"I have read 'Lalla Rookh.' ... I am very glad to hear of his popularity, for Moore is a very noble fellow, in all respects, and will enjoy it without any of the bad feelings which success, good or evil, sometimes engenders in the men of rhyme."
He wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in a sort of jest,—"I am not quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons to read 'Lalla Rookh,'—in the first place, on account of this sad passion, and in the second, that they mayn't discover that there was a better poet than Papa."[32]
To end these quotations, let us add that, shortly before his death, he said to Medwin:—"Moore is one of the small number of writers, who will survive the century which has appreciated his worth. The Irish Melodies will go to posterity with their music, and the poems and the music will last as long as Ireland, or music or poetry."
CAMPBELL.
Campbell, the author of "Pleasures of Hope," and who stands fourth in the triangle, was spared, with Rogers, in the famous satire—
"Come forth, oh! Campbell, give thy talents scope:
Who dare aspire, if thou must cease to hope?"
This homage was strengthened by a note, in which Byron called the "Pleasures of Hope" one of the finest didactic poems in the English language.
Byron's relations with Campbell were never as intimate as with other poets. Not only because circumstances prevented it, but also in consequence of a fault in Campbell's character, which lessened the sympathy raised by the admiration of his talent and of his worth. This fault consisted in an excessive opinion of himself, which prevented his being just toward his rivals, and bearing patiently with their successes, or the criticisms of his own work.
Coleridge at this time was giving lectures upon poetry, in which he taught a new system of poetry.
"He attacks," says Lord Byron, "the 'Pleasures of Hope,' and all other pleasure whatever.... Campbell will be desperately annoyed. I never saw a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive. What a happy temperament! I am sorry for it; what can he fear from criticism?"