[1]"Death, the immortalising winter, flewAthwart the stream—and time's printless torrent grewA scroll of crystal, blazoning the nameOf Adonais"—Fragment on Keats: Shelley.
[1]"Death, the immortalising winter, flewAthwart the stream—and time's printless torrent grewA scroll of crystal, blazoning the nameOf Adonais"—Fragment on Keats: Shelley.
[2]Note the melodiousness of the Fairy Song:"Shed no tear! O shed no tear!The flower will bloom another year.Weep no more! O weep no more!Young buds sleep in the root's white core," &c.
[2]Note the melodiousness of the Fairy Song:
"Shed no tear! O shed no tear!The flower will bloom another year.Weep no more! O weep no more!Young buds sleep in the root's white core," &c.
[3]Shelley:Adonais
[3]Shelley:Adonais
In November 1825 Sir Walter Scott writes in his diary: "I saw Moore ... There is a manly frankness and perfect ease and good breeding about him which is delightful. Not the least touch of the poet or the pedant ... His countenance is decidedly plain, but the expression is so very animated, especially in speaking or singing, that it is far more interesting than the finest features could have rendered it. I was aware that Byron had often spoken, both in private society and his Journal, of Moore and myself in the same breath, and with the same sort of regard; so I was curious to see what there could be in common betwixt us, Moore having lived so much in the gay world, I in the country and with people of business, and sometimes with politicians; Moore a scholar, I none; he a musician and artist, I without knowledge of a note; he a democrat, I an aristocrat—with many other points of difference; besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both tolerably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a strong one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as lions; and we have both seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses in the air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met in an alehouse, and who called himself 'thegreatTwalmley—inventor of the floodgate iron for smoothing linen.' ... It would be a delightful addition to life if T. M. had a cottage within two miles of one.—We went to the theatre together, and the house, being luckily a good one, received T. M. with rapture. I could have hugged them, for it paid back the debt of the kind reception I met with in Ireland."
In these cordial words the great Scottish author compares himself with the Irish national poet. The resemblance between their position, as recognised and highly esteemed organs of the two dependent countries united to England, makes the difference between them the more clearly perceptible. There is, first of all, the dissimilarity produced by the dissimilar relations of Scotland and Ireland to the dominant race. Scotland's position was a subordinate one, but it was legally established, and the country sent representatives to Parliament. The Irish, on the other hand, divided by a much more marked difference of race, and, as regarded the majority, of religion, from their English masters, had been for six centuries under the rule of a Government in which they had no more share than have the Hindoos or the Cingalese in theirs. The Protestant Irish Parliament existed in its day in Ireland like a hostile garrison in a conquered country. It was a body of absolute rulers, governing and oppressing in the name of a foreign power; any attempt at opposition on the part of its members was at once put a stop to either by bribery or force. The Irish Protestant was not in reality in a better position than his Catholic fellow-countryman; he could purchase the favour of his masters only by sacrificing the interests of his country, and enjoyed only the one pitiful privilege of being at the same time vassal and master.
It has been a fortunate thing for the English people that their faults as well as their virtues have ensured them success in the struggle for political independence and power; their egoism and their pride have been of almost as much service to them as their sober sagacity and their energy. The Irish, on the other hand, seem, like the Poles, to be condemned both by their virtues and their vices to political subordination. Even making allowance for the fact that the character of the conquered race is invariably maligned in the descriptions of it given by the conqueror, it must be granted that the sprightliness, ardour, and charm of the Irish, their turbulent bravery, their fitful chivalry, their independent and, under certain conditions, rebellious tendencies, co-existing with a love of the pomp and splendour of royalty, form a bad foundation for a tranquil and independent existence as a state. The virtues of the Irish are not the modern, civic virtues, but those of an earlier age—their piety verges on the blindest superstition; their fidelity consists, like that of their Breton brothers, in a kind of vassal-fealty to the old nobility of the country, and their splendid bravery is of an undisciplined, impetuous nature. Long-continued oppression has, moreover, set its imprint on their souls. They lack self-confidence, and have a tendency to dissimulation and to indolence; they are too reckless of danger and too easily intimidated when brought face to face with it; they cannot, when liberty is granted them for a short time, make a good use of it, this being an art which can only be learned by long practice.
There are inexperienced races just as there are inexperienced individuals. One side of the Irish character has a strong resemblance to the French (and the Irish have always had a warm sympathy for the French), another reminds us of the Polish character, and there is a third which is almost Oriental. In a poem entitled "The Parallel" (one of theIrish Melodies), which Moore composed in answer to an anti-Irish pamphlet written to prove that the Irish were originally Jews, he compares the fate of the two nations:—
"Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken,And fall'n from her head is the once royal crown;In her streets, in her halls, desolation hath spoken,And 'while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down.'"
And there undoubtedly is an Oriental quality in the race. Byron, writing of Moore, says that the wildness, tenderness, and originality of the Irish—the magnificent and fiery spirit of the men, the beauty and feeling of the women, are the best proofs of the Oriental descent which they claim. A race with such a character necessarily fell an easy prey to a determined, cruel English despotism.
THOMAS MOORE
THOMAS MOORE
A hasty glance at the history of Ireland during Thomas Moore's youth will help us to understand how this man with the gentle nature and the sweet lyric gift was the first to rouse English poetry from its engrossed preoccupation with nature, to impress it into the service of liberty, and to give the start to political poetry.
