About the same time that Bensley left the stage to become barrack-master at Knightsbridge, Moody retired from the public scene. Lady Morgan, when contrasting her father with Moody, does great injustice to the latter. She cites Cumberland as saying to Mr. Owenson, after seeing the latter play Cumberland's Major O'Flaherty:--"Mr. Owenson, I am the first author who has brought an Irish gentleman on the stage, and you are the first who ever played it _like_ a gentleman." Moody was the original Major; and Lady Morgan remarks, that he "knew as much of Ireland as he did of New Zealand. English audiences, however," she adds, "were satisfied, for they had not yet got beyond the conventional delineation of Teague and Father Foigard, types of Irish savagery and Catholic Jesuitism. Cumberland and Sheridan both thanked my father for redeeming their creations from caricature." Hereby does Moody suffer retribution. The best actor of Irishmen of his time, he was ashamed of being taken for one. His name was Cochrane; he was a native of Cork, where he had been apprenticed to his father, a hairdresser; but he chose to call himself Moody, and to declare that he was not born in Cork, but somewhere near Clare Market. Foolish ambition! Taking him at his word, Sydney Owenson rejoins that he knew as much of Ireland as he did of New Zealand! Nevertheless, Moody knew a good deal of Ireland, and something at least of Jamaica, to which island he ran away from his own, and played the leading tragic characters there for several years. He made no effect at Covent Garden, till he was cast for Captain O'Cutter, in Colman's "Jealous Wife"--an Irish gentleman before Cumberland's Major O'Flaherty. His fine humour and correct judgment gained for him the universal applause. Hitherto all stage Irishmen had been funny ruffians. Churchill has recorded the merit of Moody:-- "Long, from a nation ever hardly used, At random censured, wantonly abused, Have Britons drawn their sport, with partial view Form'd general notions from the rascal few; Condemn'd a people as for vices known, Which from their country banish'd, seek our own. At length, howe'er, the slavish chain is broke, And sense, awaken'd, scorns her ancient yoke; Taught by thee, Moody, we now learn to raise Mirth from their foibles, from their virtue, praise."