Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  Unfortunately, Lord Byron was an exception to the usual course of such lapses. With him, the canker showed itself “in the morn and dew of youth,” when the effect of such “blastments” is, for every reason, most fatal, — and, in addition to the real misfortune of being an unbeliever at any age, he exhibited the rare and melancholy spectacle of an unbelieving schoolboy. The same prematurity of developement which brought his passions and genius so early into action, enabled him also to anticipate this worst, dreariest result of reason; and at the very time of life when a spirit and temperament like his most required control, those checks, which religious pre-possessions best supply, were almost wholly wanting.

  We have seen, in those two Addresses to the Deity which I have selected from among his unpublished poems, and still more strongly in a passage of the Catalogue of his studies, at what a boyish age the authority of all systems and sects was avowedly shaken off by his enquiring spirit. Yet, even in these, there is a fervour of adoration mingled with his defiance of creeds, through which the piety implanted in his nature (as it is deeply in all poetic natures) unequivocally shows itself; and had he then fallen within the reach of such guidance and example as would have seconded and fostered these natural dispositions, the licence of opinion into which he afterwards broke loose might have been averted. His scepticism, if not wholly removed, might have been softened down into that humble doubt, which, so far from being inconsistent with a religious spirit, is, perhaps, its best guard against presumption and uncharitableness; and, at all events, even if his own views of religion had not been brightened or elevated, he would have learned not wantonly to cloud or disturb those of others. But there was no such monitor near him. After his departure from Southwell, he had not a single friend or relative to whom he could look up with respect; but was thrown alone on the world, with his passions and his pride, to revel in the fatal discovery which he imagined himself to have made of the nothingness of the future, and the all-paramount claims of the present. By singular ill fortune, too, the individual who, among all his college friends, had taken the strongest hold on his admiration and affection, and whose loss he afterwards lamented with brotherly tenderness, was, to the same extent as himself, if not more strongly, a sceptic. Of this remarkable young man, Matthews, who was so early snatched away, and whose career in after-life, had it been at all answerable to the extraordinary promise of his youth, must have placed him upon a level with the first men of his day, a Memoir was, at one time, intended to be published by his relatives; and to Lord Byron, among others of his college friends, application, for assistance in the task, was addressed. The letter which this circumstance drew forth from the noble poet, besides containing many amusing traits of his friend, affords such an insight into his own habits of life at this period, that, though infringing upon the chronological order of his correspondence, I shall insert it here.

  LETTER 19. TO MR. MURRAY.

  “Ravenna, 9bre 12. 1820.

  “What you said of the late Charles Skinner Matthews has set me to my recollections; but I have not been able to turn up any thing which would do for the purposed Memoir of his brother, — even if he had previously done enough during his life to sanction the introduction of anecdotes so merely personal. He was, however, a very extraordinary man, and would have been a great one. No one ever succeeded in a more surpassing degree than he did, as far as he went. He was indolent, too; but whenever he stripped, he overthrew all antagonists. His conquests will be found registered at Cambridge, particularly his Downing one, which was hotly and highly contested, and yet easily won. Hobhouse was his most intimate friend, and can tell you more of him than any man. William Bankes also a great deal. I myself recollect more of his oddities than of his academical qualities, for we lived most together at a very idle period of my life. When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had become attached during the two last years of my stay there; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford (there were no rooms Vacant at Christ-church); wretched from some private domestic circumstances of different kinds, and consequently about as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop. So that, although I knew Matthews, and met him often then at Bankes’s, (who was my collegiate pastor, and master, and patron,) and at Rhode’s, Milnes’s, Price’s, Dick’s, Macnamara’s, Farrell’s, Galley Knight’s, and others of that set of contemporaries, yet I was neither intimate with him nor with any one else, except my old schoolfellow Edward Long (with whom I used to pass the day in riding and swimming), and William Bankes, who was good-naturedly tolerant of my ferocities.

  “It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of a year away from Cambridge, to which I had returned again to reside for my degree, that I became one of Matthews’s familiars, by means of H —— , who, after hating me for two years, because I wore a white hat, and a grey coat, and rode a grey horse (as he says himself), took me into his good graces because I had written some poetry. I had always lived a good deal, and got drunk occasionally, in their company — but now we became really friends in a morning. Matthews, however, was not at this period resident in College. I met him chiefly in London, and at uncertain periods at Cambridge. H —— , in the mean time, did great things: he founded the Cambridge ‘Whig Club’ (which he seems to have forgotten), and the ‘Amicable Society,’ which was dissolved in consequence of the members constantly quarrelling, and made himself very popular with ‘us youth,’ and no less formidable to all tutors, professors, and beads of Colleges. William B —— was gone; while he stayed, he ruled the roast — or rather the roasting — and was father of all mischiefs.

