We forget the subject alluded to at the commencement of the ensuing letter, having lost the one that explained it; but Mr Moore and his correspondent used to send critical opinions to one another on their writings, and the latter recollects having elicited some pleasant reproaches from him for objecting to his too frequent use of the words “dews” and “flowers.” Mr Moore said, that he was in the act of writing some verses with those words in them, when he objection came in by the post; and that he had struck out one in consequence, but kept the other to spite his friend. Let the reader imagine the delightfulness of such a correspondent, if he had been but sincere. Whether the allusion was to any tirade against criticism arising out of this circumstance, or from some less friendly assault, we cannot say: for Mr Moore has not been slow to complain of the critics, nor to secure interest against them, though he will do nothing to assist you in turn. We do not believe that there is any mention in his writings of one single author, however acquainted he may have been with him in private, or however distinguished even the author may have been himself, unless he has been a man of influence in the circles. This it is to be a “diner-out!” He does not know on what tender toes of aristocracy he may tread, till his footing is secure.

In the letters of Lord Byron, published by Mr Moore, are various notices of a poem written by Mr Leigh Hunt, called the Story of Rimini. In his Lordship’s first mention of it in a letter to Mr Moore, he calls it “a real good, and very original poem;” says he thinks it will be “a great hit;” and adds, “you can have, no notion how very well it is written, nor should I, had I not redde* it.” In a letter of the same date to Mr Murray the bookseller, he describes it as a “very wonderful and beautiful performance, with just enough of fault to make its beauties more remarked and remarkable.” The Story of Rimini was published; the Quarterly Review damned a poem written by the Editor of the Examiner; and the damnation was the signal for a series of attacks and calumnies from all the quarters of Toryism, which conspiring with its ascendancy in those times, with the natural tendency of the mob of small writers to side against a losing cause, and with the Author’s culpable carelessness in neglecting his fortunes while he aggravated his opinions, ultimately succeeded in depriving him of all influence. The Bourbons had just been reinstated then; every insult and injury was meditated to the cause of mankind; and every one of is advocates was to be sacrificed at any price. Those were not the times of Lafayette and Philip of Orleans, of the good natured William the Fourth, of the sounds of the ice of tyranny breaking up in all quarters, of the heavenly summer of hope, and of all England calling out for that Reform, which in recommending them to call for, the Editor of the Examiner had lost “health, fame, and fortune.” The same signal which roused his enemies was the signal for the terrors and desertions of false friends. We shall not pain ourselves by dwelling upon graver instances, but not long afterwards the faults of Mr Leigh Hunt’s poem became uppermost in the mind of his noble eulogizer, his friendship with Mr Shelley (always beloved by his friends, and now so praised by those who have been taught to know him, as well as by those who are eager to reconcile themselves to the memory of a man of rank,) was a new offence to the Anti-liberals, and to those who fear them; and his admiration of the genius of another young poet, Mr Keats, besides aggravating the offence, completed the impatience of the noble bard, who never liked Mr Hunt’s homage to Mr Wordsworth as the first poet of the age. As to Mr Moore, to go counter to the circles at all, except under circumstances which extorted their respect, it happened to suit the immediate policy of the Whig part of them, was a committal of a man’s self, which, it seems, neutralized the merit of the exceptions, and not only precluded all public recognition of his friend, or even that hazardous assistance of a political squib or two, which his “gratitude” promised, and his expediency took such care not to perform, but enabled him to write in two sorts of style upon one subject, to two different friends; as the reader will see presently. Mr Moore cannot say his soul is his own, out of the pale of what is “received.” He has no notion even of a pathos which is not dressed, as he thinks, in a manner fit to go to court. His sphere is a round of dinners: his universal empyrean the roof of the Opera House. Yet the annals of fashion might have taught him, that tears are to be shed even there; and nature, in spite of mistake, still find a sympathy. Lord Byron spoke too partially, in the first instance, of the faults in the ‘Story of Rimini.’ We are very sincere in saying so; and any reader may believe us, when we add, that he confounded them too much with the poem afterwards. The truth is, that the critics were right when they objected to certain coinages, cant phrases, and other detects in the poem, generated, not as they thought by affectation, but by a mistaken notion of avoiding the cant of commonplace. These can be easily taken away. But the author has been allowed to persuade himself by other reasons than his own, that there is a heart beating underneath those trivialities of the poem, which might have saved Mr Moore the duplicity of speaking of it in one way to the author, and. another to his Noble Friend. To cite testimonies in favour of his own work, is a suing for opinions in formâ pauperis, which no decent author can be inclined to. The next generation is sure to do justice to the Poem one way or other; either by restoring it to perusal, or forgetting it altogether. Suffice it meanwhile to say, is observing the strange attempt of Mr Moore to throw ridicule one

