extraordinary industry. Though a very gay man, Moore never was an indolent one.

In 1806 there appeared a very severe article in the Edinburgh Review on Moore's Odes and Epistles, which so roused his Irish blood, that, hearing that Jeffrey was in London, he sent him a challenge; and the poet and reviewer met at Chalk Farm, where, when about to fire, out stepped some police from behind the trees, and arrested the belligerents. On examining the pistols, that of Moore was found to have a bullet in it, that of Jeffrey none. This was soon converted in the newspapers into Moore's pistol being only loaded with a paper pellet, and Jeffrey's one without the pellet,-as though he had already fired his pellet in the Edinburgh. The whole made much merriment; and Lord Byron did not let the story lose anything in his version of it in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

On the 25th of March, 1811-was it because it was Lady-day ?— Moore was married to a Miss Dyke, at St. Martin's church, in London, being two-and-thirty years of age. It was a most fortunate marriage. Though Miss Dyke had little or no property, as it is commonly called, she seems to have been possessed of every other good property. She was very handsome and very domestic. Though of a peculiarly retiring disposition, and, therefore, not accompanying her husband much into his gay and general society, she was most amiable, intelligent, and accomplished. She showed herself on all occasions a woman of much energy of character, of tact and judgment. Nothing was more striking than the manner in which the poet relied upon her in all matters of daily life. Lord John Russell says, “From 1811, the year of his marriage, to 1852, that of his death, this excellent and beautiful person received from him the homage of a lover, enhanced by all the gratitude, all the confidence, which the daily and hourly happiness which he enjoyed was sure to inspire. Thus, whatever amusement he might find in society, whatever sights he might behold, whatever literary resources he might seek elsewhere, he always returned to his home with a fresh feeling of delight."

But perhaps there never was a man who spent almost the whole of his life in a constant round of visiting amongst the great and fashionable, who retained so warmly and uncorruptedly the full strength of his domestic affections. There never was a more kind and devoted son. Twice a week, except when in Bermuda and America, he wrote to his mother, with a never varying love. He settled a hundred pounds a-year on his parents as soon as he began to realize a tolerable income, and always paid it while they lived, even when sorely pressed himself.

Soon after his marriage he made the acquaintance of Lord Byron, but for some time he was almost constantly the guest of Lord Moira, at Donnington Park. To be near him, and yet not quite dependent on him for a home, he took a cottage at Kegworth in the spring of 1812, about a year after his marriage. They did not long remain there, for in the summer of the next year they removed to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne. This was, no doubt, occasioned

by the appointment of Lord Moira to the government of India, and to the expectation of Moore and his friends that he would take him with him in some profitable post, which was wholly disappointed. Lord Moira, though he had raised such expectations, had too many hungry expectants of his own kith and kin; and Moore, justly chagrined, removed to a distance. They had now two daughters, one having been born in London, before settling at Kegworth, and a second at that place.

But Moore had now prospects of no inconsiderable emolument at home. He had already engaged with Power for 500l. a-year for seven years, for his Irish Melodies, and he had now niade the engagement with Longmans for Lalla Rookh, for 3000/. Here then he went to work in joyous alacrity. The rent of his cottage was only 201. a-year, and the taxes three or four more, not altogether 30%. This poem was ready for the press in 1816, so that it would seem to have cost him between two and three years. Once more, therefore, they removed. This time it was to the foot of Muswell Hill, near Hornsey. It is a small brick cottage standing in very secluded grounds. There they spent the summer of 1817, while Moore was putting Lalla Rookh through the press; and his wife stayed there while he made a trip to Paris; where he collected the materials for that humorous production, The Fudge Family in Paris. From Paris he was hastily recalled by the illness of his eldest daughter, who died soon after he reached Hornsey. In the autumn they went down to Bowood to see some houses there which Lord Lansdowne, who wished to have them near him, thought would suit them, where they took Sloperton Cottage, furnished, for 401. a-year!

