The Sun.
London, England, 1828-01-03 00:00:00

MR. THOMAS MOORE and LORD BYRON,

(Flom the Atheneum, No. I.)

We are fortunately enabled to gratify our readers,
by giving, in our First Number, a very early extract
relative to the two of the most prominent individuals
described in Mr. Leigh Hunt's forthcoming work,
entitled ' Lord Byron and some of his Contempo-
raries.' When the book is before us we shall review
it with strict justice. For the present, we content
ourselves with presenting the extract, which will, no
doubt, be eagerly read
" MR. THOMAS 310011 E.

I thought Thomas Moore, when I first knew him, as
delightful a person as one could imagine. He could not
help being an interesting one; and his sort of talent has
this advantage in it, that, being of a description intelligible
to all, the possessor is equally sure of present and future
fame. I never received a visit from him, but I felt as if
I bad been talking with the Prior of Sir Charles Sedley.
His acquaintance with Lord Byron began by talking of a
duel. With me it commenced in as gallant a way, though
of a different sort. I bad cut up an Opera of his (the
" Blue Stocking"), as unworthy of so great a wit. He

came to see me, saving I was very much in the right; and
an intercourse took place, which I might have enjoyed to
this day, had he valued his real fame as much as I did. I

mean to assume nothing in saying this, either as a dispenser
of reputation, or as a man of undisputed reputation myself.
I live too much out of the world, and differ too plainly
with what is in it, to pretend to be either one or the
other. But Mr. Moore, in his serious as well as gayer
verses, talked a great deal of independence and openness,
and the contempt of common places ; and nn this account
he owed it to his admirers not to disappoint them. He
was bound to them the more especially, when they put
hearty faith in him, and when they thought they paid him
a compliment in being independent themselves. The'r.eader
has seen to what I allude. At the time I was speaking of,
my acquaintance, perhaps, was of some little service to
Mr. .Moore; at least, he thought so. I am sure I never
valued myself on any service which a very hearty admira-
tion of his twit and independence could render him. It
was involuntary on my part; I could not have helped it;
and at all times the advantage of personal intercourse would
have been on my side.
Mr. Moore was lively, polite, bustling, full of ameni-
ties and acquieseences, into which be contrived to throw a
sort of roughening of cordiality, like the crust of old port.
It seemed a happiness to hills to say, " yes." There was
just enough of the Irishman in him to flavour his speech
and manner. He was a little particular, perhaps, in his
orthoepy, but not more so than became a poet ; and he
appeared to me the last man in the world to cut his coun-
try, even for the sake of high life. As to his person, all
the world knows that he is as little of stature, as he is great
in wit. It is said that an illustrious personage, in a fit of
playfulness, once threatened to put him into the wine-
cooler—a proposition which Mr. Moore took to be more
royal than polite. A Spanish gentleman, whom I met on
the Continent, and who knew him well, said, in his ener-
getic English, which he spoke none the worse for a wrong
vowel or so, Now, there's Mooerr, Thomas Mooerr: I
look upon Mooerr as an active lithe men.' This is true.—
He reminds us of those active little great men who abound
so remarkably in Clarendon's history. Like them, he
would have made au excellent practical partisan, and it
would have done him good. Horseback, and a little Irish
fighting, would have seen fair play with his good living,
and kept his look as juvenile as his spirit. His forehead is
bony and full of character, with bumps' of wit, large and
radiant, enough to transport a phrenologist. His eyes are.
as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of
vine leaves ; his mouth generous and good humoured, with
dimples ; his nose sensual, prominent, and at the same
time the reverse of aquiline. There is a very peculiar
character in it, as if it were looking forward, and scenting
a feast or an orchard. The face, upon the whole, is Irish,
not unruffled with care and passion ; but festivity is the
predominant expression. When Mr. Moore was a child,
he is said to have been eminently handsome, a Cupid for
a picture; and, notwithstanding the tricks which both joy
and sorrow have played with his face, you can fancy as
much. It was a recollection, perhaps, to this effeet, that
induced Isis friend (Mr. Atkinson) to say, one after-
noon,
in defending hint from liberalism, " Sir, they may
talk of Moore as they please; but I tell you what—
I always consider him" (and this argument he thought
conclusive), " I always consider my friend Thomas Moore
as an infant, sporting on the bosom of Venus." There
was no contesting this ; and, in truth, the hearers were
very little disposed to contest it—Mr. Atkinson having hit
upon a defence which was snore logical in spirit than
chronological in the image. When conscience comes, a
inan's impulse's must take thought ; but till then, poetry
is only the eloquent and irresistible development of the
individual's nature ; and Mr. Moore's wildest verses were
a great deal wore innocent than could enter into the ima-
ginations of the old libertines who thought they bad a
right to use them. I must not, in this portrait, leave out
his music. He plays, and sings with great taste, on the
piano-forte, and is known as a graceful composer. His
voice, which is a little hoarse in speaking (at least I used to
think so), softens into a breaths, like that of the flute, when
singing. In speaking, he is emphatic in rolling the letter It,
perhaps out of a despair of being able to get rid of the
national peculiarity. The structure of his versification,
when I knew him, was more artificial than it has been
since ; and in Isis serious compositions suited him better.
He has hardly faith enough in what he rises to give way to
his impulses, except when they are lively; and artificial li
thoughts demand a similar embodiment. Bnt he contem-
plated the time easy-playing, muscular style of Dryden,
with a sort of perilous pleasure. I remember his quoting
with delight a couplet of Dryden's, which came with a par-
ticular grace out of his mouth

