CHAPTER V
WORK AS BIOGRAPHER AND CONTROVERSIALIST
After his return from Paris to England, once the task was accomplished of seeing his two books of verse, serious and comic, through the press, Moore turned naturally to resume the _Life of Sheridan_ which he had been obliged to drop during his stay on the Continent, remote from all the living sources of information. But the business of collecting material was a long one; the claims of the Sheridan family for a share in profits were not yet settled; and in the summer of 1823 Moore accepted an invitation which led to a new literary undertaking, carried through before the _Sheridan_. This was a proposal from the Lansdownes that he should accompany them on a tour through Ireland.
The party met in Dublin, and a characteristic little episode is recorded in the Diary. Moore's mother wanted to see her son's distinguished friend, but was shy of a visit from him; so it was arranged that Lord Lansdowne should be walked past the windows where the old couple sat at watch, while he and the poet waved their salutations.
On the way south Moore revived memories of his courtship by a visit to Kilkenny. "Happy times!" he notes, "but not more happy than those which I owe to the same dear girl still." Further south, alarming rumours began to come in, telling of secret organisation among the peasantry, and of the ascendency of "Captain Rock," a mysterious individual in whose name orders and threatening letters were then issued. Killarney charmed Moore with its loveliness, but we find sympathetic observations also concerning Lord Lansdowne's trouble with his Kerry tenants, occasioned by their habits of sub-letting, rearing large families, and so forth. Altogether, the Journal is written by one who sees keenly the oppression of tithes, but on all other matters wears a landlord's spectacles; and this criticism was made sharply, and with justice, in an answer to the book which resulted from this journey.
Moore came back with his head full of material, and set to work reading for a projected narrative of his tour; but after a couple of weeks, the brilliant idea occurred to him of converting it into a _History of Captain Rock and his Ancestors_. The project expanded a good deal as he wrote, and six months' work resulted in a considerable volume, of which the first part was a review of Irish history, which showed with ingenious irony how well English policy, from the first enactments of Henry II. against Irish dress, has been adapted to perpetuate the type and breed of Captain Rock. It was the first book which Moore had written in prose, and nowhere else in his prose writings was he so lavish of wit. I may cite a couple of examples.
"My unlucky countrymen," says Captain Rock (for the Captain was the nominal author of his own Memoirs) "have always had a taste for justice--a taste as inconvenient to them, situated as they have always been, as a taste for horse-racing would be to a Venetian."
"Our Irish rulers have always proceeded in proselytism on the principle of a wedge with its wrong side foremost.... The courteous address of Launcelot to the young Jewess, 'Be of good cheer, for truly I think thou art damned,' seems to have been the model on which the Protestant Church has founded all its conciliatory advances to Catholics."
The broad facts of English misrule in Ireland were not then staled by much repetition, and Moore's statement of them was read with eagerness. In execution the book was faulty, the irony being ill sustained towards the latter part, where it touched contemporary topics. But the success was brilliant, and from Almack's to Holland House Moore heard nothing but its praises. Naturally enough, it made its way in Ireland; "the people through the country are subscribing their sixpences and shillings to buy a copy," a Dublin bookseller wrote; and the Catholics of Drogheda forwarded a formal expression of gratitude, which pleased Moore the better as he "rather feared the Catholics would not take very cordially to the work, owing to some infidelities to their religion which break out now and then in it." And, in truth, the tone is throughout that of one who rather deplores the employment of tyranny to frighten Irish Catholics out of their religion than dislikes the idea of a change of faith. Politically speaking, however, the tone of the book was firm enough. Moore, like most Irishmen, had little knowledge of Irish history, and only began to read it when he had to instruct others in its lessons. Whether because of its effect on his mind, or because _Captain Rock_ gave him a reputation in Ireland, which he dearly valued, as the champion of Irish liberties, it is certain that from this time onward the direction of his mind was increasingly towards Irish subjects.
He had felt the attraction earlier. A letter to Corry, written when _Lalla Rookh_ was nearly completed, says: "I have some thoughts of undertaking a very voluminous work about Ireland (if properly encouraged by _patres nostri_--the Longmans), and this will require my residence for at least two or three years in or near Dublin." Nothing came of the project, which was perhaps not strongly formed; and in any case he was drawn away from it by the enforced move to France. And although one can trace, from the publication of _Captain Rock_ onward, a steady bent of purpose in him to use his pen in the service of his country, he was a second time driven out of his course by an unforeseen event. In the midst of the Captain's triumphs, while editions were rapidly succeeding each other, a great stroke of misfortune fell on Moore. Byron died; and the depositary of his Memoirs was immediately plunged into a most embarrassing situation.
