family, which continued always in the same races, had not only a physician, a huntsman, a smith, and such like, but a poet and a tale-teller. The first recorded and sung the actions of their ancestors, and entertained the company at feasts; the latter amused them with tales when they were melancholy and could not sleep; and a very gallant gentleman of the north of Ireland has told ready admission into the presence of kings in the 14th century. Speaking of the celebration of the feast of Pentecost at Westminster, he says, « In the great hall, when sitting royally at the table, with his peers about him, there entered a woman adorned like a minstrel, sitting on a great horse, trapped as minstrels then used, who rode about the table showing pastime, and at length came up to the king's table, and laid before him a let-me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntter, and, forthwith turning her horse, saluted every one and departed: when the letter was read, it was found to contain animadversions on the king. The door-keeper, being threatened for admitting her, replied, that it was not the custom of the king's palace to deny admission to minstrels, especially on such high solemnities, and feast-days.» In Froissart, too, we may plainly see what necessary appendages to greatness the minstrels were esteemed, and upon what familiar terms they lived with their masters. When the four Irish kings, who had submitted themselves to Richard II of England, were seated at table, « on the first dish being served they made their minstrels and principal servants sit beside them, and eat from their plates, and drink from their cups. The knight appointed by Richard to attend them having objected to this custom, on another day ordered the tables to be laid out and covered, so that the kings sat at an upper table, the minstrels at a middle one, and the servants lower still. The royal guests looked at each other, and refused to eat, saying, that he deprived them of their good old custom in which they had been brought up." However, in the reign of Edward II, a public edict was issued, putting a check upon this license, and limiting the number of minstrels to four per diem admissible to the tables of the great. It seems, too, that about this period the minstrels had sunk into a kind of upper servants of the aristocracy: they wore their lord's livery, and sometimes shaved the crown of their heads like monks. When war and hunting formed almost the exclusive occupation of the great; when their surplus revenues could only be employed in supporting idle retainers, and no better means could be devised for passing the long winter evenings than drunkenness and gambling, it may readily be conceived how welcome these itinerant musicians must have been in baronial halls, and how it must have flattered the pride of our noble ancestors to listen to the eulogy of their own achievements, and the length of their own pedigrees. Sir William Temple says, the great men of the Irish septs, among the many officers of their ings there, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these tale-tellers, that when he lay down would begin a story of a king, a giant, a dwarf, or a damsel, and such rambling stuff, and continue it all night long in such an even tone, that you heard it going or whenever you awaked, and believed nothing any physicians give could have so good and so innocent an effect to make men sleep, in any pains or distempers of body or mind.» on In the reign of Elizabeth, however, civilization had so far advanced, that the music which had led away the great lords of antiquity no longer availed to delude the human understanding, or to prevent it from animadverting on the pernicious effects produced by those who cultivated the tuneful art. Spenser, in his view of the state of Ireland, says, «There is amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called Bardes, which are to them instead of poets, whose profession is to set forth the praises or dispraises of men in their poems or rithmes; the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them, for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men. For their verses are taken up with a general applause, and usually sung at all feasts and meetings by certain other persons whose proper function that is, who also receive for the same great rewards and reputation amongst them. These Irish Bardes are, for the most part, so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that themselves do more deserve to be sharply disciplined; for they seldom use to chuse unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems; but whomsoever they find to be most licentions of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition: him they set up and glorifie in their rithmes; him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow. The moralizing poet then continues to show the « effect of evil things being decked with the attire of goodly words,» on the affections of a young mind, which, as he observes, « cannot rest; for, «if he be not busied in some goodness, he will find himself such business as shall soon busy all about him. In which, if he shall find any to praise him, and