of those literary projects on which I had counted most sanguinely in the calculation of my resources; and, though I had found sufficient time to furnish my musical publisher with the Eighth Number of the Irish Melodies, and also a Number of the National Airs, these works alone, I knew, would yield but an insufficient supply, compared with the demands so closely and threateningly hanging over me. In this difficulty I called to mind a subject,—the Eastern allegory of the Loves of the Angels,—on which I had, some years before, begun a prose story, but in which, as a theme for poetry, I had now been anticipated by Lord Byron, in one of the most sublime of his many poetical miracles, "Heaven and Earth." Knowing how soon I should be lost in the shadow into which so gigantic a precursor would cast me, I had endeavored, by a speed of composition which must have astonished my habitually slow pen, to get the start of my noble friend in the time of publication, and thus afford myself the sole chance I could perhaps expect, under such unequal rivalry, of attracting to my work the attention of the public. In this humble speculation, however, I failed; for both works, if I recollect right, made their appearance at the same time. In the mean while, the negotiation which had been entered into with the American claimants, for a reduction of the amount of their demands upon me, had continued to "drag its slow length along ;" nor was it till the month of September, 1822, that, by a letter from the Messrs. Longman, I received the welcome intelligence that the terms offered, as our ultimatum, to the opposite party, had been at last accepted, and that I might now with safety return to England. I lost no time, of course, in availing myself of so welcome a privilege; and as all that remains now to be told of this trying episode in my past life may be comprised within a small compass, I shall trust to the patience of my readers for tolerating the recital. On arriving in England I learned, for the first time, having been, till then, kept very much in darkness on the subject,—that, after a long and frequently interrupted course of negotiation, the amount of the claims of the American merchants had been reduced to the sum of one thousand guineas, and that towards the payment of this the uncle of my deputy, a rich London merchant,-had been brought, with some difficulty, to contribute three hundred pounds. I was likewise informed, that a very dear and distinguished friend of mine, to whom, by his own desire, the state of the negotiation was, from time to time, reported, had, upon finding that there appeared, at last, some chance of an arrangement, and learning also the amount of the advance made by my deputy's relative, immediately deposited in the hands of a banker the remaining portion (7501.) of the required sum, to ie there in readiness for the final settlement of the der and. Though still adhering to my original purpose of owing to my own exertions alone the means of relief from these difficulties, I yet felt a pleasure in allowing this thoughtful deposite to be applied to the generous purpose for which it was destined; and having employed in this manner the 7501., I then transmitted to my kind friend,—I need hardly say with what feelings of thankfulness,—a check on my publishers for the amount. Though this effort of the poet's purse was but, as usual, a new launch into the Future,a new anticipation of yet unborn means,-the result showed that, at least in this instance, I had not counted on my bank "in nubibus" too sanguinely; for, on receiving my publishers' account, in the month of June following, I found 1000l. placed to my credit from the sale of the Loves of the Angels, and 500l. from the Fables of the Holy Alliance. I must not omit to mention, that, among the resources at that time placed at my disposal, was one small and sacred sum, which had been set apart by its young possessor for some such beneficent purpose. This fund, amounting to about 3001., arose from the proceeds of the sale of the first edition of a biographical work, then recently published, which will long be memorable, as well from its own merits and subject, as from the lustre that has been since shed back upon it from the public career of its noble author. To a gift from such hands might well have been applied the words of Ovid, -acceptissima semper Munera sunt, auctor quæ pretiosa facit. In this volume, and its immediate successor, will be found collected almost all those delinquencies of mine, in the way of satire, which have appeared, from time to time, in the pub lic journals, during the last twenty or thirty years. The comments and notices required to throw light on these political trifles must be reserved for our next volume. PREFACE ΤΟ THE NINTH VOLUME. IN one of those Notices, no less friendly than they are able and spirited, which this new Edition of my Poetical Works has called forth from a leading political journal, I find, in