We here terminate the Biographical part of our sketch; and, after a few introductory and general remarks, shall proceed to take a critical review of our author's principal works, including some interesting sketches and anecdotes of ancient minstrelsy, illustrative of the « Irish Melodies.» Moore is not, like Wordsworth or Coleridge, the poet's poet; nor is it necessary, in order to enjoy his writings, that we should create a taste for them other than what we received from nature and education. Yet his style is contemned as tinsel and artificial, whereas the great praise bestowed on those preferred to it is, that they are the only true natural.—Now if it requires study and progressive taste to arrive at a sense of the natural, and but common feeling to enjoy the beauties of the artificial, then certainly these names have changed places since we met them in the dictionary.

Formerly, people were content with estimating books—persons are the present objects universally. It is not the pleasure or utility a volume 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 intervals 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 conscious 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,

is the language of the age, and the most insignificant calculate on the wonders they might have effected, had chance' thrown a pen in their way.-The literary character has, in fact, extended itself over the whole face of society, with all the evils that D'Israeli has enumerated, and ten times more

it has spread its fibres through all ranks, sexes, and ages. There no longer exists what writers used to call a public— that disinterested tribunal has long since merged in the body it used to try. Put your finger on any head in a crowd-it belongs to an author, or the friend of one, and your great authors are supposed to possess a quantity of communicable celebrity: an intimacy with one of them is a sort of principality, and a stray anecdote picked up rather a valuable sort of possession. These people are always crying out against personality, and personality is the whole business of their lives. They can consider nothing as it is by itself; the cry is, « who wrote it ?» what manner of man is he?» 1» where did he borrow it? They make puppets of literary men by their impatient curiosity; 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.

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 attributes 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 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 unexpected capabilities.

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;— what authors can compete, as to popularity, with Montaigne, Byron, Rousseau? Yet we cannot but believe that there have been thousands of men in the world who could have walked the same path, and perhaps met with the same success, if they had had the same confidence. Passionate and reflecting minds are not so rare as we suppose, but the boldness that sets at nought society is. Nor could want of courage be the only obstacle: there are, and have been, we trust, maný who would not exchange the privacy of their mental sanctuary, for the indulgence of spleen, or the feverish dream of popular celebrity. And if we can give credit for this power to the many who have lived unknown and shunned publicity, how much more must we not be inclined to allow to him of acknowledged genius, and who has manifested it in works of equal beauty, and of greater merit, inasmuch as they are removed from self? It has been said by a great living author and poet,' that « the choice of a subject removed from self is the test of genius.»

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

⚫ Coleridge.

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 have been picked up by the small fry of critics, who commenced their career with a furious attack on him, Pope, and Campbell, but have since thought it becoming to grow out of their early likings. And at present they profess to prefer the great works which they have never read, and which they will never be able to read, to those classic poems, of which they have been the most destructive enemies, by bethumbing and quoting their beauties into triteness and common-place.

The merits of Pope and of Moore have suffered depreciation from the same cause-the facility of being imitated to a certain degree. And as vulgar admiration seldom penetrates beyond this degree, the conclusion is that nothing can be easier than to write like, and even equal to, either of these poets. In the universal self-comparison, which is above mentioned, as the foundation of modern criticism, feeling is assumed to be genius-the passive is considered to imply the active power. No opinion is more common or more fallacious-it is the « flattering unction » which has inundated the world with versifiers, and which seems to under-rate the merit of compositions, 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 su perior faculty.

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 speaking 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 childishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia.

any

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 other poein we know of; we rather think we speak the sense of all classes of readers, when we add, that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain feeling of disappointment with that of admiration,—to excite admiration rather than any warmer sentiment of delight-to dazzle more than to enchant—and, in the end, more frequently to startle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, with the constant succession of glittering images and high-strained emotions, than to maintain a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less profuse or more systematic display of attractions.

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