— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Moore, Thomas.

Odes Upon Cash, Corn, Catholics and Other Matters. Selected from the Columns of the Times Journal. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Pasternoster-Row, 1828. Pp. 183.

Descriptive Essay

In 1817 Thomas Moore, a poor, charismatic Irishman exploded upon the poetry scene with his hugely popular Lalla Rookh. He had already experienced commendable success with several other collections, but Lalla Rookh put Moore in the ranks of Shelley and Lord Byron as far as popularity and wide repute. It also saw to it that he was paid more money than them. In 1828, Moore published a small collection of poetry titled Odes Upon Cash, Corn, Catholics and Other Matters. Even though Moore was by this time well into the prime of his career and had easily established himself as a solid poet who was both successful with critics and the public, this book received very little attention. It seems that each poem had appeared independently in small journals at one time or another but that this collection was the first time these poems had ever been printed together among the same pages.

The most prominent and obvious characteristic of Thomas Moore's Odes Upon Cash, Corn, Catholics and Other Matters is its satirical, political edge. The title page of the collection is inscribed with a potent little phrase of which even dull readers should be able to pick up on. It is a quotation from Figaro which states, "None but little minds dread little books." This wry comment is really the appropriate way to tip the reader off as to what they may expect over the course of the next 183 pages. What follows is a collection of poetry written in clear, simple language that is full of sarcasm, humor and political satire.

Moore was born a poor Catholic in Ireland at a time when Irish Catholics had virtually no rights. This social position imprinted a certain hardiness and political acuteness in his development so that by the time he could consider himself an established poet, there was never a time when he was not controversial. There are 51 poems in Cash, Corn, Catholics, with the longest poem running no more than six pages. All of them are short and largely devoid of lyrical, colorful language. All of them can be described as political in nature. This collection is such that a person with no experience with Thomas Moore, or with the political situation of 1828 Europe, might think that the writer of this book was either an economist or a political cartoonist.

The political satire of this collection may prove to be the most difficult challenge in fully grasping its meaning. As with most satire, one is aware that there is some kind of joke but one is not necessarily aware of what the joke, exactly, is or how, exactly, the joke works. But, nonetheless, one can sense that somebody, somewhere, is being jabbed by the clean, sharp point of somebody else's wit, and this book is no different. It is so steeped in the current events of the time that the reader feels like he or she should have all the newspapers from this period sitting next to him or her so that references to corn prices or bank/government relations can be quickly looked up to aid in complete comprehension. I found this to be true with nearly all of the poems. I would even go so far as to say that this book is not the lofty, eternal, beautiful poetry with which the Romantic Poets are so often associated. Rather, this poetry is deliberately written in a more common tongue than Wordsworth normally employed and it is grounded in overt political statements that are much more obvious to the commoner than clusters of daffodils. The poems all sound like regular conversations about current events. These conversations, however, have been set to a poetic meter and that is the difference between this poetry, and the rough, vulgar conversation between the butcher on the corner and the barber up the block.

Moore graces Cash, Corn, Catholics with a very short prologue. This short prologue is supposed to suggest a motivation for the publication of this work. Moore writes:

The following trifles, having enjoyed, in their circulation through the newspapers, all the celebrity and length of life to which they were entitled, would have been suffered to pass quietly into oblivion without pretending to any further distinction, had they not already been published, in a collective form, both in London and Paris, and, in each case, been mixed up with a number of other productions, to which, whatever may be their merit, the author of the following pages has no claim. A natural desire to separate his own property, worthless as it is, from that of others, is, he begs to say, the chief motive of the publication of this volume. (iii)

Already we gather that this is the type of writing which is in the newspaper. This would probably explain the commonality of subject in all 51 poems. Moore basically insinuates that, had each of these poems not already been published separately, he would never have even published them together. Since they were published at various times, however, he declares that he might as well keep them together in one collection, of which the resultant title is the name of this book. This may be part of the reason why it is so hard to find reviews of this collection. Moore makes it sound as if assembling and publishing this set were more of a cursory, small project than a concerted, elaborate effort. Maybe he simply did not care to release this collection with fanfare.

