ing our readers to dismiss from theirs, all undue and disproportioned associations with "Little's Lyrics"-" Anacreon Moore," "Tom Moore," &c., &c., we wish to apply ourselves to the two volumes before us, as affording materials for the study of the actual man, in his best and most permanent attributes.

It does not appear that Lord John Russell has much to do with the present volumes, except lending his name to them as their Editor. A simple and kindly preface—with a short disquisition on poetry-as good as might be expected from a nobleman of fair mental culture, who has led too busy a political life to have taken at any time more than a taste of Hippocrene,-with probably some care of selection and arrangement, and a most brief and occasional note or two of explanation-comprehend all that the Editor has to do with the volumes before us. Indeed there are marks of the work of selection and arrangement having been mostly performed by poor Moore himself before his death-in the double anticipation probably of helping in the provision for those whom he expected to leave behind, and of saving his noble Editor as much unnecessary trouble as possible. So far, then, not only by the contribution of letters and journals, but, if we are right in our impression, by the actual superintendence of the author himself, in the selection of material, the volumes before us are essentially and entirely an autobiography.

Indeed, as regards the literary part of his life, this may be called the second time that Moore has now been his own biographer; and those who are familiar with the prefaces written by himself to the several volumes of his works collected in 1841-42, will find a not inconsiderable portion of the literary notices in the present work anticipated by what Moore wrote then. "Finding," as he says in the first of these prefaces, "that in no country is there so much curiosity felt respecting the interior of the lives of public men as in England," he took from the journal already written such materials, as might gratify the public curiosity, without violating the confidence of private and social life. The journal itself, now published, is of course fuller, richer, and more interesting, than the foretaste of its quality which these prefaces afforded.

His natural genius, and a rather ambitious mother, se

curing nurture for its growth, and opportunity for its exhibition, formed the groundwork of Moore's after-celebrity, and of-we suppose we must call it, with all its accompanying struggles and anxieties-his success in life.

The little wine-store in Dublin had a parlour behind it, and within that parlour a very clever lad, with a mother clever enough to perceive it, and ambitious enough to wish to make the most of him. Accordingly she secured him the best education, and the best society, that her means and opportunities would allow. Mr. Whyte, his schoolmaster, was elocutionary and theatrical, according to the taste of the cleverer middle-class people of that day. Amidst the theatrical society of his aunt's supper-table it was that Southey drew in his first breath of literary influences, and felt the collision that first wakens to the sense of intellectual power and the thirst for increasing it. A little earlier Goethe was going through the same course of stimulant, we presume, in Germany. The ambition of Moore's parents for their son even led them to entertain the question, whether they should not bring him up as a Protestant, as, at that time especially, no career was open to a young Roman Catholic in England or Ireland. Shame, doubt, inherited prepossessions, and finally principle, came in to determine them to take the side of honesty. As with many other men, whose parents, in their timidity, fear that they are lessening the chances of worldly good to their children, by preferring something else to its unscrupulous pursuit, nothing could have turned out more fortunate for the youth than the spirited honesty of this course. A liberal

Catholic of talent was, in the then state of political parties, just the person to be useful, patronized, caressed, admired. There was Moore made for the occasion-large-hearted, well-informed, full of toleration and kindness, free from all narrowness and prejudice. The worse specimen he was of a true son of such a church, the better party-specimen he was for those who desired to enlist public sympathy in favour of emancipation. This man was an example of the excluded, dreaded, persecuted Papist! This very untoward circumstance (as his parents thought it) of his religion, was all in his favour with the only set of great people who would have admitted him to their society, and poured upon him their admiration and regard-the Whig

the

aristocracy. Had he been brought up a good Tory conformist, by the policy of his parents, he would in the first place have belied his nature and antecedents, and would have gone forth a Samson shorn of his hair-unable to do an honest, hearty work-placed amid a cause and patrons alien and uncongenial to his whole man. He would have been a cramped and unnatural Conservative, instead of a natural and genuine Liberal; and the result upon his genius, though not destructive-nothing could destroy it would have been disastrous. Then, too, the Whig aristocracy were many of them clever themselves, and laid themselves out for the encouragement of talent, admitting it into easy and graceful union with their own. Whereas the Tory aristocracy were stiff, stupid, and proud, supposing that a low-born genius was not good enough for them; whereas the unhappy truth was, that he was too good, and that they could not appreciate him. Bitterly did the whole party rue their dulness and their hauteur, when they saw the result in the brilliant staff, it might be called, of wit, genius, and spirit, which the Whigs gathered round them to do the work of their party and their principles upon heart of the nation. Thus, Thomas Moore, by being put upon an honest track, did a great and serious work in this kingdom, by his squibs and crackers, his songs and his bonmots, and is to be reckoned among the most effective and successful of the patriotic labourers for Ireland and for freedom. But the touch also of the world, which his mother infused into his heart, and which adhered to him all his life, was not without its use in pushing him forward. She had always sought for him, and habituated him to, society superior to that by which he was naturally and by position surrounded. This early gave him that ease of manner, and that free courtesy, without which a man's company is too apt to be cumbrous, restrained, and restraining, and which made him, when he afterwards came to London, drop upon the bed of the fine aristocratic soil as an indigenous plant. It has to be confessed that his singing-and that singing accompanied by himself (for his poor mother had stretched a point to get him a piano)and that singing and playing of his own verses-and the singing, and music, and poetry, being all excellent-had much to do with his early and easy transit across the

