250 



Tom Moore. 



'Heaven forbid,' old Testy crieth — 



' Heaven forbid,' so echo I — 

 Every ravenous bird that flieth 



Then would at our cherries fly ! 



t Ope but half an inch or so, 



And behold what bevies break in ! 

 Here some cursed Popish crow 



Pops his long and lickerish beak in ! 



Here sly Arians flock unnumbered, 



And Socinians slim and spare ; 

 "Who, with small belief encumbered. 



Slip in easy anywhere ! 



Methodists, of birds the aptest 



Where there's pecking going on— 

 And that water-fowl the Baptist — 



All would share our fruits anon ! 



If less costly fruit won't suit them, 

 Hips and haws and such like berries, 



Cui*se the cormorants, stone them, shoot them, 

 Anything — to save our cherries." 



The Irish Melodies in long succession (the popularity of which 

 passes our comprehension in these days) must have proved a very- 

 mine of wealth, the publishers giving* £500 a year for seven years ! 

 The Twopenny Post Bag, the Fudges, Captain Rock, the Epicurean, 

 and his graver works, the Life of Byron and the History of Ireland, 

 which he feared he should never live to complete — for all these 

 he received no less than £20,000. 



Notwithstanding the wealth of literature in our day, we can 

 hardly realise the condition of the literary atmosphere of the past, 

 when flashes of Byron, Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, 

 and Moore, in rapid succession electrified the world. The friend of 

 each, Moore was singularly free, from the taint of envy or jealous 

 rivalry. His feeling of admiration for Byron's poetry was fully 

 reciprocated by Byron himself, who could write : — ct To me some of 

 Moore's last Erin sparks are worth all the epics that ever were 

 composed/' And Lord John Russell, in his preface, writes: — "Of 

 English lyrical poets Moore is surely the first . . . While the 



