LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 383.-20 SEPTEMBER, 1851. From Chambers' Papers for the People. of passion, but festivity is the predominant expression." In Mr. Hunt's autobiography, not long since published, this portrait is repeated, with the THOMAS MOORE, a man of brilliant gifts and exception of the words we have enclosed within large acquirements, if not an inspired poet, was single inverted commas-struck out possibly from born on the 28th of May, 1780, in Augier street, a lately awakened sense of their injustice; and it Dublin, where his father carried on a respectable is added that "his (Moore's) manner was as bright business as a grocer and spirit-dealer. Both his as his talk was full of the wish to please and be parents were strict Roman Catholics, and he of pleased." To these testimonials as to the personal course was educated in the same faith; at that time appearance and manners of Thomas Moore we can under the ban not only of penal statutes, but of only add that of Mr. Joseph Atkinson, one of the influential opinion both in Great Britain and Ire- poet's most intimate and attached friends. This land. Thus humble and unpromising were the gentleman, when speaking to an acquaintan birth and early prospects of an author who-thanks the author of the " Melodies," said that to him to the possession of great popular talent, very in- Moore always seemed an infant sporting on the dustriously cultivated and exercised, together with bosom of Venus." This somewhat perplexing considerable tact and prudence, and pleasing social idea of the mature author of the songs under disaccomplishments-won for himself not only the cussion was no doubt suggested by the speaker's general fame which ordinarily attends the success-recollections of his friend's childhood. ful display of genius, but the especial sympathy Whatever the personal graces or defects of Mr. and admiration of his countrymen and fellow-reli- Moore, it is quite certain at all events that he early gionists, and the smiles and patronage of a large exhibited considerable mental power and imitative and powerful section of the English aristocracy, at faculty. He was placed when very young with whose tables and in whose drawing-rooms his Mr. Samuel Whyte, who kept a respectable school sparkling wit and melodious patriotism rendered him an ever-welcome guest. Few men, indeed, have passed more pleasantly through the world than Thomas Moore. His day of life was one continual sunshine, just sufficiently tempered and shaded by passing clouds-"mere crumpling of the rose-leaves "- -as to soften and enhance its general gayety and brightness. With its evening thick shadows came-the crushing loss of children -and the gray-haired poet, pressed by his heavy grief, has turned in his latter years from the gay vanities of brilliant society, and sought peace and consolation in seclusion, and the zealous observance of the precepts and discipline of the church to which he is, not only from early training and association, but by temperament and turn of mind, devotedly attached. 66 in Grafton street, Dublin. This was the Mr. Whyte who attempted to educate Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and pronounced him to be an incorrigible dunce "-a verdict in which at the time the mother of the future author of the "School for Scandal " fully concurred. Mr. Whyte, it seems, delighted in private theatricals, and his labors in this mode of diffusing entertaining knowledge were, it appears, a good deal patronized by the Dublin aristocracy. Master Moore was his "show-actor," and played frequently at Lady Borrowes' private theatre. On one occasion the printed bills announced "An Epilogue-A Squeeze at St. Paul's, by Master Moore," in which he is said to have been very successful. These theatricals were attended by several members of the ducal family of Leinster, the Latouches of Dublin, with many other Irish notabilities; and it was probably here. Moore contracted the taste for aristocratic society. which afterwards became a passion with him. As a child, Moore was, we are told, remarkable for personal beauty, and might have sat, says a writer not over-friendly to him, "as Cupid for a picture." This early promise was not fulfilled. The obstinate exclusion of the Catholics from: Sir Walter Scott, speaking of him in 1825, says: the common rights of citizenship naturally excited. "He is a little, very little man-less, I think, than violent and growing discontent amongst that body. Lewis, whom he resembles: his countenance is of religionists; and Thomas Moore's parents,. plain, but very animated when speaking or sing- albeit prudent, wary