“Of fluent verse, and furious prose, Sweet songster of fictitious woes”— was “quitte pour la peur,” and sent to receive the plaudits of his friends for his firmness, and the cautions of his own common sense with respect to his intimacies for the future. Moore’s want of stature was an actual misfortune to him through life, which, though not shown with the bitterness of Byron on his lameness, must have been a source of perpetual vexation in society. He was one of the smallest men, perhaps, in existence, above a dwarf. Yet he was well-proportioned; and his lively countenance, which looked the very mirror of good-nature, aided by his manners, which had by instinct the grace of good society, made his figure, after the first introduction, almost forgotten. When he had established his fame, of course, none adverted to defects of any kind, and the “little Tom Moore” of Ireland became the Mr Moore of England, by the consent of all circles. He possessed, also, those gifts which create popularity. The people of Ireland have a remarkable fondness for music, and Moore was a musician by nature. Of music he knew nothing as a science, but he felt its soul. The heavy harmonies of Germany—in which the chief object is to show the toil of the performer and the patience of his auditory, to press discords into the service, and to crush the very sense of pleasure—would not have been endured by the Irish, who, like all lovers of the genuine art, prefer songs to musical problems, and to be bewitched rather than be bewildered. Moore, accordingly, cultivated the finer part—its feeling. He has been heard to say, “that if he had an original turn for anything, it was for music;” and he certainly produced, in his earliest career, some of the most original, tender, and tasteful melodies in existence for the Piano, which he touched with slight, but sufficient skill; and, sung to his own soft and sweet lines, he realised more of the _magic_ of music than any performer whom we ever heard.