"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, | 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, And to uphold and cheer the rest, The gentle decay and gradual extinction Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud of this youngest life, is the most tender and In worship of an echo. In the powd They could not deem me one pouch, Among them, but no mem," &c. 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 beautiful passage in the poem. "But he, the favorite and the flow'r, 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. A small green isle; it seem'd no more, The fish swam by the castle wall, 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. We would confine this remark, however, to the descriptions of external objects, and the allusions to literature and history-or to what may be termed the materiel of the poetry before us. The Characters and Sentiments are of a different order. They cannot, indeed, be said to be copies of European nature; but they are still less like that of any other region. They are, in truth, poetical imaginations; but it is to the poetry of rational, honourable, considerate, and humane Europe, that they belong-and not to the childishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia. It may seem a harsh and presumptuous sentence, to some of our Cosmopolite readers: But from all we have been able to gather from history or recent observation, we should be inclined to say that there was no sound sense, firmness of purpose, or principled goodness, except among the natives of Europe, and their genuine descendants. There is something very extraordinary, we think, in the work before us-and something which indicates in the author, not only a great exuberance of talent, but a very singular con 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 without 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 example, at what is perhaps the most finished and exquisite production of human art-the design and elevation of a Grecian temple, in its old severe simplicity. What penury of ornament-what rejection of beauties of detail!-what masses of plain surface-what rigid economical limitation to the useful and the necessary! The cottage of a peasant is scarcely more simple in its structure, and has not fewer parts that are superfluous. Yet what grandeur-what elegance-what grace and completeness in the effect! The whole is beautiful—because the beauty is in the whole: But there is little merit in any of the parts, except that of fitness and careful finishing. Contrast this, now, with a Dutch pleasurehouse, or a Chinese-where every part is meant to be separately beautiful-and the result is deformity!—where there is not an inch of the surface that is not brilliant with varied colour, and rough with curves and anglesand where the effect of the whole is monstrous and offensive. We are as far as possible from meaning to insinuate that Mr. Moore's poetry is of this description. On the contrary, we think his ornaments are, for the most part, truly and exquisitely beautiful; and the general design of his pieces very elegant and ingenious: All that we mean to say is, that there is too much ornament-too many insulated and independent beauties-and that the notice, and the very admiration they excite, hurt the interest of the general design; and not only withdraw our attention too importunately from it, but at last weary it out with their perpetual recurrence. 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 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 only, 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 ceive of their proceedings, or to sympathise freely with their fortunes. The disasters to which they are exposed, and the designs in which they are engaged, are of the same ambitious and exaggerated character; and all are involved in so much pomp, and splendour, and luxury, and the description of their extreme grandeur and elegance forms so considerable a part of the whole work, that the less sublime portion of the species can with 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, demoniacal misanthropy, and devoted love. 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 distinguishing feature in Homer, Chaucer, Ariosto, 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 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 are no more to be wondered at, than the power of flying in an eagle, or of fasting in a snake. It should be almost enough to settle the question, that such is the fact and that no 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 objects of our intense sympathy and admiration, in great emergencies, and under the influence of rare but conceivable excitements, are, after all, our fellow creatures-made of the same flesh and blood with ourselves, and acting, and acted upon, by the common principles of our nature. Without this, indeed, the effect of their sufferings and exploits would be entirely lost upon us; as we should be without any scale by which to estimate the magnitude of the temptations they had to re try, if a poem, turning upon the jealousies of court intrigue, the pride of rank, and the cabals of sovereigns and statesmen, were put into the hands of village maidens or clownish labourers, is it not obvious that the remoteness of the manners, characters and feelings from their own, would first surprise, and then revolt them-and that the moral, intellectual and adventitious Superiority of the personages concerned, would, instead of enhancing the interest, entirely destroy it, and very speedily extinguish all sympathy with their passions, |