not be sweetened? At the same time, it is easy to carry charges of this
kind too far, and not always through motives the purest and most exalted.
It may be said without unfairness on either side that the sort of talents
which Moore possessed brought him naturally into the society which he
frequented; that very possibly the world has got quite as much out of him
by that development of his faculties as by any other which they could have
been likely to receive; and that he repaid patronage in the coin of
amusement and of bland lenitives, rather than in that of obsequious
adulation. For we are not required nor permitted to suppose that there was
the stuff of a hero in "little Tom Moore;" or that the lapdog of the
drawing-room would under any circumstances have been the wolf-hound of the
public sheepfold. In the drawing-room he is a sleeker lapdog, and lies
upon more and choicelier-clothed laps than he would in "the two-pair
back;" and that is about all that needs to be said or speculated in such a
case. As a matter of fact, the demeanor of Moore among the socially great
seems to have been that of a man who respected his company, without
failing to respect himself also--any ill-natured caviling or ready-made
imputations to the contrary notwithstanding.

In 1802 Moore produced his first volume of original verse, the _Poetical
Works of the late Thomas Little_ (an allusion to the author's remarkably
small stature), for which he received L60. There are in this volume some
erotic improprieties, not of a very serious kind either in intention or in
harmfulness, which Moore regretted in later years. Next year Lord Moira
procured him the post of Registrar to the Admiralty Court of Bermuda; he
embarked on the 25th of September, and reached his destination in January
1804. This work did not suit him much better than the business of the bar;
in March he withdrew from personal discharge of the duties: and, leaving a
substitute in his place, he made a tour in the United States and Canada.
He was presented to Jefferson, and felt impressed by his republican