with inarticulate throes, and you hear the shrieks | echo-We have no human figure before us, no of a human voice within. palpable reality answering to any substantive form or nature. Hence we think it may be explained why it is that our author has so little picturesque effect—with such vividness of conception, such insatiable ambition after ornament, and such an inexhaustible and delightful play of fancy. Mr Moore is a colourist in poetry, a musician also, and has a heart full of tenderness and susceptibility for all that is delightful and amiable in itself, and that does not require the ordeal of suffering, of crime, or of deep thought, to stamp it with a bold character. In this we conceive consists the charm of his poetry, which all the world feels, but which it is difficult to explain scientifically, and in conformity to transcendant rules. It has the charm of the softest and most brilliant execution; there is no wrinkle, no deformity on its smooth and shining surface. It has the charm which arises from the continual de Critically speaking, Mr Moore's poetry is chargeable with two peculiarities: first, the pleasure or interest he conveys to us is almost always derived from the first impressions or physical properties of objects, not from their connexion with passion or circumstances. His lights dazzle the eye, his perfumes soothe the smell, his sounds ravish the ear; but then they do so for and from themselves, and at all times and places equally--for the heart has little to do with it. Hence we observe a kind of fastidious extravagance in Mr Moore's serious poetry. Each thing must be fine, soft, exquisite in itself, for it is never set off by reflection or contrast. It glitters to the sense through the atmosphere of indifference. Our indolent luxurious bard does not whet the appetite by setting us to hunt after the game of human passion, and is therefore obliged to hamper us with dainties, seasoned with rich fancy and the sauce pi-sire to please, and from the spontaneous sense quante of poetic diction. Poetry, in his hands, becomes a kind of cosmetic art-it is the poetry of the toilet. His muse must be as fine as the Lady of Loretto. Now, this principle of composition leads not only to a defect of dramatic interest, but also of imagination. For every thing in this world, the meanest incident or object, may receive a light and an importance from its association with other objects, and with the heart of man; and the variety thus created is endless as it is striking and profound. But if we begin and end in those objects that are beautiful or dazzling in themselves and at the first blush, we shall soon be confined to a human reward of self-pleasing topics, and be both superficial and wearisome. It is the fault of Mr Wordsworth's poetry that he has perversely relied too much (or wholly) on this reaction of the imagination on subjects that are petty and repulsive in themselves, and of Mr Moore's, that he appeals too exclusively to the flattering support of sense and fancy. Secondly, we have remarked that Mr Moore hardly ever describes entire objects, but abstractqu alities of objects. It is not a picture that he gives us, but an inventing of beauty. He takes a blush or a smile, and runs on whole stanzas in ecstatic praise of it, and then diverges to the sound of a voice, and discourses eloquent music » on the subject; but it might as well be the light of heaven that he is describing, or the voice of of pleasure in the author's mind. Without being gross in the smallest degree, it is voluptuous in the highest. It is a sort of sylph-like spiritualized sensuality. So far from being licentious in his Lalla Rookh, Mr Moore has become moral and sentimental (indeed he was always the last), and tantalizes his young and fair readers with the glittering shadows and mystic adumbrations of evanescent delights. He, in fine, in his courtship of the Muses, resembles those lovers who always say the softest things on all occasions; who smile with irresistible good humour at their own success; who banish pain and truth from their thoughts, and who impart the delight they feel in themselves unconsciously to others! Mr Moore's poetry is the thornless rose-its touch is velvet, its hue vermilion, and its graceful form is cast in beauty's mould. Lord Byron's, on the contrary, is a prickly bramble, or sometimes a deadly upas, of form uncouth and uninviting, that has its root in the clefts of the rock, and its head mocking the skies, that wars with the thunder-cloud and tempest, and round which the loud cataracts roar. We here conclude our sketch of Anacreon Moore, LALLA ROOKH. In the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, king of the Lesser Bucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having abdicated the throne in favour of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Prophet; (1) and, passing into India through the delightful valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time at Delhi on his way. He was entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the same splendour to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia. During the stay of the royal pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the emperor, Lalla Rookh; —a princess described by the poets of her time, as more beautiful than Leila, (2) Shirine, (3) Dewilde, (4) or any of those heroines whose names and loves embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was intended that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cashmere; where the young king, as soon as the cares of empire would permit, was to meet, for the first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into Bucharia. The day of Lalla Rookh's departure from Delhi was as splendid as sunshine and pageantry could make it. The bazaars and baths were all covered with the richest tapestry; hundreds of gilded barges upon the Jumna floated with their