The inception of Moore's most famous work was due to a publisher's suggestion. In 1797 (or perhaps a year earlier), Bunting's collection of Irish Airs had been issued, and Moore tells us that his interest in them was encouraged by his friend Edward Hudson. Even before his departure for Bermuda the young Irish poet had shown his skill in fitting words for singing; and songs by him had been issued by Carpenter, by Rhames of Dublin, and by other firms. When he returned home after an absence which extended from the summer of 1803 to the autumn of 1806, he returned with fame greatly augmented by his latest volume, and presumably the vogue of his singing was not less in Dublin than elsewhere. What the song was that he refers to in his letter to Miss Godfrey, we do not know; but it is exceedingly likely to have been the lines on Emmet, which occupied a prominent place in the first number of the _Melodies_. One can very well believe that the fame of some song by Moore on an Irish theme may have suggested to William Power, owner of a music warehouse in Dublin, the proposal which he made--namely, that Moore should collaborate with Sir John Stevenson in producing a series of Irish Melodies. The following prefatory letter, addressed by Moore to Stevenson, was issued by the publisher in his preliminary announcement to the first and second numbers:-- "I feel very anxious that a work of this kind should be undertaken. We have too long neglected the only talent for which our English neighbours ever deigned to allow us any credit. Our National Music has never been properly collected; and while the composers of the Continent have enriched their Operas and Sonatas with Melodies borrowed from Ireland--very often without even the honesty of acknowledgment--we have left these treasures, in a great degree, unclaimed and fugitive. Thus our Airs, like too many of our countrymen, have, for want of protection at home, passed into the service of foreigners. But we are come, I hope, to a better period of both Politics and Music; and how much they are connected, in Ireland at least, appears too plainly in the tone of sorrow and depression which characterizes most of our early Songs.