Moore married at thirty-two--after he was known for the Irish melodies, but before the publication of _Lalla Rookh_; and in his _Letters and Diary_ (if you read them--though they make an enormous mass to read, and frighten most people away by their bulk), you will come upon very frequent, and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”--the wife. It is true, there were rumors that he wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. Doubtless there was many a day and many a week when she was guarding the cottage and the children at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships who loved music and literature in London; but how should he refuse the invitations of his Lordship this or that? Or how should she--who has no robes that will stand alone--bring her pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? Always, too (if his letters may be trusted), he is eager to make his escape between whiles--wearied of this _tintamarre_--and to rush away to his cottage at Sloperton[52] for a little slippered ease, and a romp with the children. Poor children--they all drop away, one by one--two only reaching maturity--then dying. The pathetic stories of the sickening, the danger and the hush, come poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that the winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon his wrenched heart over-quickly again. But what right have you or I to judge in such matters? There are chirrupy little men--and women, too,--on whom grief does not seem to take a hard grip; all the better for them! Moore, I think, was such a one, and was braced up always and everywhere by his own healthy pulses, and, perhaps, by a sense of his own sufficiency. His vanities are not only elastic, but--by his own bland and child-like admissions--they seem sometimes almost monumental. He writes in his _Diary_, “Shiel (that’s an Irish friend) says I am the first poet of the day, and join the beauty of the Bird-of-Paradise’s plumes to the strength of the eagle’s wing.” Fancy a man copying that sort of thing into his own _Diary_, and regaling himself with it! Yet he is full of good feeling--does not cherish resentments--lets who will pat him on the shoulder (though he prefers a lord’s pat). Then he forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so out with Jeffrey that a duel nearly came of it; but afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend for years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain--far more than his artificialities of make-up would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue with the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), he determines on good advisement to be away with it; and so goes smack into the den of the great publisher and gives him his hand: such action balances a great deal of namby-pambyism.