the best parts of Mokanna, it has a far more interesting story; and is not liable to any of the objections we have been obliged to bring against the contrivance and structure of that leading poem. The outline of the story is short and simple.-Al Hassan, the bigotted and sanguinary Emir of Persia, had long waged a furious and exterminating war against the votaries of the ancient religion of the landthe worshippers of Mithra, or his emblem, Fire-then and since designated by the name of Ghebers. The superior numbers of the invader had overcome the heroic resistance of the patriots, and driven them to take refuge in a precipitous peninsula, cut off from the land by what was understood to be an impassable ravine, and exposing nothing but bare rocks to the sea. In this fastness the scanty remnant of the Ghebers maintain themselves, under the command of their dauntless leader, Hafed, who is still enabled, by sudden and daring incursions, to harass and annoy their enemy. In one of those desperate enterprises, this adventurous leader climbs to the summit of a lofty cliff, near the Emir's palace, where a small pleasure-house had been built, in which he hoped to surprise this bigotted foe of his country; but found only his fair daughter Hinda, the loveliest and gentlest of all Arabian maids-as he himself expresses it. "He climb'd the gory Vulture's nest, And found a trembling Dove within!" This romantic meeting gives rise to a mutual passion-and the love of the fair Hinda is inevitably engaged, before she knows the name or quality of her nightly visitant. In the noble heart of Hafed, however, love was but a secondary feeling, to devotion to the freedom and the faith of his country. His little band had lately suffered further reverses, and saw nothing now before them but a glorious self-sacrifice. He resolves, therefore, to tear all gentler feelings from his breast, and in one last interview to take an eternal farewell of the maid who had captivated his soul. In his melancholy aspect she reads at once, with the instinctive sagacity of love, the tidings of their approaching separation; and breaks out into the following sweet and girlish repinings:"I knew, I knew it could not last 'Twas bright, 'twas heavenly-but 'tis past! To glad me with its soft black eye, When he smiles sternly at the idea of danger, she urges him to join her father's forces, and earn her hand by helping him to root out those impious Ghebers whom he so much abhors. The spirit of the patriot bursts forth at this; and, without revealing his name or quality, he proudly avows and justifies the conduct of that luckless sect; and then, relenting, falls into a gentler and more pathetic strain. "Oh! had we never, never met! Faith, friends, and country, sunder'd wide;— When false to all that's dear beside! Thy father Iran's deadliest foeThyself, perhaps, ev'n now-but noHate never look'd so lovely yet! No!-sacred to thy soul will be The land of him who could forget All but that bleeding land for thee! Her widows mourn, her warriors fall, He then starts desperately away; regains his skiff at the foot of the precipice, and leaves her in agony and consternation. The poet now proceeds to detail, a little more particularly, the history of his hero; and recounts some of the absurd legends and miraculous attributes with which the fears of his enemies had invested his name. "Such were the tales, that won belief, And such the colouring fancy gave For happy homes and altars free ; His only spell-word, Liberty! The pageant of his country's shame, Of a first smile, so welcom'd he The sparkle of the first sword drawn For vengeance and for liberty !''—pp. 206, 207. "Whose life, as free from thought as sin, The Persian lily shines and towers, Has fall'n upon her golden flowers. Far other feelings Love has brought Her soul all flame, her brow all sadness," &c. Not the pure, open, prosp'rous Love, In friendship's smile, and home's caress, And does the long-left home she seeks And the gay, gleaming fishes count, Shooting around their jasper fountHer little garden mosque to see, And once again, at ev'ning hour, In her own sweet acacia bower.- groves, As a pale Angel of the Grave."-pp. 227, 228. Her vessel is first assailed by a violent tempest, and, in the height of its fury, by a hostile bark; and her senses are extinguished with terror in the midst of the double conflict. At last, both are appeased-and her recollection is slowly restored. The following passage appears to us extremely beautiful and characteristic: How calm, how beautiful comes on When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze, When the blue waters rise and fall, "Such was the golden hour that broke Beneath no rich pavilion's shade, She soon discovers, in short, that she is a captive in the hands of the Ghebers! and shrinks with horror, when she finds that she is to be carried to their rocky citadel, and to the presence of the terrible Hafed. The galley is rowed by torchlight through frightful rocks and foaming tides, into a black abyss of the promontory, where her eyes are banascent, till at last she is desired to look up, daged and she is borne up a long and rugged and receive her doom from the formidable chieftain. Before she has raised her eyes, the well known voice of her lover pronounces her name; and she finds herself alone in the arms of her adoring Hafed! The first emotion is ecstasy. But the recollection of her father's vow and means of vengeance comes like a thundercloud on her joy ;-she tells her lover of the treachery by which he has been sacrificed; and urges him, with passionate eager ness, to fly with her to some place of safety. 