This was in 1797, shortly before the discovery of the great Irish conspiracy. The discovery came, with all its attendant horrors. One of its first results was a regular court of inquisition, held within the walls of the University. The roll was called, and the students were examined one by one. Most of them knew little or nothing about the plot, but there were a few, among them Robert Emmet, whose absence revealed to their comrades how much they had known of the betrayed and defeated plans. The dead silence which followed the daily calling out of their names made a profound impression on Moore. He himself proved at this trial what a high-spirited little fellow he was; he told the dreaded Lord Fitzgibbon to his face that, in taking the oath demanded of him, he reserved to himself the power of refusing to answer any question calculated to get a comrade into trouble; and he bore with manly composure the outburst of anger which followed. As he was not a member of the Society of United Irishmen, and had evidently no knowledge of their plans, he was dismissed at once. It was during the years immediately following this incident that Moore began to appear before the public as a poet. The horrors attendant on the suppression of the rebellion did not provide him with any of his themes; they were still too near. Emmet was away, and his influence in abeyance; and, indeed, political poetry was for the moment an impossibility in Ireland. So the young poet, whose temperament naturally inclined him in the direction of light, sprightly verse, followed the course prescribed by his tastes and his age. He prepared an English version of the Odes of Anacreon, which he published before he was twenty, with a dedication to the Prince Regent, who was at that time the hope of the Liberals; and in 1801 he published, under the title of _Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq_., a volume of poems, for the most part of an erotic, youthfully sensuous, and slightly licentious character. The Irish licentiousness reminds one of that which is not at all uncommon in Swedish erotic poetry; it has also, like the Swedish, a national stamp.