[Born at Dublin, 1780. Died in Wiltshire, 1852. Aged 72.]
A poet of exuberant fancy, revelling in lavish ornament and gorgeous
painting, and giving utterance to the most ingenious creations, in
language of ineffable, and, occasionally, overpowering sweetness. A
writer of inimitable Irish ballads, which are now plaintive, now joyous,
now pathetic, now fervid, now tender, now fierce, now melting, now
heroic; but always matchless by the graceful flow of the verse, and the
prompt springing of the happiest illustration. Also the author of
satires, brilliant and cutting, but rather the outpourings of a generous
fancy, delighting in its own exquisite self-conscious faculty of
mischief, than the malicious and bitter expression of a vexed and
disappointed mind. Melody and joyance are careering in almost every
syllable that he wrote. He was a passionate lover of music, and when he
sang his own ballads, the effect upon his listeners was electrical. His
most celebrated poetical composition is “Lalla Rookh,” an Eastern
romance, which he wrote “amidst the snows of two or three Derbyshire
winters.” His best prose work, “The Epicurean,” is a masterly
performance, redolent of the perfume which breathes through his verse,
and elevated by a high moral aim. When Thomas Moore died, the impression
left of the man upon the public mind was stamped there by his jocund
muse--a feeling of tenderness and love was associated with the pleasant
memory of “Little Tommy Moore.” Since his death his memoirs and his
diary have been published, and the impression has grown dimmer and
dimmer in consequence. As a man, Thomas Moore, the poet, appears to have
been hardly more heroic than the most prosaic of his kind.
[By Christopher Moore. Executed in 1838, for the late Edward Moore, of
Mayfair.]