Life
, a comedy by F. Reynolds. It was at Byron's suggestion that Moore, when preparing the
Life
, applied to Miss Pigot for letters. On January 22, 1828, he was taken to call on her and her mother by the Rev. John Becher. "Their reception of me most cordial and flattering; made me sit in the chair which Byron used to sit in, and remarked, as a singularity, that this was the poor fellow's birthday; he would to-day have been forty. On parting with Mrs. Pigot, a fine, intelligent old lady, who has been bedridden for years, she kissed my hand most affectionately, and said that, much as she had always admired me as a poet, it was as the friend of Byron she valued and loved me ... Her affection, indeed, to his memory is unbounded, and she seems unwilling to allow that he had a single fault ... Miss Pigot in the evening, with his letters, which interested me exceedingly; some written when he was quite a boy, and the bad spelling and scrambling handwriting delightful; spelling, indeed, was a very late accomplishment with him" (
Diary of Thomas Moore
, vol. v. p. 249). (See "To Eliza,"
Poems
, vol. i. pp.47-49; see also the lines "To M. S. G.,"
Poems
, vol. i. pp. 79, 80; see for the lines which Byron wrote in her copy of Burns,