Thomas Moore Part 5

Nothing could be more honourable to both men than such an offer, and Moore long afterwards referred to it in his Memoir with deep feeling. It was only one of a shoal of similar tributes. Leigh Hunt, then editor of the _Examiner_, wrote to Perry of the _Chronicle_ to urge the opening of a public subscription. Rogers pressed 500 of his own on Moore, as a beginning towards some such fund: Lord Lansdowne offered security for the whole; Lord John Russell proposed to set aside all future profits from his _Life of Lord Russell_, just published, and forwarded inquiries from his brother Lord Tavistock as to whether anything was doing to save Moore from imprisonment. "I am very poor," Lord Tavistock wrote, "but I have always had such a strong admiration for Moore's independence of mind that I would willingly sacrifice something to be of use to him."

Moore recorded all this with legitimate pride, in his diary, but continued steadfast in his determination to rely on no one but his publishers; and the Longmans expressed the fullest readiness to advance in the way of business any reasonable sum, to which he might, by compromise, reduce the claims on him.

Nothing could more strongly indicate the general respect in which Moore was held than this practical testimony. It is necessary to emphasise that Moore impressed those in contact with him by no quality so much as by his high-mindedness. Old Dr. Parr expressed the feeling of many, when he left by his will a ring to Thomas Moore, "who stands high in my estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his independent spirit and incorruptible integrity." Men who saw how Moore lived felt no doubt the greatness of the temptations to which he was exposed. Private liberality was pressed upon him repeatedly; and if his pride revolted from that, he had more than a common chance of public rewards. Those anxious to serve the poet were by no means only of one political colour; no man had more apt.i.tude to conciliate, or stronger motives for doing so. Early in his married life, at a time when his professed patron, Lord Moira, took office under a government opposed to the Catholic cause, which he, like Moore, had always supported, the poet might easily have waived something of his scruples; and Miss G.o.dfrey insisted upon the reasons for his doing so, in language which would probably have been endorsed by most of his Whig friends.

"As to your political opinions, it was very fine to indulge in them and act up to them while there was a distant perspective in so doing of fame or emolument, and at the same time a feeling that the triumph of such opinions, and the success of the party you belonged to, might be conducive to the prosperity of your country. But now, when those opinions have less and less influence, and that party less and less consideration--when your family is increasing and your wants, of course, increasing with it--don't you think prudence should have its turn? Would not your love for your wife and anxiety for the welfare of your children reconcile you to some little sacrifice of political opinions?"

The same line of argument was used to Moore at many junctures in his life and he always had the same answer. "More mean things," he told Rogers, "have been done in this world under the shelter of wife and children than under any pretext that worldly-mindedness can resort to."

The fact that the argument was so often used indicates that he lived always in the range of temptation; and many would blame him because he never had the inclination to sever himself from the connections which made it almost impossible for him to live frugally. Yet, apart from the argument that he helped the popularity of his music by singing his songs as no one else could sing them, it is clear that for much of his work--for all the satirical side of it--close touch with society was essential. Hardly less essential was it for the work of which his _Sheridan_ was only the first instalment--his contribution to the literature of memoirs. On the other hand, it is clear that as the satirist, the observer, the historian, and the politician strengthened in him, they crowded out the poet. Life near Bowood meant life in contact with the leading politicians and thinkers of the day: Sloperton was very different from the seclusion of Mayfield. The question naturally arises, whether Moore, by encouraging his interest in contemporary events, and, generally speaking, in the prose side of life, stifled a higher gift, or whether he simply obeyed a sound and healthy impulse. The answer cannot be given without some detailed consideration of the work by which he took rank in his own generation--his equivalent for Scott's lays and Byron's romances.

Like them, Moore relied upon the charm of an exciting narrative, laid in unfamiliar scenes, and furnished with highly-coloured descriptive pa.s.sages. But, whereas Scott wrote of the Border where he had been bred, and Byron of the East where he had travelled in days when the traveller was obliged to become a real part of every scene in which he moved, Moore laid his stories in a country known to him only through books, and he derived them from a literature remote and alien from all European sympathies. The natural consequence is that, whereas Scott's and Byron's descriptions savour of actual experience, Moore's reek of the lamp; and, with astonishing lack of judgment, he spoilt whatever illusion might exist, by the constant interposition of footnotes to explain the fragments of Eastern custom, tradition, or natural history, which he had laboriously wrought in. Nothing could more strongly stamp the artificial character of the whole. The truth, which Moore unhappily did not realise, is that poetry should be made, not out of things new but of things old; out of the familiar, not the unfamiliar. His research for novelty of subject was fatal to him; the attractions which he sought to give his work are those which poetry in the true sense must dispense with. Scott handled material wrought over a hundred times in Border ballads. Byron indeed made poetry from the novel, the strange, the obviously picturesque. But what keeps Byron's poetry alive is the element of personal emotion which Byron contributed to the subject. In so far as anything survives of _Lalla Rookh_, the same is true of Moore.

