Part 14

The friends and relatives among whom the melodist was brought up were, without exception, ardent in their Irish patriotism; and in 1792 he was carried by his father to one of the demonstrative gatherings held in welcome of the French Revolution, and was perched on the chairman’s knee. The excitement of the festive scene, and the hallucination of those who took part in it, may be judged from such toasts as that recorded by him as having been enthusiastically sent round: “May the breezes from France fan our Irish oak into verdure.” Surely, Donnybrook Fair must ever afterward have seemed tame to those who were present at such assemblies.

The young poet espoused these principles with warmth and sympathy; and having been entered at Trinity College in 1795, supported his opinions with a lively eloquence, which, as matters stood, might have caused danger. He passed through the academic course with much credit, was distinguished for his classical acquirements, took part in the debates of the Historical Society, and was much admired for the wit and playfulness he exhibited among his associates. Having brought his collegiate studies to a termination, taken the degree of bachelor of arts, and won the character of a most pleasant companion, he proceeded to London in 1799, and had the happiness of being enrolled as a student of law at the Middle Temple.

Meantime he had been prompt to seize every means of improvement, and his innate talent for music had been cultivated with assiduity and effect; he had gained no inconsiderable amount of classical learning; and he had acquired some knowledge of the French and Italian languages. In the middle of the year following his arrival in England, the translation of Anacreon’s Odes, with which he had been engaged for some time, was published by subscription. This work had been contemplated by the eager and aspiring boy even in his school days, and it now appeared, with a dedication to the Prince of Wales, to whom the poet had already been presented. Its reception was most flattering; public favor was bestowed in abundance, and it elicited this complimentary impromptu――

“Ah, mourn not for Anacreon dead! Ah, mourn not for Anacreon fled! The lyre still breathes he touched before, For we have one Anacreon Moore!”

The rhyming adventurer from the “Green Isle”――small in form but sprightly in mind――was introduced to fashionable circles, excited the curiosity and interest of royal personages, and charmed patrician assemblies with his vocal powers. He had, moreover, the distinction of dining twice at Carlton House with the Prince of Wales, and of being admitted to a grand _fête_ given by his royal highness on becoming regent. At a subsequent period he was one of the same exalted individual’s keenest assailants and sharpest satirists.

In 1803, Moore, through the influence of his friend Lord Moira, to whom he had been introduced by a Dublin Mæcenas, obtained an official appointment at Bermuda, and went thither to undertake the duties attached to it. The novelty of the situation might, for a brief season, lend it some slight charm and attraction; but after a year’s trial of the island he considered it intolerable, as might have been anticipated in the case of one who had revelled in all the joys of poetic celebrity, and whose delightful singing had been rewarded in glittering halls with the dazzling and fascinating smiles of aristocratic beauty. He therefore resolved on fulfilling its functions, in future, by deputy; and after a flying visit to America, returned to England.

Moore, soon after this brief absence from the world of wit and fashion, published his “Odes and Epistles,” suggested by this rambling excursion. In these poems, as in the volume given to the world under the assumed name of “Thomas Little,” the glowing and irresistible imagination of the bard led him to commit what were very generally regarded as nothing less than most objectional offenses against delicacy and decorum. Accordingly he was attacked in the “Edinburgh Review,” with, as he conceived, so much and undeserved severity, that he thought himself called on to challenge Jeffrey, as the responsible editor, to mortal combat. In consequence, the poet and critic met at Chalk Farm to enjoy the doubtful luxury of being fired at by each other; but, fortunately, the interference of lurking police-officers stopped the matter in time to prevent mischief, otherwise it is not improbable――so great was their awkwardness――that it might have resulted in involuntary suicide; at all events, the seconds seem to have been in a position of no slight peril. If any thing could have added to the absurdity of the affair, it would have been the report, which asserted that the pistols, on examination, were found to contain paper pellets, substituted in place of leaden bullets. This proved to have been erroneous; but the whole transaction exposed the actors to much tantalizing but well-merited ridicule. “A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind,” and the parties principally implicated formed a close and lasting friendship.

