"Your absence, all but ill endure,

And none so ill as-THOMAS MOORE."

And in 1835, after her death, when visiting the house, where his mother had been born and brought up, situated in the old corn-market of Wexford, he wrote:-" One of the noblest minded, as well as the most warm-hearted of all God's creatures, was born under that lowly roof."

His sister Ellen, to whom he was greatly attached, was a small delicate woman, with an expression sharpened somewhat by continuous bodily ailment; but her mind and disposition were essentially lovable, and she sang very sweetly. Moore contrived in 1803, when he had quite enough to do otherwise, to buy and send her a present of a pianoforte.

Such were, always, his genuine and enduring home feelings, both then and afterwards, when he was being lionized in the first London society.

In 1801 he published a volume of "poems" under the name of "The Late Thomas Little, Esq." These were full of indecencies, of which, however, he was afterwards so much ashamed that he altogether excluded many of them from the collected edition of his

poems.

His friend Rogers states, "So heartily has Moore repented of having published Little's Poems, that I have seen him shed tears-tears of deep contrition-when we were talking of them." And he himself afterwards thus wrote, in a poem called

MY BIRTH-DAY.

"My birth-day”—what a diff'rent sound
That word had in my youthful ears!
And how, each time the day comes round,
Less and less white, its mark appears!

When first our scanty years are told,
It seems like pastime to grow old;
And, as Youth counts the shining links,
That time around him binds so fast,
Pleas'd with the task, he little thinks
How hard that chain will press at last.
Vain was the man, and false as vain,
Who said "were he ordain'd to run
His long career of life again,

He would do all that he had done."-
Ah, 'tis not thus the voice, that dwells
In sober birth-days, speaks to me
Far otherwise-of time it tells,
Lavish'd unwisely, carelessly;
Of counsel mock'd; of talents, made
Haply for high and pure designs,
But oft, like Israel's incense, laid
Upon unholy, earthly shrines;
Of nursing many a wrong desire;
Of wandering after Love too far,
And taking every meteor fire,

That cross'd my pathway, for his star.—
All this it tells, and, could I trace

The imperfect picture o'er again,

With pow'r to add, retouch, efface

The lights and shades, the joy and pain,

How little of the past would stay!

How quickly all should melt away—

All-but that Freedom of the Mind,

Which hath been more than wealth to me;
Those friendships, in my boyhood twin'd,
And kept till now unchangingly;

And that dear home, that saving ark,

Where Love's true light at last I've found,

Cheering within, when all grows dark,

And comfortless, and stormy round!

"Moore at twenty-one," says a writer in the Athenæum,

"had a singularly acute insight into his own character. Pretending to describe the nature of the fictitious Mr. Little, he says, 'He had too much vanity to hide his virtues, and not enough of art to conceal his defects.' This indeed expresses Moore completely, and is the secret of his marvellous personal popularity and of the ease with which his private character has always been assailed. He wore his heart upon his sleeve, and the world grew tired of looking at it."

CHAPTER III.

BERMUDA AND AMERICA.

In 1803 Lord Moira procured him an appointment in the Court of Bermuda as Registrar of the Admiralty. Before sailing he wrote thus to his mother:

"Portsmouth, Thursday, Sept. 22, 1803. "Just arrived at Portsmouth, and the wide sea before my eyes, I write my heart's farewell to the dear darlings at home. Heaven send I may return to English ground with pockets more heavy and spirits not less light than I now leave it with. Everything has been arranged to my satisfaction. I am prepared with every comfort for the voyage, and a fair breeze and a loud yo-yo-ee! are all that's now wanting to set me afloat. My dear father should write to Carpenter and thank him for the very friendly assistance he has given me: without that assistance the breeze would be fair in vain for me, and Bermuda might be sunk in the deep, for any share that I could pretend to in it; but now all is smooth for my progress, and Hope sings in the shrouds of the ship that is to carry me. Good-by! God bless you all, dears of my heart! I will write again if our departure is delayed by any circumstance. God

bless you again, and preserve you happy till the return of TOM. your 'Urge Stevenson to send Carpenter the songs; I shall write to him. Sweet Mother, Father, Kate, and Nell, good-by!"

66

And again, on October 10th, writing on shipboard, when a homeward-bound sail was in sight. After describing the progress of the voyage, he says:

66

'Keep up your spirits, my sweet mother, there is every hope, every prospect of happiness for all of us. Love to darling father, to my own Kate and Nell. I am now near two thousand miles from you, but my heart is at home. God bless you. The ship is brought to, and our lieutenant is just going aboard, so I must stop.-Your own, TOM."

"I wrote a line to Carpenter by a ship we met off the Western Islands. I hope he has got it. Here is a kiss for you, my darlings, all the way from the Atlantic.”

He sailed on the 25th of September in the Phaeton frigate from Spithead, landing at Norfolk, Virginia, whence, after a stay of about ten days, he proceeded in a loop of war to Bermuda. It was the beginning of 1804 when Moore reached the "still-vexed Bermoothes," already consecrated to song by Shakspere, Waller, and Andrew Marvell.

To his mother, on January 19th, 1804, he writes:

"These little islands of Bermuda form certainly one of the prettiest and most romantic spots that I could ever have imagined, and the descriptions, which represent it as like a place of fairy enchantment, are very little beyond the truth. From my window now as I write, I can see five or six different islands, the most distant not a mile from the others, and separated by the clearest, sweetest coloured sea you can conceive; for the water here is so singularly transparent that, in coming in, we could see the rocks under the ship quite plainly. These little islands are thickly covered with cedar groves,

through the vistas of which you catch a few pretty white houses, which my poetical short-sightedness always transforms into temples."

In his Odes and Epistles, subsequently published, we have a series of poetical notes of his progress from place to place, and from these we shall give some extracts:-

TO LORD VISCOUNT STRANGFORD.

ABOARD THE PHAETON FRIGATE, OFF THE AZORES, BY MOONLIGHT.

Sweet Moon! if, like Crotona's sage,

By any spell my hand could dare

To make thy disk its ample page,

And write my thoughts, my wishes there;

How many a friend, whose careless eye

Now wanders o'er that starry sky,

Should smile, upon thy orb to meet
The recollection, kind and sweet,
The reveries of fond regret,

The promise, never to forget,

And all my heart and soul would send
To many a dear-lov'd, distant friend.

Even now delusive hope will steal
Amid the dark regrets I feel,
Soothing, as yonder placid beam

Pursues the murmurers of the deep,
And lights them with consoling gleam,
And smiles them into tranquil sleep.
Oh! such a blessed night as this,

I often think, if friends were near,
How we should feel, and gaze with bliss
Upon the moon-bright scenery here!

The sea is like a silvery lake,

And, o'er its calm the vessel glides
Gently, as if it fear'd to wake