The introductory pages prefixed to _Lalla Rookh_ in the 1841 edition of Moore's poems bear out this view. Moore relates his difficulties--his many attempts, begun and thrown aside. In one of these rejected stories, and only one, he writes, "had I yet ventured to involve that most homefelt of all my inspirations which has lent to the story of 'The Fire Worshippers' its main attraction and interest"--that half-veiled reference to Irish history and Irish aspirations, of which mention has already been made. Moore shrewdly observes that the absence of this sort of feeling in the other preliminary sketches--

"was the reason doubtless, though hardly known at the time to myself, that, finding my subjects so slow in touching my sympathies, I began to despair of their ever touching the hearts of others.... But at last--fortunately, as it proved--the thought occurred to me of founding a story on the fierce struggle so long maintained between the Ghebers, or ancient Fire Worshippers of Persia, and their haughty Moslem masters. From that moment a new and deep interest in my whole task took possession of me. The cause of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and the spirit that had spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at home in the East."

It found itself about as much at home, I should say, as is the ordinary European in oriental costume at a masked ball. To wear Eastern clothes like an Eastern is possible, for one who has a.s.similated the Eastern way of life; otherwise, incongruities reveal themselves with every gesture.

Byron, happier than Moore in his choice, wrote of an East that touches the West, of the clash between Frank and Moslem.

Worse still, Moore was an amatory poet, he had made successes by writing about love; and accordingly, he determined to rely in his poems--as Scott, wiser than he, had not done--on the love interest. He misunderstood his own temperament. Love poetry of the serious order demands pa.s.sion, and Moore is the poet of dalliance, not of pa.s.sion. The pa.s.sion--if it can be called a pa.s.sion--of pity, the pa.s.sion of political enthusiasm, he had; but the violence of exclusive desire, whether lasting or temporary, which Byron so often rendered, was a chord outside of Moore's range.

The poets of Moore's own day, who knew and liked Moore, never cared for _Lalla_; and Leigh Hunt, an excellent critic, spoke the truth about it.

Condemning the poem gently as "too florid in its general style," though allowing to it exquisite pa.s.sages, he goes on:--

"You are so truly, by birth, a poetical animal, out of the pale of book-a.s.sociations and a free inhabitant of the most Elysian parts of nature, that the more you resolved to speak and to feel out of the sincerity of your own impulses, without thinking it necessary to search for ideas, the more to your advantage I am persuaded it would be. You are a born poet and have only to claim your inheritance--not to be heaping up a mult.i.tude of anxious proofs which, though mistaken by some for ostentation, are in reality evidences of a diffidence of pretension which you ought not to feel."

No man could give better advice. Moore had written narrative poetry, one may safely say, because the fashion of the day was for narrative. He had caught at Rogers's suggestion of poetry on an Eastern theme, which was to give him a new field. As he worked on, he felt his theme alien, and tried to make himself at home in it by taking into the subject what really belonged to another atmosphere; and further, he decided that "he must try to make up for his deficiencies in _dash_ and vigour by versatility and polish." Not in this way is poetry written; the poet who tries to accommodate himself to the taste of the public is destroying his art.

Moore had earned his fame by writings, amatory, political, and satirical, which it came natural to him to produce, because he was "a poetical animal"; _Lalla Rookh_ was, in great measure, work done against the grain, and relying for its success on the secondary qualities of elaborate finish, profusion of ornament, and variety of interest. These qualities, however, were present in no common degree, and the poem's success is not to be wondered at. The dose of novelty in style was just sufficient to attract, without offending by its revolt against "the Popish sing-song." It was indeed so perfectly in the fashion of its time, as to be inevitably demoded after a lapse of years. The florid loops and curves of the Regency period in decorative art have their equivalent in Moore's profuse and lengthily elaborated metaphors.

