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scale, and measured by the same standard. This fury of comparison knows no bounds; its abettors, at the same time that they reserve to themselves the full advantage of dormant merit, make no such allowance to established authors. They judge them rigidly by their pages, assume that their love of fame and emolument would not allow them to let any talent be idle, and will not hear any arguments advanced for their unex

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-
tervals and in different grades, self being the
hidden centre whither all the comparisons verge.
In former times works of authors were composed
with ideal or ancient models,—the humble crowd
of readers were content to peruse and admire.
At 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;is the language of the age, and the most insigni- what authors can compete, as to popularity, with ficant calculate on the wonders they might have Montaigne, Byron, Rousseau? Yet we cannot effected, had chance thrown a pen in their way. but believe that there have been thousands of -The literary character has, in fact, extended men in the world who could have walked the itself over the whole face of society, with all the same path, and perhaps met with the same sucevils that D'Israeli has enumerated, and ten times cess, if they had had the same confidence. Pasmore-it has spread its fibres through all ranks, sionate and reflecting minds are not so rare as sexes, and ages. There no longer exists what we suppose, but the boldness that sets at nought writers used to call a public-that disinterested society is. Nor could want of courage be the tribunal has long since merged in the body it only obstacle: there are, and have been, we used to try. Put your finger on any head in a trust, many who would not exchange the privacy crowd-it belongs to an author, or the friend of of their mental sanctuary, for the indulgence of one, and your great authors are supposed to pos- spleen, ‚or the feverish dream of popular celebrity. sess a quantity of communicable celebrity: an And if we can give credit for this power to the intimacy with one of them is a sort of principality, many who have lived unknown and shunned and a stray anecdote picked up rather a valuable publicity, how much more must we not be insort of possession. These people are always cry-clined to allow to him of acknowledged genius, ing out against personality, and personality is and who has manifested it in works of equal the whole business of their lives. They can con- beauty, and of greater merit, inasmuch as they sider nothing as it is by itself; the cry is, are removed from self? It has been said by a wrote it ?» what manner of man is he?» great living author and poet,' that the choice of where did he borrow it?» They make pup- a subject removed from self is the test of gepets of literary men by their impatient curiosity; nius. 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.

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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, are viewed under this one aspect. The man, the poet, the philosopher, are blended, and the attribates 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

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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 Poets, he might perhaps have written the best parts of Childe Harold-and had he the disposition or the whim to be egotistical, he might lay bare a mind of his own as proudly and as passionately organized as the great lord did, whom some one describes to have gutted himself body and soul, for all the world to walk in and see the show.

So much for the preliminary cavils which are thrown in the teeth of Moore's admirers. They

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have been picked up by the small fry of critics, | transplantation of an 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 and natural appearances of the country.

The merits of Pope and of Moore have suffered depreciation from the same cause--the faci- We have always considered Asia as naturally lity of being imitated to a certain degree. And the home of poetry, and the creator of poets. as vulgar admiration seldom penetrates beyond: What makes Greece so poetical a country is, that this degree, the conclusion is that nothing can be at every step we stumble over recollections of easier than to write like, and even equal to, ei- departed grandeur, and behold the scenes where ther of these poets. In the universal self-com- the human mind has glorified itself for ever, parison, which is above mentioned, as the foun- and played a part the records of which can dation of modern criticism, feeling is assumed to never die. But in Asia, to the same charm of be genius—the passive is considered to imply the viewing the places of former power-of comparactive power. No opinion is more common or ing the present with the past-there is added a more fallacious—it is the flattering unction » | luxuriance of climate, and an unrivalled beauty which has inundated the world with versifiers, of external nature, which, ever according with and which seems to under-rate the merit of com- the poet's soul, positions, in which there is more ingenuity and elegance than passion. Genius is considered to be little more than a capability of excitement— the 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.

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

We shall now proceed to notice the most laboured and most splendid of Mr Moore's produc-out so brightly on the children of the north-nor

tions- Lalla Rookh»:

Then if, while scenes so grand,

So beautiful, 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.

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 warmer clime, and here wantons and luxuriates in these Several of our modern poets had already cho- voluptuous regions, as if it felt that it had at sen the luxuriant climate of the East for their ima- length recognized its native element. It is amazing, giuations to revel in, and body forth their shapes indeed, how much at home Mr Moore seems to be of light; but it is no less observable that they in India, Persia, and Arabia; and how purely | had generally failed, and the cause we believe to and strictly Asiatic all the colouring and imagery be this-that the partial conception and confined of his poem appears. He is thoroughly imbued knowledge which they naturally possessed of a with the character of the scenes to which he transcountry, so opposed in the character of its inha-ports us; and yet the extent of his knowledge is bitants and the aspect of its scenery to their own, less wonderful than the dexterity and apparent occasioned them, after the manner of all imper- facility with which he has turned it to account, fect apprehenders, to seize upon its prominent in the elucidation and embellishment of his poetry. features and obvious characteristics, without en-There is not a simile, a description, a name, a tering more deeply into its spirit, or catching its trait of history, or allusion of romance, which retired and less palpable beauties. The sudden belongs to European experience, or does not in

nament

dicate entire familiarity with the life, nature, and in its old severe simplicity. What penury of orlearning of the East. - 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 richness. We 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 an 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 child-pleasing to the eye and the taste. We are as far ishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia.