folk, were, like thousands of ing. The lowness of his stature was a sore sub- other naturally sensible and pacific people, carried. ject with Moore-almost as much, and as absurdly away for a moment by the tremendous outburst of 80, as the malformation of his foot was with Lord the French Revolution. The meteor-blaze which. Byron. Leigh Hunt, in a work published between suddenly leaped forth and dazzled the astonished. twenty and thirty years ago, gives the following world seemed a light from heaven to the oppressea detailed portrait of the Irish poet :-" His forehead nations of Europe; and in Ireland especially it. is bony and full of character, with bumps of wit was hailed as the dawn of a great deliverance, by. large and radiant enough to transport a phrenolo- millions whom an unwise legislation had alienated gist; his eyes are as dark and fine as you would and almost maddened. Young Moore, when little wish to see under a set of vine-leaves; his mouth, more than twelve years of age, sat upon his generous and good-humored, with dimples; his father's knee at a great banquet in Dublin, where nose, sensual and prominent, and at the same time the toast-"May the breezes from France fan our the reverse of aquiline; there is a very peculiar Irish oak into verdure!" was received with a francharacteristic in it-as if it were looking forward tic vehemence which, child as he was, left an imto and scenting a feast or an orchard.' The face, pression upon him that did not pass away with upon the whole, is Irish, not unruffled by care and many vears. The daystar of liberty, as it was CCCLXXXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXX. 34 termed, which arose in France, set in blood and upon the subject of the apprehended conspiracy by tempest; but the government, alarmed at the omi- Lord Chancellor Clare, who insisted upon compelnous aspect of the times, relaxed (1793) the penal ling a disclosure, upon oath, of any knowledge the Jaws, and Catholics for the first time were eligible students of the university might possess of the perfor admission to the Dublin University; eligible sons and plans of the plotters. Moore at first that is, to partake of the instruction conferred at declined being sworn, alleging in excuse that he the national seat of learning, but not for its honors had never taken an oath, and although perfectly or rewards. These were still jealously reserved unconscious himself of offence against the governfor the dominant caste. Young Moore was imme- ment, that he might unwittingly compromise diately entered of Trinity College; and, although others. This odd excuse Lord Clare, after conhe succeeded by his assiduity and ability in extort-sulting with Duigenan, famous for his anti-papist ing an acknowledgment from the authorities that polemics, declined to receive, and Moore was he had earned a classical degree, he was, for reli- sworn. Three or four questions were asked as to gion's sake, as a matter of course, denied it. Some his knowledge of any conspiracy to overthrow the English verses, however, which he presented at government by violence; and, these briefly anone of the quarterly examinations in lieu of the swered, the matter ended. This is Mr. Moore's usual Latin metre, were extolled; and he received own version of a scene which has been rendered in a well-bound copy of the "Travels of Anarchasis" various amusing and exaggerated forms. as a reward. The young student's proficiency in the Greek and Latin languages was also acknowledged, though not officially. The precocity of Moore's rhyming genius had been also exemplified by a sonnet, written when he was only fourteen years of age, and inserted in a Dublin magazine called "The Anthologia." Two or three years later he composed a Masque, which was performed by himself, his elder sister, and some young friends, in the little drawing-room over the shop in Augier street, a friend, afterwards a celebrated musician, enacting orchestra on the pianoforte. One of the songs of the masque was written to the air of Haydn's Spirit Song, and ob moreover, to a band of gay spirits who occasionally amused themselves by a visit to Dalkey, a small island in the Bay of Dublin, electing one Stephen Armitage, a respectable pawnbroker, and "very agreeable singer," King of that Ilk. On one of these coronation days King Stephen conferred the honor of knighthood upon Incledon, with the title of Sir Charles Melody; and he created Miss Battier, a rhyming lady, Henrietta, Countess of Laurel, and His Majesty's Poetess-Laureate. The working laureate was, however, Master Moore, and in that capacity he first tried his hand at political squibbling, by launching some