him a great deal of credit. He was rather a strong partisan, and,
having a brilliant vein of poetical satire, he wrote in 1813 _The
Twopenny Post Bag_--the best satiric verse of the poetical kind since
the _Anti-Jacobin_, and the best on the Whig side since the _Rolliad_.

Nor did he fail to take advantage of the popular appetite for long poems
which Scott and Byron had created; his _Lalla Rookh_, published in 1817,
being very popular and very profitable. It was succeeded by another and
his best satirical work, _The Fudge Family_, a charming thing.

Up to this time he had been an exceedingly fortunate man; and his good
luck, aided it must be said by his good conduct,--for Moore, with all
his apparent weaknesses, was thoroughly sound at the core,--enabled him
to surmount a very serious reverse of fortune. His Bermuda deputy was
guilty of malversation so considerable that Moore could not meet the
debt, and he had to go abroad. But Lord Lansdowne discharged his
obligations; and Moore paid Lord Lansdowne. He returned to England in
1823, and was a busy writer for all but the last years of the thirty
that remained to him; but the best of his work was done, with one
exception. Byron left him his _Memoirs_, which would of course have been
enormously profitable. But Lady Byron and others of the poet's
connections were so horrified at the idea of the book appearing that, by
an arrangement which has been variously judged, but which can hardly be
regarded as other than disinterested on Moore's part, the MS. was
destroyed, and instead of it Moore brought out in 1830 his well-known
_Life of Byron_. This, some not incompetent judges have regarded as
ranking next to Lockhart's _Scott_ and Boswell's _Johnson_, and though
its main attraction may be derived from Byron's very remarkable letters,
still shows on the part of the biographer very unusual dexterity, good
feeling, and taste. The lives of _Sheridan_ and _Lord Edward Fitzgerald_
had, and deserved to have, less success; while a _History of Ireland_
was, and was bound to be, an almost complete failure. For, though a very
good prose writer, Moore had little of the erudition required, no grasp
or faculty of political argument, and was at this time of his life, if
not earlier, something of a trimmer, certain to satisfy neither the
"ascendency" nor the "nationalist" parties. His prose romance of _The
Epicurean_ is much better, and a really remarkable, piece of work; and
though the _Loves