" Let honour and preferment go for gold :
But glorious beauty isn't to be sold."
Besides the pleasure I took in Mr. Moore's society as
• a man of wit, I had a great esteem for him as a man of
candour and independence. His letters were full °fall that
was pleasant in him. As I was a critic at that time, and
in the habit of giving my opinion of his works in The
Examiner, lie would write me his opinion of the opinion,
with a mixture of good humour, admission, and deprecation,
so truly delightful, and a sincerity of criticism on my own
writings so extraordinary for so courteous a man, though
with abundance of balm and eulogy, that never any subtlety
of compliment could surpass it ; and with all my self-confi-
dence, I never ceased to think that the honour was on my
side, ansl that I could only deserve such candour of inter-
course by being as ingenuous as himself. This admiring
regard for him he completed by his behaviour to an old
patron of his, who, not thinking it polite to retain him
openly by his side, proposed to facilitate his acceptance of a
place under the Tories ; au accommodation which Mr.
Moore rejected as an indignity. If any body at that time
hail told me, that our new and cordial Anacreon, who
counted a lofty spirit among his luxuries, could do a disin-
genuous thing, or sacrifice a cause or a free sentiment on
the fat altars of aristocracy—a sweet-smelling savour unto'
a Lord—l should have answered, that all that might be in
the common course of the prose of this life ; but that no-
body knew what superiority there was to conventional de-
ductions in the very weakness of a poet.
I remember our astonishment in Italy (Lord Byron's
included) at the flaming panegyric passed by Mr. Moore
upon England, and all things English, at a dinner in Paris.
It was his farewell dinner, if I :ecollect, when leaving Paris
for London. Either the English panegyric or the Irish
Melodies were certainly much in the wrong; nor is it easy
to decide what Capt. Rock would have said to it. But the
invective against Rousseau and poor Madame de Warens,
in Mr. Moose's Rhymes on the Road, was still snore
startling, Madame de Warens is not a person to be ap-
proved of in all respects, perhaps in very few. She had a
kind heart, but a dangerous ill-regulated will, and might
as well have abstained from loving the sour-faced gardener,
and sacrificing her natural love of truth to degrading secre-
Fie& But nobody thinks otherwise of her than she was ;
and Mr. Moore's denouncement was, to say the least of it,
superfluous. These things may be safely left to the heart
of the community. The evil mixed with them may even
suggest a better good, if discussed handsomely and sin-
cerelY• Madame de Warens was a means of setting one of
the most extraordinary minds that have appeared in the
world, upon speculations not the less interesting to huma-
nity, because coteries, not so good as herself, choose
to cant about them. Mr. Granger, the biographical
painter of portraits, who was a clergyman, and did
not think it necessary to show a "zeal beyond know-
ledge," would have been charitable enough to call her
,‘ open-hearted," which is an epithet he does not scruple to
give even to the meretricious Duchess of Cleveland. Mr.
Moore, on the other hand, instead of taking her along with
him, as he ought to do, and trying how kindly he can
unite his own moral improvement with that of " exquisite
mothers" in general, thinks fit to shake his Anacreon
laurels at her, and call her a naughty woman. I would
have done, if I were he, with this two-o'clock-in-the-morn-
in penitence, with maudlin tears in his eyes; and set my-
self to the task of reformation in a more masculine and
social style. It is not handsome of him ; it is not grateful;
it is not gallant. Human beings are all worth being men-
tioned with common humanity; and we make poor amends
for offences we may have committed ourselves, by reproach-