s from 'Lalla Rookh'--which I humbly
suspect will knock up ..." (he intended himself), "and show young
gentlemen that something more than having been across a camel's hump is
necessary to write a good Oriental tale. The plan, as well as the
extracts I have seen, please me very much indeed, and I feel impatient
for the whole."

And, lastly, after he had received it:--

"I have read 'Lalla Rookh.' ... I am very glad to hear of his
popularity, for Moore is a very noble fellow, in all respects, and will
enjoy it without any of the bad feelings which success, good or evil,
sometimes engenders in the men of rhyme."

He wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in a sort of jest,--"I am not quite sure
that I shall allow the Miss Byrons to read 'Lalla Rookh,'--in the first
place, on account of this sad _passion_, and in the second, that they
mayn't discover that there was a better poet than Papa."[32]

To end these quotations, let us add that, shortly before his death, he
said to Medwin:--"Moore is one of the small number of writers, who will
survive the century which has appreciated his worth. The Irish Melodies
will go to posterity with their music, and the poems and the music will
last as long as Ireland, or music or poetry."

CAMPBELL.

Campbell, the author of "Pleasures of Hope," and who stands fourth in
the triangle, was spared, with Rogers, in the famous satire--

"Come forth, oh! Campbell, give thy talents scope:
Who dare aspire, if thou must cease to hope?"

This homage was strengthened by a note, in which Byron called the
"Pleasures of Hope" one of the finest didactic poems in the English
language.

Byron's relations with Campbell were never as intimate as with other
poets. Not only because circumstances prevented it, but also in
consequence of a fault in Campbell's character, which lessened the
sympathy raised by the admiration of his talent and of his worth. This
fault consisted in an _excessive_ opinion of himself, which prevented
his being just toward his rivals, and bearing patiently with their
successes, or the criticisms of his own work.

Coleridge at this time was giving lectures upon poetry, in which he
taught a new system of poetry.

"He attacks," says Lord Byron, "the 'Pleasures of Hope,' and all other
pleasure whatever.... Campbell will be desperately annoyed. I never saw
a man (and of him I have seen very little) so sensitive. What a happy
temperament! I am sorry for it; what can _he_ fear from critici