THOMAS MOORE

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1920, Page 11

THOMAS MOORE

(By A. Hilliard Attebidgb, in America.) In handbooks of literature and encyclopedias Ave find Thomas Moore very generally , described as the “National Poet of Ireland,” and his name appears in an honored place in many published lists of Catholic writers. One may doubt, however, whether his claim to the pre-eminent title of the “national poet” of his native land can stand critical examination. Moore was the son of Catholic parents, having been born in Dublin in 1779. In the autobiographical sketch of his early life, which forms the first part of his Memoirs edited by Lord John Russell, he tells us: “My mother was a sincere and warm Catholic, and even gave way to some of the old superstitions connected with that faith in a manner remarkable for a person of her strength of mind.” But he adds that his father was not so religiously minded and that his jibes and jests against priests would sometimes call forth a protest from his wife. About an old priest from a neighboring church who was often a visitor at his home, Moore writes affectionately, but says he was somewhat afraid of him when the time came to go to confession. As a boy he went to the Sacraments twice a year, probably at Easter and Christmas, for in those later years of the eighteenth century, when so many of the Irish priesthood were educated in France and inspired by the French rigorism of the time, it was the custom of many in Ireland to go to the Sacraments on several great feasts only of the year. In 1794, at the age of 15, Moore became a student at Trinity College, a stronghold of Protestantism, and not long after this he gave up the practice of confession. He writes in his Memoirs: “So irksome, did it become to me, that about a year or two after my entrance into college I ventured to signify to my mother a wish that I should no longer go to confession; and after a slight remonstrance she sensibly acceded to my wish.” Thus at the age of 16 or 17 Moore gave up the practice of his religion, though he seems to have always called himself a Catholic. In 1799 came his journey to London to keep his terms at the Middle Temple, with a view to being called to the Bar. But literature, not law, was to be his career. He brought with him from Dublin his verse-translation of the so-called Odes of Anacreon, songs of love and wine, now for the most part recognised by scholars as mostly the work, not of Anacreon, but of later singers. The Prince Regent, afterwards King George IV.; accepted the dedication of the work. It was just the kind of poetry that might well be dedicated to this “ill-advised young man,” as old George 111. called his bibulous, loose-living and spendthrift son. The young Irishman now joined the Prince’s circle at Carlton House and became the favorite of London drawing-rooms, where his poetical honors, the favor of his royal patron, and his own musical talents and bright witty conversation made him a welcome guest. Moore had been a student of Trinity in the stirring days of ’Ninety-eight and had lived there in an atmosphere of Protestant Toryism that kept him far aloof from both nationalist and Catholic ideals. He was in London when the Union was effected and when Emmet made his wild and hopeless protest that brought him to the scaffold. When, in 1807, Moore began the publication of the Irish Melodies that were to bring him fame and fortune, he had long been outside the current of Irish nationalism and for years had been only in name an adherent of Ireland’s Faith. He had a kind of scrappy knowledge of the history of his native land, just enough to provide historical or legendary topics for some of the Melodies, and to make some show of erudition in the foot-notes he attached to them. Years after, on a visit to Dublin, he found Eugene O’Curry busy on some of the Gaelic manuscripts in the library of the Irish Academy, and the great scholar told him something of their contents. Moore had just written a History of Ireland for a British publisher. “I should never have attempted to write that history,” he said to O’Curry. The Irish people of the time were delighted with the Melodies. To the public in England they came as a revelation. The traditional airs to which the words were set were a new treasury of delightful music. The words were often true poetry, though unfortunately they were at times unworthy of their theme. There was far too much of tawdry ornament and not a little of the stupid conventional Bacchanalianism affected by the poets of the day. Ojie of the poems is a brutal libel on an heroic Saint of Erin, St. Kevin (Coemgen), the founder and Abbot of Glendalough. The patriotic national note is frequently sounded, but often thrown back into the far past of the Danish wars. The foreign foes with whom the heroes of

