254 Tom Moore. 
described as “ that never-to-be-forgotten melodious warbling.” 
Either people were more musically sensitive and sympathetic in 
those days than in the present, or the singing must have had un- 
paralleled power, for both ladies and gentlemen were frequently 
obliged to leave the room in floods of tears over the melodies. On 
one occasion, at Bowood, Moore himself was moved to tears— 
Bowles followed suit, and Rogers the poet, and Julian Young 
(Vicar of Lyneham, and son of Charles Young, the celebrated 
actor) joined in the chorus: Lord Lansdowne describing the ex- 
hibition as high poetical excitement! The musical editors of the 
melodies were, for the earlier numbers, Sir John Stevenson—and 
for the later, Sir Henry Bishop; but how far they would satisfy 
the musical crities of to-day is somewhat questionable. 
We now come to the poet’s last years, clouded by loss of memory 
and a helplessness almost childish. The loss of his last child not 
only saddened him, but obscured his bright intellect. His final 
attempt to sing in public was at Mr. Schomberg’s, of Wans, when 
he broke down at a loss for the old familiar words, and declared he 
would never again sing in public—and he never did. On the very 
day before his death “ he warbled,” as Mrs. Moore expressed it, and 
passed without pain on February 26th, 1852. The body rests 
beside his favorite Anastasia in Bromham churchyard ; and thither 
the widowed Bessy was borne thirteen years later, in September, 
1865. The beautiful east window is erected to er memory, the 
more doubtful west to is. 
In reviewing the life of Moore—by no means an ideal life—it is 
only fair to remember that, as he advanced in years, he deeply 
_ regretted the sensuality of his earlier poems, and removed a great 
deal of it. Howitt, in his “ Homes and Haunts of the British 
Poets,” is severely just in his estimate of Tom Moore :—* We 
cannot help feeling regret that so much of his life should have been 
wasted in the empty glare of mere fashionable Society. But it is 
as useless to wish Moore anything but what he was as to wish a 
butterfly a bee, or that a moth should not fly to a candle. It was 
his nature; and the pleasure of being caressed, flattered, and admired 
by titled people must be purchased at any cost. Neither poverty 