not very brilliant sarcasms against government in general. Lord Clare, we are told, was half alarmed at this Dalkey court and its poets, and insisted upon an explanation from one of the mock officials. This is, however, we believe, a fable, though at the time a current one. For several previous years the thunder-cloud, which burst so fatally in 1798, had been slowly gathering in Ireland. Moore sympathized with the object, if not with the mode, of operation contemplated by the opponents of English rule in that country; and he appears to have been only saved from serious if not fatal implication in the rebellion by the wise admonitions of his excellent mother, aided by his own instinctive aversion to the com-tained great applause. Master Moore belonged, mittal of any act which might compromise his present and future position, by placing him amongst extreme men in the front and forlorn-hope of the battle, instead of amidst the wiser respectabilities of liberalism, from whose ranks a man of wit and genius may, he knew, shoot his diamond-tipt arrows at the enemy not only without danger, but with almost certain fame and profit to himself. Moore was intimate with the two Emmets, and an active member of a debating-club, in which the eldest, the unfortunate Robert, endeavored to mature his oratorical powers against the time when his dream of political regeneration should be realized. Towards the close of the year 1797, the at the time celebrated newspaper called "The Press" was started by Arthur O Connor, the Emmets, and other chiefs of the United Irishmen. It was published twice a week, and although, Mr. Moore says, not distinguished at all for talent, had a large circulation amongst the excited masses. Moore first contributed a poetical effusion-anonymously of course-and soon growing bolder with impunity, contributed a fiery letter, which had the questionable honor of being afterwards quoted in the House of Commons by the minister as one of his proofs that severe repressive measures were required to put down the dangerous spirit manifested in Ireland. On the evening this letter appeared, young Moore read it after supper to the assembled family—his heart beating violently all the while lest the sentiments it contained, and the style in which they were expressed, should reveal the eloquent author. His fears were groundless; no one suspected him; and the only remark elicited by the violent letter was a quiet one from his sister "that it was rather strong!" Next day his mother, through the indiscretion of a person connected with the newspaper, discovered his secret, and commanded him, as he valued her blessing, to disconnect himself at once from so dangerous a pursuit and companionship. The young man obeyed, and the storm of 1798, passed over harmlessly for him. Moore was once slightly questioned In 1799, being then only in his twentieth year, Thomas Moore arrived in London for the purpose of entering himself of the Middle Temple, and publishing his translation of the Odes of Anacreon. He had already obtained the friendship of Earl Moira, and that nobleman procured him permission to dedicate the work to the Prince of Wales. His poetical career may now be said to have fairly commenced. It was a long and brilliant one, most of his works having rapidly passed through numerous editions, and been perhaps more extensively read than those of any contemporary author, always excepting the romances of Scott. There can be no reasonable doubt that Moore owed much of this popularity and success to the accident of his position, and the favoring circumstances of the times in which he wrote. The enfant gate of high and influential circles, as well as the melodious expositor and poet-champion of the wrongs of a nation to whose glorious music he has happily, for himself, married much of his sweetest verse, he dwelt in a peculiar and irradiating atmosphere, which greatly enhanced his real magnitude and brightness. Even now, when the deceptive 66 or medium has lost its influence, it is somewhat diffi- | flowers. Well, then, all human life is artificial, cult, and may seem ungracious, to assign his true from the highest to the lowest. Burns' simplest place in the splendid galaxy of British poets to a maiden is artificial-highly so; there is not one of writer who has contributed so largely to the delight us but is "sophisticated." Perhaps high, courtly, of the reading and musical population of these artificial life is meant. But Rosalind, Beatrice, kingdoms. His verse is so pleasantly-graceful Juliet, Ophelia, were court ladies; Constance and and melodious, that one hardly likes to show that Catherine were queens; and are they not exquisitely it owes its chief attraction to the elaborate polish natural ?