view or two by the
transaction. Moore was made for life. These things happen at one time
and do not happen at another. We are inclined to accept them as ultimate
facts into which it is useless to inquire. There does not appear to be
among the numerous fixed laws of the universe any one which regulates
the proportion of literary desert to immediate reward, and it is on the
whole well that it should be so. At any rate the publication increased
Moore's claims as a "lion," and encouraged him to publish next year the
_Poems of the late Thomas Little_ (he always stuck to the Christian
name), which put up his fame and rather put down his character.

In later editions Thomas Little has been so much subjected to the
fig-leaf and knife that we have known readers who wondered why on earth
any one should ever have objected to him. He was a good deal more
uncastrated originally, but there never was much harm in him. It is true
that the excuse made by Sterne for Tristram Shandy, and often repeated
for Moore, does not quite apply. There is not much guilt in Little, but
there is certainly very little innocence. He knows that a certain amount
of not too gross indecency will raise a snigger, and, like Voltaire and
Sterne himself, he sets himself to raise it. But he does not do it very
wickedly. The propriety of the nineteenth century, moreover, had not
then made the surprisingly rapid strides of a few years later, and some
time had to pass before Moore was to go out with Jeffrey, and nearly
challenge Byron, for questioning his morality. The rewards of his
harmless iniquity were at hand; and in the autumn of 1803 he was made
Secretary of the Admiralty in Bermuda. Bermuda, it is said, is an
exceedingly pleasant place; but either there is no Secretary of the
Admiralty there now, or they do not give the post to young men
four-and-twenty years old who have written two very thin volumes of
light verses. The Bermoothes are not still vexed with that kind of Civil
Servant. The appointment was not altogether fortunate for Moore,
inasmuch as his deputy (for they not only gave nice berths to men of
letters then, but let them have deputies) embezzled public and private
moneys, with disastrous results to his easy-going principal. But for the
time it was all, as most things were with Moore, plain sailing. He went
out in a frigate, and was the delight of the gun-room. As soon as he got
tired of the Bermudas, he appointed his deputy and went to travel in