1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron, 187 



fucius to the Ten Commandments, believes that virtue is a mere feeling, 

 not a principle, and that death is an eternal sleep." 



Of this farrago, Moore pronounces, that if it was meant for his usual 

 purpose " of displaying his wit at the expense of his character ;" it must 

 be recollected, that it was addressed to " one of those officious, self-satis- 

 fied advisers, whom it was at all times the delight of Lord Byron to 

 astonish and mystify." It was one of those " tricks with which through 

 life, he amused himself at the expense of the numerous quacks, which his 

 celebrity drew round him." So much for the biographer's homage to 

 Mr. Dallas. 



His first literary event was in 1808 ; the Edinburgh Review cri- 

 tique on the ' ' Hours of Idleness." He had notice of it, and mentions it 

 to one of his correspondents, Mr. Becher : " I am of so much import- 

 ance, that a most violent attack is preparing for me in the next number 

 of the Edinburgh Review. This I had from the authority of a friend, 

 who has seen the proof and MS. of the critique. You know the 

 system of the Edinburgh Review gentlemen is universal attack. They 

 praise none, and neither the public nor the author expects praise from 

 them. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never 

 praise any except the partizans of Lord Holland and Co." , 



The critique came out, and it vexed him for the moment. " A friend 

 who found him in the first moments of excitement, after reading the 

 article, inquired anxiously, whether he had just received a challenge !" 

 (By the by, not a very complimentary question to his Lordship's nerves.) 

 But Byron's " Satire," in petto, fortified him against the shock. On that 

 day he tried his double allies, wine and ink; drank three bottles of 

 claret, and reinforced his " Satire," " by twenty lines." When a man 

 has nothing else for it, he has, as Shylock says, " revenge." Lord 

 Byron had already anticipated the insult by " 380 lines of revenge ;" the 

 additional " twenty made him feel himself considerably better," and he 

 proceeded forthwith to cut up the critics with the delight of a fresh sti- 

 mulus for " savagery." 



At this time he writes to his friend Becher : " Entre nous, I am 

 cursedly dipt; my debts, every thing inclusive, will be nine or ten thou- 

 sand before I am twenty-one." He had the early fondness for travel 

 natural to every body, boobies and all. But his fondness was for regions 

 beyond what the Travellers' Club call Pcstchaise-land. He longed to sun 

 himself in India, or at least in Persia. But India, probably as being the 

 further off, was his favourite. He writes to his mother in 1808: " I 

 wish you would inquire of Major Watson (who is an old Indian) what 

 things it will be necessary to provide for my voyage. I have already 

 procured a friend to write to the Arabic Professor at Cambridge for 

 some information I am anxious to possess. After all, you see my pro- 

 ject is not a bad one. If I do not travel now, I never shall, and all men 

 should one day or other. I have at present no connexions to keep me at 

 home, no wife, no unprovided sisters, brothers, &c." 



But first of the first, he was to bring out his Satire, and silence the 

 critics for ever. This none would have blamed ; but he freighted his 

 " shippe of fooles" with the name of every poet, and almost every man of 

 his acquaintance. He frequently too changed his colouring in the course 

 of his revisions ; and Lord Carlisle who flourished in the MS., 



" On one alone Apollo deigns to smile, 

 And crowns a new Roscommori in Carlisle," 

 2 B 2 



