before our readers, a passage or two from Lalla Rookh, which is decidedly the best of his productions.

Yet now he comes-brighter than ever he

E'er shin'd before-but ah! not bright for thee;
No-dread, unlooked for, like a visitant
From th' other world, he comes as if to haunt
The guilty soul with dreams of lost delight,
Long lost to all but memory's aching sight.
* * * * * * *
Fond maid, the sorrow of her soul was such,
Ev'n reason sunk blighted beneath its touch;
And though e'er long her sanguine spirit rose
Above the first dead pressure of its woes,

*

The health and bloom return'd, the delicate chain
Of thought once tangl'd never cleared again.

With the critic who should maintain, after reading these passages, that their author has infused into them that agreeable and melifluous modulation, of which our standard poets have shewn this measure to be susceptible, we will not argue the matter. His perceptions of harmony and of grace in composition, must be so utterly opposed to ours, that we should in vain attempt to reconcile them; and we have no relish for vain disputation.

We may here state our opinion of Moore as a poet, and it will be manifest that we are not prejudiced against either the man or his verses, when we say, that we consider him the best song writer that ever lived. He can handle the harp of Erin sweetly, pathetically, and melodiously, whenever his imagination is warmed by the glowing strains of any of his native airs. But take the inspiring instrument out of his hands, and give him no popular tune to regulate his cadence, and you might as well set "Hercules to the distaff," as him to make poetry. His "Loves of the Angels," is almost as insipid and puling as the nursling ditties of the Water poets. As a poem, the public voice, has for once done right, in pronouncing it an abortion. His Lalla Rookh, is a much better production, and in some of its lyrical parts is really beautiful.

Oh! had we never, never met,

Or would this heart even now forget,

How link'd, how blest we might have been,
Had fate not frowned so dark between!

Hads't thou been born a Persian maid,
In neighbouring valleys had we dwelt,
Through the same fields in childhood play'd,
At the same kindling altar knelt !
Then, then, while all those nameless ties,
In which the charm of country lies,
Had round our hearts been hourly spun,
Till IRAN'S cause and thine were one ;-
While in thy lute's awakening sigh,
I heard the voice of days gone by,
And saw in every smile of thine,
Returning hours of glory shine!

While the wrong'd spirit of our land,

Lov'd, look'd, and spoke her wrongs through thee,

God! who could then this sword withstand?

Its every flash was victory!

It is such passages as this, that have gained Moore his reputation, and that will transmit his name to posterity as a true poet. But they are lyrical passages. He never wrote any thing equal to them in the classical and more dignified measure of our poetry. Even Byron has written some small pieces very beautifully in the lyrical style. He has also, in the short metre of eight syllables, the facility of which he himself notices, given us some really good poetry; and we are of opinion that his Bride of Abydos, and his Giaour, will be frequently read, when the facination of his eccentricities have lost their influence, and permitted the majority of his other poems to lie quietly embedded in cobwebs.

Our readers will perceive, that our chief reason for placing the fashionable poetry of the day, so far below the standard of excellence, is the incapacity of our present writers to attain excellence in the construction of that measure, which we esteem the most naturally adapted to subjects of dignity and length of any in our language. It will be immediately suggested that the classical couplet cannot be better suited for such subjects than blank verse, and perhaps, in every particular but one, the suggestion is correct. Well written blank verse, is majestic, flowing, and melodious. It is a species of versification well suited to the most grave and important subjects; and agreeable enough to English ears. We believe, however, that it is not

quite so agreeable, because it is not quite so harmonious, as the classical couplet written in the style of our standard poets. We have both the Ænead and the Illiad in blank verse; the one by Trapp, and the other by Cowper; but who would ever think of reading either, that could get the translations of Dryden and Pope?

But awkward as the present race of fashionable pocts are in managing the classical couplet, they appear still more so in their attempts at blank verse. This may, perhaps, be accounted for, from their being all, with the exception of Campbell, and Rogers, of naturally untuned ears; for, to make blank verse in any degree tolerable, requires a perfection of harmonious numbers, that may, to a certain extent, be dispensed with in rhyme. Since the days of Akenside, no poem of any length has appeared in blank verse, that we can read without an exertion of patience by no means agreeable. Cowper's Task is by far the most respectable; but his lines are too sluggish and unwieldy for our taste. This author is, indeed, a fine moralist; but we wish that he had moralized altogether in prose; for both his rhymes and his blank verse are frequently downright prose to us; and prose-poetry we consider one of the most disgusting monsters in nature.

As to the Byronian blank verse, it is a thousand times worse than Cowper's. The following is a tolerably fair sample of it. Whoever can relish it, can, in our opinion, relish any thing that ever types put together.

'Tis he! I am taken in the toils. Before
I quitted Hamburgh, Guilio, his steward,
Informed me, that he had obtained an order
From Bradenburgh's elector for the arrest
Of Kruitzner (such the name I then bore) when
1 came upon the frontier. The free city
Alone preserved my freedom-till I left
Its walls-fool that I was to leave them!-But
I deemed this humble garb, &c.

Let us try if we can imitate this.

A fool indeed, to think of passing on
The world, such stuff for genuine poetry!

Werner, Act 1st, Scene 1st.

One might exclaim, if one knew not full well
That Byron's name can fool all reading people
Out of their senses, or plug up their ears.

Fools that we are, to admire such drivelling verses.
But sure a lord must be a genius, and

A titled poet never can write trash. So thinks

The world, though 'tis perhaps mistaken, &c.

He who admires the first of these passages, can certainly have no objection to the last, it being evidently in the same style; and he who could not write five hundred such lines per day, is not fit to be a grocer's clerk.

In what different strains does Milton sing.

Take for exam

ple the whisper with which Adam awakened Eve, when he,
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty, which whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth pecular graces; then with voice,
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her soft hand touching, whisper'd thus: Awake,
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,
Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake: the morning shines, and the fresh fields,
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colours, how the bee

Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweets.

And Thompson pours forth his numbers, in melody scarcely inferior.

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends,
And fortune smiled deceitful on her birth;
For in her tender years deprived of all,
Of every stay, save innocence and heaven,
She with her widowed mother, feeble, old,
And poor, lived in a cottage far retired
Among the windings of a shady vale;
By solitude and deep surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty conceal'd. &c.

Nor must we forget the bard of Avon's wood-notes-wild, which although upwards of two hundred years since they were sung, are still refreshing to the fancy; and when compared with Byron's blank verse, are as the nightingale's song to the

croaking of a raven. At the commencement of his Play of the Twelfth Night," he sings in numbers worthy of the immortality to which they are destined.

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.-
That strain again; —it had a dying fall;
O, it came o'er my car like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets. &c.

Hear him also in "The Merchant of Venice," in a strain of poetry that has never been surpassed.

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit Jessica; Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubim."

And is it in lieu of such strains as these, that we must be content with the lullabies of Wordsworth, and the vulgarities of Byron! To what corruption will our versification sink in but a few years more, if the public taste is not speedily reclaimed to a relish for true dignity of language, and harmony of numbers? If the cant of railing against harmonious verse, be not abandoned, we shall soon have very little of it indeed, to rail against. Our poets finding it much easier to write lines, for verses they will not deserve to be called, with rugged carelessness, than with graceful and harmonious cadence, will gladly avail themselves of the prevailing humour, and our poetry will become such as Sternhold and Hopkins, or even Blind Harry, would have been ashamed to own.

The advocates of the Byronian school, after they are pushed to the confession that its versification is devoid of harmony, change their ground, and boldly assert, that harmony is of no advantage to poetry. If, therefore, we can prove that it is not only of advantage to it, but that it is one of its chief distin