by Thomas Moore
“The best way to make the public ‘forget’ me is to remind them of yourself. You cannot suppose that I would ask you or advise you to publish, if I thought you would fail. I really have no literary envy; and I do not believe a friend’s success ever sat nearer another than yours do to my best wishes. It is for elderly gentlemen to ‘bear no brother near,’ and cannot become our disease for more years than we may perhaps number. I wish you to be out before Eastern subjects are again before the public.”
LETTER 172. TO MR. MURRAY.
“March 12. 1814.
“I have not time to read the whole MS., but what I have seen seems very well written (both prose and verse), and, though I am and can be no judge (at least a fair one on this subject), containing nothing which you ought to hesitate publishing upon my account. If the author is not Dr. Busby himself, I think it a pity, on his own account, that he should dedicate it to his subscribers; nor can I perceive what Dr. Busby has to do with the matter except as a translator of Lucretius, for whose doctrines he is surely not responsible. I tell you openly, and really most sincerely, that, if published at all, there is no earthly reason why you should not; on the contrary, I should receive it as the greatest compliment you could pay to your good opinion of my candour, to print and circulate that or any other work, attacking me in a manly manner, and without any malicious intention, from which, as far as I have seen, I must exonerate this writer.
“He is wrong in one thing — I am no atheist; but if he thinks I have published principles tending to such opinions, he has a perfect right to controvert them. Pray publish it; I shall never forgive myself if I think that I have prevented you.
“Make my compliments to the author, and tell him I wish him success: his verse is very deserving of it; and I shall be the last person to suspect his motives. Yours, &c.
“P.S. If you do not publish it, some one else will. You cannot suppose me so narrow-minded as to shrink from discussion. I repeat once for all, that I think it a good poem (as far as I have redde); and that is the only point you should consider. How odd that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand, including all that has been said, and will be on the subject!”
LETTER 173. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 9. 1814.
“All these news are very fine; but nevertheless I want my books, if you can find, or cause them to be found for me, — if only to lend them to Napoleon, in “the Island of Elba,” during his retirement. I also (if convenient, and you have no party with you,) should be glad to speak with you, for a few minutes, this evening, as I have had a letter from Mr. Moore, and wish to ask you, as the best judge, of the best time for him to publish the work he has composed. I need not say, that I have his success much at heart; not only because he is my friend, but something much better — a man of great talent, of which he is less sensible than I believe any even of his enemies. If you can so far oblige me as to step down, do so; and if you are otherwise occupied, say nothing about it. I shall find you at home in the course of next week.
“P.S. I see Sotheby’s Tragedies advertised. The Death of Darnley is a famous subject — one of the best, I should think, for the drama. Pray let me have a copy when ready.
“Mrs. Leigh was very much pleased with her books, and desired me to thank you; she means, I believe, to write to you her acknowledgments.”
LETTER 174. TO MR. MOORE.
“2. Albany, April 9. 1814.
“Viscount Althorp is about to be married, and I have gotten his spacious bachelor apartments in Albany, to which you will, I hope, address a speedy answer to this mine epistle.
“I am but just returned to town, from which you may infer that I have been out of it; and I have been boxing, for exercise, with Jackson for this last month daily. I have also been drinking, and, on one occasion, with three other friends at the Cocoa Tree, from six till four, yea, unto five in the matin. We clareted and champagned till two — then supped, and finished with a kind of regency punch composed of madeira, brandy, and green tea, no real water being admitted therein. There was a night for you! without once quitting the table, except to ambulate home, which I did alone, and in utter contempt of a hackney-coach and my own vis, both of which were deemed necessary for our conveyance. And so, — I am very well, and they say it will hurt my constitution.
“I have also, more or less, been breaking a few of the favourite commandments; but I mean to pull up and marry, if any one will have me. In the mean time, the other day I nearly killed myself with a collar of brawn, which I swallowed for supper, and indigested for I don’t know how long: but that is by the by. All this gourmandise was in honour of Lent; for I am forbidden meat all the rest of the year, but it is strictly enjoined me during your solemn fast. I have been, and am, in very tolerable love; but of that hereafter as it may be.
“My dear Moore, say what you will in your preface; and quiz any thing or any body, — me if you like it. Oons! dost thou think me of the old, or rather elderly, school? If one can’t jest with one’s friends, with whom can we be facetious? You have nothing to fear from * *, whom I have not seen, being out of town when he called. He will be very correct, smooth, and all that, but I doubt whether there will be any ‘grace beyond the reach of art;’ — and, whether there is or not, how long will you be so d —— d modest? As for Jeffrey, it is a very handsome thing of him to speak well of an old antagonist, — and what a mean mind dared not do. Any one will revoke praise; but — were it not partly my own case — I should say that very few have strength of mind to unsay their censure, or follow it up with praise of other things.
“What think you of the review of Levis? It beats the Bag and my hand-grenade hollow, as an invective, and hath thrown the Court into hysterics, as I hear from very good authority. Have you heard from * * *?
