This powerful article, intended to annihilate the popular | 400, chiefly to his mother, and Mr. Power Whig poet and partisan, is from the pen of the Tory Coryphæus, J. Hilme Croker, and is in his best style.-ED] We have given our general views of Mr. Moore's literary character, as well as of some of his principal productions, so fully on former occasions that, on the present, we shall confine our observations to the special contents of the volumes before us. This is a task which we wish we could have spared ourselves; for we have but little to commend either in the substance or the cir cumstances of the publication-which has not merely disappointed the general reader, but must, we believe, have given pain to every one who has any regard for the memory of poor Moore. The book presents us with, first, an autobiographical sketch of Moore's earlier life, of which a good deal seems to us very apocryphal, and what is of any value has been already before the public in the prefaces to the collected edition of his works; secondly, a number of letters, already above Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by the Right Honorable Lord John Russell, M. P. Vols. I., II., III, and IV. 1853. VOL XXX. NO. IL the publisher of his "Melodies ;" thirdlybut much the larger and more important section, occupying half the second and the whole of the third and fourth volumes-a Diary-beginning in August, 1818-and ly kept-of not merely the incidents of his thenceforward most assiduously and minuteand doings of the extensive and variegated literary and domestic life, but the sayings society in which he moved. following clause of his will (dated 1828):— These materials he bequeathed under the "I also confide to my valued friend Lord John Russell (having obtained his kind promise to undertake this service for me) the task of looking over whatever papers, letters, or journals I may leave behind me, for the purpose of forming from them some kind of publication, whether in the shape of memoirs or otherwise, which may afford the means of making some provision for my wife and family."-Preface, p. i. On this Lord John observes "that the reader will not wonder that he has thought deceased friend." To the general proposiit right to comply with the request of his tion we cheerfully assent, but the manner in which the task has been executed is a 10 very different question. Every one recollects his friend Sydney Smith's description of his Lordship's readiness to undertake any thing and every thing-to build St. Paul's-cut for the stone--or command the Channel fleet." We cannot guess what he might have been as an architect, an anatomist, or an admiral, but he is assuredly a very indifferent editor. His position, indeed, is altogether a strange one. We see him in the political world executing the most important duties without an office, and in his literary capacity accepting a very important office, without performing its most ordinary duties. He is also, we find, simultaneously editing the correspondence of Mr. Fox. Yet it evidently never once occurs to him, that one who has so many irons in the fire runs a risk of burning his fingers. In the first place, the volumes are--what is called--edited in the most slovenly and perfunctory style. For instance:- At the close of the letters we find one of the few, and generally very idle notes that he condescends to give us :- "These letters are, many of them-most of them, I may say without a full date, and I fear several have been wrongly placed.-J.R." -i. 141. "Fear!" any one who had read the Letters must have been sure of it; and why is it so ? What is the use of an editor but to look after such things? and, in this case, we really believe that it might have been done by an hour's attentive perusal and comparison with the other contents of the volumes. But the materials are not only negligently misplaced--but, if Lord John had, as he intimates, a power of selection, in many instances very ill chosen. We by no means quarrel with his having given us much that may appear trifling--it was incident to the nature of the task he had undertaken--but we smile at the pompous solemnity with which he endeavors to excuse such an un sifted accumulation of littleness and nothings as we have now before us. "Mr. Moore," his Lordship says, "was one of those men whose genius was so remarkable that the world ought to be acquainted with the daily current of his life and the lesser traits of his character."-p. vi. To this we may make the old reply, Je n'en vois pas la nécessité. Mr. Moore was a lively and a popular writer, and a most agreeable companion, and well entitled to a special biography, but we never imagined that the recesses of his private life were to afford anything so emphatically important to mankind. Admitting, however, as we are quite willing to do, the amusement and even the instruction to be derived from a Dutch delineation of the smaller details of social life, it is essential even to that petty pleasure to know something about the company into which we are thus introduced. Of the many hundred persons who are more or less prominent actors in the long melo-drame of Moore's life, there are not above a couple of dozen that would not require a nomenclator, while the editor has not thought fit to fix the identity of any one, and leaves us a mere mob of undistinguishable names. There are, or seem to be, five or six different tribes of Moores, three or four septs of Nugents, four or five clans of Douglasses, Smiths in their usual abundance, and long strings of " Brown -Jones-Robinson," and the like, but not a hint from the writer or the editor which of the Browns, Joneses, or Robinsons is the party concerned. Lord John, we admit, may say that in the great majority of cases we should probably think