  “Matthews and I, meeting in London, and elsewhere, became great cronies. He was not good tempered — nor am I — but with a little tact his temper was manageable, and I thought him so superior a man, that I was willing to sacrifice something to his humours, which were often, at the same time, amusing and provoking. What became of his papers (and he certainly had many), at the time of his death, was never known. I mention this by the way, fearing to skip it over, and as he wrote remarkably well, both in Latin and English. We went down to Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks’ dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, with an occasional neighbour or so for visiters, and used to sit up late in our friars’ dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments. Matthews always denominated me ‘the Abbot,’ and never called me by any other name in his good humours, to the day of his death. The harmony of these our symposia was somewhat interrupted, a few days after our assembling, by Matthews’s threatening to throw —— out of a window, in consequence of I know not what commerce of jokes ending in this epigram. —— came to me and said, that ‘his respect and regard for me as host would not permit him to call out any of my guests, and that he should go to town next morning.’ He did. It was in vain that I represented to him that the window was not high, and that the turf under it was particularly soft. Away he went.

  “Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘don’t let us break through — let us go on as we began, to our journey’s end;’ and so he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He had previously occupied, during my year’s absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones, the tutor, in his odd way, had said, on putting him in, ‘Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, Sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.’ Matthews was delighted with this; and whenever anybody came to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution; and used to repeat Jones’s admonition in his tone and manner. There was a l
arge mirror in the room, on which he remarked, ‘that he thought his friends were grown uncommonly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon discovered that they only came to see themselves.’ Jones’s phrase of ‘tumultuous passions,’ and the whole scene, had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe that I owed to it a portion of his good graces.

  “When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against one of his white silk stockings, one day before dinner; of course the gentleman apologised. ‘Sir,’ answered Matthews, ‘it may be all very well for you, who have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other people’s; but to me, who have only this one pair, which I have put on in honour of the Abbot here, no apology can compensate for such carelessness; besides, the expense of washing.’ He had the same sort of droll sardonic way about every thing. A wild Irishman, named F —— , one evening beginning to say something at a large supper at Cambridge, Matthews roared out ‘Silence!’ and then, pointing to F —— , cried out, in the words of the oracle, ‘Orson is endowed with reason.’ You may easily suppose that Orson lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing this compliment. When H —— published his volume of poems, the Miscellany (which Matthews would call the ‘Miss-sell-any’), all that could be drawn from him was, that the preface was ‘extremely like Walsh.’ H —— thought this at first a compliment; but we never could make out what it was, for all we know of Walsh is his Ode to King William, and Pope’s epithet of ‘knowing Walsh.’ When the Newstead party broke up for London, H —— and Matthews, who were the greatest friends possible, agreed, for a whim, to walk together to town. They quarrelled by the way, and actually walked the latter half of their journey, occasionally passing and repassing, without speaking. When Matthews had got to Highgate, he had spent all his money but three-pence halfpenny, and determined to spend that also in a pint of beer, which I believe he was drinking before a public-house, as H —— passed him (still without speaking) for the last time on their route. They were reconciled in London again.

  “One of Matthews’s passions was ‘the Fancy;’ and he sparred uncommonly well. But he always got beaten in rows, or combats with the bare fist. In swimming, too, he swam well; but with effort and labour, and too high out of the water; so that Scrope Davies and myself, of whom he was therein somewhat emulous, always told him that he would be drowned if ever he came to a difficult pass in the water. He was so; but surely Scrope and myself would have been most heartily glad that

  “‘the Dean had lived, And our prediction proved a lie.’

  “His head was uncommonly handsome, very like what Pope’s was in his youth.

  “His voice, and laugh, and features, are strongly resembled by his brother Henry’s, if Henry be he of King’s College. His passion for boxing was so great, that he actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty (whom I had backed and made the match for against Tom Belcher), and I saw them spar together at my own lodgings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I would have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match went off. It was of course to have been a private fight, in a private room.

  “On one occasion, being too late to go home and dress, he was equipped by a friend (Mr. Baillie, I believe,) in a magnificently fashionable and somewhat exaggerated shirt and neckcloth. He proceeded to the Opera, and took his station in Fops’ Alley. During the interval between the opera and the ballet, an acquaintance took his station by him and saluted him: ‘Come round,’ said Matthews, ‘come round.’— ‘Why should I come round?’ said the other; ‘you have only to turn your head — I am close by you.’— ‘That is exactly what I cannot do,’ said Matthews; ‘don’t you see the state I am in?’ pointing to his buckram shirt collar and inflexible cravat, — and there he stood with his head always in the same perpendicular position during the whole spectacle.

  “One evening, after dining together, as we were going to the Opera, I happened to have a spare Opera ticket (as subscriber to a box), and presented it to Matthews. ‘Now, sir,’ said he to Hobhouse afterwards, ‘this I call courteous in the Abbot — another man would never have thought that I might do better with half a guinea than throw it to a door-keeper; — but here is a man not only asks me to dinner, but gives me a ticket for the theatre.’ These were only his oddities, for no man was more liberal, or more honourable in all his doings and dealings, than Matthews. He gave Hobhouse and me, before we set out for Constantinople, a most splendid entertainment, to which we did ample justice. One of his fancies was dining at all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Somebody popped upon him in I know not what coffee-house in the Strand — and what do you think was the attraction? Why, that he paid a shilling (I think) to dine with his hat on. This he called his ‘hat house,’ and used to boast of the comfort of being covered at meal-times.