Certain features of the work must be unreservedly condemned. The prose narrative in which the four poems are set is deplorable--sprightly beyond endurance; and in the _Veiled Prophet_ Moore tears one pa.s.sion after another to tatters in bursts of sheer rhetoric. Yet even here good lines are plenty, though they are all in metaphors, or some other excrescence; for instance--

"Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan The flying throne of star-taught Soliman."

In _Paradise and the Peri_ we have a production more within the poet's range. A prettier example of an _Arabian Nights Tale_, done into springing, easy verse, it would be difficult to find. The idea, neat and graceful, could have been treated within the compa.s.s of a song, which should tell how the exiled Peri was promised admittance if she brought "the gift that is most dear to Heaven"; how she tried first the patriot hero's life-blood--(shed in vain); then the last sigh of the maiden who chose to share the death of her true love; and, last of all, how she won home with the tear of repentance from a Byronic sinner. All through the poem there is the suggestion of singing, and, as Scott said, "Moore beats us all at a song."

From "The Fire Worshippers" I have quoted already the best pa.s.sages, those which express most fully the germinal idea. One may add an energetic denunciation, which had its full application, for instance, to Leonard McNally, Emmet's advocate, who defended most of the Irish political prisoners during a long period of time, and regularly sold the secrets of his defence to the Government.

"Oh, for a tongue to curse the slave, Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!

May life's unblessed cup for him Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim,-- With hopes, that but allure to fly, With joys, that vanish while he sips, Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips!

His country's curse, his children's shame, Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame, May he, at last, with lips of flame, On the parch'd desert thirsting die,-- While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh, Are fading off, untouch'd, untasted, Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!

And, when from earth his spirit flies, Just Prophet, let the d.a.m.n'd-one dwell Full in the sight of Paradise, Beholding heaven, and feeling h.e.l.l!"

Last of all, and most lavishly decorated, is the story of the Feast of Roses at Cashmere. The opening pa.s.sage is a good example of Moore's high-wrought effort after Eastern local colour:--

"Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave, Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?

"Oh I to see it at sunset,--when warm o'er the Lake Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws, Like a bride, full of blushes, when ling'ring to take A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes!-- When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half-shown, And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own.

Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells, Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging, And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.

Or to see it by moonlight,--when mellowly shines The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines; When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars, And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet From the cool, shining walks where the young people meet.-- Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes A new wonder each minute, as slowly it breaks, Hills, cupolas, fountains, call'd forth every one Out of darkness, as they were just horn of the sun, When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day, From his harem of night-flowers stealing away; And the wind, full of wantonness, wooes like a lover The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over.

When the East is as warm as the light of first hopes, And Day, with his banner of radiance unfurl'd, Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes, Sublime, from that Valley of bliss to the world!"

But one finds a more real example of Moore's poetry in this quatrain:--

"There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright, Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer day's light, Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender, Till Love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour."

If one compares pa.s.sages like these with, for instance, Cowper's anapaests, even in so beautiful a poem as "The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade," it will be seen that Moore helped on the extraordinary advance in poetical technique which marks the years from 1795 to the rise of Tennyson. Moore's sense of style is always faulty--witness the very next couplet:--

"This was not the beauty--_oh, nothing like this!_ That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss."

But he had a fine ear for metre, and in this poem he displayed all his resources, changing the rhythm half-a-dozen times, with interpolating bursts of song.

When, in addition, we remember that the most indolent reader could never for an instant mistake his meaning--that the volume of thought was always light as compared with the faculty of expression--that every harshness was carefully smoothed away, and condensation always sacrificed to limpidity--it is not hard to understand the poem's popularity. Yet, when all has been said, the last word is that _Lalla Rookh_ is a work of very secondary merit, and retains its place in literature mainly as an example of an extinct taste. Twenty years after it was written, Moore knew this, and told Longman that, "in a race to future times (if any thing of mine could pretend to such a run), those little ponies, the _Melodies_, will beat the mare _Lalla_ hollow." And indeed, if it were not for the _Melodies_, n.o.body would now give an eye to their stable companion.

[1] Parkinson.

[2] Alluding to Rogers's poem "Italy."

CHAPTER IV

PERIOD OF RESIDENCE ABROAD

Moore's residence on the Continent lasted three and a half years, and it formed an interlude in his life, interrupting what was otherwise a very continuous texture. The period was one of relative idleness, yet by no means of rest; and although whatever he produced during it was in verse, its close found the transition accomplished, from poet to man of letters.