'Hafed, my own beloved Lord,' She kneeling cries-' first, last ador'd! Half what thy lips impassion'd swore, Those eyes before me beaming thus, High burst in air the fun'ral flames, pp. 283, 284. Hafed is more shocked with the treachery to which he is sacrificed than with the fate to which it consigns him :-One moment he gives up to softness and pity-assures Hinda, with compassionate equivocation, that they shall soon meet on some more peaceful shore -places her sadly in a litter, and sees her borne down the steep to the galley she had lately quitted, and to which she still expects This sad story is closed by a sort of choral that he is to follow her. He then assembles dirge, of great elegance and beauty, of which his brave and devoted companions-warns we can only afford to give the first stanza. them of the fate that is approaching-and exhorts them to meet the host of the invaders" in the ravine, and sell their lives dearly to their steel. After a fierce, and somewhat too sanguinary combat, the Ghebers are at last borne down by numbers; and Hafed finds himself left alone, with one brave associate, mortally wounded like himself. They make a desperate effort to reach and die beside the consecrated fire which burns for ever on the summit of the cliff. The crags are red they've clamber'd o'er, Now Hafed sees the Fire divine- And must I leave thee with'ring here, The mark for every coward's spear? And fires the pile, whose sudden blaze pp. 278, 279. The unfortunate Hinda, whose galley had been detained close under the cliff by the noise of the first onset, had heard with agony the sounds which marked the progress and catastrophe of the fight, and is at last a spectatress of the lofty fate of her lover. "But see what moves upon the height? What bodes its solitary glare? Shrin'd in its own grand element ! No Farewell-farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! (Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea) pearl ever lay, under Oman's green water, More pure in its shell than thy Spirit in thee." p. 284. The general tone of this poem is certainly too much strained. It is overwrought throughout, and is too entirely made up of agonies and raptures ;-but, in spite of all this, it is a work of great genius and beauty; and not only delights the fancy by its general brilliancy and spirit, but moves all the tender and noble feelings with a deep and powerful agitation. The last piece, entitled "The Light of the Haram," is the gayest of the whole; and is of a very slender fabric as to fable or invention. In truth, it has scarcely any story at all; but is made up almost entirely of beautiful songs and descriptions. During the summer months, when the court is resident in the Vale of Cashmere, there is, it seems, a sort of oriental carnival, called the Feast of Roses, during which every body is bound to be hap py and in good humour. At this critical period, the Emperor Selim had unfortunately a little love-quarrel with his favourite Sultana Nourmahal,-which signifies, it seems, the Light of the Haram. The lady is rather unhappy while the sullen fit is on her; and applies to a sort of enchantress, who invokes a musical spirit to teach her an irresistible song, which she sings in a mask to the offended monarch; and when his heart is subdued by its sweetness, throws off her mask, and springs with fonder welcome than ever into his repentant arms. The whole piece is written in a kind of rapture,-as if the author had breathed nothing but intoxicating gas during its composition. It is accordingly quite filled with lively images and splendid expressions, and all sorts of beauties,-except those of reserve or simplicity. We must give a few specimens, to revive the spirits of our readers after the tragic catastrophe of Hafed; and we may begin with this portion of the description of the Happy Valley. "Oh! to see it by moonlight,-when mellowly The light o'er its palaces, gardens and shrines; ple meet. Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day, The character of Nourmahal's beauty is much in the same taste: though the diction is rather more loose and careless. "There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright, Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender, eves, Now melting in mist and now breaking in gleams, When pensive, it seem'd as if that very grace, 'Then come! thy Arab maid will be When thawing suns begin to shine, This strain, and the sentiment which u p. 334. enough, of this book, to let our readers unWe have now said enough, and showa of it. Its great fault certainly is its excessive derstand both what it is, and what we think finery, and its great charm the inexhaustible copiousness of its imagery-the sweetness and ease of its diction-and the beauty of the ob And where it most sparkl'd no glance could discerned. Its finery, it should also be observed, jects and sentiments with which it is conIn lip, cheek or eyes, for she brighten'd all over, is not the vulgar ostentation which so often Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon, When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun." disguises poverty or meanness-but the expp. 302, 303. travagance of excessive wealth. We have said this, however, we believe before-and suspect we have little more to say. We can give but a little morsel of the en- Mr. All poets, who really love poetry, and live in a poetical age, are great imitators; and the character of their writings may often be as correctly ascertained by observing whom they imitate and whom they abstain from imitating, as from any thing else. Moore, in the volume before us, reminds us oftener of Mr. Southey and Lord Byron, than of any other of his contemporaries. The resemblance is sometimes to the Roderick of ly to his Kehama. This may be partly owing the first-mentioned author, but most frequent to the nature of the subject; but, in many passages, the coincidence seems to be more radical-and to indicate a considerable conformity, in taste and habits of conception. Nourmahal herself, however, in her Arabian Mr. Southey's tone, indeed, is more assum disguise, sings a still more prevailing ditty-ing, his manner more solemn, and his diction of which we can only insert a few stanzas. "Fly to the desert, fly with me! Our Arab tents are rude for thee; 'Our sands are bare; but down their slope a weaker. Mr. Moore is more lively-his figures and images come more thickly; and his language is at once more familiar, and more strengthened with points and antitheses. In other respects, the descriptive passages in Kehama bear a remarkable affinity to many in the work before us-in the brightness of the colouring, and the amplitude and beauty of the details. It is in his descriptions of love, and of female loveliness, that