Thomas Moore

For the 16th-century saint and philosopher, seeThomas More.

For other people named Thomas Moore, seeThomas Moore (disambiguation).

Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore, after a painting byThomas Lawrence
Born	(1779-05-28)28 May 1779 Dublin,Ireland
Died	25 February 1852(1852-02-25)(aged 72) Sloperton Cottage,Bromham, Wiltshire,England
Occupation	Writer, poet, lyricist
Education	Samuel Whyte's English Grammar School, Dublin;Trinity College Dublin;Middle Temple,London
Notable works	Irish Melodies Memoirs of Captain Rock Lalla Rookh Letters & Journals of Lord Byron
Spouse	Elizabeth Dyke

Thomas Moore(28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852), also known asTom Moore,was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for hisIrish Melodies.His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture fromIrishto English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib",writer for the aristocraticWhigs;in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot.

Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "AnacreonMoore "after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surroundedCatholic Emancipation,Moore was seen to defend the tradition of theChurch in Irelandagainst both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. TheLife and Death ofLord Edward Fitzgeralddepicts theUnited Irishleader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. ComplementingMaria Edgeworth'sCastle Rackrent,Memoirs of Captain Rockis a saga, not ofAnglo-Irishlandowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism".

Today Moore is remembered almost alone either for hisIrish Melodies(typically "The Minstrel Boy"and"The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friendLord Byron.

Early life and artistic launch

The Thomas MooreTavern,Wexford,birthplace and home of Moore's mother Anastasia Codd. She lived here whilepregnantwith Thomas, and on 26 August 1836 Moore returned to the building and praised his mother as "one of the noblest-minded as well as most warm-hearted of all God's creatures."

Thomas Moore was born to Anastasia Codd fromWexfordand John Moore fromCounty Kerryover his parents'grocery shopin Aungier Street,Dublin,He had two younger sisters, Kate and Ellen. Moore showed an early interest in music and performance, staging musical plays with his friends and entertaining hope of being an actor. In Dublin he attended Samuel Whyte's co-educational English grammar school,where he was schooled in Latin and Greek and became fluent in French and Italian. By age fourteen he had had one of his poems published in a new literary magazine called theAnthologia Hibernica( “Irish Anthology” ).

Samuel Whyte had taughtRichard Brinsley Sheridan,Irish playwright and EnglishWhig politician,of whom Moore later was to write a biography.

Trinity College and the United Irishmen

In 1795, Moore was among the first Catholics admitted toTrinity College Dublin,preparing, as his mother had hoped, for a career in law. Through the literary salon of the poet and satiristHenrietta Battier,and his friends at Trinity,Robert Emmettand Edward Hudson, Moore was connected to the popular politics of the capital agitated by theFrench Revolutionand by the prospect of a French invasion. With their encouragement, in 1797, Moore wrote an appeal to his fellow students to resist the proposal, then being canvassed by the English-appointedDublin Castle administration,to secure Ireland by incorporatingthe kingdomin a union withGreat Britain.In April 1798, Moore was interrogated at Trinity but acquitted on the charge of being a party, through theSociety of United Irishmen,to sedition.

Moore, though a friend of Emmett, had not taken the United Irish oath with Emmett and Hudson, and he played no part in therepublican rebellion of 1798(Moore was at home, ill in bed),or inthe uprising in Dublinfor which Emmett was executed in 1803.Later, in a biography of the United Irish leaderLord Edward Fitzgerald(1831),he made clear his sympathies, not hiding his regret thatthe French expeditionunderGeneral Hochefailed in December 1796 to effect a landing.To Emmett's sacrifice on the gallows Moore pays homage in the song "O, Breathe Not His Name" (1808). More veiled references to Emmett are found in the long oriental poem "Lalla Rookh" (1817).

London society and first success

Moore as a young man

In 1799, Moore continued his law studies atMiddle TempleinLondon.The impecunious student was assisted by friends in the expatriate Irish community in London, including Barbara, widow ofArthur Chichester, 1st Marquess of Donegall,the landlord and borough-owner ofBelfast.

Moore's translations ofAnacreon,celebrating wine, women and song, were published in 1800 with a dedication to thePrince of Wales.His introduction to the futureprince regentandKing, George IVwas a high point in Moore's ingratiation with aristocratic and literary circles in London, a success due in great degree to his talents as a singer and songwriter. In the same year he collaborated briefly as a librettist withMichael Kellyin the comic opera,The Gypsy Prince,staged at theTheatre Royal, Haymarket,

In 1801, Moore hazarded a collection of his own verse:Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq..The pseudonym may have been advised by their juvenile eroticism. Moore's celebration of kisses and embraces skirted contemporary standards of propriety. When these tightened in theVictorian era,they were to put an end to what was a relative publishing success.

Travels and family

Observations of America and duel with critic

In the hope of future advancement, Moore reluctantly sailed from London in 1803 to take up a government post secured through the favours ofFrancis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira.Lord Moira was a man distinct in his class for having, on the eve of the rebellion in Ireland, continued to protest against government and loyalist outrages,and to have urged a policy of conciliation.Moore was to be the registrar of theAdmiralty Prize CourtinBermuda.Although as late as 1925 still recalled as "the poet laureate" of the island, Moore found life on Bermuda sufficiently dull that after six months he appointed a deputy and left for an extended tour of North America.As in London, Moore secured high-society introductions in the United States including to the President,Thomas Jefferson.Repelled by the provincialism of the average American, Moore consorted with exiled European aristocrats, come to recover their fortunes, and with oligarchicFederalistsfrom whom he received what he later conceded was a "twisted and tainted" view of the new republic.

