"As to what you say of Byron's volume, no doubt there are longueurs, but really not many. The most teasing part is the blanks, which perplex without concealing. I also think that Moore went on a wrong principle, when, publishing any personality, he did not publish all. It is like a suppression of evidence. When such horrors are published of Sir S. Romilly, it would have been justice to his memory to show that, on the slightest provocation, Byron would treat his dearest friend in the same style. When his sneers against Lady Byron and her mother are recorded, it would lessen their effect if it were shown that he sneered at all man and womankind in turn; and that the friend of his choicest selection, or the mistress of his maddest love, were served no better, when the maggot (selfishness) bit, than his wife or his mother-in-law."
The appearance of the Life induced Captain Medwin to publish his "Conversations with Lord Byron," a work now chiefly remembered as having called forth from Murray, who was attacked in it, a reply which, as a crashing refutation of personal charges, has seldom been surpassed. [Footnote: Mr. Murray's answer to Medwin's fabrications is published in the Appendix to the 8vo edition of "Lord Byron's Poems.">[
Amongst the reviews of the biography was one by Lockhart in the Quarterly (No. 87), which was very favourable; but an article, by Mr. Croker in No. 91, on another of Moore's works—the "Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald"—was of a very different character. Murray told Moore of the approaching appearance of the article in the next number, and Moore enters in his Diary, "Saw my 'Lord Edward Fitzgerald' announced as one of the articles in the Quarterly, to be abused of course; and this too immediately after my dinings and junketings with both author and publisher."
Mr. Moore to John Murray.
October 25, 1831.
… I see that what I took for a joke of yours is true, and that you are at me in this number of the Quarterly. I have desired Power to send you back my copy when it comes, not liking to read it just now for reasons. In the meantime, here's some good-humoured doggerel for you:
THOUGHTS ON EDITORS.
Editur et edit.
No! Editors don't care a button,
What false and faithless things they do;
They'll let you come and cut their mutton,
And then, they'll have a cut at you.
With Barnes I oft my dinner took,
Nay, met e'en Horace Twiss to please him:
Yet Mister Barnes traduc'd my Book,
For which may his own devils seize him!