and romance go astray, mimicking one another's voice. Sometimes, on the other hand, as in Coresus and Callirhoë, and in many of the lyrics, he is so precipitately brief that the climax is an affront. Then, in the longer pieces, based on history, he is apt after an evil and favourite habit of the British Legislature, to proceed by reference'. That is, he assumes that the real events are known, or will be looked up. Not less offensive to popular taste is the want of sifting. Mere exercises, like the trial of Aeschylus, the bandying of indifferent compliments between him and Sophocles, the slaughter of Corythos by his father, and the rescue of Alcestis by Hercules, elbow scenes of absolute loveliness, such as The Hamadryad, Iphigeneia, the first part of Corythos, Peleus and Thetis, and Polyxena. A similar want of assortment doubtless has helped to spoil even the garden of lyrics for a public which will not be at the pains to distinguish between flowers and weeds.

The same public, docile when it is a question of economy of brain-worry, has been satisfied to take it on trust from the initiated that Landor is a poet who sits on the dais. It does not trouble to scrutinize his right. Were it to inquire, it would learn that he had the poet's gift of imparting to his verse, over and above all else, a feeling as if of a spirit having hovered near. The attribute is to be prized beyond all others, when apprehended; for it is the readers' then as much as the writer's; and every writer rejoices to share the delight with them. Landor, it is to be feared, had little of that pleasure. But the popular coldness, which was his ordinary experience, cannot have deprived him of the rapture of feeling the descent of inspiration. I read a sense at least of this supreme joy in his own review of a career which impressed his contemporaries as harassed-however needlessly-cross-grained,

ineffectual, and unhappy. With spiritual visitations such as favoured him, he cannot have wholly mocked himself in the farewell, which, while it charms, brings somehow an ache to admiring hearts:

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;

I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.17

The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor. Eight vols. Chapman and Hall, 1876. Vol. vii, Gebir; Acts and Scenes; Hellenics. Vol. viii, Miscellaneous Poems.

1 The Hamadryad (Hellenics), vol. vii, p. 427.

2 Iphigeneia and Agamemnon (Hellenics), vol. vii, p. 488.

3 The Espousals of Polyxena (Hellenics), vol. vii, p. 512.

• Beatrice Cenci (Dialogues in verse), vol. vii, p. 363.

5 Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn (Dialogues in Verse), vol. vii,

p. 337.

• On Catullus (The Last Fruit off an Old Tree), vol. viii, p. 162.

7 Young (Last Fruit, &c), vol. viii, p. 172.

8 Collection of 1846, No. 63, vol. viii, p. 21. Ibid., No. 58, vol. viii, pp. 19-20.

10 Ibid., No. 200, vol. viii, p. 96.

11 Additional Poems, No. 96, vol. viii, p. 337.

12 Collection of 1846, No. 152, vol. viii, p. 79.

13 Ibid., No. 102, vol. viii, p. 52.

14 Ibid., No. 213, vol. viii, p. 103.

15 Ibid., No. 93, vol. viii, p. 47.

16 Ibid., No. 61, vol. viii, pp. 20-1.

17 Prefixed to volume: The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. E. Moxon,

1853.

THOMAS MOORE

1779-1852

COURAGE is required to praise Moore even moderately. Admiration of him is likely to be taken as evidence of a want of intellectual vigour, and of a propensity to the heinous crime of cheap sensibility. Notwithstanding liability to these terrible charges, I will not without a struggle be parted from an old favourite. Now as formerly I find in Moore a power of affording to particular moods the satisfaction they have been craving. Not merely are there special poems which I could not consent to abandon; there even, I believe, is a spirit in the whole which, if dismissed to wander outside the recognized poetic domain, would leave a void not easily filled.

Much of Moore's literary energy, I willingly allow, was spent on work long since out of date. The smoothness of his Anacreon is not Hellenic enough to content modern scholarship. The vivacity of his political and social satire evaporated as it hit its mark. The Twopenny Post-Bag, The Intercepted Letters, and The Fudge Family in Paris, with a legion of political epigrams, are forgotten; and it is useless to complain. Their humour and wit, sometimes riotous, oftener caustic, always gay and audacious, require too much reading-in, between the lines, of scandals connected with Carlton House-no longer a Whig centre-and its unwieldy master. For very different reasons Lalla Rookh is similarly neglected. There also I equally recognize the uselessness of quarrelling with public taste. The diffuseness, especially in the Fire Worshippers, and a want

of reasonableness, towards which Fadladeen really was over-tolerant, in the entire scheme of the tale of The Veiled Prophet, might have been excused. The treatment of the general theme as if it were a huge operatic libretto, a medley of musical spectacles, was fatal. Moore had learnt so perfectly the art of writing words to an air that he composed a poem of the dimensions of an epic on the same lines. The crowd of imagery in a work on that scale is bewildering. The covering plot is smothered in roses; it is drowned in a butt of sweet malmsey. The whole produces the effect not so much of poetry pure and simple, as of poetry in solution.

All that remains positively extant out of a prolonged and industrious career's achievement is an accumulation of lyrics. Naturally they differ widely in degrees of merit. A few deserve to survive by virtue of their saucy insolence; for example-juvenile exercise though it was

When I lov'd you, I can't but allow

I had many an exquisite minute;
But the scorn that I feel for you now
Hath even more luxury in it.
Thus, whether we're on or we're off,
Some witchery seems to await you ;
To love you was pleasant enough,

And oh! 'tis delicious to hate you! 1

The clashing melody will rescue one at least of the Sacred

Songs:

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed his people are free.

Sing-for the pride of the tyrant is broken,

His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave—
How vain was their boast, for the Lord hath but spoken,
And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea;
Jehovah has triumphed-his people are free; ?

A Canadian boat-song is charmingly simple:
Faintly as tolls the evening chime

Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past.

Why should we yet our sail unfurl?

There is not a breath the blue wave to curl.
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.

Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past;

and old associations cling about:

Oft in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.1

But the Irish Melodies are the real sheet-anchor of Moore's fame. Modern critics have often assured them they are dead. Some have accepted the judgement against them of an exaggerated sentimentality, and rest in their graves. Others, a fair number, are obstinately incredulous, and insist upon going on breathing. I should be sorry for myself if I ceased to find romance in :

The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of beauty shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,
As if that soul were fled.-

So sleeps the pride of former days,

So glory's thrill is o'er,

And hearts that once beat high for praise,

Now feel that pulse no more.