But scarcely were they got into this new house than care in a very wholesale and disagreeable shape followed them. Moore's deputy, whom he had left in Bermuda, after having long embezzled the proceeds of the post, absconded, leaving the poet responsible for 6,000/ The man was of a rich and respectable mercantile family of the name of Sheddon. He had been recommended to Moore by the uncle, a wealthy old fellow, and, poet-like, Moore had taken no guarantee from him for this dishonest nephew. Till these affairs could be settled, Moore was advised to get away to the Continent, and accordingly he set out, in company with Lord John Russell, on the 4th of September, 1819. In this journey he went with Lord John to Paris, thence into Switzerland and as far as Milan, where they parted; and Moore went on to visit Lord Byron at his country house, La Mira, near Fusina, and went from thence with him to Venice. He found Byron grown fat, and living with the Countess Guiccioli, whom he did not think at all handsome. Her husband was perfectly agreeable to this arrangement, on condition that Byron should let him have 1,000l. Moore returned by the south of France to Paris, where, in January, 1820, his wife and children joined him. There he lived till the latter end of November, 1822, when, the Bermuda affair being settled, he returned to England, and to his cottage at Sloperton, which he now secured on a term for 251. a-year.

During the nearly three years that he lived in Paris, Moore's life was precisely the same as when in England-one continual round of visiting amongst the English aristocracy and travellers who came there. At the same time he was busy on the Life of Sheridan, The Epicurean, The Loves of the Angels, &c. During this period he made one visit to England, and to his parents in Ireland, in 1821, of course in cog., wearing artificial moustaches as a disguise, and taking his wife's name, Dyke.

The places in which Moore lived in and near Paris were, first, apartments in the Rue Chantereine, where they lived only six weeks, when they removed to a cottage in the Champs Elysées; after that they occupied for some time a cottage of their friends the Villamils, at La Butte Coaslin, near Sèvres. Moore says that the cottage of La Butte conjured up an apparition of Sloperton, and he defines it by a happy quotation from Pope

"A little cot with trees a row,

And, like its master, very low."

Here he used to wander in the noble park of St. Cloud, with his pocket-book and pencil, composing verses, and pondering on the Epicurean; and closing the evening by practising duets with the lady of his Spanish friend, or listening to her guitar. Kenney, the dramatic writer, lived near them, and Washington Irving visited him there.

Thence they went back to the Allée des Veuves, Champs Elysées, and then back to Sèvres. After that they had lodgings at 17, Rue d'Anjou, Paris; and finally at Passy. It is curious that it was in Paris and its vicinity that Moore says he first began to feel the influence of Nature. In his journal of September, 1819, we find him saying, "Few things set my imagination on the wing so much as those spectacles at the Opera," which appears very characteristic; but in October, 1820, a year after, when he had been walking in the park at St. Cloud, and the Bois de Boulogne, he discovers that "It is only within these few years I have begun to delight in the charms of in-animate nature, the safest as well as the purest passion."

At length his Bermuda affair was settled, by the claimants reducing their demands to 1,000. or 1,2001, of which the old Sheddon, the delinquent's uncle, agreed to pay 300/., Lord John Russell 2007, and Lord Lansdowne the remainder.

Perhaps the most important event connected with his later life was the destruction of the Memoirs of Lord Byron, which had been entrusted to him for publication after his death. These Memoirs had been given to Mr. Moore, and Mr. Moore had sold the copyright of them to Mr. Murray, for two thousand guineas. Lord Byron being dead, and the time for publication come, the relatives of Lord Byron took alarm, and implored Mr. Moore to allow them to be destroyed. To this Mr. Moore was weak enough to consent. That he did so from a sense of the most delicate honour there could be no question; even had he not proved that by the sacrifice of two thousand guineas and interest, which he repaid to Mr. Murray, though he had to borrow it of Messrs. Longmans. But if honour to Lord Byron's

relatives was preserved, it was neither so to Lord Byron nor the public. It was a sacred trust of the one for the gratification of the other; and had Mr. Moore had any scruples on the subject of publication, he should have returned the MS. to Lord Byron while living When dead, there was no such way out; there was no alternative, without a betrayal of the most sacred trust that could be reposed in man, but to allow the noble donor's intention to be faithfully carried out. There has been much controversy on this topic, but this still continues, and will continue to be, the result of public opinion. What renders the destruction of these memoirs the more unaccountable is, that by Moore's own practice and confession, they contained nothing objectionable, except it might be a passage bearing rather hard upon the private character of some one in a conversa tion with Madame de Stael, and a charge against Sir Samuel Romilly, which he admits could have been most easily neutralized, by a true version in a note. They could not be very immoral, one would think, for Moore lent them about amongst his lady friends, Lady Holland, Lady Mildmay, &c., and they came back without any remonstrances or disapprobation. Indeed, had there been anything objectionable, he confesses that he had full authority from Lord Byron to alter or annul.

