in his pocket, as his incipient stock in trade. His countryman Sheridan, too, it will be remembered, started at the same early age with a translation from a Greek but Sheridan's "Arispoet; tænetus" is forgotten, while Moore's "Anacreon" is destined for immorta lity. The translation was speedily followed by "The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.," of which the less that is said the better. On the 24th of February, 1801, Moore produced, at the Haymarket Theatre, an operatic spectacle, called The Gipsy Prince, which, although never printed, was moderately successful in representation, and was repeated about ten times. It was known to be his, although he did not publicly avow himself as the author before it was acted, and felt little disposed to do so after. The “Dramatic Censor" condemns it as a very poor piece. The "Biographia Dramatica "says, "Though not very interesting as a drama, it contained some humour, and was interspersed with some pretty music from the pen of Mr. Kelly." Kelly himself sustained the hero, and Mrs. Mountain, Suett, Emery, and Fawcett were included in the cast. In Moore's letters to his mother, in February and March, 1801 (published in Lord John Russell's memoirs), we find the following slight allusion to The Gipsy Prince: dined on Saturday in company with Suett and Bannister; read the piece to them. Suett is quite enchanted with his part, particularly the mock bravura.""I kept my piece back too long. I am afraid they will not have time to bring it out this season, and it is too expensive for Colman's theatre. He has read it, however; is quite delighted with it, and wishes me to undertake something on a more moderate scale for the little theatre, which perhaps I shall do." His correspondence makes no mention of his drama subsequent to its production. The "Monthly Mirror" of July, 1801-at that time a periodical of first-rate celebrity, edited by Edward Dubois, contained the follownotice:

:

66

"July 24th. A musical entertainment, under the title of The Gipsy Prince, written

by a gentleman of the name of Moore, who has acquired considerable poetical reputation by some elegant and spirited translations of 'Anacreon,' was produced on this evening, and was received with a mixture of applause and disapprobation. It is certainly a flimsy and uninteresting performance, and must be considered merely as a vehicle for some very pleasing music by Mr. Kelly, who made his first appearance on this stage for these three years, in the character which gives the piece a title. A noble Spaniard, for some reason or other, is obliged to disguise his person. He becomes the leader of a band of gipsies; and in that capacity rescues a poor Jew from the officers of the Inquisition, one of whom is wounded in the rencontre. For this he is obliged to fly. He takes shelter in the garden of a grandee, whose daughter instantly falls in love with him, and conceals him from his pursuers. After a little time he is discovered; but it appearing that the man he had wounded is not dead, and that he is the long-lost nephew of a friend of the young lady's father, his offence is pardoned, and the fond pair are united. There is a character called Rincon, into which the author has endeavoured to throw a little humour; but it is so little, and the part itself, though performed by Mr. Fawcett, is so detached from the general plot, that its effect was very inconsiderable. Mrs. Mountain looked and sung, as she always does, most charmingly; and Miss Tyrer,† who is the express image of Mrs. Bland, was very lucky in her song and duet, which were both rapturously applauded. Indeed the whole of the music, as well the original airs composed by Mr. Kelly, as the selections from Paisiello,' are extremely creditable to the taste and scientific arrangements of the composer. The songs do not possess much merit; but Milton himself could hardly infuse a spirit of poetry into the songs of a modern opera."

The concluding sentence is rather a harsh and hasty dictum on the early efforts of a writer, many of whose subsequent ballads are as exquisitely delicate and beautiful in the words, as in the melodies to which they are adapted. Byron was neither exaggerated nor wildly enthusiastic in his admiration when he wrote: "To me, some of Moore's last Erin sparks- As a beam o'er the face of the waters,'' When he who adores thee,' 'Oh, blame not,' and Oh! breathe not his name '-are worth all the epics that ever were composed."

"I had the pleasure this year (1801) to meet Mr. Thomas Moore, the poet, at Mrs. Crouch's cottage, in the King's-road; my brother Joseph introduced him there. I was much entertained with his conversation, and cultivated his pleasing society; and in the course of our acquaintance, persuaded him to write a musical afterpiece for the Haymarket Theatre. I engaged with Mr. Colman to compose the music and to perform in it. It was called The Gipsy Prince, and was performed, for the first time, on the 24th of February, 1801. Part of the poetry was very pretty; but the piece did not succeed, and was withdrawn. As a sample of the poetry, I subjoin a song, sung by me in the character of the Gipsy Prince :

"I have roam'd through many a weary round,
I have wander'd east and west;
Pleasure in every clime I found,
But sought in vain for rest.

