In the intervals of several numbers of the Melodies Moore employed himself on other things. In 1812, he began to think of his great romance—his Opus Magnum—Lalla Rookh. Moore gives us the history of this poem, manufacture, sale and all; but the sale of it (in MS.) went before the manufacture. It was sold to the Messrs. Longman for 3000 guineas—not pounds: literary payments in England having been and being still made, by respectable publishers, in the more aristocratic coin. Mr. Perry, proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, made the bargain for his friend, the bard, and we suspect that without his influence and shrewdness, Moore would not have got that sum. For poets, and people of refined feelings, are the worst hands at a bargain in the world, as everybody knows. Perry said the poet of the Melodies should have the highest price ever given for any poetic work; and that being 3000 guineas, he held out for it and got it. The Longmans bought their pig in a poke, as the saying is. They were to take whatever poem Moore was pleased to write, and also to wait till it was written. This was a very pleasant sort of trade for the poet, and he went to work with that inspiration and cheerfulness of spirit which publishers, for their own sake, should do every thing to encourage in their writers. Moore retired to Mayfield Cottage, in Derbyshire, a little way from Donington Park and its library, and began to seclude himself from mankind. Having resolved that his romance should be Oriental, he crammed himself with every thing written about the East that he could, in any way, lay hands on—its manners, customs, history, religion, languages, geography, and so forth. He then began to write a long story called the “Peri’s Daughter;” but, after going a little way in it, his Pegasus stuck fast, and the attempt was put aside. He tried other ideas; but to little purpose. At last, an _Irish_ idea struck him—that of poor Catholics persecuted and kept down for their religion. By a happy dexterity he metamorphosed them into Guebres, and so, setting up the frame-work of the “Fire-Worshipers,” and clothing his Hibernian sentiments—half romance half religion—in all the sparkling phraseology of the East, he got on swimmingly. The monster, “Prophet of the Khorassan,” “Paradise and the Peri,” and the “Light of the Harem,” followed favorably; and in 1816, after three years’ incubation, he gave Lalla Rookh to the purchasers of the manuscript. To Moore’s honor, it must be said, that seeing the monetary and other embarrassments of that year, he offered to release the Longmans from their engagement, if they desired it. But they stuck manfully to their bargain; and it is pleasant to add, made handsomely by it.