Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Moore

  A day or two after, Lord Byron sent me the following: —

  “My dear Moore,

  “‘When Rogers’ must not see the enclosed, which I send for your perusal. I am ready to fix any day you like for our visit. Was not Sheridan good upon the whole? The ‘Poulterer’ was the first and best.

  “Ever yours,” &c.

  1.

  “When T * * this damn’d nonsense sent, (I hope I am not violent), Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.

  2.

  “And since not ev’n our Rogers’ praise To common sense his thoughts could raise — Why would they let him print his lays?

  3.

  * * * *

  4.

  * * * *

  5.

  “To me, divine Apollo, grant — O! Hermilda’s first and second canto, I’m fitting up a new portmanteau;

  6.

  “And thus to furnish decent lining, My own and others’ bays I’m twining — So gentle T * *, throw me thine in.”

  On the same day I received from him the following additional scraps. The lines in italics are from the eulogy that provoked his waggish comments.

  TO ——

  1.

  “‘I lay my branch of laurel down.’

  “Thou ‘lay thy branch of laurel down!” Why, what thou’st stole is not enow; And, were it lawfully thine own, Does Rogers want it most, or thou? Keep to thyself thy wither’d bough, Or send it back to Dr. Donne — Were justice done to both, I trow, He’d have but little, and thou — none.

  2.

  “‘Then thus to form Apollo’s crown.

  “A crown! why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi’s town, Enquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, They’ll tell you Phoebus gave his crown, Some years before your birth, to Rogers.

  3.

  “‘Let every other bring his own.’

  “When coals to Newcastle are carried, And owls sent to Athens as wonders, From his spouse when the * *’s unmarried, Or Liverpool weeps o’er his blunders; When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel, When C * *’s wife has an heir, Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel, And thou shalt have plenty to spare.”

  The mention which he makes of Sheridan in the note just cited affords a fit opportunity of producing, from one of his Journals, some particulars which he has noted down respecting this extraordinary man, for whose talents he entertained the most unbounded admiration, — rating him, in natural powers, far above all his great political contemporaries.

  “In society I have met Sheridan frequently: he was superb! He had a sort of liking for me, and never attacked me, at least to my face, and he did every body else — high names, and wits, and orators, some of them poets also. I have seen him cut up Whitbread, quiz Madame de Staël, annihilate Colman, and do little less by some others (whose names, as friends, I set not down) of good fame and ability.

  “The last time I met him was, I think, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote’s, where he was as quick as ever — no, it was not the last time; the last time was at Douglas Kinnaird’s.

  “I have met him in all places and parties, — at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock’s, at Robins’s the auctioneer’s, at Sir Humphrey Davy’s, at Sam Rogers’s, — in short, in most kinds of company, and always found him very convivial and delightful.

  “I have seen Sheridan weep two or three times. It may be that he was maudlin; but this only renders it more impressive, for who would see

  “From Marlborough’s eyes the tears of dotage flow, And Swift expire a driveller and a show?

  Once I saw him cry at Robins’s the auctioneer’s, after a splendid dinner, full of great names and high spirits. I had the honour of sitting next to Sheridan. The occasion of his tears was some observation or other upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office and keeping to their principles: Sheridan turned round:— ‘Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived, or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have a shilling of their own.’ And in saying this he wept.

  “I have more than once heard him say, ‘that he never had a shilling of his own.’ To be sure, he contrived to extract a good many of other people’s.

  “In 1815, I had occasion to visit my lawyer in Chancery Lane, he was with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, &c., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help enquiring that of Sheridan. ‘Oh,’ replied the attorney, ‘the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.’— ‘Well,’ said I, ‘and what do you mean to do?’— ‘Nothing at all for the present,’ said he: ‘would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?’ and here he began laughing, and going over Sheridan’s good gifts of conversation.

  “Now, from personal experience, I can vouch that my attorney is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly accessible to any kind of impression out of the statute or record; and yet Sheridan, in half an hour, had found the way to soften and seduce him in such a manner, that I almost think he would have thrown his client (an honest man, with all the laws, and some justice, on his side) out of the window, had he come in at the moment.

  “Such was Sheridan! he could soften an attorney! There has been nothing like it since the days of Orpheus.

  “One day I saw him take up his own ‘Monody on Garrick.’ He lighted upon the Dedication to the Dowager Lady * *. On seeing it, he flew into a rage, and exclaimed, ‘that it must be a forgery, that he had never dedicated any thing of his to such a d —— d canting,’ &c. &c. &c — and so went on for half an hour abusing his own dedication, or at least the object of it. If all writers were equally sincere, it would be ludicrous.