to give him encouragement, as those Bardes do for little reward, or a share of a stolen cow, then waxeth he most insolent, and half mad with the love of himself and his own lewd deeds. And as for words to set forth such lewdness, it is not hard for them to give a goodly and painted show thereunto, borrowed even from the praises which are proper to virtue itself; as of a most notorious thief and wicked outlaw, which had lived all his life-time of spoils and robberies, one of their bardes in his praise will say, that he was none of the idle milksops that was brought up to the fire-side; but that most of his days he spent in arms and valiant enterprises-that he did never eat his meat before he had won it with his sword; that he lay not all night in slugging in a cabin under his mantle, but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives; and did light his candle at the flames of their houses to lead him in the darkness; that the day was his night, and the night his day; that he loved not to be long wooing of wenches to yield to him, but, where he came, he took by force the spoil of other men's love, and left but lamentation to their lovers; that his music was not the harp, nor the lays of love, but the cries of people and the clashing of armour; and, finally, that he died, not bewailed of many, but made many wail when he died, that dearly bought his death." It little occurred to Spenser that, in thus reprobating these poor bards, he was giving an admirable analysis of the machinery and effects of almost all that poets have ever done! In 1563 severe enactments were issued against these gentlemen, to which was annexed the following-«Item, for that those rhymers do, by their ditties and rhymes, made to dyvers lordes and gentlemen in Ireland, in the commendacion and highe praise of extorsion, rebellion, rape, raven, and outhere injustice, encourage those lordes and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leve them, and for making of such rhymes, rewards are given by the said lordes and gentlemen; that for abolishinge of soo heynouse an abuse, » etc., etc. The feudal system, which encouraged the poetical state of manners, and afforded the minstrels worthy subjects for their strains, received a severe blow from the policy pursued by Elizabeth. This was followed up by Cromwell, and consummated by King William, of Orange memory. More recently a Scotch writer observes, In Ireland the harpers, the original composers, and the chief depositories of that music, have, till lately, been uniformly cherished and supported by the nobility and gentry. They endeavoured to outdo one another in playing the airs that were most esteemed, with correctness, and with their proper expression. The taste for that style of performance seems now, however, to be declining. The native harpers are not much encouraged. A number of their airs have come into the hands of foreign musicians, who have attempted to fashion them according to the model of the modern music; and these acts are considered in the country as capital improvements. >> We have gone into the above details, not only because they are in themselves interesting and illustrative of the « Irish Melodies," but because we fully coincide with the bard of « Childe Harold," that the lasting celebrity of Moore will be found in his lyrical compositions, with which his name and fame will be inseparably and immortally connected. Mr Moore possesses a singular facility of seizing and expressing the prevailing association which a given air is calculated to inspire in the minds of the greatest number of hearers, and has a very felicitous talent in making this discovery, even through the envelopes of prejudice or vulgarity. The alchemy by which he is thus accustomed to turn dross into gold is really surprising. The air which now seems framed for the sole purpose of giving the highest effect to the refined and elegant ideas contained in the stanzas Sing, sing-music was given,» has for years been known only as attached to the words of, «Oh! whack! Judy O'Flanagan, etc., and the words usually sung to the tune of Cumilum are of the same low and ludicrous description. He possesses, also, in a high degree, that remarkable gift of a poetical imagination, which consists in elevating and dignifying the meanest subjects on which it chuses to expatiate : As they, who to their couch at night Like freezing founts, where all, that's thrown The ingenuity with which the above simile is applied, is not more remarkable than the success with which the homely image of putting out the bed-candle before we sleep, is divested of every particle of vulgarity. In the same way, and with equal facility, the sudden revival of forgotten feelings, at meeting with friends from whom we have been long separated, is compared to the discovering, by the application of heat, letters written invisibly with sympathetic ink : What soften'd remembrances come o'er the heart When held to the flame will steal out to the sight, So many a feeling that long seem'd effaced, The warmth of a meeting like this brings to light. Rich and Rare," taken music, words, and all, is worth an epic poem to the Irish nation,-simple, tender, elegint, sublime, it