the only true natural.—Now if it requires study and progressive taste to arrive at a sense of the natural, and but common feeling to enjoy the beauties of the artificial, then certainly these names have changed places since we met them in the dictionary.

are viewed under this one aspect. The man, the poet, the philosopher, are blended, and the attributes of each applied to all without distinction. One person inquires the name of a poet, because he is a reasoner; another, because he is mad; another, because he is conceited. Johnson's assertion is taken for granted-that genius is but great natural power directed towards a particular object: thus all are reduced to the same scale, and measured by the same standard. This fury of comparison knows no bounds; its abettors, at the same time that they reserve to them

Formerly, people were content with estimating books-persons are the present objects universally. It is not the pleasure or information a volume affords, which is taken into consideration, but the genius which it indicates. Each person is anxious to form his scale of excellence, and to range great names, living or dead, at certain in-selves the full advantage of dormant merit, make tervals and in different grades, self being the no such allowance to established authors. They hidden centre whither all the comparisons verge. judge them rigidly by their pages, assume that In former times works of authors were composed their love of fame and emolument would not alwith ideal or ancient models,-the humble crowd low them to let any talent lie idle, and will not of readers were content to peruse and admire.hear any arguments advanced for their unexAt present it is otherwise, every one is con-pected capabilities. scious of having either written, or at least having been able to write a book, and consequently all literary decisions affect them personally:

Scribendi nihil a me alienum puto,

The simplest and easiest effort of the mind is egotism,—it is but baring one's own breast, disclosing its curious mechanism, and giving exaggerated expressions to every-day feeling. Yet no productions have met with such success ;what authors can compete, as to popularity, with Montaigne, Byron, Rousseau? Yet we cannot but believe that there have been thousands of men in the world who could have walked the same path, and perhaps met with the same success, if they had had the same confidence. Passionate and reflecting minds are not so rare as we suppose, but the boldness that sets at nought society is. Nor could want of courage be the only obstacle: there are, and have been, we trust, many who would not exchange the privacy of their mental sanctuary, for the indulgence of spleen, or the feverish dream of popular celebrity. And if we can give credit for this power to the many who have lived unknown and shunned publicity, how much more must we not be in

is the language of the age, and the most insignificant calculate on the wonders they might have effected, had chance thrown a pen in their way. -The literary character has, in fact, extended itself over the whole face of society, with all the evils that d'Israeli has enumerated, and ten times more-it has spread its fibres through all ranks, sexes, and ages. There no longer exists what writers used to call a public-that disinterested tribunal has long since merged in the body it used to try. Put your finger on any head in a crowd-it belongs to an author, or the friend of one, and your great authors are supposed to possess a quantity of communicable celebrity: an intimacy with one of them is a sort of principality, and a stray anecdote picked up rather a valuable sort of possession. These people are always cry-clined to allow to him of acknowledged genius, ing out against personality, and personality is the whole business of their lives. They cau consider nothing as it is by itself; the cry is, who wrote it? what manner of man is he? » << where did he borrow it? They make puppets of literary men by their impatient curiosity; and when one of themselves is dragged from his malign obscurity in banter or whimsical revenge, he calls upon all the gods to bear witness to the malignity he is made to suffer.

It is this spirit which has perverted criticism, and reduced it to a play of words. To favour this vain eagerness of comparison, all powers and faculties are resolved at once into genius-that vague quality, the supposition of which is at every one's command; and characters, sublime in one respect as they are contemptible in another,

and who has manifested it in works of equal beauty, and of greater merit, inasmuch as they are removed from self? It has been said by a great living author and poet,' that the choice of a subject removed from self is the test of genius. »

a

These considerations ought, at least, to prevent us from altogether merging a writer's genius in his works, and from using the name of the poem and that of the poet indifferently. For our part, we think that if Thomas Moore had the misfortune to be metaphysical, he might have written such a poem as the Excursion,— that had he condescended to borrow, and at the same time disguise the feelings of the great Lake

⚫ Coleridge.