-and was not he who drew them as much and musical flow of its brilliant fancies, rather than the poet of nature as when he stamped Aubrey, or to its intrinsic light and truth and beauty. Critics a Carrier, or the Sailor in the Tempest, desirous of assigning a high place to the poetry of Shallow, on his glorious canvas? Choking grief, Moore, and, therefore, to avoid testing him by the and burning indignation, and yearning tenderness, standard of our great imaginative poets, have in- are felt and expressed in marble palaces as keenly vented a new theory, or rather have revived an old as in the poor man's hut; and there, too, may be fallacy, with regard to the qualities and direction found exuberant mirth, and pleasant wit, and genof a poet's mind as exhibited in his works. They tlest tears and smiles. say Moore is the poet of fancy, not of imagination of artificial life, not of nature; and therefore not to be truly estimated by comparing him with poets of imagination and of nature. Imagination and fancy they assert to be two entirely distinct attributes, and that a poet may be deficient in the first and eminent in the second. This is a manifest though ingenious error. The difference is one of degree, not of nature. Fancy is imagination, but imagination of inferior power and range; and they bear precisely the same relation to each other as the graceful and the pretty do to the noble and the beautiful. An example will illustrate our meaning better than many words. Moore thus describes the coming on of evening : "T was one of those ambrosial eves Milton has the following lines on a sufficiently similar theme : Now came still Evening on, and Twilight grey If, indeed, be meant by artificial life the masks and wrappings, the adjuncts of highly-artificial life-that is, the court-dresses and plumes, the perfume and silk-hangings, the conventional speech before company-the phrase of" the poet of artificial life" is intelligible; but to apply it in that sense to Mr. Moore is to lower and insult, not to defend and honor, him. Let us, before subscribing to so depreciatory a judgment, stroll through the gay parterre of the poet's works, and I think we shall find, when we compare notes at the close, that although his writings are not radiant with the divine gems which high poetic genius scatters along its starry path, they at all events sparkle with beautiful fancies, and breathe a music which, if not of the spheres, is of the sweetest of earth's melodies. 66 66 The Odes of Anacreon obtained much present popularity at a time when the moralities of respectable literature were not so strictly enforced by public opinion as in the present day. Many of them are paraphrases rather than translations, containing, as Dr. Laurence, Burke's friend, remarked at the time, pretty turns not to be found in Anacreon." Mr. Moore in his preface battles stoutly for the qualified morality of the Bard of Teos. "His and Virtue with her zone loosened may be an emmorality," he says, was relaxed, not abandoned, blem of the character of Anacreon." This prettily-expressed nonsense is perhaps the best excuse that can be offered for the sensuous gayety, the utterly material philosophy, displayed and inculcated in the Odes. More attention and respect are due to another of the prefatorial excuses: "To infer," says the translator, "the moral disposition of a poet from the tone of sentiment which pervades his work, is sometimes a very fallacious analogy." This may be so "sometimes," and indeed we are quite willing to admit its truth with regard to Mr. Moore himself, who, in the relations of son, husband, and father, was a very estimable It cannot be seriously denied that imagination is person, and as different from the compound of Bluedisplayed in both these extracts; the difference is, Beard and Lovelace that his earlier poems especialthat in the first it is dwarfed and enfeebled to fancy; ly would imply as light from darkness. But with in the last, it is exalted and kindled into inspira- respect to Anacreon the analogy is not, we appretion. Those therefore who, abandoning the high hend, a fallacious one. He died at eighty-five, as ground sometimes claimed for Moore, content he had lived, a debauchee, choked with a grapethemselves with asserting that he is par excellence stone, as it is recorded-a figurative mode probathe poet of fancy, in effect say that he is a poet bly of expressing that he died under the influence of confined and inferior imaginative power. The of the wine whose praises he was perpetually singother canon, that he is the poet of artificial life, and therefore not to be measured or compared with a poet of nature, is still more easily disposed of. By artificial life is of course meant human social life; it does not imply or contemplate the difference between poetical descriptions of flowers and shrubs ranged in a conservatory, or the scene paintings of a theatre, and poetical transcripts of the natural world, with its streams and woods and ing. He was, too, it appears from his own confession, horribly afraid in his latter years of Pluto's dread abode-a terror that could scarcely have beset him for mere wine-bibbing under a mythology in which Bacchus was deified. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the light gayety and sensuous joyousness of the Odes are more skilfully rendered by Moore than in any previous English translation of the Teian Muse. Some, however, 66 of his favorite similes are greatly overdone. Mr. | strong" than civil. It will also be admitted to be Richard Swiveller himself was not fonder of the somewhat perplexing that the poet who, but for his rosy" than the poet in these paraphrastic trans- mother's interference and his own wise secondlations. Couleur de rose pervades the whole series thoughts, would have joined the confederacy of in overpowering profusion-rosy lips, rosy cheeks, United Irishmen, and who has since then shed rosy hands, rosy breath, rosy smiles, we almost melodious tears over the graves of Lord Edward think rosy tears and rosy teeth, both of which we Fitzgerald and Robert Emmet, should denounce all know should be invariably "pearly." But the errors and deficiencies of America as— enough of Anacreon, whose verses are rapidly The ills, the vices of the land where first passing away before the influence of a purer taste and a manlier, healthier tone of mind than prevailed when he could be either popular or dangerous. "Thomas Little's Poems, Songs," &c., given to the world by Mr. Moore in 1801, are a collection of puerile rhapsodies still more objectionable than the Anacreontic Odes; and the only excuse for them was the extreme youth of the writer. Byron thus alluded to the book in his once famous satire : 'Tis Little, young Catullus of his day, As sweet but as immoral in his lay. Many years afterwards, his lordship, in a letter to Moore, (1820,) reverted, half in jest half in earnest, to the work in these words: "I believe all the mischief I have ever done or sung has been owing to that confounded book of yours." The most objectionable of these songs have been omitted from the recent editions of Moore's works, and we believe no one has more deplored their original publication than the author himself. In 1803, thanks to his verses and Lord Moira's patronage, Moore obtained a place under government-that of Registrar to the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda. The unrespective favoritism which in those days governed nominations in the public service is pleasantly illustrated by this appointment. "Il fallut un calculateur; ce fut un danseur qui l'obtint!" was Beaumarchais' sarcasm on Monsieur de Calonne's nomination. A similar principle was followed here. An accountant and man of business was wanted at Bermuda; but as there was a young poet to reward, all vulgar common-sense considerations were thrust aside, and the youthful translator of Anacreon received the appointment. Moore sailed in the Phænix frigate, and took formal possession of his post; but he soon wearied of the social monotony of the "still vexed Bermoothes," hastily appointed a deputy to perform all the duties of his office for a share of the income, and betook himself to America. He was as much out of his proper element there as in Bermuda. The rugged republicanism of the States disgusted him, and after a brief glance at Canada he returned to England, having been absent about fifteen months. Those rebel fiends that rack the world were nurst. But let us pass on to a pleasanter subject. While in Canada Mr. Moore composed the popular Boat-song," the words and air of which were, he says, inspired by the scenery and circumstances which the verses portray, and by the measured chant of the Canadian rowers. Captain Hall also testifies to the fidelity of this descriptive song. The republication in 1806 of Juvenile Songs, Odes, et cetera, elicited a fierce and contemptuous denunciation of them from the Edinburgh Review, and this led to a hostile meeting between the editor of that publication, the late Lord Jeffrey, and Mr. Moore." They met at Chalk Farm, near Hampstead; but the progress of the duel was interrupted by police-officers, who, on examining the pistols of the baffled combatants, found that they had been charged