The case about this famous document may be briefly stated. In October 1819, Byron handed Moore the first portion of it, as a gift which would ultimately be of value; and in 1821 he sent the remainder to his friend in Paris, making the suggestion that money might be raised on it by anticipation. This was accordingly done, and, in September 1821, Murray agreed to pay two thousand guineas, and took the manuscript into his keeping. Part of this money was applied in settlement of the Bermuda claims, and in November of that year Moore signed a deed making over the property. This deed was submitted to Byron, and Byron signed an assignment of the manuscript to Murray. Scarcely was the transaction completed, when scruples were aroused in Moore by Lord Holland's saying that he wished the money could have been got in any other way. Lord Holland's objection, as Moore states it (though expressly in his own words) was, that it seemed like depositing in cold blood a quiver of poisoned arrows for use in future warfare upon private character. Moore protested against this view of the document, and Lord Holland, who had read the manuscript, could recall nothing admitting of such a description, except a passage relating to Mme de Staël, and a charge against Sir Samuel Romilly--both of which, Moore pointed out, could be omitted or neutralised in editing for publication, as he had reserved the right to do. Nevertheless, the scruple wrought in him, and in the following April (1822) he approached Murray with a request that the deed of sale should be cancelled, and replaced by an agreement converting the transaction into a loan, with the manuscript held as security till Moore should be able to repay. An agreement on these lines was accordingly drawn up, and Moore's conscience was relieved. He expresses strongly in his Diary his feeling of satisfaction that the control of the matter was again in his own hands.
In the succeeding year he appears to have arranged that the Longmans should take over the debt (and presumably the security), advancing him the means to repay Murray; and on May 13th one of the firm mentioned that the money was ready. On the 14th it was too late; news of Byron's death reached London; and that evening Moore received a note from Douglas Kinnaird "anxiously inquiring in whose possession the Memoirs were, and saying that he was ready on the part of Lord Byron's family to advance the £2000 for the manuscript, in order to give Lady Byron and the rest of the family an opportunity of deciding whether they wished them to be published or no."
Moore soon learned that Murray, immediately on hearing the news, had gone to Wilmot Horton, offering to place the Memoirs at the disposal of the family, without recognising that Moore had any voice in the matter. Moore went to Hobhouse and explained his view of the situation, which was that nothing could be done without his consent; and he substantiated his view by recalling a clause which he had inserted in the draft-agreement. This gave him a period of three months, in case of Byron's death, in which to raise the money. The agreement had never been formally completed, and the draft could not be found. But Murray admitted in principle Moore's claim, and expressed himself ready to comply with the arrangement, provided his money were repaid in full, with interest. The manuscript could then be disposed of, as Moore suggested, by placing it in the hands of "Lord Byron's dearest friend, his sister, Augusta Leigh."
From the proposal that the work should be placed at the disposal of Lady Byron, Moore dissented altogether; it would be treachery, he said (and Hobhouse agreed), to Byron's intentions and wishes. He also strongly opposed the view, put forward by Hobhouse and Kinnaird, that Mrs. Leigh ought "to burn the manuscript altogether without any previous perusal or deliberation." This, he said, was to treat it as if it were a pest-bag, whereas, "although the second part was full of very coarse things, the first contained (with the exception of about three or four lines) nothing which on the score of decency might not be safely published."
Matters were at this point on May 15th, and on the 16th a meeting took place at Murray's between Moore, Hobhouse, and Mr. Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, the last two representing Mrs. Leigh. The agreement between Moore and Murray had not yet been found, and discussion was conducted on the assumption that Moore had a controlling voice in the matter. Thus, although, as it was subsequently decided, Byron's formal sanction of the assignment of the property to Murray would have rendered the later agreement inoperative, Moore has full right to praise or blame for the consent which he gave to the step taken at this memorable meeting; when, as the world knows, after a very quarrelsome scene, the manuscript was formally destroyed by Mrs. Leigh's representatives.
It does not appear that any one of the parties concerned in the act felt in the least that they were depriving Byron of a posthumous justification of his own career. Moore, in all the references to this Memoir, treats it solely as a piece of literature, and Lord John Russell, who had read most, if not all, of the composition, simply says that it "contained little trace of Byron's genius and no interesting details of his life." Those who were eager for suppression appear to have been influenced by the desire to avoid scandal; and the notion was widespread, for Moore, after the affair, was congratulated on having "saved the country from a pollution." His most serious objection to destroying the MS. rested on the support which such an action would give to this view of what Byron had written.
But the objection was not strong enough to induce him to jeopardise his own character. Moore's hands were tied in the transaction by the fact that he stood to lose two thousand guineas if the MS. were destroyed, and would avoid this loss if his own opinion, favouring publication, were adopted. Whoever opposed publication in the discussion at Murray's, had merely to hint that Moore's advocacy was interested, and pride would at once constrain the needy poet to consent to the holocaust.
The two persons who stood to lose in the matter were Moore and Murray, and both made a creditable sacrifice. Murray resigned his chances of a considerable profit. But Moore incurred deliberately a ruinous burden of debt. Even so, his sensitive conscience was not quite clear as to the justification of his act; but Hobhouse appears to have decided him by saying that Byron had more than once expressed a regret at having put the Memoirs out of his own power, and had only been prevented from reclaiming them by his dislike to taking back a gift.
