LETTER XI.

[Regrets at not meeting.]

11, Duke-street, St. James's, Tuesday.

MY DEAR HUNT-Here I have been for five or six days past, and we have not met. When, where, or how is it to be achieved? I was better off when you were in prison. Pray, let me have a line to say whether you will come to town, on what days, what hours, &c., &c., and believe me,

Ever, yours truly,

THOMAS MOORE.

LETTER XII.

[Mask on the Descent of Liberty-Champion weekly newspaper, and its editor, Mr. John Scott-Bonaparte on his road from Elba to Paris-Articles by Mr. Moore in the Edinburgh Review-Questions elative to mothers.]

Mayfield Cottage, Thursday, March 30th, 1816. MY DEAR HUNT-Many thanks for the Mask *—you already know my opinion of it-it will live in spite of the Congress and Bonaparte; and though the principal maskers have shifted dresses a good deal since, your poetry is independent of the politics. It has that kind of general and fanciful character of Sir Joshua Reynolds's portraits, which will make it long outlive the frail and foolish heads that sat for it. I see you have been done justice to by a very interesting writer in the Champion. His description of you in the prison-garden is done well and feelingly. I was a good deal surprised, during a visit some time ago to Chatsworth, to find how very little more than the reputation of the Champion had reached any of the various Whig lords there assembled. They had all heard it was extremely clever; but I do not think one of them had ever met with it, which I could not help considering a little stupid in their lordships. Your friend, Scott, is a fine fellow, and I heartily hope he may have perfect success. I see your imagination was affected, as mine was, by the description of Bonaparte's meeting with the Royal army. If that account be true, it is a fact as sublime as any thing that fiction ever thought of; and I am not at all surprised at the overwhelming effects of such daring—such apparent consciousness of irresponsibility. For my own part, I should have thought that Fate herself was coming in that carriage. I perfectly agree with you on the subject of his restoration-or rather, I go beyond you for I am decidedly glad of it; but, then, I am an Irishman-feræ naturæ-beyond the pale; and my opinions, I believe, are more the result of passion than of reason. If, however, there is a

*The Descent of Liberty.

† On his return from Elba.

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single Norwegian, Genoese, Saxon, or Pole, that doesn t agree with me, why he's a very worthy, loyal sort of a gentleman, and I wish his masters joy of him-that's all.

I supposed you recognized me (by my old pickled and preserved joke about Southey) in the Edinburgh article on Lord Thurlow; but doubt whether I was equally well known to you as the orthodox critic of the Fathers in the last number. Scott, I saw, gave an extract from me, which was the only sign of life this last article has exhibited since its appearance.

Mrs. Moore is much gratified by your remembrance of her. I have had some difficulty in bringing her to bear her late loss with resignation, and I fear her health is paying for the efforts her mind has made. If I had let her grieve more at first, I am sure she would have been better now. Which hurts women most-having children or losing them? I sincerely hope Mrs. Hunt may always be unable to answer as to the latter part of this question; and with best remembrances to her, I am, my dear Hunt, very truly yours,

THOMAS MOORE.

Lord Byron is just gone to town. He has got, he tells me, the Duchess of Devonshire's house in Piccadilly.

LETTER XIII.

[Overflow of ideas-Moral prejudices.]

Sloperton Cottage, Devizes, January 21st, 1818.

My dear Hunt-Having the opportunity of a frank, I must write you a line or two to thank you for your very kind notices of me; and still more, to express my regret that in my short and busy visit to town, I had not the happiness, to which I looked forward, of passing at least one day with you and your family. I am always so thrown in medias res "when I go to London, that I have never a minute left for any thing agreeable; but my next visit will, I hope, be one of pleasure, and then you are sure to be brought in among the ingredients. For the cordiality with which you have praised and defended me, I am, I assure you, most deeply grateful; and, though less alive, I am sorry to say, both to praise and blame, than I used to be, yet coming from a heart and a taste like yours, they can not fail to touch me very sensibly. You are quite right about the conceits that disfigure my poetry; but you (and others) are quite as wrong in supposing that I hunt after them-my greatest difficulty is to hunt them away. If you had ever been in the habit of hearing Curran converse-though I by no means intend to compare myself with him in the ready coin of wit-yet, from the tricks which his imagination played him while he talked, you might have some idea of the phantasmagoria that mine passes before me while I write. In short, St. Anthony's temptations were nothing to

what an Irish fancy has to undergo from all its own brood of Will-o'th'-wisps and hobgoblins.

I was sorry to find that Cobbett found such a sturdy defender in your correspondent of last week; indeed, I am grieved to the heart at many things I see among the friends of liberty, and begin to fear much more harm from the advocates of the cause than from its enemies. You, however, are always right in politics; and if you would but keep your theories of religion and morality a little more to yourself (the mania on these subjects being so universal and congenital, that he who thinks of curing it is as mad as his patients), you would gain influence over many minds that you unnecessarily shock and alienate. I would not say this of you in public (for I can not review my friends) but I say it to you thus privately, with all the anxious sincerity of a well-wisher both to yourself and the cause you so spiritedly advocate. I intended to have written you a long letter, but the post-belle (an old woman whom I employ for that purpose) is ringing her alarum below, and I must finish. My best regards to Mrs. Hunt.

