The work which shows Moore's humour and satire at its best, _The Fudge Family in Paris_, is full of witty sallies against the new, incapable Bourbon Government, but strikes at England in bold, dead earnest. We find such lines as: "Everywhere gallant hearts, and spirits true, Are served up victims to the vile and few; While E----, everywhere--the general foe Of truth and freedom, wheresoe'er they glow-- Is first, when tyrants strike, to aid the blow!" And England is reminded that "----maledictions ring from every side Upon that grasping power, that selfish pride, Which vaunts its own, and scorns all rights beside." The Fourth and Seventh Letters ought to be read, with their jeers at the Prince Regent's laziness and corpulence, and their abuse of Castlereagh, of whom Moore thus writes: "We sent thee C----gh; as heaps of dead Have slain their slayers by the pest they spread, So hath our land breathed out--thy fame to dim, Thy strength to waste, and rot thee, soul and limb-- Her worst infections all condensed in him!" And the potentates of the Holy Alliance are called "That royal, ravening flock, whose vampire wings O'er sleeping Europe treacherously brood, And fan her into dreams of promised good, Of hope, of freedom--but to drain her blood!" This sounds very bad and very dangerous; the distance separating such a writer from the older generation of poets strikes us as great; it seems but a step from this to Shelley and Byron. But as a matter of fact, it is a long way; for all these attacks are not quite so seriously meant as one would imagine. This champion of the cause of Ireland was no advocate of her independence; Moore did not desire the separation of his country from England; he only desired that she should be ruled better and more justly. This bold denouncer of kings was no republican, but a sincere believer in monarchy, who would have had bad kings replaced by good ones. He was no free-thinker, this man who railed so violently at the hypocrisy of the Holy Alliance, but a sincere, enlightened Catholic, who, though he brought up his children as Protestants, wrote a thick book, _Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion_, in defence of the most important doctrines of the Catholic faith. With all his apparent unrestraint, Moore kept within the bounds prescribed by the society in which he lived. The Whig leaders had, when he came to London, received him with open arms, and Moore became and remained the Whig poet, who in a long series of playfully sarcastic letters--rhymed feuilletons one might call them--treated the public questions and Parliamentary events of the day with sparkling wit and drawing-room humour of the best style, in the spirit of the Whig party. [1] Massey: _History of England_, iv. 302. The whole account is founded upon descriptions given by _English patriots_. [2] _Lalla Rookh: The Fire-worshippers_. [3]