with powder only. This was probably a sensible device-it was not at all an uncommon one -on the part of the seconds to prevent mischief; or it might have been, as is usually believed, that the bullets dropped out of one or both of the pistols by the jolting of the carriages in which the combatants reached the field of expected battle; but of course the discovery created a great laugh at the time. Moore indignantly denied through the newspapers that he was cognizant of the innocent state of Mr. Jeffrey's pistol-aa assertion there cannot be the slightest reason for doubting. This droll incident led to his subsequent acquaintance with Lord Byron, who, unmindful or regardless of Mr. Moore's denial of the "calumny," repeated it with variations in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," chiefly with a view to annoy Mr. Jeffrey. Moore was again indignant, and demanded an apology or satisfaction. His letter did not, however, reach the noble lord till many months afterwards, when explanations ensued, and the affair terminated by a dinner at the house of Mr. Rogers, where the four poets, Byron, Campbell, Moore, and Rogers, met each other for the first time. The intimacy thus commenced, if we may judge from the biography of Byron, ripened into a lasting Soon after his return, he favored the world with friendship on the part of Moore. This feeling was his impressions of Bermuda, the United States, and but faintly reciprocated by Byron. Indeed, if we Canada. His sketches of Bermudan scenery have are to believe his own statement, made in one of been pronounced by Captain Basil Hall and others his latest letters, the noble poet was almost incapato be extremely accurate and vivid. On the truth-ble of friendship, “never having," he says, "exfulness of his American social and political pictures cept towards Lord Clare, whom he had known from and prophecies, Time-a much higher authority-infancy, and perhaps little Moore," experienced has unmistakably delivered judgment. We extract one or two of their minor beauties: any such emotion. "Little Tommy dearly loves a lord," was Byron's sneering expression more than once; and perhaps he believed Moore's loudly-expressed regard for himself to be chiefly based on that predilection. Moore had before this married a Miss Dyke, who is described as a lady of great beauty and amiability, and moreover distinguished for considerable decision of character and strong commonsense qualities which more than once proved of essential service to her husband. They had several children, the loss of whom, as we have before stated, has darkened and embittered the close of the poet's days. Two political satires, called "Corruption" and "Intolerance," were next published, and followed by "The Sceptic," described as a philosophical essay. Neither of them reached a second edition. The aim of "The Sceptic" was to set forth in sober seriousness the beauty, true enlightenment, and amiability of Ignorance, with whom Faith, Hope, Charity, and Patience, fleeing in disgust from such contradictory sciolists as Newton, Descartes, Locke, &c., are represented as dwelling in content and love. In his enthusiasm for the leaden goddess, Moore exclaims— Hail, modest Ignorance!-the goal and prize, The last, best knowledge of the simply wise. This philosophic ignorance he further opines to be "the only daughter of the schools that can safely be selected as the handmaid of Piety." Figaro's exclamation" Que les gens d'esprit sont bêtes!" has received frequent serious confirmation, and never perhaps more so than in this panegyric on Ignorance by Thomas Moore. The "Intercepted Letters; or the Twopenny Post-Bag, by Thomas Brown, the Younger," was Moore's next successful work. It is a collection of sarcastic jeux d'esprits levelled at the princeregent and the ruling politicians of the day. They had a great but necessarily transitory success. Such pièces d'occasion inevitably lose their force and piquancy by the passing into oblivion of the ephemera against which they were directed. It may sufficiently indicate the slight permanency and limited range of such pin-points, however sharp and polished, to state, that of all Moore's sarcastic verse, excellent in its way, as everybody admits it to be, only one piece There was a little man, And he had a little soul, has had the honor of translation into a foreign language. Wit which strikes at individuals dies with the world's remembrance of the crimes or follies of the persons assailed; and who cares now for the brilliant butterflies of Carlton House, or the gilded gadflies, social or political, which infested the atmosphere of the vain regent's court? It