Moore was born in May 1779. The years of his early youth were the period of the revolting events now to be related. From the time when the English Government showed, by the appointment of Lord Camden as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1795), that it had abandoned the humaner policy of 1782, the Society of United Irishmen, a powerful political organisation, which had hitherto aimed at the emancipation of the country by lawful means, completely changed its character. The separation of Ireland from England became its aim; it had dreams of the establishment of an Irish Republic. But there were two powerful elements of dissension in the country itself, namely, the existence of two races, hostile to each other, and the strong animosity in the lower classes between Protestants and Catholics. To put an end to the disturbances and riots which were constantly resulting from these internal dissensions, the Government formed a force of Protestant constabulary, 37,000 strong. These troops were permitted, under the pretence of searching for concealed weapons, to capture, torture, and put to death any unfortunate person whom an enemy, or any ruffian whatever, chose to accuse of suspicious behaviour. Hundreds of unoffending people, who were guilty of no other offence than professing the creed of their fathers, were flogged until they were insensible, or made to stand upon one foot on a pointed stake, or were half hanged, or had the scalp torn from their heads by a pitched cap. Militia and yeomanry, as well as the regular troops, were billeted in private houses; and this billet appears to have been construed as an unlimited license for robbery, devastation, ravishment, and, in case of resistance, murder. It was boasted by officers of rank that within certain large districts no home had been left undefiled; and upon its being remarked that the sex must have been very complying, the reply was that "the bayonet removed all squeamishness."[1]
It was not surprising that the despair induced by such proceedings drove numbers of the most peaceable and sensible Irishmen into the arms of a secret society, which sent Lord Edward Fitzgerald (whose biography Moore wrote with such warm admiration) as its deputy to France, to arrange with General Hoche for the landing of a French army in Ireland at the time appointed for a general rising of the Irish rebels. Grattan, the old, passionless leader of the national party, refused to countenance foreign interference, and retired from public life in despair over the latest plans both of the rulers and the oppressed. The Irish patriots elected a governing body, a species of Directoire, which was negotiating with France for the loan of money and troops, when all its plans were discomfited by the treason of a single Catholic Irishman. His name, which deserves to be remembered, was Reynolds. Moore undoubtedly had this man in his mind when he wrote the description, inThe Fire-worshippers, of the base betrayal of the rebel chief to the Mohammedans.[2]
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was in bed when the soldiers forced their way into the house where he lay hidden. A reward of £1000 had been offered for his head. Although undressed, and with no weapon but a sword, he defended himself for a long time against three fully armed English officers, of whom one received three and another fourteen wounds; the third disarmed him with a pistol-shot, and he was taken to prison. Fitzgerald was acquainted with the most distinguished of the French revolutionists; he was a friend of Thomas Paine; and his wife was a charming daughter of Philippe Egalité. He carried on a steady correspondence with France; and had he not died in prison, he would have been executed. It speaks well for Moore's courage and independent judgment, that, though he belonged to a circle in which Fitzgerald was regarded as a traitorous madman, he paid him all the honour due to his heroism.
The rebels having thus lost their leader, the prospect of a general rising was at an end; but the Government took the opportunity to treat persons suspected of sedition with a cruelty bordering on frenzy. Martial law was proclaimed, and those employed to administer it are described by English historians as "a set of ignorant, bloodthirsty ruffians, who first, by torture and promises of pardon, converted Catholic prisoners into witnesses against the accused, and then treated them in the most shameful manner." The first notable man who fell a victim to this species of justice was a peaceable member of the party which desired reform by lawful means, Sir Edward Crosbie. He was hanged, and his body mutilated afterwards. It was not the difference of religion which excited the cruel passions of these torturers, for all the best leaders of the United Irishmen (Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Harvey, Thomas Emmet) were Protestants, who unselfishly embraced the cause of their Catholic countrymen; it was the Anglo-Saxons' old race-hatred of the Celts.
The Government chose as its chief tool a man who was known to be such an ignorant, ferocious partisan that any degree of violence might be expected of him. This was Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, a small proprietor, who in 1799 was appointed High Sheriff. His plan of ingratiating himself with his employers was to seize persons whom he chose to suspect, and, by dint of the lash and threats of instant death, to extort confessions of guilt and accusations of other persons. So abject was the terror of the peasantry who were abandoned to the mercy of this miscreant, that they fell on their knees before him. I give two examples of his manner of proceeding, chosen from the many which were made public during the lawsuit brought against him for having abused his authority—the result of which was, of course, his acquittal with honour.
He received a poor teacher of languages (Wright by name), who, hearing that he was "suspected," had come to the court-house of his own accord, with the order to fall upon his knees and receive his sentence. "You are a Rebel," said the Sheriff, "and a principal in this rebellion. You are to receive five hundred lashes, and then to be shot." The poor man begged for time, and was so rash as to ask for a trial. This aroused Fitzgerald to fury, and Wright was hurried to the flogging-ladders. Fitzgerald himself dragged his fainting victim by the hair, kicked him, and slashed him with a sword. Fifty lashes had been inflicted, when an English Major came up and asked what Wright had done. The Sheriff answered by flinging him a note, taken from Wright's pocket. It was in French, a language of which Fitzgerald was wholly ignorant, and proved to be an excuse for inability to fulfil a professional engagement. Major Riall assured Fitzgerald that the note was perfectly harmless; nevertheless the lash continued to descend until the victim's entrails were visible through the flayed flesh. The hangman was then ordered to apply his thongs to a part of the body which had not yet been torn.
This case of Wright's was one of those which created the greatest sensation during the proceedings against the Irish High Sheriff. But "the trial," says Massey, "would not have been complete had not an Orange parson been called on the part of the defendant to swear that this notorious bloodshedder, who throughout Ireland was called 'flogging Fitzgerald,' was a mild and humane man." The fact that the Government, contrary to the principles of the constitution, had given a special permission at the time of his appointment for the employment of torture, made it easy for him to triumph over all his denouncers. Addressing the jury as defendant, he actually boasted of having flogged several persons under circumstances more aggravated than those before the court. He mentioned one man who had cut his throat to escape the horrors and ignominy of torture. It remains to be told that Judkin Fitzgerald received a special pension as reward of his services, and was, after the Union, made a baron of the United Kingdom.
One more specimen of the proceedings during the suppression of the rebellion must be given; it furnishes an idea of the impressions received by Moore during the years when he was ripening into manhood.—"A part of the Mount Kennedy corps of yeomanry were, on an autumn night in the year 1798, patrolling the village of Delbarg, in the county of Wicklow. Two or three of the party, led by Whollaghan, one of their number, entered the cottage of a labouring man named Dogherty, and demanded if there were any bloody rebels there. The only inmates of the cabin were Dogherty's wife, and a sick lad, her son, who was eating his supper. Whollaghan asked if the boy was Dogherty's son, and, being told that he was—'Then, you dog,' said Whollaghan, 'you are to die here.' 'I hope not,' answered the poor lad; and begged, if there were any charge against him, that he might be tried. Whollaghan, with a volley of abuse, raised his gun and pulled the trigger twice, but the piece missed fire. A comrade then handed him another gun; and the mother rushed at the muzzle to shield her son. In the struggle the piece went off, and the ball broke young Dogherty's arm. When the boy fell, the assassins left the cabin; but Whollaghan returned, and seeing the lad supported by his mother, he cried out: 'Is not the dog dead yet?' 'O yes, sir,' cried the poor woman, 'he is dead enough.' 'For fear he is not,' said Whollaghan, 'let him take this.' And with deliberate aim he fired a fourth time, and Dogherty dropped dead out of his mother's arms. Whollaghan was tried for murder. The real defence was that the prisoner and his companions had been sent out with general orders from their officer to shoot any one they pleased. The court seem to have been of opinion that such orders were neither unusual nor unreasonable. They found 'that the prisoner did shoot and kill one Thomas Dogherty, a rebel'; but acquitted him of any malicious or wilful intention of murder."