Having already essayed dramatic composition, in a piece entitled the “Gipsy Prince,” Moore, in 1811, made a second attempt in an opera, “M.P., or the Blue Stocking,” which was produced at the Lyceum theatre with partial success. He was infinitely more fortunate in a matrimonial adventure, made about the same period; after which he removed from the metropolis, and chose a residence in Dorsetshire. Then appeared the “Twopenny Post-bag,” a political effusion, in which several eminent persons, holding opinions at variance with those of the author’s patrons, were lashed with sparkling wit, sharp sarcasm, and humorous pleasantry: but he was not unoccupied with projects more worthy of his fine taste and beaming fancy. He now came forth with his “Irish Melodies,” which are replete with real feeling and true delicacy, and fully entitle him to be rewarded, as he desired, with the proud title of “the Poet of the Irish people.” They are the happiest emanations of his gay and fanciful muse. Among song-writers he is almost unrivaled. No matter what may be the theme――playful or pathetic, light or impassioned, his verse flows onward like a “shining river” with graceful fluency; and his cadences tell how exquisitely the ear was tuned to the expression of the sentiment, which had its origin in the mind. It is as the producer of lyrics for the ancient music of his country that he gave proof of his peculiar and felicitous combination of power, and achieved so wide a reputation. He poured out these verses with unexampled readiness and fertility. In some he appeared not only as poet, but musical composer also; and his delicious words and graceful music thrilled and captivated the public ear and heart. His popularity had now risen high, but it soon appeared that his name had not yet gathered all the fame which was to enrich it, when, in 1817, “Lalla Rookh” made its appearance. This Oriental romance, rich, brilliant, and gorgeous, was his most elaborate poem. It had been produced in frost and snow, yet his potent imagination had conjured before him the sunniest of Eastern scenes, with all their splendor and magnificence; and, what was a most important part of the business, the manuscript is said to have brought him three thousand guineas. When presented to the public, it was found to unite the purest and softest tenderness with poetic fervor and lofty dignity. Its effect was immediate and extensive; it was received with eager enthusiasm; and the readers showed their appreciation by committing large portions to memory. No doubt the English public were, at the time, athirst for verse; but even under such circumstances nothing but high merit, taste, fancy, feeling, and delicacy, could have ensured such rapturous approval, and wrought such enchantment as Moore’s poem, rich with imagery and ornament, now did, though on a subject by no means calculated to interest the bulk of the community.

His next work, “The Fudge Family in Paris,” saw the light in 1818, and was one of those brilliant trifles in which its author was considered to be altogether unrivaled in his day and generation. It arose from a passing visit made by the poet to the Continent, and ran through successive editions. He afterward reproduced the actors in “The Fudge Family in England;” but with a felicity and success utterly unequal to the original effort.

Moore had now, as a poet, achieved splendid triumphs, and excited immense admiration.

“Crowned with perennial flowers, By wit and genius wove, He wandered through the bowers Of fancy and of love;”

while, in social points of view, few men, similarly situated, were more courted by persons of rank and distinction. He had made comparatively few enemies, for his satirical shafts, sparkling with wit, were discharged with so much sportiveness, that they rarely created much venomous feeling. The kindness of the heart from which they emanated was naturally too great to admit of that being very frequently the case. He continued, though tried by vicissitudes of fortune, to retain all his amiable and domestic feelings in full vigor; his rural dwelling seems to have had greater attraction than the gay and glittering drawing-rooms, which he still now and then enlivened with the flashes of his graceful wit and refined genius. He was a man of the world as well as a poet and scholar, and he relished the taste of sparkling glasses of “liquid ruby,” as well as the sight of bright eyes and brilliant glances. He seems to have generally enjoyed himself with little restraint; and ministered to the amusement of others without compromising his personal dignity, or in any degree violating the independence of his spirit. His wit and cheerfulness, when exerted, were fascinating in the extreme, and he could at pleasure “set the table in a roar.” One day, at a dinner-party where he was, the absence of game having been lamented, one of the guests, struck with his fine display, remarked――

“Why, gentlemen, what better game could you wish than ‘Moore game?’ Surely you have that in abundance.”

In the circles he frequented it was his lot to become intimate with Lord Byron, to whom he had introduced himself by something resembling a challenge; and when, in 1819, he made that journey to the Continent which furnished him with matter for his “Rhymes on the Road,” Moore visited the great, but erring and unhappy, author of “Childe Harold,” then residing near Venice. It was then that the noble and long-descended bard confided to his charge the autobiography, which was ultimately consigned to the flames, after it had entailed on the Irish melodist infinite trouble, anxiety, and annoyance, and that shortly after the time when the conduct of the individual who acted as his deputy at Bermuda had driven him from England, and involved him in serious pecuniary difficulties and embarrassments. On leaving Italy, Moore betook himself to Paris, where he was treated with high honor and distinguished by a public dinner, which, as a mark of esteem and admiration, was particularly grateful to the heart and feelings of the accomplished exile. While there, he wrote the “Loves of the Angels,” containing passages of great beauty, passion, and tenderness, but considered inferior to the former effusions of his versatile muse. This may be accounted for by its publication having been hastened by the announcement of Lord Byron’s “Heaven and Earth,” understood to be founded on the same passage of Scripture――a very sufficient explanation of its holding a secondary place among its author’s productions. His latest work of imagination was the “Epicurean,” an Eastern tale in prose, and in a spirit of pure romance.

