Mr. Moore has adopted a somewhat different theory of poetical style from that which, judging by his practice, he formerly maintained. We have used the terms refined simplicity,' as characteristic of his manner in the present volume; and it was not without consideration that we admitted this phrase into our general preliminary observations: for, although refinement of style, in contra-distinction to the familiarity and the vulgarity of many of his versifying contemporaries, was the peculiar and proud mark of Mr. Moore's former writings, yet we do not recollect any thing in this author like the pervading simplicity of the publication before us. We should be very sorry that any persons, whose judgement we esteem, were to suppose us deficient in admiration of this great quality of composition. It is so closely connected with perspicuity, and with that pellucid clearness of meaning which eminently distinguishes our older writers, that we cannot but most highly value it. Still, however, as we have more than once had occasion to remark of late, a visible and indeed a vast gulph lies between the simplicity of the moderns and that of the antients; and here we do not only refer to the plain dignity of the classics, properly so called, (illa priorum simplicitas,) but we still more especially allude to many of our own greater poets, to Dryden, to Otway, and some others. Yet it appears to us that these excellent models of expression, while they steer clear of the regions of bombast and obscurity, do not (except in their grosser passages) run against the rocks of familiarity, and of a low sort of conversation, or even nursery, manner, impressing their hearers with the sort of feeling which they would have on being made the unwilling listeners to dialogue between very common-place persons, or young uninteresting children. We have often avowed our sentiments that such is the burthen on our minds, when we rise from perusing, as dire necessity will at times demand, some of the more infantine efforts of Mr. Wordsworth; and now that we have been compelled to mention this gentleman, in the requisite way of illustration, we cannot help seriously lamenting that the comparatively few pathetic and even sublime instances in his poems, in which the admission of this extreme simplicity of diction has been successful, have so blinded some authors even of superior genius in the present day, as to have had the same effect on them that two or three quack doctor's cures never fail to produce on the wretched remnant of his patients, whom his art has reduced to that remnant out of a thriving multitude. When Lord Byron, when Mr. Moore himself, (to whom we confess, above all others, we anxiously looked for the preservation

of

of a pure and exalted taste in poetical expression,) has fallen into this vulgar error of the day, and has occasionally written verse as if not he, but some one greatly his inferior, was talking prose, we are required, by every motive of love and zeal for the honour of the English muse, to mark and to reprobate such an aberration from his own better principles and practice of composition. Akin to this fault, is that of a too loose and irregular frame of verse. The fondness for

variety, or the fear of monotony, has led Mr. Moore into this fault. Here, also, he has perhaps imbibed a too copious draught of the rythmical doctrines of the modern school, and has suffered his own exquisite ear to be misled by vicious example. Our more observant readers will be at no loss to discover several instances of both the defects to which we have alluded, in the preceding extract: but we shall point them out, specifically, as we advance.

While we are speaking on the subject, we may be permitted to appeal to those who are competent to decide such a question, whether they ever experienced, in the perusal of Dryden's Fables for instance, any want of variety of rythm, any too frequent recurrence of similar pauses, any monotony of cadence? We feel assured that the more finished pages of this peculiarly harmonious writer have proved, to a demonstration, that the regular English couplet is susceptible of every change of modulation that the most truly musical ear can require; and, if this be the case, and at the same time no such licences are to be found in this great poet as those which disfigure the versification of his more audacious successors, will it not follow that they must injudiciously have had recourse to older models, and must have imitated those who, in the infancy of English poetry, were too little confined by any critical rules of composition: whose taste was not equal to their genius; who could not therefore unconsciously make rules for themselves: who lived, in a word, before

"Waller was smooth; and Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine."

In his "Variations," indeed, if Mr. Moore would have more frequently favoured us with the noble Alexandrine, as well as the triplet, which he has sometimes introduced with effect, we should not have complained: but it is the overlapping of verses, constantly repeated, that we must censure; it is the pause occurring constantly at every possible syllable, it is the imitation, in a word, of the Draytons, and Websters, and Witherses of old, filtered through the cullender of a Southey

or a Wordsworth, which we cannot with any patience behold in a writer who has more true poetic genius, and (let us not be forced to say who had!) more true poetic taste, than a whole swarm of such dead May-flies, or living summergnats, put together.

Mr. Moore has too much discrimination, and beyond a doubt too much candour, to pervert our meaning into a recommendation of inflated diction, or of exuberant ornament, or of the least degree of exaltation of style above the subject-matter. Neither will he suppose us to be praising the confessedly too great uniformity of Pope's versification; whose unvarying melody is certainly somewhat like the dying hum of the bee, lost in his own honey. No, it is not such unchangeable sweetness as this that we would wish to see return among us; nor is it the fustian of Nat. Lee, or the pomposity of Young, that we are panegyrizing on the present occasion. It is the language and the flow of Dryden in his happier efforts. Let our poets rest here; and as to any newly revived old vagaries, let them be left on the shores of that Lake whence they have unfortunately emanated, to deluge our literature with a taste equally puerile and prosaic.

We have done; and our readers shall be refreshed with some more of the Veiled Prophet.'