  “He told me that, on the night of the grand success of his School for Scandal, he was knocked down and put into the watch-house for making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watchmen.

  “When dying, he was requested to undergo ‘an operation.’ He replied, that he had already submitted to two, which were enough for one man’s lifetime. Being asked what they were, he answered, ‘having his hair cut, and sitting for his picture.’

  “I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought him extremely pleasant and convivial. Sheridan’s humour, or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage; he never laughed, (at least that I saw, and I watched him,) but Colman did. If I had to choose, and could not have both at a time, I should say, ‘Let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman.’ Sheridan for dinner, Colman for supper; Sheridan for claret or port, but Colman for every thing, from the madeira and champagne at dinner, the claret with a layer of port between the glasses, up to the punch of the night, and down to the grog, or gin and water, of daybreak; — all these I have threaded with both the same. Sheridan was a grenadier company of life-guards, but Colman a whole regiment — of light infantry, to be sure, but still a regiment.”

  It was at this time that Lord Byron became acquainted (and, I regret to have to add, partly through my means) with Mr. Leigh Hunt, the editor of a well-known weekly journal, the Examiner. This gentleman I had myself formed an acquaintance with in the year 1811, and, in common with a large portion of the public, entertained a sincere admiration of his talents and courage as a journalist. The interest I took in him personally had been recently much increased by the manly spirit, which he had displayed throughout a prosecution instituted against himself and his brother, for a libel that had appeared in their paper on the Prince Regent, and in consequence of which they were both sentenced to imprisonment for two years. It will be recollected that there existed among the Whig party, at this period, a strong feeling of i
ndignation at the late defection from themselves and their principles of the illustrious personage who had been so long looked up to as the friend and patron of both. Being myself, at the time, warmly — perhaps intemperately — under the influence of this feeling, I regarded the fate of Mr. Hunt with more than common interest, and, immediately on my arrival in town, paid him a visit in his prison. On mentioning the circumstance, soon after, to Lord Byron, and describing my surprise at the sort of luxurious comforts with which I had found the “wit in the dungeon” surrounded, — his trellised flower-garden without, and his books, busts, pictures, and piano-forte within, — the noble poet, whose political view of the case coincided entirely with my own, expressed a strong wish to pay a similar tribute of respect to Mr. Hunt, and accordingly, a day or two after, we proceeded for that purpose to the prison. The introduction which then took place was soon followed by a request from Mr. Hunt that we would dine with him; and the noble poet having good-naturedly accepted the invitation, Horsemonger Lane gaol had, in the month of June, 1813, the honour of receiving Lord Byron, as a guest, within its walls.

  On the morning of our first visit to the journalist, I received from Lord Byron the following lines written, it will be perceived, the night before: —

  “May 19. 1813.

  “Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town, Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown, — For hang me if I know of which you may most brag, Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny Post Bag; * * * * But now to my letter — to yours ’tis an answer — To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir, All ready and dress’d for proceeding to spunge on (According to compact) the wit in the dungeon — Pray Phoebus at length our political malice May not get us lodgings within the same palace! I suppose that to-night you’re engaged with some codgers, And for Sotheby’s Blues have deserted Sam Rogers; And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got, Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote. But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra, And you’ll be Catullus, the R —— t Mamurra.

  “Dear M. — having got thus far, I am interrupted by * * * *. 10 o’clock.

  “Half-past 11. * * * * is gone. I must dress for Lady Heathcote’s. — Addio.”

  Our day in the prison was, if not agreeable, at least novel and odd. I had, for Lord Byron’s sake, stipulated with our host beforehand, that the party should be, as much as possible, confined to ourselves; and, as far as regarded dinner, my wishes had been attended to; — there being present, besides a member or two of Mr. Hunt’s own family, no other stranger, that I can recollect, but Mr. Mitchell, the ingenious translator of Aristophanes. Soon after dinner, however, there dropped in some of our host’s literary friends, who, being utter strangers to Lord Byron and myself, rather disturbed the ease into which we were all settling. Among these, I remember, was Mr. John Scott, — the writer, afterwards, of some severe attacks on Lord Byron; and it is painful to think that, among the persons then assembled round the poet, there should have been one so soon to step forth the assailant of his living fame, while another, less manful, was to reserve the cool venom for his grave.

