make it possible for him even to counterfeit dulWe must now take a slight glance at the

We have felt it our duty to point out the faults of our author's poetry, particularly in respect to ness. Lalla Rookh, but it would be quite unjust to cha-poetry. racterize that splendid poem by its faults, which The first piece, entitled the Veiled Prophet of are infinitely less conspicuous than its manifold Khorassan, is the longest, and, we think, certainly beauties. There is not only a richness and bril-not the best of the series. The story, which is not liancy 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 enchantment -where 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 through long reaches of delight. Mr Moore's poetry, indeed, where his happiest vein is opened, realizes 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,
Amid the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul,
And lap it in Elysium.

And though it is certainly to be regretted that he
should occasionally 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 excellencies are as peculiar to
himself as his faults, and, on the whole, we may
assert, more characteristic of his genius.

in all its parts extremely intelligible, is founded on a vision, in D'Herbelot, of a daring impostor of the early ages of Islamism, who pretended to have received a later and more authoritative mission than that of the Prophet, and to be destined to overturn all tyrannies and superstitions on the earth, and to rescue all souls that believed in him. To shade the celestial radiance of his brow, he always wore a veil of silver gauze, and was at last attacked by the Caliph, and exterminated with all his adherents. On this story Mr Moore has engrafted a romantic and not very probable tale : yet, even with all its faults, it possesses a charm almost irresistible, 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 faults of the story with the graceful amplitude of their rich and figured veil.

« Paradise and the Peri» has none of the faults just alluded to. It is full of spirit, elegance, and beauty, and, though slight in its structure, breathes throughout a most pure and engaging morality.

The Fire-worshippers» appears to us to be indisputably the finest and most powerful poem of them all. With all the richness and beauty of diction that belong to the best parts of Mokanna, it has a far more interesting story; and is not liable to the objections that arise against the contrivance and structure of the leading poem. The general tone of the Fire-worshippers is certainly work of great genius and beauty; and not only too much strained, but, in spite of that, it is a delights the fancy by its general brilliancy and spirit, but moves all the tender and noble feelings with a deep and powerful agitation.

a

The legend of Lalla Rookh 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 omniThe last piece, entitled The Light of the scient Fadladeen, the magnificent and most in- Haram,» is the gayest of the whole; and is of a fallible grand chamberlain of the haram-whose very slender fabric as to fable or invention. In sayings and remarks, by the by, do not agree very truth, it has scarcely any story at all; but is well with the character which is assigned him-made up almost entirely of beautiful songs and being for the most part very smart, snappish, and fascinating descriptions. acute, and by no means solemn, stupid, and pompous, as one would have expected. Mr Moore's genius, perhaps, is too inveterately lively, to

On the whole, it may be said of « Lalla Rookh,» that its great fault consists in its profuse finery ; but it should be observed, that this finery is not the vulgar ostentation which so often disguises I Milton, who was much patronized by the illustrious poverty or meanness-but, as we have before House of Egerton, wrote the Mask of Comus, upon John hinted, the extravagance of excessive wealth. Its Egerton, then Earl of Bridgewater, when that nobleman, great charm is in the inexhaustible copiousness of in 1634, was appointed Lord President of the principality its imagery-the sweetness and ease of its diction of Wales. It was performed by three of his Lordship's children, before the Earl, at Ludlow Castle.-See the Works-and the beauty of the objects and sentiments of the present Earl of Bridgewater, with which it is conceived.

Whatever popularity Mr Moore may have acquired as the author of Lalla Rookh, etc., it is as the author of the « Irish Melodies » that he will go down to posterity unrivalled and alone in that delightful species of composition. Lord Byron has very justly and prophetically observed, that « Moore is one of the few writers who will survive the age in which he so deservedly flourishes. He will live in his 'Irish Melodies'; they will go down to posterity with the music; both will last as long as Ireland, or as music and poetry."

tional music of Scotland, it seems to us, that Allan Ramsay's literary existence must have terminated its earthly career long since; but, in the divine melody of « The Yellow-hair'd Laddie,» he has secured a passport to future ages, which mightier poets might envy, and which will be heard and acknowledged as long as the world has ears to hear.

