Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

LETTER 81. TO MR. HARNESS.

  “8. St. James’s Street, Dec. 15. 1811.

  “I wrote you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *’s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things combined, put me out of humour with him and all mankind. The latter part of my life has been a perpetual struggle against affections which embittered the earliest portion; and though I flatter myself I have in a great measure conquered them, yet there are moments (and this was one) when I am as foolish as formerly. I never said so much before, nor had I said this now, if I did not suspect myself of having been rather savage in my letter, and wish to inform you thus much of the cause. You know I am not one of your dolorous gentlemen: so now let us laugh again.

  “Yesterday I went with Moore to Sydenham to visit Campbell. He was not visible, so we jogged homeward, merrily enough. To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a kind of rage at present. Last night I saw Kemble in Coriolanus; — he was glorious, and exerted himself wonderfully. By good luck I got an excellent place in the best part of the house, which was more than overflowing. Clare and Delawarre, who were there on the same speculation, were less fortunate. I saw them by accident, — we were not together. I wished for you, to gratify your love of Shakspeare and of fine acting to its fullest extent. Last week I saw an exhibition of a different kind in a Mr. Coates, at the Haymarket, who performed Lothario in a damned and damnable manner.

  “I told you the fate of B. and H. in my last. So much for these sentimentalists, who console themselves in their stews for the loss — the never to be recovered loss — the despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs! You censure my life, Harness, — when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence — a walking statue — without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love — romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!

  “Dec. 16th. — I have just received your letter; — I feel your kindness very deeply. The foregoing part of my letter, written yesterday, will, I hope, account for the tone of the former, though it cannot excuse it. I do like to hear from you — more than like. Next to seeing you, I have no greater satisfaction. But you have other duties, and greater pleasures, and I should regret to take a moment from either. H * * was to call to-day, but I have not seen him. The circumstances you mention at the close of your letter is another proof in favour of my opinion of mankind. Such you will always find them — selfish and distrustful. I except none. The cause of this is the state of society. In the world, every one is to stir for himself — it is useless, perhaps selfish, to expect any thing from his neighbour. But I do not think we are born of this disposition; for you find friendship as a schoolboy, and love enough before twenty.

  “I went to see * *; he keeps me in town, where I don’t wish to be at present. He is a good man, but totally without conduct. And now, my dearest William, I must wish you good morrow, and remain ever, most sincerely and affectionately yours,” &c.

  From the time of our first meeting, there seldom elapsed a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each other; and our acquaintance ripened into intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have seldom known an example. I was, indeed, lucky in all the circumstances that attended my first introduction to him. In a generous nature like his, the pleasure of repairing an injustice would naturally give a zest to any partiality I might have inspired in his mind; while the manner in which I had sought this reparation, free as it was from resentment or defiance, left nothing painful to remember in the transaction between us, — no compromise or concession that could wound self-love, or take away from the grace of that frank friendship to which he at once, so cordially and so unhesitatingly, admitted me. I was also not a little fortunate in forming my acquaintance with him, before his success had yet reached its meridian burst, — before the triumphs that were in store for him had brought the world all in homage at his feet, and, among the splendid crowds that courted his society, even claims less humble than mine had but a feeble chance of fixing his regard. As it was, the new scene of life that opened upon him with his success, instead of detaching us from each other, only multiplied our opportunities of meeting, and increased our intimacy. In that society where his birth entitled him to move, circumstances had already placed me, notwithstanding mine; and when, after the appearance of “Childe Harold,” he began to mingle with the world, the same persons, who had long been my intimates and friends, became his; our visits were mostly to the same places, and, in the gay and giddy round of a London spring, we were generally (as in one of his own letters he expresses it) “embarked in the same Ship of Fools together.”

  But, at the time when we first met, his position in the world was most solitary. Even those coffee-house companions who, before his departure from England, had served him as a sort of substitute for more worthy society, were either relinquished or had dispersed; and, with the exception of three or four associates of his college days (to whom he appeared strongly attached), Mr. Dallas and his solicitor seemed to be the only persons whom, even in their very questionable degree, he could boast of as friends. Though too proud to complain of this loneliness, it was evident that he felt it; and that the state of cheerless isolation, “unguided and unfriended,” to which, on entering into manhood, he had found himself abandoned, was one of the chief sources of that resentful disdain of mankind, which even their subsequent worship of him came too late to remove. The effect, indeed, which his subsequent commerce with society had, for the short period it lasted, in softening and exhilarating his temper, showed how fit a soil his heart would have been for the growth of all the kindlier feelings, had but a portion of this sunshine of the world’s smiles shone on him earlier.

