shores, connecting my name with the picturesque spot they describe, and the noble old tree which I believe still adorns it.* One of the few treasures (of any kind) I can boast the possession of, is a goblet formed of one of the fruit-shells of this remarkable tree, which was brought from Bermuda, a few years since, by Mr. Dudley Costello, and which that gentleman, having had it tastefully mounted as a goblet, very kindly presented to me; the following words being part of the inscription which it bears:-"To Thomas Moore, Esq., this cup, formed of a calabash which grew on the tree that bears his name, near Walsingham, Bermuda, is inscribed by one who," &c. &c. From Bermuda I proceeded in the Boston, with my friend Captain (now Admiral) J. E. Douglas, to New York, from whence, after a short stay, we sailed for Norfolk, in Virginia; and about the beginning of June, 1804, I set out from that city on a tour through part of the States. At Washington, I passed some days with the English minister, Mr. Merry; and was, by him, presented at the levee of the President, Jefferson, whom I found sitting with General Dearborn and one or two other officers, and in the same homely costume, comprising slippers and Connemara stockings, in which Mr. Merry had been received by himmuch to that formal minister's horror-when waiting upon him, in full dress, to deliver his credentials. My single interview with this remarkable person was of very short duration; but to have seen and spoken with the man who drew up the Declaration of American Independence was an event not to be forgotten. At Philadelphia, the society I was chiefly made acquainted with, and to which (as the verses addressed to "Delaware's green banks"† sufficiently testify) I was indebted for some of my most agreeable recollections of the United States, consisted entirely of persons of the Federalist or Anti-Democratic party. Few and transient, too, as had been my opportunities, of judging for myself of the political or social state of the country, my mind was left open too much to the influence of the feelings and prejudices of those I chiefly consorted with; and, certainly, in no quarter was I so sure to find decided hostility, both to the men and the principles then dominant throughout the Union, as among officers of the British navy, and in the ranks of an angry Federalist opposition. For any bias, therefore, that, under such circumstances, my opinions and feelings may be thought to have received, full allowance, of course, is to be made in appraising the weight due to my authority on the subject. All I can answer for, is the perfect sincerity and earnestness of the actual impressions, whether true or erroneous, under which my Epistles from the United States were written; and so strong, at the time, I confess, were those impressions, that it was the only period of my past life during which I have found myself at all sceptical as to the soundness of that Liberal creed of politics, in the profession and advocacy of which I may be almost literally said to have begun life, and shall most probably end it. Reaching, for the second time, New York, I set out from thence on the now familiar and easy enterprise of visiting the Falls of Niagara. It is but too true, of all grand objects, whether in nature or art, that facility of access to them much diminishes the feeling of reverence they ought to inspire. Of this fault, however, the route to Niagara, at that period- at least the portion of it which led through the Genesee country-could not justly be accused. The latter part of the journey, which lay chiefly through yet but half-cleared wood, we were obliged to perform on foot; and a slight accident I met with, in the course of our rugged walk, laid me up for some days at Buffalo. To the rapid growth, in that wonderful region, of, at least, the materials of civilization, -however ultimately they may be turned to account,- this flourishing town, which stands on Lake Erie, bears most ample testimony. Though little better, at the time when I visited it, than a mere village, consisting chiefly of huts and wigwams, it is now, by all accounts, a populous and splendid city, with five or six churches, town-hall, theatre, and other such appurtenances of a capital. In adverting to the comparatively rude state of Buffalo, at that period, I should be ungrate - A representation of this calabash, taken from a drawing has been introduced in the vignette prefixed to the second on the spot, by Dr, Savage of the Royal Artillery, volume of the edition in ten volumes. ↑ See Epistle to Mr. W. R. Spencer, p. 125. of this edition. ful were I to omit mentioning, that, even then, on the shores of those far lakes, the title of "Poet,"-however unworthily in that instance bestowed, bespoke a kind and distinguishing welcome for its wearer; and that the Captain who commanded the packet in which I crossed Lake Ontario*, in addition to other marks of courtesy, begged, on parting with me, to be allowed to decline payment for my passage. When we arrived, at length, at the inn, in the neighbourhood of the Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening; and I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract in my ears. The day following I consider as a sort of era in my life; and the first glimpse I caught of that wonderful cataract gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters folding smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that, during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality; and, vast and wonderful as was the scene that then opened upon me, my first feeling was that of disappointment. It would have been impossible, indeed, for any thing real to come up to the vision I had, in these few seconds, formed of it; and those awful scriptural words, "The fountains of the great deep were broken up," can alone give any notion of the vague wonders for which I was prepared. can in any respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been describing; and, however different the nature of their appeals to the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking on the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum. Some changes, I understand, injurious to the beauty of the scene, have taken place in the shape of the Falls since the time of my visit to them; and among these is the total disappearance, by the gradual crumbling away of the rock, of the small leafy island which then stood near the edge of the Great Fall, and whose tranquillity and unapproachableness, in the midst of so much turmoil, lent it an interest which I thus tried to avail myself of, in a Song of the Spirit of that region ‡ : There, amid the island-sedge, Lone I sit at close of day, &c. &c. Another characteristic feature of the vicinity of the Falls, which, I understand, no longer exists, was the interesting settlement of the Tuscarora Indians. With the gallant Brock §, who then commanded at Fort George, I passed the greater part of my time during the few weeks I remained at Niagara; and a visit I paid to these Indians, in company with him and his brother officers, on his going to distribute among them the customary presents and prizes, was not the least curious of the many new scenes I witnessed. These people received But, in spite of the start thus got by imagin- us in all their ancient costume. The young ation, the triumph of reality was, in the end, men exhibited for our amusement in the race, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the the bat-game, and other sports, while the old scene that opened upon me soon took posses- and the women sat in groups under the sursion of my whole mind; presenting, from day rounding trees; and the whole scene was as to day, some new beauty or wonder, and, like picturesque and beautiful as it was new to me. all that is most sublime in nature or art, awak- It is said that West, the American painter, ening sad as well as elevating thoughts. I when he first saw the Apollo, at Rome, exretain in my memory but one other dream-claimed instantly, "A young Indian warrior!" for such do events so long past appear-which- and, however startling the association may The Commodore of the Lakes, as he is styled. + The two first sentences of the above paragraph, as well as a passage that occurs in the subsequent column, stood originally as part of the Notes on one of the American Poems. Introduced in the Epistle to Lady Charlotte Rawdon, p. 128. of this edition. This brave and amiable officer was killed at Queenston, in Upper Canada, soon after the commencement of the war with America, in the year 1812. He was in the act of cheering on his men when he fell. The inscription on the monument raised to his memory, on Queenston Heights, does but due honour to his manly character. appear, some of the graceful and agile forms which I saw that day among the Tuscaroras were such as would account for its arising in the young painter's mind. While on the subject of the Canadian Boat Song, an anecdote connected with that once popular ballad may, for my musical readers at least, possess some interest. A few years since, while staying in Dublin, I was presented, at his own request, to a gentleman who told me that his family had in their possession a curious relic of my youthful days, -being the first notation I had made, in pencilling, of the air and words of the Canadian Boat Song, while on my way down the St. Lawrence, and that it was their wish I should add my signature to attest the authenticity of the autograph. I assured him with truth that I had wholly forgotten even the existence of such a memoran After crossing "the fresh-water ocean" of Ontario, I passed down the St. Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec, staying for a short time at each of these places; and this part of my journey, as well as my voyage on from Quebec to Halifax, is sufficiently traceable through the few pieces of poetry that were suggested to me by scenes and events on the way. And here I must again venture to avail myself of the valuable testimony of Captain Hall to the truth of my descriptions of some of those scenes through which his more practised eye followed me;-dum; that it would be as much a curiosity to taking the liberty to omit in my extracts, as far as may be done without injury to the style or context, some of that generous surplusage of praise in which friendly criticism delights to indulge. In speaking of an excursion he had made up the river Ottawa," a stream," he adds, "which has a classical place in every one's imagination from Moore's Canadian Boat Song," Captain Hall proceeds as follows: "While the poet above alluded to has retained all that is essentially characteristic and pleasing in these boat songs, and rejected all that is not so, he has contrived to borrow his inspiration from numerous surrounding circumstances, presenting nothing remarkable to the dull senses of ordinary travellers. Yet these highly poetical images, drawn in this way, as it were carelessly and from every hand, he has combined with such graphic - I had almost said geographical-truth, that the effect is great, even upon those who have never, with their own eyes, seen theUtawa's tide,' nor flown down the Rapids,' nor heard the 'bell of St. Anne's toll its evening chime;' while the same lines give to distant regions, previously consecrated in our imagination, a vividness of interest, when viewed on the spot, of which it is difficult to say how much is due to the magic of the poetry, and how much to the beauty of the real scene.' "It is singularly gratifying," the author adds, "to discover that, to this hour, the Canadian voyageurs never omit their offerings to the shrine of St. Anne, before engaging in any enterprise; and that during its performance, they omit myself as it could be to any one else, and that I should feel thankful to be allowed to see it. In a day or two after, my request was complied with, and the following is the history of this musical "relic." In my passage down the St. Lawrence, I had with me two travelling companions, one of whom, named Harkness, the son of a wealthy Dublin merchant, has been some years dead. To this young friend, on parting with him, at Quebec, I gave, as a keepsake, a volume I had been reading on the way,- Priestley's Lectures on History; and it was upon a fly-leaf of this volume I found I had taken down, in pencilling, both the notes and a few of the words of the original song by which my own boat-glee had been suggested. The following is the form of my memorandum of the original air:— Then follows, as pencilled down at the same moment, the first verse of my Canadian Boat Song, with air and words as they are at present. From all this it will be perceived, that, in my own setting of the air, I departed in almost every respect but the time from the strain our voyageurs had sung to us, leaving the music of the glee nearly as much my own as the words. no opportunity of keeping up so propitious an intercourse. The flourishing village which surrounds the church on the Green Isle' in question owes its existence and support entirely to these pious contributions." To the few desultory and, perhaps, valueless recollections I have thus called up, respecting the contents of our second volume, I have only to add, that the heavy storm of censure and criticism-some of it, I fear, but too well deserved - which, both in America and in England, the publication of my "Odes and Epistles" drew down upon me, was followed by results which have far more than compensated for any pain such attacks at the time may have inflicted. In the most formidable of all my censors, at that period, -the great master of the art of criticism, in our day,-I have found ever since one of the most cordial and highly valued of all my friends; while the good-will I have experienced from more than one distinguished American sufficiently assures me that any injustice I may have done to that land of freemen, if not long since wholly forgotten, is now remembered only to be forgiven. As some consolation to me for the onsets of criticism, I received, shortly after the appearance of my volume, a letter from Stockholm, addressed to "the author of Epistles, Odes, and other poems," and informing me that "the Princes, Nobles, and Gentlemen, who composed the General Chapter of the most Illustrious, Equestrian, Secular, and Chapteral Order of St. Joachim," had elected me as a Knight of this Order. Notwithstanding the grave and official style of the letter, I regarded it, I own, at first, as a mere ponderous piece of pleasantry; and even suspected that in the name of St. "Joachim" I could detect the low and irreverent pun of St. Jokehim. On a little inquiry, however, I learned that there actually existed such an order of knighthood; that the title, insignia, &c. conferred by it had, in the instances of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Bouillon, and Colonel Imhoff, who were all Knights of St. Joachim, been authorised by the British court; but that since then, Page 127. of this edition. this sanction of the order nad been withdrawn. Of course to the reduction thus caused in the value of the honour was owing its descent in the scale of distinction to "such small deer" of Parnassus as myself. I wrote a