Thomas Moore

(1779-1852)

Moore is considered Ireland's National Bard and is to it what Robert Burns is to Scotland.  This Irish poet, satirist, music composer is known for his popular Irish Melodies.  His ballads were published as Moore's Irish Melodies, (commonly called Moore's Melodies) in 1846 and 1852.

He was educated at Trinity College and studied law at the Middle Temple in London. It was as a poet, translator, balladeer and singer that he found fame.  Moore was far more than a balladeer, however. He had major success as a society figure in London, and in 1803 was appointed registrar to the Admiralty in Bermuda. From there, he travelled in Canada and the United States. It was after this trip that he published his book, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems, which featured a paean to the historic Cohoes Falls called Lines Written at the Cohos (sic), or Falls of the Mohawk River, among other famous verses.

He returned to England and married an actress, Elizabeth "Bessy" Dyke, in 1811. Moore had expensive tastes, and, despite the large sums he was earning from his writing, soon got into debt, a situation which was exacerbated by the embezzlement of money by the man he had employed to deputise for him in Maine. Moore became liable for the £6000 which had been illegally appropriated. In 1819, he was forced to leave Britain -- in company with Lord John Russell -- and live in Paris until 1822 (notably with the family of Martin de Villamil), when the debt was finally paid off.

Some of this time was spent with Lord Byron, whose literary executor Moore became. He was much criticised later for allowing himself to be persuaded into destroying Byron's memoirs at the behest of Byron's family due to their damningly honest content. Moore did, however, edit and publish Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life (1830).

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