  At the same time, in all such speculations and conjectures as to what might have been, under more favourable circumstances, his character, it is invariably to be borne in mind, that his very defects were among the elements of his greatness, and that it was out of the struggle between the good and evil principles of his nature that his mighty genius drew its strength. A more genial and fostering introduction into life, while it would doubtless have softened and disciplined his mind, might have impaired its vigour; and the same influences that would have diffused smoothness and happiness over his life might have been fatal to its glory. In a short poem of his, which appears to have been produced at Athens, (as I find it written on a leaf of the original MS. of Childe Harold, and dated “Athens, 1811,”) there are two lines which, though hardly intelligible as connected with the rest of the poem, may, taken separately, be interpreted as implying a sort of prophetic consciousness that it was out of the wreck and ruin of all his hopes the immortality of his name was to arise.

  “Dear object of defeated care, Though now of love and thee bereft, To reconcile me with despair, Thine image and my tears are left. ’Tis said with sorrow Time can cope, But this, I feel, can ne’er be true; For, by the death-blow of my hope, My Memory immortal grew!”

  We frequently, during the first months of our acquaintance, dined together alone; and as we had no club, in common, to resort to, — the Alfred being the only one to which he, at that period, belonged, and I being then a member of none but Watier’s, — our dinners used to be either at the St. Alban’s, or at his old haunt, Stevens’s. Though at times he would drink freely enough of claret, he still adhered to his system of abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a notion that animal food has some peculiar influence on the character; and I rem
ember, one day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a beef-steak, after watching me for a few seconds, he said, in a grave tone of enquiry,— “Moore, don’t you find eating beef-steak makes you ferocious?”

  Understanding me to have expressed a wish to become a member of the Alfred, he very good-naturedly lost no time in proposing me as a candidate; but as the resolution which I had then nearly formed of betaking myself to a country life rendered an additional club in London superfluous, I wrote to beg that he would, for the present, at least, withdraw my name: and his answer, though containing little, being the first familiar note he ever honoured me with, I may be excused for feeling a peculiar pleasure in inserting it.

  LETTER 82. TO MR. MOORE.

  “December 11. 1811.

  “My dear Moore,

  “If you please, we will drop our former monosyllables, and adhere to the appellations sanctioned by our godfathers and godmothers. If you make it a point, I will withdraw your name; at the same time there is no occasion, as I have this day postponed your election ‘sine die,’ till it shall suit your wishes to be amongst us. I do not say this from any awkwardness the erasure of your proposal would occasion to me, but simply such is the state of the case; and, indeed, the longer your name is up, the stronger will become the probability of success, and your voters more numerous. Of course you will decide — your wish shall be my law. If my zeal has already outrun discretion, pardon me, and attribute my officiousness to an excusable motive.

  “I wish you would go down with me to Newstead. Hodgson will be there, and a young friend, named Harness, the earliest and dearest I ever had from the third form at Harrow to this hour. I can promise you good wine, and, if you like shooting, a manor of 4000 acres, fires, books, your own free will, and my own very indifferent company. ‘Balnea, vina * *.’

  “Hodgson will plague you, I fear, with verse; — for my own part I will conclude, with Martial, ‘nil recitabo tibi;’ and surely the last inducement is not the least. Ponder on my proposition, and believe me, my dear Moore, yours ever,

  “BYRON.”

  Among those acts of generosity and friendship by which every year of Lord Byron’s life was signalised, there is none, perhaps, that, for its own peculiar seasonableness and delicacy, as well as for the perfect worthiness of the person who was the object of it, deserves more honourable mention than that which I am now about to record, and which took place nearly at the period of which I am speaking. The friend, whose good fortune it was to inspire the feeling thus testified, was Mr. Hodgson, the gentleman to whom so many of the preceding letters are addressed; and as it would be unjust to rob him of the grace and honour of being, himself, the testimony of obligations so signal, I shall here lay before my readers an extract from the letter with which, in reference to a passage in one of his noble friend’s Journals, he has favoured me.

  “I feel it incumbent upon me to explain the circumstances to which this passage alludes, however private their nature. They are, indeed, calculated to do honour to the memory of my lamented friend. Having become involved, unfortunately, in difficulties and embarrassments, I received from Lord Byron (besides former pecuniary obligations) assistance, at the time in question, to the amount of a thousand pounds. Aid of such magnitude was equally unsolicited and unexpected on my part; but it was a long-cherished, though secret, purpose of my friend to afford that aid; and he only waited for the period when he thought it would be of most service. His own words were, on the occasion of conferring this overwhelming favour, ‘I always intended to do it.’”

  During all this time, and through the months of January and February, his poem of “Childe Harold” was in its progress through the press; and to the changes and additions which he made in the course of printing, some of the most beautiful passages of the work owe their existence. On comparing, indeed, his rough draft of the two Cantos with the finished form in which they exist at present, we are made sensible of the power which the man of genius possesses, not only of surpassing others, but of improving on himself. Originally, the “little Page” and “Yeoman” of the Childe were introduced to the reader’s notice in the following tame stanzas, by expanding the substance of which into their present light, lyric shape, it is almost needless to remark how much the poet has gained in variety and dramatic effect: —

  “And of his train there was a henchman page, A peasant boy, who serv’d his master well;

  And often would his pranksome prate engage Childe Burun’s ear, when his proud heart did swell With sullen thoughts that he disdain’d to tell. Then would he smile on him, and Alwin smiled, When aught that from his young lips archly fell, The gloomy film from Harold’s eye beguiled....

