As to my own share in these representations, the following list of my most successful characters will show how remote from the line of the Heroic was the small orbit through which I ranged; my chief parts having been Sam, in "Raising the Wind," Robin Roughhead, Mungo, two contained in the following pages are closely connected.* In my Preface to the First Volume of this collection, I briefly noticed the taste for Private Theatrical Performances which prevailed during the latter half of the last century among the higher ranks in Ireland. This taste continued for nearly twenty years to sur-Sadi, in the "Mountaineers," Spado, and Peepvive the epoch of the Union, and in the performances of the Private Theatre of Kilkenny gave forth its last, as well as, perhaps, brightest flashes. The life and soul of this institution was our manager, the late Mr. Richard Power, a gentleman who could boast a larger circle of attached friends, and through a life more free from shadow or alloy, than any individual it has ever been my lot to know. No livelier proof, indeed, could be required of the sort of feeling entertained towards him than was once shown in the reception given to the two following homely lines which occurred in a Prologue I wrote to be spoken by Mr. Corry in the character of Vapid. 'Tis said our worthy manager intends To help my night, and he, you know, has friends.† These few simple words I wrote with the assured conviction that they would produce more effect, from the homefelt truism they contained, than could be effected by the most laboured burst of eloquence; and the result was just what I had anticipated, for the house rung, for a considerable time, with the heartiest plaudits. The chief comic, or rather farcical, force of the company lay in my friend Mr. Corry, and "longo intervallo," myself; and though, as usual, with low comedians, we were much looked down upon by the lofty lords of the buskin, many was the sly joke we used to indulge together, at the expense of our heroic brethren. Some waggish critic, indeed, is said to have declared that of all the personages of our theatre he most admired the prompter,"because he was least seen and best heard." But this joke was, of course, a mere goodhumoured slander. There were two, at least, of our dramatic corps, Sir Wrixon Becher and Mr. Rothe, whose powers, as tragic actors, few amateurs have ever equalled; and Mr. Corry -perhaps alone of all our company-would have been sure of winning laurels on the public stage. * See page 456. ing Tom. In the part of Spado there occur several allusions to that gay rogue's shortness of stature, which never failed to be welcomed by my auditors with laughter and cheers; and the words "Even Sanguino allows I am a clever little fellow" was always a signal for this sort of friendly explosion. One of the songs, indeed, written by O'Keefe for the character of Spado so much abounds with points thus personally applicable, that many supposed, with no great compliment either to my poetry or my modesty, that the song had been written, expressly for the occasion, by myself. The following is the verse to which I allude, and for the poetry of which I was thus made responsible: "Though born to be little's my fate, Yet so was the great Alexander; Some further account of the Kilkenny Theatre, as well as of the history of Private Theatricals in general, will be found in an article I wrote on the subject for the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlvi. No. 92. p. 368. PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH VOLUME. On my return from the interesting visit to Rome, of which some account has been given in the preceding Preface, I took up my abode in Paris, and, being joined there by my family, continued to reside in that capital, or its en ↑ See page 456. virons, till about the close of the year 1822. As no life, however sunny, is without its clouds, I could not escape, of course, my share of such passing shadows; and this long estrangement from our happy English home, towards which my family yearned even more fondly than myself, had been caused by difficulties of a pecuniary nature, and to a large amount, in which I had been involved by the conduct of the person who acted as my deputy in the small office I held at Bermuda. That I should ever have come to be chosen for such an employment seems one of those freaks or anomalies of human destiny which baffle all ordinary speculation; and went far, indeed, to realise Beaumarchais' notion of the sort of standard by which, too frequently, qualification for place is regulated,—“Il fallut un calculateur; ce fut un danseur qui l'obtint." But however much, in this instance, I suffered from my want of schooling in matters of business, and more especially from my having neglected the ordinary precaution of requiring security from my deputy, I was more than consoled for all such embarrassment, were it even ten times as much, by the eager kindness with which friends pressed forward to help to release me from my difficulties. Could I venture to name the persons,—and they were many,-who thus volunteered their aid, it would be found they were all of them men whose characters