Here is a lady describing the husband whom she longs for; he is something in the mould of Othello as he stole away Desdemona's heart, when she

"wished

That heaven had made her such a man."

Who'd leap in the chariot of my heart,
And seize the reins, and wind it to his will,
Must be of other stuff, my cub of Ind;
White honour shall be like a plaything to
him,

Borne lightly, a pet falcon on his wrist;
One who can feel the very pulse o' the
time,

Instant to act, to plunge into the strife,
And with a strong arm hold the rearing
world.

In costly chambers hushed with carpets
rich,

Swept by proud beauties in their whistling silks,

Mars' plait shall smooth to sweetness on his brow;

His mighty front whose steel flung back the sun,

When horsed for battle, shall bend above a hand

Laid like a lily in his tawny palm,

With such a grace as takes the gazer's eye.
His voice that shivered the mad trumpet's
blare,-

A new-raised standard to the reeling field,-
Shall know to tremble at a lady's ear,

To charm her blood with the fine touch of
praise,

And as she listens-steal away the heart.
If the good gods do grant me such a man,
More would I dote upon his trenched brows,
His coal-black hair, proud eyes, and scornful
lips,

Than on a gallant, curled like Absalom,
Cheek'd like Apollo, with his luted voice.

Why 'tis a boisterous and a cruel style,
A style for challengers,"

as that flirt of flirts, Rosalind, says. Bobadil is the only man for Smith's lady. Like the hair dresser's sweetheart in Master Humphrey's Clock, her husband must be "in the milingtary."

Smith, however, has better stuff in his genius than the above selected rant might lead the reader to suppose. He possesses fine descriptive powers. Thus he writes of Re

solution:

I will throw off this dead and useless past,
As a strong runner, straining for his life,
Unclasps a mantle to the hungry winds.
A mighty purpose rises large and slow
From out the fluctuations of my soul.

As, ghost-like, from the dim and tumbling sea
Starts the completed moon.

Thus of Unrest :

Unrest! unrest! The passion-panting sea
Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great hungry soul. The unquiet clouds
Break and dissolve, then gather in a mass,

And float like mighty icebergs through the blue.
Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth;
Heaven yearns in stars. Down comes the frantic rain;
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds

In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.

The next extract is exquisite in its word painting and beauty

of thought:

The lark is singing in the blinding sky,

Hedges are white with may. The bridegroom sea

Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride,

And, in the fulness of his marriage joy,

He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a space to see how fair she looks,

Then proud, runs up to kiss her. All is fair

All glad, from grass to sun! Yet more I love

Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes

In Winter's front, so fair 'mong its dark peers,

It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and, when it returned,

Finding its old companions gone away,

It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile then bursts in tears,

And all the while it holds within its hand

A few half-withered flowers.

These extracts we consider more than sufficient to prove our statement that Alexander Smith is now a poet, and will be hereafter, with care, caution, and prudence, a great one.

Thus, having placed before the reader the chief of those Scottish lyrical poets, and writers of short pieces, inferior only to Burns, to Scott, and to Crabbe, our pleasant task is ended. Amongst our Scottish and English friends, personally and in a literary way, it is our pride and happiness to comprise many. It may appear that we have assumed some poets to be unknown who are well known, and have omitted the names of many who have struck bold or melodious chords upon The Harp of the North. Those who know Ireland will not hold this opinion. Politics and turmoil of party strife have left our

middle classes less time for reading, and possibly less taste for it, than those of the sister kingdoms; and amongst this class the Melodies of Thomas Moore most prized and best known are, The Harp that once through Tara's Hall, The Minstrel Boy, On Lough Neagh's Banks, to the exclusion of Silent O Moyle, It is not the Tear this Moment Shed-which possess mere poetry of the greatest beauty for recommendation, but divested of that meretricious and clinquant patriotism which the four recently published volumes of the poet's Journal proved to have been, certainly not in any way a speculation, or political trade, but, at best, only a sentimental maudlin myth. For this reason, and because of the four first poets upon our list very few indeed of the present generation know anything, we have thus written. This will explain why we have dwelt upon that which must appear stale to many of our readers in the sister islands; but, whilst anxious to make THE IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW "66 racy of the soil," we wish to give our countrymen who may be ignorant of it, some experience of a literature which should be to them well known and familiar. Twenty-two years ago Barry Cornwall wrote "It cannot be very flattering to our self-love to observe, that all the song-writers, except Mr. Moore, (and, I ought to have added, Dibdin,) are Scottish poets." He was right then, and so they still continue. Of Gilfillan, of Tannahill, of Ramsay, of the Cunninghams (Allan and Peter), of Robert Nicholl, we have written nothing-they belong to another grade of the realm of poesy, and require a separate paper. We have also omitted Macaulay's name as a poet; but the following extracts from his poem Pompeii, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at Cambridge Commencement, 1819, must be novel to many readers, and full of interest to all :

:

The mirth and music thro' Pompeii rung,
Then verdant wreaths on all her portals hung;
Her sons, with solemn rite and jocund lay,
Hail'd the glad splendours of that festal day;
With fillets bound, the hoary priests advance,
And rosy virgins braid the choral dance;

The rugged warrior here unbends a while

His iron front, and deigns a transient smile;

There, frantic with delight, the ruddy boy

Scarce treads on earth, and bounds and laughs with joy;
From ev'ry crowded altar perfumes rise

In billowy clouds of fragrance to the skies;
The milk-white monarch of the herd they lead,
With gilded horns, at yonder shrine to bleed;
And while the victim crops the broidered plain,
And frisks and gambols tow'rds the destin'd fane,

But see, the op'ning theatre invites

The fated myriads to its gay delights

In, in, they swarm, tumultuous as the roar

Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore.