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day on what he has praised the day before, that in quarters fashionable as well as unfashionable, the pages of the ‘Story of Rimini’ have been embalmed in the most welcome of all criticisms,tears. Let this bit of superfluousness be pardoned in a writer who would fain have devoted his whole life to poetry, had not circumstances and the times compelled his conscience to serve truth in a less pleasing shape. In 1816, after the first outcry had been raised against the Story of Rimini, Lord Byron intimated to Mr Moore, who had then become a critic himself, that a favourable notice of it in the Edinburgh Review would be useful, and “do it justice.” But Mr Moore, beside. discovering that Mr Hunt was no wholesale flatterer, had found out that the once potent editor of a newspaper, and critic of new operas, could be quizzed by a court dependant, and had thus become an object of ridicule to all who valued the gravity of their reception. In his first quarto, therefore, we find the following note on the above intimation of his lordship’s;

“My reply,” says Mr Moore, “to this part of his letter, was, I find, as follows: with respect to Hunt’s poem, though it is, I own, full of beauties, and though I like himself sincerely, I really could not undertake to praise it seriously. There is so much at the quizzible in all he writes, that I never can put on the proper pathetic face in reading him.”—Vol. i. p. 644.

The next letter is dated four years afterwards, by which time Mr Moore had got a considerable access of dread respecting the progress of liberalism. He has a pretty alliteration somewhere in one of his quartos about “rank, riches, and religion.” We know not whether the alteration of times would have modified that particular passage, for we do not remember the context; but we are very firmly persuaded that if the second French Revolution had happened before the publication of Mr Moore’s prose works, the author would not have thought it necessary to express so much anxiety respecting the dangers of plain speaking; nor are we sure that the word religion would have been found in his writings. It was not to be expected perhaps under any circumstances, that Mr Moore would be found in the van of opinion. We do not believe that he has given up to a party what was “meant for mankind.” People are generally meant for what they do. But at all events, we beg the reader to compare the coy and devout publicities of Mr Moore, the words marked in capitals in the following letter. We need not add that the words are so marked by ourselves.

* The Feast of the Poets.

THE TATLER.

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By the way, in turning over a bundle of letters we have met with another, the beginning of which, from the writer who could praise nothing seriously, is edifying. Mr Moore is thanking Mr Leigh Hunt for sending him a Mask, called the ‘Descent of Liberty,’ which, to say the truth, was not worth his praises; and he writes as follows:

‘You already know my opinion of it—it will, live in spite of the Congress and Buonaparte—and though the principal maskers have shifted dresses a good deal since, your poetry is independent of the politics—it has that kind of general and, fanciful character of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portraits, which will make it long outlive the frail and foolish heads that sat for it.”

To return a moment to the “pathetic face,” we must relate a characteristic touch of the late Mr Hazlitt. When he read the note in Mr Moore’s book, containing those words about “putting on” the face, as aforesaid, he exclaimed, with one of his looks,”—“Damn his face! What has that to do with it? Does he always put on a face when he goes to read anything serious?”

The next and last letter is dated August 20, 1821, that is say, only a few months before Mr Moore wrote to Lord Byron to warn him against any connexion of authorship with Mr Leigh Hunt and Mr Shelley on accounts of its being a “bankrupt” “unequal” and “unholy” alliance. For the “unholy,” we refer the readers to Mr Moore’s opinion respecting the “mania” prevalent on the subject of religion and morality; for the “unequal” (keeping in mind that the work proposed to be set up was a periodical one), to all that he has said—in the previous letters respecting Mr Hunt as a periodical writer, and to the close of the first paragraph of the following letter, written, as we have just observed, but a few months before his admonitions to Lord Byron. For the “bankrupt” we refer to his “gratitude,” and perhaps we may add with a little better chance of the existence of such a thing, his shame. Such is the “gratitude” of a man of the world A losing cause is with him cause of offence, and a sufficient reason why he should warn one friend who never appears up to that period to have done him any service, against connexion with another to whom he had repeatedly expressed himself under obligation. But the reader shall have this matter sifted in our next.

We conclude with introducing to him the harbinger of Mr Moore’s good offices:—

All the insincere will of course secretly love Mr Moore the better for these letters. His double-dealing will help to reconcile them to their own. But what will the sincere say to him? And they are a rising party now in the world! Perhaps he might have found it better for him in the end to stick to them!