glowed upon their altars." Having long lost, I fear, most of my Eastern learning, I can only cite, in defence of my catastrophe, an old Oriental tradition, which relates that Nimrod, when Abraham refused, at his command, to worship the fire, ordered him to be thrown into the midst of the flames.* A precedent so ancient for this sort of use of the worshipped element, appears, for all purposes at least of poetry, to be fully sufficient.

In addition to these agreeable testimonies, I have also heard, and, need hardly add, with some pride and pleasure, that parts of this work have been rendered into Persian, and have found their way to Ispahan. To this fact, as I am willing to think it, allusion is made in some lively verses, written many years since, by my friend, Mr. Luttrell:

"I'm told, dear Moore, your lays are sung,
(Can it be true, you lucky man?)
By moonlight, in the Persian tongue,
Along the streets of Ispahan."

That some knowledge of the work may have really reached that region, appears not improbable from a passage in the Travels of Mr. Frazer, who says, that "being delayed for some time at a town on the shores of the Caspian, he was lucky enough to be able to amuse himself with a copy of Lalla Rookh, which a Persian had lent him."

Of the description of Balbec, in "Paradise and the Peri," Mr. Carne, in his Letters from the East, thus speaks: "The description in Lalla Rookh of the plain and its ruins is exquisitely faithful. The minaret is on the declivity near at hand, and there wanted only the muezzin's cry to break the silence.”

I shall now tax my readers' patience with but one more of these generous vouchers. Whatever of vanity there may be in citing such tributes, they show, at least, of what great value, even in poetry, is that prosaic quality, industry; since, as the reader of the foregoing pages is now fully apprized, it was in a slow and laborious collection of small facts, that the first foundations of this fanciful Romance were laid. The friendly testimony I have just referred to, appeared, some years since, in the form in

• Tradunt autem Hebræi hanc fabulam quod Abraham in ignem missus sit quia ignem adorare noluit. - ST. HIERON. in Quæst. in Genesim.

↑ Lalla Roukh, Divertissement mêlé de Chants et de

which I now give it, and, if I recollect right, in the Athenæum :

"I embrace this opportunity of bearing my individual testimony (if it be of any value) to the extraordinary accuracy of Mr. Moore, in his topographical, antiquarian, and characteristic details, whether of costume, manners, or less-changing monuments, both in his Lalla Rookh and in the Epicurean. It has been my fortune to read his Atlantic, Bermudean, and American Odes and Epistles, in the countries and among the people to which and to whom they related; I enjoyed also the exquisite delight of reading his Lalla Rookh, in Persia itself; and I have perused the Epicurean, while all my recollections of Egypt and its still existing wonders are as fresh as when I quitted the banks of the Nile for Arabia:-I owe it, therefore, as a debt of gratitude (though the payment is most inadequate), for the great pleasure I have derived from his productions, to bear my humble testimony to their local fidelity.

"J.S. B."

Among the incidents connected with this work, I must not omit to notice the splendid Divertissement, founded upon it, which was acted at the Château Royal of Berlin, during the visit of the Grand Duke Nicholas to that capital, in the year 1822. The different stories composing the work were represented in Tableaux Vivans and songs; and among the crowd of royal and noble personages engaged in the performances, I shall mention those only who represented the principal characters, and whom I find thus enumerated in the published account of the Divertissement.†

cause. The Comte D'Artois, or Monsieur, I had met in the year 1802-3, at Donington Park, the seat of the Earl of Moira, under whose princely roof I used often and long, in those days, to find a most hospitable home. A small party of distinguished French emigrants were already staying on a visit in the house when Monsieur and his suite arrived; and among those were the present King of France and his two brothers, the Duc de Montpensier, and the Comte de Beaujolais.

Some doubt and uneasiness had, I remember, been felt by the two latter brothers, as to the reception they were likely to encounter from the new guest; and as, in those times, a cropped and unpowdered head was regarded generally as a symbol of Jacobinism, the Comte Beaujolais, who, like many other young men, wore his hair in this fashion, thought it, on the present occasion, most prudent, in order to avoid all risk of offence, not only to put powder in his hair, but also to provide himself with an artificial queue. This measure of precaution, however, led to a slight incident after dinner, which, though not very royal or dignified, was at least creditable to the social good-humour of the future Charles X. On the departure of the ladies from the dining-room, we had hardly seated ourselves in the old-fashioned style, round the fire, when Monsieur, who had happened to place himself next to Beaujolais, caught a glimpse of the ascititious tail,—which, | having been rather carelessly put on, had a good deal straggled out of its place. With a sort of scream of jocular pleasure, as if delighted at the discovery, Monsieur seized the stray appendage, and, bringing it round into full view, to the great amusement of the whole company, popped it into poor grinning Beaujolais' mouth.

