reputation had found charms enough to detain him among the enchanted hills and woods of Persia. We have made an excursion of a very early date with Prince Madoc into South America; we have wept with Gertrude of Wyoming over the scenes of desolation in the northern half of the New World; and we have been "cursed" by Kehama on the mountains of the Ganges: -but, with the exception of some elegant and lighter efforts, rendered indeed of comparative consequence by such names as those of Professor Carlyle and Sir William Jones, the "bowers of Rochnabad and the streams of Mosellay" have remained unsung; and the riches, the beauty, and the dazzling splendour of Persian courts, or camps, or temples, have been lost on the knowlege and the imagination of English genius.

This rather extraordinary chasm in our polite literature has been amply filled up by the present volume; which will undoubtedly afford an exquisite pleasure, on the whole, to every real lover of a refined simplicity and elegance in versification and phraseology; and which will furnish an unmixed treat to the admirers of the more excursive flights of an equally vigorous and playful fancy. Mr. Moore, whose mingled powers of poetry and music are known to every proficient and to every amateur in either of these arts throughout our country, has manifestly prepared himself for this long projected publication, with great care and diligence of study. It is evident, not only from the notes but from the whole contexture of the work, that he has thoroughly imbued his mind with a knowlege of the customs, manners, and habits of that part of the East which he has chosen for the scene of his poetical adventures. Every peculiar production of the lands or seas, with which he surrounds his characters, seems by turns to supply him with the most apposite and ingenious similes or illustrations; and a beautiful variety of these novel' ideas may be found in Lalla Rookh. We will now make our readers acquainted with this lady, as we believe many of them will be surprized to find Lalla Rookh to be; --such, however, she is, and a very interesting specimen of a sex to whom this poet appears to devote at least a proportionate share of his attention. Perhaps we cannot introduce his heroine (if such she may be called) in a more concise manner than the author himself has done in a passage at the commencement of his story:

In the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, King of the Lesser Bucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having abdicated the throne in favour of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Prophet; and, passing into India

through

through the delightful valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time. at Delhi on his way. He was entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the same splendour to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia. During the stay of the Royal Pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the Prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the Emperor, LALLA ROOKH;- a Princess described by the poets of her time, as more beautiful than Leila, Shirine, Dewilde, or any of those heroines whose names and loves embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was intended that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cashmere; where the young King, as soon as the cares of empire would permit, was to meet, for the first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into Bucharia.'

We omit the description of the streets of Delhi, and of the parting scene between Lalla Rookh and her imperial father; proceeding to the picture of the procession, which the reader is to accompany to the end of the romance:

Seldom had the Eastern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens in the suburbs to the Imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of splendour. The gallant appearance of the Rajas and Mogul lords, distinguished by those insignia of the Emperor's favour, the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and the small silver-rimmed kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles; the costly armour of their cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Keder Khan, in the brightness of their silver battle-axes and the massiness of their maces of gold; the glittering of the gilt pine-apples on the tops of the palankeens; - the embroidered trappings of the elephants, bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique temples, within which the ladies of LALLA ROOKH lay, as it were, enshrined; the rose-coloured veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter, at the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her through the curtains, with feathers of the Argus pheasant's wing;-and the lovely troop of Tartarian and Cashmerian maids of honour, whom the young King had sent to accompany his bride, and who rode on each side of the litter, upon small Arabian horses;- all was brilliant, tasteful, and magnificent, and pleased even the critical and fastidious FADLADEEN, Great Nazir or Chamberlain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen immediately after the Princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of the pageant.'

It was necessary to bring this 'important personage' before our readers; because he occurs, and with increasing dignity of character, corpulence, and criticism, at every pause or 'break of the poetry. We must now also apprize the astonished tyro in the vagaries of the modern metrical romance, that these pauses or breaks in the volume which we are exa

N 4

mining

mining consist of "pure prose !"-that it is pure, it will be said, is something: but wherefore prose? This is a question which we cannot decidedly answer. When Macrobius compared Homer and Virgil, he was obliged to intersperse his own prose with the poetry of his two great subjects of comparison: when Strada wrote his Prolusiones, this medley was equally natural:- Boethius De Consolatione, and Barclay in his Argenis, and Walton in his "Complete Angler," and those modern classics, Dr. Trapp in his Prælections, and Professor Coplestone, were driven, as it were, into a similar mixture:- but it is choice, unbiassed choice, and neither convenience nor necessity, which occasioned the practice in this volume. Mr. Moore certainly might have formed the string, on which his pearls are hung, of any texture that he pleased; and he has made it of a sort of serio-comic prose, of the effect of which our readers must really judge for themselves, since we cannot pretend to guide any person's taste in a matter of such very uncertain decision. No one bath, it is said, is of precisely the same temperature to any two patients. How, then, shall we lay down a general rule for appreciating the criticisms of Fadladeen? One thing we will venture to predict; that many will agree in the justice of some of these criticisms, and will also be of opinion that the author has evinced more humour and good-humour than safe policy, in thus anticipating the remarks of severe censors, and in furnishing dull malignity with the borrowed arrows of satire. For ourselves, we are so delighted with the entire change in Fadladeen's opinions at the conclusion of the work, when he discovers but we will make no discoveries, calculated to diminish the pleasure of our readers. We hasten to finish the analysis of the connecting story of Lalla Rookh; and to announce that, during her journey to Cashmere, the bridal procession is accompanied by a young poet named Feramorz: who, not having the adequate fear of Fadladeen before his eyes, continues to amuse them at their several woodland resting-places for the night, with various poetical" Arabian Nights' Entertainments;" that, finally, the bride arrives at Cashmere; and that but here we chuse to imitate Dinarzade of happily interrupted memory, and to leave the remainder of the romance to the diligent research of the reader.

