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.

No doubt the world has already seen the most brilliant days of Moore's
poetry. Its fascinations are manifestly of the more temporary sort: partly
through fleetingness of subject-matter and evanescence of allusion (as in
the clever and still readable satirical poems); partly through the aroma
of sentimental patriotism, hardly strong enough in stamina to make the
compositions national, or to maintain their high level of popularity after
the lyrist himself has long been at rest; partly through the essentially
commonplace sources and forms of inspiration which belong to his more
elaborate and ambitious works. No poetical reader of the present day is
the poorer for knowing absolutely nothing of _Lalla Rookh_ or the _Loves