On one of the evenings of this short visit of Monsieur, I remember Curran arriving unexpectedly, on his way to London; and, having come too late for dinner, he joined our party in the evening. As the foreign portion of the company was then quite new to him, I was able to be useful, by informing him of the names, rank, and other particulars of the party he found assembled, from Monsieur himself,

down to the old Duc de Lorge and the Baron de Rolle. When I had gone through the whole list, "Ah, poor fellows!" he exclaimed, with a mixture of fun and pathos in his look, truly Irish, "Poor fellows, all dismounted cavalry!

On the last evening of Monsieur's stay, I was made to sing for him, among other songs, "Farewell Bessy!" one of my earliest attempts at musical composition. As soon as I had finished, he paid me the compliment of reading aloud the words as written under the music; and most royal havoc did he make, as to this day I well remember, of whatever little sense or metre they could boast.

Among my earlier poetic writings, more than one grateful memorial may be found of the happy days I passed in this hospitable mansion*,

Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights On Donington's green lawns and breezy heights. But neither verse nor prose could do any justice to the sort of impression I still retain of those long-vanished days. The library at Donington was † extensive and valuable; and through the privilege kindly granted to me of retiring thither for study, even when the family were absent, I frequently passed whole weeks alone in that fine library, indulging in all the first airy castle-building of authorship. The various projects, indeed, of future works that used then to pass in fruitless succession through my mind, can be compared only to the waves as described by the poet,

"And one no sooner touch'd the shore, and died,
Than a new follower rose."

With that library is also connected another of my earlier poems, -the verses addressed to the Duke of Montpensier on his portrait of the Lady Adelaide Forbes; for it was there that this truly noble lady, then in the first dawn of her beauty, used to sit for that picture; while, in another part of the library, the Duke of Orleans, - engaged generally at that time with a volume of Clarendon, -was by such studies unconsciously preparing himself for the high and arduous destiny, which not only the Good

injustice, whose filial wish I know it is to keep all at Donington exactly as his noble father left it.

See p. 92. of this edition.

Genius of France, but his own sagacious and intrepid spirit, had early marked out for him.

I need hardly say how totally different were all the circumstances under which Monsieur himself and some of his followers were again seen by me in the year 1817;-the same actors, indeed, but with an entirely new change of scenery and decorations. Among the variety of aspects presented by this change, the ridiculous certainly predominated; nor could a satirist who, like Philoctetes, was smitten with a fancy for shooting at geese*, ask any better supply of such game than the high places, in France, at that period, both lay and ecclesiastical, afforded. Not being versed, however, sufficiently in French politics to venture to meddle with them, even in sport, I found a more ready conductor of laughter - for which I was then much in the mood-in those groups of ridiculous English who were at that time swarming in all directions throughout Paris, and of all whose various forms of cockneyism and nonsense I endeavoured, in the personages of the Fudge Family, to collect the concentrated essence. The result, as usual, fell very far short of what I had myself preconceived and intended. But, making its appearance at such a crisis, the work brought with it that best seasoning of all such jeux-d'esprit, the à-propos of the moment; and, accordingly, in the race of successive editions, Lalla Rookh was, for some time, kept pace with by Miss Biddy Fudge.

The series of trifles contained in this volume, entitled "Rhymes on the Road," were written partly as their title implies, and partly at a subsequent period from memorandums made on the spot. This will account for so many of those pieces being little better, I fear, than "prose fringed with rhyme." The journey to a part of which those Rhymes owed their existence was commenced in company with Lord John Russell in the autumn of the year 1819. After a week or two passed at Paris, to enable Lord John to refer to Barillon's Letters for a new edition of his Life of Lord Russell then preparing, we set out together for the Simplon. At Milan, the agreeable society of the late Lord Kinnaird detained us for a

few days; and then my companion took the route to Genoa, while I proceeded on a visit to Lord Byron, at Venice.

It was during the journey, thus briefly described, I addressed the well-known Remonstrance to my noble friend†, which has of late been frequently coupled with my prophetic verses on the Duke of Wellington ‡, from the prescient spirit with which it so confidently looked forward to all that Lord John has since become in the eyes of the world.