It was by means such as these that tranquillity was restored in Ireland, and that its people were ripened for the great administrative change in which Castlereagh's cold, diplomatic keen-sightedness saw the one chance of escape from the Irish deadlock, namely, the discontinuance of the independent Irish Parliament which held its sessions in Dublin, and its incorporation with the Parliament meeting in London. The only opposition which required to be overcome was that of the Irish Parliament itself, which, corrupt as it was, was not yet pliable enough. Castlereagh, who was Secretary of State for Ireland, and who does not seem in his capacity of Protestant Irishman to have had a particularly high opinion of his Protestant countrymen, had recourse to the simple expedient of purchasing one by one a sufficient number of the votes of the Opposition. In every official letter which he wrote to the Government at home between the beginning of 1799 and the accomplishment of the Union in 1800, he insisted on the necessity of bribery; and he received the Government's answer in the shape of one million five hundred thousand pounds, of which he made the best possible use. In their despair, the few patriots in the Parliament resolved to try the only expedient which they thought likely to be of any avail; they arranged that Grattan, who was still idolised by the nation, but who had long kept silence and was now dangerously ill, should suddenly appear in Parliament in the middle of the debate on the Union. The scene was arranged with the Irish love of dramatic effect. A vacancy having occurred a few days before the meeting of Parliament in the representation of Wicklow, an arrangement was made with Mr. Tighe, the patron of the borough, to return Grattan. Tighe himself took the return, and, riding all night, arrived in Dublin at five o'clock in the morning. Grattan, wasted by sickness, was taken out of bed, dressed, wrapped in a blanket, and conveyed in a sedan chair to the Parliament House. At seven in the morning, when the jaded House was half asleep, the speech of an orator named Egan was interrupted by the voice of the Speaker summoning a new member to the table to take the oaths. The House started from its slumber as the spectral figure of Grattan paced slowly up the floor. The man of 1782, the champion of the revolution which had made Ireland a nation, had come back as from the grave to rescue the independence of his country. He concluded his speech with the words: "Against such a proposition, were I expiring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last breath and record my dying testimony." When Corry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dared to reply to these words with an accusation of treason, Grattan answered with a challenge. A few days afterwards they fought a duel with pistols; Corry, fortunately for himself, was wounded in the arm; had he been the victor, he would undoubtedly have been torn in pieces by the mob.
But even Grattan was powerless against the weapons employed by the Government. The eloquence, the brilliancy and solidity of which were compared by Moore to those of a precious gem, and which Byron declared to be superior to that of Demosthenes, found no echo.[3]The day the Union was decided on, the galleries were crowded with an anxious, excited audience. But Castlereagh, who felt assured of success, awaited the result with a smile on his lips. When the time for voting came, the Speaker, dwelling on the words, said: "All who desire the Union hold up their hands!" Member after member slowly and shamefacedly raised his hand. For a moment the Speaker stood as still as a statue; then crying: "The Union is carried!" he threw himself on his chair with a gesture of disgust and anger. During this stormy debate, in the course of which the most notable Irishmen of the day proclaimed opposition and rebellion at the present juncture to be a duty—none of them, however, with any intention of carrying their principles into action—there sat in one of the galleries a youth with a pale face and sparkling eyes, who meant all that the others only said, and swore in his heart that he would be the liberator of his country. This young man was Ireland's best and noblest son, Robert Emmet, the friend who, in all probability, inspired Thomas Moore with most of the force and fire to be found in the enchantingIrish Melodies.
The notable Irish poet who came into the world in the same year as our Danish poet, Oehlenschläger, was the son of a Dublin wine-merchant. He had a good father and an affectionate, capable mother, and spent a happy childhood in the bosom of his family. He very early showed himself to be an unusually clever and talented boy; he acted, wrote and recited poetry, and sang with a peculiarly sweet voice, which he retained all his life. In reading his own account of his boyhood, we observe how early his peculiar poetic gift, which was that of the improvisatore and singer, the lyrist proper, reveals itself. He possessed the same talent which distinguished Bellmann, the Swede, that of fusing words and music together into a whole; and along with this, he had the actor's and singer's power of moving by his interpretation. He was short, considerably under middle height; his brown hair curled close to his head, and in his childhood he resembled a little Cupid. His forehead was large and radiant, so interesting that it must have been the delight of phrenologists. He had beautiful, dark eyes—the kind of eyes, says Leigh Hunt, which we think of surmounted by a wreath of vine leaves—a refined, merry mouth, a dimpled chin, a sensual nose, slightly turned up, as if it were inhaling the fragrance of a feast or an orchard. The little man as a whole produced an impression of vitality and energy; he was of the stuff to have made a fiery raider of the old Irish type; he was always high-spirited, and in his younger days so quick-tempered that he challenged Jeffrey on account of the latter's first review of his poetry, and afterwards Byron for jeering (inEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers) at the bloodless endeavour at a duel which was the result of the first challenge.
In spite, however, of this martial element in his disposition, it is highly probable that Moore, if he had lived at a less critical, distressing period, and had not come into personal contact with tyranny and oppression, would never have risen to a higher rank as poet than that of the sweet Anacreontic singer. His temperament inclined him in this direction. But it was vouchsafed to him to do more for his country than ever man had done for it before, more even than Burns had done for Scotland, namely, to knit its name, its memories, its sufferings, the shameful injustice done it, and the most admirable qualities of its sons and daughters, to imperishable poetry and music.
At the early age of fifteen Moore was entered as a student at the University of Dublin. The political leaven which was beginning to leaven the whole of Ireland had penetrated the walls of the University. A young man, destined to a great and tragic fate, was attracting the attention both of his fellow-students and the professors. This was the Robert Emmet already alluded to, a youth of singular purity of character, who at the age of sixteen was already a distinguished student of mathematics and physics, and a political orator of the first rank. His speeches at the meetings of the "Historical Society," and the deep impression made by them on Moore, a lad of his own age, but of a much weaker and less developed character, have already been mentioned. Although he had been warned against allowing himself to be seen in the streets with Emmet, Moore was soon connected with him by the ties of warm admiration and close friendship. And little wonder! It was the Irish national hero whom the Irish poet had met, in the springtide of their youth. Neither of them had any prevision of the other's future greatness, but the instinct which unites harmonious minds kept them together long enough for the poet to receive his consecration from the hero. "Were I to number," says Moore, "the men among all I have ever known, who appeared to me to combine in the greatest degree pure moral worth with intellectual power, I should, among the highest of the few, place Robert Emmet."[4]
Robert Emmet was born in 1780. His elder brother, Thomas, was one of the leaders of the rebellion of 1798, and, after its failure, was first imprisoned and then banished. Robert's earliest emotions were hatred of English tyranny and love of the Irish martyrs. Even as a boy he displayed a strength of character which foreshadowed the greatness of soul that he displayed as a man. At the age of twelve he was already absorbed in the study of mathematics and chemistry.[5]One day, immediately after making a chemical experiment, he sat down to solve a difficult mathematical problem, and, absently putting his hand to his mouth, poisoned himself with a corrosive sublimate which he had been handling a few moments before. The violent pains which he immediately felt, informed him of his danger. The fear of being forbidden to make such dangerous experiments in future led him to suppress anything of the nature of a cry. He went downstairs to his father's library, looked up the article on "Poison" in an encyclopædia, and found that chalk was recommended as an antidote in such cases as his. Remembering that he had seen a piece of chalk in the coach-house, he went there, broke open the door, which was locked, found the chalk, prepared and drank a solution of it, and returned to his mathematical problem. He appeared at breakfast next morning with a face so altered that it was hardly recognisable, and then confessed to his tutor that he had suffered excruciating tortures during the night, but added that one good result of his sleeplessness was that he had solved his problem.
