With equal acuteness and adaptation to character, he
dedicated the poems to the Prince of Wales, an anacreontic hero. As might
be expected, with such a patron, the volume was a success. In 1801 he
published another series of erotic poems, under the title _The Poetical
Works of the late Thomas Little_. This gained for him, in Byron's line,
the name of "the young Catullus of his day"; and, at the instance of Lord
Moira, he was appointed poet-laureate, a post he filled only long enough
to write one birthday ode. What seemed a better fortune came in the shape
of an appointment as Registrar of the Admiralty Court of Bermuda. He went
to the island; remained but a short time; and turned over the uncongenial
duties of the post to a deputy, who subsequently became a defaulter, and
involved Moore to a large amount. Returning from Bermuda, he travelled in
the United States and Canada; not without some poetical record of his
movements. In 1806 he published his _Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems_,
which called down the righteous wrath of the Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey
denounced the book as "a public nuisance," and "a corrupter of public
morals.
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