MOORE, THOMAS, the 'Bard of Erin,' was born at 12 Aungier Street, Dublin, on 28th May 1779, the son of a Catholic grocer. From the school where Sheridan had been educated, and where he himself became a 'determined rhymer,' he passed in 1794 to Trinity College, and thence, after taking his B.A., proceeded in 1799 to London to keep terms at the Middle Temple. He brought with him a translation of Anacreon, which came out in 1800, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, his patron then, but the butt from 1813 of his satire. It proved a great hit, and, with his musical talent, procured him admission to the best society. In 1801 followed the Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, whose pretty erotics were a good deal blamed, and very widely read. In 1803, through Lord Moira's influence, he was appointed registrar of the Admiralty court at Bermuda. He went there to arrange for a deputy, and, after a tour in the States and in Canada, returned in a twelve-month to England—the democratic notions of his Dublin days toned down by his transatlantic experience. For his Odes and Epistles (1806) he was sharply taken to task in the Edinburgh. The bulletless duel with Jeffrey was the consequence, over which Byron made so merry, but which left the non-combatants fast friends for life. In 1811 he married an actress, good Bessy Dyke (1793–1865), and, after living successively in Leicestershire, in Derbyshire, and at Horney near London, in 1817 they settled at Sloperton Cottage, near Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's seat, in Wiltshire.
Meanwhile, among other fugitive pieces, Moore had published the earlier of the Irish Melodies (ten parts, 1807–34) and The Twopenny Post-bag (1812), whose tropes at once glittered and stung. Now he became anxious to emulate his brother-poets, who published in quarts. He fixed on an oriental subject, and in 1817 the long-expected Lalla Rookh appeared, dazzling as a firefly; and the whole English world applauded. After the publication he went with Rogers to Paris, and there wrote The Fudge Family (1818). For Lalla Rookh the Longmans paid him 3000 guineas; the Irish Melodies brought in £500 a year; but Moore had 'a generous contempt for money;' and about this time his Bermuda deputy embezzled £6000. Moore's liability was reduced by compromise to £1000, which he ultimately paid by his pen; but in 1819, to avoid arrest, he went to Italy with Lord John Russell. He spent five days at Venice with Byron (his friend since 1811), went on with Chantrey to Rome, and then with his family fixed his abode in Paris, where he wrote The Loves of the Angels (1823) and a prose romance, The Epicurean (1827). He returned in 1822 to Sloperton; and here, except for occasional 'junktetings' to London, Scotland, and elsewhere, he passed his last thirty years. To those years belong the Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824), the History of Ireland (1827), and the Lives of Sheridan (1825), Byron (q.v., 1830), and Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1831). In 1835 he received a pension of £300, but his last days were clouded by sorrow and suffering—the loss of his two sons, and the decay of his mental faculties. 'I am sinking,' he writes to Rogers in 1847, 'into a mere vegetable.' He died on 25th February 1852, and was buried in Bromham Churchyard.
Moore in his lifetime was popular as only Byron; but to-day he ranks far below Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. His muse was a spangled dancing-girl—light, airy, graceful, but soulless. The Loves of the Angels, his most ambitious effort, falls beneath even the Byronic standard; Lalla Rookh, again, is brilliant, but fatiguing. He is best in his lyrics; and even in them there is a certain sameness, with their eternal 'love of one's country, of the wine of other countries, and of the women of all countries.' See his Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence, 'edited' by Lord John Russell (8 vols. 1852–56); Valtat, Thomas Moore, sa Vie et Œuvres (Paris, 1886).