“Good plays are scarce;
So Moore writes farce;
The poet’s fame grows brittle—
We knew before
That Little’s Moore,
But now ’tis Moore that’s Little.”
Respecting Moore’s duel with Lord Jeffrey, Theodore Hook composed the following lines:—
“When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said,
A reverse he displayed in his vapour,
For while all his poems were loaded with lead,
His pistols were loaded with paper.
For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank,
Such salvo he should not abuse;
For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank
That is fired away at Reviews.”
“Moore is here called Anacreon,” says W. Davenport Adams, “in allusion to his translations from that poet.” The duel was owing to an article in the Edinburgh Review, which Moore thought proper to resent by challenging the editor. The combatants were, however, arrested on the ground, and conveyed to Bow Street, where the pistols were found to contain merely a charge of powder, the balls having in some way disappeared. Byron alludes to the circumstance in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:—
“When Little’s leadless pistol met his eye,
And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by.”
After this strange encounter, the poet and critic were firm friends.
Slips of the pen have given rise to some smart epigrammatic corrections. Albert Smith wrote in an album as follows:—
“Mont Blanc is the Monarch of Mountains,
They crown’d him long ago;
But who they got to put it on
Nobody seems to know.”
Albert Smith.
Thackeray was successfully solicited to contribute to the same book, and wrote under the fore-going:—
A Humble Suggestion.