livid, half-starved visage presented itself through the lattice, and a
thin, shrill voice discordantly ejaculated,--"Come in, gentlemen, come
in. _Don't be afeard!_ I'm only a tailor at work on the premises."
This villanous salutation damped sadly the illusion of the scene;
and it was some time before we rallied sufficiently from this horrible
desecration to descend to the poet's walk in the shrubbery, where,
pacing up and down the live-long morning, he composed his _Lalla
Rookh_. It is a little confined gravel-walk, in length about twenty
paces; so narrow, that there is barely room on it for two persons to
walk abreast: bounded on one side by a straggling row of stinted
laurels, on the other by some old decayed wooden paling; at the end of
it was a huge haystack. Here, without prospect, space, fields, flowers,
or natural beauties of any description, was that most imaginative poem
conceived, planned, and executed. It was at Mayfield, too, that those
bitter stanzas were written on the death of Sheridan. There is a curious
circumstance connected with them; they were sent to Perry, the
well-known editor of the _Morning Chronicle_. Perry, though no
stickler in a general way, was staggered at the venom of two stanzas, to
which I need not more particularly allude, and wrote to inquire whether
he might be permitted to omit them. The reply which he received was
shortly this: "You may insert the lines in the _Chronicle_ or not,
as you please; I am perfectly indifferent about it; but if you _do_
insert them, it must be _verbatim_." Mr. Moore's fame would not
have suffered by their suppression; his heart would have been a gainer.
Some of his happiest efforts are connected with the localities of
Ashbourne. The beautiful lines beginning

"Those evening bells, those evening bells,"