The interlude opened with a real holiday, which was in truth amply deserved. After a fortnight's stay in Paris, spent in seeing theatres, sights, and a deal of company, Lord John Russell and his travelling companion posted off through France to Geneva; explored the a.s.sociations of Ferney under the guidance of Dumont, the translator of Bentham, and sometime tutor to Lord Lansdowne; and then set out for the Alps. The pa.s.sage over the Simplon, and the sight of the Jungfrau with the sunset-flush on its snows, so wrought upon Moore's emotions that he shed tears. At Milan the travellers parted company, Lord John proceeding to Genoa, while Moore's destinations were Venice and Rome. Travelling alone, in the "crazy little caleche" which he had been advised to buy, was no joy, and he gladly reached La Mira, Byron's country house, two hours' drive from Padua. The friends met for the first time after a separation of five years, and Moore's note of the occurrence is curiously lacking in warmth. The Byron whom he had known and liked so well was a different person from the Byron of Italy. Much had happened in the interval, and with a great deal of Byron's later, and maturer, work, Moore was very imperfectly in sympathy. Nor did the Countess Guiccioli much impress him. Byron, who had put his Venetian palace at Moore's disposal, commended him to his friend Scott, who showed the traveller round the place. A day or two later Byron came to Venice, and there was much intimate talk between the two men. On the 11th of October, Moore paid a farewell visit to La Mira and the Countess; and before the poets parted, a notable thing happened. Lord Byron handed to Moore the Memoirs of himself, of which Moore had heard for the first time a few days earlier.

From Padua to Ferrara and so to Florence we trace in the Diary rather a homesick gentleman, who begins to affect the virtuoso a little, and at the time to collect notes for an epistle on the cant of connoisseurs. In Florence he found some acquaintances, and they were in shoals before him at Rome, where he arrived in the end of October. During the three weeks of his stay here, Chantrey the sculptor and Jackson the painter--to the latter of whom Moore at this time sat--were his princ.i.p.al a.s.sociates, and he left Rome in their company. His impressions of Italy savour a little too much of second-hand ideas to be of interest. Moore had, evidently enough, no education in art and yet was so susceptible to surrounding influences that his talk was all of pictures, statuary, buildings and so forth. His judgments on the music which he heard are in strong contrast, brief and confident--the utterance of a genuine taste.

But the friendship formed with Chantrey seems to have been sympathetic and lasting, based on a common interest in human character.

On December 11th Moore arrived in Paris, and 'went as soon as I could with a beating heart to enquire for letters from home.' There were none of recent date, for the beloved Tom was ill, and Bessy would not write till the crisis was over; moreover, the Longmans wrote that nothing had as yet been settled in the Bermuda business, so that a return to England was impossible. "This is a sad disappointment," Moore writes,--"my dear cottage and my books. I must, however, lose no time in determining upon bringing Bessy and her little ones over; and wherever they are, will be home, and a happy one, to me."

Meanwhile, he took "an entresol in the Rue Chantereine at 250 fr. a month," and saw a deal of society, English and French, with potentates in plenty. But it did not console him. "I have no one here that I care one pin for, and begin to feel, for the first time, like a banished man," he wrote to Rogers; and a Christmas day apart from his family only deepened his gloom. But on January 1st, 1820, Bessy and her young ones landed safely in Paris, and things began to brighten singularly. "My dear tidy girl," Moore writes, "notwithstanding her fatigue, set about settling and managing everything immediately." Chief of the things settled was a resolution not to go into society, "which was tolerably adhered to for some time";--Moore meanwhile working at his "Fudge Family in Italy," a first draft of the poetical impressions which he published ultimately as _Rhymes on the Road_. After about a month, a successful move was made to "a very pretty cottage in the Allee des Veuves," somewhere in the Champs elysees--"as rural and secluded a workshop as I have ever had," says Moore.

Gradually, however, virtue evaporated. The poet was beset with invitations, and, moreover, he owns to a sense of depression before the task of writing, "when the attention of all the reading world is absorbed by two writers, Scott and Byron." He had also a consciousness that his poetical essays in and upon connoisseurship were not the right thing; and finally, in June, after the whole had been set up by a French printer, it was decided to suppress the publication; Sir James Mackintosh having advised the Longmans, that the incidental satire on Castlereagh and other leading members of the Government would be injurious to Moore's interest, at a time when it might be possible to induce Government to drop its share of the claims against him; and Moore himself being influenced by the wish to publish nothing new till he had something of importance to produce.