This is not a mere fancy of the uninitiated, or the barbarous exaggeration of a musical savage, who has lost his senses at hearing Orpheus's hurdyIf, indeed, the anticipation of lasting celebrity gurdy, because he never heard any thing better. be the chief pleasure for the attainment of which One of the greatest composers that ever charmed poets bestow their labour, certainly no one can the world-the immortal Haydn-on being rehave engaged so much of it as Thomas Moore.quested to add symphonies and accompaniments It is evident that writers who fail to command to the Scotch airs, was so convinced of their duimmediate attention, and who look only to pos- rability, that he replied—« Mi vanto di questo terity for a just estimate of their merits, must lavoro, e per cio mi lusingo di vivere in Scozia feel more or less uncertainty as to the ultimate molti anni dopo la mia morte.»> result, even though they should appreciate their own productions as highly as Milton his Paradise Lost; while they who succeed in obtaining a large share of present applause cannot but experience frequent misgivings as to its probable duration : prevailing tastes have so entirely changed, and works, the wonder and delight of one generation, have been so completely forgotten in the next, that extent of reputation ought rather to alarm than assure an author in respect to his future fame.

But Mr Moore, independently of poetical powers of the highest order-independently of the place he at present maintains in the public estimation-has secured to himself a stronghold of celebrity as durable as the English tongue.

It is not without reason, therefore, that Mr Moore indulges in this kind of second-sight, and exclaims (on hearing one of his own melodies re-echoed from a bugle in the mountains of Killarney),

Oh, forgive if, while listening to music, whose breath
Seem'd to circle his name with a charm against death,
He should feel a proud spirit within him proclaim,
Even so shalt thou live in the echoes of fame;
Even, so, though thy mem'ry should now die
'T will be caught up again in some happier day,
And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong,
Through the answering future, thy name and thy song!

away,

In truth, the subtile essences of these tunes present
no object upon which time or violence can act.
Pyramids may moulder away, and bronzes be
decomposed; but the breeze of heaven which
fanned them in their splendour shall sigh around
them in decay, and by its mournful sound awaken
all the recollections of their former glory. Thus,
when generations shall have sunk into the grave,
and printed volumes been consigned to oblivion,
traditionary strains shall prolong our poet's exist-
ence, and his future fame shall not be less certain
than his present celebrity.

Like the gale that sighs along
Beds of oriental flowers,

Almost every European nation has a kind of primitive music, peculiar to itself; consisting of short and simple tunes or melodies, which at the same time that they please cultivated and scientific ears, are the object of passionate and almost exclusive attainment by the great body of the people, constituting, in fact, pretty nearly the sum of their musical knowledge and enjoyment. Being the first sounds with which the infant is soothed in his nursery, with which he is lulled to repose at night, and excited to animation in the day, they make an impression on the imagination that can never afterwards be effaced, and are consequently handed down from parent to child, from generation to generation, with as much uniformity as the family features and dispositions. It is evident, therefore, that he who first successfully invests them with language becomes thereby Almost every European nation, as we before himself a component part of these airy existences, observed, has its own peculiar set of popular and commits his bark to a favouring wind, before melodies, differing as much from each other in which it shall pass on to the end of the stream of character as the nations themselves; but there time. are none more marked or more extensively Without such a connexion as this with the na-known than those of the Scotch and Irish. Some

Is the grateful breath of song,

That once was heard in happier hours;
Fill'd with balm the gale sighs on,

Though the flowers have sunk in death;
So when the Bard of Love is
gone,

His mem'ry lives in Music's breath!

of these may be traced to a very remote era; while of others the origin is scarcely known; and this is the case, especially, with the airs of Ireland. With the exception of those which were produced by Carolan, who died in 1738, there are few of which we can discover the dates or composers.

