1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. 189 



and, after sandwiches, &c., retired to rest. A set of monkish 

 dresses, which had been provided, with all the proper apparatus of 

 crosses, beads, tonsures, &c., often gave a variety to our appearance and 

 to our pursuits." 



Gaming is a sort of apprentice fee, which all young men of rank, and 

 multitudes of no rank at all, pay for their entrance into that miserable 

 and silly life called fashionable. Byron, who took his share of every 

 thing, good and bad, dashed into gaming like the rest. But he made 

 the affair one of principle. " I have," says his journal, " a notion that 

 gamblers are as happy as many people, being always excited. Women, 

 wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then. But every 

 turn of the card, and cast of the die, keeps the gamester alive : besides, 

 one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else. I was 

 very fond of it when young, that is to say of Hazard, for I hate all card 

 games, even Faro. When Macco (or however they spell it) was intro- 

 duced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle of 

 the box and dice, and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or 

 bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often 

 to decide at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and 

 carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally ; but 1 had no cool- 

 ness, no judgment, no calculation." His lordship's delicacy never per- 

 ceived that gambling is robbery, the taking the purse of some fool, 

 foolish enough to risk his money on the throw of a die : his sensibi- 

 lity felt too much, to feel the radical baseness of the act of taking a man's 

 money out of his pocket, when, in nine instances out of ten, the pro- 

 cess was the direct road to his beggary and suicide. Gambling is the 

 fashion, as all the world knows ; but it is impossible to connect the 

 idea, in any instance, with dignity, feeling, or delicacy of mind. It is 

 the meanest form of avarice ! 



Moore makes the most of his noble friend's melancholy. But how 

 much of this must be attributed to the night's debauch, the glasses of 

 pure brandy, and the dash and rattle of the dice, with dashing of all 

 other kinds, to the amount of bankruptcy, is left untold. The bard's 

 constitution was originally a bad one : he made it worse by indulgence in 

 all shapes and shades of whims ; he quarrelled with the world j he had a 

 daily head-ache, and a dozen daily duns ; and, if this is not enough to 

 account for heavy spirits, without either the sublime or the profound, 

 the problem is beyond solution. 



He was now seriously bent on travel, as he says, " Vov all the world, 

 like Robinson Crusoe." And concludes a letter on the subject by 

 laughing at his friend Hobhouse, who seems to have taken the journey 

 in the fiercest resolution of authorship. " Hobhouse has made woundy 

 preparations for a book on his return one hundred pens, two gallons 

 of japan ink, and several volumes of best blank, are no bad provision for 

 a discerning public." 



From Falmouth he wrote an excellent song, which we do not recol- 

 lect to have seen in any of his publications. 



THE LISBON PACKET. 



Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809. 



Huzza, Hodgson ! we are going; 



Our embargo's off at last ; 

 Favourable breezes blowing, 



Bend the canvas o'er the mast. 



