Moore had looked forward to some new exertion in his behalf of Lord Moira's influence, but circumstances disappointed his hopes. When the prince of Wales to whom "Anacreon" had been dedicated, became regent, and threw his whig friends overboard, Moore assailed his former patron with stinging satire. Soon afterwards Lord Moira was appointed governor-general of India, and "the avowed intimate of the regent," conjectures the Edinburgh reviewer of Moore's Memoirs (April, 1854), "owing this appointment to the personal will and protection of his royal master, was utterly incapacitated from extending his patronage to the notorious satirist of that master." The disappointment came just when marriage, entailing new responsibilities, made Moore more than ever anxious about his future. He could now look to literature alone as a support. He began by removing, in 1812, from the dissipations of London to the seclusion of what he himself describes as "a pretty little stone-built cottage, in the fields by itself, about a mile and a half from the very sweetly situated town of Ashbourne" in Derbyshire. Thence in 1813 he launched the "Twopenny Post-Bag, by Thomas Brown the Younger;" poetical satires on the prince regent, which were at once very popular, and which strengthened his hold on his friends of the circle at Holland house, to which he had been admitted before his departure from London. Through the Irish Melodies and his political satires, Moore's reputation as a master of song was now very high; and in 1815 the firm of Longman agreed to give him for an elaborate poetical work £3000, the highest price then known to have been given for a poem. The work was "Lalla Rookh;" it appeared in 1817, and with its brilliant success Moore's became one of the first names in English poetry. The triumph, however, was followed by a severe blow. A defalcation of his Bermuda deputy made him suddenly responsible for a sum of £6000, and in this crisis the independence which, with all Moore's love of high society, distinguished him, shone brightly forth. He declined the offered gifts of his aristocratic and wealthy friends, and resolved to meet the claim or the liabilities in which it involved him, by the industry of his pen. While debt hung over him, however, he for some time travelled and resided on the continent (visiting Byron at Venice); and among the results of his continental experiences, was the composition of "Rhymes on the Road," "Fables of the Holy Alliance," and that pleasantest of all his satires, "The Fudge Family in Paris." Soon after the publication of "Lalla Rookh," Moore had quitted Mayfield, to occupy Sloperton cottage, within a walk of the seat of his steady friend the present marquis of Lansdowne. On his return from the continent he settled at Sloperton, which was his usual residence until his death. His second long poem "The Loves of the Angels," not so successful as "Lalla Rookh," appeared in 1823, and after several years of labour, his "Life of Sheridan," in 1825, preceded in 1824 by the "Memoirs of Captain Rock," and followed in 1827 by his glittering and impressive prose romance, "The Epicurean." To the interval belongs the affair of the Byron memoirs; Lord Byron had presented Moore with his MS. memoirs for posthumous publication, a gift of considerable pecuniary value; and Moore made over the MS. to the late Mr. John Murray the publisher, for the sum of two thousand guineas. On the death of Lord Byron in 1824, the noble poet's family and friends, strongly opposed to the publication of the memoirs, succeeded in procuring their destruction. Moore reimbursed Mr. Murray the sum which had been advanced, and with honourable, but perhaps needless scrupulosity, refused to receive any compensation from the representatives of Byron or of his family. He was indirectly compensated, however, by an engagement to compose the biography of Lord Byron, which appeared in 1830, and in which, a difficult and delicate task was performed very gracefully and successfully.
