Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.


We have already noticed the taste of Mr. Moore for music. "Nor has he
neglected those more solid attainments which should ever distinguish the
well-bred gentleman, for he is an excellent general scholar, and
particularly well-read in the literature of the middle ages. His
conversational powers are great, and his modest and unassuming manners
have placed him in the highest rank of cultivated society." Although his
reputation is so well established, he speaks of himself with his wonted
modesty. "Whatever fame he might have acquired he attributed principally
to the verses which he had adapted to the delicious strains of Irish
melody. His verses, in themselves, could boast of but little merit; but
like flies preserved in amber, they were esteemed in consequence of the
precious material by which they were surrounded."

Sheridan, in speaking of the subject of this memoir, said "That there was
no man who put so much of his heart into his fancy as Tom Moore; that his
soul seemed as if it were a particle of fire separated from the sun; and
was always fluttering to get back to that source of light and heat." Lord
Byron, too, distinguished Moore as "a name consecrated by unshaken public
principle, and the most undoubted and various talents."

[1] Moore's Sheridan, vol. ii. p. 463.

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