human
Fame of this sort is very marketable, and to-day would bring its owner big offers from the popular magazines. Their equivalent in those days was found in the annuals of the type of the _Forget-me-not_, _Souvenir_, etc.; and request after request was made to Moore for his name either as editor or contributor. The Longmans proposed to undertake such a publication, and tempted him with the prospects of £500 to £1000 a year if he would edit it. He replied, not with a direct refusal, but with a letter stating his views concerning literature of this class, which not only convinced the firm that he personally would injure his reputation by accepting, but decided them to abandon the scheme. Again, about 1827, Heath the engraver offered, first £500 and subsequently £700 a year to Moore if he would edit a new album or magazine, and at the same time tried to force on him a cheque for a hundred pounds as the price of a contribution of a hundred lines. But Moore was not to be tempted. Only once in his career did he depart from what his sense of the dignity of letters demanded, and that was at a time when he had brought himself low in purse by writing books to express his convictions, and refusing commissions that would have brought in large sums. His scruple, which nowadays seems strangely demoded, is the more respectable because he never hints a word of blame for those who did not share that