BOOKS OF THE DAY

Tom Moore (John Sparrow) .. .

Christians Challenge the World (Roger Lloyd) William Tyndale (E. E. Kellett) . . Shakespeare's Descent into Hell (W. J. Lawrence) Bushido Publicity (G. F. Hudson) ..

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The People's Front (Goronwy Rees) ..

The Art of Humanism (Anthony Blunt) Two Psychologists (William Empson) Sir Aurel Stein (Christopher Sykes) . .

Fiction (Forrest Reid) ..

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TOM MOORE

By JOHN SPARROW "The minstrel boy to the war is gone In the ranks of death you'll find him—" POETRY and politics were not wholly unrelated Moore's day any more than they are in our own, when so many of our minstrel boys have gone to the war and are to be found, if not exactly in the ranks of death, at least in the offices of progressive journals, broadcasting their experiences behind the lines. Moore himself, in his student days so ardent an advocate of rebellion, was very soon to be reproached with being a renegade : at the time when Robert Emmet and his other college companions were giving their blood for their beliefs, Moore was already safe in England, angling for the patronage of Lord Moira ; and the Irish Melodies, which so much helped his countrymen in the nineteenth century to remind each other eloquently of their common wrongs, grew into popularity at a time when their author was nestling comfortably in the shade of Bowood. Certainly Moore was not made for heroic passion, in poetry or in life itself, and it is not surprising that he should have become a victim of that resentment which, as Mr. Strong points out, Dublin reserves for those of her sons who have enjoyed too great a success among the oppressors.

Yet one cannot help feeling that if one had known Moore one could not have brought oneself to dislike him. He had— his letters prove it—a geserous nature and a kind heart, and the ease which he evidently found in making friends—friends as diverse as Bowles and Byron—suggests that he had winning manners also. Always in debt, yet never a sponge, a favourite in every drawing room, yet always devoted in his attentions to obscure parents and a humble, an unpresentable, wife, he warbles his way through the fashionable world of half a century, without having made a serious enemy either among his con- temporaries or among posterity.

As a poet he had no qualities which make us want to read him now. Little's Anacreon is as dead as Lalla Rookh : very interesting as both may be to students of fashions in literature, neither is of the least interest to any one else ; and the Irish Melodies, though they contain some metrical experiments which deserve attention, belong really to the history of song and not to the history of verse. Mr. Strong's book, in con- sequence, does not contain an ounce of literary criticism worth the name, but he has some interesting remarks on the Melodies considered as national songs. Moore, in short, is not a poet or a historical personage of the first or even of secondary importance ; he is remembered only as the author who nearly fought a duel with Jeffrey, the friend and biographer of Byron, the melodist of Erin, a little man with dark curls and a bright eye who for nearly half a century entertained at the piano in salons of the Whigs.

Moore, one must conclude, is a figure who belongs to the background, or the middle distance, in the social and literary history of his period. It is a fascinating period, and those who wish to know about it in detail, to become acquainted with the minor figures who compose its galaxy, will wish to know the facts about him.

If then, one wishes to find out the facts about Moore, how is one to do it ? One way, no doubt, is to read the costly volume now under review. Another method, no more expensive and no less satisfying, is to buy or borrow Lord John Russell's edition of Moore's Journal and Correspondence and dip into The Minstrel Boy : A Portrait of Tom Moore. By L. A. G. Strong. (Hodder and Stoughton. t8s.) it at leisure. In considering which of these two methods to recommend, the reviewer is faced with a problem which often presents itself in these days when a new picturesque biography appears every month or every week. What purpose is served by such biographies—biographies in which there is no evidence of deep research, no accumulation of unpublished material, and which yet claim to be more than mere summaries of infor- mation already available; biographies in which the hero is patted, so to speak, upon the head and called by his Christian name ? Writing such books, doubtless, gratifies their authors ; reading them amuses a number of persons who wish to experi- ence the pleasure which they expect from a novel and at the same time the feeling that they are improving themselves by reading " history." But does the achievement of either or even both of these ends really justify the production of yet another of these hybrid volumes ? Yes, we may answer, if, but only if, the author contributes something new to the under- standing of his subject. In one or two such biographies pub- lished in recent years the author has succeeded in revealing something about the character, the temperament, or the achieve- ment of his hero which the ordinary reader would not perceive from a study of the mere facts ; or in presenting him in a new light or a new context so as to bring to view unsuspected relationships or influences. Books in which this is done are worth writing, but they are very rarely written, and Mr. Strong would not claim for his biography that it is one of these.

No one who is already familiar with the first-hand authorities on this period—with Crabb Robinson, for instance, and Creedy, with the books that deal with Holland House, with Moore's own life of Byron, with Hogg's reminiscences or Trelawny's, with Lockhart, with Cyrus Redding, and N. P. Willis—will deriie much pleasure or profit from reading Mr. Strong. No one, on the other hand, who has not made the acquaintance of these authorities (and they are as easy to procure as they are delightful to read) can conscientiously be recommended to spend eighteen shillings on Mr. Strong's book before he has at least dipped into them.

This is not to say that Mr. Strong's is a very bad book, or even that it is a bad book of its kind ; Mr. Strong is an accomplished writer and a conscientious student, and he was impelled to write by a real interest in and a real sympathy with his fellow-countryman. But his book suffers from all the defects of its kind : it is bright; it patronises its subject; it manages to mention Mr. J. B. Priestley and not to mention Mr. Pitt. Mr. Strong, having mentioned Sydney Smith without qualification several times, finds it . necessary on p. to6 (and not for the . purpose of distinguishing him from the defender of Acre) to inform us in a note that he was " the famous clergyman and wit." Finally, it is necessary to say that the book is not as well written as a book written by Mr. Strong should be : " The author of The Ancient Mariner carried too many guns for the Irish singer " ; " To the major concerns of his age he was as irrelevant as a thrush " ; " Not by accident does a man become, and remain for close on a hundred years, the voice of his country : nor do songs born in the drawing-room reach and hold the thatched cabin " ; " He walked on the sunny side of the road, but he was faithful in his fashion . . . his record will bear inspection better than most." These sentences—the last two are chosen to advertise the book upon its cover—are typical of the author's attitude to his subject and his manner of expressing it. They typify also _ the defects of the book : it is not history and it is not art ; it is not, in other words, the real thing.