A boy with courage and composure of this quality was sure to grow into a man with a powerful influence over others.
One of those whom Emmet influenced most strongly was Thomas Moore. The simplicity of appearance and manner which, in combination with the most delicate consideration for others, distinguished the young politician, changed, when the spring was touched that set his feelings, and through them, his intellect in motion, into an air of intellectual nobility and superiority which enchained the sympathy of the poet to be. "No two individuals," writes Moore, "could be much more unlike to each other, than was the same youth to himself, before rising to speak, and after;—the brow that had appeared inanimate, and almost drooping, at once elevating itself to all the consciousness of power, and the whole countenance and figure of the speaker assuming a change as of one suddenly inspired. Of his oratory, it must be recollected, I speak after youthful impressions; but I have heard little, since, that appeared to me of a loftier or purer character." Moore further asserts that Emmet's influence over his surroundings was due quite as much to the blamelessness of his life and the grave suavity of his manners as to his scientific attainments and his eloquence.
In 1797 a newspaper namedThe Presswas started by the brothers Emmet, O'Connor, and other Irish popular leaders; and Moore was not a little eager to see something of his own in its patriotic and widely-read columns. But his mother's constant anxiety about him made him fearful of hazarding anything that might agitate her, so he resolved to write anonymously, at any rate to begin with. He sent in an imitation of Ossian, which was printed, but excited no attention. Then, with trembling hand, he entrusted to the post aLetter to the Students of Trinity College, which, as he himself observes, was richly seasoned with treason; it was a witty satire on Castlereagh, who, as long as he lived, was the butt of Moore's wit.
"I hardly expected," writes Moore, "that it would make its appearance; but, lo and behold, on the next evening of publication, when seated, as usual, in my little corner by the fire, I unfolded the paper for the purpose of reading it to my father and mother, there was my own letter staring me full in the face, occupying a conspicuous station in the paper, and, of course, one of the first and principal things that my auditors wished to hear." Overcoming his emotion, he read the letter aloud, and had the gratification of hearing it much praised by his parents, who, however, pronounced both language and sentiments to be "very bold". On the following day, Edward Hudson, the only friend entrusted with the secret, paid a morning call, and had not been long in the room conversing with Mrs. Moore, when he looked significantly at Tom and remarked: "Well, you saw—." "That letter was yours, then, Tom?" cried the mother; and new entreaties to be cautious followed on Tom's confession.
"A few days after," writes Moore, "in the course of one of those strolls into the country which Emmet and I used often to take together, our conversation turned upon this letter, and I gave him to understand that it was mine; when with that almost feminine gentleness of manner which he possessed, and which is so often found in such determined spirits, he owned to me that on reading the letter, though pleased with its contents, he could not help regretting that the public attention had thus been called to the politics of the University, as it might have the effect of awakening the vigilance of the college authorities, and frustrate the progress of the good work (as we both considered it) which was going on there so quietly. Even then, boyish as my own mind was, I could not help being struck with the manliness of the view which I saw he took of what men ought to do in such times and circumstances, namely, not totalkorwriteabout their intentions, but toact. He had never before, I think, in conversation with me, alluded to the existence of the United Irish societies, in college, nor did he now, or at any subsequent time, make any proposition to me to join in them, a forbearance which I attribute a good deal to his knowledge of the watchful anxiety about me which prevailed at home.... He was altogether a noble fellow, and as full of imagination and tenderness of heart as of manly daring."
It is plain enough that Robert Emmet, though he was sincerely attached to Moore, felt that he was not of the stuff of which a man must be made who is to stake his future and his life on the success of a rebellion. But he had a high opinion of the young poet, and often sought his society; he was doubtless conscious of the resonance of his own ideas and dreams in the harp of Moore's soul. He used frequently to sit by him at the pianoforte whilst he played over the airs from Bunting's Irish collection; and Moore as an old man still remembered how one day, when he was playing the spirited air, "Let Erin remember the day!" Emmet exclaimed passionately: "Oh that I were at the head of twenty thousand men marching to that air!"
This was in 1797, shortly before the discovery of the great Irish conspiracy. The discovery came, with all its attendant horrors. One of its first results was a regular court of inquisition, held within the walls of the University. The roll was called, and the students were examined one by one. Most of them knew little or nothing about the plot, but there were a few, among them Robert Emmet, whose absence revealed to their comrades how much they had known of the betrayed and defeated plans. The dead silence which followed the daily calling out of their names made a profound impression on Moore. He himself proved at this trial what a high-spirited little fellow he was; he told the dreaded Lord Fitzgibbon to his face that, in taking the oath demanded of him, he reserved to himself the power of refusing to answer any question calculated to get a comrade into trouble; and he bore with manly composure the outburst of anger which followed. As he was not a member of the Society of United Irishmen, and had evidently no knowledge of their plans, he was dismissed at once.
It was during the years immediately following this incident that Moore began to appear before the public as a poet. The horrors attendant on the suppression of the rebellion did not provide him with any of his themes; they were still too near. Emmet was away, and his influence in abeyance; and, indeed, political poetry was for the moment an impossibility in Ireland. So the young poet, whose temperament naturally inclined him in the direction of light, sprightly verse, followed the course prescribed by his tastes and his age. He prepared an English version of the Odes of Anacreon, which he published before he was twenty, with a dedication to the Prince Regent, who was at that time the hope of the Liberals; and in 1801 he published, under the title ofPoetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq., a volume of poems, for the most part of an erotic, youthfully sensuous, and slightly licentious character. The Irish licentiousness reminds one of that which is not at all uncommon in Swedish erotic poetry; it has also, like the Swedish, a national stamp.