The first story, sung to the lute of Feramorz, is intitled 6 The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.' The subject turns on the historical record of an impostor named Hakem ben Haschem, (called Mocanna, from the veil of silver gauze which he always wore,) who, in the year of the Hegira 163,

created.

created much alarm throughout the eastern empire. Among the numerous victims of this impious wretch, whether sacrificed to his ambition or to his lust, is one unhappy female, Zelica; who, having been led to believe that her lover Azim was dead, becomes distracted in consequence of her grief, and, falling thus into the power of the impostor, is turned into an instrument of his deceitful influence over the blinded multitude of his followers. Her lover himself at length joins the Prophet's standard; and a dreadful meeting (not planned so well as it ought to have been) takes place between them. She recovers her reason for a while. We extract a part of

this description:

It was indeed the touch of those lov'd lips
Upon her eyes that chac'd their short eclipse,
And, gradual as the snow, at heaven's breath,
Melts off and shows the azure flowers beneath,
Her lids unclos'd, and the bright eyes were seen
Gazing on his; not, as they late had been,
Quick, restless, wild, but mournfully serene,
As if to lie, ev'n for that tranced minute,
So near his heart, had consolation in it;
And thus to wake in his belov'd caress
Took from her soul one half its wretchedness.
But, when she heard him call her good and pure,
Oh 'twas too much too dreadful to endure!
Shuddering she broke away from his embrace,
And, hiding with both hands her guilty face,
Said, in a tone whose anguish would have riven
A heart of very marble, " Pure! - oh Heaven."
That tone those looks so chang'd-the withering blight,
That sin and sorrow leave where'er they light-
The dead despondency of those sunk eyes,
Where once, had he thus met her by surprize,
He would have seen himself, too happy boy,
Reflected in a thousand lights of joy;
And then the place, that bright unholy place,
Where vice lay hid beneath each winning grace
And charm of luxury, as the viper weaves
Its wily covering of sweet balsam-leaves;
All struck upon his heart, sudden and cold
As death itself; it needs not to be told -
No, no he sees it all, plain as the brand

-

-

Of burning shame can mark - whate'er the hand,
That could from heav'n and him such brightness sever,
'Tis done to heav'n and him she's lost for ever!
It was a dreadful moment; not the tears

The lingering, lasting misery of years

Could match that minute's anguish all the worst
Of sorrow's elements in that dark burst

Broke

Broke o'er his soul, and with one crash of fate,
Laid the whole hopes of his life desolate !

"Oh! curse me not," she cried, as wild he toss'd
His desperate hand tow'rds heav'n "though I am lost,
Think not that guilt, that falsehood made me fall,

No, no -'twas grief, 'twas madness did it all!
Nay, doubt me not-though all thy love hath ceas'd
I know it hath - yet, yet believe, at least,
That every spark of reason's light must be
Quench'd in this brain, ere I could stray from thee!
They told me thou wert dead-why, Azim, why
Did we not, both of us, that instant die

When we were parted? oh! could'st thou but know
With what a deep devotedness of woe

I wept thy absence o'er and o'er again

Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
And memory, like a drop that, night and day,"
Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away!
Didst thou but know how pale I sat at home,
My eyes still turn'd the way thou wert to come,
And, all the long, long night of hope and fear,
Thy voice and step still sounding in my ear
Oh God! thou would'st not wonder that, at last,
When every hope was all at once o'ercast,
When I heard frightful voices round me say
Azim is dead! - this wretched brain gave way,
And I became a wreck, at random driven,
Without one glimpse of reason or of Heaven
All wild-and ev'n this quenchless love within
Turn'd to foul fires to light me into sin!
Thou pitiest me I knew thou would'st-
that sky
Hath nought beneath it half so lorn as I.

-

4

The fiend, who lur'd me hither hist! come near,
Or thou too, thou art lost, if he should hear
Told me such things- oh! with such devilish art,
As would have ruin'd ev'n a holier heart.
Of thee, and of that ever-radiant sphere,
Where bless'd at length, if I but serv'd him here,
I should for ever live in thy dear sight,
And drink from those pure eyes eternal light!
Think, think how lost, how madden'd I must be,
To hope that guilt could lead to God or thee!"

We are compelled to break off this very interesting quotation, long before we have exhausted its beauties: but so many passages have claims on our attention, that we must endeavour to present our readers with as great a variety of subjects as we can introduce.

Before, however, we proceed to the execution of this pleasant task, it will be necessary for us to make some remarks on the preceding extract. First, we think it is obvious that

Mr. Moore