myself."

The anecdotes he told me were all of the class of those I have
related,--simple, unostentatious. He has been frequently charged with
the weakness of undue respect for the aristocracy. I never heard him,
during the whole of our intercourse, speak of great people with whom he
had been intimate, never a word of the honors accorded to him; and,
certainly, he never uttered a sentence of satire or censure or harshness
concerning any one of his contemporaries. I cannot recall any
conversation with him in which he spoke of intimacy with the great, and
certainly no anecdote of his familiarity with men or women of the upper
orders; although he conversed with me often of those who are called the
lower classes. I remember his describing with proud warmth his visit to
his friend Boyse, at Bannow, in the County of Wexford: the delight he
enjoyed at receiving the homage of bands of the peasantry, gathered to
greet him; the arches of green leaves under which he passed; and the
dances with the pretty peasant-girls,--one in particular, with whom he
led off a country-dance.[L] Would that those who fancied him a
tuft-hunter could have heard him! They would have seen how really humble
was his heart. Indeed, a reference to his Journal will show that of all
his contemporaries, whenever he spoke of them, he had ever something
kindly to say. There is no evidence of ill-nature in any case,--not a
shadow of envy or jealousy. The sturdiest Scottish grazier could not
have been better pleased than he was to see the elegant home at
Abbotsford, or have felt prouder to know that a poet had been created a
baronet. When speaking of Wordsworth's absorption of all the talk at a
dinner-table, Moore says,--"But I was well pleased to be a listener."
And he records, that General Peachey, "who is a neighbor of Southey,
mentions some amiable traits of him."

The house at Sloperton is a small, neat, but comparatively poor cottage,
for which Moore paid originally the princely sum of forty pounds a year,
"furnished." Subsequently, however, he became its tenant under a
repairing-lease at eighteen pounds annual rent. He took possession of it
in November, 1817. Bessy was "not only satisfied, but delighted with it,
which shows the humility of her taste," writes Moore to his mother; "for
it is a small thatched cottage, and we get it furnished for forty pounds
a year." "It has a small garden and lawn in front, and a kitchen-garden
behind. Along two of the sid