kind God threw in his way,
yet at that moment he was "terribly puzzled how to pay his tailor." In
1811, his friend Douglas, who had just received a large legacy, handed
him a blank check, that he might fill it up for any sum he needed. "I
did not accept the offer," writes Moore to his mother; "but you may
guess my feelings." Yet just then he had been compelled to draw on his
publisher, Power, for a sum of thirty pounds, "to be repaid partly in
songs," and was sending his mother a second-day paper, which he was
enabled "to purchase at rather a cheap rate." Even in 1842 he was
"haunted worryingly," not knowing how to meet his son Russell's draft
for one hundred pounds; and a year afterwards he utterly drained his
banker to send fifty pounds to his son Tom. Once, being anxious that
Bessy should have some money for the poor at Bromham, he sent a friend
five pounds, requesting him to forward it to Bessy as from himself; and
when urged by some thoughtless person to make a larger allowance to his
son Tom, in order that he might "live like a gentleman," he writes,--"If
_I_ had thought but of living like a gentleman, what would have become
of my dear father and mother, of my sweet sister Nell, of my admirable
Bessy's mother?" He declined to represent Limerick in Parliament, on the
ground that his "circumstances were not such as to justify coming into
Parliament at all, because to the labor of the day I am indebted for my
daily support." His must be a miserable soul who could sneer at the poet
studying how he could manage to recompense the doctor who would "take no
fees," and at his amusement when Bessy was "calculating whether they
could afford the expense of a fly to Devizes."

As with his mother, so with his wife. From the year 1811, the year of
his marriage,[M] to that of his death, in 1852, she received from him
the continual homage of a lover; away from her, no matter what were his
allurements, he was ever longing to be at home. Those who love as he did
wife, children, and friends will appreciate, although the worldling
cannot, such commonplace sentences as these:--"Pulled some heath on
Ronan's Island (Killarney) to send to my dear Bessy"; when in Italy,
"got letters from my sweet Bessy, more precious to me than all the
wonders I can see"; while in Paris, "sending for Bessy and my little
ones; wherever they are will be home, and a happy home to me." When
absent, (which was rarely for more than a week,) no matter where or in