Following his return to England in 1804, Moore publishedEpistles, Odes, and Other Poems(1806). In addition to complaints about America and Americans (including their defence of slavery), this catalogued Moore's real and imagined escapades with American women.Francis Jeffreydenounced the volume in theEdinburgh Review(July 1806), calling Moore "the most licentious of modern versifiers", a poet whose aim is "to impose corruption upon his readers, by concealing it under the mask of refinement."Moore challenged Jeffrey to a duel but their confrontation was interrupted by the police. In what seemed to be a "pattern" in Moore's life ( "it was possible to condemn [Moore] only if you did not know him" ), the two then became fast friends.

Moore, nonetheless, was dogged by the report that the police had found that the pistol given to Jeffrey was unloaded. In his satiricalEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers(1809),Byron,who had himself been stung by one of Jeffrey's reviews, suggested Moore's weapon was also "leadless": "on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated". To Moore, this was scarcely more satisfactory, and he wrote to Byron implying that unless the remarks were clarified, Byron, too, would be challenged. In the event, when Byron, who had been abroad, returned there was again reconciliation and a lasting friendship.

In 1809, Moore was elected as a member to theAmerican Philosophical SocietyinPhiladelphia.

Marriage and children

Between 1808 and 1810, Moore appeared each year inKilkenny,Ireland, with a charitable mixed repertory of professional players and high-society amateurs. He favouredcomic rolesin plays likeSheridan'sThe RivalsandO'Keeffe'sThe Castle of Andalusia.Among the professionals, on stage in Kilkenny with her sister, the tragedienne-to-beMary Ann Duff,was Elizabeth "Bessy" Dyke.In 1811, Moore married Bessy inSt Martin-in-the-Fields,London. Together with Bessy's lack of a dowry, the Protestant ceremony may have been the reason why Moore kept the match for some time secret from his parents. Bessy shrank from fashionable society to such an extent that many of her husband's friends never met her (some of them jokingly doubted her very existence). Those who did held her in high regard.

The couple first set up house in London, then in the country atKegworth,Leicestershire,and in Lord Moira's neighbourhood at Mayfield Cottage in [Staffordshire], and finally in Sloperton Cottage inWiltshirenear the country seat of another close friend and patron,Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne.Their company included Sheridan andJohn Philpot Curran,both in their bitter final years.

Tom and Bessy had five children, none of whom survived them. Three girls died young, and both sons lost their lives as young men. One of them, Thomas Landsdowne Parr Moore, as a lowly officer fought first with the British Army inAfghanistan,and then withFrench Foreign LegioninAlgeria.He was dying of tuberculosis that riddled the family when, according to Foreign Legion records, he was killed in action on 6 February 1846. Despite these heavy personal losses, the marriage of Thomas Moore is generally regarded to have been a happy one.

Debt exile, last meeting with Byron

In 1818, it was discovered that the man Moore had appointed his deputy in Bermuda had embezzled 6,000pounds sterling,a large sum for which Moore was liable. To escapedebtor's prison,in September 1819, Moore left for France, travelling withLord John Russell(future Whigprime ministerand editor of Moore's journals and letters). InVenicein October, Moore saw Byron for the last time. Byron entrusted him with a manuscript for his memoirs, which, as his literary executor, Moore promised to have published after Byron's death.

In Paris, Moore was joined by Bessy and the children. His social life was busy, often involving meetings with Irish and British and travellers such asMaria EdgeworthandWilliam Wordsworth.However, his attempt to bridge the gulf in his connections between his exiled fellow countrymen and members of the British establishment was not always successful. In 1821, several emigres, prominent among themMyles Byrne(a veteran ofVinegar Hilland of Napoleon'sIrish Legion) refused to attend aSt Patrick's daydinner Moore had organised in Paris because of the presiding presence of Wellesley Pole Long, a nephew of theDuke of Wellington.

Once Moore learned the Bermuda debt had been partly cleared with the help of Lord Lansdowne (whom Moore repaid almost immediately by a draft on Longman, his publisher), the family, after more than a year, returned to Sloperton Cottage.

Political and historical writing

Squib writer for the Whigs

To support his family Moore entered the field of politicalsquib writingon behalf of his Whig friends and patrons. TheWhigshad been split by the divided response ofEdmund BurkeandCharles Foxto the French Revolution. But with the antics of the Prince Regent, and in particular, his highly public efforts to disgrace and divorcePrincess Caroline,proving a lightning rod for popular discontent, they were finding new unity and purpose.

From the "Whigs as Whigs", Moore claimed not to have received "even the semblance of a favour" (Lord Moira, they "hardly acknowledge as one of themselves" ). And with exceptions "easily counted", Moore was convinced that there was "just as much selfishness and as much low-party spirit among them generally as the Tories".But for Moore, the fact that the Prince Regent held fast against Catholic admission to parliament may have been reason sufficient to turn on his former friend and patron. Moore'sHoratian mockeryof the Prince in the pages ofThe Morning Chroniclewere collected inIntercepted Letters, or the Two-Penny Post-Bag(1813).

The lampooning of Castlereagh

Bloody Castlereagh, 1798

Another, and possibly more personal, target for Moore was theForeign SecretaryLord Castlereagh.A reform-mindedUlsterPresbyterianturned AnglicanTory,asIrish SecretaryCastlereagh had been ruthless in the suppression of the United Irishmen and in pushing theAct of Unionthrough theIrish Parliament.In what were the "verbal equivalents of the political cartoons of the day",Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress(1818) andFables for the Holy Alliance(1823), Moore lampoons Castlereagh's deference to the reactionary interests of Britain's continental allies.Widely read, so that Moore eventually produced a sequel, was the verse novelThe Fudge Family in Paris(1818). The family of an Irishman working as a propagandist for Castlereagh in Paris, the Fudges are accompanied by an accomplished tutor and classicist, Phelim Connor. An upright but disillusioned Irish Catholic, his letters to a friend reflect Moore's own views.