That many of these airs possess great beauty and pathos, no one can doubt who is acquainted with the selections that have been made by Mr Moore; but as a genus or a style, they also exhibit the most unequivocal proofs of a rude and barbarous origin; and there is scarcely a more striking instance of the proneness of mankind to exalt the supposed wisdom of their ancestors, and to lend a ready ear to the marvellous, than the exaggerated praise which the authors of this music have obtained.

It is natural to suppose that in music, as in all other arts, the progress of savage man was gradual; that there is no more reason for supposing he should have discovered at once the seven notes of the scale, than that he should have been able at once to find appropriate language for all the nice distinctions of morals or metaphysics. We shall now pass to some interesting accounts of the Bards of the « olden time,» which come within the scope of our subject when speaking of the present Bard of Erin, and his « Irish Melodies.»

light remains, the more highly is Irish border minstrelsy extolled.

« The oldest Irish tunes (says the same writer) are said to be the most perfect," and history accords with this opinion. Vin. Galilei, Bacon, Stanishurst, Spenser, and Camden, in the 16th century, speak warmly of Irish version, but not so highly as Polydore Virgil and Major, in the 15th, Clynn, in the middle of the 14th, or Fordun, in the 13th. As we recede yet further, we find Giraldus Cambrensis, G. Brompton, and John of Salisbury, in the 12th century, bestowing still more lofty encomiums; and these, again, falling short of the science among us in the 11th and 10th centuries. In conformity with this, Fuller, in his account of the Crusade conducted by Godfrey of Bologne, says, « Yea, we might well think that all the concert of Christendom in this war would have made no music, if the Irish Harp had been wanting."

In those early times the Irish bards were invested with wealth, honours, and influence. They wore a robe of the same colour as that used by kings were exempted from taxes and plunder, and were billeted on the country from Allhallowtide to May, while every chief bard had thirty of inferior note under his orders, and every secondrate bard fifteen.

John of Salisbury, in the 12th century, says, that the great aristocrats of his day imitated Nero in their extravagant love of fiddling and singing; «< that they prostituted their favour by bestowing it on minstrels and buffoons; and that, by a certain foolish and shameful munificence, they expended immense sums of money on their frivolous exhibitions. >> The courts of princes,» says another contemporary writer, « are

Dr Burney observes, that « the first Greek musicians were gods; the second, heroes; the third. bards; the fourth, beggars!» During the infancy of music in every country, the wonder and affections of the people were gained by surprise; but when musicians became numerous, and the art was regarded of easier acquirement, they lost their favour, and, from being seated at the tables of kings, and helped to the first cut, they were re-filled with crowds of minstrels, who extort from duced to the most abject state, and ranked amongst rogues and vagabonds. That this was the cause of the supposed retrogradation of Irish music we shall now proceed to show, by some curious ex-vil, at the very first word, the most curious gartracts from contemporary writers. ments, beautifully embroidered with flowers and pictures, which had cost them twenty or thirty marks of silver, and which they had not worn above seven days!»

them gold, silver, horses, and vestments, by their flattering songs. I have known some princes who have bestowed on these minstrels of the De

The Bards, the earliest professors of whom we have not any account, having united to their capacity of musicians the function of priests, could not fail to obtain for themselves, in an age of From the foregoing account, by Salisbury ignorance and credulity, all the influence and John, the twelfth century must, verily, have been respect which that useful and deserving class of the true golden age for the sons of the lyre; who men have never failed to retain, even among na- were then, it seems, clothed in purple and fine tions who esteem themselves the most enlight-linen, and fared sumptuously every day. It is ened. But the remotest period in which their true, they were flatterers and parasites, and did character of musician was disengaged from that «dirty work for it in those days; but, at any of priest is also the period assigned to the high-rate, princes were then more generous to their est triumph of their secular musical skill and re- poet-laureates, and the sackbut and the song spectability. << It is certain, says Mr Bunting were better paid for than in a simple butt of (in his Historical and Critical Dissertation on the sack. Harp), « that the further we explore, while yet any

