'You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may suit your convenience. But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a lady that would have suited him. If this be true, "it is the unkindest cut of all,"—to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.
'But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you must be conscious of your woman, with her "virtue loose about her, who would have suited Lord Byron," to be as imaginary a being as the woman without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron! Poo, poo! I could paint to you the woman that could have matched him, if I had not bargained to say as little as possible against him.
'If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse for his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your poetry, nor Lord Byron's, nor all our poetry put together, ever delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so coldly treated. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding the living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the quick. I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady Byron's favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed its breath. Time, however, cures everything; and even your book, Mr. Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron's character being better appreciated.
'Thomas Campbell.'
Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man, throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.
What was the consequence? Campbell was crowded back, thrust down, overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.
There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him and on Lady Byron. Her friends were angry with him for having caused this re-action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by Lady Byron's enemies, and deserted by her friends. All the literary authorities of his day took up against him with energy. Christopher North, professor of moral philosophy in the Edinburgh University, in a fatherly talk in 'The Noctes,' condemns Campbell, and justifies Moore, and heartily recommends his 'Biography,' as containing nothing materially objectionable on the score either of manners or morals. Thus we have it in 'The Noctes' of May 1830:—
'Mr. Moore's biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and some, I am sorry to know, condemned.'
On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on to justify Moore altogether, only admitting that 'it would have been better had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron's about the old people;' and, finally, he closes by saying,—