of it, rather than the mental superiority by which it is obtained, that interferes with their enjoyment. Distinction, however won, usually leads to a passion for more distinction; and is apt to engage us in laborious efforts and anxious undertakings: and those, even when successful, seldom repay, in our judgment at least, the ease, the leisure, and tranquillity, of which they require the sacrifice: but it really passes our imagination to conceive, that the very highest degrees of intellectual vigour, or fancy, or sensibility, should of themselves be productive either of unhappiness or general dislike. Harold and his poet next move along the lovely banks of the Rhine, to which, and all their associated emotions, due honour is paid in various powerful stanzas. We pass on, however, to the still more attractive scenes of Switzerland. The opening is of suitable grandeur. "But these recede. Above me are the Alps, How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.' On this magnificent threshold, the poet pauses, to honour the patriot field of Morat, and the shrine of the priestess of Aventicum; and then, in congratulating himself on his solitude, once more moralises his song with something of an apology for its more bitter misanthropies. "To fly from, need not be to hate mankind; "The race of life becomes a hopeless flight And love Earth only for its earthly sake? The cliffs of Meillerie, and the groves of Clarens of course, conjure up the shade of Rousseau; whom he characterises very strongly, but charitably, in several enchanting stanzas;-one or two of which we shall cite as a specimen of the kindred rapture with which the Poet here honours the Apostle of Love. "His love was passion's essence! As a tree In him existence, and o'erflowing teems [seems. ong his burning page, distemper'd though it | This breath'd itself to life in Julie, this Invested her with all that's wild and sweet," &c. "Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep Love! Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought! Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks. "All things are here of him; from the black pines, Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines Which slope his green path downward to the shore, Where the bow'd waters meet him, and adore, Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood, The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, Offering to him and his, a populous solitude." Our readers may think, perhaps, that there is too much sentiment and reflection in these extracts; and wish for the relief of a little narrative or description: but the truth is, that there is no narrative in the poem, and that all the descriptions are blended with the expres sion of deep emotion. The following picture, however, of an evening calm on the lake of Geneva, we think, must please even the lovers of pure description 66 Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction! Once I lov'd Torn ocean's roar; but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet, as if a sister's voice reprov'd, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so mov'd. "It is the hush of night; and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep! and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, [more! Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol At intervals, some bird from out the brakes, Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill; But that is fancy!-for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues." Oh The following sketch of a Midsummer night's thunder storm in the same sublime region, is still more striking and original— The sky is chang'd!-and such a change! night, [strong! And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud. "And this is in the night :-Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea! And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black,-and now, the glee Of the loud hills shake with its mountain-mirth." In passing Ferney and Lausanne, there is a fine account of Voltaire and Gibbon; but we have room for but one more extract, and must take it from the characteristic reflections with which the piece is concluded. These, like most of the preceding, may be thought to savour too much of egotism: But this is of the essence of such poetry; and if Lord Byron had only been happier, or in better humour with the world, we should have been delighted with the confidence he has here reposed in his readers :-as it is, it sounds too like the last disdainful address of a man who is about to quit a world which has ceased to have any attractions-like the resolute speech of Pierre "For this vile world and I have long been jangling, And cannot part on better terms than now." The reckoning, however, is steadily and sternly made; and though he does not spare himself, we must say that the world comes off much the worst in the comparison. The passage is very singular, and written with much force and dignity. "Thus far I have proceeded in a theme Renew'd with no kind auspices.-To feel We are not what we have been, and to deem Is a stern task of soul!-No matter!-it is taught. Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud In worship of an echo. In the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood "I have not lov'd the world, nor the world me ' O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; That two or one, are almost what they seem,That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." The closing stanzas of the poem are extremely beautiful;-but we are immoveable in the resolution, that no statement of ours shall ever give additional publicity to the subjects of which they treat. We come now to "The Prisoner of Chillon." It is very sweet and touching-though we can afford but a short account of it. Chillon is a ruined castle on the Lake of Geneva, in the dungeon of which three gallant brothers were confined, each chained to a separate pillar, till, after long years of anguish, the two younger died, and were buried under the cold floor of the prison. The eldest was at length liberated, when worn out with age We could not see each other's face, A grating sound-not full and free The return to the condition of the younger brother, the blooming Benjamin of the family, is extremely natural and affecting. 