Poets, he might perhaps have written the best | be this-that the partial conception and confined parts of Childe Harold—and had he the disposition knowledge which they naturally possessed of a or the whim to be egotistical, he might lay bare a country, so opposed in the character of its inhamind of his own as proudly and as passionately bitants and the aspect of its scenery to their own, organized as the great lord did, whom some one occasioned them, after the manner of all imperdescribes « to have gutted himself body and soul, fect apprehenders, to seize upon its prominent for all the world to walk in and see the show. features and obvious characteristics, without enSo much for the preliminary cavils which are tering more deeply into its spirit, or catching its thrown in the teeth of Moore's admirers. They retired and less palpable beauties. The sudden have been picked up by the small fry of critics, transplantation of a European mind into Asiatic who commenced their career with a furious at- scenes can seldom be favourable to its well-being tack on him, Pope, and Campbell, but have since and progress; at least none but those of the first thought it becoming to grow out of their early order would be enabled to keep their imaginalikings. And at present they profess to prefer tions from degenerating into inconsistency and the great works which they have never read, and bombast, amid the swarms of novelties which which they will never be able to read, to those start up at every step. Thus it is that, in nearly classic poems, of which they have been the most all the oriental poems added to our literature, destructive enemies, by bethumbing and quoting we had the same monotonous assemblage of intheir beauties into triteness and common-place. sipid images, drawn from the peculiar phenomena The merits of Pope and of Moore have suffer- and natural appearances of the country. ed depreciation from the same cause- -the facility of being imitated to a certain degree. And as vulgar admiration seldom penetrates beyond this degree, the conclusion is that nothing can be easier than to write like, and even equal to, either of these poets. In the universal self-comparison, which is above mentioned, as the foundation of modern criticism, feeling is assumed to be genius-the passive is considered to imply the active power. No opinion is more common or more fallacious-it is the «flattering unction» which has inundated the world with versifiers, and which seems to under-rate the merit of compositions, in which there is more ingenuity and elegance than passion. Genius is considered to be little more than a capability of excitementthe greater the passion the greater the merit ; and the school-boy key on which Mr Moore's love and heroism are usually set, is not considered by any reader beyond his reach. This is certainly Moore's great defect; but it is more that of his taste than of any superior faculty.

We shall now proceed to notice the most laboured and most splendid of Mr Moore's productions- Lalla Rookh » :

Then if, while scenes so grand,

So beautifal, shine before thee,
Pride, for thine own dear land,

Should haply be stealing o'er thee;
Oh! let grief come first,

O'er pride itself victorious,
To think how man hath curst

What Heaven hath made so glorious.

Several of our modern poets had already chosen the luxuriant climate of the East for their imaginations to revel in, and body forth their shapes of light; but it is no less observable that they had generally failed, and the cause we believe to

We have always considered Asia as naturally the home of poetry, and the creator of poets. What makes Greece so poetical a country is, that at every step we stumble over recollections of departed grandeur, and behold the scenes where the human mind has glorified itself for ever, and played a part, the records of which can never die. But in Asia, to the same charm of viewing the places of former power-of comparing the present with the past-there is added a luxuriance of climate, and an unrivalled beauty of external nature, which, ever according with the poet's soul,

Temper, and do befit him to obey
High inspiration.

It was reserved for Mr Moore to redeem the character of oriental poetry, in a work which stands distinct, alone, and proudly pre-eminent above all that had preceded it on the same subject.

Never, indeed, has the land of the sun shone out so brightly on the children of the north-nor the sweets of Asia been poured forth-nor her Gorgeousness displayed so profusely to the delighted senses of Europe, as in the fine oriental romance of Lalla Rookh. The beauteous forms, the dazzling splendours, the breathing odours of the East, found, at last, a kindred poet in that Green Isle of the West, whose genius has long been suspected to be derived from a W..rmer clime, and here wantons and luxuriates in these voluptuous regions, as if it felt that it had at length recognised its native abode. It is amazing, indeed, how much at home Mr Moore seems to be in India, Pérsia, and Arabia; and how purely and strictly Asiatic all the colouring and imagery of his poem appears. He is thoroughly imbued

with the character of the scenes to which he transports us; and yet the extent of his knowledge is less wonderful than the dexterity and apparent facility with which he has turned it to account, in the elucidation and embellishment of his poetry. There is not a simile, a description, a name, a trait of history, or allusion of romance, which belongs to European experience, or does not indicate entire familiarity with the life, nature, and learning of the East.