is the very essence of poetry and music;-there is not one simile or conceit, nor one idle crotchet to be met with throughout. The musical as well as the poetical taste of the author is evident in every line, nor is one allowed to shine at the expense of the other. Moore has composed some beautiful airs, but seems shy of exercising this faculty, dreading, perhaps, that success in that pursuit would detract from his poetical fame. The union of these talents is rare, and some have affirmed that they even exclude one another. When Gretry visited Voltaire at Ferney, the philosopher paid him a compliment at the expense of his profession : « Vous êtes musicien," said Voltaire, « et vous avez de l'esprit cela est trop rare pour que je ne prenne pas à vous le plus vif intérêt.» Nature certainly may be supposed not over-inclined to be prodigal in bestowing on the same object the several gifts that are peculiarly hers; but, as far as the assertion rests on experience, it is powerfully contradicted by the names of Moore and Rousseau. The late Mr Charles Wolfe, having both a literary and a musical turn, occasionally employed himself in adapting words to national melodies, and in writing characteristic introductions to popular songs. Being fond of « The Last Rose of Summer» (IRISH MEL. No V), he composed the following tale for its illustration: This is the grave of Dermid:-He was the best minstrel among us all,—a youth of romantic genius, and of the most tremulous, and yet the most impetuous feeling. He knew all our old national airs, of every character and description: according as his song was in a lofty or a mournful strain, the village represented a camp or funeral; but if Dermid were in his merry mood, the lads and lasses hurried into a dance, with a giddy and irresistible gaiety. One day our chieftain committed a cruel and wanton outrage against one of our peaceful villagers. Dermid's harp was in his hand when he heard it :—with all the thoughtlessness and independent sensibility of a poet's indignation, he struck the chords that never spoke without response, and the detestation became universal. He was driven from amongst us by our enraged chief; and all his relations, and the maid he loved, attended the minstrel into the wide world. For three years there were no tidings of Dermid; and the song and the dance were silent; when one of our little boys came running in, and told us that he saw our minstrel approaching at a distance. Instantly the whole village was in commotion; the youths and maidens assembled on the green, and agreed to celebrate the arrival of their poet with a dance: they fixed upon the air he was to play for them; it was the merriest of his collection; the ring was formed; all looked eagerly to the quarter from which he was to arrive, determined to greet their favourite bard with a cheer. But they were checked the instant he appeared; he came slowly, and languidly, and loiteringly along; his countenance had a cold, dim, and careless aspect, very different from that expressive cheerfulness which marked his features, even in his more melancholy moments; his harp was swinging heavily upon his arm; it seemed a burthen to him; it was much shattered, and some of the strings were broken. He looked at us for a few moments, then, relapsing into vacancy, advanced without quickening his pace, to his accustomed stone, and sate down in silence. After a pause, we ventured to ask him for his friends;—he first looked up sharp in our faces, next down upon his harp; then struck a few notes of a wild and desponding melody, which we had never heard before; but his hand dropped, and he did not finish it.—Again we paused:-then knowing well that, if we could give the smallest mirthful impulse to his feelings, his whole soul would soon follow, we asked him for the merry air we had chosen. We were surprised at the readiness with which he seemed to comply; but it was the same wild and heart-breaking strain he had commenced. In fact, we found that the soul of the minstrel had become an entire void, except one solitary ray that vibrated sluggishly through its very darkest part; it was like the sea in a dark calm, which you only know to be in motion by the panting which you hear. He had totally forgotten every trace of his former strains, not only those that were more gay and airy, but even those of a more pensive cast; and he had gotten in their stead that one dreary simple melody; it was about a Lonely Rose, that had outlived all its companions; this he continued singing and playing from day to day, until he spread an unusual gloom over the whole village: he seemed to perceive it, for he retired to the church-yard, and continued repairing thither to sing it to the day of his death. The afflicted constantly resorted there to hear it, and he died singing it to a maid who had lost her lover. The orphans have learnt it, and still chaunt it over Dermid's grave." The Fudge Family in Paris» is a most humorous work, written partly in the style of The Twopenny-Post Bag.» These poetical epistles remind many persons of the Bath Guide, but a comparison can hardly be supported; the plan of Mr Moore's work being less