Master of the pencil's fire!Sketch'd in painting's bold display,
Many a city first portray,
Many a city revelling free,
Warm with loose festivity.
Picture then a rosy train,
Bacchants straying o'er the plain,
Piping, as they roam along,
Roundelay or shepherd-song.
Paint me next, if painting may
Such a theme as this portray,
All the happy heaven of love
Which these blessed mortals prove.
Here the suggestion, if not of Fletcher's manner, at least of some manner contemporary with Fletcher, is unmistakable. But since the verses were put forward without comment, no one thought of objecting. It is like the fable of the Wind and the Sun: Moore's genial example relaxed the bonds of 'correctness' by far more quickly than Wordsworth's austere theorising.
The easy way is seldom so good as the hard way, and no one would put Moore's early work into comparison with the wonderful volume that was the fruit of the years spent by Wordsworth and Coleridge at Nether Stowey. Yet it is only just to emphasise the fact that Moore was the first to bring back to English that note of song, natural even in its artificiality, which is heard all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but, except by Blake, was never sounded during the eighteenth. One can readily imagine the delight with which a generation, nursed on Cowper and Crabbe, turned to these facile yet not vulgar harmonies. And the work, though seemingly so easy, was wrought with delicate care; Lord Moira noted, and Moore gratefully recorded the praise, that few among the best poets had been so strictly grammatical! Always a careful craftsman, Moore never worked harder than on this first attempt. But his labour detracted nothing from the flush of youth, the zest for enjoyment, which pervades the lines. 'The young people will like it,' probably in any generation, whenever they chance to read it.
Moore, however, could never reconcile himself to effacing altogether the traces of his study. Lalla Rookh testifies to his passion for footnotes, and the same unfortunate itch displays itself already in the Anacreon. We find him quoting, not only Ronsard and Lessing—a wide range for one-and-twenty—but commentators and authors by far more recondite—Cornelius de Pauw, the poetess Veronica Cambara, the Epistles of Alciphron, together with Aulus Gellius and Angerianus. One must remember, however, that Moore's age had a taste for what we should dismiss as pedantry—witness the polyglot jesting of Father Prout; and he doubtless obeyed a wise instinct when he opened his prefatory remarks in a manner worthy of the gentleman whom Dr. Primrose met in jail:—
"There is but little known with certainty of the life of Anacreon. Chamæleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in the general wreck of ancient literature."
In the next publication, which followed rapidly upon the success of the first, Moore dispensed with erudition. Censorious people shook their heads over the Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq., and it must be allowed that the censure had some justification. In the remarks upon Anacreon, Moore had praised that poet because "his descriptions are warm; but the warmth is in the ideas not the words." There is certainly no grossness in the words of Mr. Thomas Little, but there is considerable warmth in his ideas—and indeed what could be more natural? Moore was an exceedingly healthy normal young man, strongly attracted towards the other sex, but exempt from any vehemences of passion. The tone of these lyrics is rather that of the Restoration poets than of the earlier Caroline school; there is prettiness, elegance, gaiety, rather than beauty; and, as in all his models, there is preoccupation rather with a sex than an individual. It is amatory poetry, not love-poetry; but in its own kind, it is as good as can be found. What could be better than
"Still the question I must parry,
Still a wayward truant prove,
Where I love I cannot marry,
Where I marry cannot love."
No other poet for a hundred years had got such elasticity and gaiety out of English rhythms as were to be found in these two early volumes. One need not claim high rank for this sort of poetry, but it would be ignorant to overlook the service which Moore was doing to all who after him came to handle English metre.
So much for his successes. The second volume is also interesting with records of his failures. The "Fragments of College Exercises" show a futile attempt to wield the heroic couplet with sonorous rhetoric. And in two other poems, Reuben and Rose and The Ring, we find Moore wandering off after the fashion of the German spectral ballad:—
"'Twas Reuben, but ah! he was deathly and cold,
And fleeted away like the spell of a dream."
And so on, with cold carcases and other properties of this form of composition, to which the poet never returned—wisely recognising that it was not for him to make readers' flesh creep.
In the meantime, while the Anacreon was passing into its second edition, and Little's Poems were making their appearance, Moore stayed in England, and his connection with Lord Moira grew closer. A great part of the year 1801 seems to have been spent by him at Donington, sometimes alone, when he worked hard in the library, shot rooks, repaired his complexion and slept sweetly, "not dreaming of ambition, though under the roof of an earl." In 1802 he had hopes of Lord Moira's coming into administration. But Lord Moira did not come in, and though considerable sums were earned by the Poems, Moore was obliged to borrow from his mother's brother. In the early part of 1803 a proposal was made to him, by Wickham, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, on behalf of the Irish Government. An Irish laureateship was to be established, with the same salary as the English, for the young Irish poet; the movers in this matter were Lord Moira and the always friendly Joe Atkinson. Our most definite record of the transaction is a letter from Moore to his mother, which makes it clear that he himself was prepared to accept the "paltry and degrading stipend," but was deterred by a letter from his father, which unfortunately we do not possess. The motive which he alleges was "the urging apprehension that my dears at home wanted it"; but since he was reassured that they stood in no instant necessity, he declined the offer. The letter however makes it perfectly clear that he looked forward at this time to a post provided by Government: legal studies in the meantime having lapsed.
These expectations were not wholly disappointed. In August Lord Moira's interest secured for him a place as registrar of a naval prize-court at Bermuda—an employment whose profits depended upon an active state of war in and about the West Indies.
The idea of so complete a separation from his home distressed him, and he tried to keep the facts from his mother as long as possible—discussing the project only by letters to his father and uncle. But on August 16th, John Moore—wrote to his son an admirable epistle (the only one from his pen that is preserved)—which deprecated the attempt to keep Mrs. Moore in the dark:—
"There could be no such deception carried on with her where you, or indeed any one of her family, were concerned, for she seems to know everything respecting them by instinct. It would not be doing her the justice she well deserves to exclude her from such confidence. … For my particular part, I think with you, that there is a singular chance, as well as a special interference of Providence, in your getting so honourable a situation at this very critical time.[1] I am sure no one living can possibly feel more sensibly