  “When Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named ‘Hiron,’ Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron’s windows every evening,

  “‘Ah me! what perils do environ The man who meddles with hot Hiron.’

  “He was also of that band of profane scoffers who, under the auspices of —— , used to rouse Lort Mansel (late Bishop of Bristol) from his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window foaming with wrath, and crying out, ‘I know you, gentlemen, I know you!’ were wont to reply, ‘We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort’— ‘Good Lort deliver us!’ (Lort was his Christian name.) As he was very free in his speculations upon all kinds of subjects, although by no means either dissolute or intemperate in his conduct, and as I was no less independent, our conversation and correspondence used to alarm our friend Hobhouse to a considerable degree.

  “You must be almost tired of my packets, which will have cost a mint of postage.

  “Salute Gifford and all my friends.

  “Yours, &c.”

  As already, before his acquaintance with Mr. Matthews commenced, Lord Byron had begun to bewilder himself in the mazes of scepticism, it would be unjust to impute to this gentleman any further share in the formation of his noble friend’s opinions than what arose from the natural influence of example and sympathy; — an influence which, as it was felt perhaps equally on both sides, rendered the contagion of their doctrines, in a great measure, reciprocal. In addition, too, to this community of sentiment on such subjects, they were both, in no ordinary degree, possessed by that dangerous spirit of ridicule, whose impulses even the pious cannot always restrain, and which draws the mind on, by a sort of irresistible fascination, to disport itself most wantonly on the brink of all that is most solemn and awful. It is not wonderful, therefore, that, in such society, the opinions of the noble poet should have been, at least, accelerated in that direction to which their bias already leaned; and though he cannot be said to have become thus confirmed in these doctrines, — as neither now, nor at any time of his life, was he a confirmed unbeliever, — he had undoubtedly learned to feel less uneasy under his scepticism, and even to mingle somewhat of boast and of levity with his expression of it. At the very first onset of his correspondence with Mr. Dallas, we find him proclaiming his sentiments on all such subjects with a flippancy and confidence far different from the tone in which he had first ventured on his doubts, — from that fervid sadness, as of a heart loth to part with its illusions, which breathes through every line of those prayers, that, but a year before, his pen had traced.

  Here again, however, we should recollect, there must be a considerable share of allowance for his usual tendency to make the most and the worst of his own obliquities. There occurs, indeed, in his first letter to Mr. Dallas, an instance of this strange ambition, — the very reverse, it must be allowed, of hypocrisy, — which led him to court, rather than avoid, the reputation of profligacy, and to put, at all times, the worst face on his own character and conduct. His new correspondent having, in introducing himself to his acquaintance, passed some compliments on the tone of moral and charitable feeling which breathed through one of his poems, had added, that it “brought to his mind another noble author, who
was not only a fine poet, orator, and historian, but one of the closest reasoners we have on the truth of that religion of which forgiveness is a prominent principle, the great and good Lord Lyttleton, whose fame will never die. His son,” adds Mr. Dallas, “to whom he had transmitted genius, but not virtue, sparkled for a moment and went out like a star, — and with him the title became extinct.” To this Lord Byron answers in the following letter: —

  LETTER 20. TO MR. DALLAS.

  “Dorant’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, Jan. 20. 1808.

  “Sir,

  “Your letter was not received till this morning, I presume from being addressed to me in Notts., where I have not resided since last June, and as the date is the 6th, you will excuse the delay of my answer.

  “If the little volume you mention has given pleasure to the author of Percival and Aubrey, I am sufficiently repaid by his praise. Though our periodical censors have been uncommonly lenient, I confess a tribute from a man of acknowledged genius is still more flattering. But I am afraid I should forfeit all claim to candour, if I did not decline such praise as I do not deserve; and this is, I am sorry to say, the case in the present instance.

  “My compositions speak for themselves, and must stand or fall by their own worth or demerit: thus far I feel highly gratified by your favourable opinion. But my pretensions to virtue are unluckily so few, that though I should be happy to merit, I cannot accept, your applause in that respect. One passage in your letter struck me forcibly: you mention the two Lords Lyttleton in a manner they respectively deserve, and will be surprised to hear the person who is now addressing you has been frequently compared to the latter. I know I am injuring myself in your esteem by this avowal, but the circumstance was so remarkable from your observation, that I cannot help relating the fact. The events of my short life have been of so singular a nature, that, though the pride commonly called honour has, and I trust ever will, prevent me from disgracing my name by a mean or cowardly action, I have been already held up as the votary of licentiousness, and the disciple of infidelity. How far justice may have dictated this accusation, I cannot pretend to say; but, like the gentleman to whom my religious friends, in the warmth of their charity, have already devoted me, I am made worse than I really am. However, to quit myself (the worst theme I could pitch upon), and return to my poems, I cannot sufficiently express my thanks, and I hope I shall some day have an opportunity of rendering them in person. A second edition is now in the press, with some additions and considerable omissions; you will allow me to present you with a copy. The Critical, Monthly, and Anti-Jacobin Reviews have been very indulgent; but the Eclectic has pronounced a furious Philippic, not against the book but the author, where you will find all I have mentioned asserted by a reverend divine who wrote the critique.