Connor's regular epistolary denunciations of Castlereagh have two recurrent themes. The first is Castlereagh as "the embodiment of the sickness with which Ireland had infected British politics as a consequence of the union":"We sent thee Castlereagh – as heaps of dead Have slain their slayers by the pest they spread". The second is that at the time of the Acts of Union Castlereagh's support for Catholic emancipation had been disingenuous. Castlereagh had been master of "that faithless craft", which can "cart the slave, can swear he shall be freed", but then "basely spurns him" when his "point is gain'd".

Through a mutual connection, Moore learned that Castlereagh had been particularly stung by the verses of the Tutor in theFudge Family.For openly casting the same dispersions against the former Chief Secretary—that he bloodied his hands in 1798 and deliberately deceived Catholics at the time of the Union—in 1811 the London-based Irish publisher, and former United Irishman,Peter Finnertywas sentenced to eighteen months for libel.

The Memoirs of Captain Rock

"The Installation of Captain Rock", Daniel Maclise, 1834

Main article:Memoirs of Captain Rock

As a partisan squib writer, Moore played a role not dissimilar to that ofJonathan Swifta century earlier. Moore greatly admired Swift as a satirist, but charged him with caring no more for the "misery" of his Roman Catholic countrymen "than his ownGulliverfor the sufferings of so many disenfranchisedYahoos".The Memoirs of Captain Rockmight have been Moore's response to those who questioned whether the son of a Dublin grocer entertaining English audiences from Wiltshire was himself connected to the great mass of his countrymen – to those whose remitted rents helped sustain the great houses among which he was privileged to move.

The Memoirsrelate the history of Ireland as told by a contemporary, the scion of a Catholic family that lost land in successive English settlements. The character,Captain Rock,is folkloric but the history is in earnest. When it catches up with the narrator in the latePenal Lawera, his family has been reduced to the "class of wretchedcottiers".Exposed to the voracious demands of spendthrift Anglo-Irish landlords (pilloried byMaria Edgeworth), both father and son assume captaincies among the "White-boys, Oak-boys, and Hearts-of Steel", the tenant conspiracies that attack tax collectors, terrorise the landlords' agents and violently resist evictions.

This low-level agrarian warfare continued through, and beyond, theGreat Irish Famineof the 1840s. It was only after this catastrophe, which as Prime Minister Moore's Whig friend, Lord Russell, failed in any practical measure to allay,that British governments began to assume responsibility for agrarian conditions. At the time ofCaptain Rock's publication (1824), the commanding issue of the day was not tenant rights or land reform. It was the final instalment ofCatholic Emancipation:Castlereagh's unredeemed promise of Catholic admission to parliament.

Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin

"Terrors of Emancipation" – The Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1829

Since within a united kingdom, Irish Catholics would be reduced to a distinct minority, Castlereagh's promises of their parliamentary emancipation seemed credible at the time of the Union. But the provision was stripped out of the union bills when in England the admission of Catholics to the "Protestant Constitution" encountered the standard objection: that as subject to political direction from Rome, Catholics could not be entrusted with the defence of constitutional liberties. Moore rallied to the "liberal compromise" proposed byHenry Grattan,who had moved the enfranchisement of Catholics in the old Irish parliament. Fears of "Popery" were to be allayed by according the Crown a "negative control", a veto, on the appointment of Catholic bishops.

In an openLetter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin(1810), Moore noted that the Irish bishops (legally resident in Ireland only from 1782) had themselves been willing to comply with a practice otherwise universal in Europe. Conceding a temporal check of papal authority, he argued, was in Ireland'sGallicantradition. In the time of "her native monarchy", the Pope had had no share in the election of Irish bishops. "Slavish notions of papal authority" developed only as a consequence of the English conquest. The native aristocracy had sought in Rome a "spiritual alliance" against the new "temporal tyranny" at home.

In resisting royal assent and in placing "their whole hierarchy at the disposal of the Roman court", Irish Catholics would "unnecessarily" be acting in "remembrance of times, which it is the interest of all parties [Catholic and Protestant, Irish and English] to forget". Such argument made little headway against the man Moore decried as ademagogue,but who, as a result of his uncompromising stand, was to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Catholic interest in Ireland,Daniel O’Connell.

Even when, in 1814, theCuriaitself (then still in silent alliance with Britain againstNapoleon) proposed that bishops be "personally acceptable to the king", O'Connell was opposed. Better, he declared, that Irish Catholics "remain for ever without emancipation" rather than allow the king and his ministers "to interfere" with the Pope's appointment of Irish prelates. At stake was the unity of church and people. "Licensed" by the government, the bishops and their priests would be no more regarded than the ministers of the established Church of Ireland.

When final emancipation came in 1829, the price O'Connell paid was the disenfranchisement of theForty-shilling freeholders– those who, in the decisive protest against Catholics exclusion, defied their landlords in voting O'Connell in the1828 Clare by-election.The "purity" of the Irish church was sustained. Moore lived to see the exceptional papal discretion thus confirmed reshaping the Irish hierarchy culminating in 1850 with the appointment of the Rector of theSacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faithin Rome, Paul Cullen, asPrimate Archbishop of Armagh.

Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion

Thomas Moore by Martin Archer Shee c 1817, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

In a call heeded by Protestants of all denominations, in 1822 the new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin,William Magee,declared the absolute necessity of winning an Irish majority for the Reformed faith — a "Second Reformation".Carrying "religious tracts expressly written for the edification of the Irish peasantry", the "editor" of Captain Rock's Memoirs is an English missionary in the ensuing "bible war".Catholics, who coalesced behind O'Connell in theCatholic Association,believed that proselytising advantage was being sought in hunger and distress (that tenancies and food were being used to secure converts), and that the usual political interests were at play.

Moore's narrator inTravels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion(1833) is again fictional. He is, as Moore had been, a Catholic student at Trinity College. On news of Emancipation (passage of the 1829 Catholic Relief Bill), he exclaims: "Thank God! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant". Oppressed by the charge that Catholics are "a race of obstinate and obsolete religionists […] unfit for freedom", and freed from "the point of honour" that would have prevented him from abandoning his church in the face of continuing sanctions, he sets out to explore the tenets of the "true" religion.