After leading a tolerably aimless existence for a year or two in London, where his talents and his Irish charm of manner made him a favourite in the best society, Moore was obliged by his poverty to go as Admiralty Registrar (a post procured for him by Lord Moira) to the Bermudas. It was, as one can easily imagine, an appointment very unsuited to his tastes, and after a short time he entrusted his duties to a deputy, made a tour in America, and returned to England. The deputy, in course of time, embezzled a considerable sum of Government money, and thus Moore, like Scott, became responsible for the payment of a heavy debt. He also, like Scott, received numerous offers of assistance; and he discharged his liabilities, partly with the assistance of wealthy friends, partly by his own industry and strict economy for several years. His tour in America lasted from October 1803 to November 1804. He brought home with him the American Epistles, and poems which are to be found in the second volume of his works, and which contain descriptions of nature as remarkable for their correctness as for their wealth of glowing colour. With his genuine English Naturalism, he was, however, more anxious to be truthful than to be brilliant, and was very proud of the many testimonies he received both from natives and travellers as to the correct impression he conveyed of country and people. The well-known English traveller, Captain Basil Hall (who visited Scott at Abbotsford and who, when ill in Venice, was taken care of by Byron), asserts that Moore's Odes and Epistles give the most beautiful and correct description of Bermuda that is to be found; and he draws attention to the fact that both the words and tune of the prettiest of the songs, the "Canadian Boat Song," are close imitations of what one actually hears in the boats out there, the poet having, however, rejected whatever was neither beautiful nor characteristic. Moore himself tells how exactly he kept to reality in his descriptions of landscapes and even trees. Referring to the lines:
"'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash-tree,With a few who could love and remember like me,"
he relates how, twenty-five years after writing them, he received from Bermuda a cup made from a shell of the fruit of the identical calabash tree alluded to, on the bark of which his name had been found inscribed. The unaccustomed natural surroundings of these regions had a fecundating effect on the mind of a young poet who was susceptible to luxurious, festal impressions. The democratic and republican institutions of the United States were much less to the taste of the refined writer on whom the general reaction against the eighteenth century, which was now beginning, was already producing its effect. His Epistles on the state of society in America prove that he was alive only to the defects of the Republic. He had an audience of the President; but we perceive that Jefferson's slovenly dress—slippers and blue stockings formed part of it—gave the young poet an unfavourable impression of the man who had drawn up the Declaration of Independence. What shocked him more than anything else in America was to find French philosophy, which he, the true child of his day, regarded as sinful and poisonous, so widely spread throughout the young republic.[6]He referred many years afterwards to this time as being the one period during which he had felt doubtful of the wisdom of the liberal political faith in which he might almost literally be said to have begun his life, and in which he expected to end it.
It almost seemed, for a moment, as if the impressions received by the poet in his oppressed native island during his childhood and youth were extinct, dead and buried under Anacreontic sentiments, reminiscences of travel, and the pleasures of life as lived in the most fashionable and frivolous circles of London society. But in 1807 appeared the first Number of theIrish Melodies, the work which is Moore's title-deed to immortality. Everything that his unfortunate country had felt and suffered during the long years of her ignominy—her agonies and sighs, her ardent struggles, her martial spirit, the smile shining through her tears—we have them all here, scattered about in songs which are written in a mood of half-gay, half-mournful levity and amorousness. It was a wreath this, woven of grief, enthusiasm, and tenderness, a fragrant wreath, such as one binds in honour of the dead, which Moore placed on his country's brow. Not that Ireland is often mentioned; there are as few names as possible in these poems—it was not safe to print Irish names. But now the singer would celebrate his mistress in such terms that no one could fail to recognise her as Erin, now the dearly beloved would speak with a majesty which showed her to be no mortal woman; and, as in the old Christian allegorical hymns, the mysticism increased the poetic effect.
What had happened in the interval between the appearance of Moore's wanton, frivolous poetry and the conception of these wonderful songs? They themselves answer the question by suppressing the answer. The fourth Melody begins:
"Oh, breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid:Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head!"
There was, then, one whose name might not be named, whose body lay dishonoured in a grave where it might be wept over only in the darkness of night.
In the next song, again without any mention of a name, we read:
"When he who adores thee has left but the nameOf his fault and his sorrows behind,Oh! say, wilt thou weep when they darken the fameOf a life that for thee was resigned?Yes, weep, and however my foes may condemn,Thy tears shall efface their decree;For Heaven can witness, though guilty to them,I have been but too faithful to thee!"
That the beloved of these lines is Ireland, we can see at the first glance; but once more a dark veil of anonymity is cast over the man whose reputation was destroyed by his enemies, but who, though declared guilty by them, had been so faithful to the object of his worship.
Let the reader turn over a few pages, and he will come upon a poem which is closely connected with the two just quoted. It is a sweet, sad portrait of the betrothed of the anonymous dead hero.
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,And lovers around her are sighing;But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,For her heart in his grave is lying.She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,Every note that he loved awaking.—Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking!He had lived for her love, for his country he died,They were all that to life had entwined him;Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,Nor long will his love stay behind him.Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,When they promise a glorious morrow;They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,From her own loved Island of Sorrow!"
The reader has already divined that the young hero of these touching laments is no other than Moore's old college friend, Robert Emmet. It was undoubtedly this young man's tragic fate which inspired the finest of the songs of freedom contained in theIrish Melodies.
Robert's elder brother suffered a term of imprisonment after the revolution of 1798, and was then banished; Robert himself escaped imprisonment, and continued to employ his liberty in the service of the cause which had cost his brother so much, and was to cost his own life. In 1802 he went to Paris, and had an interview with the First Consul, who appeared to him "to care as little for Ireland as he did for the republic or for liberty," and several with Talleyrand, whom he considered no more satisfactory, for the purpose of making arrangements for the proclamation of an independent Irish Republic, supported by an alliance with the French Republic. The moment was an opportune one, for the friendly relations which had been re-established for a short time between France and England by the Peace of Amiens were on the point of giving way to renewed hostility. Bonaparte seems actually to have for a moment contemplated a landing in Ireland (he lamented at St. Helena that he had not gone to Ireland instead of to Egypt), and Robert Emmet returned in November 1802 to his native island with a distinct promise from the French authorities that the landing of their army should take place in August 1803. With untiring audacity he prepared for a new rebellion throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. He was persuaded that that of 1798 had failed because it had not had sufficient support in the capital. His great aim, therefore, was to get possession of Dublin, and more particularly of the Castle, the gates of which stood open till late in the evening. Day and night he superintended the preparations of the conspirators. In different parts of the town they rented a number of houses, where they established secret manufactories of weapons and ammunition. Emmet had a staff of fifteen men, almost all of the lower class, to assist him in the task of superintendence. Such rest as he granted himself was taken lying on a mattress on the floor of one of the powder-magazines.