“No more rhyme for — or rather, from — me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer. I have had my day, and there’s an end. The utmost I expect, or even wish, is to have it said in the Biographia Britannica, that I might perhaps have been a poet, had I gone on and amended. My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me. They can’t say I have truckled to the times, nor to popular topics, (as Johnson, or somebody, said of Cleveland,) and whatever I have gained has been at the expenditure of as much personal favour as possible; for I do believe never was a bard more unpopular, quoad homo, than myself. And now I have done;— ‘ludite nunc alios.’ Every body may be d —— d, as they seem fond of it, and resolve to stickle lustily for endless brimstone.
“Oh — by the by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem, an ‘Anti-Byron,’ coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow, by rhyme, all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important, till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce such a production. Murray would not publish it, for which he was a fool, and so I told him; but some one else will, doubtless. ‘Something too much of this.’
“Your French scheme is good, but let it be Italian; all the Angles will be at Paris. Let it be Rome, Milan, Naples, Florence, Turin, Venice, or Switzerland, and ‘egad!’ (as Bayes saith,) I will connubiate and join you; and we will write a new ‘Inferno’ in our Paradise. Pray think of this — and I will really buy a wife and a ring, and say the ceremony, and settle near you in a summer-house upon the Arno, or the Po, or the Adriatic.
“Ah! my poor little pagod, Napoleon, has walked off his pedestal. He has abdicated, they say. This would draw molten brass from the eyes of Zatanai. What! ‘kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, and then be baited by the rabble’s curse!’ I cannot bear such a crouching catastrophe. I must stick to Sylla, for my modern favourites don’t do, — their resignations are of a different kind. All health and pros
perity, my dear Moore. Excuse this lengthy letter. Ever, &c.
“P.S. The Quarterly quotes you frequently in an article on America; and every body I know asks perpetually after you and yours. When will you answer them in person?”
He did not long persevere in his resolution against writing, as will be seen from the following notes to his publisher.
TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 10. 1814.
“I have written an Ode on the fall of Napoleon, which, if you like, I will copy out, and make you a present of. Mr. Merivale has seen part of it, and likes it. You may show it to Mr. Gifford, and print it, or not, as you please — it is of no consequence. It contains nothing in his favour, and no allusion whatever to our own government or the Bourbons. Yours, &c.
“P.S. It is in the measure of my stanzas at the end of Childe Harold, which were much liked, beginning ‘And thou art dead,’ &c. &c. There are ten stanzas of it — ninety lines in all.”
TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 11. 1814.
“I enclose you a letteret from Mrs. Leigh.
“It will be best not to put my name to our Ode; but you may say as openly as you like that it is mine, and I can inscribe it to Mr. Hobhouse, from the author, which will mark it sufficiently. After the resolution of not publishing, though it is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be better altogether that it is anonymous; but we will incorporate it in the first tome of ours that you find time or the wish to publish. Yours alway, B.
“P.S. I hope you got a note of alterations, sent this matin?
“P.S. Oh my books! my books! will you never find my books?
“Alter ‘potent spell’ to ‘quickening spell:’ the first (as Polonius says) ‘is a vile phrase,’ and means nothing, besides being common-place and Rosa-Matilda-ish.”
TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 12. 1814.
“I send you a few notes and trifling alterations, and an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate. A ‘Good-natured Friend’ tells me there is a most scurrilous attack on us in the Anti-jacobin Review, which you have not sent. Send it, as I am in that state of languor which will derive benefit from getting into a passion. Ever,” &c.
LETTER 175. TO MR. MOORE.
“Albany, April 20. 1814.
“I am very glad to hear that you are to be transient from Mayfield so very soon, and was taken in by the first part of your letter. Indeed, for aught I know, you may be treating me, as Slipslop says, with ‘ironing’ even now. I shall say nothing of the shock, which had nothing of humeur in it; as I am apt to take even a critic, and still more a friend, at his word, and never to doubt that I have been writing cursed nonsense, if they say so. There was a mental reservation in my pact with the public, in behalf of anonymes; and, even had there not, the provocation was such as to make it physically impossible to pass over this damnable epoch of triumphant tameness. ’Tis a cursed business; and, after all, I shall think higher of rhyme and reason, and very humbly of your heroic people, till — Elba becomes a volcano, and sends him out again. I can’t think it all over yet.
“My departure for the Continent depends, in some measure, on the incontinent. I have two country invitations at home, and don’t know what to say or do. In the mean time, I have bought a macaw and a parrot, and have got up my books; and I box and fence daily, and go out very little.
“At this present writing, Louis the Gouty is wheeling in triumph into Piccadilly, in all the pomp and rabblement of royalty. I had an offer of seats to see them pass; but, as I have seen a Sultan going to mosque, and been at his reception of an ambassador, the most Christian King ‘hath no attractions for me:’ — though in some coming year of the Hegira, I should not dislike to see the place where he had reigned, shortly after the second revolution, and a happy sovereignty of two months, the last six weeks being civil war.
