TOM MOORE.

MR. STEAD has devoted one of the numbers of his "Masterpiece Library," or, to speak more intelligibly, of his "Penny Poets," to Tom Moore. That he should have done so is a sign that Moore still holds the field as a poet, and still has among the greater public something like the fame and reputation which he had in his lifetime. Mr. Stead would, we may be sure, not have included Moore in his list had he believed that the unliterary world judge him as does the literary. Among the cultivated class, Moore is clearly quite out of date and quite old-fashioned. No "up-to-date" pub- lisher would dream of bringing out an edition de lure of Moore, or giving us a selection from his poems on hand-made paper ; and the young gentlemen of literary light and leading who come up from the Universities full of schemes for making studies, critical estimates, and appreciations of great poets, never think of beginning with Moore. Moore may still be a poet for the million, but "the better vulgar" of literature have given their verdict against his poems.

Which is the true verdict ? Is Moore a poet, or merely a banjo-man the false gallop of whose verses "produces nausea," as the doctors sometimes say of their own prescriptions In our opinion the million has judged, as it generally does, rightly, but for the wrong reasons. Moore was a poet; but those who think and proclaim him one, generally give their decision on totally inadequate grounds. They praise his worst poems, and call poetry that in his work which least deserves the name. The truth is, Moore was a poet who hardly ever wrote good poetry, and never wrote a poem which had not almost as many blemishes as lines. People complain of Byron being an inferior artist ; but compared with Moore he had a faultless ear and a high standard of literary dis- cretion. There is something positively shocking, disgraceful, shameless, in the way in which Moore spoilt/ his best ideas. He seems to have been absolutely without the sense of letters, and could be as vulgar and tawdry in his -ornament as the veriest " penny-a-liner" in the poet's corner of a provincial newspaper. Nature had given him a fluency of language which was positively astounding. Words poured forth from his lips in cataracts, or rather like water from a perennial pump. But of command a language, that power with which certain poets have been born, but which most have acquired by force of judgment and the cultivation of that indefinable sense which We call taste, Moore had none. His language often commanded him. He never commanded it. It was the old story,—" He fagotted his notions as they fell, and if they rhymed and tattled all went well." But the strange thing is that, in spite of this fatal defect, Moore was a poet. The pump spouted forth its copious gushes of mud and water, but with the mud there came visible specks of true gold,—the gold of poetic inspiration. You may pick out of Moore's poetry—generally out of his half-humorous and satiric verse—hundreds of single lines and phrases which are not silver or mica, but real gold,—the stuff of which Shake- speare and Milton are made entire, and which Wordsworth sometimes used alone, but oftener set in homely, clumsy, but honest, oaken frames. Take, as an example, the charming line,—

"In safer slumber love reposes."

Here the pump has given out a piece of authentic ore. Alas ! it is almost a desecration to quote the next line, or to refer to the blundering rattling vulgarity of the poem as a whole. "Lesbia hath a beaming eye !" If he had had his deserts the poet would have had a black one for perpetrating such an out- rage on taste as to link the lovely cadence we have just quoted with the winks of the tight-lacing nymph and the artless oglings of the "gentle, bashful Nora Creina." We have given an instance of the way in which Moore could spoil a beautiful piece of poetic rhetoric. Let any one who wants to see how he could get hold of a striking idea and manage to spoil it by his fatal lack of taste, turn to the lines on the funeral of Sheridan. That satire can be, and often is, great poetry we have Dryden, Pope, and Byron to witness. The poetry is not seldom shown in a certain recklessness and audacity in "wild enormities" of poetic imagery. Moore had by nature the power to excel in such flights. He could pour

out the raw material of satire with the greatest ease, but, alas !

he almost invariably spoilt his effects by his incorrigible want of discretion. Take his reference to the Regent :—

"No, not for the riches of all who despise thee. Though that would make Europe's whole opulence mine."

Nothing could possibly be finer. In rush and go and audacity and in their red-hot indignation, the lines are above

praise. We do not believe that the satiric verse of ancient or modern times contains anything more telling, and telling not merely as invective, but as poetry. Yet just consider how Moore used them. He ruined his verses by putting in front of them exactly the same thought in almost the same language, only a little weakened :—

"No, not for the wealth of the land that supplies thee

With millions to heap upon foppery's shrine,

No, not for the riches of all who despise thee'

Though that would make Europe's whole opulence mine."

It is really heart-breaking to see such a waste of gold. One yearns for some critical process by which the glorious deposit of ore could be washed out of the mud. But alas, the alluvial deposits of the valleys of Parnassus are not available for such treatment. In the same poem Moore spoils one of the most telling, if one of the least true, antitheses in our literature by his vile and clumsy grammar and his botching rhymes. Moore wanted to contrast the supposed neglect which Sheridan suffered in his last illness• with the pomp of his funeral— there was no such neglect, in fact, but that is another story ; and will, before long, be given to the world—and had the happy inspiration to do it by the lines,—

" How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow."

That is super-excellent satire, but listen to the way in which the base Indian throws the jewel away :—

" Oh ! it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow And spirits so mean in the great and high born; To think what a long line of titles may follow

The relics of him who died—friendless and lorn !

