If the washy liberal patriotism of Moore's very early years
had any vitality at all, such as would have qualified it for a harder
struggle than jeering at the Holy Alliance, and singing after-dinner songs
of national sentimentalism to the applause of Whig lords and ladies, this
American experience may beheld to have been its death-blow. He now saw
republicans face to face; and found that they were not for him, nor he for
them. He returned to England in 1806; and soon afterwards published his
_Odes and Epistles_, comprising many remarks, faithfully expressive of his
perceptions, on American society and manners.
The volume was tartly criticised in the _Edinburgh Review_ by Jeffrey, who
made some rather severe comments upon the improprieties chargeable to
Moore's early writings. The consequence was a challenge, and what would
have been a duel at Chalk Farm, but for unloaded pistols and police
interference. This _fiasco_ soon led to an amicable understanding between
Moore and Jeffrey; and a few years later, about the end of 1811, to a
friendship of closer intimacy between the Irish songster and his great
poetic contemporary Lord Byron. His lordship, in his youthful satire of
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, had made fun of the unbloody duel.
This Moore resented, not so much as a mere matter of ridicule as because
it involved an ignoring or a denial of a counter-statement of the matter
put into print by himself.
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