two s*, whose total absence from the whole scene, as well as the dead silence that, day after day, followed the calling out of their names, proclaimed how deep had been their share in the unlawful proceedings inquired into by this tribunal. But there was one young friend of mine, *, whose appearance among the suspected and examined as much surprised as it deeply and painfully interested me. He and Emmet had long been intimate and attached friends; their congenial fondness for mathematical studies having been, I think, a far more binding sympathy between them than any arising out of their political opinions. From his being called up, however, on this day, when, as it appeared afterwards, all the most important evidence was brought forward, there could be little doubt that, in addition to his intimacy with Emmet, the college authorities must have possessed some information which led them to suspect him of being an accomplice in the conspiracy. In the course of his examination, some questions were put to him which he refused to answer,-most probably from their tendency to involve or inculpate others; and he was accordingly dismissed, with the melancholy certainty that his future prospects in life were blasted; it being already known that the punishment for such contumacy was not merely expulsion from the University, but also exclusion from all the learned professions. The proceedings, indeed, of this whole day had been such as to send me to my home in the evening with no very agreeable feelings or prospects. I had heard evidence given affecting even the lives of some of those friends whom I had long regarded with admiration as well as affection; and what was still worse than even their danger, a danger ennobled, I thought, by the cause in which they suffered,-was the shameful spectacle exhibited by those who had appeared in evidence against them. Of these witnesses, the greater number had been themselves involved in the plot, and now came forward either as voluntary informers, or else * One of these brothers has long been a general in the French army: having taken a part in all those great enterprises of Napole which have now become matter of history. Should these meet the eye of General, they will call to his mind were driven by the fear of the consequences of refusal to secure their own safety at the expense of companions and friends. I well remember the gloom, so unusual, that hung over our family circle on that evening, as, talking together of the events of the day, we discussed the likelihood of my being among those who would be called up for examination on the morrow. The deliberate conclusion to which my dear honest advisers came, was that, overwhelming as the consequences were to all their plans and hopes for me, yet, if the questions leading to criminate others, which had been put to almost all examined on that day, and which poor ******* alone had refused to answer, were put to me, I must, in the same manner, and at all risks, return a similar refusal. I am not quite certain whether I received any intimation on the following morning, that I was to be one of those examined in the course of the day; but I rather think some such notice had been conveyed to me; and, at last, my awful turn came, and I stood in presence of the formidable tribunal. There sat, with severe look, the vice-chancellor, and, by his side, the memorable Doctor Duigenan,-memorable for his eternal pamphlets against the Catholics. 66 The oath was proffered to me. "I have an objection, my Lord," said I, "to taking this oath." "What is your objection?" he asked sternly. "I have no fears, my Lord, that any thing I might say would criminate myself; but it might tend to involve others, and I despise the character of the person who could be led, under any such circumstances, to inform against his associates." This was aimed at some of the revelations of the preceding day; and, as I learned afterwards, was so understood. "How old are you, Sir?" he then asked. "Between seventeen and eighteen, my Lord." He then turned to his assessor, Duigenan, and exchanged a few words with him, in an under tone of voice. "We cannot," he resumed, again addressing me, "suffer any one to remain in our University who refuses to take this oath." "I shall, then, my Lord," I replied, "take the the days we passed together in Normandy, a few summers since; -more especially our excursion to Bayeux, when, as we talked on the way of old college times and friends, all the eventful and stormy scenes he had passed through since seemed quite forgotten. oath, - still reserving to myself the power of refusing to answer any such questions as I have just described." "We do not sit here to argue with you, Sir," he rejoined sharply; upon which I took the oath, and seated myself in the witnesses' chair. notices and memoranda respecting this work, as I think may be likely to interest my readers. Of the few songs written with a concealed political feeling,—such as "When he who adores thee," and one or two more, —the most successful, in its day, was "When first I met The following are the questions and answers thee warm and young," which alluded, in its that then ensued. After adverting to the hidden sense, to the Prince Regent's desertion proved existence of United Irish Societies in of his political friends. It was little less, I the University, he asked, "Have you ever own, than profanation to disturb the sentiment belonged to any of these societies?" "No, of so beautiful an air by any connexion with my Lord." "Have you ever known of any of such a subject. The great success of this song, the proceedings that took place in them? soon after I wrote it, among a large party stay"No, my Lord." "Did you ever hear of a ing at Chatsworth, is thus alluded to in one of proposal at any of their meetings, for the pur-Lord Byron's letters to me:-"I have heard chase of arms and ammunition?" "Never, my Lord." "Did you ever hear of a proposition made, in one of these societies, with respect to the expediency of assassination?" "Oh no, my Lord." He then turned again to Duigenan, and, after a few words with him, said to me: "When such are the answers you are able to give *, pray what was the cause of your great repugnance to taking the oath?" "I have already told your Lordship my chief reason; in addition to which, it was the first oath I ever took, and the hesitation was, I think, natural."