Predictably, the resolve the young man draws from his theological studies is to remain true to the faith of his forefathers (not to exchange "the golden armour of the old Catholic Saints" for "heretical brass" ).The argument, however, was not the truth of Catholic doctrine. It was the inconsistency and fallacy of the bible preachers. Moore's purpose, he was later to write, was to put "upon record" the "disgust" he felt at "the arrogance with which most Protestant parsons assume […] credit for being the only true Christians, and the insolence with which […] they denounce all Catholics asidolatorsandAntichrist".Had his young man found "among the Orthodox of the first [Christian] ages" one "particle" of their rejection of the supposed "corruptions" of the Roman church – justification not byfaith alonebut also bygood works,transubstantiation,and veneration of saints, relics and images — he would have been persuaded.

Moore's work elicited an immediate riposte. TheSecond Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion(1833)was a vindication of the reformed faith by an author described as "not the editor ofCaptain Rock's Memoirs"— the Spanish exile and Protestant convertJoseph Blanco White.

Brendan Clifford,editor of Moore's political writings, interprets Moore's philosophy as "cheerful paganism", or, at the very least, "à la carteCatholicism "favouring" what scriptural Protestantism hated: the music, the theatricality, the symbolism, the idolatry ".Despite his mother being a devout Catholic, and like O'Connell acknowledging Catholicism as Ireland's "national faith",Moore appears to have abandoned the formal practice of his religion as soon as he entered Trinity.

Sheridan, Fitzgerald andThe History of Ireland

In 1825, Moore'sMemoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridanwas finally published after nine years of work on and off. It proved popular, went through a number of editions, and helped establish Moore's reputation among literary critics. The work had a political aspect: Sheridan was not only a playwright, he was a Whig politician and a friend ofFox.Moore judged Sheridan an uncertain friend of reform. But he has Sheridan articulate in his own words a good part of what was to be the United Irish case for separation from England.

Writing in 1784 to his brother, Sheridan explains that the "subordinate situation [of Ireland] prevents the formation of any party among us, like those you have in England, composed of person acting upon certain principles, and pledged to support each other". Without the prospect of obtaining power – which in Ireland is "lodged in a branch of the English government" (the Dublin Castle executive) – there is little point in the members of parliament, no matter how personally disinterested, collaborating for any public purpose. Without an accountable executive the interests of the nation are systematically neglected.

It is against this, the truncated state of politics in Ireland, that Moore seesLord Edward Fitzgerald,a "Protestant reformer" who wished for "a democraticHouse of Commonsand the Emancipation of his Catholic countrymen ", driven toward the republican separatism of theUnited Irishmen.He absolves Fitzgerald of recklessness: but for a contrary wind, decisive French assistance would have been delivered byGeneral HocheatBantryin December 1796.In his ownMemoirs,Moore acknowledges hisLife and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald(1831) as a "justification of themen of '98– theultimi Romanorumof our country ".

Moore'sHistory of Ireland,published in four volumes between 1835 and 1846, reads as a further and extended indictment of English rule. It was an enormous work (consulted byKarl Marxin his extensive notes on Irish history),but not a critical success. Moore acknowledged scholarly failings, some of which stemmed from his inability to read documentary sources in Irish.

On Reform and Repeal

Parliamentary reform

In his journal, Moore confessed that he "agreed with the Tories in their opinion" as to the consequences of the firstParliamentary Reform Act (1832).He believed it would give "an opening and impulse to the revolutionary feeling now abroad" [England, Moore suggested, had been "in the stream of a revolution for some years" ]and that the "temporary satisfaction" it might produce would be but as the calm before a storm: "a downward reform (asDrydensays) rolls on fast ".But this was a prospect he embraced. In conversation with the Whig grandeeLord Lansdowne,he argued that while the consequences might be "disagreeable" for many of their friends, "We have now come to that point which all highly civilised countries reach when wealth and all the advantages that attend it are so unequally distributed that the whole is in an unnatural position: and nothing short of a general routing up can remedy the evil."

Despite their initially greater opposition to reform, Moore predicted that the Tories would prove themselves better equipped to ride out this "general routing". With the youngBenjamin Disraeli(who was to be the author of theSecond Reform Actin 1867) Moore agreed that since theGlorious Revolutionfirst led them to court an alliance with the people against the aristocracy, the Tories had taken "a more democratic line". For Moore this was evidenced by the prime-ministerial careers ofGeorge CanningandRobert Peel:"mere commoners by birth could never have attained the same high station among the Whig party".

O'Connell and Repeal

In 1832, Moore declined a voter petition fromLimerickto stand for theWestminster Parliamentas aRepealcandidate. WhenDaniel O'Connelltook this as evidence of Moore's "lukewarmness in the cause of Ireland", Moore recalled O'Connell's praise for the "treasonous truths" of his book on Fitzgerald.The difficulty, Moore suggested, was that these "truths" did not permit him to pretend with O'Connell that reversing the Acts of Union would amount to something less than real and lasting separation from Great Britain. Relations had been difficult enough after the old Irish Parliament had secured itslegislative independence from London in 1782.But with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin, "which they would be sure to have out and out", the British government would be continually at odds, first over the disposal ofChurch of Irelandandabsenteeproperty, and then over what would be perennial issues of trade, foreign treaties and war.

So "hopeless appeared the fate of Ireland under English government, whether of Whigs or Tories", that Moore declared himself willing to "run the risk of Repeal, even with separation as its too certain consequence."But with Lord Fitzgerald, Moore believed independence possible only in union with the "Dissenters" (the Presbyterians) of the north (and possibly then, again only with a prospect of French intervention). To make "headway against England" the "feeling" of Catholics and Dissenters had first to be "nationalised". This is something Moore thought might be achieved by fi xing upon the immediate abuses of the (Anglican and landed) "Irish establishment". As he had O'Connell's uncompromising stance on the Veto, Moore regarded O'Connell's campaign for Repeal as unhelpful or, at best, "premature".

