The life of Moore for several years ensuing is one of literary success and social brilliancy, varied by his marrying in 1811, Miss Bessy Dyke, a lady who made an excellent and devoted wife, and to whom he was very affectionately attached, although the attractions and amenities of the fashionable world caused from time to time considerable inroads upon his domesticity. After a while, he removed from London, with his wife and young family, to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire--a somewhat lonely site. His Irish Melodies, the work by which he will continue best known, had their origin in 1797, when his attention was drawn to a publication named Bunting's Irish Melodies, for which he occasionally wrote the words. In 1807 he entered into a definite agreement with Mr. Power on this subject, in combination with Sir J. Stevenson, who undertook to compose the accompaniments. The work was prolonged up to the year 1834; and contributed very materially to Moore's comfort in money matters and his general prominence--as his own singing of the Melodies in good society kept up his sentimental and patriotic prestige, and his personal lionizing, in a remarkable degree. He played on the piano, and sang with taste, though in a style resembling recitative, and not with any great power of voice: in speaking, his voice had a certain tendency to hoarseness, but its quality became flute-like in singing. In 1811 he made another essay in the musical province; writing, at the request of the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, an operetta named M.P., or the Bluestocking. It was the reverse of a stage-success; and Moore, in collecting his poems, excluded this work, save as regards some of the songs comprised in it. In 1808 had appeared anonymously, the poems of Intolerance and Corruption, followed in 1809 by The Sceptic. Intercepted Letters, or The Twopenny Postbag, by Thomas Brown the Younger, came out in 1812: it was a huge success, and very intelligibly such, going through fourteen editions in one year. In the same year the project of writing an oriental poem--a class of work greatly in vogue now that Byron was inventing Giaours and Corsairs--was seriously entertained by Moore. This project took shape in Lalla Rookh, written chiefly at Mayfield Cottage--a performance for which Mr. Longman the publisher paid the extremely large sum of £3150 in advance: its publication hung over till 1817. The poem has been translated into all sorts of languages, including Persian, and is said to have found many admirers among its oriental readers. Whatever may be thought of its poetic merits--and I for one disclaim any scintilla of enthusiasm--or of its power in vitalizing the disjecta membra of orientalism, the stock-in-trade of the Asiatic curiosity-shop, there is no doubt that Moore worked very conscientiously upon this undertaking: he read up to any extent,--wrote, talked, and perhaps thought, Islamically--and he trips up his reader with some allusion verse after verse, tumbling him to the bottom of the page, with its quagmire of explanatory footnotes. In 1815 appeared the National Airs; in 1816, Sacred Songs, Duets, and Trios, the music composed and selected by Stevenson and Moore; in 1818, The Fudge Family in Paris, again a great hit. This work was composed in Paris, which capital Moore had been visiting in company with his friend Samuel Rogers the poet.

The easily earned money and easily discharged duties of the appointment in Bermuda began now to weigh heavy on Moore. Defalcations of his deputy, to the extent of £6000, were discovered, for which the nominal holder of the post was liable. Moore declined offers of assistance; and, pending a legal decision on the matter, he had found it apposite to revisit the Continent. In France, Lord John (the late Earl) Russell was his travelling companion: they went on together through Switzerland, and parted at Milan. Moore then, on the 8th of October 1819, joined in Venice his friend Byron, who had been absent from England since 1816. The poets met in the best of humor, and on terms of hearty good-fellowship--Moore staying with Byron for five or six days. On taking leave of him, Byron presented the Irish lyrist with the MS. of his autobiographical memoirs stipulating that they should not be published till after the donor's death: at a later date he became anxious that they should remain wholly unpublished. Moore sold the MS. in 1831 to Murray for £2100, after some negotiations with Longman, and consigned it to the publisher's hands. In 1824 the news arrived of Byron's death. Mr. (afterwards Sir Wilmot) Horton on the part of Lady Byron, Mr. Luttrell on that of Moore, Colonel Doyle on that of Mrs. Leigh, Lord Byron's half-sister, and Mr. Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton) as a friend and executor of the deceased poet, consulted on the subject. Hobhouse was strong in urging the suppression of the Memoirs. The result was that Murray, setting aside considerations of profit, burned the MS. (some principal portions of which nevertheless exist in print, in other forms of publication); and Moore immediately afterwards, also in a disinterested spirit, repaid him the purchase-money of £2100. It was quite fair that Moore should be reimbursed this large sum by some of the persons in whose behoof he had made the sacrifice, this was not neglected.