any explanation able. Just so: but what is that excuse but that could be given very barren and unprofita proof that the greater part of the work is itself unprofitable and barren; for what interest can there be about the sayings and doings of people whose personal identity is not even worth realizing? There is one instance of this neglect or reserve so remarkable and so unaccountable that it seems to throw something of suspicion where we are sure Lord John could have had none-we mean the announcement of Moore's marriage. We need not say in what a variety of ways such an event influences any man's subsequent life. In Moore's case it seems to have been singularly impru dent, and if not clandestine, at least very mysterious, and must have been the cause of much embarrassment, and in spite of his joyous and sanguine temper, of constant anxiety. Almost every page of the Diary, and many pages twice or thrice over, testify how vividly, how ostentatiously he produces and reproduces the happy consequences of this alliance; but those who will take the trouble of looking closer will see that he seems to have been in a constant fidget about the various shades of coolness or countenance with which his choice was received, and that his feelings towards individuals were evidently sweetened or soured according to this special influence; and yet all that either he or his editor tells us on this affair which predominates over every hour of his after life is this -At page 252 of the first volume, under date "May, 1811," he writes to his mother that he is to meet at breakfast at Lady egal's and at dinner at Mr. Rogers's, 'A 147 But besides these obvious defects of Lord John's editorial system, some questions of more serious importance present themselves. He considers it, he says "clear," that Don-"by assigning to me the task of looking over whatever papers, letters, or journals' he might leave behind him, for the purpose of forming from them some kind of publication, whether in the shape of memoirs or otherwise,' he meant to leave much to my discretion."-i. ix. person whom you little dream of, but whom I shall introduce to your notice next week." To which the editor appends this note : "Mr. Moore was married to Miss Dyke on March 22, 1811, at St. Martin's Church in Lon don." · It is clear Lord John could not rationally have accepted the duty without some degree of control-not, however, and arbitrary, but a responsible control. When a man of strong party feelings like Lord John Russell has an unlimited power over a miscellaneous mass of papers, written partizan of his own, and teeming with all the on the spur of every transient feeling by a political partialities and personal antipathies be only fair to tell us distinctly at the outset, of their common habits and opinions, it would whether he makes a selection or whether he prints in extenso the whole work as he finds it; and in the former case he should indicate by blanks or asterisks where any suppression Occurs. We observe that Lord John in a few Surely after Lord John's dissertation on the necessity of the world's being made acquainted with the minute details of Mr. Moore's life, it is very strange to find him thus slurring over the chief personage and topic of all. We throw into a foot note a few words on this subject (chiefly collected from the Diary) which seem necessary to supply the editor's injudicious omission, and to explain Moore's real position. We do so the more willingly, lest our silence, added to that of Lord John, should lead to a suspicion that anything should be truly said derog-places does introduce, in the exercise of his atory in the slightest degree from the merits of this excellent person," as she is, no doubt justly, described by Lord John, and by every one else that we have ever heard speak of her.t Barbara, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Godfrey, became in 1790, the third wife of the first Marquis [then Earl] of Donegal. He died in 1799. Lady Donegal and her sisters Mary and Philippa seem to have lived together; hence Moore always speaks of them as the Donegals. They were amongst the earliest, kindest, and most sensible of Moore's friends; and a few of Miss Mary Godfrey's letters to him, full of lively talk and excellent advice, are certainly the best things in the volumes. It is not stated, and we very much doubt, that Lady Donegal knew anything of Miss Dyke before the marriage, but she immediately, as Moore phrases it, "took her by the hand." Lady Donegal died in 1829. Of Miss Godfrey we regret that we know nothing but her half dozen agreeable letters. Mr. Dyke was, we are informed, a subaltern actor on the Irish stage; he also gave lessons in dancing and showed some artistic talents in scene painting. He had three daughters; the eldest married a Mr. Duff, also, we have been informed, on the stage, and the youngest Mr. Murray, of the Edinburgh Theatre [ii. 208]; the second, Elizabeth, born in 1793, was the wife of Moore. They were all on the stage, [i. 304], when young as dancers, and afterwards as actresses; in both these capacities they were engaged to fill the female parts in the Amateur Theatricals of Kilkenny in the years 1809 and 1810, when Moore, then one of the performers discretion, blanks and asterisks. This would imply that he has made no other suppressions and, if so, the Diary must have been, on the whole singularly inoffensive, and a dozen similar suppressions would have removed the chief blots of this kind that we have heard complained of; but here a recent circumstance suggests some rather puzzling considerations. There occurs in the Diary the following passage: "June 16, 1825.-Breakfasted at Rogers's: Sidney Smith and his family, Luttrell, Lord John [and it is said a very good one], became acquainted |