very deeply, the common sensibilities of our | sist, or the energies they had exerted. To nature. We need scarcely make an excep- make us aware of the altitude of a mountain, tion for the lofty Lyric, which is so far from it is absolutely necessary to show us the plain being generally attractive, that it is not even from which it ascends. If we are allowed to intelligible, except to a studious few-or for see nothing but the table land at the top, the those solemn and devotional strains which de-effect will be no greater than if we had rerive their interest from a still higher princi-mained on the humble level of the shoreple: But in all narrative poetry-in all long except that it will be more lonely, bleak, and pieces made up of descriptions and adven- inhospitable. And thus it is, that by extures, it seems hitherto to have been an indis-aggerating the heroic qualities of heroes, they pensable condition of their success, that most of the persons and events should bear a considerable resemblance to those which we meet with in ordinary life; and, though more animated and important than to be of daily occurrence, should not be immeasurably exalted above the common standard of human fortune and character. become as uninteresting as if they had no such qualities-that by striking out those weaknesses and vulgar infirmities which identify them with ordinary mortals, they not only cease to interest ordinary mortals, but even to excite their admiration or surprise; and appear merely as strange inconceivable beings, in whom superhuman energy and refinement It should be almost enough to settle the are no more to be wondered at, than the power question, that such is the fact-and that no of flying in an eagle, or of fasting in a snake. narrative poetry has ever excited a great in- The wise ancient who observed, that being terest, where the persons were too much puri-a man himself, he could not but take an interfied from the vulgar infirmities of our nature, est in every thing that related to man-might or the incidents too thoroughly purged of all have confirmed his character for wisdom, by that is ordinary or familiar. But the slightest adding, that for the same reason he could take reflection upon the feelings with which we no interest in any thing else. There is nothread such poetry, must satisfy us as to the ing, after all, that we ever truly care for, but reason of our disappointment. It may be told the feelings of creatures like ourselves:-and in two words. Writings of this kind revolt by we are obliged to lend them to the flowers their improbability; and fatigue, by offering and the brooks of the valley, and the stars and no points upon which our sympathies can airs of heaven, before we can take any delight readily attach.-Two things are necessary to in them. With sentient beings the case is give a fictitious narrative a deep and com- more obviously the same. By whatever manding interest; first, that we should believe names we may call them, or with whatever that such things might have happened; and fantastic attributes we may please to invest secondly, that they might have happened to them, still we comprehend, and concern ourourselves, or to such persons as ourselves. selves about them, only in so far as they reBut, in reading the ambitious and overwrought semble ourselves. All the deities of the poetry of which we have been speaking, we classic mythology-and all the devils and feel perpetually, that there could have been angels of later poets, are nothing but human no such people, and no such occurrences as creatures-or at least only interest us so long we are there called upon to feel for; and that as they are so. Let any one try to imagine it is impossible for us, at all events, to have what kind of story he could make of the admuch concern about beings whose principles ventures of a set of beings who differed from of action are so remote from our own, and who our own species in any of its general attributes are placed in situations to which we have never-who were incapable, for instance, of the known any parallel. It is no doubt true, that debasing feelings of fear, pain, or anxietyall stories that interest us must represent pas- and he will find, that instead of becoming sions of a higher pitch, and events of a more more imposing and attractive by getting rid extraordinary nature than occur in common of those infirmities, they become utterly inlife; and that it is in consequence of rising significant, and indeed in a great degree inthus sensibly above its level, that they become conceivable. Or, to come a little closer to objects of interest and attention. But, in order the matter before us, and not to go beyond that this very elevation may be felt, and pro- the bounds of common experience-Suppose duce its effect, the story must itself, in other a tale, founded on refined notions of delicate places, give us the known and ordinary level, love and punctilious integrity, to be told to a and, by a thousand adaptations and traits of race of obscene, brutal and plundering savages universal nature, make us feel, that the char--or, even within the limits of the same counacters which become every now and then the try, if a poem, turning upon the jealousies of objects of our intense sympathy and admira- court intrigue, the pride of rank, and the cabals tion, in great emergencies, and under the in- of sovereigns and statesmen, were put into fluence of rare but conceivable excitements, the hands of village maidens or clownish laare, after all, our fellow creatures-made of bourers, is it not obvious that the remoteness the same flesh and blood with ourselves, and of the manners, characters and feelings from acting, and acted upon, by the common prin- their own, would first surprise, and then reciples of our nature. Without this, indeed, volt them-and that the moral, intellectual the effect of their sufferings and exploits and adventitious Superiority of the personages would be entirely lost upon us; as we should concerned, would, instead of enhancing the be without any scale by which to estimate the interest, entirely destroy it, and very speedily magnitude of the temptations they had to re-extinguish all sympathy with their passions, and all curiosity about their fate ?