reference to the numerous satirical pieces contained in these volumes, the following suggestion:"It is now more than a quarter of a century since this bundle of political pasquinades set the British public in a roar; and though the events to which they allude may be well known to every reader, ‘Cujus octavum trepidavit ætas there are many persons, now forming a part of the literary public, who have come into existence since they happened, and who cannot be expected, even if they had the leisure and opportunity, to rummage the files of our old newspapers for a history of the perishable facts on which Mr. Moore has so often rested the flying artillery of his wit. Many of those facts will be considered beneath the notice of the grave historian; and it is, therefore, incumbent on Mr. Moore-if he wishes his political squibs, imbued as they are with a wit and humor quite Aristophanic, to be relished, as they deserve to be relished, by our great-grandchildren-to preface them with a rapid summary of the events which gave them birth." Without pausing here to say how gratifying it is to me to find my long course of AntiTory warfare thus tolerantly, and even generously spoken of, and by so distinguished an organ of public opinion, I shall, as briefly as I can, advert to the writer's friendly suggestion, and then mention some of those reasons which have induced me to adopt it. That I was disposed, at first, to annex some such commentary *The Times Jan. 9, 1841. to this series of squibs, may have been collected from the concluding sentences of my last Preface; but a little further consideration has led me to abandon this intention. To that kind of satire which deals only with the lighter follies of social life, with the passing modes, whims, and scandal of the day, such illustrative comments become, after a short time, necessary. But the true preserving salt of political satire is its applicability to future times and generations, as well as to those which had first called it forth; its power of transmitting the scourge of ridicule through succeeding periods, with a lash still fresh for the back of the bigot and the oppressor, under whatever new shape they may present themselves. I can hardly flatter myself with the persuasion that any one of the satirical pieces contained in this Volume is kely to possess this principle of vitality; but I feel quite certain that, without it, not all the notes and illustrations in which even the industry of Dutch commentatorship could embalm them would ensure to these trifles a life much beyond the present hour. Already, to many of them, that sort of relish by far the least worthy source of their success-which the names of living victims lend to such sallies, has become, in the course of time, wanting. But, as far as their appositeness to the passing political events of the day has yet been tried-and the dates of these satires range over a period of nearly thirty years their ridicule, thanks to the undying nature of human absurdity, appears to have lost, as yet, but little of the original freshness of its first application. Nor is this owing to any peculiar felicity of aim in the satire itself, but to the sameness, throughout that period, of all its original objects;—the unchangeable nature of that spirit of Monopoly by which, under all its various impersonations, commercial, religious, and political, these satires had been first provoked. To refer but to one instance, the Corn Question,-assuredly, the entire appositeness, at this very moment, of such versicles as the following, redounds far less to the credit of poesy than to the disgrace of legislation, How can you, my Lord, thus delight to torment all That, being by nature so little prone to spleen tioning some particulars respecting an early squib of mine,—the Parody on the Prince Regent's Letter,-I spoke of a dinner at which I was present on the very day of the first publication of that Parody, when it was the subject of much conversation at table, and none of the party, except our host, had any suspicion that I was the author of it. This host was Lord Holland; and as such a name could not but lend value to any anecdote connected with literature, I only forbore the pleasure of adding such an ornament to my page, from knowing that Lord Holland had long viewed with disapprobation and regret much of that conduct of the Whig party towards the Regent in 1812-13,† of the history of which this squib, and the welcome reception it met with, forms an humble episode. or bitterness, I should yet have frequented so much the thorny paths of satire, has always, to myself and those best acquainted with me, been a matter of surprise. By supposing the imagination, however, to be, in such cases, the sole or chief prompter of the satire-which, in my own instance, I must say, it has generally been -an easy solution is found for the difficulty. The same readiness of fancy which, with but little help from reality, can deck out "the Cynthia of the minute" with all possible attrac- | tions, will likewise be able, when in the vein, to shower ridicule on a political adversary, without allowing a single feeling of real bitterness to mix itself with the operation. Even that sternest of all satirists, Dante, who, not content with the penal fire of the pen, kept an Inferno ever ready to receive the victims of his wrath,-even Dante, on becoming acquainted with some of the persons whom he had thus doomed, not only revoked their awful sentence, but even honored them with warm praise; and probably, on a little further acquaintance, the instances I could give of the lightness of would have admitted them into his Paradiso. his hand at such trifles, there is one no less When thus loosely and shallowly even the sub-characteristic of his good-nature than his wit, lime satire of Dante could strike its roots in his own heart and memory, it is easy to conceive how light and passing may be the feeling of hostility with which a partisan in the field of satire plies his laughing warfare; and how often it may happen that even the pride of hitting his mark outlives but a short time the flight of the shaft. Lord Holland himself, in addition to his higher intellectual accomplishments, possessed in no ordinary degree the talent of writing easy and playful vers de société; and, among as it accompanied a copy of the octavo edition of Bayle, which, on hearing me rejoice one day that so agreeable an author had been at last made portable, he kindly ordered for me from Paris. So late, indeed, as only a month or two before his lordship's death, he was employing himself, with all his usual cheerful eagerness, I cannot dismiss from my hands these politi- in translating some verses of Metastasio; and cal trifles, "This swarm of themes that settled on iny pen, Which I, like summer-flies, shake off again,”— without venturing to add that I have now to connect with them one mournful recollectionone loss from among the circle of those I have longest looked up to with affection and admiration-which I little thought, when I began this series of prefatory sketches, I should have to mourn before their close. I need hardly add, that, in thus alluding to a great light of the social and political world recently gone out, I mean the late Lord Holland. It may be recollected, perhaps, that, in men *In his Convito he praises very warmly some persons whom he had before abused.-See Foscolo, Discorso sul Testo di Dante. This will be seen whenever those valuable papers come occasionally consulted both Mr. Rogers and myself as to different readings of some of the lines. In one of the letters which I received from him while thus occupied, I find the following postscript: "Tis thus I turn th' Italian's song, Nor deem I read his meaning wrong. But with rough English to combine The sweetness that's in every line, Asks for your Muse, and not for mine. Sense only will not quit the score; We must have that, and-little More." He then adds, "I send you, too, a melancholy Epigram of mine, of which I have seen many, alas, witness the truth :— to be published, which Lord Holland left behind him, containing Memoirs of his own times and of those immediately preceding them. In sixteen volumes, published at Paris, by Desocr. "A minister's answer is always so kind! I starve, and he tells me he'll keep me in mind. about thirteen or fourteen lines of it. The story to be told in letters from a young Epicurean philosopher, who, in the second century of the Christian era, goes to Egypt for the purpose of discovering the elixir of immortality, which is supposed to be one of the secrets of the Egyptian priests. During a Festival on the Nile, he meets with a beautiful maiden, the daughter of one of the priests lately dead. She enters the catacombs, and disappears. He hovers around the spot, and at last finds the well and secret passages, &c., by which those who are initiated enter. He sees this maiden in one of those theatrical spectacles which formed a part of the subterranean Elysium of the Pyramids-finds opportunities of conversing with her their intercourse in this myste The only portion of the mass of trifles contained in this volume, that first found its way to the public eye through any more responsible channel than a newspaper, was the Letters of the Fudge Family in England, a work which was sure, from its very nature, to encounter the double risk of being thought dull as a mere sequel, and light and unsafe as touching on follies connected with the name of Religion. Into the question of the comparative dulness of any of my productions, it is not for me, of course, to enter; but to the charge of treating religious subjects irreverently, I shall content myself with replying in the words of Pascal,-rious region described. They are discovered; "Il a bien de la différence entre rire de la religion et rire de ceux qui la profanent par leurs opinions extravagantes." PREFACE ΤΟ THE TENTH