"When glory sighs for other climes,
I feel that one's too wide,

And think a home which love endears
Is worth a world beside.

"The needle thus, too rudely moved,
Wander'd unconscious where ;
Yet, having found the place it loved,
It, trembling, settled there."

The above short details comprise all we have been able to collect respecting this ricketty bantling, which died almost as soon as it was born; but they suffice to fix the paternity in the face of many assertions to the contrary.

Moore, although professing liberal principles, and writing himself a democrat, bowed before the altar of aristocracy with more incense than became the lofty independence of genius, even though in want of patronage to help its progress. But he had true pride, notwithstanding, and never neglected or felt ashamed of his own relations, amidst all the fascinations of popularity, or the congenial allurements of elevated society. Once, when the Prince of Wales said to him, at his own table, "Moore, are you connected with the Drogheda family?" he replied readily, without a blush, "No, your Royal Highness; I have no pretensions to such an honour; I am the son of an humble tradesman in Dublin."

Whatever might be merits or demerits, the promise or disappointment, of The Gipsy Prince, it was a production

of youth and inexperience, and should be estimated accordingly; but when Moore had reached full maturity, and had passed what Shakspeare calls the period of "blown youth," and was gently gliding into his thirty-third year, he brought forward a comic opera in three acts, entitled M.P., or the Blue Stocking, which was published soon after representation, but has never since been reprinted, or included in any of his collected works. This piece was acted, for the first time, at the Lyceum Theatre, by the Drury-lane Company, under the management of Arnold, on the 9th of September, 1811. It met with more than average success, and ran for nineteen nights, but does not appear to have been continued after the first season. Some of the papers praised it warmly; others were very severe, and unjustly so, in their strictures. Some time previous to the performance, Moore says in a letter to his mother :

"I did not write on Saturday, as I was a little nervous about my reading to the manager; but I came off with him ten times better than I expected, as I have, indeed, very little confidence in my dramatic powers. He was, however, very much pleased, and said its only fault was, that it would be too good for the audience; that it was in the best style of good comedy, and many more things, which, allowing all that is necessary for politeness, are very encouraging; and I begin to have some little hopes that it may succeed. Do not mention my opera to any one, and bid Kate muzzle old Joe upon the subject."

Again, he writes to Lady Donegall, on the 17th of August, 1811:—

"The season is now, indeed, so far gone, that I should not wonder if I were yet to have you witnesses of my first plunge; and, oh! if I could pack a whole audience like you, with such taste for what is good, and such indulgence for what is bad! But I think there is not in the world so stupid or so boorish a congregation as the audience of an English play-house. I have latterly attended a good deal, and I really think that when an author makes them laugh, he ought to feel like Phocion, when the Athenians applauded him, and ask what wretched bêtise had produced the tribute."+

After the production of the opera, he seems to have communicated the result

† Ibid. p. 257.

to his friends, but with no very strong impression that he had made a hit. This drew from his constant correspondent, Miss Godfrey, Lady Donegall's sister, the following reply :—

"You are so severe upon your poor opera, that, on first opening your letter, we gave it up for lost, and thought it must certainly go to the regions below. However, upon going a little further on, it was an agree able surprise to find it had succeeded, and upon turning to the Globe, the paper which we get, we had great consolation in seeing that it had been very well received, and was likely to go on with great success. What more would you have? If you had written something that had pleased yourself and half-a dozen people of taste very much, that had been full of sentiment and refinement, and not a vulgar joke in it, it might have been very delightful for the above-mentioned seven people; but the public would not have borne it the second night. You write to please the public and not yourself; and if the public are pleased, upon their heads be the sin and shame, if it be unworthy of giving pleasure. An author who hopes for success on the stage must fall in with popular taste, which is now at the last gasp, and past all cure. I dare say, however, that this piece has a great deal more merit than you allow that it has; and that whenever you could give your taskmasters the slip you have put in something excellent in your own way. At all events, the Globe gives a very good account of it, and I'll stick to that; and I hope we shall see it next November with a great deal of pleasure, and I am sure we shall with a great deal of interest. Pray don't let Mr. A- cheat you: it really is too bad that everybody cheats you, and makes money of your talents, and you sit smiling by, not a farthing the better for them."*

The "Biographia Dramatica" says of M. P.:.