How proud they can press to the funeral array Of one whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow ! How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to day, Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow !

And thou, too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream,

Incoherent and gross, even grosser had passed, Were it not for that cordial and soul giving beam

Which his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness cast."

What a jumble of mud and gold ! The last verse quoted is a mass of thick mud, but in it sparkles a really inspired phrase. It was an inspiration worthy of Dryden at his best to describe the Regent's life as "incoherent and gross,"—

" a sick epicure's dream."

But the lines to Sheridan are no exception. One has only to turn the pages of Moore's "Humorous and Satirical Poems" to find the mud in places positively shot through with gold. Full of the very essence of comic poetry is the poem on "Moral Positions," while "The New Creation of Peers" is one of the wittiest party poems in the language. What could be better than the description of the two promoted baronets :— "The plan being fixed, 'raw material was sought, No matter how middling, so Tory the creed be : And first -to begin with—Squire W—rt—y, 'twas thought, For a Lord was as raw a material as need be.

Next came, with his penchant for painting and pelf, The tasteful Sir Ch-rl-s, so renowned, far and near, For purchasing pictures, and selling himself,— And both (as the public well knows) very dear.

Beside him come r, with equal éclat, in ;— Stand forth, chosen pair, while for titles we measure ye; Both connoisseur baronets, both fond of drawing,

Sir John after nature, Sir Charles on the Treasury."

Excellent, too, is the contrast between Bankes and Goulburn :

Each a different mode pursues, Each the same conclusion reaches; B-nkes is foolish in Reviews, G—lb—rn foolish in his speeches."

But best of all is the delightful satire on the Eldonian Tories, preached on a text afforded by the supposed discovery of a Mr. Roger Dodsworth, who had been preserved for two hun- dred years in a glacier :— "What a lucky turn-up !—just as Eld-n's withdrawing, To find thus a gentleman, frozen in the year Sixteen hundred and sixty, who only wants thawing To serve for our times quite as well as the Peer ;-

To bring thus to light, not the wisdom alone Of our ancestors, molt as we find it on shelves, But, in perfect condition, full-wigged and full-grown, To shovel up one of those wise bucks themselves!

Oh thaw Mr. Dodsworth and send him safe home,—

Let him learn nothing useful or new on the way; With his wisdom kept snug for the light let him come, And our Tories will hail him with Hear' and' What a God-send to them—a good, obsolete man, Who has never of Locke or Voltaire been a reader ;— Oh thaw Mr. Dodsworth as fast as you can, [leader." And the L-nsd-les and H-rtf-rds shall choose him for

Of course there are the same faults here that we find in the grander and more poignant satire of Sheridan'e funeral; but the happy fancy and the lighter touch make it easier to for- give them.

Those who will be inclined to agree that Moore was a poet, but one who wrote no true poem, may ask,—Did he never write a copy of verse which had not glaring faults of taste and style? The Melodies and "Lana Rookh " and "The Loves of the Angels" may have to go, but is there no poem, even of half a dozen stanzas, which is not defaced by blemishes? We doubt the possibility of being able to answer this question favourably to Moore. The nearest thing we know of is the following half. serious, half-playful poem, "The Torch Race,"—Fable III. of "The Fables of the Holy Alliance." It certainly has not many faults, and it is full of charm :—

" I saw it all in Fancy's glass— Herself, the fair, the wild magician,

Who bid this splendid day dream pass, And named each gliding apparition.

'Twas like a torch-race—such as they Of Greece performed, in ages gone, When the fleet youths, in long array, Passed the bright torch triumphant on.

I saw the expectant nations stand, To catch the coming flame in turn ;— I saw, from ready band to hand, The clear, though struggling glory burn.

And oh, their joy, as it came near, 'Twas in itself a joy to see ;- While Fancy whispered in my ear, 'That torch they pass is Liberty !'

And each, as she received the flame, Lighted her altar with its ray; Then, smiling to the next who came, Speeded it on its sparkling way.

From Albion first, whose ancient shrine Was furnished with the fire already, Columbia caught the boon divine, And lit a flame, like Albion's, steady.

The splendid gift then Gallia took, And, like a wild Bacchante, raising The brand aloft, its sparkles shook,

As she would set the world a-blazing!

And when she fired her altar high, It flashed into the reddening air So fierce, that Albion, who stood nigh, Shrunk, almost blinded by the glare !"

The rest is hardly as good ; still, the poem, strange as it sounds to write so of anything by Moore, is, in our opinion at least, in no part altogether vulgar or tasteless. "When the fleet youths in long array

Passed the bright torch triumphant on,"

is indeed an exceedingly fine touch of rhetoric, and may stand beside Collins's famous lines without fear of the com- parison. Yes, Moore is a poet ; the greater public is right, though they have no right to give such a verdict on the evidence before them,—" Lalla Rookh " and the "Irish Melodies." In truth, "the round world" is so infallible in literature because it judges purely by instinct, and by no arbitrary canons of criticism. The man in the street feels in 'his bones that Moore is a poet, while to arrive at the same t e‘e conclusion the mere critic must plod through a gibbering wilderness of sentimental inanities and rhetorical infamies.