I return you the ‘Tatler’ that you lent me. I think Mr. Hunt makes more of Moore’s letters than they deserve. I certainly wish Moore had not flattered him so much, but we should recollect that Moore and Mr. Hunt were at that day fellow labourers in a party, and as poor Gifford said, “politics, like misery, brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows.” I really wonder that Hunt had nothing more piquant to produce; and as to the mention of Lord Moira, I see no insincerity in it, as politics over heated Moore’s private friendship for Hunt, so it over cooled that for Lord Moira. Party is much the strongest passion of an Englishman’s mind. Friendship, love, even avarice, give way before it. There is not one of us who does not tolerate partizans whom one would indignantly reject as ordinary acquaintances. So that, on the whole, I look with a very excusing eye on the flummery with which Moore thought fit to feed the vanity of the weekly critic. As to his present opinions of the man, I suppose they are the correct ones, but I know neither him nor his works, except ‘Rimini.’