The works which Moore produced after his "Life of Byron" were not of striking importance. They include his biography of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Irish Patriot, 1831; the "Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion," a plaidoyer for Catholicism; and the "History of Ireland," which he contributed to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, and on which he spent a great deal of trouble without any commensurate result, for history was a department foreign to his peculiar genius. The money which he had received for copyrights amounted, according to his own calculation, to £20,000; but this had been exhausted when, in 1835, he received from the whig ministry of Lord Melbourne a pension of £300 a year. His latest years were clouded by domestic calamity, and by enfeebled intellect. In 1841 he began, however, and superintended to its completion, a collective edition of his poetical works, enriched by interesting autobiographical reminiscences. He died on the 25th of February, 1852. As a provision for his faithful and affectionate wife, he left behind him, in the editorial care of his friend Lord John (now Earl) Russell, his diary and letters; selections from which were published by that nobleman in 1853-66. These amusing volumes reflect the sayings and doings of the high society with which Moore mixed, and will be prized by the Macaulays of future generations. Their contents have led hostile critics to reproach Moore with having neglected his home for the pleasures of London society. But, as Earl Russell has remarked, "those who imagine that he passed the greater part of his time in London are greatly in error The London days are minutely recorded; the Sloperton months are passed over in a few lines. Except when he went to Bowood or some other house in the neighbourhood, the words 'read and wrote' comprise the events of week after week of literary labour and domestic affection." As a man, when we consider his temptations, his difficult position, and the patronage which was showered upon him, Moore is certainly entitled to respect. He was the poet of an aristocratic party, caressed by its chiefs, and welcome in its salons; but he always retained a certain independence, and his career contrasts very favourably with that of another man of talents, his contemporary and somewhat similarly situated, the gifted Theodore Hook. As a poet, Moore will scarcely rank as high in the future as in his own time; yet, sparkling, sensuous, and tender, his verse will never want readers. Without the warmth and strength of the songs of Burns, his "Irish Melodies," despite their concetti, rank among the masterpieces of English song, and the friends of "justice to Ireland" must always regard him as their most successful Tyrtæus. "Moore," says the late Professor Spalding, in a brief but comprehensive criticism, "one of the most popular of our poets, will long be remembered for his songs, so melodious, so elegant in phrase, and wedding his graceful sentiments so skilfully with glittering pictures. His fund of imagery is inexhaustible, but his analogies are oftener ingenious than poetical. He might be described, if we were to adopt a distinction often made of late, as having fancy rather than imagination. His Eastern romances in 'Lalla Rookh,' with all their occasional felicities, are not powerful poetic narratives. Probably he is nowhere so successful as in his satirical effusions of comic rhyme; for in these his fanciful ideas are prompted by a wit so gaily sharp, and expressed with a pointedness and neatness so very unusual, that it is a pity these pieces should be condemned to speedy forgetfulness, as they must be by the temporary interest of their topics." Let us close with still another quotation, the affectionate verdict of Moore's noble friend, the editor of his memoirs, Earl Russell:—"Those," says the veteran leader of the whig party, "who have enjoyed the brilliancy of his wit, and heard the enchantments of his song, will never forget the charms of his society. The world, so long as it can be moved by sympathy and exalted by fancy, will not willingly let die the tender strains and the pathetic fires of a true poet."—F. E.
MOORSOM, Sir Robert, a British admiral, was born in 1760 at Whitby, and embarked in 1777 on board the Ardent, 64, commanded by Captain Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave. Removing with him to the Courageux, 74, he participated as midshipman, in the battle off Ushant, in the relief of Gibraltar, in the action of Cape Spartel, and in the capture by Admiral Kempenfelt of part of a convoy going to the West Indies with Admiral de Guichen. Attaining post-rank in 1790 he commanded, during the war of 1793, the Niger and Astræa frigates, and the Hindostan, 50; and during that of 1803 the Majestic, 74, and Revenge, 74. With the last named ship he fought at the battle of Trafalgar. In 1806 he became private secretary to Lord Mulgrave, first lord of the admiralty, and continued advancing in the civil service and in rank in the navy until 1830, when he became full admiral. He died in 1835.—R. H.
* MOQUIN-TANDON, Alfred, a French botanist of Montpellier, is distinguished for his researches into vegetable monstrosities, in the conducting of which he has traced important principles of development in the organs of plants. His works are—"Essai sur les dédoublemeus ou multiplicati ns d'organes dans les Vegetaux." published at Montpellier in 1826; "Chenopodearum monographica enumeratio," Paris, 1840; and