According to Stowe, the minstrel bad still a

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ready admission into the presence of kings in the 14th century. Speaking of the celebration of the feast of Pentecost at Westminster, he says, « In the great hall, when sitting royally at the table, with his peers about him, there entered a woman adorned like a minstrel, sitting on a great horse, trapped as minstrels then used, who rode about the table showing pastime, and at length came up to the king's table, and laid before him a letter, and, forthwith turning her horse, saluted every one and departed: when the letter was read, it was found to contain animadversions on the king. The door-keeper, being threatened for admitting her, replied, that it was not the custom of the king's palace to deny admission to minstrels, especially on such high solemnities, and feast-days.»

In Froissart, too, we may plainly see what necessary appendages to greatness the minstrels were esteemed, and upon what familiar terms they lived with their masters. When the four Irish kings, who had submitted themselves to Richard II of England, were seated at table, "on the first dish being served they made their minstrels and principal servants sit beside them, and eat from their plates, and drink from their cups. The knight appointed by Richard to attend them having objected to this custom, on another day << ordered the tables to be laid out and covered, so that the kings sat at an upper table, the minstrels at a middle one, and the servants lower still. The royal guests looked at each other, and refused to eat, saying, that he deprived them of their good old custom in which they had been brought up."

However, in the reign of Edward II, a public edict was issued, putting a check upon this license, and limiting the number of minstrels to four per diem admissible to the tables of the great. It seems, too, that about this period the minstrels had sunk into a kind of upper servants of the aristocracy: they wore their lord's livery, and sometimes shaved the crown of their heads like monks."

When war and hunting formed almost the exclusive occupation of the great; when their surplus revenues could only be employed in supporting idle retainers, and no better means could be devised for passing the long winter evenings than drunkenness and gambling, it may readily be conceived how welcome these itinerant musicians must have been in baronial halls, and how it must have flattered the pride of our noble ancestors to listen to the eulogy of their own achievements, and the length of their own pedi

grees.

Sir William Temple says, the great men of the Irish septs, among the many officers of their

family, which continued always in the same races, had not only a physician, a huntsman, a smith, and such like, but a poet and a tale-teller. The first recorded and sung the actions of their ancestors, and entertained the company at feasts; the latter amused them with tales when they were melancholy and could not sleep; and a very gallant gentleman of the north of Ireland has told me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these tale-tellers, that when he lay down would begin a story of a king, a giant, a dwarf, or a damsel, and such rambling stuff, and continue it all night long in such an even tone, that you heard it going on whenever you awaked, and believed nothing any physicians give could have so good and so innocent an effect to make men sleep, in any pains or distempers of body or mind. »

In the reign of Elizabeth, however, civilization had so far advanced, that the music which had led away the great lords of antiquity no longer availed to delude the human understanding, or to prevent it from animadverting on the pernicious effects produced by those who cultivated the tuneful art. Spenser, in his view of the state of Ireland, says, "There is amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called Bardes, which are to them instead of poets, whose profession is to set forth the praises or dispraises of men in their poems or rithmes; the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them, for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men. For their verses are taken up with a general applause, and usually sung at all feasts and meetings by certain other persons whose proper function that is, who also receive for the same great rewards and reputation amongst them. These Irish Bardes are, for the most part, so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that themselves do more deserve to be sharply disciplined; for they seldom use to chuse unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems; but whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition: him they set up and glorifie in their rithmes; him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow." The moralizing poet then continues to show the « effect of evil things being decked with the attire of goodly words," on the affections of a young mind, which, as he observes, « cannot rest; for, «if he be not busied in some goodness,