mfries, was much admired by Burns, who used to get him to try over the
words which he composed to new melodies. He is brother of Macculloch of
Ardwell.

_November_ 22.--MOORE. I saw Moore (for the first time, I may say) this
season. We had indeed met in public twenty years ago. There is a manly
frankness, and perfect ease and good breeding about him which is
delightful. Not the least touch of the poet or the pedant. A
little--very little man. Less, I think, than Lewis, and somewhat like
him in person; God knows, not in conversation, for Matt, though a clever
fellow, was a bore of the first description. Moreover, he looked always
like a schoolboy. I remember a picture of him being handed about at
Dalkeith House. It was a miniature I think by Sanders,[10] who had
contrived to muffle Lewis's person in a cloak, and placed some poignard
or dark lanthorn appurtenance (I think) in his hand, so as to give the
picture the cast of a bravo. "That like Mat Lewis?" said Duke Henry, to
whom it had passed in turn; "why, that is like a MAN!" Imagine the
effect! Lewis was at his elbow.[11] Now Moore has none of this
insignificance; to be sure his person is much stouter than that of
M.G.L., his countenance is decidedly plain, but the expression is so
very animated, especially in speaking or singing, that it is far more
interesting than the finest features could have rendered it.

I was aware that Byron had often spoken, both in private society and in
his Journal, of Moore and myself in the same breath, and with the same
sort of regard; so I was curious to see what there could be in common
betwixt us, Moore having lived so much in the gay world, I in the
country, and with people of business, and sometimes with politicians;
Moore a scholar, I none; he a musician and artist, I without knowledge
of a note; he a democrat, I an aristocrat--with many other points of
difference; besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both
tolerably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a strong
one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is
going forward than to maintain our dignity as lions; and we have both
seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls the
imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses in
the air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met in an
alehouse, and who called himself "the _great_ Twalmley--inventor of the
floodgate iron for smoothin