In July the kindness of friends, M. Villamil, a Spanish gentleman, and his wife, enabled the Moores to move for the summer into pleasant quarters--a little _pavillion_ in the grounds of the Villamils' house near Sevres. Here the poet, still in pursuit of an important subject, returned to an idea which first germinated in his mind after the completion of _Lalla_--the story of a Greek who goes to Egypt in search of some philosophic secret, and during a celebration of the Egyptian priestly mysteries becomes enamoured of a young girl. She proves to be a Christian, and the hero is thus introduced to the secret communion. It is of course the basis of Moore's prose romance, _The Epicurean_, but his collected works contain a considerable fragment of _Alciphron_, his first sketch of it in verse, which dates from this time. Studies for the work brought him into touch with French savants, and the more Moore read upon the subject, the less he appears to have written. But the research drew him to Paris and away from his quarters in the "pavilion"; and when, in October, the household returned to its home in the Allee des Veuves, and Moore and his wife dined at home with the little ones for the first time since the beginning of July, "Bessy said in going to bed, 'This is the first rational day we have had for a long time.'"

Lord John Russell notes penitently on this pa.s.sage, that he regrets his part in persuading Moore to prefer France to Holyrood, for "his universal popularity was his chief enemy." At no time did Moore suffer so much from being lionised, for his home was in easy reach of Paris, and in Paris French and English alike pursued this celebrity. _Lalla Rookh_ was then at the height of its fame; was in the East being translated into Persian, and in the West transformed into a kind of masque which a troupe of royal amateurs presented at Berlin: and Lalla's poet was naturally much courted. Further, in the close of the year, there came a missive from Byron which was a fatal encouragement to idleness and outlay. He forwarded the continuation of the Memoirs, with the suggestion that Moore should sell the reversion of the MS. The suggestion was acted on after a while, and Murray consented to advance the large sum of 2000 guineas. Meanwhile engagements acc.u.mulated, and Moore began to lose health as well as time. He went into the world more and more as a bachelor, Bessy, as always, falling into the background when expenses grew high; though, at first, in Paris he and she went about a good deal together. Nevertheless, he wrote with all sincerity on March 25th, 1821:--

"This day ten years we were married, and though Time has made his usual changes in us both, we are still more like lovers than any married couple of the same standing I am acquainted with."

In the autumn, it was decided that Moore should come to England _sub rosa_, and try to compromise the Bermuda claims with a lump sum out of Murray's advance. He was met with dissuasion by his friendly publishers the Longmans, and it transpired finally that Lord Lansdowne had left 1000 with them to attempt a similar settlement. The kindness gratified Moore's best qualities, as well as his mild vanity, and though he declined to profit by it, he was greatly uplifted. From London he crossed to Dublin to see his parents after three years' separation--but the separation had made no breach, for Moore wrote twice every week to his mother. The visit was a short one, and he had some fears for his safety from arrest, as he had been widely recognised in Dublin. But on his return to town the publishers met him with joyful news. The chief claim had been settled for 1000, and he was free to "walk boldly out into the sunshine," and show himself up Bond Street and St. James's. Of this 1000, three hundred were extorted from Mr. Sheddon, uncle and recommender of the defaulting deputy; the rest was settled (as a compliment) out of Lord Lansdowne's money, but a draft on Murray was immediately sent him to repay the loan.

For the present, however, Moore lacked the means to move back to England, and he remained in Paris, where, in the summer of 1822, he at last settled down to a serious piece of work--his _Loves of the Angels_--"a subject," he says, "on which I long ago wrote a prose story and have ever since meditated a verse one." The work went quickly, a thousand lines were completed within two months; and in November, when the poet's friends in Paris mustered to give him a farewell dinner, allusion was made to the new poem as all but ready to appear. It was actually out before Christmas. By that time Moore was back and comfortably established at Sloperton (an intervening tenant having died seasonably), and here he found his study enlarged, his family well, and himself "most happy to be at home again." "Oh, quid solutis!"--he exclaims, recalling the lines of Horace which tell of the joy it is to shake off a load of care, and to rest after labours in a foreign land.