e verses, not a poem. There is no principle of
massing or of continuity in his productions--neither height nor breadth
nor depth of capacity. There is no truth of representation, no strong
internal feeling--but a continual flutter and display of affected airs
and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by
extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness
and unmeaning sentimentality. All is flimsy, all is florid to excess.
His imagination may dally with insect beauties, with Rosicrucian spells;
may describe a butterfly's wing, a flower-pot, a fan: but it should not
attempt to span the great outlines of nature, or keep pace with the
sounding march of events, or grapple with the strong fibres of the human
heart. The great becomes turgid in his hands, the pathetic insipid. If
Mr. Moore were to describe the heights of Chimboraco, instead of the
loneliness, the vastness and the shadowy might, he would only think
of adorning it with roseate tints, like a strawberry-ice, and would
transform a magician's fortress in the Himmalaya (stripped of its
mysterious gloom and frowning horrors) into a jeweller's toy, to be set
upon a lady's toilette. In proof of this, see above "the diamond turrets
of Shadukiam," &c. The description of Mokanna in the fight, though
it has spirit and grandeur of effect, has still a great alloy of the
mock-heroic in it. The route of blood and death, which is otherwise well
marked, is infested with a swarm of "fire-fly" fancies.

"In vain Mokanna, 'midst the general flight,
Stands, like the red moon, in some stormy night.
Among the fugitive clouds, that hurrying by,
Leave only her unshaken in the sky."

This simile is fine, and would have been perfect, but that the moon is
not red, and that she seems to hurry by the clouds, not they by her. The
description of the warrior's youthful adversary,

----"Whose coming seems
A light, a glory, such as breaks in dreams."--

is fantastic and enervated--a field of battle has nothing to do with
dreams:--and again, the two lines immediately after,

"And every sword, true as o'er billows dim
The needle tracks the load-star, following him"--

are a mere piece of enigmatical ingenuity and scientific
_mimminee-pimminee._

We cannot except the _Irish Melodies_ from the same censure. If these
national airs do indeed express the soul of impassioned feeling in his
countrymen, the case of Ireland is hopeless. If