In 1825, Moore visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and was entertained with wonted hospitality by the mighty novelist, who did not fail to conduct his charming and interesting visitor to the Rhymer’s Glen, and all the spots renowned in Border history and tradition, which he was accustomed daily to haunt and draw inspiration from. Yet it may fairly be questioned whether the sunny heart and voluptuous imagination of the sentimental love-singer, which had luxuriated in all the gorgeousness of Oriental scenery, and in the meeting of “bright waters” in sweet and happy valleys, would be very deeply impressed while viewing the purple peaks of Eildon, or crossing the “Leader’s silver tide,” which were the pride and consolation of the “last minstrel’s” checkered existence.

In 1825, Moore appeared before the public in the character of a biographer, with the “Life of Sheridan,” which, though valuable and amusing, was not considered fully to establish his reputation in his new literary field. Indeed, it was the fashion of the day to say that Moore had murdered the marvelous and witty orator, whose skillfully-prepared and dexterously-delivered jokes had so often made the walls of St. Stephen shake and resound with laughter and merriment. “No!” exclaimed George IV., on hearing this grave charge; “but he has certainly attempted his life.” Lord Brougham says, that the frankness with which Moore gave the secret note-books of the famous wit to the world, must almost have made their author shake in his grave.

Four years later, Moore was again an aspirant to public favor, with “Notices of the Life of Lord Byron.” From the large space which the poetic peer had during life filled in the eye of the world, and the extraordinary reputation he had left behind him, this work was, and could hardly fail to be, extremely interesting. Much had been expected, however, on account of the close friendship that had existed, and the frank intercourse that had taken place, between the distinguished writer and the hero whose sayings and doings his pen aspired to immortalize. Moreover, the mystery attached to the autobiography that had been destroyed was not forgotten. The literary enterprise, when executed, was not deemed quite satisfactory; it was encompassed with perplexing and insuperable difficulties, and the book was necessarily the reverse of faultless. In fact, even if he had the inclination, it was almost impossible for him to comment with any degree of freedom or severity on the failings and follies of a man with whom he had been long on terms so intimate; even if the danger and delicacy of the arduous task had not been indefinitely increased by respect and consideration for the feelings of many persons then still living.

The notices of Byron’s life were followed by “Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,” whose career had attracted Moore’s ardent and most consecrated sympathies. The life of this ill-fated nobleman was written throughout with heart and feeling; and, perhaps, may be taken as the most favorable specimen of its author’s prose style. Besides, he had shown his prowess in political and religious controversy, in the “Life of Captain Rock,” as also in the “Travels of an Irish Gentleman;” and he contributed a history of Ireland to “Lardner’s Cyclopædia.” These emanations are characterized by much of the beauty of language, liveliness of remark, and tenderness of sentiment, displayed in his metrical writings, but without being received with similar tokens of approbation. The surpassing charms of his happy and exuberant verse, ever displaying a fancy rich, spirited, elegant, and impassioned, though not sublime, or always immortal, have been universally felt and confessed; the enchantment they produced for a time on the public mind and imagination, was beyond all dispute or question: but with his prose works it was widely different. Whatever their intrinsic merits, they have failed to rank in public interest or estimation with his poetic compositions.

Nevertheless, the nature of some of them, the subjects to which they related, and the principles they sought to maintain, support, and vindicate, were such, that the Irish patriots of the period conceived their author fairly entitled to share in the glories they were acquiring, and the laurels they were reaping in the British Parliament. This conclusion being arrived at, Moore was graciously requested to leave his quiet and peaceful abode in Wiltshire, and appear as a candidate for the representation of Limerick, in order that he might “pursue the triumph and partake the gale.” He was not, however, so ambitious of senatorial rank as to accept of an honor, which the peculiar circumstances under which it could have been conferred, and the conditions on which it would have been held, rendered, to say the least, equivocal in character.

Moore, by the favor of his political friends, enjoyed a pension from the crown during the latter years of his life; but they were darkened, and his beaming intellect clouded, by the domestic losses and calamities, which, at this period, he had to endure.

The once gay, vivacious, and captivating poet, died at his residence, Slopperton Cottage, near Devizes, on the 26th of February, 1852, and he was laid at rest in the green church-yard at Bonham.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

Three months previous to the date when the ashes of Sir Godfrey Kneller mingled with kindred dust, the first Englishman who, according to the eloquent eulogium of Burke, added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country, was cradled, with time-honored formalities, in a borough town of Devonshire.