Although more than a thousand persons were concerned in the conspiracy, there was not one traitor among them, and the merciless Government had not the slightest idea of what was impending. Emmet's private fortune was entirely expended on the necessary preparations, although the men who served him received no payment for their work. One of them, conversing many years afterwards with the author ofThe United Irishmen, told him that they worked, not for money, but for the cause; that they had perfect confidence in Robert Emmet, and would have given their lives for him. But in the month of July an accident occurred; one of the powder-magazines blew up, killing two men, one of whom died in Emmet's arms. The following day a Protestant newspaper informed the Government that it was sleeping on a mine.
There could now be no question of waiting for the French; half-prepared as the conspirators were, they had either to make their attempt at once or accept the certainty of annihilation without a struggle. On the morning of the 23rd of July a manly proclamation to the people of Ireland, drawn up by Emmet himself, was discovered posted up in the streets of Dublin. But when evening came, and Emmet attempted the surprise of the Castle, he proved to his sorrow how unreliable his countrymen were at a dangerous and decisive crisis. The number of his followers steadily diminished as they approached the Castle, and by the time its gates were reached it was clear that any attack which the mere handful of faithful enthusiasts left, could make on the now alert and well-armed enemy was doomed to defeat. In the first confusion the rebel leaders succeeded in escaping to the hills of Wicklow, where they were able to hold a council the following day. Most of them were certain that their cause was anything but a lost one; let them but give the signal, and the whole of Ireland would rise like one man, &c., &c. Robert Emmet alone had lost all his illusions. He succeeded in convincing his friends that to continue their endeavours at this juncture, and without other forces than the undisciplined rebels who alone were at their service, would lead to nothing but more shedding of the blood of a people who had already suffered so much. At the moment of parting, all the others entreated Emmet to take advantage of an opportunity which presented itself of escaping from the country at once in a fishing-boat belonging to one of the rebels. But, with a slight confusion of manner, he told them that he could not possibly leave Ireland for an unlimited number of years without first returning to Dublin to take leave of a lady, who was so dear to him that he must see her again if he "had to die for it a thousand times."
In Dublin the military were on his heels. His faithful housekeeper, a young, brave girl, was covered with bayonet pricks and underwent "half-hanging"; but nothing would induce her to betray her master's hiding-place. At last he was found and arrested, a pistol-shot in the shoulder preventing any attempt at escape. When the officer who arrested him was making an excuse for this shot, the prisoner said shortly: "All is fair in war."
A few days after his imprisonment, Robert Emmet wrote to the young lady for whose sake he had risked his life. This was Miss Sarah Curran, a daughter of the eminent and highly respected barrister, John Philpot Curran, who is so often named in Byron's poetry, and who had been the eloquent, undaunted defender of the political prisoners tried after the rebellion of 1798. Young Emmet had been a welcome visitor at Curran's house; but when Curran discovered the attachment between the two young people, he separated them, as he feared that Emmet's political opinions augured ill for his future; and the correspondence between them had been carried on without his knowledge. The jailer demanded a large sum from Emmet for conveying his letter to its address, and then took it straight to the Attorney-General. Fearing possible injurious consequences to the lady whom he loved, Emmet at once wrote to his judges, and, knowing that his eloquence was dreaded, offered to plead guilty and not say one word in his own defence if, in return, they would make no reference, in the hearing of the case, to his letter to Miss Curran. The offer was made in vain. The very next day, the arrival of the police to search his house informed the furious Curran of the relations between his daughter and Emmet.
Of the result of the trial no one had any doubt; the accused knew his fate. When the governor of the prison came upon him one day plaiting a lock of hair which Miss Curran had given him, he looked up and said: "I am preparing it to take with me to the scaffold." On his table was found a carefully executed pen and ink drawing—an excellent portrait of himself, the head severed from the body.
The trial began at 10 A.M. After the Attorney-General had made a speech, in which he affirmed that the only results of the conspiracy had been to elicit stronger proofs than had before existed of the attachment of Ireland to its King, Robert Emmet requested that, as his only answer, the following paragraph from the proclamation of the provisional government, as drawn up by him, might be read aloud: "From this time onward flogging and torture are forbidden in Ireland, and may not be reintroduced on any pretext whatever." Hereupon followed a speech by a hateful Irish renegade, Mr. Plunket, who had formerly belonged to the party of rebellion, but who now, as King's Counsel, overwhelmed Emmet with abuse. Then Emmet himself stood up, and, with the prospect of certain and almost immediate death before his eyes, defended himself in a speech with which every Irishman to this day is familiar. He began by saying that if he were to suffer only death after being adjudged guilty, he should bow in silence to his fate; but the sentence which delivered his body to the executioner also consigned his character to obloquy, and therefore he must speak. The judge roughly interrupting him in the middle of his speech, he calmly said: "I have understood, my Lord, that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity," and continued his speech in such a loud voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court-house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing boisterous in his manner. Those who heard him declare, says Madden, that his accents and cadence of voice were exquisitely modulated. He moved about the dock as he warmed in his address, with characteristic, rapid, and not ungraceful motions. Even after the lapse of thirty years, the witnesses of the scene could not speak without emotion of the graceful majesty with which he defied his judges. A correspondent of theTimes, who unconditionally condemned the rebellion, wrote of Emmet as follows: "But as to Robert Emmet individually, it will surely be admitted that even in the midst of error he was great; and that the burst of eloquence with which, upon the day of his trial, with the grave already open to receive him, he shook the very court wherein he stood, and caused not only 'that viper whom his father nourished' (Mr. Plunket) to quail beneath the lash, but likewise forced that 'remnant of humanity' (Lord Norbury, who tried him), to tremble on the judgment seat, was an effort almost superhuman."
Emmet ended with these words: "My lord, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim—it circulates warmly and unruffled through its channels, and in a little time it will cry to heaven. Be patient! I have but a few words to say—I am going to my cold and silent grave—my lamp of life is nearly extinguished—I have parted with everything that was dear to me in this life, and for my country's cause with the idol of my soul, the object of my affections. My race is run—the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world—it isthe charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace, my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."
The sentence was pronounced. Robert Emmet was, on the following day, first to be hanged, and then beheaded. When the prisoner was removed from the dock it was about ten o'clock at night. As he passed the grating of a cell in which a friend was confined, he called to him: "I shall be hanged to-morrow." He was allowed no peace during his last hours. The Government became alarmed lest an attempt might be made to rescue him, and an order was sent to convey him to Kilmainham jail, two miles and a half away. Not till he reached there did a humane jailer take off the irons which had been put on so roughly that they had drawn blood. The same man gave him something to eat, no food having been provided for him since before the trial began, at ten in the morning. Emmet then slept soundly for a short time. On awaking he employed the time left him in writing letters to his brother in America, to Miss Curran's brother, and to herself. He was interrupted by a friend, who came to bid him farewell. Emmet's first inquiry was after his mother, and his friend was obliged to tell him that she had died the day before of grief. She had borne with fortitude the banishment of one of her sons for his devotion to the cause of Ireland, and she had encouraged Robert in all his proceedings; but when she knew that he, the pride of her heart, was doomed, in his twenty-third year, to such a terrible death, her heart broke. Robert received the news composedly, and said, after a silence of some moments: "It is better so." In his letter to young Curran he wrote: "I did not look to honours for myself—praise I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah's countenance that her husband was respected." His writing in this letter is as firm and regular as usual.