ness.

consisting of many pages, should have detached and distinguishable beauties in every one of them. No great work, indeed, should have many beauties: if it were perfect it would have but one, and that but faintly perceptible, except on a view of the whole. Look, for example, at what is the most finished and exquisite production of human art-the design and elevation of a Grecian temple, in its old severe simplicity. What penury of ornament what neglect of beauties of detailwhat masses of plain surface-what rigid economical limitation to the useful and the necessary! The cottage of a peasant is scarcely more simple in its structure, and has not fewer parts that are superfluous. Yet what grandeur-what elegance what grace and completeness in the effect! The whole is beautiful-because the beauty is in the whole; but there is little merit in any of the

Nor are the barbaric ornaments thinly scattered to make up a show. They are showered lavishly over the whole work; and form, perhaps, too much the staple of the poetry, and the riches of that which is chiefly distinguished for its richWe would confine this remark, however, to the descriptions of external objects, and the allusions to literature and history-to what may be termed the matériel of the poetry we are speak-parts except that of fitness and careful finishing. ing of. The characters and sentiments are of a different order. They cannot, indeed, be said to be copies of a European nature; but still less like that of any other region. They are, in truth, poetical imaginations;-but it is to the poetry of rational, honourable, considerate, and humane Europe that they belong —and not to the childishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia.

There is something very extraordinary, we think, in this work—and something which indicates in the author, not only a great exuberance of talent, but a very singular constitution of genius. While it is more splendid in imagery-and for the most part in very good taste-more rich in sparkling thoughts and original conceptions, and more full indeed of exquisite pictures both of all sorts of beauties, and all sorts of virtues, and all sorts of sufferings and crimes, than any other poem we know of; we rather think we speak the sense of all classes of readers, when we add, that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain feeling of disappointment with that of admiration,—to excite admiration rather than any warmer sentiment of delight-to dazzle more than to enchant and, in the end, more frequently to starthe the fancy, and fatigue the attention, with the constant succession of glittering images and highstrained emotions, than to maintain a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less profuse or more systematic display of attractions.

Contrast this with a Dutch or a Chinese pleasurehouse, where every part is meant to be beautiful, and the result is deformity-where there is not an inch of the surface that is not brilliant with colour, and rough with curves and angles,—and where the effect of the whole is displeasing to the eye and the taste. We are as far as possible from meaning to insinuate that Mr Moore's poetry is of this description; on the contrary, we think his ornaments are, for the most part, truly and exquisitely beautiful, and the general design of his pieces extremely elegant and ingenious: all that we mean to say is, that there is too much ornament-too many isolated and independent beauties-and that the notice and the very admiration they excite, hurt the interest of the general design, and withdraw our attention too importunately from it.

Mr Moore, it appears to us, is too lavish of his gems and sweets; and it may truly be said of him, in his poetical capacity, that he would be richer with half his wealth. His works are not only of rich materials and graceful design, but they are everywhere glistening with small beauties and transitory inspirations-sudden flashes of fancy that blaze out and perish; like earthborn meteors that crackle in the lower sky, and unseasonably divert our eyes from the great and lofty bodies which pursue their harmonious courses in a serener region.

The style is, on the whole, rather diffuse, and We have spoken of these as faults of styletoo unvaried in its character. But its greatest fault but they could scarcely have existed without gois the uniformity of its brilliancy-the want of oc- ing deeper; and though they first strike us as casional plainness, simplicity, and repose. We have | qualities of the composition only, we find, upon a heard it observed by some very zealous admirers | little reflection, that the same general character of Mr Moore's genius, that you cannot open this belongs to the fable, the characters, and the senbook without finding a cluster of beauties in every timents-that they all are alike in the excess of page. Now, this is only another way of expressing their means of attraction-and fail to interest, what we think its greatest defect. No work, chiefly by being too interesting.