Yours, very faithfully,

THOMAS MOORE.

LETTER XIV.

[Irish Melodies-Expressions of friendship—Loss by the defalcation of a deputy of Bermuda.]

Sloperton Cottage, Devizes, Oct. 10th, 1818.

MY DEAR HUNT-I intended that a letter from me should accompany your copy of the 7th number of my Melodies; but I rather think, from your paper of Sunday last, that Power has had the start of me; and I only write now to get a little credit from you for my intentions, which, in general, indeed, are the best things about me, but which, unfortunately, the matter-of-fact people of the world are never satisfied with. As you have imagination, however, as well as heart, I shall leave you to fancy all the kind things I have felt toward you, during the long, long time I have passed in saying nothing whatever about them; and I am the more inclined just now to trust a good deal to your imaginative power, as I am disabled from writing much from a slight strain in my shoulder, which I received the night before last— when the world was near being a bad poet out of pocket by the upsetting of a carriage in which I was returning from Bowood.

Shall you be in London about the latter end of November? I hope to be there about that time, and we must meet; for I have much to say to you, much to give and receive sympathy about. I suppose you have heard of the calamity that has befallen me through the defalcation of my deputy at Bermuda, who has made free with the proceeds of two or three ships and cargoes deposited in his hands, and I am likely to be made responsible for the amount. You will, it is most probable,

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have an opportunity of returning my prison visits; as, if it comes to the worst, the Rules must be my residence. However (as I have just written to Lord Byron), Unity of Place is one of Aristotle's Rules, and, as a poet, I must learn to conform to it. By-the-by, he has made many inquiries about you in his two last letters to me, and I should be glad to hear from you before I write to him again. I hope you will like my Irish Melodies better than you liked Lalla Rookh. You were right about the verses to Sir H. Lowe.

Yours, my dear Hunt, very truly,

THOMAS MOORE.

LETTER XV.

[Compliment to the Examiner-Dr. Bowring.]

Paris, Aug. 20th, 1821.

MY DEAR HUNT--I take the opportunity of a frank to send you a hasty line of acknowledgment for your kind mention of me. I was indeed most happy to see the announcement of your recovery, for public as well as private reasons; for, though you have right good auxiliaries, there is but one Richmond in the field after, all.

This is a very delightful place to live in; and if I was not obliged to stay in it, I should feel the time pass happily enough; for were "E'en Paradise itself my prison,

Still I should long to leap the crystal walls."

Your friend Mr. Bowring and I were rather unlucky in our attempts to meet, but we did meet at last, and I liked him exceedingly. (Signature cut off.)

LETTERS OF SHELLEY.

[I regret extremely, on the reader's account, as well as my own, that I have not taken better and more grateful care of the letters which my friend wrote to me. I can not conceive how so many have been missing. Some were, doubtless, given away; others may have been handed about, and detained. Such as I can lay before the public,

I do.]

LETTER I.

[Remonstrance for not being waked at parting-Lyons Weather in March-Poem of the Nymphs.]

Lyons, March 22d, 1818.

MY DEAR FRIEND-Why did you not wake me that night before we left England, you and Marianne? I take this as rather an unkind

piece of kindness in you; but which, in consideration of the six hundred miles between us, I forgive.*

We have journeyed toward the spring that has been hastening to meet us from the south; and though our weather was at first abominable, we have now warm, sunny days, and soft winds, and a sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. The heat in this city to-day, is like that of London in the midst of summer. My spirits and health sympathize in the change. Indeed, before I left London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, and I had demands upon them which I found it difficult to supply. I have read Foliage:—with most of the poems I was already familiar. What a delightful poem the Nymphs is especially the second part. It is truly poetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the word. If six hundred miles were not between us, I should say what pity that glib was not omitted, and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beautiful. But for fear I should spoil your next poem, I will not let slip a word on the subject. Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and tell Marianne she defrauded me of a kiss by not waking me when she went away, and that as I have no better mode of conveying it, I must take the best, and ask you to pay the debt. When shall I see you all again? Oh, that it might be in Italy! I confess that the thought of how long we may be divided, makes me very melancholy. Adieu, my dear friends. Write soon. Ever most affectionately yours,

P. B. S.

LETTER II.

[Prometheus Unbound-the Mask of Anarchy-Julian and Maddalo— Familiar, vulgar, and ideal styles of writing-Rosalind and Helen] Livorno, August 15th, 1819.

MY DEAR FRIEND-How good of you to write to us so often, and such kind letters! But it is like lending to a beggar. What can I offer in return? †

Though surrounded by suffering and disquietude, and latterly almost overcome by our strange misfortune, I have not been idle. My Prometheus is finished, and I am also on the eve of completing another work, totally different from any thing you might conjecture that I should write; of a more popular kind; and, if any thing of mine could

*My wife and myself had taken leave of him in the negative manner alluded to, in his lodgings in Great Russell-street. I wish I could tell the number of the house, for the sake of my brother lovers of localities; but it was some doors up on the left side of the way from Tottenham-court-road-perhaps as many as twenty-and the name of the person of whom he rented the lodgings, was that of a distinguished connection of his own-Godwin.

† Such is the way in which the most generous of men used to talk to those whom he bad obliged.

The taking away of his children by the Court of Chancery.