One of the secrets of Mr. Moore's successful industry, perhaps, may be found in the fact that, spite of his social disposition, and of all the fascinations of society for a man of his fame, wit, and accomplishments, he lived the greater part of his life after his marriage in the country. What is also highly commendable is, that his habits of life with the wealthy aristocracy never seduced him into living in expensive houses. All his residences are of the humblest description, and of a rent seldom passing 401. a-year, and for the greater part of his life, as we have seen, only 251. Yet we have a suspicion that this prudence originated with his wife, for we always find that whenever Moore came into possession of money, or had a prospect of it, he began to live expensively.-Borrowed a large house of Lord Lansdowne, at Richmond, one summer; borrowed his friends' carriages; gave great dinners and fêtes champêtres; and, therefore, at the time of his death, though he confesses to have made 30,000!. by his writings, he had nothing to leave to his wife, his sole survivor, but his Diary in MS. Amongst the various places of abode, two only were residences of much duration. These were Mayfield cottage, near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, and Sloperton cottage, near Devizes, in Wiltshire.

Mayfield is not a particularly picturesque village, nor is the immediate neighbourhood striking; but it lies in a fine country, and within a short distance of it are Dovedale, and other beautiful scenes in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The recommendations of Mayfield have been thus enumerated by a cotemporary writer in a periodical. "Moore's cottage is in a secluded part of Mayfield, a village on the Staffordshire side of the river Dove, about two miles from Ashbourne. It is a spot not often alluded to in literature, though the neighbourhood has been peculiarly honoured by the presence of

literary men. Three miles from Mayfield is Wotton Hall, where Rousseau lived several years; where he botanized, and where he wrote his Confessions. One mile from Mayfield, on the other side of the Dove, lived a great, and perhaps a much better man than Rousseau, but who will not attain an equal renown-Michael Thomas Sadler. At Oakover, one mile from Mayfield, is the residence of the late Mr. Ward, author of Tremaine. Two miles further up the river, in the loveliest of all villages, a grotto is still preserved in which Congreve wrote his first drama. A ten minutes' walk affords a view of the grand entrance to Dovedale, immortalized by old Izaak Walton. At Tissington, another most exquisite village, like the former, without workhouse or alehouse, lived Greaves, the author of the Spiritual Quixote. Dr. Taylor, one of Dr. Johnson's most esteemed friends, was an inhabitant of Ashbourne. The great lexicographer was a visitor of this neighbourhood, and some of his most amusing conversations and peculiarities are recorded by Boswell while staying in this quiet town. Mayfield cottage bears now some claim to the notice of the lovers of literature, from its being the residence of Mr. Alfred Butler, the clever author of the novels Elphinstone and the Herberts."

It was not, however, the attractions enumerated in the above passage which determined the settlement of Moore there. His wife and himself were travelling along from a scene of great aristocratic splendour, of which they had become so weary, that they sighed for the utmost simplicity, retirement, and repose, and vowed that they would take the very first place of such a character that they found vacant. Mayfield cottage was the one. "It was a poor place," said Moore to myself, "little better than a barn, but we at once took it, and set about making it habitable."

It is no doubt from some such remark on the part of the poet that a paragraph originated which I have lately seen going the round of the newspapers, that he wrote Lalla Rookh in a barn. That barn was, in fact, Mayfield cottage, though he describes their cottage at Kegworth also as a barn-like abode. The right-hand front window at Mayfield is pointed out as belonging to Moore's little parlour; the window at the side belonged to his not very extensive library, and the trees visible above the roof are part of the orchard, his favourite study, in which some of his choicest lyrics were composed.

The warm-hearted poet, though it was many years since he quitted Mayfield, spoke with pleasure of the enjoyment he experienced there. The country around, both in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, has many charms for a poetic eye. It was within a walk of Dovedale; and he speaks of his rambling in that enchanting glen with "his Bessy," his wife. There are, too, many persons of taste and intelligence living thereabout, from whom he and his family received every cordial attention. He was zealously engaged in working out what he deemed was to be the crowning work of his fame, Lalla Rookh, and he regarded the cottage at Mayfield, and the scene immediately surrounding it, peculiarly favourable for this purpose. "It was in