The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes

by Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 1780. Both his parents
were Roman-Catholics; and he was, as a matter of course, brought up in the
same religion, and adhered to it--not perhaps with any extreme
zeal--throughout his life. His father was a decent tradesman, a grocer and
spirit-retailer--or "spirit-grocer," as the business is termed in Ireland.
Thomas received his schooling from Mr. Samuel Whyte, who had been
Sheridan's first preceptor, a man of more than average literary culture.
He encouraged a taste for acting among the boys: and Moore, naturally
intelligent and lively, became a favorite with his master, and a leader in
the dramatic recreations.

His aptitude for verse appeared at an early age. In 1790 he composed an
epilogue to a piece acted at the house of Lady Borrows, in Dublin; and in
his fourteenth year he wrote a sonnet to Mr. Whyte, which was published in
a Dublin magazine.

Like other Irish Roman-Catholics, galled by the hard and stiff collar of
Protestant ascendancy, the parents of Thomas Moore hailed the French
Revolution, and the prospects which it seemed to offer of some reflex
ameliorations. In 1792 the lad was taken by his father to a dinner in
honor of the Revolution; and he was soon launched upon a current of ideas
and associations which might have conducted a person of more
self-oblivious patriotism to the scaffold on which perished the friend of
his opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having been
opened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was entered
there as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient in
French and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn for
Latin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy with
many of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after various
interrogations, in which he honorably refused to implicate his friends) a
severe admonition from the University authorities; but he had not joined
in any distinctly rebellious act and no more formidable results ensued to
him.

Genres: Poetry, Ebooks

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Thomas Moore, was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot.
Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation, Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Memoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism".
Today Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies (typically "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Tis said--but whether true or not
Let bards declare who've seen 'em--
That Love and Time have only got
One pair of wings between 'em. [...] (Love and Time)