MR. MOORE, THE POET.
At Mayfield, near Ashbourne, is a cottage where Moore, it is stated, composed Lalla Rookh. "For some years this distinguished poet lived at the neighbouring village of Mayfield; and there was no end to the pleasantries and anecdotes that were floating about its coteries respecting him; no limit to the recollections which existed of the peculiarities of the poet, of the wit and drollery of the man. Go where you would, his literary relics were pointed out to you. One family possessed pens; and oh! Mr. Bramah! such pens! they would have borne a comparison with Miss Mitford's; and those who are acquainted with that lady's literary implements and accessaries will admit this is no common-place praise—pens that wrote "Paradise and the Peri" in Lalia Rookh! Another showed you a glove torn up into thin shreds in the most even and regular manner possible; each shred being in breadth about the eighth of an inch, and the work of the teeth! Pairs were demolished in this way during the progress of the Life of Sheridan. A third called your attention to a note written in a strain of the most playful banter, and announcing the next "tragi-comedy meeting." A fourth repeated a merry impromptu; and a fifth played a very pathetic air, composed and adapted for some beautiful lines of Mrs. Opie's. But to return to Mayfield. Our desire to go over the cottage which he had inhabited was irresistible. It is neat, but very small, and remarkable for nothing except combining a most sheltered situation with the most extensive prospect. Still one had pleasure in going over it, and peeping into the little book-room, ycleped the "Poet's Den," from which so much true poetry had issued to delight and amuse mankind. But our satisfaction was not without its portion of alloy. As we approached the cottage, a figure scarcely human appeared at one of the windows. Unaware that it was again inhabited, we hesitated about entering; when a livid, half-starved visage presented itself through the lattice, and a thin, shrill voice discordantly ejaculated,—"Come in, gentlemen, come in. Don't be afeard! I'm only a tailor at work on the premises." This villanous salutation damped sadly the illusion of the scene; and it was some time before we rallied sufficiently from this horrible desecration to descend to the poet's walk in the shrubbery, where, pacing up and down the live-long morning, he composed his Lalla Rookh. It is a little confined gravel-walk, in length about twenty paces; so narrow, that there is barely room on it for two persons to walk abreast: bounded on one side by a straggling row of stinted laurels, on the other by some old decayed wooden paling; at the end of it was a huge haystack. Here, without prospect, space, fields, flowers, or natural beauties of any description, was that most imaginative poem conceived, planned, and executed. It was at Mayfield, too, that those bitter stanzas were written on the death of Sheridan. There is a curious circumstance connected with them; they were sent to Perry, the well-known editor of the Morning Chronicle. Perry, though no stickler in a general way, was staggered at the venom of two stanzas, to which I need not more particularly allude, and wrote to inquire whether he might be permitted to omit them. The reply which he received was shortly this: "You may insert the lines in the Chronicle or not, as you please; I am perfectly indifferent about it; but if you do insert them, it must be verbatim." Mr. Moore's fame would not have suffered by their suppression; his heart would have been a gainer. Some of his happiest efforts are connected with the localities of Ashbourne. The beautiful lines beginning
"Those evening bells, those evening bells,"
were suggested, it is said, by hearing the Ashboume peal; and sweetly indeed do they sound at that distance, "both mournfully and slow;" while those exquisitely touching stanzas,
"Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb
In life's happy morning hath hid from our eyes,"
were avowedly written on the sister of an Ashbourne gentleman, Mr. P—— B——. But to his drolleries. He avowed on all occasions an utter horror of ugly women. He was heard, one evening, to observe to a lady, whose person was pre-eminently plain, but who, nevertheless, had been anxiously doing her little endeavours to attract his attention, "I cannot endure an ugly woman. I'm sure I could never live with one. A man that marries an ugly woman cannot be happy." The lady observed, that "such an observation she could not permit to pass without remark. She knew many plain couples who lived most happily."—"Don't talk of it," said the wit; "don't talk of it. It cannot be."—"But I tell you," said the lady, who became all at once both piqued and positive, "it can be, and it is. I will name individuals so circumstanced. You have heard of Colonel and Mrs. ——. She speaks in a deep, gruff bass voice; he in a thin, shrill treble. She looks like a Jean Dorée; he like a dried alligator. They are called Bubble and Squeak by some of their neighbours; Venus and Adonis by others. But what of that? They are not handsome, to be sure; and there is neither mirror nor pier-glass to be found, search their house from one end of it to the other. But what of that? No unhandsome reflections can, in such a case, be cast by either party! I know them well; and a more harmonious couple I never met with. Now, Mr. Moore, in reply, what have you to say? I flatter myself I have overthrown your theory completely." "Not a whit. Colonel—has got into a scrape, and, like a soldier, puts the best face he can upon it." Those still exist who were witnesses to his exultation when one morning he entered Mrs——'s drawing-room, with an open letter in his hand, and, in his peculiarly joyous and animated manner, exclaimed, "Don't be surprised if I play all sorts of antics! I am like a child with a new rattle! Here is a letter from my friend Lord Byron, telling me he has dedicated to me his poem of the 'Corsair.' Ah, Mrs.——, it is nothing new for a poor poet to dedicate his poem to a great lord; but it is something passing strange for a great lord to dedicate his book to a poor poet." Those who know him most intimately feel no sort of hesitation in declaring, that he has again and again been heard to express regret at the earlier efforts of his muse; or reluctance in stating, at the same time, as a fact, that Mr. M., on two different occasions, endeavoured to repurchase the copyright of certain poems; but, in each instance, the sum demanded was so exorbitant, as of itself to put an end to the negotiation. The attempt, however, does him honour. And, affectionate father as he is well known to be, when he looks at his beautiful little daughter, and those fears, and hopes, and cares, and anxieties, come over him which almost choke a parent's utterance as he gazes on a promising and idolized child, he will own the censures passed on those poems to be just: nay more—every year will find him more and more sensible of the paramount importance of the union of female purity with female loveliness—more alive to the imperative duty, on a father's part, to guard the maiden bosom from the slightest taint of licentiousness. It is a fact not generally suspected, though his last work, "The Epicurean," affords strong internal evidence of the truth of the observation, that few are more thoroughly conversant with Scripture than himself. Many of Alethe's most beautiful remarks are simple paraphrases of the sacred volume. He has been heard to quote from it with the happiest effect—to say there was no book like it—no book, regarding it as a mere human composition, which could on any subject even "approach it in poetry, beauty, pathos, and sublimity." Long may these sentiments abide in him! And as no man, to use his own words, "ever had fiercer enemies or firmer friends"—as no man, to use those of others, was ever more bitter and sarcastic as a political enemy, more affectionate and devoted as a private friend, the more deeply his future writings are impregnated with the spirit of that volume, the more heartfelt, let him be well assured, will be his gratification in that hour when "we shall think of those we love, only to regret that we have not loved more dearly, when we shall remember our enemies only to forgive them."