“Pray write, and deem me ever,” &c.
LETTER 176. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 21. 1814.
“Many thanks with the letters which I return. You know I am a jacobin, and could not wear white, nor see the installation of Louis the Gouty.
“This is sad news, and very hard upon the sufferers at any, but more at such a time — I mean the Bayonne sortie.
“You should urge Moore to come out.
“P.S. I want Moreri to purchase for good and all. I have a Bayle, but want Moreri too.
“P.S. Perry hath a piece of compliment to-day; but I think the name might have been as well omitted. No matter; they can but throw the old story of inconsistency in my teeth — let them, — I mean, as to not publishing. However, now I will keep my word. Nothing but the occasion, which was physically irresistible, made me swerve; and I thought an anonyme within my pact with the public. It is the only thing I have or shall set about.”
LETTER 177. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 25. 1814.
“Let Mr. Gifford have the letter and return it at his leisure. I would have offered it, had I thought that he liked things of the kind.
“Do you want the last page immediately! I have doubts about the lines being worth printing; at any rate, I must see them again and alter some passages, before they go forth in any shape into the ocean of circulation; — a very conceited phrase, by the by: well then — channel of publication will do.
“‘I am not i’ the vein,’ or I could knock off a stanza or three for the Ode, that might answer the purpose better. At all events, I must see the lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind’s manuscript already. Has any one seen or judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide — only give me a fair report, and ‘nothing extenuate,’ as I will in that case do something else.
“Ever,” &c.
“I want Moreri, and an Athenæus.”
LETTER 178. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 26. 1814.
“I have been thinking that it might be as well to publish no more of the Ode separately, but incorporate it with any of the other things, and include the smaller poem too (in that case) — which I must previously correct, nevertheless. I can’t, for the head of me, add a line worth scribbling; my ‘vein’ is quite gone, and my present occupations are of the gymnastic order — boxing and fencing — and my principal conversation is with my macaw and Bayle. I want my Moreri, and I want Athenæus.
“P.S. I hope you sent back that poetical packet to the address which I forwarded to you on Sunday: if not, pray do; or I shall have the author screaming after his Epic.”
LETTER 179. TO MR. MURRAY.
“April 26. 1814.
“I have no guess at your author, — but it is a noble poem, and worth a thousand odes of anybody’s. I suppose I may keep this copy; — after reading it, I really regret having written my own. I say this very sincerely, albeit unused to think humbly of myself.
“I don’t like the additional stanzas at all, and they had better be left out. The fact is, I can’t do any thing I am asked to do, however gladly I would; and at the end of a week my interest in a composition goes off. This will account to you for my doing no better for your ‘Stamp Duty’ postscript.
“The S.R. is very civil — but what do they mean by Childe Harold resembling Marmion? and the next two, Giaour and Bride, not resembling Scott? I certainly never intended to copy him; but, if there be any copyism, it must be in the two poems, where the same versification is adopted. However, they exempt The Corsair from all resemblance to any thing, though I rather wonder at his escape.
“If ever I did any thing original, it was in Childe Harold, which I prefer to the other things always, after the first week. Yesterday I re-read English Bards; — bating the malice, it is the best.
“Ever,” &c.
A resolution was, about this time, adopted by him, which, however strange and precipitate it appeared, a knowledge of the previous state of his mind may enable us to account for satisfactorily. He had now, for two years, been drawing upon the admiration of the public with a rapidity and s
uccess which seemed to defy exhaustion, — having crowded, indeed, into that brief interval the materials of a long life of fame. But admiration is a sort of impost from which most minds are but too willing to relieve themselves. The eye grows weary of looking up to the same object of wonder, and begins to exchange, at last, the delight of observing its elevation for the less generous pleasure of watching and speculating on its fall. The reputation of Lord Byron had already begun to experience some of these consequences of its own prolonged and constantly renewed splendour. Even among that host of admirers who would have been the last to find fault, there were some not unwilling to repose from praise; while they, who had been from the first reluctant eulogists, took advantage of these apparent symptoms of satiety to indulge in blame.
The loud outcry raised, at the beginning of the present year, by his verses to the Princess Charlotte, had afforded a vent for much of this reserved venom; and the tone of disparagement in which some of his assailants now affected to speak of his poetry was, however absurd and contemptible in itself, precisely that sort of attack which was the most calculated to wound his, at once, proud and diffident spirit. As long as they confined themselves to blackening his moral and social character, so far from offending, their libels rather fell in with his own shadowy style of self-portraiture, and gratified the strange inverted ambition that possessed him. But the slighting opinion which they ventured to express of his genius, — seconded as it was by that inward dissatisfaction with his own powers, which they whose standard of excellence is highest are always the surest to feel, — mortified and disturbed him; and, being the first sounds of ill augury that had come across his triumphal career, startled him, as we have seen, into serious doubts of its continuance.
