and bald, and nowhere shows the close thinker, nor accurate author.

Thus much of Richardson, the familiar correspondent; we hope to be able to say more of the author of Clarissa Harlowe.

XXV.

THOMAS MOORE.

THE present century has produced many able writers, some brilliant critics and essayists, careful and scrutinizing authors on history and philosophy, a few men of real wit, one or two true humorists, many sweet, lively versifiers, and, fewest of all, a band of genuine Poets. But in the list which includes Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, posterity will not place the name of Moore, who, at the present moment enjoys, perhaps, a more varied and general, not to say enviable and exalted reputation, than any of the poets just mentioned. In the end, the permanence and character of an author's reputation must solely rest on the character and merit of his works. The epic seldom read, if a really great work, is sure of immortality; the collection of songs, however popular, unless equally admirable in their way, must give place to the next new fashion of the hour.

It must not be thought we underrate the song because it is brief, and offers less pretensions. It was the earliest form of poetry, and is consecrated by the numberless gems, the bright thoughts, the dark fancies, the glittering conceits of poets of every age and country.

Of songs the earliest are the best, for the above reason, they were fresher, had the advantage of coming first, were

unhackneyed. We, therefore, greatly prefer the early songwriters, and agree sincerely with Izaak Walton, who is speaking of a similar kind of poetry, such as Raleigh, Marlowe, and Walton wrote: "They wrote old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines now in fashion, in this critical age."

Moore is essentially a song writer. It affords the best scope for his genius, which flags beyond a limited distance, yet a song writer of a different stamp from the old masters of the lyric art, as we shall have occasion to show.

Mr. Moore is a parlor-poet. We have all known parlororators old gentlemen, who would descant with all the flourishes of rhetoric, on some topic of business, or politics, or family history. But here we have a bard, whose best audience is a fashionable company, whose best position is sitting at the piano and whispering one of his own melodies into the charmed ears of school-girls and the titled dames of English society. You would never have caught Milton exhibiting himself in this fashion. He knew how to preserve the dignity of the poetic character, which was the ruling character in him. Moore is rather a man of fashion; writing verses for his own amusement, and singing them for the entertainment of others. His fancy is of proper dimensions to suit a drawing-room; he may flutter amongst china ornaments, gilded vases, and or-molu clocks; rustling behind the curtains, or burying himself, with Rabelais, in his easy chair of luxurious construction. In the open air of the world, on the broad stage of society at large, he is lost. He wants ballast to support him, so light and volatile is his genius. He has no energy to propel him onward. He has no weight of sentiment; no force of thought.

What, then, has he? A lively wit, a vein of glittering

conceits, cold and hard, in proportion to their polish, great power of language, running into mere verbosity, and a fatal facility of turning off any given quantity of rhyme, at the shortest possible notice. His muse is always on the alert, "coming," "coming," like, the tapster at a popular inn. He has not the slightest pretension to the three great requisites of a great poet. He has no lofty imagination, no deep sentiment, no curious felicity of expression. His fancy is a tricksy sprite, smart and epigrammatic, capable of doing justice to a political satire, or well-bred courtly scandal. It conducts him easily and pleasantly through the mazes of a comic song, and even enlightens the honest heartiness of his patriotic effusions. But in sentimental pieces, it becomes mere affectation. His serious notes are mere grimacings of sensibility. The feeling of his songs is such as his fashionable readers can appreciate, but so hollow and superficial, with a very few exceptions, as to be appreciable by no other class. One reason of the popularity of the Melodies, is the sweet music to which many of them have been married, and the sweet voices we have heard sing them. Mrs. Wood gave a new lustre to the treble part of "Love's Young Dream." Oft in the stilly night," has called forth the sweetest tones of the finest tenor; "The Soldier's Farewell" has been answered by many a heart. Peculiar circumstances have given reputation to some of the songs as the history of the song, "She is far from the land where her young lover sleeps." There are, perhaps, ten really natural expressions of feeling in the collection of Melodies, but we doubt if more. The rest of the sentimental songs are sad stuff. The Orator Puff's are much better, and the "Two-penny Post Bag," a separate satirical poem, the best of all Moore's attempts.

Moore's Lalla Rookh is an instance of palpable failure. We know, nowhere, more elaborate, voluptuous description, and complicated, fanciful illustrations, so entirely thrown away as here, except in the versified form of the Epicurean, properly a rich, oriental prose poem, but, as translated into verse, a meaningless desert of poetical common-places.

The Anacreon of this author is not so good as Cowley's version; which proves that the very airiest poetry must have a basis of powerful sense, as the hardest marble takes the finest polish, and the loftiest pillars are crowned with the lightest chaplets of Corinthian grace. Ben Jonson, whose finest lyric," Drink to me only with thine eyes," is continually ascribed to Moore, affords one instance among many others, of stern, rugged, vigorous sense, lightened and relieved by delicate and graceful fancy. The majestic old tragedians, Marlowe, Webster, and Shakspeare, and the rest, exhibited this refinement. But mere fancy, without vigor of understanding, fails to give momentum and passion to poetic flights. An excess of levity is visible in such poetry, which, on grave themes, is converted into as intolerable dullness.

The imitations of Moore are among the best tests of the real want of excellence of his poetry. His copyists are mawkish ballad-mongers, or else libertine philosophers, as they may affect real feeling, or a perfect indifference to it. These gentlemen substitute the French wines for Byron's gin, and if not as furious and terrible as the followers of Don Juan, are more light-hearted and skeptical.

There is an unhandsome notion lurking in the community, that the quantity of wine a poet can drink, and its effects upon him, exhibit the measure of his powers. Willis, himself, has lately fallen in with this absurdity, by which