Moore's need for consulting on points of honour did not end with the burning of the MS. Byron's family were anxious to repay him the money which he had paid to Murray before the cremation; and, not unnaturally, Lord Lansdowne and other friends urged him to accept. But he refused persistently to do so, though one adviser after another forced him to postpone for a week the irrevocable step of publishing his account of the transaction in the papers. His view was, that his duty had been to surrender the trust into the hands most proper to receive it, and that he could keep at least the credit of having made a sacrifice in order to do so. With this credit he refused to part; and he notes that he had little trouble in bringing his men of business, the Longmans, to take his view of the matter, but could not so easily persuade Lord Lansdowne, with Rogers and the rest, that a poor man ought to act on the same principles as if he were rich. It should be remembered to Moore's credit that he on many occasions followed his own sense of honour when he might have pleaded the advice of most honoured and honourable persons for adopting another course.
Friends of Moore's fame will rejoice that he acted in so scrupulous a spirit, but the necessity is to be deplored. The heavy load of debt thus thrown upon him forced him into producing too much. It also made it practically inevitable that he should recoup himself for this loss by undertaking the most lucrative task that offered--namely, a biography of Byron; yet he was uncertain for a considerable time whether the thing ought to be done, and, if done, whether he was the right person to do it. Even when his mind was clear of these perplexities--which Hobhouse strengthened by dissuading him from the task--there was a long period of suspense for which Murray was answerable. During three years Moore was distracted, anxious, and uneasy, unable to settle down to any important work.
For the present, however, once the Byron business was settled, his mind and his hands were full. It had been finally settled that the Longmans, and not Murray, should be the publishers of the _Life of Sheridan_; they undertaking, not only to pay Moore a thousand guineas, but to give the Sheridan family half profits, once 2500 copies had been disposed. Moore went resolutely to work, and in October of the next year the book made its appearance, and succeeded beyond expectation. The Longmans expressed their sense of its merits by adding £300 to the stipulated thousand.
The _Life of Sheridan_ did not interest contemporaries mainly as a piece of biography. Many references to traits and stories of the dramatist and statesman, which occur in the Diary, make it plain that Moore had conceived an opinion of Sheridan by no means wholly favourable, and biography of the unsparing order was not a task which he would have undertaken. His aim was to outline Sheridan's career, rather than to paint the man, and consequently the book's main value lay in the historical view which it gave of the past fifty years. On this Moore was congratulated by so good a judge as Jeffrey, and he had a right to feel that his claim was established to rank with serious political thinkers.
Yet even before this, he was by no means regarded merely as a person of quick fancy and lively talent. It was proposed that he should join Jeffrey in editing the _Edinburgh_; and, still more remarkable, in 1822 the proprietors of the _Times_ invited him to replace Barnes for six months in conducting their paper. Moore refused the offer (which was made at the suggestion of Rogers), but felt highly gratified; and from his return to England he was a constant contributor to the _Times_, sending there all his satiric verses. Their popularity was so great that the proprietors authorised Barnes to pay Moore a retainer of £400 a year; and up to 1828 this source of income, with the annuity from Power, was his main revenue. It was precarious, however; for the _Times_ sometimes took a tone in handling Irish topics which made it difficult for Moore to continue the connection, and in 1827 he formally closed it. It was renewed, however, after Barnes made a tour in Ireland (carrying introductions from Moore), and returned ready "to support the Irish cause with all his might."
Indeed, the best work of the three years 1825-8 is to be found in the _Odes on Cash, Corn, and Catholics_, nearly all of which were contributed to the _Times_. The first "evening" of _Evenings in Greece_, and the fifth and sixth numbers of _National Airs_, which were the work done for Power at this period, have little in them but fluent verse; and even less can be said for the work which Moore took up as a _pièce de résistance_, his discarded Egyptian story, which he now completed as a prose romance. In _The Epicurean_ we have the last and by no means sprightly runnings of the vein which produced _Lalla_ and the _Loves of the Angels_: an imagination feeding itself on marvels read of in books, and producing literature which appealed to curiosity more than to any other instinct. The description of the Egyptian mysteries seen by the young philosopher, who goes to the land of pyramids and catacombs in search of new truth, is frigid in the extreme; and the flashes of genuine poetry which redeem _Lalla_ and _The Angels_ find no place in this very bad example of deliberately poetic prose. Nevertheless its oversweetened eloquence found plenty of readers, and the book realised £700 to its author,--of which, however, £500 had already been anticipated, independently of the main debt, the two thousand guineas.
