Thomas Moore was closely attuned to the taste and artistic sensibility of his age, but he is remembered now primarily by the Irish, who still sing his songs and claim him as their own. He was a born lyricist and a natural musician, a practiced satirist and one of the first recognized champions of freedom of Ireland. With George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott, he embodied British Romanticism not only for the British and the Irish but also for Americans and Europeans. So popular was he in his day that publishers advanced him extraordinary sums on the promise of works from his ever-active pen. He wrote too much and catered too deliberately to his audience to reach the heights of Parnassus attained by the major Romantic poets, but his efforts on behalf of his friends place him, with Samuel Rogers, among the great humanists of the...