OF THOMAS MOORE, ESQ. COMPRISING ANECDOTES OF ANCIENT MINSTRELSY, ILLUSTRATIVE of the BY J. W. LAKE. Had Mr Moore done no more than this, he would be entitled to the gratitude of his countrymen; but his genius, like his own Peri, seems never pleased, but while hovering over the region he loves; or if it makes a short excursion, it is only in the hope of securing some advantage that may accelerate the removal of those disqua NOTWITHSTANDING the number of literary men to whom Ireland has given birth, there is very little connected with their names which conveys to us any thing of a national association; for the land of their nativity scarcely enjoys a single ray of that brilliant mind, which sheds its intellectua! brightness over the sister country. Congreve was an apostate, and Swift only by accident a patriot;lifications, which are supposed to exclude happiness whilst Goldsmith was weak enough to affect an air of contempt for a people whose accent was indelibly stamped on his tongue. We could protract the list of her ungrateful and thoughtless - men of mind, even to our own day; but the task would be invidious, and we gladly turn from it to one who forms a splendid exception-one who is not ashamed of Ireland, and of whom Ire-Moore what he deserves-the crown of patriotism; land is justly proud. — Land of the Muse! in glory's lay, In history's leaf thy name shall soar, And still is beaming round thy shore from the limits of his country. In ■ Lalla Rookh • he has given his fire-worshippers the wrongs and feelings of Irishmen; while, in the Memoirs of Captain Rock, he has accomplished a most difficult task-written a history of Ireland that has been read. 19 On such grounds we may well claim for Mr but it is not on this head alone he is entitled to our praise. As a poet, since the lamented death of Byron, he stands al.nost without a competitor; and as a prose-writer, he is highly respectable. home, with a sensibility as exquisite as that which breathes through the lines of Cowper on receiving his mother's picture. Mr Moore is the only son of the late Mr Garret Moore, formerly a respectable tradesman in Dublin, where our poet was born on the 28th of May, 1780. He has two sisters; and his infantine days For thou canst boast a patriot, Moore! seem to have left the most agreeable impressions Mr Moore is every way an Irishman, in heart, on his memory. In an epistle to his eldest sisin feelings, and in principles. For his country ter, dated November, 1803, and written from he has done more than any man living: he has Norfolk in Virginia, he retraces with delight their associated her name, her wrongs, and her attri-childhood, and describes the endearments of butes, with poetry and music, neither of which can ever die, while taste, patriotism, and literature subsist in the world; and whilst these survive, Ireland will form the theme of Beauty's song, and He acquired the rudiments of an excellent Irish music the charm of every cultivated mind. education under the care of the late Mr Samuel But, all extrinsic circumstances apart, there is in Whyte, of Grafton-street, Dublin, a gentleman the melodies of Mr Moore a sacred fire, which cou- extensively known and respected as the early tuveys its vividness to the soul of his readers; and tor of Sheridan. He evinced such talent in early they must be made of sterner stuff than the ordi-life, as determined his father to give him the adnary race of men, if their bosoms do not glow with vantages of a superior education, and at the early liberal and patriotic enthusiasm, while they pe-age of fourteen, he was entered a student of Triruse the harmonious creations of a poet who has nity College, Dublin. clothed the wild and eccentric airs of his country in words that burn, and sentiments that find an echo in every generous breast. Mr Moore was greatly distinguished while at the University, by an enthusiastic attachment to the liberty and independence of his country, a |