at any one who regards, even with a tincture of contempt, such
work (to take various characteristic examples) as Dryden's lyrics, as
Shenstone's, as Moore's, as Macaulay's Lays, because he thinks that, if
he did not contemn them, his worship of Shakespeare, of Shelley, of
Wordsworth would be suspect, is most emphatically not a critic of poetry
and not even a catholic lover of it. Which said, let us betake ourselves
to seeing what Moore's special virtue is. It is acknowledged that it
consists partly in marrying music most happily to verse; but what is not
so fully acknowledged as it ought to be is, that it also consists in
marrying music not merely to verse, but to poetry. Among the more
abstract questions of poetical criticism few are more interesting than
this, the connection of what may be called musical music with poetical
music; and it is one which has not been much discussed. Let us take the
two greatest of Moore's own contemporaries in lyric, the two greatest
lyrists as some think (I give no opinion on this) in English, and
compare their work with his. Shelley has the poetical music in an
unsurpassable and sometimes in an almost unapproached degree, but his
verse is admittedly very difficult to set to music. I should myself go
farther and say that it has in it some indefinable quality antagonistic
to such setting. Except the famous Indian Serenade, I do not know any
poem of Shelley's that has been set with anything approaching to
success, and in the best setting that I know of this the honeymoon of
the marriage turns into a "red moon" before long. That this is not
merely due to the fact that Shelley likes intricate metres any one who
examines Moore can see. That it is due merely to the fact that Shelley,
as we know from Peacock, was almost destitute of any ear for music is
the obvious and common explanation. But neither will this serve, for we
happen also to know that Burns, whose lyric, of a higher quality than
Moore's, assorts with music as naturally as Moore's own, was quite as
deficient as Shelley in this respect. So was Scott, who could yet write
admirable songs to be sung. It seems therefore almost impossible, on the
comparison of these three instances, to deny the existence of some
peculiar musical music in poetry, which is distinct from poetical music,
though it may coexist with it or may be separated from it, and which is
independent both of technical musical training and even of what is
commonly called "ea