Joshua Reynolds was the tenth of the numerous family with which his parents――a worthy and old-fashioned couple――were blessed. His father was a scholar and divine, known and valued in the province for the respectability of his learning, the innocence of his heart, and the simplicity of his mind. Besides, he is stated to have been of so singularly absent a tendency, that once, while performing a journey on horseback, he dropped one of his top-boots by the way, without perceiving the unusual and inconvenient loss he had met with. Doubtless when he arrived at home, this laughable and disastrous incident would furnish his fruitful dame, Theophila, with the text of a diffuse and impassioned curtain-lecture, and, perhaps, make the reverend personage considerably more careful when in future he escaped for a while from his toils and fatigues as head-master of the grammar-school of Plympton. There his distinguished son was born on the 16th of July, 1723; and there he was ere long inspired with the ambition of linking his name indestructibly with that glorious art of which he became so successful a cultivator.

The occasion of the high-fated infant’s presentation at the baptismal font was rendered memorable by a mistake so awkward and peculiar, as to furnish reasonable grounds for believing the mental characteristics of the elder Reynolds to have been then at work. In any case, the officiating clergyman was led by some process to pronounce the Christian name of Joseph instead of that by which the child then presented has since been known to the world, as well as registered in the records of fortune and the rolls of fame. On the education of young Reynolds much less attention was bestowed than might have been expected from the circumstances of his birth; and he did not profit to any large extent by such instruction as he received. He did not obtain any great stock of classical knowledge; but his deficiency in this important respect, though never supplied, was, in after days, countervailed and thrown into the background by the information which he had acquired in untiring study of Nature and perseverance in Art, in that commerce with the most refined portion of the British public, of which, for many long years, he had the advantage, and in the constant and familiar intercourse which, during prosperous manhood, he maintained with men of genius, intellect, and erudition. But, however little inclined to pore over Latin and Greek books, his heart was, without loss of time, turned toward an accomplishment which he afterward found of infinitely greater value. Almost in infancy he began to show signs of his vocation for the pursuit which made him one of the most remarkable men, and the greatest painter, of his age; and his first effort was the copying of some drawings made by his sisters. He was then in early boyhood, and he next applied the artistic skill he possessed to the imitation of such prints as illustrated the volumes in his father’s library; particularly those in an old Book of Emblems, which was inherited, along with her Dutch blood, from a grandmother, who had come from Holland. The clerical pedagogue did not smile on these juvenile attempts, nor did he look with a propitious eye on the direction his son’s talents were taking. However absent scholars may be in regard to other matters, especially those which chiefly concern themselves, they are usually observant enough when the welfare and interests of their children are at stake. Even Adam Warner awoke from day-dreams about the Eureka when he saw the lordly chamberlain whispering soft tales in the ear of his beauteous daughter; and Parson Reynolds, though so much occupied with sage reflections that he could only find time to indicate to his wife by monosyllables whether he would have tea or coffee on an afternoon, opened his eyes to the fact, that Joshua’s industry in drawing and coloring, with the rude materials within his reach, contrasted disagreeably with his remissness in attending to the lessons of the school over which he presided. Thus he denounced the boyish essays as the offspring of pure idleness, and the author of them was destined for the medical profession. Though, perhaps, this was decided on with little consideration for his own wishes, Reynolds stated in after life, that if such had been his fortune, he would have exerted himself as strenuously to become an eminent physician as he strove with success to be a great painter. However, the paternal views were suddenly and fortunately changed.

Having, about his eighth year, met with the “Jesuit’s Perspective,” young Reynolds read and digested its contents with so much earnestness, that he was enabled to execute a drawing of the school-house on the principles asserted in the treatise. This, when exhibited in the family circle, quite astonished the anxious father, who, with gratified pride, pronounced the execution wonderful; and he began to regard the juvenile artist’s predilections with comparative complacency. Upon this, Reynolds devoted himself more arduously to his chosen studies, took likenesses of the inmates of the house, improved perceptibly in execution, and quite neglected his school exercises. He was confirmed in his love of art by reading Richardson’s “Treatise on Painting,” which so captivated and inspired his mind and imagination, that Raphael seemed to him the most marvelous name in ancient or modern annals. Thus charmed and stimulated, he continued to make numerous sketches and portraits, which were recognized by his friends as evidencing progressive improvement. Nothing was now wanting but a field in which to practice and bring to perfection the talents with which he had been bountifully endowed, to confer pleasure on his fellow men, and to refine their tastes.