enhanced such a service, and that, in all, the name and the act reflected honour upon each other. I shall so far lift the veil in which such delicate generosity seeks to shroud itself, as to mention briefly the manner in which one of these kind friends,-himself possessing but limited means,-proposed to contribute to the object of releasing me from my embarrassments. After adverting, in his letter, to my misfortunes, and "the noble way," as he was pleased to say, "in which I bore them," he adds, "would it be very impertinent to say, that I have 500l. entirely at your disposal, to be paid when you like; and as much more that I could advance, upon any reasonable security, payable in seven years?" The writer concludes by apologising anxiously and delicately for "the liberty which he thus takes," assuring me that "he would not have made the offer if he did not feel that he would most readily accept the same assistance from me." I select this one instance from among the many which that trying event of my life enables me to adduce, both on account of the deliberate feeling of manly regard which it manifests, and also from other considerations which it would be out of place here to mention, but which rendered so genuine a mark of friendship from such a quarter peculiarly touching and welcome to me. When such were the men who hastened to my aid in this emergency, I need hardly say, it was from no squeamish pride,—for the pride would have been in receiving favours from such hands,—that I came to the resolution of gratefully declining their offers, and endeavouring to work out my deliverance by my own efforts. With a credit still fresh in the market of literature, and with publishers ready as ever to risk their thousands on my name, I could not but feel that, however gratifying was the generous zeal of such friends, I should best show that I, in some degree, deserved their offers, by declining, under such circumstances, to accept them. Meanwhile, an attachment had issued against me from the Court of Admiralty; and as a negotiation was about to be opened with the American claimants, for a reduction of their large demand upon me,- supposed, at that time, to amount to six thousand pounds,—it was deemed necessary that, pending the treaty, I should take up my abode in France. To write for the means of daily subsistence, and even in most instances to "forestall the slow harvest of the brain," was for me, unluckily, no novel task. But I had now, in addition to these home calls upon the Muse, a new, painful, and, in its first aspect, overwhelming exigence to provide for; and, certainly, Paris, swarming throughout as it was, at that period, with rich, gay, and dissipated English, was, to a person of my social habits and multifarious acquaintance, the very worst possible place that could have been resorted to for even the semblance of a quiet or studious home. The only tranquil, and, therefore, to me, most precious portions of that period were the two summers passed by my family and myself with our kind Spanish friends, the V * * * * Is, at their beautiful place, La Butte Coaslin, on the road up to Bellevue. There, in a cottage belonging to M. V 1, and but a ** *** few steps from his house, we contrived to conjure up an apparition of Sloperton*; and I was able for some time to work with a feeling of comfort and home. I used frequently to pass the morning in rambling alone through the noble park of St. Cloud, with no apparatus for the work of authorship but my memorandum-book and pencils, forming sentences to run smooth and moulding verses into shape. In the evenings I generally joined with Madame V ******* 1 in Italian duetts, or, with far more pleasure, sat as listener, while she sung to the Spanish guitar those sweet songs of her own country to which few voices could do such justice. One of the pleasant circumstances connected with our summer visits to La Butte was the near neighbourhood of our friend, Mr. Kenny, the lively dramatic writer, who was lodged picturesquely in the remains of the Palace of the King's Aunts, at Bellevue. I remember, on my first telling Kenny the particulars of my Bermuda mishap, his saying, after a pause of real feeling, "Well, it's lucky you're a poet; -a philosopher never could have borne it." Washington Irving also was, for a short time, our visiter; and still recollects, I trust, his reading to me some parts of his then forthcoming work, Bracebridge Hall, as we sat together on the grass walk that leads to the Rocher, at La Butte. Among the writings, then but in embryo, to which I looked forward for the means of my enfranchisement, one of the most important, as well as most likely to be productive, was my intended Life of Sheridan. But I soon found that, at such a distance from all those living authorities from whom alone I could gain any interesting information respecting the private life of one who left behind him so little epistolary correspondence, it would be wholly impossible to proceed satisfactorily with this task. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Murray and Mr. Wilkie, who were at that time the intended publishers of the work, to apprize them of this temporary obstacle to its progress. Being thus baffled in the very first of the few resources I had looked to, I next thought of a Romance in verse, in the form of Letters, "A little cot, with trees arow, or Epistles; and with this view sketched out a story, on an Egyptian subject, differing not much from that which, some years after, formed the groundwork of the Epicurean. After labouring, however, for some months, at this experiment, amidst interruption, dissipation, and distraction, which might well put all the Nine Muses to flight, I gave up the attempt in despair;-fully convinced of the truth of that warning conveyed in some early verses of my own, addressed to the Invisible Girl: Oh hint to the bard, 'tis retirement alone It was, indeed, to the secluded life I led during the years 1813-1816, in a lone cottage among the fields, in Derbyshire, that I owed the inspiration, whatever may have been its value, of some of the best and most popular portions of Lalla Rookh. It was amidst the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters that I found myself enabled, by that concentration of thought which retirement alone gives, to call up around me some of the sunniest of those Eastern scenes which have since been welcomed in India itself, as almost native to its clime. But, abortive as had now been all my efforts to woo the shy spirit of Poesy, amidst such unquiet scenes, the course of reading I found time to pursue, on the subject of Egypt, was of no small service in storing my mind with the various knowledge respecting that country, which some years later I turned to account, in writing the story of the Epicurean. The kind facilities, indeed, towards this object, which some of the most distinguished French scholars and artists afforded me, are still remembered by me with thankfulness. Besides my old acquaintance, Denon, whose drawings of Egypt, then of some value, I frequently consulted, I found Mons. Fourier and Mons. Langlès no less prompt in placing books at my disposal. With Humboldt, also, who was at that time in Paris, I had more than once some conversation on the subject of Egypt, and remember his expressing himself in no very laudatory terms respecting the labours of the French savans in that country. I had now been foiled and frustrated in two See p. 71. of this edition. РОРЕ. of those literary projects on which I had counted most sanguinely in the calculation of my resources; and, though I had found sufficient time to furnish my musical publisher with the Eighth Number of the Irish Melodies, and also a Number of the National Airs, these works alone, I knew, would yield but an insufficient supply, compared with the demands so closely and threateningly hanging over me. In this difficulty I called to mind a subject,—the Eastern allegory of the Loves of the Angels, -on which I had, some years before, begun a prose story, but in which, as a theme for poetry, I had now been anticipated by Lord Byron, in one of the most sublime of his many poetical miracles, "Heaven and Earth." Knowing how soon I should be lost in the shadow into which so gigantic a precursor would cast me, I had endeavoured, by a speed of composition which must have astonished my habitually slow pen, to get the start of my noble friend in the time of publication, and thus afforded myself the sole chance I could perhaps expect, under such unequal rivalry, of attracting to my work the attention of the public. In this humble speculation, however, I failed; for both works, if I recollect right, made their appearance at the same time. In the meanwhile, the negotiation which had been entered into with the American claimants, for a reduction of the amount of their demands upon me, had continued to "drag its slow length along;" nor was it till the month of September, 1822, that, by a letter from the Messrs. Longman, I received the welcome intelligence that the terms offered, as our ultimatum, to the opposite party, had been at last accepted, and that I might now with safety return to England. I lost no time, of course, in availing myself of so welcome a privilege; and as all that remains now to be told of this trying episode in my past life may be comprised within a small compass, I shall trust to the patience of my readers for tolerating the recital. On arriving in England I learned, for the first time, having been, till then, kept very much in darkness on the subject,--that, after a long and frequently interrupted course of negotiation, the amount of the claims of the American merchants had been reduced to the sum of one thousand guineas, and that towards the payment of this the uncle of my deputy, a rich London merchant,-had been brought, with some difficulty, to contribute three hundred pounds. I was likewise informed, that a very dear and distinguished friend of mine, to whom, by his own desire, the state of the negotiation was, from time to time, reported, had, upon finding that there appeared, at last, some chance of an arrangement, and learning also the amount of the advance made by my deputy's relative, immediately deposited in the hands of a banker the remaining portion (750l.) of the required sum, to be there in readiness