VOLUME. THE Story which occupies this volume was intended originally to be told in verse; and a great portion of it was at first written in that form. This fact, as well as the character, perhaps, of the whole work, which a good deal partakes of the cast and coloring of poetry, have been thought sufficient to entitle it to a place in this general collection of my poetical writings. How little akin to romance or poesy were some of the circumstances under which this work was first projected by me, the reader may have seen from a preceding preface ;* and the following rough outline, which I have found among my papers, dated Paris, July 25, 1820, will show both my first general conception, or foreshadowing of the story, and likewise the extent to which I thought right, in afterwards working out this design, to reject or modify some of its details. 66 and he is thrown into those subterranean prisons, where they who violate the rules of Initiation are confined. He is liberated from thence by the young maiden, and taking flight together, they reach some beautiful region, where they linger, for a time, delighted, and she is near becoming a victim to his arts. But taking alarm, she flies; and seeks refuge with a Christian monk, in the Thebaid, to whom her mother, who was secretly a Christian, had consigned her in dying. The struggles of her love with her religion. A persecution of the Christians takes place, and she is seized (chiefly through the unintentional means of her lover) and suffers martyrdom. The scene of her martyrdom described, in a letter from the Solitary of the Thebaid, and the attempt made by the young philosopher to rescue her. He is carried off from thence to the cell of the Solitary. His letters from that retreat, after he has become a Christian, devoting his thoughts entirely to repentance and the recollection of the beloved saint who had gone before him.— If I don't make something out of all this, the deuce is in't." According to this plan, the events of the story were to be told in Letters, or Epistolary Poems, addressed by the philosopher to a young Athenian friend; but, for greater variety, as well as convenience, I afterwards distributed the task of narration among the chief Began my Egyptian Poem, and wrote personages of the Tale. The great difficulty, * Preface to the Eighth Volume, p. 40 of this edition. however, of managing, in rhyme, the minor details of a story, so as to be clear without growing prosaic, and still more, the diffuse length to which I saw narration in verse would extend, deterred me from following this plan any further; and I then commenced the tale anew in its present shape. Of the Poems written for my first experiment, a few specimens, the best I could select, were introduced into the prose story; but the remainder I had thrown aside, and nearly forgotten even their existence, when a circumstance somewhat characteristic, perhaps, of that trading spirit which has now converted Parnassus itself into a market, again called my attention to them. The late Mr. Macrone, to whose general talents and enterprise in business all who knew him will bear ready testimony, had long been anxious that I should undertake for him some new Poem or Story, affording such subjects for illustration as might call into play the fanciful pencil of Mr. Turner. Other tasks and ties, however, had rendered my compliance with this wish impracticable; and he was about to give up all thoughts of attaining his object, when on learning from me accidentally that the Epicurean was still my own property, he proposed to purchase of me the use of the copyright for a single illustrated edition. The terms proffered by him being most liberal, I readily acceded to the proposed ar rangement; but, on further consideration, there arose some difficulty in the way of our treaty-the work itself being found insufficient to form a volume of such dimensions as would yield any hope of defraying the cost of the numerous illustrations then intended for it. Some modification, therefore, of our terms was thought necessary; and then first was the notion suggested to me of bringing forth from among my papers the original sketch, or opening of the story, and adding these fragments, as a sort of make-weight, in the mutual adjustment of our terms. That I had myself regarded the first experiment as a failure, was sufficiently shown by my relinquishment of it. But, as the published work had then passed through several editions, and had been translated into most of the languages of Europe, it was thought that an insight into the anxious process by which such success had been attained, might, as an encouragement, at least, to the humble merit of painstaking, be deemed of some little use. The following are the translations of this Tale which have reached me: viz. two in French; two in Italian, (Milan, 1836-Venice, 1835 ;) one in German, (Inspruc, 1828;) and one in Dutch, by M. Herman van Loghem, (Deventer, 1829.) |