Mr Moore's Parnassus is a blooming Eden, and Lord Byron's a rugged wilderness of shame and sorrow. On the tree of knowledge of the first you can see nothing but perpetual flowers and verdure; in the last you see the naked stem and rough bark; but it heaves at intervals with inarticulate throes, and you hear the shrieks of a human voice within. 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 piquante 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 C. repulsive in themselves, aud 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 abstract qualities of objects. It is not á 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 echo-We have no human figure before us, no 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 desire to please, and from the spontaneous sense 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 spiritualised 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 hu mour 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, To whom the Lyre and Laurels have been given, |