  On the 2d of June, in presenting a petition to the House of Lords, he made his third and last appearance as an orator, in that assembly. In his way home from the House that day, he called, I remember, at my lodgings, and found me dressing in a very great hurry for dinner. He was, I recollect, in a state of most humorous exaltation after his display, and, while I hastily went on with my task in the dressing-room, continued to walk up and down the adjoining chamber, spouting forth for me, in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering. “I told them,” he said, “that it was a most flagrant violation of the Constitution — that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom, and that — —”— “But what was this dreadful grievance?” I asked, interrupting him in his eloquence.— “The grievance?” he repeated, pausing as if to consider— “Oh, that I forget.” It is impossible, of course, to convey an idea of the dramatic humour with which he gave effect to these words; but his look and manner on such occasions were irresistibly comic; and it was, indeed, rather in such turns of fun and oddity, than in any more elaborate exhibition of wit, that the pleasantry of his conversation consisted.

  Though it is evident that, after the brilliant success of Childe Harold, he had ceased to think of Parliament as an arena of ambition, yet, as a field for observation, we may take for granted it was not unstudied by him. To a mind of such quick and various views, every place and pursuit presented some aspect of interest; and whether in the ball-room, the boxing-school, or the senate, all must have been, by genius like his, turned to profit. The following are a few of the recollections and impressions which I find recorded by himself of his short parliamentary career: —

  “I have never heard any one who fulfilled my ideal of an orator. Grattan would have been near it, but for his harlequin delivery. Pitt I never heard. Fox but once, and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as different from an orator as an improvisatore, or a versifier, from a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory. Canning is sometimes very like one. Windham I did not admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad sophistry. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English. Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour’s delivery. Burdett is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and I think the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches up stairs, and run down from Bellamy’s when he was upon his legs. I heard Bob Milnes make his second speech; it made no impression. I like Ward — studied, but keen, and sometimes eloquent. Peel, my school and form fellow (we sat within two of each other), strange to say, I have never heard, though I often wished to do so; but from what I remember of him at Harrow, he is, or should be, among the best of them. Now I do not admire Mr. Wilberforce’s speaking; it is nothing but a flow of words— ‘words, words, alone.’

  “I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence, properly so called; and am inclined to think that the Irish had a great deal, and that the French will have, and have had in Mirabeau. Lord Chatham and Burke are the nearest approaches to orators in England. I don’t know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but in the House I wish him at the bar once more. Lauderdale is shrill, and Scotch, and acute.

  “But amongst all these, good, bad, and indifferent, I never heard the speech which was not too long for the auditors, and not very intelligible, except here and there. The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious and tiresome as may be to those who must be often present. I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly, but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit: and he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length.

  “The impression of Parliament upon me was, that its members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence, (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and I suspect still fewer in modern times,) but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them know what is right, though they can’t express it nobly.

  “Horne Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial re-unions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in a barn, would have done. Whatever diffidence or nervousness I felt (and I felt both, in a great degree) arose from the number rather than the quality of the assemblage, and the thought rather of the public without than the persons within,
— knowing (as all know) that Cicero himself, and probably the Messiah, could never have altered the vote of a single lord of the bedchamber, or bishop. I thought our House dull, but the other animating enough upon great days.

  “I have heard that when Grattan made his first speech in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubtful whether to laugh at or cheer him. The débût of his predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under nearly similar circumstances. But when the ministerial part of our senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer) for the cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman, and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan’s speech, indeed, deserved them; it was a chef-d’oeuvre. I did not hear that speech of his (being then at Harrow), but heard most of his others on the same question — also that on the war of 1815. I differed from his opinions on the latter question, but coincided in the general admiration of his eloquence.

  “When I met old Courtenay, the orator, at Rogers’s, the poet’s, in 1811-12, I was much taken with the portly remains of his fine figure, and the still acute quickness of his conversation. It was he who silenced Flood in the English House by a crushing reply to a hasty débût of the rival of Grattan in Ireland. I asked Courtenay (for I like to trace motives) if he had not some personal provocation; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me, as I had read it, to involve it. Courtenay said ‘he had; that, when in Ireland (being an Irishman), at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, Flood had made a personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being a member of that House, could not defend himself, and that some years afterwards the opportunity of retort offering in the English Parliament, he could not resist it.’ He certainly repaid Flood with interest, for Flood never made any figure, and only a speech or two afterwards, in the English House of Commons. I must except, however, his speech on Reform in 1790, which Fox called ‘the best he ever heard upon that subject.’”