I occasionally met Moore in public, and once or twice at public dinners. One of the most agreeable evenings I ever passed was in 1830, at a dinner given to him by the members of "The Literary Union." This club was founded in 1829 by the poet Campbell. I shall have to speak of it when I write a "Memory" of him. Moore was in strong health at that time, and in the zenith of his fame. There were many men of mark about him,--leading wits and men of letters of the age. He was full of life, sparkling and brilliant in all he said, rising every now and then to say something that gave the hearers delight, and looking as if "dull care" had been ever powerless to check the overflowing of his soul. But although no bard of any age knew better how to "Wreathe the bowl with flowers of the soul," he had acquired the power of self-restraint, and could stop when the glass was circulating too freely. At the memorable dinner of the Literary Fund, at which the good Prince Albert presided, (on the 11th of May, 1842,) the two poets, Campbell and Moore, had to make speeches. The author of the "Pleasures of Hope," heedless of the duty that devolved upon him, had "confused his brain." Moore came in the evening of that day to our house; and I well remember the terms of true sorrow and bitter reproach in which he spoke of the lamentable impression that one of the great authors of the age and country must have left on the mind of the royal chairman, then new among us. It is gratifying to record, that the temptations to which the great lyric poet, Thomas Moore, was so often and so peculiarly exposed, were ever powerless for wrong. Moore sat for his portrait to Shee, Lawrence, Newton, Maclise, Mulvany, and Richmond, and to the sculptors Ternerani, Chantrey, Kirk, and Moore. On one occasion of his sitting, he says,--"Having nothing in my round potato face but what painters cannot catch,--mobility of character,--the consequence is, that a portrait of me can be only one or other of two disagreeable things,--_caput mortuum_, or a caricature." Richmond's portrait was taken in 1843. Moore says of it,--"The artist has worked wonders with unmanageable faces such as mine." Of all his portraits, this is the one that pleases me best, and most forcibly recalls him to my remembrance. I soon learned to love the man. It was easy to do so; for Nature had endowed him with that rare, but happy gift,--to have pleasure in giving pleasure, and pain in giving pain; while his life was, or at all events seemed to be, a practical comment on his own lines:-- "They may rail at this life; from the hour I began it, I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss."