History of the English Language and Literature 15. Thomas Moore (1779-1852), poet, biographer, and historian—but most of all poet—was born in Dublin in the year 1779. He began to print verses at the age of thirteen, and may be said, like Pope, to have â——lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.â—— He came to London in 1799, and was quickly received into fashionable society. In 1803 he was made Admiralty Registrar 343 at Bermuda; but he soon gave up the post, leaving a deputy in his place, who, some years after, embezzled the Government funds, and brought financial ruin upon Moore. The poetâ——s friends offered to help him out of his money difficulties; but he most honourably declined all such help, and, like Sir W. Scott, resolved to clear off all claims against him by the aid of his pen alone. For the next twenty years of his life he laboured incessantly; and volumes of poetry, history, and biography came steadily from his pen. His best poems are his Irish Melodies, some fifteen or sixteen of which are perfect and imperishable; and it is as a writer of songs that Moore will live in the literature of this country. He boasted, and with truth, that it was he who awakened for this century the long-silent harp of his native land— â——Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of silence had hung oâ——er thee long, When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song.â—— His best long poem is Lalla Rookh.—His prose works are little read nowadays. The chief among them are his Life of Sheridan, and his Life of Lord Byron.—He died at Sloperton, in Wiltshire, in 1852, two years after the death of Wordsworth. 16. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), a great English poet, was born in London in the year 1788. He was the only child of a reckless and unprincipled father and a passionate mother. He was educated at Harrow School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume—Hours of Idleness—was published in 1807, before he was nineteen. A critique of this juvenile work which appeared in the â——Edinburgh Reviewâ—— stung him to passion; and he produced a very vigorous poetical reply in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. After the publication of this book, Byron travelled in Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey for two years; and the first two cantos of the poem entitled Childe Haroldâ——s Pilgrimage were the outcome of these travels. This poem at once placed him at the head of English poets; â——he woke one morning,â—— he said, â——and found himself famous.â—— He was married in the year 1815, but left his wife in the following year; left his native country also, never to return. First of all he settled at Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of the poet Shelley, and where he wrote, among other poems, the third canto of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chillon. In 1817 he removed to Venice, where he 344 composed the fourth canto of Childe Harold and the Lament of Tasso; his next resting-place was Ravenna, where he wrote several plays. Pisa saw him next; and at this place he spent a great deal of his time in close intimacy with Shelley. In 1821 the Greek nation rose in revolt against the cruelties and oppression of the Turkish rule; and Byronâ——s sympathies were strongly enlisted on the side of the Greeks. He helped the struggling little country with contributions of money; and, in 1823, sailed from Geneva to take a personal share in the war of liberation. He died, however, of fever, at Missolonghi, on the 19th of April 1824, at the age of thirty-six. 17. His best-known work is Childe Harold, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. His plays, the best of which are Manfred and SardanapÄ—lus, are written in blank verse.—His style is remarkable for its strength and elasticity, for its immensely powerful sweep, tireless energy, and brilliant illustrations. 18. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),—who has, like Spenser, been called â——the poetâ——s poet,â———was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, in the year 1792. He was educated at THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
88