there is the strongest resemblance to Lord Byron-at least to the larger poems of that noble author. In the powerful and condensed expression of strong emotion, Mr. Moore seems to us rather to have imitated the tone of his Lordship's smaller pieces-but imitated them as only an original genius could imitate-as Lord Byron himself may be said, in his later pieces, to have imitated those of an earlier date. There is less to remind us of Scott than we can very well account for, when we consider the great range and variety of that most fascinating and powerful writer; and we must say, that if Mr. Moore could bring the resemblance a little closer, and exchange a portion of his superfluous images and ecstasies for an equivalent share of Mr. Scott's gift of interesting and delighting us with pictures of familiar nature, and of the spirit and energy which never rises to extravagance, we think he would be a gainer by the exchange. To Mr. Crabbe there is no resemblance at all; and we only mention his name to observe, that he and Mr. Moore seem to be the antipodies of our present poetical sphere; and to occupy the extreme points of refinement and homeliness that can be said to fall within the legitimate dominion of poetry. They could not meet in the middle, we are aware, without changing their nature, and losing their specific character; but each might approach a few degrees, we think, with great mutual advantage. The outposts of all empires are posts of peril:--though we do not dispute that there is great honour in maintaining them with success, There is one other topic upon which we are not quite sure we should say any thing. On a former occasion, we reproved Mr. Moore, perhaps with unnecessary severity, for what appeared to us the licentiousness of some of his youthful productions. We think it a duty to say, that he has long ago redeemed that error; and that in all his latter works that have come under our observation, he appears as the eloquent champion of purity, fidelity, and delicacy, not less than of justice, liberty, and honour. Like most other poets, indeed, he speaks much of beauty and love; and we doubt not that many mature virgins and careful matrons may think his lucubrations on those themes too rapturous and glowing to be safely admitted among the private studies of youth. We really think, however, that there is not much need for such apprehensions: And, at all events, if we look to the moral design and scope of the works themselves, we can see no reason to censure the author. All his favourites, without exception, are dutiful, faithful, and self-denying; and no other example is ever set up for imitation. There is nothing approaching to indelicacy even in his description of the seductions by which they are tried; and they who object to his enchanting pictures of the beauty and pure attachment of the more prominent characters would find fault, we suppose, with the loveliness and the embraces of angels. (November, 1814.) By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. The Excursion; being a Portion of the Recluse, a Poem. 4to. pp. 447. London; 1814.* THIS will never do! It bears no doubt the unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his stamp of the author's heart and fancy: But peculiar system. His former poems were I finally resolved, therefore, to reprint my review of "The Excursion ;" which contains a pretty full view of my griefs and charges against Mr. Wordsworth; set forth too, I believe, in a more temperate strain than most of my other inculpations, and of which I think I may now venture to say farther, that if the faults are unsparingly noted, the beauties are not penuriously or grudgingly allowed; but commended to the admiration of the reader with at least as much heartiness and good-will. I have spoken in many places rather too bitterly and confidently of the faults of Mr. Words worth's poetry: And forgetting that, even on my own view of them, they were but faults of taste, or venial self-partiality, have sometimes visited them, I fear, with an asperity which should be reserved for objects of Moral reprobation. If I were now to deal with the whole question of his poetical merits, though my judgment might not be substantially different, I hope I should repress the greater part of these vivacités of expression: And indeed so But I have also reprinted a short paper on the strong has been my feeling in this way, that, con. same author's "White Doe of Rylstone,"-in sidering how much I have always loved many of which there certainly is no praise, or notice of the attributes of his Genius, and how entirely I beauties, to set against the very unqualified cenrespect his Character, it did at first occur to me sures of which it is wholly made up. I have done whether it was quite fitting that, in my old age and this, however, not merely because I adhere to these his, I should include in this publication any of those censures, but chiefly because it seemed necessary critiques which may have formerly given pain or to bring me fairly to issue with those who may not offence, to him or his admirers. But, when I re- concur in them. I can easily understand that many flected that the mischief, if there really ever was whose admiration of the Excursion, or the Lyrical any, was long ago done, and that I still retain, in Ballads, rests substantially on the passages which I substance, the opinions which I should now like too should join in admiring, may view with greater to have seen more gently expressed, I felt that to indulgence than I can do, the tedious and flat pas omit all notice of them on the present occasion, sages with which they are interspersed, and may might be held to import a retractation which I am consequently think my censure of these works a as far as possible from intending; or even be rep-great deal too harsh and uncharitable. Between resented as a very shabby way of backing out of Bentiments which should either be manfully persisted in, or openly renounced, and abandoned as untenable. such persons and me, therefore, there may be no radical difference of opinion, or contrariety as to principles of judgment. But if there be any who actually admire this White Doe of Rylstone, or |