"My dearest Tom,--Can it _really_ be true that you have a pension of £300 a year? Mrs., Mr., two Misses and young Longman were here to-day, and tell me it is really the case, and that they have seen it in two papers. Should it turn out true, I know not how we can be thankful enough to those who gave it, or to a Higher Power. The Longmans were very kind and nice and so was _I_, and I invited them _all five_ to come at some future time. At present I can think of nothing but £300 a year, and dear Russell jumps and claps his hands for joy.... If the story is true of the £300, pray give dear Ellen £20, and _insist_ on her drinking £5 worth of wine _yearly_ to be paid out of the £300 a year.... Is it true? I am in a fear of hope and anxiety and feel very oddly. No one to talk to but sweet Buss, who says, 'Now, Papa will not have to work so hard, and will be able to go out a little.' ... _N.B._--If this good news be true, it will make a great difference in my _eating_. I shall then indulge in butter to potatoes. _Mind_ you do not tell this piece of gluttony to _any_ one." It is pleasant to think of this climax to all the exultation of the Wexford processions. Moore was entitled to say to himself that he had done yeoman's service to the principles for which a Whig administration then stood, and yet had shown his complete independence of persons. What he received, no man could say had been gained by any compromise with his convictions; and it came at a time when it was much needed, for his power of literary production had largely spent itself. The comic inspiration had not indeed wholly run dry, for in 1835 Moore published _The Fudges in England_ (a work even more unworthy of its predecessor than most sequels); and in 1836 he entered into an agreement to supply the _Morning Chronicle_ with squibs--his _Times_ connection having long dropped. But except for this, and the furbishing up in 1839 of _Alciphron_, his first draft in verse of the Egyptian story, nothing more appears to have been produced by him, except the volumes of his _History of Ireland_, which appeared respectively in 1835, 1836, 1840, and 1846. In fact, within the last seventeen years of his existence, Moore wrote little or nothing but these volumes of history, for which he appears to have received £500 apiece. It will be seen how timely was the succour of the pension.