"This very successful piece is the production of Thomas Moore, Esq., the wellknown translator of 'Anacreon,' and writer of some amatory poems, under the assumed name of Thomas Little, Esq. It is an elegant and pleasant jeu d'esprit, containing some laughable equivoque, and broad humour, intermixed occasionally with scenes of pathos. Lady Bab Blue is a literary woman of fashion, a class of beings which our modern lecturers have re-invigorated; a vestige of the Bas Blue Club, whose primary ambition is, to be imagined a philosopher in petticoats. The author appears to us to have had an eye, in sketching this character, to that of Miss Beccabunga Veronica, in the comic opera called The Lakers.† Some of the songs possess considerable poetical merit. The music by the author."

Whether Moore's dramatic ardour was cooled by the unfair treatment he hints at as to the profits of his opera, or that he was really discontented with the result, and felt that he was losing his name, and warring with his "gifts," he resigned the sock and never more resumed it; although he seems to have meditated a third attempt in 1813, as we collect from a passage in one of his letters to his musical publisher, Mr. Power, in which he says "I have had another application about Drurylane, in consequence of a conversation at Holland House, and am beginning already (without, however, stopping the progress of my poem) to turn over a subject in my mind." But he soon abandoned it, if he had ever seriously entertained the idea. Perhaps he had been urged by his friend Lord Byron, at that time one of the active members of the committee, and very warm in his efforts to rouse up sleeping genius, in the hope that some novelty might start forth to revive and prop the sinking fortunes of the theatre. The desired novelty soon came, in the person of a great actor, Edmund Kean, but the authors slumbered on, and fortunately left his genius to grapple with their mightier predecessors.

As Moore's opera was never reprinted after the run was over, and the demand had ceased, and very few collectors

have preserved a copy, it has become a sort of literary rarity, and in this particular record some account of it may not be considered superfluous or out of place. The characters, and the actors who represented them, are enumerated in the following list: . Sir Charles Canvas, a Member of Parliament, Mr. Oxberry; Leatherhead, the keeper of a circulating-library, Mr. Lovegrove; Henry de Rosier, in love with Miss Hartington, Mr. Philipps ;* Hartington, Mr. Marshall; Captain Canvas, in love with Miss Selwyn, Mr. Horn; Davy, servant to Lady Bab, Mr. Knight; La Fosse, Mr. Wewitzer; Lady Bab Blue, Mrs. Sparks; Miss Selwyn, her niece, in love with Captain Canvas, Miss Poole; Miss Hartington, in love with Henry, Miss Kelly; Susan, her maid, Mrs. Bland; Madame de Rosier, Mrs. Harlowe.

The plot may be readily described. The scene lies at a fashionable watering-place. The father of Captain and Sir Charles Canvas was married privately in France. Captain Canvas was born before his father's marriage was avowed, and previous to the second solemnisation of it publicly in England. As there was no proof of the first marriage, Sir Charles has usurped, and is in possession of the family title and estate. Madame de Rosier and her son are emigrants, who have lost their property in the French revolution. Henry is reduced to become shopman to Leatherhead. Madame de Rosier, and her servant, La Fosse, happen to have been present at the first marriage of Lady Canvas. Sir Charles endeavours to suppress their evidence, but at the conclusion he is forced to resign the title and estate to his elder legitimate brother. Captain Canvas and Henry de Rosier marry Miss Selwyn and Miss Hartington. Lady Bab Blue is a pretender to poetry, chemistry, &c. She has written a poem upon sal-ammoniac, which she calls the "Loves of Ammonia," and

intends Leatherhead to print. In a letter to Sir Charles, she has expressed her determination that he shall marry her niece. She gives this letter by mistake to Leatherhead, who concludes from the epistle, and from another which she sends him about her poem, that Ammonia is the name of her niece. This produces some good equivocation, and the most amusing scene in the opera. The piece, on the whole, although it would pass muster with a less distinguished parentage, must be pronounced unworthy of Moore's genius, considering the mature age at which it was written. The dialogue is too much laboured and elaborate, the humour is slow and forced, and the whole moves as lazily as the first starting of a steam train, without the exhilarating rapidity which invariably follows. Yet we find here, for the first time, some of the author's songs, which obtained much permanent popularity, such as "When Leila touched the Lute," "Young Love once lived in an humble shed,' "To sigh, yet feel no pain," "Mr. Orator Puff," "Here's the lip that betrayed," and "Though sacred the tie that our country entwineth." When Moore printed his opera, he accompanied it by the following preface, explaining his motives:

"When I gave this piece to the theatre, I had not the least intention of publishing it; because, however I may have hoped that it would be tolerated upon the stage, amongst those light summer productions which are laughed at for a season and forgotten, I was conscious how ill such fugitive trifles can bear to be embodied into a literary form by publication. Amongst the reasons which have influenced me to alter this purpose, the strongest, perhaps, is the pleasure I have felt in presenting the copyright of the dialogue to Mr. Power, as some little acknowledgment of the liberality he has shown in the purchase of the music.