This perspective was shared by some of O'Connell's younger lieutenants, dissidents with theRepeal Association.Young IrelanderCharles Gavan Duffysought to build a "League of North and South"around whatMichael Davitt(of the laterLand League) described as "the programme of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen reduced to moral and constitutional standards" —tenant rights and land reform.

Irish Melodies

Reception

In the early years of his career, Moore's work was largely generic, and had he died at this point he would likely not have been considered an Irish poet.From 1806 to 1807, Moore dramatically changed his style of writing and focus. Following a request by the publishers James and William Power, he wrote lyrics to a series of Irish tunes in the manner ofHaydn's settings of British folksongs, with SirJohn Andrew Stevensonas arranger of the music. The principal source for the tunes wasEdward Bunting'sA General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music(1797) to which Moore had been introduced at Trinity by Edward Hudson.TheMelodieswas published in ten volumes, together with a supplement, over 26 years between 1808 and 1834. The musical arrangements of the last volumes, following Stevenson's death in 1833, were byHenry Bishop.

TheMelodieswere an immediate success, "The Last Rose of Summer","The Minstrel Boy","Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"and" Oft in the Stilly Night "becoming immensely popular. There were parodies in England, but translations into German, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, and French, and settings byHector Berliozguaranteed a large European audience. In the United States, "The Last Rose of Summer" alone sold more than a million copies.

Byron said he knew them all "by rote and by heart"; setting them above epics and Moore above all other poets for his "peculiarity of talent, or rather talents, – poetry, music, voice, all his own". They were also praised bySir Walter Scottwho conceded that neither he nor Byron could attain Moore's power of adapting words to music.Moore was in no doubt that theIrish Melodieswould be "the only work of my pen […] whose fame (thanks to the sweet music in which it is embalmed) may boast a chance of prolonging its existence to a day much beyond our own".

Ireland's "national music"

Moore's Melodies, Centenary Edition, 1880

The "ultra-Tory"The Anti-Jacobin Review( "Monthly Political and Literary Censor" )discerned in Moore'sMelodiessomething more than innocuous drawing-room ballads: "several of them were composed in a very disordered state of society, if not in open rebellion. They are the melancholy ravings of the disappointed rebel, or his ill-educated offspring". Moore was providing texts to what he described as "our national music", and his lyrics did often "reflect an unmistakable intimation of dispossession and loss in the music itself". Despite Moore's difficult relationship with O'Connell, in the early 1840s hisMelodieswere employed in the "Liberator's" renewed campaign for Repeal. TheRepeal Association's monster meetings (crowds of over 100,000) were usually followed by public banquets. AtMallow, County Cork,before the dinner speeches, a singer performed Moore's "Where Is the Slave?":

Oh, where's the slave so lowly, Condemned to chains unholy, Who could be burst His bonds accursed, Would die beneath them slowly?

O'Connell leapt to his feet, threw his arms wide and cried "I am not that slave!" All the room followed: "We are not those slaves! We are not those slaves!"

In the greatest meeting of all, at theHill of Tara(by tradition the inaugural seat of theHigh Kings of Ireland), on thefeast-day of the Assumption,15 August 1843, O'Connell's carriage proceeded through a crowd, reportedly of a million, accompanied by a harpist playing Moore's "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls".

Those Evening Bells

Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!

Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.

And so ’t will be when I am gone, -
That tuneful peal will still ring on;
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

By Thomas Moore

Later criticism and reappraisal

Some critics detected a tone of national resignation and defeatism in Moore's lyrics: a "whining lamentation over our eternal fall, and miserable appeals to our masters to regard us with pity".William Hazlittobserved that "if Moore'sIrish Melodieswith their drawing-room, lackadaisical, patriotism were really the melodies of the Irish nation, the Irish people deserve to be slaves forever ".Moore, in Hazlitt's view had "convert[ed] the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff box".It was a judgement later generations of Irish writers appeared to share.

InAPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man,as he passes "the droll statue of the national poet of Ireland" inCollege Street,James Joyce's biographic protagonist,Stephen Dedalus,remarks on the figure's "servile head". Yet in his father's house, Dedalus is moved when he hears his younger brothers and sisters singing Moore's "Oft in the Stilly Night". Despite Joyce's occasional expressions of disdain for the bard, critic Emer Nolan suggests that the writer responded to the "element of utopian longing as well as the sentimental nostalgia" in Moore's music. InFinnegans Wake,Joyce has occasion to allude to virtually every one of theMelodies.

While acknowledging that his own sense of an Irish past was "woven... out of Moore'sMelodies ",in a 1979 tribute to Moore,Seamus Heaneyremarked that Ireland had rescinded Moore's title of national bard because his characteristic tone was ' "too light, too conciliatory, too colonisé" for a nation "whose conscience was being forged by James Joyce, whose tragic disunity was being envisaged byW.B. Yeatsand whose literary tradition was being restored by the repossession of voices such asAodhagán O Rathaille's orBrian Merriman's ".

More recently, there has been a reappraisal sympathetic to Moore's "strategies of disguise, concealment and historical displacement so necessary for an Irish Catholic patriot who regularly sang songs to London glitterati about Irish suffering and English 'bigotry and misrule'".The political content of theMelodiesand their connections to the United Irishmen and to the death of Emmet have been discussed in Ronan Kelly's biography of the poet,Bard of Erin(2008), by Mary Helen Thuente inThe Harp Restrung: the United Irishmen and the Rise of Literary Nationalism(1994); and by Una Hunt inLiterary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore(2001).