Th' enraptur'd throng in breathless transport views

The gorgeous temple of the Tragic Muse.

There, while her wand in shadowy pomp arrays

Ideal scenes, and forms of other days,

Fair as the hopes of youth, a radiant band,

The sister arts around her footstool stand,

To deck their Queen, and lend a milder grace

To the stern beauty of that awful face.
Far, far, around the ravish'd eye surveys

The sculptur'd forms of Gods and Heroes blaze --
Above, the echoing roofs the peal prolong
Of lofty converse, or melodious song,
While, as the tones of passion sink or swell,
Admiring thousands own the moral spell,
Melt with the melting strains of fancy'd woe,
With terror sicken, or with transport glow.
Oh! for a voice like that which peal'd of old
Thro' Salem's cedar courts and shrines of gold,.
And in wild accents round the trembling dome
Proclaim'd the havoc of avenging Rome,

While ev'ry palmy arch and sculptur'd tow'r
Shook with the footsteps of the parting power.

Such voice might check your tears, which idly stream
For the vain phantoms of the Poet's dream-

Might bid these terrors rise, those sorrows flow,

For other perils, and for nearer woe.

The hour is come. Ev'n now the sulph'rous cloud Involves the city in its funeral shroud,

And far along Campania's azure sky

Expands its dark and boundless canopy.

The Sun, tho' thron'd on heav'ns meridian height,
Burns red and rayless thro' that sickly night.
Each bosom felt at once the shudd'ring thrill,
At once the music stopp'd-the song was still.
None in that cloud's portentous shape might trace
The fearful changes of another's face:

But thro' that horrid stillness each could hear
His neigbour's throbbing heart beat high with fear.
A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise
Grief's sobbing plaints and terror's frantic cries:
The gates recoil, and towards the narrow pass,
In wild confusion rolls the living mass.
Death! when thy shadowy sceptre waves away
From his sad couch the prisoner of decay,
Tho' friendship view the close with glist'ning eye,
And love's fond lips imbibe the parting sigh,
By torture rack'd, by kindness sooth'd in vain,
The soul still clings to being and to pain;
But when have wilder terrors cloth'd thy brow,
Or keen'r torments edg'd thy dart than now?
When with thy regal horrors vainly strove
The laws of Nature, and the power of Love;
On mother's babes in vain for mercy call,
Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall.
Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise
Tow'rds yonder well-known face the accusing gaze.
She, trampled to the earth, th' expiring maid
Clings round her lover's feet and shrieks for aid;
Vain is th' imploring glance, the frenzy'd cry--
All, all is fear-to succour is to die.

Saw ye how wild, how red, how broad a light
Burst on the darkness of that mid-day night,
As fierce Vesuvius scatter'd o'er the vale
His drifted flames and sheets of burning hail,

Oh! who may sing that hour of mortal strife,
When nature calls on death, yet clings to life?
Who paint the wretch that draws sepulchral breath,
A living pris'ner in the house of Death?
Pale as the corse which loads the funeral pile,
With face covuls'd, that writhes the ghastly smile,
Behold him, speechless, move with hurry'd pace
Incessant round his dungeon's cavern'd space-
Now shriek in terror, and now groan in pain,
Gnaw his white lips, and strike his burning brain,
Till fear o'erstrained in stupor dies away,
And madness wrests his victim from dismay:
His arms sink down; his wild and stony eye
Glares without sight on blackest vacancy;
He feels not, sees not; wrapp'd in senseless trance,
His soul is still and listless as his glance;

One cheerless blank, one rayless mist is there--
Thoughts, senses, passions, live not with despair!

Here the reader has the first effort of the essayist's mind. To trace its growth in the Edinburgh, and in the Lays of Ancient Rome, will repay the study-possibly if Alexander Smith attempt it, he may one day write a history brilliant as Macaulay's, and an essay famous as that on Ranke's Popes.

ART. VI.—MOORE'S JOURNALS AND

CORRESPONDENCE.

Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. Edited by the Right Honourable Lord John Russell, M.P. Vols. I., II., III., IV. London: Longman and Co. 1853.

At the conclusion of the second volume of this work, Thomas Moore was, on the 30th of August, 1819, in London, and preparing to start with Lord John Russell upon a continental tour. He had told us of his birth; of his school days; of his early London struggles; of his unfortunate colonial appointment; of his duel with Jeffrey; of his introduction to Byron; of his marriage; of his removal to Derbyshire; of his triumphs as a poet; of his position in the society of the gay and great; of his struggles, his difficulties, and his fears. On quitting England with Lord John Russell, he left his wife and children in his recently hired residence, Sloperton, and from the 5th of September, 1819, the day upon which he sailed from Dover, to the 31st of October, 1825, the day upon which the last entry in that portion of the Diary closing the fourth volume is made, his