—Now, what | meet her enamoured bridegroom in the degentlemen and ladies are to a ferocious savage, lightful valley of Cashmere. The progress or politicians and princesses to an ordinary of this gorgeous cavalcade, and the beauty rustic, the exaggerated persons of such poetry as we are now considering, are to the ordinary readers of poetry. They do not believe in the possibility of their existence, or of their adventures. They do not comprehend the principles of their conduct; and have no thorough sympathy with the feelings that are ascribed to them. We have carried this speculation, we believe, a little too far-and, with reference to the volume before us, it would be more correct perhaps to say, that it had suggested these observations, than that they are strictly applicable to it. For though its faults are certainly of the kind we have been endeavouring to describe, it would be quite unjust to characterise it by its faults-which are beyond all doubt less conspicuous than its beauties. There is not only a richness and brilliancy of diction and imagery spread over the whole work, that indicate the greatest activity and elegance of fancy in the author; but it is everywhere pervaded, still more strikingly, by a strain of tender and noble feeling, poured out with such warmth and abundance, as to steal insensibly on the heart of the reader, and gradually to overflow it with a tide of sympathetic emotion. There are passages indeed, and these neither few nor brief, over which the very Genius of Poetry seems to have breathed his richest enchantmentwhere the melody of the verse and the beauty of the images conspire so harmoniously with the force and tenderness of the emotion, that the whole is blended into one deep and bright stream of sweetness and feeling, along which the spirit of the reader is borne passively away, through long reaches of delight. Mr. Moore's poetry, indeed, where his happiest vein is opened, realises more exactly than that of any other writer, the splendid account which is given by Comus of the song of "His mother Circe, and the Sirens three, And though it is certainly to be regretted that he should so often have broken the measure with more frivolous strains, or filled up its intervals with a sort of brilliant falsetto, it should never be forgotten, that his excellences are at least as peculiar to himself as his faults, and, on the whole, perhaps more characteristic of his genius. The volume before us contains four separate and distinct poems-connected, however, and held together "like orient pearls at random strung," by the slender thread of a slight prose story, on which they are all suspended, and to the simple catastrophe of which they in some measure contribute. This airy and elegant legend is to the following effect. Lalla Rookh, the daughter of the great Aurengzebe, is betrothed to the young king of Bucharia; and sets forth, with a splendid train of Indian and Bucharian attendants, to of the country which it traverses, are exhibited with great richness of colouring and picturesque effect; though in this, as well as in the other parts of the prose narrative, a certain tone of levity, and even derision, is frequently assumed-not very much in keeping, we think, with the tender and tragic strain of poetry of which it is the accompanimentcertain breakings out, in short, of that mocking European wit, which has made itself merry with Asiatic solemnity, ever since the time of the facetious Count Hamilton-but seems a little out of place in a miscellany, the prevailing character of which is of so opposite a temper. To amuse the languor, or divert the impatience of the royal bride, in the noon-tide and night-halts of her luxurious progress, a young Cashmerian poet had been sent by the gallantry of the bridegroom; and recites, on those occasions, the several poems that form the bulk of the volume now before us. Such is the witchery of his voice and look, and such the sympathetic effect of the tender tales which he recounts, that the poor princess, as was naturally to be expected, falls desperately in love with him before the end of the journey; and by the time she enters the lovely vale of Cashmere, and sees the glittering palaces and towers prepared for her reception, she feels that she would joyfully forego all this pomp and splendour, and fly to the desert with her adored Feramorz. The youthful bard, however, has now disappeared from her side; and she is supported, with fainting heart and downcast eyes, into the hated presence of her tyrant! when the voice of Feramorz himself bids her be of good cheer-and, looking up, she sees her beloved poet in the Prince himself! who had assumed this gallant disguise, and won her young affections, without deriving any aid from his rank or her engagements. The whole story is very sweetly and gaily told; and is adorned with many tender as well as lively passages-without reckoning among the latter the occasional criticisms of the omniscient Fadladeen, the magnificent and most infallible grand chamberlain of the Haram-whose sayings and remarks, we cannot help observing, do not agree very well with the character which is assigned him— being for the most part very smart, sententious, and acute, and by no means solemn, stupid, and pompous, as was to have been expected. Mr. Moore's genius, however, we suppose, is