Contrast this with a Dutch, or a Chinese pleasure-house, 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 dis

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 insulated 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.

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 Mr Moore, it appears to us, is too lavish of his the sense of all classes of readers, when we add, gems and sweets, and it may truly be said of that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain him, in his poetical capacity, that he would be feeling of disappointment with that of admira- richer with half his wealth. His works are not tion,—to excite admiration rather than any warm- only of rich materials and graceful design, but er sentiment of delight-to dazzle more than to they are every where glistening with small beauenchant—and, in the end, more frequently to star-ties and transitory inspirations-sudden flashes tle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, with the of fancy that blaze out and perish; like earthconstant succession of glittering images and high-born meteors that crackle in the lower sky, and strained emotions, than to maintain a rising in- unseasonably divert our eyes from the great and terest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less pro- lofty bodies which pursue their harmonious fuse or more systematic display of attractions. courses in a serener region. The style is, on the whole, rather diffuse, and too unvaried in its character. But its greatest fault is the uniformity of its brilliancy-the want of plainness, simplicity, and repose. We have heard it observed by some very zealous admirers of Mr Moore's genius, that you cannot open this book without finding a cluster of beauties in every page. Now, this is only another way of expressing what we think its greatest defect. No work, 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 humau art—the design and elevation of a Grecian temple,

We have spoken of these as faults of stylebut they could scarcely have existed without going deeper; and though they first strike us as qualities of the composition only, we find, upon a little reflection, that the same general character belongs to the fable, the characters, and the sentiments-that they all are alike in the excess of their means of attraction-and fail to interest, 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 every of the early ages of Islamism, who pretended to where pervaded, still more strikingly, by a have received a later and more authoritative strain of tender and noble feeling, poured out mission than that of the Prophet, and to be deswith such warmth and abundance, as to steal in-tined to overturn all tyrannies and superstitions sensibly on the heart of the reader, and gradually on the earth, and to rescue all souls that believed 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.

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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 Mokanna, 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 too much strained, but, in spite of that, it is a work of great genius and beauty; and not only 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 very slender fabric as to fable or invention. In savings and remarks, by the by, do not agree very truth, it has scarcely any story at all; but is well with the character which is assigned himmade up almost entirely of beautiful songs and being for the most part very smart, snappish, and fascinating descriptions. acute, and by no means solemn, stupid, and pomOn the whole, it may be said of « Lalla Rookh,» pous, as one would have expected. Mr Moore's that its great fault consists in its profuse finery ; genius, perhaps, is too inveterately lively, to but it should be observed, that this finery is not make it possible for him even to counterfeit dul-the vulgar ostentation which so often disguises We must now take a slight glance at the

ness.

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

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.

poverty or meanness-but, as we have before hinted, the extravagance of excessive wealth. Its great charm 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.»

If, indeed, the anticipation of lasting celebrity be the chief pleasure for the attainment of which poets bestow their labour, certainly no one can have engaged so much of it as Thomas Moore. It is evident that writers who fail to command immediate attention, and who look only to posterity for a just estimate of their merits, must feel more or less uncertainty as to the ultimate 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 estimation-has secured to himself a strong hold of celebrity, as durable as the English tongue.

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 himself a component part of these airy existences, and commits his bark to a favouring wind, before which it shall pass on to the end of the stream of time.

Without such a connexion as this with the national 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 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.

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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 hurdygurdy, because he never heard any thing better. One of the greatest composers that ever charmed the world-the immortal Haydn-on being requested to add symphonies and accompaniments to the Scotch airs, was so convinced of their durability, that he replied-« Mi vanto di questo lavoro, e per cio mi lusingo di vivere in Scozia molti anni dopo la mia morte.»

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 existence, and his future fame shall not be less certain than his present celebrity.

Like the gale that sighs along
Beds of oriental flowers,

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!

Almost every European nation, as we before observed, has its own peculiar set of popular melodies, differing as much from each other in character as the nations themselves; but there are none more marked or more extensively known than those of the Scotch and Irish. Some of these may be traced to a very remote era; while of others the origin is scarcely known; and this is the case, especially, with the airs of Ireland. With the exception of those which were produced by Carolan, who died in 1738, there are few of which we can discover the dates or composers.

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