One may note here a very curious scruple of literary conscience which Moore adhered to with surprising consistency. Although heavily in debt, and forced to make every penny by sheer production, he constantly set aside a means, which for at least ten years was constantly open to him, of earning money with little labour. His reputation then stood at its highest point; he was not only high in favour with the frequenters of Holland House, but also with the whole fashionable world and its far-off imitators. A single trait--which, with his usual naïve pleasure in instances of his own popularity, he records--may illustrate the matter. At a country ball, a young lady who was fortunate enough to shake hands with the poet "wrapped the hand up in her shawl, saying no one else should touch it that night." Fame of this sort is very marketable, and to-day would bring its owner big offers from the popular magazines. Their equivalent in those days was found in the annuals of the type of the _Forget-me-not_, _Souvenir_, etc.; and request after request was made to Moore for his name either as editor or contributor. The Longmans proposed to undertake such a publication, and tempted him with the prospects of £500 to £1000 a year if he would edit it. He replied, not with a direct refusal, but with a letter stating his views concerning literature of this class, which not only convinced the firm that he personally would injure his reputation by accepting, but decided them to abandon the scheme. Again, about 1827, Heath the engraver offered, first £500 and subsequently £700 a year to Moore if he would edit a new album or magazine, and at the same time tried to force on him a cheque for a hundred pounds as the price of a contribution of a hundred lines. But Moore was not to be tempted. Only once in his career did he depart from what his sense of the dignity of letters demanded, and that was at a time when he had brought himself low in purse by writing books to express his convictions, and refusing commissions that would have brought in large sums. His scruple, which nowadays seems strangely demoded, is the more respectable because he never hints a word of blame for those who did not share that "horror of Albumising, Annualising, and Periodicalising which my one inglorious surrender (and for base money too) has but confirmed me in." Characteristically enough, however, he did for courtesy what he so often refused to do for profit, and waived the scruple in favour of his old and beautiful friend Lady Blessington, to whom he thus expressed himself. He sent her some verses for her _Book of Beauty_, which are among the latest and by no means the worst that he wrote.
In 1827, however, at a time when nothing was yet settled as to the _Life of Byron_, his refusal of the inducements held out by Heath and the Longmans was not his only example of constancy to a point of honour. Letters apprised him in December 1826 that his father's death could not be long deferred, and when he reached Dublin the old man was too far gone to see or recognise his son. It is characteristic of Moore that he counted this to be a great relief, "as I would not for worlds have the sweet impression he left upon my mind when I last saw him exchanged for one which would haunt me, I know, dreadfully through all the remainder of my life." This morbid shrinking from actual physical impressions of pain or horror was a marked trait of the man, and not a manly one; it was doubtless closely connected with his temperamental liability to uncontrollable bursts of emotion. Nevertheless it was a thing hardly more within his will-power than is the common tendency to turn faint at the sight of blood; and in other respects he made up for it by exhibiting a noble staunchness. The death of his father was a heavy blow, as making the first gap in a family so closely linked by affection; but a man at forty-seven must be prepared to lose his parents, and the actual trouble of so quiet a death in the fulness of age would soon have passed naturally. But John Moore's pension died with him, and his son, already sufficiently embarrassed, found his mother and sister added to his other charges. The burden could have been avoided; for Lord Wellesley, then Viceroy, at once signified a wish to continue the half-pay pension to Moore's sister, out of a fund which he, as Lord-Lieutenant, could dispose of without reference to England, where the King might reasonably be presumed unfriendly to such a favour. "All this," Moore notes, "very kind and liberal of Lord Wellesley; and God knows how useful such an aid would be to me, as God alone knows how I am to support all the burdens now heaped upon me; but _I could not_ accept such a favour. It would be like that _lasso_ with which they catch wild animals in South America; the noose would only be on the _tip_ of the horn, it is true, but it would do."
He found himself again approved in his action by men of business (Power the publisher and various Irish friends) but censured by Lord Lansdowne. His answer was ready, however. _The Life of Sheridan_, with its outspoken strictures on certain passages in Whig policy, had not been altogether relished at Bowood, and Moore was for once not sorry, since the lack of approbation proved the independence of his attitude. And it was now easy for him to say that, since Lord Lansdowne had described his last published book as too conciliatory to the Tories, any favour coming to its author from a Tory government would certainly be construed by unfriendly judges as the price of this civility.
At last, however, the long negotiations about Byron's Life and Letters came to a conclusion. Moore, whose debt was to the Longmans, and who was moreover bound to them by gratitude for much real friendliness, inclined to write the _Life_ for them, and an arrangement to that effect was made. But in February 1828, when Murray, who held the great bulk of the material, finally made up his mind to secure Moore's services, if possible, both as editor and biographer, the Longmans, with their accustomed liberality, waived their claim. It was settled that Moore should receive 4000 guineas, of which sum half was to be advanced, to pay off his debt to the Longmans. And thus, after many efforts, he got, for a time at least, level with the world.
The work once undertaken went on fast--Moore working, he writes, "as hard as it is in my nature to work at anything"--and by the end of 1829 the first of two quarto volumes was ready for publication. In his prefatory note to the second volume, which shortly followed, Moore--whom Byron called "the only modest author he had ever known"--attributed the success of the work to the interest of the subject and the materials. There is no denying that his modesty was in this case justified. The _Life of Byron_ has probably been more read than any biography in the language, with the single exception of Boswell's; yet it has no claim to rank, for instance, with Lockhart's masterpiece as a literary achievement. Moore's task was simply to weave together a chain of narrative from the copious materials presented to him by the poet's journals, letters, and, not least, by his poems. His work was, however, hampered by the necessity of sparing sensibilities, and we have frequently to wish that he had been less discreet. Nevertheless, upon the whole, a very difficult undertaking was carried through with supreme tact, with well-practised dexterity, and, above all, with a most commendable absence of pretension. Beyond the skilled selection and grouping of materials, Moore's part is very considerable. It amounts to a very acute exposition of the Byron whom he had known--a man wholly unlike the popular conception of him. Naturally enough, the work has the character of a defence or justification, and as such it is loyal and sincere. Moore never goes back on his friend. But there were in that friend's character certain elements which he disliked, and in his intellect ranges which he did not fully comprehend; and we feel always that the Byron whom Moore best understands is the Byron of earlier days, the writer of vehement romance and impassioned soliloquy--a Byron who had not yet come to the full scope of his powers. This also was natural enough, for Moore's personal intercourse with Byron practically ended when Byron married.
Their friendship began, drolly enough, as has been already mentioned, out of a cartel resulting from another challenge. In 1809, Moore saw _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, and had no special cause to quarrel with the attack upon his own work. Little,
"The young Catullus of his day, As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay,"
might regard the attack as verging on a tribute; and indeed Little's poems were among Byron's earliest favourites and models in verse. But Moore was choleric; he did not like to hear himself entitled the "melodious advocate of lust"; and further on he came upon a passage which touched him on a sensitive point. His abortive duel with Jeffrey furnished too obvious material for the satirist to miss--above all, when Jeffrey was the special mark--and accordingly Moore found the following reference to it:--
"Can none remember that eventful day, That ever glorious, almost fatal fray, When Little's leadless pistol met the eye, And Bow Street's myrmidons stood laughing by?"
A note was appended, stating that, in the duel at Chalk Farm, "on examination, the balls of the pistols were found to have evaporated."
The satire being anonymous, Moore, though sufficiently vexed, took no steps; but when a second edition was issued with Byron's name, he wrote from Ireland to the author, saying that in the note "the lie was given" to his own public statement, published in the _Times_ concerning the duel, and demanding to know whether Byron would "avow the insult."
This letter, as Moore soon learnt, had not reached its address, for Byron had gone abroad; but he was told that Hodgson had undertaken to forward it. Nothing more was heard, and Moore let things rest till a year and a half later, when Byron returned from abroad. Moore had in the meantime married, and was about to become a father; he was therefore, as he admits, inclined to be conciliatory, but none the less determined to push the matter to an explanation. Referring to the previous letter, which he assumed to have miscarried, he re-stated his grievance in writing, but then continued:--
"It is now useless to speak of the steps with which it was my intention to follow up that letter. The time which has elapsed since then, though it has done away neither the injury nor the feeling of it, has in many respects materially altered my situation; and the only object which I have now in writing to your Lordship is to preserve some consistency with that former letter, and to prove to you that the injured feeling still exists, however circumstances may compel me to be deaf to its dictates at present. When I say 'injured feeling,' let me assure your Lordship that there is not a single vindictive sentiment in my mind towards you. I mean but to express that uneasiness under (what I must consider to be) a charge of falsehood, which must haunt a man of any feeling to his grave, unless the insult be retracted or atoned for."
Byron answered stiffly enough, that he had never seen Moore's denial, and therefore had never intended "giving the lie"; but that he could neither retract nor apologise for a charge of falsehood which he never advanced. He was ready, he said, "to accept any conciliatory proposition which did not compromise his own honour"--or, failing that, to give satisfaction. Moore, in his account of the affair, admits freely that he had shown a want of tact in talking of friendly advances, while demanding an explanation; and he expresses his admiration for Byron's conduct in the difficulty. It is certain that the younger man showed more sense and less inclination to take offence, and the final proposal that a friendly meeting should be arranged was Byron's. The place fixed on was Rogers's table, and Campbell was of the company; and the dinner (though complicated by Byron's unexpected wish to dine on biscuits and soda water--neither of which was forthcoming) had the happiest results. Byron formed a lasting friendship with Rogers; but between him and Moore an intimacy of the closest kind ripened rapidly--the more so because Byron's state was then one of considerable isolation. A few months later, the blazing success of _Childe Harold_ only confirmed the friendship, as it made the new poet the lion of a society where Moore's position was already firmly fixed. Jealousy was none of Moore's vices, or he had ample ground for it in that sudden leap past him, into a region of fame which, as he always knew in his heart, he could never occupy. But even a jealous nature might have been conciliated by Byron's frank enthusiasm. "I am too proud of being your friend," he wrote, "to care with whom I am linked in your estimation"; and the fragmentary "Journal" which he kept in 1813 expresses the grounds of his admiration very fully.
"Moore has a peculiarity of talent, or rather talents--poetry, music, voice--all his own; and an expression in each, which never was, nor will be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still higher nights in poetry. By the bye, what humour, what--everything, in the 'Post Bag'! There is nothing Moore may not do, if he will but seriously set about it. In society he is gentlemanly, gentle, and, altogether, more pleasing than any individual with whom I am acquainted. For his honour, principle, and independence, his conduct to...[1] speaks 'trumpet-tongued.' He has but one fault--and that one I daily regret--he is not _here_."
Byron had also, what was no impediment in such a friendship, a great admiration for his friend's work, and his letters teem with inquiries after the progress of _Lalla_. Moore's abandonment of the story which resembled too closely the _Bride of Abydos_, he thought unnecessary, and was sincerely grieved to have stood in the light. Indeed, it is sufficiently evident that Byron's feeling for Moore was a good deal warmer than Moore's for Byron; not unnaturally, considering that Moore was newly married and deep in love with his wife. Byron is always the more frequent correspondent; it is he who has to reproach the other with slackness. But, it must be insisted again, the friendship had been begun when Moore was already rich in friendships and happy in a home, while Byron was moody and lonely in a world against which he cherished grievances; and this new companionship filled a large space in his life. The sympathy between the two is easily understood, if one remembers not only that each in his way exercised an extraordinary attraction for men as well as women, but that their tastes coincided. The days when Moore knew Byron well were Byron's period of dandyism, and Moore was always something of a dandy. Both belonged to Watier's, the dandies' club _par excellence_, and, being the only persons in the set who were men of letters as well as men of fashion, they were naturally drawn together. Moore's removal from town, too, detracted in no way from their intimacy, since whenever he returned to London, he came now as a bachelor. In 1814 they were almost daily together during his stay, and the letters give us pleasant hints of their joint festivities, from fine assemblies to lobsters and brandy and water at Stevens's in Bond Street. Their friendship was so close that it permitted of Moore's advising Byron not only to marry, but to make a particular choice--and one other than that which he disastrously made. Further, when the choice had been made, it was to Moore that Byron confided first his rejoicings and afterwards something of his perplexities.
Nevertheless Byron's marriage ended their comradeship, and the friends did not meet in the months when Lady Byron's unexplained departure and obdurate silence loosed a storm of obloquy on her husband. Moore was quick in sympathy, and Byron wrote him a letter such as could only be written to a trusted intimate. And when finally his departure was fixed on, verse spoke his feelings much better than the rather pompous dedication in prose which he had prefixed to the _Corsair_ in January 1814:--
"My boat is on the shore And my bark is on the sea; But before I go, Tom Moore, Here's a double health to thee.
"Were't the last drop in the well As I gasped upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, 'Tis to thee that I would drink.
"With that water, as this wine, The libation I would pour Should be--peace with thine and mine And a health to thee, Tom Moore."
Of their meeting in Italy, three years after this was written, something has been already said. To the end of the chapter Byron was the more constant correspondent of the two. There are not wanting in Moore's Diary remarks respecting Byron in which other things than liking can be perceived; sharp disapprobation (and merited) for his writing to Murray details of a Venetian intrigue which would enable the woman to be identified; and later, a distinct touch of spleen occasioned by the disparaging estimate of all recent poetry which Byron paraded in his controversy with Bowles. Yet these are only hints of a passing mood, and it is clear that Moore was always proud of the friendship; he is quick to write down Lord Clare's assurance (which is supported by a letter of Byron's own) that Clare and he were the people whom Byron cared most for. It is also most clear that Byron's death, incurred in the cause of a nation's freedom, set him on a pinnacle in Moore's estimation, and, in the eyes of that always generous critic, more than redeemed whatever was amiss in his career. The _Life_ did effectively what it was meant to do: it presented a favourable view of Byron's character, all the more convincing because the means used were chiefly quotations of Byron's own words. It is a great praise in a task so difficult to say that Moore never offends us; and on many occasions his comment is not merely sane and generous, uniting the tolerance of a man of the world with the insight of a poet; it is also instinct with dignity. For an excellent example of such moments, and of Moore's prose style at its best, the conclusion of the memoir may be given:--
"The arduous task of being the biographer of Byron is one, at least, on which I have not obtruded myself: the wish of my friend that I should undertake that office having been more than once expressed, at a time when none but boding imagination could have foreseen much chance of the sad honour devolving to me. If in some instances I have consulted rather the spirit than the exact letter of his injunctions, it was with the view solely of doing him more justice than he would have done himself; there being no hands in which his character could have been less safe than his own, nor any greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he affected to be for what he was. Of any partiality, however, beyond what our mutual friendship accounts for and justifies, I am by no means conscious; nor would it be in the power, indeed, even of the most partial friend to allege anything more convincingly favourable of his character than is contained in the few simple facts with which I shall here conclude--that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend;--that those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants, remained attached to him to the last;--that the woman, to whom he gave the love of his maturer years, idolises his name; and that, with a single unhappy exception, scarce an instance is to be found of any one, once brought, however briefly, into relations of amity with him, that did not feel towards him a kind regard in life and retain a fondness for his memory.
"I have now done with the subject, nor shall be easily tempted into a recurrence. Any mistakes or misstatements I may be proved to have made shall be corrected;--any new facts which it is in the power of others to produce will speak for themselves. To mere opinions I am not called upon to pay attention--and still less to insinuations or mysteries. I have here told what I myself know and think concerning my friend, and now leave his character, moral as well as literary, to the judgment of the world."
No sooner was the work on Byron completed than the prospect of another, no less lucrative, offered itself. A proposal was made, with Lady Canning's approbation, that Moore should write the Life of Canning. "The importance of the period, the abundance of the materials I should have to illustrate it, and my general coincidence with the principles of Canning's latter line of politics," as well as the money, all tempted Moore greatly, but he decided against it for a characteristic reason.
"An obstacle presented itself in the person of Lord Grey, of whose conduct, during the period in question, it would be necessary to speak with such a degree of freedom as both my high opinion of him, and my gratitude to him for much kindness, would render impossible. If left to myself, I might perhaps manage to do justice to all parties without offending any; but under the dictation of Lady Canning the thing would be impracticable."