the Melodies are doing s battle are Danish and' Norwegian kings,, so patriotic sentiments can be expressed without: too much risk of offending fashionable opinion in London. There is an almost despairing lamentation over the glories of a past that has gone forever. There is no brave hope for the future, no call to action in the present. The harp of Erin hangs “mute on Tara’s walls” with broken strings. As for any glories in the present, Ireland is called upon to rejoice in her Prince, Moore’s royal patron, and we have a picture of the Muse of History writing the world’s story and the “Genius of Erin” weeping beside her, “for hers was the story that blotted the leaves,” till at last Erin rejoices as she “Sees history write, with a pencil of light That illumined the volume, her Wellington’s name.” Wellington belonged to Ireland only in the sense that he was a son of the ruling British colony, and happened to be born in Dublin. Moore wrote in a very different tone of the Duke in the days when Wellington was bitterly opposing Catholic Emancipation, and when he described him as —■ That chief so coldly great Whom Fame unwillingly smiles upon; Whose name is one of th’ accursed words They breathe with hate on his native plains; For why? They gave him their hearts and swords, And he, in return, gave scoffs and chains. Those lines are to be found in one of the long series of political poems, now serious, now humorous, which Moore for many years contributed to the London newspapers, mostly to the Times, then on the side of the Liberals ot the day against the old Tory gang. Some of Moore’s best ' and brightest work is to be read in those now forgotten lyrics of political guerilla warfare. He had quarrelled with the Prince Regent and often made him the target of his satire. In many of these newspaper verses he did good service to the Irish cause. But the real national poets, Thomas Davis, Clarence Mangan, and other signers of the Young Ireland movement, came to the front much later, during the sad days for Moore, when he was waiting for the end in his cottage at Slopcrton, with his sons dead and his mind failing, and when he wrote, he “was becoming every day more like a vegetable.” An affectionate wife, a Protestant, was caring for him. For years he had gone with her to the English Church service, but once only in his journals we find a record of his going into a Catholic church and thinking sadly of his earlier Faith. But strange to say in the days of his success, four years after O’Connell had on Catholic Emancipation, Moore wrote a book in defence of the Faith he had long ceased to practice. In 1833 Longmans of London published for him, in two little duodecimo volumes, a book that many of our time have heard of, but few have read The Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion. The dedication runs: “To the people of Ireland, this defence of their National Faith is inscribed by their devoted servant.” The story is told, in the first person, of an Irishman at Trinity College, who on hearing one day in 1829, that the Catholic Emancipation Act has been passed, exclaims, “Thank God, I can now become a Protestant.” For he has always regarded Protestantism as the religion of “gentlemen,” cultured, polite, successful people, but felt that to abandon Catholicism under the duress of persecution would be an unworthy act. Now he can become a Protestant without being regarded as a mere fugitive from legal disabilities. 1 But it occurs to him that he may as well first verify the Protestant claim to represent primitive Christianity. As he is a Greek and Latin scholar, he goes to the college library to look for Protestantism in the Fathers of the Church. One wonders where Moore gathered the long array of Patristic texts that follows. His hero gets a decided shock wdien he begins wdth St. Clement in the first century and discovers that he was a Pope, and though Bishop of Rome was regulating the affairs of Corinth. In other Apostolic Fathers he also finds distinctly “Romanist” doctrines and practices, and has the same experience with the Fathers of the second, third, and fourth centuries. Where were the Protestants all this time? He discovers the first Protestants in the men of Capharnaum, who, on hearing the doctrine of the Eucharist, said, “This saying is hard and who can bear it?” and went their way. He finds, indeed, traces of Protestantism in the early cen- ; turies, but always among the “heretics” whom the Fathers I and Councils denounce. He leaves the study of the past , and talks with Protestants of the day, making even a jour- : ney to Germany, the original home of modern Protestan-

tism. But lie finds no two exponents of the religion agree. All is chaos and disunion, and he returns to the Catholic Church, the Church of his own people, exclaiming: “Hail to thee, thou one and only true Church, who art alone the way of life, and in' whose tabernacles alone there is security from all this confusion of tongues There is abundance of sound - teaching and close reasoning _in the book, with all its playful wit and at times bitter satire on the Protestantism of the time. Alas that the writer did not follow the example of his imaginary “traveller” and act upon the conclusions for which he argued so effectively. He spent all the years of his active career a wanderer from the way of life that he pointed out to others. No priest was near him as the end came, and the service of the Anglican Church was read beside his grave. We can only hope that before the darkness finally settled down upon his once brilliant mind in the days of his bodily ill-health and mental decay, light and grace were given to him, and by God’s mercy there was a response.