† I was now dismissed without any further questioning; and, however trying had been this short operation, was amply repaid for it by the kind zeal with which my young friends and companions flocked to congratulate me;-not so much, I was inclined to hope, on my acquittal by the court, as on the manner in which I had acquitted myself. Of my reception, on returning home, after the fears entertained of so very different a result, I will not attempt any description; it was all that such a home alone could furnish. *** I shall now string together such detached There had been two questions put to all those examined on the first day," Were you ever asked to join any of these societies?" and "By whom were you asked?" which I should have refused to answer, and must, of course, have abided the consequences. + For the correctness of the above report of this short examination, I can pretty confidently answer. It may amuse, therefore, my readers, as showing the manner in which biographers make the most of small facts,-to see an extract or two from another account of this affair, published not many years since by an old and zealous friend of our family. After stating with tolerable correctness one or two of my answers, the writer thus proceeds :66 Upon this, Lord Clare repeated the question, and young Moore from London that you have left Chatsworth It has been sometimes supposed that “Oh, breathe not his name," was meant to allude to Lord Edward Fitzgerald: but this is a mistake; the song having been suggested by the wellknown passage in Robert Emmet's dying speech, "Let no man write my epitaph..... let my tomb remain uninscribed, till other times and other men shall learn to do justice to my memory." The feeble attempt to commemorate the glory of our great Duke-"When History's Muse," &c.—is in so far remarkable, that it made up amply for its want of poetical spirit, by an outpouring, rarely granted to bards in these days, of the spirit of prophecy. It was in the year 1815 that the following lines first made their appearance: And still the last crown of thy toils is remaining, The grandest, the purest, ev'n thou hast yet known ; made such an appeal, as caused his lordship to relax, austere and rigid as he was. The words I cannot exactly remember: the substance was as follows:-that he entered college to receive the education of a scholar and a gentleman; that he knew not how to compromise these characters by informing against his college companions that his own speeches in the debating society had been ill construed, when the worst that could be said of them was, if truth had been spoken, that they were patriotic that he was aware of the high-minded nobleman he had the honour of appealing to, and if his lordship could for a moment condescend to step from his high station and place himself in his situation, then say how he would act under such circumstances, it would be his guidance."-HERBERT's Irish Varieties. London, 1836. Though proud was thy task, other nations unchaining, Far prouder to heal the deep wounds of thy own. At the foot of that throne, for whose weal thou hast stood, Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame, &c. About fourteen years after these lines were written, the Duke of Wellington recommended to the throne the great measure of Catholic Emancipation. The fancy of the "Origin of the Irish Harp, "was (as I have elsewhere acknowledged*) suggested, by a drawing made under pecuLarly painful circumstances, by the friend so often mentioned in this sketch, Edward Hud In connexion with another of these matchless irs,—one that defies all poetry to do it justice, -I find the following singular and touching statement in an article of the Quarterly Review. Speaking of a young and promising poetess, Lucretia Davidson, who died very early from nervous excitement, the Reviewer says, "She was particularly sensitive to music. There was one song (it was Moore's Farewell to his Harp) to which she took a special fancy. She wished to hear it only at twilight, thus (with that same perilous love of excitement which made her place the Æolian harp in the window when she was composing) seeking to increase the effect which the song produced upon a nervous system, already diseasedly susceptible; for it is aid that, whenever she heard this song, she became cold, pale, and almost fainting; yet it was her favourite of all songs, and gave occasion to those verses addressed in her fifteenth year to ber sister."