'I was the eldest of the three, The gentle decay and gradual extinction of this youngest life, is the most tender and beautiful passage in the poem. "But he, the favorite and the flow'r, not The populous and the powerful was a lump. After this last calamity, he is allowed to be Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless at large in the dungeon. "And it was liberty to stride Along my cell from side to side, My brothers' graves without a sod.' mountains. "I saw them-and they were the same, They were not chang'd like me in frame; The only one in view; A small green isle; it seem'd no more, A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay! There is a poem entitled "The Dream," full of living pictures, and written with great beauty and genius-but extremely painfuland abounding with mysteries into which we have no desire to penetrate. "The Incantation" and "Titan" have the same distressing character-though without the sweetness of the other. Some stanzas to a nameless friend, are in a tone of more open misanthropy. This is a favourable specimen of their tone and temper. "Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Beautiful as this poetry is, it is a relief at last to close the volume. We cannot maintain our accustomed tone of levity, or even speak like calm literary judges, in the midst of these agonising traces of a wounded and distempered spirit. Even our admiration is at last swallowed up in a most painful feeling of pity and The rest of the poems in this little volume, of wonder. It is impossible to mistake these are less amiable—and most of them, we fear, for fictitious sorrows, conjured up for the purhave a personal and not very charitable ap- pose of poetical effect. There is a dreadful plication. One, entitled "Darkness," is free tone of sincerity, and an energy that cannot at least from this imputation. It is a grand be counterfeited, in the expression of wretchand gloomy sketch of the supposed conse-edness and alienation from human kind, which quences of the final extinction of the Sun and occurs in every page of this publication; and the Heavenly bodies-executed, undoubtedly, as the author has at last spoken out in his own with great and fearful force-but with some-person, and unbosomed his griefs a great deal thing of German exaggeration, and a fantastical selection of incidents. The very conception is terrible, above all conception of known calamity-and is too oppressive to the imagination, to be contemplated with pleasure, even in the faint reflection of poetry. too freely to his readers, the offence now (November, 1817.) Lalla Rookh; an Oriental Romance. By THOMAS MOORE. 4to. pp. 405.: London: 1817. THERE is a great deal of our recent poetry derived from the East: But this is the finest Orientalism we have had yet. The land of the Sun has never shone out so brightly on the children of the North-nor the sweets of Asia been poured forth, nor her gorgeousness displayed so profusely to the delighted senses of Europe. The beauteous forms, the dazzling splendours, the breathing odours of the East, seem at last to have found a kindred poet in that green isle of the West; whose Genius has long been suspected to be derived from a warmer clime, and now wantons and luxuriates in those voluptuous regions, as if it felt that it had at length regained its native element. It is amazing, indeed, how much at home Mr. Moore seems to be in India, Persia, and Arabia; and how purely and strictly Asiatic all the colouring and imagery of his book appears. He is thoroughly embued with the character of the scenes to which he transports us; and yet the extent of his knowledge is less wonderful than the dexterity and apparent facility with which he has turned it to account, in the elucidation and embellishment of his poetry. There is not, in the volume now before us, a simile or description, a name, a trait of history, or allusion of romance which belongs to European experience; or does not indicate an entire familiarity with the life, the dead nature, and the learning of the East. Nor are these barbaric ornaments thinly scattered to make up a show. They are showered lavishly over all the work; and form, perhaps too much, the staple of the poetry-and the riches of that which is chiefly distinguished for its richness. stitution of genius. While it is more splendid in imagery-(and for the most part in very good taste)-more rich in sparkling thoughts and original conceptions, and more full indeed of exquisite pictures, both of all sorts of beauties and virtues, and all sorts of sufferings and crimes, than any other poem that has yet come before us; we rather think we speak the sense of most readers, when we add, that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain feeling of disappointment with that of admiration! to excite admiration rather than any warmer sentiment of delight-to dazzle, more than to enchant-and, in the end, more frequently to startle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, by the constant succession of glittering images and high-strained emotions, than to maintain a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less profuse or more systematic display of attractions. The style is, on the whole, rather diffuse, and too unvaried in its character. But its greatest fault, in our eyes, is the uniformity of its brilliancy-the want of plainness, simplicity, and repose. We have heard it observed by some very zealous admirers of Mr. Moore's genius, that you cannot open this book with out finding a cluster of beauties in every page. Now, this is only another way of expressing what we think its greatest defect. No work, consisting of many pages, should have detached and distinguishable beauties in every one of them. No great work, indeed, should have many beauties: If it were perfect, it would have but one; and that but faintly perceptible, except on a view of the whole. Look, for ex ample, at what is perhaps the most finished We would confine this remark, however, to and exquisite production of human art-the the descriptions of external objects, and the design and elevation of a Grecian temple, in allusions to literature and history or to what its old severe simplicity. What penury of may be termed the materiel of the poetry be- ornament-what rejection of beauties of de fore us. The Characters and Sentiments are tail!-what masses of plain surface-what of a different order. They cannot, indeed, be rigid economical limitation to the useful and said to be copies of European nature; but they the necessary! The cottage of a peasant is are still less like that of any other region. scarcely more simple in its structure, and has They are, in truth, poetical imaginations;- not fewer parts that are superfluous. Yet but it is to the poetry of rational, honourable, what grandeur-what elegance-what grace considerate, and humane Europe, that they and completeness in the effect! The whole is belong-and not to the childishness, cruelty, beautiful-because the beauty is in the whole: and profligacy of Asia. It may seem a harsh But there is little merit in any of the parts, and presumptuous sentence, to some of our except that of fitness and careful finishing. Cosmopolite readers: But from all we have Contrast this, now, with a Dutch pleasurebeen able to gather from history or recent ob- house, or a Chinese-where every part is servation, we should be inclined to say that meant to be separately beautiful-and the rethere was no sound sense, firmness of purpose, sult is deformity !