Eóin MacWhiteand Kathleen O'Donnellhave found that the political undertone of theMelodiesand of other of Moore's works was readily appreciated by dissidents in the imperial realms of eastern Europe.Greek-Rumanianconspirators against theSultan,Russian Decembristsand, above all, Polish intellectuals recognised in the Gothic elements of theMelodies,Lalla Rookh( “a dramatization of Irish patriotism in an Eastern parable” )andCaptain Rock(all of which found translators) "a cloak of culture and fraternity".

Byron's Memoirs

Byron:"When you read my Memoirs you will learn the evils of true dissipation."

Moore was much criticised by contemporaries for allowing himself to be persuaded, on the grounds of their indelicacy, to destroyByron's Memoirs.Modern scholarship assigns the blame elsewhere.

In 1821, with Byron's blessing, Moore sold the manuscript, with which Byron had entrusted him three years before, to the publisherJohn Murray.Although he himself allowed that it contained some "very coarse things",when, following Bryon's death in 1824, Moore learned that Murray had deemed the material unfit for publication he spoke of settling the matter with a duel.But the combination of Byron's wifeLady Byron,half-sister and executorAugusta Leighand Moore's rival in Byron's friendshipJohn Cam Hobhouseprevailed. In what some were to call the greatest literary crime in history, in Moore's presence the family solicitors tore up all extant copies of the manuscript and burned them in Murray's fireplace.

With the assistance of papers provided byMary Shelley,Moore retrieved what he could. HisLetters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life(1830) "contrived", in the view ofMacaulay,"to exhibit so much of the character and opinions of his friend, with so little pain to the feelings of the living".Lady Byron still professed herself scandalised—as didThe Times.

With Byron an inspiration, Moore previously published a collection of songs,Evenings in Greece,(1826) and, set in 3rd-century Egypt, his only prose novelThe Epicurean(1827). Supplying a demand for "semi-erotic romance tinged with religiosity" it was a popular success.

1844 photograph by Henry Fox Talbot

Moore stands centre in a photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot dated April 1844

Moore stands in the centre of acalotypedated April 1844.

Moore is pictured with members of the household ofWilliam Henry Fox Talbot,the photographer. Talbot, a pioneer of photography (the inventor of thesalted paperandcalotypeprocesses) was Moore's neighbour in Wiltshire. It is possible that the lady to the lower right of Moore is his wife Bessy Moore.

To the left of Moore stands Henrietta Horatia Maria Fielding (1809–1851), a close friend of the Moores, Talbot's half-sisterand the daughter of Rear-Admiral Charles Fielding.

Moore took an early interest in Talbot's photogenic drawings. Talbot, in turn, took images of Moore's hand-written poetry possibly for inclusion in facsimile in an edition ofThe Pencil of Nature,the first commercially published book to be illustrated withphotographs.

Death

It is a criticism of Moore that he "wrote too much and catered too deliberately to his audiences".In his lyrics there is a bathos that speaks both to a love of recitation and to an abiding sense of tragedy that is perhaps lost on the modern reader.

Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm'd and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken!...

When I remember all The friends, so link'd together, I’ve seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed!...

Window atOttawa Public Libraryfeatures Moore withDickens,Archibald Lampman,Walter Scott,Byron,Tennyson,andShakespeare

In the late 1840s (and as the catastrophe of theGreat Famineovertook Ireland), Moore's powers began to fail. He was reduced ultimately to senility, which came suddenly in December 1849. Moore died on 25 February 1852, preceded by all his children and by most of his friends and companions.

After the deaths of his wife and five children, Moore died in his seventy-third year and was buried in Bromham churchyard within view of his cottage home, and beside his daughter Anastasia (who had died aged 17), near Devizes in Wiltshire.

His epitaph at his St. Nicholas churchyard grave is inscribed:

Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,

The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long,
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,

And gave all thy chords to light, freedom and song!

Moore had appointed as his literary executor,Lord John Russell,the Whig leader who, just four days before Moore's death, had ended hisfirst term as Prime Minister.Russell dutifully published Moore's papers in accordance with his late friend's wishes. TheMemoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Mooreappeared in eight volumes, published between 1853 and 1856.

Commemoration

Statue of Moore in College Street, Dublin

Moore is often considered Ireland'snational bardand to be to Ireland whatRobert Burnsis toScotland.Moore is commemorated in several places: by a plaque on the house where he was born, by busts atThe MeetingsandCentral Park,New York, and by a bronze statue near Trinity College Dublin. There is a road inWalkinstown,Dublin, named Thomas Moore Road, in a series of roads named after famous composers, locally referred to as the Musical Roads.

• Many composers have set the poems of Thomas Moore to music. They includeLudwig van Beethoven,Gaspare Spontini,Robert Schumann,Friedrich von Flotow,Felix Mendelssohn,Hector Berlioz,Charles Ives,William Bolcom,Benjamin Britten,andHenri Duparc.
• As noted above (Irish Melodies / Later criticism and reappraisal), many songs of Thomas Moore are cited in works ofJames Joyce,for example "Silent, O Moyle" inTwo Gallants(Dubliners)or "The Last Rose of Summer".
• Irish American scholar, singer and criticJames W. Flannery(born 1936) is widely recognized as a skilled interpreter of Thomas Moore's art songs. In 1997 he released a book and recording namedDear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore.
• Oliver Onionsquotes Moore's poem "Oft in the Stilly Night" in his 1910 ghost story "The Cigarette Case".It is also referenced in Bob Shaw's 1966 science-fiction story "Light of Other Days".
• The earliest known photograph taken by a woman (Constance Fox Talbot) is an albeit somewhat unclear image of a few lines from one of his poems.
• Letitia Elizabeth Landonoffers a tribute in her poem "Thomas Moore, Esq.", in Fisher'sDrawing Room Scrap Book,1839.

• Edna O'Brienwrote a short story entitled "Oft in the Stilly Night" in her 1990 story collectionLantern Slides.