At one o'clock, escorted by the sheriffs and followed by the executioner, he was led to the scaffold. So great was the power of his gentleness and charm over wild, rude natures, that one of the warders burst into tears at parting from him. Emmet, whose arms were bound, bent forward and kissed the man on the cheek; and the jailer, whom twenty years of service had hardened, and inured to prison scenes, fell senseless at his prisoner's feet. Before mounting the scaffold Emmet entrusted to one of his friends the letter which he had written to Miss Curran; but the friend was arrested and imprisoned, and this letter, like the other, did not reach its destination. Emmet took off his neckerchief himself, and assisted in adjusting the rope round his neck. After his head was struck from the body the executioner held it up to the crowd, proclaiming in a loud voice: "This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet!" Not a sound was heard in answer.
Next day the readers of theLondon Chronicle, the Government organ, were told: "He behaved without the least symptom of fear, and with all the effrontery and nonchalance which so much distinguished his conduct on his trial yesterday. He seems to scoff at the dreadful circumstances attending on him, at the same time, with all the coolness and complacency that can be possibly imagined, though utterly unlike the calmness of Christian fortitude. Even as it was, I never saw a man die like him; and God forbid I should see many with his principles.... The clergyman who attended him endeavoured to win him from his deistical opinions. He thanked him for his exertions, but said that his opinions on such subjects had long been settled, and that this was not the time to change them." Thus spoke the official press. Oppressed Ireland kept silence at the scaffold of her young hero, and, faithful to his wish, carved no epitaph on his tomb.
But when Moore'sIrish Melodiesappeared, it was as if the grief and wrath of a whole nation had suddenly found expression; in these songs it rose and fell, whispered and shouted, moaned and murmured, like the waves of the sea, and with the irresistible force of a natural element. Soon there was not a peasant in Ireland, as there is not one today, unfamiliar with the song: "When he who adores thee." To this day Robert Emmet's last speech is read in American schools. It is the gospel of the Irish struggle for independence. But, strangely enough, Emmet's heroic death contributed less to his fame among his countrymen than did his touching love story. His betrothed, regarded by the Irish people as their hero's widow, became the object of silent veneration. Her unhappiness was increased by her being obliged to live amongst people who sided with England, and who considered, much as they pitied him, that Emmet had deserved his fate. Some years after Emmet's death Miss Curran made the acquaintance of an English officer, a Captain Sturgeon, who, touched by her forlorn position and attracted by her many charms, offered her his hand. After long hesitation she married him. As she was beginning to show symptoms of decline, he took her to Italy. Her appearance, says Admiral Napier, who saw her at Naples, was that of "a wandering statue." She died, not long after her marriage, in Sicily, "far from the land where her young hero sleeps." Washington Irving has described her in hisSketch Book, in the beautiful tale called "The Broken Heart." But her most worthy monument is the song: "She is far from the land."[7]
In theMelodies, however, the griefs of the individual are but a symbol of those of the nation, an embodiment of the universal suffering. We come upon songs in which we seem to hear all the sons and daughters of Ireland lamenting over the fruitlessness of the great French Revolution and the disappointment of the hopes which all nations, but theirs above all others, had set upon the stability and victory of the Republic. Such a song is the touching:
"'Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking";
with its wild lament that the first ray of liberty, welcomed with blessings by man, has disappeared, and by its disappearance deepened the darkness of the night of bondage and mourning which has again closed in over the kingdoms of the earth, and darkest of all over Erin. Truly noble and lofty is the flight of this verse:
"For high was thy hope, when those glories were dartingAround thee, through all the gross clouds of the world;When Truth, from her fetters indignantly starting,At once, like a sunburst, her banner unfurled.Oh, never shall earth see a moment so splendid!Then, then, had one Hymn of Deliverance blendedThe tongues of all nations; how sweet had ascendedThe first note of Liberty, Erin, from thee!"
And the poem ends with maledictions on the "light race, unworthy its good," who "like furies caressing the young hope of freedom, baptized it in blood." Other poems are of a more threatening nature, although the threat is always poetic and half-concealed. Read, for example, the song, "Lay his sword by his side."
"Lay his sword by his side,—it hath served him too wellNot to rest near his pillow below;To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell,Its point was still turn'd to a flying foe.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Yet pause—for, in fancy, a still voice I hear,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .And it cries, from the grave where the hero lies deep,'Tho' the day of your Chieftain for ever hath set,'Oh, leave not his sword thus inglorious to sleep,—'It hath victory's life in it yet!'"
The poem which is directly aimed at the Prince Regent is the most severe and most high-toned of them all. It is the one which begins: "When first I met thee, warm and young." The Prince's name is not mentioned, but the verses can only be understood when it is known that it is to him they refer. Erin, speaking as a woman, describes her belief in him, her faith in the promises he made when "young and warm" and her continued reliance on him even when she saw him change. When she heard of his follies, she persisted in discovering, even in his faults, "some gleams of future glory." But now that the attractive qualities of youth have departed, and none of the virtues of maturity have replaced them, now that those who once loved him avoid him, and even his flatterers despise him, Erin would not give one of her "taintless tears" for all his guilty splendour. And the day will come when his last friends will forsake him, and he will call in vain on her whom he has lost for ever. She will say:
"Go—go—'tis vain to curse,'Tis weakness to upbraid thee;Hate cannot wish thee worseThan guilt and shame have made thee."
Wordsworth addressed declarations of love to England when she was victorious and great; Scott sang the praises of Scotland at a time when she was beginning to take her place as a flourishing nation by the side of a sister kingdom; but Moore addressed his heartfelt, glowing strains to a country which lay humiliated and bleeding at its torturers' feet. He writes:—
"Remember thee! yes, while there's life in this heart,It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art;More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers,Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours.Wert thou all that I wish thee,—great, glorious, and free—First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea,—I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow,But, oh! could I love thee more deeply than now?"