letter, however, full of grateful acknowledgment, to Monsieur Hansson, the Vice-Chancellor of the Order, saying that I was unconscious of having entitled myself, by any public service, to a reward due only to the benefactors of mankind; and therefore begged leave most respectfully to decline it. PREFACE го THE THIRD VOLUME. THE three satirical Poems, with which this Volume commences, were published originally without the author's name; "Corruption" and "Intolerance" in the year 1808, and "The Sceptic" in the year following. The political opinions adopted in the first of these Satiresthe Poem on Corruption-was chiefly caught up, as is intimated in the original Preface, from the writings of Bolingbroke, Sir William Wyndham, and other statesmen of that factious period, when the same sort of alliance took place between Toryism and what is now called Radicalism, which is always likely to ensue on the ejection of the Tory party from power. † In the somewhat rash effusion, it will be seen that neither of the two great English parties is handled with much respect; and I remember being taken to task, by one of the few of my Whig acquaintances that ever looked into the poem, for the following allusion to the silencing effects of official station on certain afterwards betook myself, not only more easy to wield, but, from its very lightness, perhaps, more sure to reach its mark. It would almost seem, too, as if the same unembittered spirit, the same freedom from all real malice with which, in most instances, this sort of squib warfare has been waged by me, was felt, in some degree, even by those who were themselves the objects of it;-so generously forgiving have I, in most instances, found them. Even the high Personage against whom the earliest and perhaps most successful of my lighter missiles were launched, could refer to and quote them, as I learn from an incident mentioned in the Life of Sir Walter Scott*, with a degree of good-humour and playfulness which was creditable alike to his temper and good sense. At a memorable dinner given by the Regent to Sir Walter in the year 1815, Scott, among other stories with which his royal host was much amused, told of a sentence passed by an old friend of his, the Lord Justice Clerk Braxfield, attended by circumstances in which the cruelty of this waggish judge was even more conspicuous than his humour. "The Regent laughed heartily," says the biographer, "at this specimen of Braxfield's brutal humour; and I' faith, Walter,' said he, this old bigwig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast?— The table spread with tea and toast, In reference to this, and other less exalted instances, of the good-humoured spirit in which my “innocui sales" have in general been taken, I shall venture to cite here a few flattering sentences which, coming as they did from a political adversary and a stranger, touched me far more by their generosity than even by their praise. In speaking of the pension which had just then been conferred upon me, and expressing, in warm terms, his approval of the grant, the editor of a leading Tory journal† thus liberally expresses himself:-"We know that some will blame us for our prejudice-if it be prejudice, in favour of Mr. Moore; but we cannot help it. As he tells us himself, 'Wit a diamond brings That cuts its bright way through' the most obdurate political antipathies. To return to the period of the Regency:In the numerous attacks from the government press, which my occasional vollies of small shot against the Court used to draw down upon me, it was constantly alleged, as an aggravation of my misdeeds, that I had been indebted to the Royal personage thus assailed by me for many kind and substantial services. Luckily, the list of the benefits showered upon me from that high quarter may be despatched in a few sentences. At the request of the Earl of Moira, one of my earliest and best friends, his Royal Highness graciously permitted me to dedicate to him my Translation of the Odes of Anacreon. I was twice, I think, admitted to the honour of dining at Carlton House; and when the Prince, on his being made Regent in 1811, gave his memorable fête, I was one of the crowd-about 1500, I believe, in number--who enjoyed the privilege of being his guests on the occasion. There occur some allusions, indeed, in the Twopenny Post-Bag, to the absurd taste displayed in the ornaments of the Royal suppertable at that fête‡; and this violation-for such, to a certain extent, I allow it to have been of the reverence due to the rights of the Hospitable Jove§, which, whether administered by prince or peasant, ought to be sacred from such exposure, I am by no means disposed to defend. But, whatever may be thought of the Vol. iii. p. 342 The Standard, August 24. 1835. Appear so perfectly at home; The same bright river, 'mong the dishes, But not ah! not the same dear fishes. Late hours and claret kill'd the old ones;- (It being rather hard to raise Some sprats have been, by Y-rm-h's wish, And gudgeons (so V-ns-tt-t told Twopenny Post-Bag, p. 137. "Ante fores stabat Jovis Hospitis ara." Ovid. |