Of my visit to Lord Byron,—an event, to me so memorable,-I have already detailed all the most interesting particulars in my published Life of the poet; and shall here only cite, from that work, one passage, as having some reference to a picture mentioned in the following pages. "As we were conversing after dinner about the various collections of paintings I had seen that morning, on my saying that, fearful as I was of ever praising any picture, lest I should draw on myself the connoisseur's sneer, for my pains, I would yet, to him, venture to own that I had seen a picture at Milan, which- The Hagar!' he exclaimed, eagerly interrupting me; and it was, in fact, that very picture I was about to mention to him as having awakened in me, by the truth of its expression, more real emotion than any I had yet seen among the chefs-d'œuvre of Venice."

In the society I chiefly lived with, while at Rome, I considered myself singularly fortunate; though but a blind and uninitiated worshipper of those powers of Art of which my companions were all high-priests. Canova himself, Chantrey, Lawrence, Jackson, Turner, Eastlake,— such were the men of whose presence and guidance I enjoyed the advantage in visiting all that unrivalled Rome can boast of beautiful and grand. That I derived from this course of tuition any thing more than a very humbling consciousness of my own ignorance and want of taste, in matters of art, I will not be so dishonest as to pretend. But, to the stranger in Rome every step forms an epoch; and, in addition to all its own countless appeals to memory and imagination, the agreeable auspices under which I first visited all its memorable places

"Pinnigero, non armigero in corpore tela exerceantur:" the words put by Accius in the mouth of Philoctetes.

† See Miscellaneous Poems. See p. 194. of this edition. Abraham dismissing Hagar, by Guercino.

the political state of Europe at that period, and those "bricconi," as he styled them, the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance; and, before I left Rome, he kindly presented to me a set of engravings from some of his finest statues, to

In one of the poems contained in this volume allusion is made to an evening not easily forgotten, when Chantrey and myself were taken by Canova to the Borghese Palace, for the purpose of showing us, by the light of a taper-his favourite mode of exhibiting that work-his beautiful statue of the Princess Borghese, called the Venere Vincitrice. In Chantrey's eagerness to point out some grace or effect that peculiarly struck him, he snatched the light out of Canova's hand; and to this circumstance the following passage of the poem referred to was meant to allude:

When he, thy peer in art and fame,
Hung o'er the marble with delight; ‡
And, while his ling'ring hand would steal
O'er every grace the taper's rays,
Gave thee, with all the gen'rous zeal
Such master-spirits only feel,

The best of fame-a rival's praise.

One of the days that still linger most pleasantly in my memory, and which, I trust, neither Lady Calcott nor Mr. Eastlake have quite forgotten, was that of our visit together to the Palatine Mount, when, as we sauntered about that picturesque spot, enjoying the varied views of Rome which it commands, they made me, for the first time, acquainted with Guidi's spirited Ode on the Arcadians, in which there is poetry enough to make amends for all the nonsense of his rhyming brethren. Truly and grandly does he exclaim,

** Indomita e superba ancor è Roma
Benchè si veggià col gran busto a terra;

Son piene di splendor le sue ruine, E il gran cenere suo si mostra eterno." With Canova, while sitting to Jackson for a portrait ordered by Chantrey, I had more than once some interesting conversation,—or, rather, listened while he spoke, respecting

collection of Poems, which a Roman poet, named Missirini, had written in praise of his different “Marmi.”

When Lord John Russell and myself parted, at Milan, it was agreed between us, that after a short visit to Rome, and (if practicable within the allowed time) to Naples, I was to rejoin him at Genoa, and from thence accompany him to England. But the early period for which Parliament was summoned, that year, owing to the violent proceedings at Manchester, rendered it necessary for Lord John to hasten his return to England. I was, therefore, most fortunate, under such circumstances, in being permitted by my friends Chantrey and Jackson to join in their journey homeward; through which lucky arrangement, the same precious privilege I had enjoyed, at Rome, of hearing the opinions of such practised judges, on all the great works of art I saw in their company, was continued afterwards to me through the various collections we visited together, at Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, Milan, and Turin.

To some of those pictures and statues that most took my fancy, during my tour, allusions will be found in a few of the poems contained in this volume. But the great pleasure I derived from these and many other such works arose far more from the poetical nature of their subjects than from any judgment I had learned to form of their real merit as works of art, -a line of lore in which, notwithstanding my course of schooling, I remained, I fear, unenlightened to the last. For all that was lost upon me, however, in the halls of Art, I was more than consoled in the cheap picturegallery of Nature; and a glorious sunset I witnessed in ascending the Simplon is still remembered by me with a depth and freshness of feeling which no one work of art I saw in the galleries of Italy has left behind.

I have now a few words to devote to a somewhat kindred subject, with which a poem or

A statue, I believe, of Pius VI. † See Rhymes on the Road, Extr. xv.

A slight alteration here has rendered these verses more true to the actual fact than they were in their original form.