extensive, and the subject more ephemeral. We pity the man, however, who has not felt pleased with this book; even those who disapprove the author's politics, and his treating Royalty with so little reverence, must be bigoted and loyal to an excess if they deny his wit and humour. Mr Moore, in his preface to the « Loves of the Angels, states, that he had somewhat hastened his publication, to avoid the disadvantage of having his work appear after his friend Lord Byron's Heaven and Earth; or, as he ingeniously expresses it, by an earlier appearance in the literary horizon, to give myself the chance of what astronomers call a heliacal rising, before the luminary in whose light I was to be lost, should appear." This was an amiable, but by no means a reasonable modesty. The light that plays round Mr Moore's verses, tender, exquisite, and brilliant, was in no danger of being extinguished even in the sullen glare of Lord Byron's genius. One might as well expect an aurora borealis to be put out by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Though both bright stars in the firmament of modern poetry, they were as distant and unlike as Saturn and Mercury; and though their rising might be at the same time, they never moved in the same orb, nor met or jostled in the wide trackless way of fancy and invention. able rival. We are not going to speak of any pre- Like moonlight on a troubled sea, Notwithstanding that these two poets in some measure divided the public between them, yet it was not the same public whose favour they severally enjoyed in the highest degree. Though both read and admired in the same extended circle of taste and fashion, each was the favourite of a totally different set of readers. Thus a lover may pay the same attention to two different women; but he only means to flirt with the one, while the other is the mistress of his heart. The gay, the We do not believe that Mr Moore ever writes a fair, the witty, the happy, idolize Mr Moore's de- line that in itself would not pass for poetry, that lightful muse, on her pedestal of airy smiles or is not at least a vivid or harmonious common transient tears. Lord Byron's severer verse is place. Lord Byron wrote whole pages of sullen, enshrined in the breasts of those whose gaiety crabbed prose, that, like a long dreary road, howhas been turned to gall, whose fair exterior has a ever, leads to doleful shades or palaces of the canker within-whose mirth has received a re- blest. In short Mr Moore's Parnassus is a bloombuke as if it were folly, from whom happiness has ing Eden, and Lord Byron's a rugged wilderness fled like a dream! By comparing the odds upon of shame and sorrow. On the tree of knowledge the known chances of human life, it is no wonder of the first you can see nothing but perpetual that the admirers of his lordship's works should flowers and verdure; in the last you see the naked be more numerous than those of his more agree-stem and rough bark; but it heaves at intervals plained 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 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 de with inarticulate throes, and you hear the shrieks | echo-We have no human figure before us, no of a human voice within. palpable reality answering to any substantive Critically speaking, Mr Moore's poetry is charge-form or nature. Hence we think it may be exable 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 reflec-world feels, but which it is difficult to explain tion 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 pi-sire to please, and from the spontaneous sense quante of poetic diction. Poetry, in his hands, of pleasure in the author's mind. Without bebecomes a kind of cosmetic art-it is the poetry of ing gross in the smallest degree, it is voluptuous | the toilet. His muse must be as fine as the Lady of in the highest. It is a sort of sylph-like spirituLoretto. Now, this principle of composition leads alized sensuality. So far from being licentious in not only to a defect of dramatic interest, but also his Lalla Rookh, Mr Moore has become moral of imagination. For every thing in this world, the and sentimental (indeed he was always the last), meanest incident or object, may receive a light and and tantalizes his young and fair readers with an importance from its association with other ob- the glittering shadows and mystic adumbrajects, and with the heart of man; and the variety tions of evanescent delights. He, in fine, in his thus created is endless as it is striking and profound. courtship of the Muses, resembles those lovers But if we begin and end in those objects that are who always say the softest things on all occasions; beautiful or dazzling in themselves and at the first who smile with irresistible good humour at their | blush, we shall soon be confined to a human re-own success; who banish pain and truth from ward 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 repulsive in themselves, and 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 abstractqu alities of objects. It is not a 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 their thoughts, and who impart the delight they We here conclude our sketch of Anacreon Moore, |