We have felt it our duty to point out the faults of our author's poetry, particularly in respect to Lalla Rookh, but it would be quite unjust to characterize that splendid poem by its faults, which are infinitely less conspicuous than its manifold beauties. There is not only a richness and brilliancy of diction and imagery spread over the whole work, that indicate the greatest activity and elegance of fancy in the author; but it is everywhere pervaded, still more strikingly, by a strain of tender and noble feeling, poured out with such warmth and abundance, as to steal insensibly on the heart of the reader, and gradually to overflow it with a tide of sympathetic emotion. There are passages indeed, and these neither few nor brief, over which the very genius of poetry seems to have breathed his richest enchantment -where the melody of the verse and the beauty of the images conspire so harmoniously with the force and tenderness of the emotion, that the whole is blended into one deep and bright stream of sweetness and feeling, along which the spirit of the reader is borne passively through long reaches of delight. Mr Moore's poetry, indeed, where his happiest vein is opened, realizes more exactly than that of any other writer, the splendid account which is given by Comus' of the song of

His mother Circe, and the sirens three,
Amid the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Who, as

they sung, would take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium.

And though it is certainly to be regretted that he should occasionally have broken the measure with more frivolous strains, or filled up its intervals with a sort of brilliant falsetto, it should never be forgotten, that his excellencies are as peculiar to himself as his faults, and, on the whole, we may assert, more characteristic of his genius.

make it possible for him even to counterfeit dulness. We must now take a slight glance at the poetry.

The first piece, entitled the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, is the longest, and, we think, certainly not the best of the series. The story, which is not in all its parts extremely intelligible, is founded on a vision, in D'Herbelot, of a daring impostor of the early ages of Islamism, who pretended to have received a later and more authoritative mission than that of the Prophet, and to be destined to overturn all tyrannies and superstitions on the earth, and to rescue all souls that believed in him. To shade the celestial radiance of his brow, he always wore a veil of silver gauze, and was at last attacked by the Caliph, and exterminated with all his adherents. On this story Mr Moore has engrafted a romantic and not very probable tale : yet, even with all its faults, it possesses a charm almost irresistible, in the volume of sweet sounds and beautiful images, which are heaped together with luxurious profusion in the general texture of the style, and invest even the faults of the story with the graceful amplitude of their rich and figured veil.

Paradise and the Peri» has none of the faults

just alluded to. It is full of spirit, elegance, and beauty, and, though slight in its structure, breathes throughout a most pure and engaging morality.

The Fire-worshippers» appears to us to be indisputably the finest and most powerful poem of them all. With all the richness and beauty of diction that belong to the best parts of Mekanna, it has a far more interesting story; and is not liable to the objections that arise against the contrivance and structure of the leading poem. The general tone of the Fire-worshippers is certainly work of great genius and beauty; and not only too much strained, but, in spite of that, it is a delights the fancy by its general brilliancy and spirit, but moves all the tender and noble feelings with a deep and powerful agitation.

The legend of Lalla Rookh is very sweetly and gaily told; and is adorned with many tender as well as lively passages-without reckoning among the latter the occasional criticisms of the omniThe last piece, entitled The Light of the scient Fadladeen, the magnificent and most in-Haram,» is the gayest of the whole; and is of a fallible grand chamberlain of the haram-whose sayings and remarks, by the by, do not agree very well with the character which is assigned himbeing for the most part very smart, snappish, and acute, and by no means solemn, stupid, and pompous, as one would have expected. Mr Moore's genius, perhaps, is too inveterately lively, to

■ Milton, who was much patronized by the illustrious House of Egerton, wrote the Mask of Comus, upon John Egerton, then Earl of Bridgewater, when that nobleman, in 1634, was appointed Lord President of the principality of Wales. It was performed by three of his Lordship's children, before the Earl, at Ludlow Castle.-See the Works of the present Earl of Bridgewater.

very slender fabric as to fable or invention. In truth, it has scarcely any story at all; but is made up almost entirely of beautiful songs and fascinating descriptions.

On the whole, it may be said of « Lalla Rookh,» that its great fault consists in its profuse finery ; but it should be observed, that this finery is not the vulgar ostentation which so often disguises poverty or meanness-but, as we have before hinted, the extravagance of excessive wealth. Its great charin is in the inexhaustible copiousness of its imagery- the sweetness and ease of its diction and the beauty of the objects and sentiments with which it is conceived.