too inveterately lively, to make it possible for him even to counterfeit dulness. We come at last, however, to the poetry. The first piece, which is entitled "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," is the longest, we think, and certainly not the best, of the series. It has all the faults which we have, somewhat too sweepingly, imputed to the volume at large; and it was chiefly, indeed, with a reference to it, that we made those introductory remarks, which the author will probably think too much in the spirit of the sage Chamberlain. The story, which is not illusions, he poisons the remnant of his ad in all its parts extremely intelligible, is herents, and himself plunges into a bath, of founded on a notice, in D'Herbelot, of a da- such corrosive quality, as instantly to extinring in.postor of the early ages of Islamism, guish life, and dissolve all the elements of who pretended to have received a later and the mortal frame. Zelica then covers herself more authoritative mission than that of the with his fatal veil, and totters out to the ramprophet, and to be destined to overturn all parts, where, being mistaken for Mokanna, tyrannies and superstitions on the earth, and she rushes upon the spear of her Azim, and to rescue all souls that believed in him. To receives his forgiveness in death! while he shade the celestial radiance of his brow, he survives, to pass the rest of his life in continalways wore a veil of silver gauze, and was ual prayer and supplication for her erring spirit; at last attacked by the Caliph, and extermi- and dies at last upon her grave, in the full nated, with all his adherents. On this story, assurance of rejoining her in purity and bliss. Mr. Moore has engrafted a romantic and not It is needless to enlarge on the particular very probable tale of two young lovers, Azim faults of this story, after the general observaand Zelica; the former of whom having been tions we hazarded at the outset. The charsupposed to perish in battle, the grief of the acter of Mokanna, as well as his power and latter unsettles her understanding; and her influence, is a mere distortion and extravadistempered imagination is easily inflamed gance: But the great blemish is the corrup by the mystic promises of the Veiled Prophet, tion of Zelica; and the insanity so gratuiwhich at length prevail on her to join the tously alleged by the poet in excuse of it. troop of lovely priestesses who earn a blissful Nothing less, indeed, could in any way acimmortality in another world, by sharing his count for such a catastrophe; and, after all, embraces upon earth. By what artful illu- it is painful and offensive to the imagination. sions the poor distracted maid was thus be- The bridal oath, pledged with blood among trayed to her ruin, is not very satisfactorily the festering bodies of the dead, is one of the explained; only we are informed that she overstrained theatrical horrors of the German and the Veiled Apostle descended into a school; and a great deal of the theorising charnel-house, and took a mutual oath, and and argumentation which is intended to pallidrank blood together, in pledge of their eter-ate or conceal those defects, is obscure and nal union. At length Azim, who had not incomprehensible. Rich as it is, in short, in been slain, but made captive in battle, and fancy and expression, and powerful in some had wandered in Greece till he had imbibed the love of liberty that inspired her famous heroes of old-hears of the proud promises of emancipation which Mokanna (for that was the prophet's name) had held out to all nations, and comes to be enrolled among the champions of freedom and virtue. On the day of his presentment, he is introduced into a scene of voluptuous splendour, where all the seducive influences of art and nature are in vain exerted to divert his thoughts from the love of Zelica and of liberty. He breaks proudly away from these soft enchantments, and finds á mournful female figure before him, in whom ne almost immediately recognises his long-Silent and bright, where nothing but the falls Meanwhile, through vast illuminated halls, lost and ever-loved Zelica. The first moment of fragrant waters, gushing with cool sound of their meeting is ecstasy on both sides; but From many a jasper fount, is heard around, the unhappy girl soon calls to mind the un- Young Azim roams bewilder'd; nor can guess utterable condition to which she is reduced- What means this maze of light and loneliness! and, in agony, reveals to him the sad story of Here, the way leads, o'er tesselated floors her derangement, and of the base advantages Where, rang'd in cassolets and silver urns, Or mats of Cairo, through long corridors, that had been taken of it. Azim at first Sweet wood of aloe or of sandal burns; throws her from him in abhorrence, but soon And here, at once, the glittering saloon turns, in relenting pity, and offers at last to Bursts on his sight, boundless and bright as noon! rescue her from this seat of pollution. She Where, in the midst, reflecting back the rays listens with eager joy to his proposal, and is In broken rainbows, a fresh fountain plays about to fly with him in the instant, when All rich with Arabesques of gold and flowers: High as th' enamell'd cupola; which towers the dread voice of Mokanna thunders in her And the mosaic floor beneath shines through ear her oath of eternal fidelity. That terrible The sprinkling of that fountain's silvery dew, sound brings back her frenzy. She throws Like the wet, glist'ning shells, of ev'ry dye; her lover wildly from her, and vanishes at That on the margin of the Red Sea lie. once, amidst the dazzling lights of that unholy palace. Azim then joins the approaching army of the Caliph, and leads on his forces against the impious usurper. Mokanna forms