The first poem is also a symbol in and of itself. You can almost bet that this poem was featured first to properly set the tone of the whole collection. It is appropriately titled, "Amatory Colloquy between Bank and Government." It is written as if the bank and the government were lovers rhapsodizing on an old lover affair. There is an obvious pun here on the nature of the rosy relationships that banks and governments have with each other. The first line reads,

Bank
Is all then forgotten? those amorous pranks
You and I, in our youth, my dear Government, play'd;
When you call'd me the fondest, the truest of Banks,
And enjoy'd the endearing advances I made!

When left to ourselves, unmolested and free,
To do all that a dashing young couple should do,
A law against paying was laid upon me,
But none against owing, dear help-mate, on you. (1-9)

As is immediately apparent, this poem is on the same level of subtlety, as a caricature or a political cartoon. Moore even gives us italics, in case we somehow miss the pun on such bank vocabulary terms as, "advances," "paying," and "owing." One can almost see Moore at his favorite London tavern trying out this, his latest poem on the bartender and his regulars and giving bunny ears with two fingers from each hand as quotation marks or nudging someone with an elbow upon uttering each of these words of the poem. My point is that there is no subtlety here.

What the poem is actually saying, or whom, specifically, the poem is jabbing, I am not so sure. The satire is very dry and my best estimate is that he is knocking on the corrupt nature bank/government relations in a very general sense. But, as I stated before, if I, as a reader, had a working knowledge of day to day current events, I would probably know exactly what was being said. I will use the example of political cartooning again because I think they function in nearly the same way. If I were to pick up a copy of the Lincoln Journal Star, or even the Daily Nebraskan in 200 years and read a cartoon by Neal Obermeyer, I would know that somebody named Tommy Lee and someone named Perlman were being made fun of and I would have a general idea of the joke, but I would not know the specific nature of the commentary, and thus, some of it would be lost on me. This whole collection of poetry is the same way. Nearly every single poem has this characteristic.

Another poem, entirely free of subtlety, but full on dry puns is one titled, "Cotton and Corn: A Dialogue." This poem, like the previous discussed poem, is written in colloquial, conversational language. It is a dialogue, as the title specifies, between corn and cotton. Like before, the first stanza offers an accurate preview. It begins:

Said Cotton to Corn, t'other day,
As they met and exchanged a salute—
(Squire Corn in his carriage so gay,
Poor Cotton, half famish'd, of foot):

"Great Squire, if it isn't uncivil
"To hint at starvation before you,—
"Look down on a poor hungry devil,
"And give some bread, I implore you!" (1-8)

And then a response:

Quoth Corn then, in answer to Cotton,
Perceiving he meant to make free,
"Low fellow, you've surely forgotten
"The distance between you and me! (9-12)

Corn continues :

"To expect that we, Peers of high birth,
"Should waste our illustrious acres,
"For no other purpose on earth
"Than to fatten curst calico-makers!—

Corn continues on for three more stanzas, ridiculing Lords and Bishops and manufacturers and taxes and debts, etc. After his tirade, which obviously misunderstands cottons request, the poem ends by saying how corn would be down before long.

Probably the most common poetic device of the entire collection is the manner of using dialogue between two parties to give the reader the poem. In this way he is also able to implicate whoever the butt of his pun happens to be. Both seem to be special interest groups and the government and in all of the poems, both are made out to be asses. It is also because of this device that that language is so bare. As stated before, there are almost no poems which muse on the typical poetic topics of the day, and there is certainly nothing like the typical poems of, say, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats or Wordsworth. All of the vocabulary is completely conversational, from choice of words, to rhythm, to manner of speaking so that the end impression of each poem is that one has just heard a tirade from some common rube.

This 'common' characteristic is probably what would have been the most commendable aspect of these poems when they were published. We are seeing a particularly common tactic of the Romantics and in this, Moore demonstrates a solid allegiance of ideas and methods. The poetry of this collection seeks to speak the common thought and opinion in the most common method. During his time, Thomas Moore was given credit for having more poetic talent than the formidable Lord Byron. Although Odes Upon Cash, Corn, Catholics and Other Matters is a relatively obscure work, in does, nonetheless, demonstrate its author's ability to be heard and write with purpose even if that purpose is to sound vulgar and base. They were humorous, simple attacks on authority figures and all readers had a pretty good chance of understanding them because the poems read like they came the common person, and not from a poet who was considered one of the most important writers of his time.


Prepared by Seth Pearsoll, University of Nebraska, December 2004.
     © Seth Pearsoll, 2004