Whatever popularity Mr Moore may have acquired as the author of Lalla Rookh, etc., it is as the author of the « Irish Melodies» that he will go down to posterity unrivalled and alone in that delightful species of composition. Lord Byron has very justly and prophetically observed, that Moore is one of the few writers who will survive the age in which he so deservedly flourishes. He will live in his 'Irish Melodies'; they will go down to posterity with the music; both will last as long as Ireland, or as music and poetry."

tional music of Scotland, it seems to us, that Allan Ramsay's literary existence must have terminated its earthly career long since; but, in the divine melody of a The Yellow-hair'd Laddie," he has secured a passport to future ages, which mightier poets might envy, and which will be heard and acknowledged as long as the world has ears to hear.

This is not a mere fancy of the uninitiated, or the barbarous exaggeration of a musical savage, who has lost his senses at hearing Orpheus's hurdyIf, indeed, the anticipation of lasting celebrity gurdy, because he never heard any thing better. be the chief pleasure for the attainment of which One of the greatest composers that ever charmed poets bestow their labour, certainly no one can the world-the immortal Haydn-on being rehave engaged so much of it as Thomas Moore.quested to add symphonies and accompaniments It is evident that writers who fail to command to the Scotch airs, was so convinced of their duimmediate attention, and who look only to pos- rability, that he replied-« Mi vanto di questo terity for a just estimate of their merits, must lavoro, e per cio mi lusingo di vivere in Scozia feel more or less uncertainty as to the ultimate molti anni dopo la mia morte.»> result, even though they should appreciate their own productions as highly as Milton his Paradise Lost; while they who succeed in obtaining a large share of present applause cannot but experience frequent misgivings as to its probable duration : prevailing tastes have so entirely changed, and works, the wonder and delight of one generation, have been so completely forgotten in the next, that extent of reputation ought rather to alarm than assure an author in respect to his future fame.

But Mr Moore, independently of poetical powers of the highest order-independently of the place he at present maintains in the public estination-has secured to himself a stronghold of celebrity as durable as the English tongue.

It is not without reason, therefore, that Mr Moore indulges in this kind of second-sight, and exclaims (on hearing one of his own melodies re-echoed from a bugle in the mountains of Killarney),

Oh, forgive if, while listening to music, whose breath
Seem'd to circle his name with a charm against death,
He should feel a proud spirit within him proclaim,
Even so shalt thou live in the echoes of fame;
Even, so, though thy mem'ry should now die away,
'T will be caught up again in some happier day,
And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong,
Through the answering future, thy name and thy song!
In truth, the subtile essences of these tunes present
no object upon which time or violence can act.
Pyramids may moulder away, and bronzes be
decomposed; but the breeze of heaven which
fanned them in their splendour shall sigh around
them in decay, and by its mournful sound awaken
all the recollections of their former glory. Thus,
when generations shall have sunk into the grave,
and printed volumes been consigned to oblivion,
traditionary strains shall prolong our poet's exist-
ence, and his future fame shall not be less certain
than his present celebrity.

Like the gale that sighs along
Beds of oriental flowers,

Almost every European nation has a kind of primitive music, peculiar to itself; consisting of short and simple tunes or melodies, which at the same time that they please cultivated and scientific ears, are the object of passionate and almost exclusive attainment by the great body of the people, constituting, in fact, pretty nearly the sum of their musical knowledge and enjoyment. Being the first sounds with which the infant is soothed in his nursery, with which he is lulled to repose at night, and excited to animation in the day, they make an impression on the imagination that can never afterwards be effaced, and are consequently handed down from parent to child, from generation to generation, with as much uniformity as the family features and dispositions. It is evident, therefore, that he who first successfully invests them with language becomes thereby Almost every European nation, as we before himself a component part of these airy existences, observed, has its own peculiar set of popular and commits his bark to a favouring wind, before melodies, differing as much from each other in which it shall pass on to the end of the stream of character as the nations themselves; but there time. are none more marked or more extensively Without such a connexion as this with the na-known than those of the Scotch and Irish. Some

Is the grateful breath of song,

That once was heard in happier hours;
Fill'd with balm the gale sighs on,

Though the flowers have sunk in death;
So when the Bard of Love is gone,

His mem'ry lives in Music's breath!