A powerfully painted scene occurs, in which our indignation is excited to the utmost against the cold and savage impostor; who, retired from the presence of his deluded followers, is revelling in secret luxury, and venting the villainous burthen of his soul in imagined solitude:

And still he drank and ponder'd-nor could see

Th' approaching maid, so deep his reverie;

At length, with fiendish laugh, like that which broke
From EBLIS at the Fall of Man, he spoke:

"Yes, ye vile race, for hell's amusement given,
Too mean for earth, yet claiming kin with heaven;
God's images, forsooth!—such gods as he
Whom INDIA serves, the monkey deity;
Ye creatures of a breath, proud things of clay,
To whom if LUCIFER, as grandams say,
Refus'd, though at the forfeit of heaven's light,
To bend in worship, LUCIFER was right!
Soon shall I plant this foot upon the neck
Of your foul race, and without fear or check,
Luxuriating in hate, avenge my shame,

My deep-felt, long-nurst loathing of man's name!
Soon, at the head of myriads, blind and fierce
As hooded falcons, through the universe
I'll sweep my darkening, desolating way,
Weak man my instrument, curst man my prey!

Ye

'Ye wise, ye learn'd, who grope your dull way on
By the dim twinkling gleams of ages gone,
Like superstitious thieves, who think the light
From dead men's marrow guides them best at night -
Ye shall have honours wealth-yes, Sages, yes—
I know, grave fools, your wisdom's nothingness;
Undazzled it can track yon starry sphere,
But a gilt stick, a bauble blinds it here.
How I shall laugh, when trumpetted along,
In lying speech, and still more lying song,

By these learn'd slaves, the meanest of the throng;
Their wits bought up, their wisdom shrunk so small,
A sceptre's puny point can wield it all!'

}

This passage manifests a formidable strain of sarcasm, and of appropriate impiety, which strongly displays the author's dramatic power of exhibiting character.

We turn to a more gentle description:

'Ah ZELICA! there was a time, when bliss
Shone o'er thy heart from every look of his;
When but to see him, hear him, breathe the air
In which he dwelt, was thy soul's fondest prayer
When round him hung such a perpetual spell,
Whate'er he did, none ever did so well.
Too happy days! when, if he touch'd a flower
Or gem of thine, 'twas sacred from that hour;
When thou didst study him, till every tone
And gesture and dear look became thy own,-
Thy voice like his, the changes of his face
In thine reflected with still lovelier grace,
Like echo, sending back sweet music, fraught
With twice th' aerial sweetness it had brought!
Yet now he comes-brighter than even he
E'er beam'd before, but ah! not bright for thee;
No dread, unlook'd for, like a visitant
From the' other world, he comes as if to haunt
Thy guilty soul with dreams of lost delight,
Long lost to all but memory's aching sight:
Sad dreams! as when the Spirit of our Youth
Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth
And innocence once ours, and leads us back,
In mournful mockery, o'er the shining track
Of our young life, and points out every ray
Of hope and
peace we've lost upon the way!
Once happy fair!-'

In the subjoined quotation, we have a proof of the author's versatility of talent. He has just breathed the very soul of tenderness and delicacy in the exquisite lines above-copied ; and we shall now see him, in the spirited catalogue of the hostile forces of the Caliph and of Mokanna, manifesting that rare union of knowlege and genius which has adorned a few of these most difficult efforts of poetry:

13

• Ne'er

--

Ne'er did the march of MAHADI display
Such pomp before;-not ev'n when on his way
TO MECCA'S Temple, when both land and sea
Were spoil'd to feed the Pilgrim's luxury ;*
When round him, mid the burning sands, he saw
Fruits of the North in icy freshness thaw,
And cool'd his thirsty lip, beneath the glow
Of MECCA's sun, with urns of Persian snow: +-
Nor e'er did armament more grand that that
Pour from the kingdoms of the Caliphat.
First, in the van, the People of the Rock, t
On their light mountain steeds, of royal stock; §
Then, Chieftains of DAMASCUS, proud to see
The flashing of their swords' rich marquetry.||
Men, from the regions near the VOLGA's mouth,
Mix'd with the rude, black archers of the South;
And Indian lancers, in white-turban'd ranks
From the far SINDE, or ATTOCK's sacred banks,
With dusky legions from the Land of Myrrh, q
And many a mace-arm'd Moor and Mid-Sea islander.
• Nor less in number, though more new and rude
In warfare's school, was the vast multitude
That, fir'd by zeal, or by oppression wrong'd,
Round the white standard of th' Impostor throng'd.
Beside his thousands of Believers, blind,
Burning and headlong as the Samiel wind,
Many who felt, and more who fear'd to feel
The bloody Islamite's converting steel,
Flock'd to his banner;- Chiefs of the' UZBEK race
Waving their heron crests with martial grace;
TURKOMANS, countless as their flocks, led forth
From the' aromatic pastures of the North;

**

*Mahadi, in a single pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of gold.'

+ Nivem Meccam apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut raro visam. Abulfeda.'

The inhabitants of Hejaz or Arabia Petræa, called by an Eastern writer "The People of the Rock.". Ebn Haukal. '$ "Those horses, called by the Arabians Kochlani, of whom a written genealogy has been kept for 2000 years. They are said to derive their origin from King Solomon's steeds." Niebuhr.'

"Many of the figures on the blades of their swords are wrought in gold or silver, or in marquetry with small gems.” Asiat. Misc. vol. i.'

¶ Azab or Saba.'

***The chiefs of the Uzbek Tartars wear a plume of white heron's feathers in their turbans." Account of Independent Tartary.

Wild