fashionable world. Perhaps there is something not unhumiliating in this recollection. But then he did not get his dinner for his song alone. He was the most agreeable, mannerly, amusing, witty, and well-informed of men after dinner. Theodore Hook we suppose was his only parallel in our time; and what a contrast in other respects between the two men ! Hook, with his conversation and wonderful extempore melody and versification among his haughty Tory society, who admitted and relished him without loving and respecting him; but obliged, after sitting with them late in the evening, to start off early in the morning to town to write incognito the article that was to give him the means of posting back, and to appear at the dinnertable in the evening, as if he had been loitering away the whole day! Moore doing a work of which he was in no way ashamed-seeking to inform, to improve, and to liberate, as well as to fascinate and divert. At the same time no man-whatever be his worth and genius, being poor and profession-less, and yet seeking the society of the wealthy and the great-can escape the penalty of a position essentially false, in the contretemps and mortifications to which it exposes him. An indication of this, as it affects the sentiment of the relation, is betrayed by Moore in the struggle of his self-respect with his work as an entertainer of the great-when he mentions the effort he made one day to sing one of his pieces in such a way as to make the Lansdownes feel its power; and again, another indication of the same painful consciousness in a commoner matter is given in his writing to one of his publishers for a little money to relieve him from the turtle-soup and claret of a high sheriff's country house, which he is obliged to continue swallowing for weeks together, because he has not a shilling in his pocket with which to give the servants their vales! Notwithstanding all which, Moore was in all his personal associations and tastes a thorough little aristocrat. When the grand exception of his own family is made-to whom he was always affectionate, generous, and constant-there is to us a painful absence, in the volumes before us, of any tolerable admixture of those intercourses and friendships with humbler people, which a man of Moore's native position and circumstances must have had if they had not been avoided and discouraged. His correspondence and friendship are

almost always with celebrities. The table of his life is strewed with porcelain. When he is looking out for godfathers or godmothers for his children, he usually looks out for them among the titled, or, at least, the celebrated. His anxiety to obtain the Marquis of Lansdowne's name on one of these occasions, the failure of his heart to put the question two or three times, and the final triumph and achievement, do not, to our feelings, speak entirely well for him, or relieve him from an impression of tuft-hunting. We should like to have seen more signs in a man of the people keeping up his intercourse with them, more records of early and humbler friendships, apart from the circle of his own immediate family, fostered and preserved. His wife seems to have felt oppressively this constant hanging on the skirts of high life. Moore writes from Sloperton, Jan., 1818, to Lady Donegal :—

"We are getting on here as quietly and comfortably as possible; and the only thing I regret is, the want of some near and plain neighbours for Bessy to make intimacy with, and enjoy a little teadrinking now and then, as she used to do in Derbyshire."

He then speaks of her visits and charities among the poor in the neighbourhood, and adds:

"After many exertions to get Bessy to go and dine there (the Marquis of Lansdowne's), I have at last succeeded this week, in consequence of our being on a visit at Bowles's, and her having the shelter of the poet's old lady to protect her through the enterprize. She did not, however, at all like it; and I shall not often put her to the torture of it. In addition to her democratic pride-which I cannot blame her for-which makes her prefer the company of her equals to that of her superiors, she finds herself a perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate; and this is a sort of dignified desolation which poor Bessy is not at all ambitious of. Vanity gets over all these difficulties; but pride is not so practicable. She is, however, very much pleased both with Lord and Lady Lansdowne; who have indeed been everything that is kind and amiable to her."-Vol. II. p. 129.

Moore's first launch upon the great world, after his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, was when his poor parents scraped a few guineas together and sent him to London to commence the study of the law, or rather to enter the Temple. His letters on this and subsequent occasions, written on the way, with the unknown future looming before the poor boy, are natural and touching.