"The opera, altogether, has had a much better fate than I expected; and it would, perhaps, have been less successful in amusing the audience if I had 'songé serièusement a

les faire rire. But that the humble opinion which I express of its merits has not been adopted in complaisance to any of my critics, will appear by the following extract from a letter, which I addressed to the licenser, for the purpose of prevailing upon him to restore certain passages which he had thought proper to expunge as politically objectionable: You will perceive, sir, by the true estimate which I make of my own nonsense, that, if your censorship were directed against bad jokes, &c., I should be much more ready to agree with you than I am at present. Indeed, in that case, the "una litura" would be sufficient.' I cannot advert to my correspondence with this gentleman without thanking him for the politeness and forbearance with which he attended to my remonstrances; though I suspect he will not quite coincide with those journalists who have had the sagacity to discover symptoms of political servility in the dialogue. This extraor ordinary charge was, I believe, founded upon the passage which alludes to the REGENT; and if it be indeed servility to look up with hope to the PRINCE as the harbinger of better days to my wronged and insulted country, and to expect that the friend of a Fox and a Moira will also be the friend of liberty and of Ireland,-if this be servility, in common with the great majority of my countrymen, I am proud to say, I plead guilty to the charge.

"Amongst the many wants which are experienced in these times, the want of a sufficient number of critics will not, I think, be complained of by the most querulous. Indeed, the state of an author now resembles very much that of the poor Laplander in winter, who has hardly time to light his little candle in the darkness, before myriads of insects swarm round to extinguish it. In the present instance, however, I have no reason to be angry with my censurers; for, upon weighing their strictures on this dramatic bagatelle against the praises with which they have honoured my writings in general, I find the balance so flatteringly in my favour, that gratitude is the only sentiment which even the severest have awakened in me."

The preface concludes with the usual platitudes in glorification of the manager and performers. Some of the passages we have quoted require a running commentary to render them intelligible. The allusion to the Regent is figurative, that royal person being typified as a high-mettled racer, and the universal favourite. Lady Bab inquires of Sir Charles if the race had begun. He replies, "Begun, madam! Yes, to be sure, they have begun. There's the high-blooded horse, Rement, has just started, and has set off

in such a style as promises a race of glory! I am but just this moment come from the House (I mean the stand-house), where the knowing ones take different sides, you understand, according as they think a horse will be in or out. But upon this start they are all nem. con., and the unanimous cry from all sides is, 'Regent against the field. Huzza! huzza !'”

This, it must be confessed, is commonplace enough, but still in much better taste than the withering philippics which Moore, in later days, launched against the exalted individual from whom he had received much personal attention, which might have closed his lips, even though insufficient to command his gratitude or respect. As sincerely admiring the poet and the man, we could wish these had not been written, at least by him.

The other interdicted passages contain some biblical references a little out of keeping, with sly hints as to the possibility of parliamentary corruption, venal members, incompetent ministers, and official favouritism. These, as we humbly opine, are fair and not dangerous subjects for satire, and it will scarcely be denied that they are drawn from nature. But the licenser of the day (or Examiner of Theatrical Entertainments, to use his proper technicality), John Larpent, Esq., was a very worthy and accomplished gentleman, with a slight tinge of the serious, or, as the profane call it, a slue towards Methodism, which led him to exercise his functions with a scrupulous horror of the most distant approach to a joke, in all that touched upon matters political, moral, or religious. When he died, and was succeeded by George Colman, it was thought that the reins would be relaxed somewhat; but the eccentric (not to say licentious) humourist of the "Broad Grins," and "Poetical Vagaries," had repented of his early levity, and ap plied the excising-knife with additional rigour. He carried this punctilious nicety to such an extent, that in his letter accompanying the license for Kenney's farce of Spring and Autumn, which is now lying before us, he directed the following lines to be expunged: "Where did you meet the angel?" "Heavens! this is a faint!" "'Twas devilish good !" "The Tower of Babel broke loose!" "What an angel!" "Heaven upon earth,"&c.&c.