banners shining in the water, while Tulip Cheek. through the streets groups of beautiful children went strewing the most delicious flowers around, as in that Persian festival called the Scattering of the Roses;1 till every part of the city was as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten had passed through it. The Princess, having taken leave of her kind father, who at parting hung a cornelian of Yemen round her neck, on which was inscribed a verse from the Koran,—and having sent a considerable present to the Fakirs, who kept up the Perpetual Lamp in her sister's tomb, meekly ascended the palankeen prepared for her; and, while Aurungzebe stood to take a last look from his balcony, the procession moved slowly on the road to Lahore. Seldom had the Eastern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens in the suburbs to the imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of splendour. The gallant appearance of the Rajas and Mogul lords, distinguished by those insignia of the emperor's favour, (5) the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and the small silver-rimmed kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles;-the costly armour of their cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Keder Khan, (6) in the brightness of their silver battle-axes, and the massiness of their maces of gold;-the glittering of the gilt pine-apples (7) on the tops of the palankeens;the embroidered trappings of the elephants, bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique temples, within which the ladies of Lalla Rookh lay, as it were, enshrined ;-the rose-coloured veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter, (8) at the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her (9) through the cur 1 Gul Rea ee. reciting the stories of the East, on whom his royal master had conferred the privilege of being admitted to the pavilion of the Princess, that he might help to beguile the tediousness of the journey by some of his most agreeable recitals. At the mention of a poet, Fadladeen elevated his critical eye-brows, and, having refreshed his faculties with a dose of that delicious opium (19) which is distilled from the black poppy of the Thebais, gave orders for the minstrel to be forthwith introduced into the presence. Fadladeen was a judge of every thing,-from the The Princess, who had once in her life seen a poet penciling of a Circassian's eye-lids to the deepest ques- from behind the screens of gauze in her father's hall, tions of science and literature; from the mixture of a and had conceived from that specimen no very favourconserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an epic able ideas of the caste, expected but little in this new poem and such influence had his opinion upon the exhibition to interest her;-she felt inclined however various tastes of the day, that all the cooks and poets of to alter her opinion on the very first appearance of Delhi stood in awe of him. His political conduct and Feramorz. He was a youth about Lalla Rookh's own opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi, age, and graceful as that idol of women, Crishna,' (20) — Should the prince at noon-day say, It is night, declare such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic, you behold the moon and stars. —And his zeal for beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exreligion, of which Aurungzebe was a munificent pro- alting the religion of his worshippers into love. His tector, (10) was about as disinterested as that of the gold-dress was simple, yet not without some marks of costsmith who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol (11) of Jaghernaut. that During the first days of their journey, Lalla Rookh, who had passed all her life within the shadow of the royal gardens of Delhi, (12) found enough in the beauty of the scenery through which they passed to interest her mind and delight her imagination; and when, at evening or in the heat of the day, they turned off from the high road to those retired and romantic places which had been selected for her encampments,—sometimes on the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the Lake of Pearl; (13) sometimes under the sacred shade of a Banyan-tree, from which the view opened upon a glade covered with antelopes; and often in those hidden, embowered spots, described by one from the Isles of the West, (14) as places of melancholy, delight, and safety, where all the company around was wild peacocks and turtle-doves;-she felt a charm in these scenes, so lovely and so new to her, which, for a time, made her indifferent to every other amusement. But Lalla Rookh was young, and the young love variety; nor could the conversation of her ladies and the great chamberlain, Fadladeen (the only persons, of course, admitted to her pavilion), sufficiently enliven those many vacant hours, which were devoted neither to the pillow nor the palankeen. There was a little Persian slave who sung sweetly to the Vina, and who, now and then, lulled the Princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of her country, about the loves of Wamak and Ezra, (15) the fair-haired Zal and his mistress Rodahver; (16) not forgetting the combat of Rustam with the terrible White Demon. (17) At other times she was amused by those graceful dancing-girls of Delhi, who had been permitted by the Bramins of the Great Pagoda to attend her, much to the horror of the good Mussulman Fadladeen, who could see nothing graceful or agreeable in idolators, and to whom the very tinkling of their golden anklets (18) was an abomination. But these and many other diversions were repeated till they lost all their charm, and the nights and noondays were beginning to move heavily, when, at length, it was recollected that, among the attendants sent by the bridegroom, was a young poet of Cashmere, much celebrated throughout the