To resume. Bidding adieu to Byron at Venice, Moore went on to Rome with the sculptor Chantrey and the portrait-painter Jackson. His tour supplied the materials for the Rhymes on the Road, published, as being extracted from the journal of a travelling member of the Pococurante Society, in 1820, along with the Fables for the Holy Alliance. Lawrence, Turner, and Eastlake, were also much with Moore in Rome: and here he made acquaintance with Canova. Hence he returned to Paris, and made that city his home up to 1822, expecting the outcome of the Bermuda affair. He also resided partly at Butte Goaslin, near Sèvres, with a rich and hospitable Spanish family named Villamil. The debt of £6000 was eventually reduced to £750: both the Marquis of Lansdowne and Lord John Russell pressed Moore with their friendly offers, and the advance which he at last accepted was soon repaid out of the profits of the Loves of the Angels--which poem, chiefly written in Paris, was published in 1823. The prose tale of The Epicurean was composed about the same time, but did not issue from the press till 1827: the Memoirs of Captain Rock in 1824. He had been under an engagement to a bookseller to write a Life of Sheridan. During his stay in France the want of documents withheld him from proceeding with this work: but he ultimately took it up, and brought it out in 1825. It was not availed to give Moore any reputation as a biographer, though the reader in search of amusement will pick out of it something to suit him. George the Fourth is credited with having made a neat bon mot upon this book. Some one having remarked to him that "Moore had been murdering Sheridan,"-- "No," replied his sacred majesty, "but he has certainly attempted his life." A later biographical performance, published in 1830, and one of more enduring interest to posterity, was the Life of Byron. This is a very fascinating book; but more--which is indeed a matter of course--in virtue of the lavish amount of Byron's own writing which it embodies than, on account of the Memoir-compiler's doings. However, there is a considerable share of good feeling in the book, as well as matter of permanent value from the personal knowledge that Moore had of Byron; and the avoidance of "posing" and of dealing with the subject for purposes of effect, in the case of a man whose career and genius lent themselves so insidiously to such a treatment, is highly creditable to the biographer's good sense and taste. The Life of Byron succeeded, in the list of Moore's writings, a History of Ireland, contributed in 1827 to Lardner's Cyclopaedia, and the Travels of an Irishman in Search of a Religion, published in the same year: and was followed by a Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, issued in 1881. This, supplemented by some minor productions, closes the sufficiently long list of writings of an industrious literary life.

In his latter years Moore resided at Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes in Wiltshire, Where he was near the refined social circle of Lord Lansdowne at Bowood, as well as the lettered home of the Rev. Mr. Bowles at Bremhill. Domestic sorrows clouded his otherwise cheerful and comfortable retirement. One of his sons died in the French military service in Algeria; another of consumption in 1842. For some years before his own death, which occurred on the 25th of February 1853, his mental powers had collapsed. He sleeps in Bromham Cemetery, in the neighborhood of Sloperton.

Moore had a very fair share of learning, as well as steady application, greatly as he sacrificed to the graces of life, and especially of "good society." His face was not perhaps much more impressive in its contour than his diminutive figure. His eyes, however, were dark and fine; his forehead bony, and with what a phrenologist would recognize as large bumps of wit; the mouth pleasingly dimpled. His manner and talk were bright, abounding rather in lively anecdote and point than in wit and humor, strictly so called. To term him amiable according to any standard, and estimable too as men of an unheroic fibre go, is no more than his due.