SIR JOHN MOORE’S CENTENARY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2455, 20 March 1909, Page 12 (Supplement)

SIR JOHN MOORE’S CENTENARY.

“The centenary of the of Gor-l| unna, which took place fitting honors to be paid to the soldier who, after one of the most brilliant' short campaigns in military history, fell;! in the hour of victory, and died while his troops were being embarked.” says the “Telegraph. “Sir John Moore’s fame has been secured by Napier, Maurice,. and other historians, but the fact that his name is known eo widely throughout the British Empire is not due so much to them as to author of the ode which celebrates in splendid Terse the glorious and tragic surroundings of Moore’s funeral. “There are two poems which every British schoolboy—whose acquaintanceship with poetry is rarely wholly voluntary—can scarcely help knowing. On© is Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ and the other is /The Burial of Sir Thomas Moore,’ and it is the latter which sticks longest in their memory. But the author goes unknown, unhonored, and unsung. Hardly anyone, if asked offhand, give his name. Campbell, indeed "is. usually guessed on the strength of his other patriotic pieces. The real author, however, was the Rev. Charles Wolfe, an Irish clergyman of the Anglican Church, who died in 1823, at the early age of thirty-one.