, as the scene altogether brought back young days of courtship and carelessness to my mind." The nights at "the Cottage" must have been things to be remembered. There abided “wit, friendship, good humour, and beauty." The quiet evenings are told of in the diary with pictorial simplicity. The more joyous nights have appropriate records too. He was privileged in his companionship, and assorted willingly with the bright of intellect alone. Sometimes dull fellows would appear, who probably loved their host for the same reason that made Jacob love Esau, "because he did eat of his venison;" but when grave and gay were alike departed, Moore knew no richer delight than to look at his sleeping treasures and to bless them as he gazed. To religious influences he bent with more eager alacrity than might be supposed by those who would prejudge him by his youthful works. Lord John Russell intimates that he never entirely seceded from the church of his baptism. The preface to the Twopenny Post Bag, however, expressly avows that the author, be he what he may, is not "a Papist," but that with a Protestant wife and children he attends the reason able worship of their parish church. Whatever this may be taken for, his opinions of the Roman Catholic demagogues and their claims were fear lessly expressed on all occasions. "The Roman Catholics," he writes to his mother, "deserve very little, and even if they merited all they ask, I cannot see how it is in the nature of things they should get it." In 1815, to Lady Donegal, he writes:-"I do not think a good cause was ever ruined by a more bigoted, brawling, and disgusting set of demagogues; and though it be the religion of my fathers, I must say that much of this vile, vulgar spirit is to be traced to that wretched faith, which is again polluting Europe with Jesuitism and inquisitions, and which of all the humbugs that have stultified mankind is the most narrowminded and mischievous." This certainly does not sound like the note of a Romanist. It was really the note, however, of one who thoroughly understood that demagogues were not necessarily the apostles of liberty, nor ultra-Romanists of toleration. The instances of his conformity with "the faith of his fathers" are curious enough. Thus in France he attends an evening party on a Sunday, and upon what took place there we have this brief record and accompanying comment. "Dancing of a Sunday night; Catholics don't mind this." The fact is that it was not in such an atmosphere as Paris that he could preserve pure religious feelings. When he gets into the salubrious paradise of Wiltshire, he speaks in another strain :-" The sunset this evening glorious: the thoughts that came over me while I looked at it, of how little I have done in this world, and how much my soul feels capable of, would have made me cry like a child, if I had given way to them; but surely there is some better sphere for those who have but begun their race in this!" If nature thus influenced him, in no slight degree was he also moved by art; for example-" to the Church of the Annunziata; heard mass sung, which was very fine. Whether it be my popish blood, or my poetical feelings, nothing gives me more delight than the 'pomp and circumstance' of a mass in so grand a church, accompanied by the music, and surrounded by such statuary and such paintings; it is a GENT. MAG. VOL. XL. most elevating spectacle!" So did he speak of mere forms; but hear what he says, when after a round of gaiety he is once more "at home,” dining with his wife and little ones, "a great treat to both," and enjoying, as "Bessie said, in going to bed, the first rational day we have had for a long time." Then was the heart of the poet deeply touched. "Iexperienced," he says, "one of those bursts of devotion which, perhaps, are worth all the churchgoing forms in the world. Tears came fast from me as I knelt down to adore the one only God whom I acknowledge, and poured forth the aspirations of a soul deeply grateful for all his goodness." Surely the godlike influences of home were better to him than the music, statuary, and paintings of the Church of the Annunziata! But we leave this portion of our subject with a slight sketch of a singular scene in Lord Arundell's chapel at Wardour. "Bowles there," writes the diarist, "having come over from Salisbury; attended mass with us, which Durazzo could not understand. Bowles himself said to me, as we knelt together, Only think of my being on my knees beside 'Captain Rock' at mass!" Here again will be the subject of a picture for some Millais in years to come, when antiquity shall have lent something like beauty to our present untractable costume. Certainly this last scene presented a strange combination. Moore, however, was an actor in many which were as singular for their incidents. The future "Doctor" Lushington dancing with him as Caliban at a masquerade may raise a smile. The same consequence may follow Moore's description of an odd dinner at Horace Twiss's in Chancery Lane, "in a borrowed room, with champagne, pewter spoons, and old Lady Cork." We question nevertheless whether even old Lady Cork did not better understand the bard's position than the Duchess of Bedford, who, travelling in Germany, "wished they had some one with them like Mr. Moore, to be agreeable when they got to their inn in the evening." But the strangest of the patronesses of our poet was undoubtedly Lady Holland. Moore prescribes a dose of her as good for the complaints of poets labouring under a plethora of vanity. She would C |
