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Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 1780. Both his parentswere Roman-Catholics; and he was, as a matter of course, brought up in thesame religion, and adhered to it—not perhaps with any extremezeal—throughout his life. His father was a decent tradesman, a grocer andspirit-retailer—or "spirit-grocer," as the business is termed in Ireland.Thomas received his schooling from Mr. Samuel Whyte, who had beenSheridan's first preceptor, a man of more than average literary culture.He encouraged a taste for acting among the boys: and Moore, naturallyintelligent and lively, became a favorite with his master, and a leader inthe dramatic recreations.
His aptitude for verse appeared at an early age. In 1790 he composed anepilogue to a piece acted at the house of Lady Borrows, in Dublin; and inhis fourteenth year he wrote a sonnet to Mr. Whyte, which was published ina Dublin magazine.
Like other Irish Roman-Catholics, galled by the hard and stiff collar ofProtestant ascendancy, the parents of Thomas Moore hailed the FrenchRevolution, and the prospects which it seemed to offer of some reflexameliorations. In 1792 the lad was taken by his father to a dinner inhonor of the Revolution; and he was soon launched upon a current of ideasand associations which might have conducted a person of moreself-oblivious patriotism to the scaffold on which perished the friend ofhis opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having beenopened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was enteredthere as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient inFrench and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn forLatin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy withmany of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after variousinterrogations, in which he honorably refused to implicate his friends) asevere admonition from the University authorities; but he had not joinedin any distinctly rebellious act and no more formidable results ensued tohim.
In 1793 Moore published in the Anthologia Hibernica two pieces of verse;and his budding talents became so far known as to earn him the proudeminence of Laureate to the Gastronomic Club of Dalkey, near Dublin, in1794. Through his acquaintance with Emmet, he joined the OratoricalSociety, and afterwards the more important Historical Society; and hepublished An Ode on Nothing, with Notes, by Trismegistus Rustifucius, D.D., which won a party success. About the same time he wrote articles forThe Press, a paper founded towards the end of 1797 by O'Connor, Addis,Emmet, and others. He graduated at Trinity College in November, 1799.
The bar was the career which his parents, and especially his mother,wished Thomas to pursue; neither of them had much faith in poetry orliterature as a resource for his subsistence. Accordingly, in 1799, hecrossed over into England, and studied in the Middle Temple; and he wasafterwards called to the bar, but literary pursuits withheld him frompracticing. He had brought with him from Ireland his translations fromAnacreon; and published these by subscription in 1800, dedicated to thePrince Regent (then the illusory hope of political reformers), wi