The next year, 1806, saw the formation of the Ministry of "All the Talents," and for a moment it seemed as if Moira would be included. His protégé's hopes ran high, but they were dashed. A small appointment was offered to Moore, but refused by him on the ground that it would be "better to wait till something worthier both of his generosity and my ambition should occur"; and at the same time the young man suggested that it would be a simpler matter to find an appointment for his father, and that such a favour would earn even more gratitude. Lord Moira at once acted on the suggestion, and John Moore was appointed to a barrack-mastership in Dublin. But Moore by no means relinquished hopes of the Irish commissionership which still dangled before his eyes, and the letters to his most intimate friends of this period, Lady Donegal and her sister, Miss Godfrey, abound with references to his expectations. Nevertheless, he had fully made up his mind, once the new poems were fairly launched, to return to Ireland and leave his interests in Lord Moira's care, when an unforeseen event led to one of the best-known passages in his life. It arose from the publication in 1806 of the new volume, _Epistles, Odes, and other Poems_. Carpenter evidently laid out money on the production of this quarto, with its frontispiece representing the _Phaeton_ under sail off the peak of the Azores; and his expectations were not disappointed. The Epistles contained in the volume, nine in number, were impressions of travel on shipboard and on land; the best is certainly that to Lady Donegal (already quoted), which describes the arrival at Bermuda; and perhaps the best known is that to Atkinson, from which a few lines may be given:-- "'Twas thus, by the shade of the Calabash Tree, With a few, who could feel and remember like me, The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw, Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you! "Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower, And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew, In blossoms of thought ever springing and new-- Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair, And would pine in elysium, if friends were not there?" More immediate notice than was bestowed on these passages of mingled description and sentiment fell to the three epistles in which Moore for the first time tried his hand at satire,--moved to it by the corruptions of the young Republic, where he found "All youth's transgression with all age's chill The apathy of wrong, the bosom's ice, A slow and cold stagnation into vice."