And in everything that Moore wrote, there is a remembrance of Ireland. His great Oriental poem,Lalla Rookh, which appeared in 1817, was prepared for by the most conscientious study. There is not an image, not a description, or name, or historical incident or reference, which has any connection with Europe. Everything, without exception, bears witness to the familiarity of the author with the life and nature of the East. Nevertheless we know that the subject did not begin to interest him until he saw a possibility of making the struggle between the Fire-worshippers and the Mohammedans a pretext for preaching tolerance in the spirit of the song, "Come, send round the wine," which he had addressed to his countrymen in theIrish Melodies. And the interest of the reader, too, is not really awakened until he begins to divine Ireland and the Irish under these Ghebers and their strange surroundings. Hence it is thatThe Fire-Worshippersis the only entirely successful part of the poem. The very names Iran and Erin melt into each other in the reader's ear. Moore himself says that the spirit which spoke in theIrish Melodiesdid not begin to feel at home in the East till he set it to work on theFire-Worshippers; and the beautiful poem, whose hero is a noble and unfortunate rebel, and whose heroine lives amongst people who speak of her lover with detestation, might well have been inspired by the memory of Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran. Some of the incidents recall their story. Before Hafed calls the Ghebers to revolt he has been wandering, an exile, in foreign lands; Hinda, devoured by anxiety for him, hears every day of massacres of the rebels. And when, learning that her lover has been burned, she drowns herself, the poet bewails her fate in a song, entire verses of which might, ifErinwere substituted forIran, be added to "She is far from the land" without introducing a perceptibly foreign element. Take, for instance, the verse:
"Nor shall Iran, beloved of her Hero, forget thee—Though tyrants watch over her tears as they start,Close, close by the side of that Hero she'll set thee,Embalmed in the innermost shrine of her heart."
And so exact is the resemblance between the spirit of theIrish Melodiesand that which reigns in this Asiatic epic, that it was possible to employ a sentence from the latter, without the change of a single word, as motto for the collection of documents relating to the Irish Rebellion which was published in the Fifties under the title:Rebellion Book and Black History. The lines are as follows;—
"Rebellion! foul, dishonouring word,Whose wrongful blight so oft has stainedThe holiest cause that tongue or swordOf mortal ever lost or gained.How many a spirit born to blessHath sunk beneath that withering name,Whom but a day's, an hour's successHad wafted to eternal fame!"
It was Moore's polemical position as an Irishman that made it impossible for him to see European politics in the same light as they appeared to the Lake School and Scott. He directed a shower of the arrows of his wit against the Holy Alliance. In theFables for the Holy Alliance, which he dedicated to Lord Byron, he jests, good-humouredly but audaciously, at the European reaction. He dreams, for example, that Czar Alexander gives a splendid ball in an ice-palace which he has erected on the frozen Neva, on the plan of that built by the Empress Anne. To it are invited all the "holy gentlemen" who, at the various Congresses, have shown such regard for the welfare of Europe.
"The thought was happy, and designedTo hint how thus the human mindMay—like the stream imprisoned there—Be checked and chilled till it can bearThe heaviest Kings, that ode or sonnetE'er yet be-praised, to dance upon it"
Madame de Krüdener has pledged her prophetic word that there is no danger, that the ice will never melt. But, lo! ere long an ill-omened dripping begins. The Czar goes on with his polonaise, but so glassy has the floor become that he can hardly keep his legs; and Prussia, "though to slippery ways so used, was cursedly near tumbling." But hardly has the Spanish fandango begun when a glaring light—"as 'twere a glance shot from an angry southern sun"—begins to shine in every chamber of the palace. Then there is a general "Sauve qui peut!" Instantly everything is in a flow—royal arms, Russian and Prussian birds of prey and French fleur-de-lys, floors, walls, and ceilings, kings, fiddlers, emperors, all are gone. Why, asks Moore,
"Why, why will monarchs caper soIn palaces without foundations?"
It is evident that he hoped great things from the Spanish Revolution, which had just begun.
In another fable he tells of a country where there was a ridiculous law prohibiting the importation of looking-glasses. What was the reason of this prohibition? The reason was that the royal race reigned by right of their superior beauty, and the people obeyed becausetheywere declared, and believed themselves to be, ugly. To hint that the King's nose was not straight, was high treason; to suggest that one's own neighbour was as good-looking as certain persons in high position, was almost as great a crime; and the subjects, never having seen looking-glasses, did notknow themselves. Certain wicked Radicals arranged that a ship with a cargo of looking-glasses should be driven ashore on this country's coast—and the reader guesses the rest. In a third fable the poet returns to his old symbolic characters, the Fire-worshippers. Less tolerant here than inLalla Rookh, he makes the Fire-worshippers throw the whole corps of "extinguishers," who have been appointed to obstruct them in the peaceful exercise of their religious rites, into the flames which they will not allow to burn.
The work which shows Moore's humour and satire at its best,The Fudge Family in Paris, is full of witty sallies against the new, incapable Bourbon Government, but strikes at England in bold, dead earnest. We find such lines as:
"Everywhere gallant hearts, and spirits true,Are served up victims to the vile and few;While E——, everywhere—the general foeOf truth and freedom, wheresoe'er they glow—Is first, when tyrants strike, to aid the blow!"
And England is reminded that
"——maledictions ring from every sideUpon that grasping power, that selfish pride,Which vaunts its own, and scorns all rights beside."
The Fourth and Seventh Letters ought to be read, with their jeers at the Prince Regent's laziness and corpulence, and their abuse of Castlereagh, of whom Moore thus writes:
"We sent thee C——gh; as heaps of deadHave slain their slayers by the pest they spread,So hath our land breathed out—thy fame to dim,Thy strength to waste, and rot thee, soul and limb—Her worst infections all condensed in him!"
And the potentates of the Holy Alliance are called
"That royal, ravening flock, whose vampire wingsO'er sleeping Europe treacherously brood,And fan her into dreams of promised good,Of hope, of freedom—but to drain her blood!"
This sounds very bad and very dangerous; the distance separating such a writer from the older generation of poets strikes us as great; it seems but a step from this to Shelley and Byron. But as a matter of fact, it is a long way; for all these attacks are not quite so seriously meant as one would imagine. This champion of the cause of Ireland was no advocate of her independence; Moore did not desire the separation of his country from England; he only desired that she should be ruled better and more justly. This bold denouncer of kings was no republican, but a sincere believer in monarchy, who would have had bad kings replaced by good ones. He was no free-thinker, this man who railed so violently at the hypocrisy of the Holy Alliance, but a sincere, enlightened Catholic, who, though he brought up his children as Protestants, wrote a thick book,Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion, in defence of the most important doctrines of the Catholic faith. With all his apparent unrestraint, Moore kept within the bounds prescribed by the society in which he lived. The Whig leaders had, when he came to London, received him with open arms, and Moore became and remained the Whig poet, who in a long series of playfully sarcastic letters—rhymed feuilletons one might call them—treated the public questions and Parliamentary events of the day with sparkling wit and drawing-room humour of the best style, in the spirit of the Whig party.