The scruple was honourable, but it illustrates the growing difficulty of Moore's position. Bound by ties of long alliance to the Whigs, he was, in reality, less and less at one with either English party; and he claimed and exercised a perfect freedom of expression in so far as principles at least were concerned. But his regard for persons constantly hampered him, and, conscious of this personal loyalty, he did not cease to consider himself as one having claims on party rewards. Lord Lansdowne came into office under the coalition in 1827, and the Whig party were fully in power from 1830 onwards; yet Moore went unrewarded, and a trace of bitterness is clearly perceptible in his tone. Were it not that from 1829 onwards the Diary has been a good deal expurgated by its editor, we should probably hear more of this note. We have no direct expression of Moore's feelings either on the Act emancipating the Catholics or on the Reform Bill. It is sufficiently evident, however, from other passages, that Moore deprecated the tumultuary agitation by which the Duke of Wellington was persuaded to reverse the traditional policy of his party; it is probable that he considered the surrender as none the Less ignominious because he rejoiced to see it made. As to Reform, we have his mind plainly enough given in several later jeremiads. "We are now hastening to the brink with a rapidity which, croaker as I have always been, I certainly did not anticipate." That is again and again the burden of his song, and again and again he deplores that concessions were made in block, and not doled out by minimum doses. As Lord John Russell neatly observes, had Reform never passed, Moore would have lived and died a staunch Reformer. But the passing of Reform showed him for what he really was--an Irish politician of Grattan's school, hostile to every kind of Radicalism, but strong in defence of two things--the principle of religious toleration and the principle of nationality.
The result of all this was to associate Moore increasingly, both as student and politician, with Irish controversy and Irish personages. He declined to write the Life of Canning because it would necessitate personal criticism on Lord Grey, and he felt no call to give utterance to this criticism. But when it came to a question of speaking or holding his peace on the subject of his own country, Moore declined to be influenced by personal considerations. Once free to choose a subject, his choice is notable. Having declined the Canning proposal, he set to work immediately on a very different theme, the _Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald_, and worked on it with enthusiasm, although the hope of a lucrative success was in this case slight indeed. More than that, as the Whig party settled down to the task of administration, they found, as usual, trouble in Ireland; and first Lord Holland, then Lord John Russell, urged Moore to let alone the biography of an Irish rebel till such time as Ireland should be quiet. Moore answered that this would be to rival the rustic in Horace, who waited till the stream should be done flowing by; and further, that it was a question of principle with him to publish. Lord Lansdowne's considerate silence weighed more with him than these intercessions, but the book came out in July 1831, with little of the éclat to which its author was now accustomed. It is nevertheless the best of his prose writings, and conveys with great moderation the essential truths about the series of measures and events which led up to the terrible crisis of 1798. What is still better, it gives an extremely vivid impression of the young rebel chief, who had much that specially endeared him to Moore in his warm and impulsive affections and his very generous nature. There was nothing in the subject outside Moore's sympathy or comprehension, and this was scarcely true either in the case of Sheridan or of Byron.
No sooner was this work out of hand than a new one was put on the stocks, arising again directly out of Moore's tastes and pre-occupations. This was the very curious _Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion_, which leads naturally to some discussion of Moore's own beliefs.
We have seen that he went to college as a Catholic (though not without some consideration of the other possibility), and was thus shut off from the rewards of proficiency; but also that, while in college, he abandoned the practice of confession and that his intimates were mainly Protestants. More than this, he married a Protestant, and allowed the children of the marriage to be brought up in their mother's religion, and for a considerable period attended church with his family--as is proved by various entries in the Diary down to 1824, or thirteen years after his marriage. And in 1825 there occurs this curious note. Lord Lansdowne, referring to a magazine article, in which Moore's songs were mentioned, said, "They take you for a Catholic." "I answered," Moore writes, "they had but too much right to do so."
It is evident that his Catholicism was, to say the least of it, unobtrusive in these days; and, although a note in the journals of travel mentions the effect always produced on him by the celebration of Mass, he seems rather inclined to endorse the distaste for so much gaudy ceremonial which his Bessy owned to when first he took her to a Catholic service. The most important passage, however, bearing upon his views occurs in his account of the family interview after his father's death:--
"Our conversation naturally turned upon religion, and my sister Kate, who, the last time I saw her, was more than half inclined to declare herself a Protestant, told me she had since taken my advice, and remained quietly a Catholic.... For myself, my having married a Protestant wife gave me an opportunity of choosing a religion, at least for my children, and if my marriage had no other advantage, I should think this quite sufficient to be grateful for. We then talked of the differences between the two faiths, and they who accuse all Catholics of being intolerantly attached to their own would be either ashamed or surprised (according as they were sincere or not in the accusation), if they had heard the sentiments expressed both by my mother and sisters on the subject."