for the final settlement of the demand. Though still adhering to my original purpose of owing to my own exertions alone the means of relief from these difficulties, I yet felt a pleasure in allowing this thoughtful deposit to be applied to the generous purpose for which it was destined; and having employed in this manner the 750l., I then transmitted to my kind friend,—I need hardly say with what feelings of thankfulness, -a cheque on my publishers for the amount. Though this effort of the poet's purse was but, as usual, a new launch into the Future,a new anticipation of yet unborn means,the result showed that, at least in this instance, I had not counted on my bank "in nubibus" too sanguinely; for, on receiving my publishers' account, in the month of June following, I found 1000l. placed to my credit from the sale of the Loves of the Angels, and 500l. from the Fables of the Holy Alliance. I must not omit to mention, that, among the resources at that time placed at my disposal, was one small and sacred sum, which had been set apart by its young possessor for some such beneficent purpose. This fund, amounting to about 300l., arose from the proceeds of the sale of the first edition of a biographical work, then recently published, which will long be memorable, as well from its own merits and subject, as from the lustre that has been since shed back upon it from the public career of its noble author. To a gift from such hands might well have been applied the words of Ovid, acceptissima semper Munera sunt, auctor quæ pretiosa facit. In this volume, and its immediate successor, will be found collected almost all those delinquencies of mine, in the way of satire, which have appeared, from time to time, in the pub "Cujus octavum trepidavit ætas there are many persons, now forming a part of the literary public, who have come into existence since they happened, and who cannot be expected, even if they had the leisure and opportunity to rummage the files of our old newspapers for a history of the perishable facts on which Mr. Moore has so often rested the flying artillery of his wit. Many of those facts will be considered beneath the notice of the grave historian: and it is, therefore, incumbent on Mr. Moore-if he wishes his political squibs, imbued as they are with a wit and humour quite Aristophanic, to be relished, as they deserve to be relished, by our great-grandchildren- -to preface them with a rapid summary of the events which gave them birth." Without pausing here to say how gratifying it is to me to find my long course of AntiTory warfare thus tolerantly, and even generously spoken of, and by so distinguished an organ of public opinion, I shall as briefly as I can, advert to the writer's friendly suggestion, and then mention some of those reasons which have induced me to adopt it. That I was disposed, at first, to annex some such commentary The Times, Jan. 9. 1841. to this series of squibs, may have been collected from the concluding sentences of my last Preface; but a little further consideration has led me to abandon this intention. To that kind of satire which deals only with the lighter follies of social life, with the passing modes, whims, and scandal of the day, such illustrative comments become, after a short time, necessary. But the true preserving salt of political satire is its applicability to future times and generations, as well as to those which had first called it forth; its power of transmitting the scourge of ridicule through succeeding periods, with a lash still fresh for the back of the bigot and the oppressor, under whatever new shape they may present themselves. I can hardly flatter myself with the persuasion that any one of the satirical pieces contained in this Volume is likely to possess this principle of vitality; but I feel quite certain that, without it, not all the notes and illustrations in which even the industry of Dutch commentatorship could embalm them would insure to these trifles a life much beyond the present hour. cess Already, to many of them, that sort of relish by far the least worthy source of their suc- which the names of living victims lend to such sallies, has become, in the course of time, wanting. But, as far as their appositeness to the passing political events of the day has yet been tried-and the dates of these satires range over a period of nearly thirty years —their ridicule, thanks to the undying nature of human absurdity, appears to have lost, as yet, but little of the original freshness of its first application. Nor is this owing to any peculiar felicity of aim, in the satire itself, but to the sameness, throughout that period, of all its original objects;-the unchangeable nature of that spirit of Monopoly by which, under all its various impersonations, commercial, religious, and political, these satires had been first provoked. To refer but to one instance, the Corn Question,-assuredly, the entire appositeness, at this very moment, of such versicles as the following, redounds far less to the credit of poesy than to the disgrace of legislation,— How can you, my Lord, thus delight to torment all That, being by nature so little prone to spleen |