† With the Melody entitled "Love, Valour, and Wit," an incident is connected, which awakened feelings in me of proud, but sad pleasure-as showing that my songs had reached the hearts of some of the descendants of those great Irish families, who found themselves forced, in the dark days of persecution, to seek in other lands a refuge from the shame and ruin of their own;- those, whose story I have thus associated with one of their country's most characteristic airs: **When, in consequence of the compact entered into between ent and the chief leaders of the conspiracy, the State Prinem, before proceeding into exile, were allowed to see their frenia, I paid a visit to Edward Hudson, in the jail of Kilmainwhere he had then lain immured for four or five months, hearing of friend after friend being led out to death, and expecting Ye Blakes and O'Donnells, whose fathers resign'd From a foreign lady, of this ancient extraction, -whose names, could I venture to mention them, would lend to the incident an additional Irish charm, -I received, about two years since, through the hands of a gentleman to whom it had been entrusted, a large portfolio, adorned inside | with a beautiful drawing, representing Love, Wit, and Valour, as described in the song. In the border that surrounds the drawing are introduced the favourite emblems of Erin, the harp, the shamrock, the mitred head of St. Patrick, together with scrolls containing each, inscribed in letters of gold, the name of some favourite melody of the fair artist. This present was accompanied by the following letter from the lady herself; and her Irish race, I fear, is but too discernible in the generous indiscretion with which, in this instance, she allows praise so much to outstrip desert:— "Si les poëtes n'étoient en quelque sorte une propriété intellectuelle dont chacun prend sa part à raison de la puissance qu'ils exercent, je ne saurois en vérité comment faire pour justifier mon courage!-car il en falloit beaucoup pour avoir osé consacrer mon pauvre talent d'amateur à vos délicieuses poësies, et plus encore pour en renvoyer le pâle reflet à son véritable auteur. "J'espère toutefois que ma sympathie pour l'Irlande vous fera juger ma foible production avec cette heureuse partialité qui impose silence à la critique: car, si je n'appartiens pas à l'Ile Verte par ma naissance, ni mes relations, je puis dire qui je m'y intéresse avec un cœur Irlandais, et que j'ai conservé plus que le nom de mes pères. Cela seul me fait espérer que mes petits voyageurs ne subiront pas le triste noviciat des étrangers. Puissent-ils remplir leur mission sur le sol natal, en agissant conjointement et toujours pour la cause Irlandaise, et every week his own turn to come. I found that to amuse his solitude he had made a large drawing with charcoal on the wall of his prison, representing that fancied origin of the Irish Harp which, some years after, I adopted as the subject of one of the Melodies."" - Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i. + Quarterly Review, vol. xli. p. 294. ་ amener enfin une ère nouvelle pour cette héroïque et malheureuse nation: - le moyen de vaincre de tels adversaires s'ils ne font qu'un ? "Vous dirai-je, Monsieur, les doux moments que je dois à vos ouvrages? ce seroit répéter une fois de plus ce que vous entendez tous les jours et de tous les coins de la terre. Aussi j'ai garde de vous ravir un tems trop précieux par l'écho de ces vieilles vérités. "Si jamais mon étoile me conduit en Irlande, je ne m'y croirai pas étrangère. Je sais que le passé y laisse de longs souvenirs, et que la conformité des désirs et des espérances rapproche en dépit de l'espace et du tems. "Jusque là, recevez, je vous prie, l'assurance therefore readily acceded to the wish expressed by the Proprietor of the Irish Melodies, for a revised and complete edition of the poetry of the Work, though well aware that my verses must lose even more than the "anima dimidium,” in being detached from the beautiful airs to which it was their good fortune to be associated. THOUGH an edition of the Poetry of the Irish | full of typographical errors, in Dublin. I have Melodies, separate from the Music, has long been called for, yet, having, for many reasons, a strong objection to this sort of divorce, I should with difficulty have consented to a disunion of the words from the airs, had it depended solely upon me to keep them quietly and indissolubly together. But, besides the various shapes in which these, as well as my other lyrical writings, have been published throughout America, they are included, of course, in all the editions of my works printed on the Continent, and have also appeared, in a volume The Advertisements which were prefixed to the different numbers, the Prefatory Letter upon Music, &c. will be found in an Appendix at the end of the Melodies. IRISH MELODIES. GO WHERE GLORY WAITS THEE. Go where glory waits thee, Oh! still remember me. Oh! then remember me. But when friends are nearest, When, at eve, thou rovest Oh! then remember me. Once so loved by thee, When, around thee dying, Oh! still remember me. WAR SONG. REMEMBER THE GLORIES OF BRIEN THE BRAVE.1 REMEMBER the glories of Brien the brave, Tho' lost to Mononia2, and cold in the grave, That star of the field, which so often hath pour'd But enough of its glory remains on each sword, To light us to victory yet. Mononia! when Nature embellish'd the tint Of thy fields, and thy mountains so fair, Did she ever intend that a tyrant should print The footstep of slavery there? No! Freedom, whose smile we shall never resign, Go, tell our invaders, the Danes, That 'tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine, Than to sleep but a moment in chains. Forget not our wounded companions, who stood In the day of distress by our side; While the moss of the valley grew red with their blood, They stirr'd not, but conquer'd and died. That sun which now blesses our arms with his light, Saw them fall upon Ossory's plain; Oh! let him not blush, when he leaves us to-night, To find that they fell there in vain. ERIN! THE TEAR AND THE SMILE IN THINE EYES. ERIN, the tear and the smile in thine eyes, of Ossory. The wounded men entreated that they might be allowed to fight with the rest." Let stakes (they said) be stuck in the ground, and suffer each of us, tied to and supported by one of these stakes, to be placed in his rank by the side of a sound man.” "Between seven and eight hundred wounded men (adds O'Halloran) pale, emaciated, and supported in this manner appeared mixed with the foremost of the troops;-never was such another sight exhibited."-History of Ireland, book xii. chap. i. |