prodigies of valour-but is always borne back by the superior force and enthusiasm of Azim: and after a long course of horrors and per of the scenes of passion, we should have had great doubts of the success of this volume, if it had all been of the same texture with the poem of which we are now speaking. Yet, even there, there is a charm, almost irresisti ble, in the volume of sweet sounds and beautiful images, which are heaped together with luxurious profusion in the general texture of the style, and invest even the absurdities of the story with the graceful amplitude of their rich and figured veil. What, for instance, can be sweeter than this account of Azim's entry into this earthly paradise of temptations? "Here too he traces the kind visitings Of woman's love, in those fair, living things of land and wave, whose fate-in bondage thrown For their weak loveliness-is like her own! on one side gleaming with a sudden grace While, on the other, lattic'd lightly in pp. 53-56. The warrior youth looks round at first with disdain upon those seductions, with which he supposes the sage prophet wishes to try the firmness of his votaries. "While thus he thinks, still nearer on the breeze "Awhile they dance before him; then divide, She saw through all his features, calm'd her fear; And, like a half-tam'd antelope, more near, Though shrinking still, she came ;-then sat her Upon a musnud's edge, and bolder grown, [down In the pathetic mode of Ispahan Touch'd a preluding strain, and thus began:-" The following picture of the grand armament of the Caliph shows the same luxuriance of diction and imagination, directed to different objects: "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 than that Pour from the kingdoms of the Caliphat. First, in the van, the People of the Rock, On their light mountain steeds, of royal stock; Then, Chieftains of Damascus, proud to see The flashing of their swords' rich marquetry," &c. pp. 86-89. We can afford room now only for the conclusion-the last words of the dying Zelica; which remind us of those of Campbell's Gertrude and the catastrophe of Azim, which is imaged in that of Southey's Roderick. But live, my Azim;-oh! to call thee mine Go to those happy fields where first we twin'd flowers, Will bring the sweetness of those innocent hours shade Of death hung dark'ning over him, there play'd His soul had seen a Vision, while he slept ; For this the old man breath'd his thanks,-and died! And there, upon the banks of that lov'd tide, The next piece, which is entitled "Paradise and the Peri," has none of the faults of the preceding. It is full of spirit, elegance, and beauty; and, though slight enough in its structure, breathes throughout a most pure and engaging morality. It is, in truth, little more than a moral apologue, expanded and adorned by the exuberant fancy of the poet who recites it. The Peris are a sort of half-fallen female angels, who dwell in air, and live on perfumes; and, though banished for a time from Para dise, go about in this lower world doing good. "One morn a Peri at the gate Of Life within, like music flowing; The Angel of the Gate sees her weeping, and "Nymph of a fair, but erring line!" Gently he said- One hope is thine. 'Tis written in the Book of Fate, The Peri yet may be forgiven Who brings to this Eternal Gate The gift that is most dear to Heaven! Go, seek it, and redeem thy sin ;'Tis sweet to let the Pardon'd in!'"''-p. 135. Full of hope and gratitude, she goes eagerly in search of this precious gift. Her first quest is on the plains of India-the luxuriant beauty of which is put in fine contrast with the havoc and carnage which the march of a bloody conqueror had then spread over them. The Peri comes to witness the heroic death of a youthful patriot, who disdains to survive the overthrow of his country's independence. She catches the last drop which flows from his breaking heart, and bears that to heaven's gate, as the acceptable propitiation that was required. For "Oh! if there be, on this earthly sphere, A boon, an offering Heaven holds dear, The angel accepts the tribute with respect: But the crystal bar of the portal does not move! and she is told that something holier even than this, will be required as the price of her admission. She now flies to the source of the Nile, and makes a delightful but pensive survey of the splendid regions which it waters; till she finds the inhabitants of the lovely gardens of Rosetta dying by thousands of the plague-the selfish deserting their friends and benefactors, and the generous, when struck with the fatal malady, seeking some solitude where they may die without bringing death upon others. Among the latter is a noble youth, who consoles himself, in the hour of his agony, with the thought, that his beloved and betrothed bride is safe from this mortal visitation. In the stillness of his midnight retreat, however, he hears a light step approaching. 'Tis she !-far off, through moonlight dim, Than live to gain the world beside !- His livid cheek to hers she presses, And dips, to bind his burning brow, In the cold lake her loosen'd tresses, An hour would come, when be should shrink "Oh! let me only breathe the air, The blessed air, that's breath'd by thee! Healing or death, 'tis sweet to me! One kiss the maiden gives,-one last, As slow the orb of daylight sets, From Syria's thousand minarets! Kneels, with his forehead to the south From purity's own cherub mouth, And hope and feeling, which had slept This tear of repentance is the acceptable gift for the Peri's redemption. The gates of heaven fly open, and she rushes into the joy of immortality. "The Fire Worshippers" is the next in the series, and appears to us to be indisputably the finest and most powerful. With all the richness and beauty of diction that belong to |