-where there is not an inch or principled goodness, except among the na- of the surface that is not brilliant with varied tives of Europe, and their genuine descendants. colour, and rough with curves and angles, There is something very extraordinary, we and where the effect of the whole is monstrous think, in the work before us-and something and offensive. We are as far as possible from which indicates in the author, not only a great meaning to insinuate that Mr. Moore's poetry exuberance of talent, but a very singular con- is of this description. On the contrary, we It seems to be a law of our intellectual constitution, that the powers of taste cannot be permanently gratified, except by some sustained or continuous emotion; and that a series, even of the most agreeable excitements, soon ceases, if broken and disconnected, to give any pleasure. No conversation fatigues so soon as that which is made up of points and epigrams; and the accomplished rhetorician, who think his ornaments are, for the most part, | ceive of their proceedings, or to sympathise truly and exquisitely beautiful; and the gene- freely with their fortunes. The disasters to ral design of his pieces very elegant and in- which they are exposed, and the designs in genious: All that we mean to say is, that which they are engaged, are of the same am there is too much ornament-too many insu- bitious and exaggerated character; and all lated and independent beauties-and that the are involved in so much pomp, and splendour, notice, and the very admiration they excite, and luxury, and the description of their exhurt the interest of the general design; and treme grandeur and elegance forms so connot only withdraw our attention too importu- siderable a part of the whole work, that the nately from it, but at last weary it out with less sublime portion of the species can with their perpetual recurrence. difficulty presume to judge of them, or to enter into the concernments of such very exquisite persons. The incidents, in like manner, are so prodigiously moving, so excessively improbable, and so terribly critical, that we have the same difficulty of raising our sentiments to the proper pitch for them ;—and, finding it impossible to sympathise as we ought to do with such portentous occurrences, are sometimes tempted to withhold our sympathy altogether, and to seek for its objects among more familiar adventures. Scenes of voluptuous splendour and ecstasy alternate suddenly with agonising separations, atrocious crimes, and tremendous sufferings;-battles, incredibly fierce and sanguinary, follow close on entertainments incredibly sumptuous and elegant ;-terrific tempests are succeeded by delicious calms at sea: and the land scenes are divided between horrible chasms and precipices, and vales and gardens rich in eternal blooms, and glittering with palaces and temples-while the interest of the story is maintained by instruments and agents of no less potency than insanity, blasphemy, poisonings, religious hatred, national antipathy, demoni acal misanthropy, and devoted love. could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope," must have been a most intolerable companion. There are some things, too, that seem so plainly intended for ornaments and seasonings only, that they are only agreeable, when sprinkled in moderation over a plainer medium. No one would like to make an entire meal on sauce piquante; or to appear in a dress crusted over with diamonds; or to pass a day in a steam of rich distilled perfumes. It is the same with the glittering ornaments of poetry-with splendid metaphors and ingenious allusions, and all the figures of speech and of thought that constitute its outward pomp and glory. Now, Mr. Moore, it appears to us, is decidedly too lavish of his gems and sweets;-he labours under a plethora of wit and imagination-impairs his credit by the palpable exuberance of his possessions, and would be richer with half his wealth. His works are not only of costly material and graceful design, but they are everywhere glistening with small beauties and transitory inspirations-sudden flashes of fancy, that blaze out and perish; like earth-born meteors that crackle in the lower sky, and unseasonably divert our eyes from the great and lofty bodies which pursue their harmonious courses in a serener region. We have spoken of these as faults of style: But they could scarcely have existed in the style, without going deeper; and though they first strike us as qualities of the composition anly, we find, upon a little reflection, that the same general character belongs to the fable, the characters, and the sentiments,-that they all sin alike in the excess of their means of attraction, and fail to interest, chiefly by being too interesting. In order to avoid the debasement of ordinary or familiar life, the author has soared to a region beyond the comprehension of most of his readers. All his personages are so very beautiful, and brave, and agonising-so totally wrapt up in the exaltation of their vehement emotions, and withal so lofty in rank, and so sumptuous and magnificent in all that relates to their external condition, that the herd of ordinary mortals can scarcely venture to con We are aware that, in objecting to a work like this, that it is made up of such materials, we may seem to be objecting that it is made of the elements of poetry,-since it is no doubt true, that it is by the use of such materials that poetry is substantially distinguished from prose, and that it is to them it is indebted for all that is peculiar in the delight and the interest it inspires: and it may seem a little unreasonable to complain of a poet, that he treats us with the essence of poetry. We have already hinted, however, that it is not advisable to live entirely on essences; and our objection goes not only to the excessive strength of the emotions that are sought to be raised, but to the violence of their transitions, and the want of continuity in the train of feeling that is produced. It may not be amiss, however, to add a word or two more of explanation. In the first place, then, if we consider how the fact stands, we shall find that all the great poets, and, in an especial manner, all the poets who chain down the attention of their readers, and maintain a growing interest through a long series of narrations, have been remarkable for the occasional familiarity, and even homeliness, of many of their incidents, characters and sentiments. This is the dis tinguishing feature in Homer, Chaucer, Ari osto, Shakespeare, Dryden, Scott-and will be found to occur, we believe, in all poetry that has been long and extensively popular; or that is capable of pleasing very strongly, or stirring |