324—to Thomas Moore

August 28, 1813.

Ay, my dear Moore, "there was a time"—I have heard of your tricks, when "you was campaigning at the "King of Bohemy." 1

I am much mistaken if, some fine London spring, about the year 1815, that time does not come again. After all, we must end in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, etc., and kissing one's wife's maid. Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour to-morrow—that is, I would a month ago, but, at present, ——

Why don't you "parody that Ode?"—Do you think 2 I should be tetchy? or have you done it, and won't tell me?— You are quite right about Giamschid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within this half hour 3 .

I am glad to hear you talk of Richardson 4 , because it tells me what you won't—that you are going to beat Lucien. At least tell me how far you have proceeded. Do you think me less interested about your works, or less sincere than our friend Ruggiero? I am not—and never was. In that thing of mine, the English Bards, at the time when I was angry with all the world, I never "disparaged your parts," although I did not know you personally;—and have always regretted that you don't give us an entire work, and not sprinkle yourself in detached pieces—beautiful, I allow, and quite alone in our language, but still giving us a right to expect a Shah Nameh 5 (is that the name?) as well as gazelles. Stick to the East;—the oracle, Staël, told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing but Southey's unsaleables,—and these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't interest us, and yours will. You will have no competitor; and, if you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a "voice in the wilderness" for you; and if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalising, and pave the path for you.

I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal—something like, only more philanthropical than, Cazotte's Diable Amoureux 6 .

It would require a good deal of poesy, and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make much of 7 .

If you want any more books, there is "Castellan's Moeurs des Ottomans," the best compendium of the kind I ever met with, in six small tomes 8 .

I am really taking a liberty by talking in this style to my "elders and my betters;"—pardon it, and don't Rochefoucault 9 my motives.

Footnote 1:

  Jerry Sneak, in Foote's Mayor of Garratt (act ii.), says to Major Sturgeon, "I heard of your tricks at the King of Bohemy."

Footnote 2:

"The Ode of Horace— 'Natis in usum lætitiæ,' etc.; some passages of which I told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures:

(Moore.)

Footnote 3:

"In his first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable—'Bright as the gem of Giamschid'—but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to 'Bright as the ruby of Giamschid.' On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, 'that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a "ruby" might unluckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to "Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;"' which he accordingly did in the following edition"

(Moore).

In the Sháh Námeh, Giamschid is the fourth sovereign of the ancient Persians, and ruled seven hundred years. His jewel was a green chrysolite, the reflection of which gives to the sky its blue-green colour. Byron probably changed to "ruby" on the authority of Vathek (p. 58, ed. 1856), where Beckford writes,

"Then all the riches this place contains, as well as the carbuncle of Giamschid, shall be hers."

Footnote 4:

  Moore's reference (see note 1) to John Richardson's Dictionary of Persian, Arabic, and English (1777), suggests to Byron that Moore was at work on an Oriental poem, probably Lalla Rookh, which would surpass the Charlemagne of Lucien Buonaparte.

Footnote 5:

  The Sháh Námeh is a rhymed history of Persia, in which occurs the famous episode of Sohrab and Rustem. It was written in thirty years by Abul Kásim Firdausí, the last name being given to him by Sultan Mahmúd because he had shed over the court at Ghizni the delights of "Paradise." Firdausí is said to have lived about 950 to 1030. (See The Sháh Námeh, translated and abridged by James Atkinson.)

Footnote 6:

 Jacques Cazotte (1720-1792) wrote La Patte du Chat (1741); Mille et une Fadaises

(1742); Observations sur la lettre de Rousseau au sujet de la Musique Française

(1754); and other works. Le Diable Amoureux appeared in 1772. Cazotte escaped the September Massacres at the Abbaye in 1792, through the heroism of his daughter, but was executed on the twenty-fifth of the same month.

Footnote 7:

"I had already, singularly enough, anticipated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aërial parent in an episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circumstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, 'All I ask of your friendship is—not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author's) nature—but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aërial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery'"

(Moore).

Footnote 8:

  Brunet, s.v. "Breton de la Martinière," gives the title of the work: Moeurs, usages costumes des Othomans, et abrégé de leur histoire. Par A. L. Castellan, Paris, 1812.

Footnote 9:

  Maxime LXXXV.:

"Nous nous persuadons souvent d'aimer les gens plus puissans que nous, et néanmoins c'est l'interêt seul qui produit notre amitié; nous ne nous donnons pas à eux pour le bien que nous leur voulons faire, mais pour celui que nous en voulons recevoir."