human
Met Moore at dinner, and spent a very pleasant three hours. He told his stories with a hit-or-miss air, as if accustomed to people of rapid apprehension. It being asked at Paris who they would have as godfather for Rothschild's child, 'Talleyrand,' said a Frenchman. _'Pourquoi, Monsieur?' 'Parce qu'il est le moins chrétien possible.'_ Moore is a delightful, gay, voluptuous, refined, natural creature; infinitely more unaffected than Wordsworth; not blunt and uncultivated like Chantrey, or bilious and shivering like Campbell. No affectation, but a true, refined, delicate, frank poet, with sufficient air of the world to prove his fashion, sufficient honesty of manner to show fashion has not corrupted his native taste; making allowance for prejudices instead of condemning them, by which he seemed to have none himself; never talking of his own work from an intense consciousness that everybody else did; while Wordsworth is talking of his own productions from apprehension that they are not enough matter of conversation. Men must not be judged too hardly. Success or failure will either destroy or better the finest natural parts. Unless one had heard Moore tell the above story of Talleyrand, it would have been impossible to conceive the air of half-suppressed impudence, the delicate light-horse canter of phrase, with which the words floated out of his sparkling anacreontic mouth.