IRISH MELODIES. Thomas Moore (1779-1852), though of humble Irish extraction and a Roman Catholic, made a social success in London as a young man by his charming personality and his ability in singing his own 'Odes of Anacreon.' To continue this success he composed 'Irish Melodies) at intervals be tween 1808 and 1834. He was not disappointed in his venture. These songs augmented his welcome in society, and when published, eventu ally with the express stipulation that the author sing them in great houses, brought him #12,810.
Yet Melodies' do not owe all their fame to Moore's playing minstrel for himself. The captivating music supplied by Sir John Steven son, the themes of the songs and their author's poetic skill were greater reasons for success. Moore, who had known Robert Emmet and had sympathized with the United Irishmen, deftly turned the hopes and wrongs of Ireland, with the usual admixture of love, war and honor, to picturesque and sentimental, but never to dangerous or revolutionary purposes. No
subjects are more popular, especially among comfortable people, with no occasion to use the stern virtues with which the poet adorns his song. Moore owed much also to his melodious, if facile and insipid, verse, and to his ease in handling the conventional romantic imagery. This skill appears at its best in such splendid openings as °Oh! breathe not his name,° with its reference to the fate of Emmet, °Go where glory waits °The harp that once through Tara's halls,* °The Minstrel Boy to the war bath gone° and the famous °The light that lies in woman's eyes.° Moore was incapable of sustaining such a mood or style, and never safe from falling flat into false feeling and balderdash. Heroics are, however, bad form in a drawing-room, and Melodies' are probably the best sentimental songs for the drawing-room ever written in English.