Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/223

 Rh sound!) that "elegant lightness" which befitted its mission in life. His accounts of the repeated attacks made on his virtue, and the repeated repulses he administered, fill by no means the least amusing pages of his journal. The first attempt was made by Orne, who, in 1826, proposed that Moore should edit a new annual on the plan of the "Souvenir"; and who assured the poet—always as deep in difficulties as Micawber—that, if the enterprise proved successful, it would yield him from five hundred to a thousand pounds a year. Moore, dazzled but not duped, declined the task; and the following summer, the engraver Heath made him a similar proposition, but on more assured terms. Heath was then preparing to launch upon the world of fashion his gorgeous "Keepsake"—"the toy-shop of literature," Lockhart called it; and he offered Moore, first five hundred, and then seven hundred pounds a year, if he would accept the editorship. Seven hundred pounds loomed large in the poet's fancy, but pride forbade the bargain. The author of "Lalla Rookh" could not consent to bow his laurelled head, and pilot the feeble