That
M. Vallat should talk rather foolishly about Emmet was to be expected;
for Emmet's rhetorical rubbish was sure to impose, and has always
imposed, on Frenchmen. The truth of course is that this young
person--though one of those whom every humane man would like to keep
mewed up till they arrived, if they ever did arrive, which is
improbable, at years of discretion--was one of the most mischievous of
agitators. He was one of those who light a bonfire and then are shocked
at its burning, who throw a kingdom into anarchy and misery and think
that they are cleared by a reference to Harmodius and Aristogeiton. It
is one of the most fearful delights of the educated Tory to remember
what the grievance of Harmodius and Aristogeiton really was. Moore (who
had something of the folly of Emmet, but none of his reckless conceit)
escaped, and his family must have been exceedingly glad to send him
over to the Isle of Britain. He entered at the Middle Temple in 1799,
but hardly made even a pretence of reading law. His actual experience is
one of those puzzles which continually meet the student of literary
history in the days when society was much smaller, the makers of
literature fewer, and the resources of patronage greater. Moore toiled
not, neither did he spin. He slipped, apparently on the mere strength of
an ordinary introduction, into the good graces of Lord Moira, who
introduced him to the exiled Royal Family of France, and to the richest
members of the Whig aristocracy--the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of
Lansdowne and others, not to mention the Prince of Wales himself. The
young Irishman had indeed, as usual, his "proposals" in his
pocket--proposals for a translation of Anacreon which appeared in May
1800. The thing which thus founded one of the easiest, if not the most
wholly triumphant, of literary careers is not a bad thing. The original,
now abandoned as a clever though late imitation, was known even in
Moore's time to be in parts of very doubtful authenticity, but it still
remains, as an original, a very pretty thing. Moore's version is not
quite so pretty, and is bolstered out with paraphrase and amplification
to a rather intolerable extent. But there was considerable
fellow-feeling between the author, whoever he was, and the translator,
and the result is not despicable. Still there is no doubt that work as
good or better might appear now, and the author would be lucky if he
cleared a hundred pounds and a favourable re