has been frequently made a reproach to Moore, that, in aiming the light arrows of his wit at the prince, he was ungratefully assailing one who had heaped favors and benefits upon him. "These favors and benefits," replies Mr. Moore, "are very easily summed up; I was allowed to dedicate 'Anacreon' to his Royal Highness; I twice dined at Carlton House; and I made one of the fifteen hundred envied guests at the prince's grand fête in 1815!" some letter, in which he set forth, as an ad misericordiam plea for lenient judgment, that he had rashly been induced to promise Arnold a piece for his theatre, in consequence of the state of attenuation to which the purses of poets are proverbially liable. The "M. P." was, as we have said, condemned, and Esop's disappointed fox received another illustration. "Writing bad jokes," quoth Mr. Moore, "for the Lyceum to make the galleries laugh is in itself sufficiently degrading; but to try to make them laugh, and fail to do so, is indeed deplorable." In sooth, to make " galleries" either laugh or weep was never Mr. Moore's aim or vocation. His eye was ever fixed upon the gay company of the "boxes," occasionally only glancing apprehensively aside from its flattering homage to scan the faces of the sour critics of the pit. And yet to make the galleries of the theatre and the world laugh has tasked and evidenced wit and humor, in comparison with which the gayest sallies, the most sparkling of Mr. Moore's fancies, are vapidity itself The mortified dramatist gave up play-writing forever, or, as he contemptuously expressed it, "made a hearty abjuration of the stage and all its heresies of pun, equivoque, and clap-trap." He was wise in doing so. The discretion evinced by the hasty retreat was only exceeded by the rashness of the venture. The intimacy of Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt continued for some years. Moore, in company with Lord Byron, dined once or twice with Hunt in prison during his confinement for a pretended libel upon the regent. A pertinent anecdote, throwing some light on Byron's sneer respecting Moore's love of lords, is told of one of these visits. The three friends, Byron, Moore, and Hunt, were walking before dinner in the prison garden, when a shower of rain came on, and Moore ran into the house, and up stairs, leaving his companions to follow as they best might. Consciousness of the discourtesy of such behavior towards his noble companion quickly flashed upon him, and he was overwhelmed with confusion. Mr. Hunt tried to console him. "I quite forgot at the moment,' said Moore, "whom I was walking with; but I was forced to remember it by his not coming up. I could not in decency go on, and to return was awkward." This anxiety-on account of Byron's lameness-Mr. Hunt remarks, appeared to him very amiable. This friendship came to an abrupt and unpleasant close. Lord Byron agreed with Hunt and Shelley to start a new periodical, to be called "The Liberal," the profits of which were to go to Leigh Hunt. Byron's parody on Southey's Vision of Judgment" appeared in it, and, ultimately, William Hazlitt became a contributor. Moore immediately In 1811 Moore made a first and last appearance became alarmed for his noble friend's character, before the world as a dramatist, by the production which he thought would be compromised by his at the Lyceum theatre of an operatic piece called connection with Hunt and Hazlitt, and wrote to "An M. P.; or the Blue Stocking." It was em- entreat him to withdraw himself from a work phatically damned, notwithstanding two or three which had "a taint in it," and from association pleasing songs, which somewhat redeemed its dull with men upon whom society" had set a mark." and vapid impertinence. The very pretty song of His prayer was complied with, and the two last"Young Love lived once in an humble shed" mentioned gentlemen were very angry, as well occurs in this piece. Moore's acquaintance with they might be. There has been a good deal of Leigh Hunt dates from the acting of the "Blue crimination and recrimination between the parties Stocking." Mr. Hunt was at the time editor of on the subject, not at all worth reproducing. The the "Examiner" newspaper, in which he had just truth is that both Hunt and Hazlitt, but especially before paid some compliments to Moore's poetry; the latter, were at the time under the ban of influand the nervous dramatist, naturally anxious to ential society and a then powerful tory press; and propitiate a critic whose opinion was esteemed Moore, with his usual prudence, declining to be oracular in certain circles, wrote him a rather ful-mad-dog'd in their company and for their sakes, |