In fiction

The character Tickle Tommy inJohn Paterson's Mare,James Hogg's allegorical satire on theEdinburghpublishing scene first published in theNewcastle Magazinein 1825, is based on Thomas Moore.Percy Frenchwrote several parodic versions of Moore's melodies in a comic paper he edited for two yearsThe Jarvey,including at least six versions of "The Minstrel Boy".are in The Jarvey.He also parodied Moore in his stage shows.As noted above, Moore and his melodies also figure in the works of James Joyce:APortrait of the Artist as a Young ManandFinnegans Wake.

List of works

Prose

• A Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin(1810)
• The Fudge Family in Paris(1818)
• Memoirs of Captain Rock(1824)
• Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan(2 vols) (1825)
• The Epicurean,a Tale(29 June 1827)
• Letters & Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life(2 vols.) (1830, 1831)
• Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald(1831)
• Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion(2 vols.) (1833)
• The Fudge Family in England(1835)
• The History of Ireland(vol. 1) (1835)
• The History of Ireland(vol. 2) (1837)
• The History of Ireland(vol. 3) (1840)
• The History of Ireland(vol. 4) (1846)
• Political and Historical Writings on Irish and British Affairs by Thomas Moore, Introduced by Brendan Clifford(1993).

Lyrics and verse

• Odes ofAnacreon(1800)
• Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little, Esq.(1801)
• The Gypsy Prince(acomic opera,collaboration withMichael Kelly,1801)
• Epistles, Odes and Other Poems(1806)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 1 and 2(April 1808)
• Corruption and Intolerance, Two Poems(1808)
• The Sceptic: A Philosophical Satire(1809)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 3(Spring 1810)
• A Melologue upon National Music(1811)
• M.P., or The Blue Stocking,(acomic opera,collaboration with Charles Edward Horn, 1811)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 4(November 1811)
• Parody of a Celebrated Letter(privately printed and circulated, February 1812,Examiner,8 March 1812)
• To a Plumassier(Morning Chronicle,16 March 1812)
• Extracts from the Diary of a Fashionable Politician(Morning Chronicle,30 March 1812)
• The Insurrection of the Papers(Morning Chronicle,23 April 1812)
• Lines on the Death ofMr. P[e]rc[e]v[a]l(May 1812)
• The Sale of the Tools(Morning Chronicle,21 December 1812)
• Correspondence Between a Lady and a Gentleman(Morning Chronicle,6 January 1813)
• Intercepted Letters, or the Two-Penny Post-Bag(March 1813)
• Reinforcements forLord Wellington(Morning Chronicle,27 August 1813)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 5(December 1813)
• A Collection of the Vocal Music of Thomas Moore(1814)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 6(1815, April or after)
• Sacred Songs, 1(June 1816)
• Lines on the Death ofSheridan(Morning Chronicle,5 August 1816)
• Lalla Rookh,an Oriental Romance(May 1817)
• National Airs, 1(23 April 1818)
• To the Ship in whichLord C[A]ST[LE]R[EA]GHSailed for the Continent(Morning Chronicle,22 September 1818)
• Lines on the Death of Joseph Atkinson, Esq. of Dublin(25 September 1818)
• Go, Brothers in Wisdom(Morning Chronicle,18 August 1818)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 7(1 October 1818)
• To SirHudson Lowe(Examiner,4 October 1818)
• The Works of Thomas Moore(6 vols) (1819)
• Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress(March 1819)
• National Airs, 2(1820)
• Irish Melodies, with a Melologue upon National Music(1820)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 8(on or around 10 May 1821)
• Irish Melodies(with an Appendix, containing the original advertisements and the prefatory letter on music, 1821)
• National Airs, 3(June 1822)
• National Airs, 4(1822)
• The Loves of the Angels, a Poem(23 December 1822)
• The Loves of the Angels, an Eastern Romance(5th ed. ofLoves of the Angels) (1823)
• Fables for the Holy Alliance, Rhymes on the Road, &c. &c.(7 May 1823)
• Sacred Songs, 2(1824)
• A Selection of Irish Melodies, 9(1 November 1824)
• National Airs, 5(1826)
• Evenings in Greece, 1(1826)
• A Dream of Turtle(The Times,28 September 1826)
• A Set of Glees(circa 9 June 1827)
• National Airs, 6(1827)
• Odes upon Cash, Corn, Catholics, and other Matters(October 1828)
• Legendary Ballads(1830)
• The Summer Fête. A Poem with Songs(December 1831)
• Irish Antiquities(The Times,5 March 1832)
• From the Hon. Henry ---, to Lady Emma ---(The Times,9 April 1832)
• To Caroline, Viscountess Valletort(The Metropolitan Magazine,June 1832)
• Ali's Bride...(The Metropolitan Magazine,August 1832)
• Verses to the Poet Crabbe's Inkstand(The Metropolitan Magazine,August 1832)
• Tory Pledges(The Times,30 August 1832)
• Song to the Departing Spirit of Tithe(The Metropolitan Magazine,September 1832)
• The Duke is the Lad(The Times,2 October 1832)
• St. Jerome on Earth, First Visit(The Times,29 October 1832)
• St. Jerome on Earth, Second Visit(The Times,12 November 1832)
• Evenings in Greece, 2(December 1832)
• To the Rev. Charles Overton(The Times,6 November 1833)
• Irish Melodies, 10(with Supplement) (1834)
• Vocal Miscellany, 1(1834)
• The Numbering of the Clergy(Examiner,5 October 1834)
• Vocal Miscellany, 2(1835)
• Irish Melodies(1835)
• The Song of the Box(Morning Chronicle,19 February 1838)
• Sketch of the First Act of a New Romantic Drama(Morning Chronicle,22 March 1838)
• Thoughts on Patrons, Puffs, and Other Matters(Bentley's Miscellany,1839)
• Alciphron,a Poem(1839)
• The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, collected by himself(10 vols) (1840–1841)
• Thoughts on Mischief(Morning Chronicle,2 May 1840)
• Religion and Trade(Morning Chronicle,1 June 1840)
• An Account of an Extraordinary Dream(Morning Chronicle,15 June 1840)
• The Retreat of the Scorpion(Morning Chronicle,16 July 1840)
• Musings, suggested by the Late Promotion of Mrs. Nethercoat(Morning Chronicle,27 August 1840)
• The Triumphs of Farce(1840)
• Latest Accounts from Olympus(1840)
• The poetical works of Thomas Moore, complete in three volumes,Paris,Baudry's European Library (1841)
• AThrenodyon the Approaching Demise ofOld Mother Corn-Law(Morning Chronicle,23 February 1842)
• Sayings and Doings of Ancient Nicholas(Morning Chronicle,7 April 1842)
• ''More Sayings and Doings of Ancient Nicholas(Morning Chronicle,12 May 1842)
• Prose and verse, humorous, satirical and sentimental, by Thomas Moore, with suppressed passages from the memoirs of Lord Byron, chiefly from the author's manuscript and all hitherto inedited and uncollected. With notes and introduction by Richard Herne Shepherd(London: Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, 1878).

