h to the nightingale, yet
each is perfect of its kind. We take Tom Moore as God sent him--not only
the sweetest song-writer of Ireland, but even in this presence I may
say, the first song-writer in the English language, not even excepting
Burns. The harshness of nature or even of human relations found faint
response in his harmonious being. He was born in the darkness of the
penal days; he lived to manhood under the cruel law that bred a terrible
revolution; but he never was a rebel. He was the college companion and
bosom friend of Robert Emmet, who gave his beautiful life on the gibbet
in protest against the degradation of his country; but Moore took only a
fitful part in the stormy political agitation of the time. When all was
done it was clear that he was one thing and no other--neither a
sufferer, a rebel, an agitator, nor a reformer, but wholly and simply a
poet. He did not rebel, and he scarcely protested. But he did his work
as well as the best, in his own way. He sat by the patriot's grave and
sang tearful songs that will make future rebels and patriots.

It was a hard task for an Irishman, in Moore's day, to win distinction,
unless he achieved it by treason to his own country. In his own bitter
words:--

"Unpriz'd are her sons till they've learned to betray;
Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires;
And the torch that would light them thro' dignity's way
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires."

And yet Moore set out to win distinction, and to win it in the hardest
field. The literary man in those days could only live by the patronage
of the great, and the native nobility of Ireland was dead or banished. A
poet, too, must have an audience; and Moore knew that his audience must
not only be his poor countrymen, but all who spoke the English language.
He lived as an alien in London, and it is hard for an alien to secure
recognition anywhere, and especially an alien poet. The songs he sang,
too, were not English in subject or tone, but Irish. They were filled
with the sadness of his unhappy country. He despaired of the freedom of
Ireland, and bade her:--

"Weep on, weep on, your hour is past,
Your dream of pride is o'er;"

but he did not turn from the ruin to seek renown from strange and
profitable subjects. As the polished Greeks, even in defeat, conquered
their Roman conquerors by their refinement, so this poet sang of
Ireland's sorrow and wrong till England a