valley for his manner of liness; and the ladies of the Princess were not long in discovering that the cloth, which encircled his high Tartarian cap, was of the most delicate kind that the shawl-goats of Tibet (21) supply. Here and there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of Kashan, hung strings of fine pearl, disposed with an air of studied negligence;-nor did the exquisite embroidery of his sandals escape the observation of these fair critics; who, however they might give way to Fadladeen upon the unimportant topics of religion and government, had the spirit of martyrs in every thing relating to such momentous matters as jewels and embroidery. For the purpose of relieving the pauses of recitation by music, the young Cashmerian held in his hand a kitar;-such as, in old times, the Arab maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the Alhambra-and having premised, with much humility, that the story he was about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm throughout the eastern empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus began:- In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light. Like tulip-beds, (29) of different shape and dyes, Bending beneath the invisible West-wind's sighs? What new-made mystery now, for Faith to sign, And blood to seal, as genuine and divine, O'er Moussa's1 cheek, (24) when down the Mount he trod, What dazzling mimickry of God's own power All glowing from the presence of his God! On either side, with ready hearts and hands, His chosen guard of bold Believers stands ; Young fire-eyed disputants, who deem their swords, On points of faith, more eloquent than words; And such their zeal, there's not a youth with brand Uplifted there, but, at the Chief's command, Would make his own devoted heart its sheath, And bless the lips that doom'd so dear a death! In hatred to the Caliph's hue of night, 2 (25) Their vesture, helms and all, is snowy white; Their weapons various;-some equipp'd, for speed, With javelins of the light Kathaian reed ; (26) Or bows of buffalo horn, and shining quivers Fill'd with the stems3 that bloom on Iran's rivers; (27) While some, for war's more terrible attacks, Wield the huge mace and ponderous battle-axe; And, as they wave aloft in morning's beam The milk-white plumage of their helms, they seem Like a chenar-tree grove, (28) when Winter throws Øer all its tufted heads his feathering snows. Between the porphyry pillars, that uphold The rich moresque-work of the roof of gold, Aloft the Haram's curtain'd galleries rise, Where, through the silken net-work, glancing eyes, From time to time, like sudden gleams that glow Through autumn clouds, shine o'er the pomp below. What impious tongue, ye blushing saints, would dare To hint that aught but Heaven hath placed you there? Or that the loves of this light world could bind, In their gross chain, your Prophet's soaring mind? No-wrongful thought!-commissioned from above To people Eden's bowers with shapes of love (Creatures so bright, that the same lips and eyes They wear on earth will serve in Paradise), There to recline among Heaven's native maids, And crown the Elect with bliss that never fades!— Well hath the Prophet-Chief his bidding done; And every beauteous race beneath the sun, From those who kneel at Brahma's burning founts4 To the fresh nymphs bounding o'er Yemen's mounts; From Persia's eyes of full and fawnlike ray, To the small, half-shut glances of Kathay;5 And Georgia's bloom, and Azab's darker smiles, And the gold ringlets of the Western Isles; All, all are there;-each land its flower hath given, To form that fair young nursery for Heaven! But why this pageant now? this arm'd array? What triumph crowds the rich Divan to-day With turban'd heads, of every hue and race, Bowing before that veil'd and awful face, 1 Moses. Hath the bold Prophet plann'd to grace this hour? The creed and standard of the Heaven-sent Chief. Though few his years, the West already knows Nor feel those God-like breathings in the air, " In Virtue's cause;-never was soul inspired Low as young Azim knelt, that motley crowd Of all earth's nations sunk the knee and bow'd, With shouts of « Alla!» echoing long and loud; While high in air, above the Prophet's head, Hundreds of banners, to the sunbeam spread, * Black was the colour adopted by the Caliphs of the house of Ab- Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan bas, in their garments, turbans, and standards. * Pichula, used anciently for arrows by the Persians. The burning fountains of Brahma, near Chittogong, esteemed as holy.-TeaNER. ⚫ China. The flying throne of star-taught Soliman! (31) In the war of the Caliph Mahadi against the Empress Irene, for an account of which see GIBBON, vol. x. Then thus he spoke :—« Stranger, though new the frame « Nor think 't is only the gross Spirits, warm'd To which all Heaven, except the Proud One, knelt :* In many a maze descending, bright through all, Again, throughout the assembly at these words, Ere the white war-plume o'er thy brow can wave;― But there was one among the chosen maids Ah Zelica! there was a time, when bliss «But these,» pursued the Chief, « are truths sublime, Yet now he comes-brighter than even he That claim a holier mood and calmer time Than earth allows us now;-this sword must first «For thee, young warrior, welcome!-thou hast yet Some tasks to learn, some frailties to forget, The transmigration of souls was one of his doctrines. See D'HEROFLOT. And when we said unto the angels, Worship Adam, they all worshipped him except Eblis (Lucifer), who refused. The Koran, ch. ii. 1 Jesus. E'er beam'd before,-but ah! not bright for thee; Once happy pair!—in proud Bokhara's groves, 'The Amoo, which rises in the Belur Tag, or Dark Mountains, and running nearly from east to west, splits into two bra nches, one of which falls into the Caspian Sea, and the other into Aral Nabi, or the Lake of Eagles. |