  “Him and one yeoman only did he take To travel eastward to a far countrie; And, though the boy was grieved to leave the lake, On whose fair banks he grew from infancy, Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily, With hope of foreign nations to behold, And many things right marvellous to see, Of which our vaunting travellers oft have told, From Mandeville....”

  In place of that mournful song “To Ines,” in the first Canto, which contains some of the dreariest touches of sadness that even his pen ever let fall, he had, in the original construction of the poem, been so little fastidious as to content himself with such ordinary sing-song as the following: —

  “Oh never tell again to me Of Northern climes and British ladies,

  It has not been your lot to see, Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz, Although her eye be not of blue, Nor fair her locks, like English lasses,” &c. &c.

  There were also, originally, several stanzas full of direct personality, and some that degenerated into a style still more familiar and ludicrous than that of the description of a London Sunday, which still disfigures the poem. In thus mixing up the light with the solemn, it was the intention of the poet to imitate Ariosto. But it is far easier to rise, with grace, from the level of a strain generally familiar, into an occasional short burst of pathos or splendour, than to interrupt thus a prolonged tone of solemnity by any descent into the ludicrous or burlesque. In the former case, the transition may have the effect of softening or elevating, while, in the latter, it almost invariably shocks; — for the same reason, perhaps, that a trait of pathos or high feeling, in comedy, has a peculiar charm; while the intrusion of comic scenes into tragedy, however sanctioned among us by habit and authority, rarely fails to offend. The noble poet was, himself, convinced of the failure of the experiment, and in none of the succeeding Cantos of Childe Harold repeated it.

  Of the satiric parts, some verses on the well-known traveller, Sir John Carr, may supply us with, at least, a harmless specimen: —

  “Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Sights, saints, antiques, arts, anecdotes, and war, Go, hie ye hence to Paternoster Row, — Are they not written in the boke of Carr? Green Erin’s Knight, and Europe’s wandering star. Then listen, readers, to the Man of Ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar: All these are coop’d within one Quarto’s brink, This borrow, steal (don’t buy), and tell us what you think.”

  Among those passages which, in the course of revisal, he introduced, like pieces of “rich inlay,” into the poem, was that fine stanza —

  “Yet if, as holiest men have deem’d, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore,” &c.

  through which lines, though, it must be confessed, a tone of scepticism breathes, (as well as in those tender verses —

  “Yes, — I will dream that we may meet again,”)

  it is a scepticism whose sadness calls far more for pity than blame; there being discoverable, even through its very doubts, an innate warmth of piety, which they had been able to obscure, but not to chill. To use the words of the poet himself, in a note which it was once his intention to affix to these stanzas, “Let it be remembered that the spirit they breathe is desponding, not sneering, scepticism,” — a distinction never to be lost sight of; as, however hopeless may be the conversion of the scoffing infidel, he who feels pa
in in doubting has still alive within him the seeds of belief.

  At the same time with Childe Harold, he had three other works in the press, — his “Hints from Horace,” “The Curse of Minerva,” and a fifth edition of “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” The note upon the latter poem, which had been the lucky origin of our acquaintance, was withdrawn in this edition, and a few words of explanation, which he had the kindness to submit to my perusal, substituted in its place.

  In the month of January, the whole of the two Cantos being printed off, some of the poet’s friends, and, among others, Mr. Rogers and myself, were so far favoured as to be indulged with a perusal of the sheets. In adverting to this period in his “Memoranda,” Lord Byron, I remember, mentioned, — as one of the ill omens which preceded the publication of the poem, — that some of the literary friends to whom it was shown expressed doubts of its success, and that one among them had told him “it was too good for the age.” Whoever may have pronounced this opinion, — and I have some suspicion that I am myself the guilty person, — the age has, it must be owned, most triumphantly refuted the calumny upon its taste which the remark implied.

  It was in the hands of Mr. Rogers I first saw the sheets of the poem, and glanced hastily over a few of the stanzas which he pointed out to me as beautiful. Having occasion, the same morning, to write a note to Lord Byron, I expressed strongly the admiration which this foretaste of his work had excited in me; and the following is — as far as relates to literary matters — the answer I received from him.

  LETTER 83. TO MR. MOORE.

  “January 29. 1812.

  “My dear Moore,

  “I wish very much I could have seen you; I am in a state of ludicrous tribulation. * * *

  “Why do you say that I dislike your poesy? I have expressed no such opinion, either in print or elsewhere. In scribbling myself, it was necessary for me to find fault, and I fixed upon the trite charge of immorality, because I could discover no other, and was so perfectly qualified in the innocence of my heart, to ‘pluck that mote from my neighbour’s eye.’