Page images
PDF
EPUB

as large bumps of wit; the mouth pleasingly dimpled. His manner and talk were bright, abounding rather in lively anecdote and point than in wit and humour, strictly 30 called. To term him amiable according to any standard, and estimable too as men of an unheroic fibre go, is no more than his due.

No doubt the world has already seen the most brilliant days of Moore's poetry. Its fascinations are manifestly of the more temporary sort :-partly through fleetingness of subject-matter and evanescence of allusion (as in the clever and still readable satirical poems); partly through the aroma of sentimental patriotism, hardly strong enough in stamina to make the compositions national, or to maintain their high level of popularity after the lyrist himself has long been at rest; partly through the essentially commonplace sources and forms of inspiration which belong to his more elaborate and ambitious works. No poetical reader of the present day is the poorer for knowing absolutely nothing of Lalla Rookh or the Loves of the Angels. What then will be the hold or the claim of these writings upon a reader of the twenty-first century? If we except the satirical compositions, choice in a different way, the best things of Moore are to be sought in the Irish Melodies, to which a considerable share of merit, and of apposite merit, is not to be denied: yet even here what deserts around the oases, and the oases themselves how soon exhaustible and forgetable! There are but few thoroughly beautiful and touching lines in the whole of Moore's poetry: here is

one

"Come rest in this bosom, mine own stricken deer."

A great deal has been said of the overpowering "lusciousness" of his poetry, and the magical "melody" of his verse most of this is pure nonsense. There is in the former as much of fadeur as of lusciousness; and a certain tripping or trotting exactitude, not less fully reducible to the test of scansion than of a well-attuned car, is but a very rudimentary form of melody-while of harmony or rhythmic volume of sound Moore is as decisively destitute as any correct versifier can well be. No clearer proof of the incapacity of the mass of critics and readers to appreciate the calibre of poetical work in point of musical and general execution could be given than the fact that Moore has always with them passed, and still passes, for an eminently melodious poet. What then remains? Chiefly this. In one class of writing, liveliness of witty banter, along with neatness; and, in the other and ostensibly more permanent class, elegance, also along with neatness. Reduce these qualities

[ocr errors]

to one denomination, and we come to something that may be called "Propriety:" a sufficiently disastrous "raw material" for the purposes of a poet, and by no means loftily to be praised or admired even when regarded as the outer investiture of a nobler poetic something within. But let desert of every kind have its place, and welcome. In the cosmical diapason and august orchestra of poetry, Tom Moore's little Pan's-pipe can at odd moments be heard, and interjects an appreciable and rightly-combined twiddle or two. To be gratified with these at the instant is no more than the instrument justifies, and the executant claims: to think much about them when the organ is pealing or the violin plaining (with a Shelley performing on the. first, or a Mrs. Browning on the second), or to be on the watch for their recurrences, would be equally superfluous and weak-minded.

[merged small][graphic]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »