Moore Thomas

Moore, Thomas (1779-1852), was the son of a Dublin grocer. In 1794 he entered at Trinity College, where he associated with Robert Emmet, and displeased the authorities by his revolutionary proceedings. After taking his degree he, in 1799, came to London, and entered at the Middle Temple. In the following year he issued his translation of Anacreon, and in 1801 published a volume of poems under the pseudonym "Thomas Little." In 1803 he obtained through Lord Moira the post of registrar of the Admiralty Court of Bermuda, but immediately appointed a deputy, and, after a tour in Canada and the United States, returned to Europe in 1806. Jeffrey's criticism of Moore's Odes and Epistles led to a bloodless duel and a fast friendship, and an intimacy with Byron followed a few years later. His National Airs appeared in 1815, and in 1817 Lalla Rookh was published. In 1819, in order to avoid the arrest with which the defalcation of his Bermudan deputy threatened him, he went on a Continental tour in company with Lord John Russell, the future editor of his Memoirs and Correspondence. Whilst on a visit to Byron at Venice he received from the poet the MS. of his autobiography, which Murray purchased, but afterwards decided to destroy. Moore now lived for a few years at Paris, where his Loves of the Angels and Epicurean were written. He returned to his house at Sloperton in 1822, and here composed his lives of Sheridan, Lord E. Fitzgerald, and Lord Byron. In 1835 he received a pension from Lord Melbourne. In his last years his faculties decayed.