Bibliography

• Benatti, Francesca, and Justin Tonra. "English Bards and Unknown Reviewers: A Stylometric Analysis of Thomas Moore and theChristabelReview ", in:Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies3 (2015).URL.
• Clifford, Brendan (ed.):Political and Historical Writings on Irish and British Affairs by Thomas Moore,(Belfast: Athol Books, 1993).
• Dowden, Wilfred S. (ed.):The Letters of Thomas Moore,2 vols, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
• Dowden, Wilfred S. (ed.):The Journal of Thomas Moore,6 vols, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983–91).
• Gunning, John P.:Moore. Poet and Patriot(Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son, 1900).
• Hunt, Una:Sources and Style in Moore's Irish Melodies(London: Routledge, 2017);ISBN978-1-4094-0561-0(hardback),ISBN978-1-315-44300-3(e-book).
• Jones, Howard Mumford:The Harp that Once: A Chronicle of the Life of Thomas Moore(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937).
• Kelly, Linda.Ireland's Minstrel: A Life of Tom Moore, Poet, Patriot and Byron's Friend(London: I.B. Tauris, 2006);ISBN978-1-84511252-3
• Kelly, Ronan:Bard of Erin. The Life of Thomas Moore(Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2008),ISBN978-1-84488-143-7.
• McCleave, Sarah / Caraher, Brian (eds):Thomas Moore and Romantic Inspiration. Poetry, Music, and Politics(New York: Routledge, 2018);ISBN978-1-138-28147-9(hardback),ISBN978-1-315-27113-2(e-book).
• Ní Chinnéide, Veronica: "The Sources of Moore's Melodies", in:Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland89 (1959) 2, pp. 109–54.
• Strong, L. A. G.:The Minstrel Boy. A Portrait of Tom Moore(London: Hodder & Stoughton, & New York: A. Knopf, 1937).
• Tonra, Justin: "Masks of Refinement: Pseudonym, Paratext, and Authorship in the Early Poetry of Thomas Moore", in:European Romantic Review25.5 (2014), pp. 551–73.doi:10.1080/10509585.2014.938231.
• Tonra, Justin: "Pagan Angels and a Moral Law: Byron and Moore's Blasphemous Publications", in:European Romantic Review28.6 (2017), pp. 789–811.doi:10.1080/10509585.2017.1388797.
• Tonra, Justin:Write My Name: Authorship in the Poetry of Thomas Moore(New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2020).doi:10.4324/9781003090960
• Vail, Jeffery W.:The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
• Vail, Jeffery W.: "Thomas Moore in Ireland and America: The Growth of a Poet's Mind", in:Romanticism10.1 (2004), pp. 41–62.
• Vail, Jeffery W.: "Thomas Moore: After the Battle", in: Julia M. Wright (ed.),The Blackwell Companion to Irish Literature,2 vols (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), vol. 1, pp. 310–25.
• Vail, Jeffery W. (ed.):The Unpublished Letters of Thomas Moore,2 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013),ISBN978-1-84893-074-2.
• Vail, Jeffery W.: "Thomas Moore", in: Gerald Dawe (ed.),The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 61–73.
• White, Harry:The Keeper's Recital. Music and Cultural History in Ireland 1770–1970(Cork: Cork University Press, 1998),ISBN1-85918-171-6.
• White, Terence de Vere:Tom Moore: The Irish Poet(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977).

External links

• Works by Thomas MooreatProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about Thomas MooreatInternet Archive
• Works by Thomas MooreatLibriVox(public domain audiobooks)
• "Introducing Project ERIN: Thomas Moore in Europe".Thomas Moore in Europe (QUB Blog).Queen's University Belfast.16 June 2017.ERIN documents two of Thomas Moore's song series – the Irish Melodies (1808–1834) and National Airs (1818–1827) – as well as music inspired by his 'oriental romance' Lalla Rookh (1817).
• Thomas Moore index entry at Poets' Corner
• Moore's Irish Melodies, arranged by C. V. Stanford
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913)."Thomas Moore".Catholic Encyclopedia.New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Thomas Moore melodiesby 'machinehay' onYouTube
• Free scores by Thomas Moorein theChoral Public Domain Library(ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Thomas Mooreat theInternational Music Score Library Project(IMSLP)
• Thomas Moore collection, 1813–1833(John J. Burns Library, Boston College)
• Bates, William (1883)."Thomas Moore".The Maclise Portrait-Gallery of "Illustrious Literary Characters".Illustrated byDaniel Maclise(1 ed.). London: Chatto and Windus. pp. 22–30 – viaWikisource.
• Thomas Moore recordingsat theDiscography of American Historical Recordings.