Taking all these things into account, I think it is not unfair to put an autobiographical construction on the _Travels of an Irish Gentleman_--which, although dedicated to the People of Ireland as a "defence of their ancient national faith by their devoted servant the Editor of 'Captain Rock's Memoirs,'" is, like that earlier work, couched in a tone of irony, and opens with a "Soliloquy up Two Pair of Stairs:"--
"It was on the evening of the 16th day of April, 1829--the very day on which the memorable news reached Dublin of the Royal Assent having been given to the Catholic Relief Bill--that, as I was sitting alone in my chambers, up two pair of stairs in Trinity College, being myself one of the everlasting 'Seven Millions' thus liberated, I started suddenly, after a few moments' reverie, from my chair, and taking a stride across the room, as if to make trial of a pair of emancipated legs, exclaimed, 'Thank God! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant.'"
It would be wrong to say that Moore, after emancipation had freed him "not only from the penalties attached to being a Catholic, but from the point of honour which had till then debarred me from being anything else," seriously contemplated a change of religion. I think, however, that on examining his consciousness, he found that up till this period he had defended his religious position to himself solely by the point of honour, and that, now the point of honour was removed, he felt it incumbent on him to be able to speak with his enemies in the gate. I believe also that the effect of his reading was to substitute for a somewhat vague Christianity a definite attachment to Catholicism. His earlier attitude of mind is well expressed by the following passage in his Diary--not the only one of its kind:--
"I sat up to read the account of Goethe's _Dr. Faustus_ in the _Edinburgh Magazine_, and before I went to bed experienced one of those bursts of devotion which perhaps are worth all the churchgoing forms in the world. Tears came fast from me as I knelt down to adore the one only God whom I acknowledge, and poured forth the aspirations of a soul deeply grateful for all His goodness."
That was written in Paris some five years before the conversation with his sister Kate. It seems to me improbable that, after the reading and writing which went to the _Travels of an Irish Gentleman_, he would have expressed himself quite in the same way as to the advantage of being able to make his children Protestants. And it is certain that in later life, though on the friendliest terms with the rector of his parish, he never attended service at the church.
The intention of the _Travels_ was, however, rather to furnish a weapon than to establish faith. In a passage of the Diary (which, by the way, deprecates the complete identification of himself with his hero), he says:--
"My views concerning the superiority of the Roman Catholic Religion over the Protestant in point of antiquity, authority, and consistency agree with those of my hero, and I was induced to put them so strongly upon record from the disgust which I feel, and have ever felt, at the arrogance with which most Protestant parsons assume to themselves and their fellows the credit of being the only true Christians, and the insolence with which weekly from their pulpits they denounce all Catholics as idolaters and anti-Christ."
In short, this book, which he speaks of in a letter to Sir William Napier, his friend and neighbour, as "purely the indulgence of a hobby," was designed rather to annoy than to persuade. It was the attempt of an Irish Catholic, who felt increasingly his right and power to speak for his nation, to retort upon uncivil opponents not merely with argument but with derision. And for this purpose no plan could have been more effectual than the one which he chose of setting his young gentleman in the first instance, after his decision to be a Protestant, to search for the one true Protestantism.
Further than this it is unnecessary to go into the consideration of a forgotten piece of polemics, which only those will read who find, like Moore himself, "no subject so piquant as theology." His attainments in this branch of learning were considerable for a layman. We have seen that in 1814 he surprised Jeffrey by his article for the _Edinburgh_ on the Fathers of the Early Church; and in 1831, while the _Travels_ were in preparation, Murray astounded Milman by revealing to him that Moore was the author of an article on _German Rationalism_. Moreover, these appear to have been the only two of Moore's numerous contributions to the Whig quarterly in which he took pleasure. Reviewing, in the ordinary way, he describes as "work which I detest, and in consequence always do badly." But recondite learning always had a fascination for him, and the scholar in him grew with years.
The scholarly taste for historical research was unhappy in one of its consequences. As early as 1829, the Longmans projected a group of histories of the British Isles, in which England was to be treated by Sir James Mackintosh in three volumes, while Scott and Moore sketched, in a volume apiece, the story of their respective countries. Lord John Russell observes judiciously that had Moore kept to the restriction, the result might have been an easy, agreeable, and readable work. Unluckily, however, he obeyed rather his sense of what was needed in a history of Ireland than a perception of what he himself was fit to do, and the task, undertaken with alacrity, became a burden. Instead of one volume, it dragged out to four, of which the first appeared in 1835, and the last in 1846; and the work is wholly devoid of any original merit, bald and colourless. "His time," says Lord John, "was absorbed by it, his health worn, and his faculties dragged down to a wearisome and uncongenial task."
Yet this is to blame unreasonably Moore's choice of a subject. The truth is that, when he engaged on it, his mind had lost its elasticity and freshness of invention, from a variety of circumstances which must be considered in a review of the last period of his life.
At the same time, it was an honourable end to that long literary career. The easy singer of light loves closed his ceaseless activities with a long period of drudgery, spent, says Lord John Russell, in "the critical examination of obscure authorities upon an obscure subject." But the obscure subject was the history of the singer's own country, and Moore was at least well justified in holding that urgent need existed for spreading among the English, and still more among the Irish, a knowledge of the history of Ireland.
[1] Probably Lord Moira. _See_ above, p. 55.