his antagonists, their sole object is to destroy or blacken the persons of their foes His is a public and gallant rencounter, theirs a sullen and solitary assassination. ter. Moore may be regarded under the four phases of an amatory poet, a narrative poet, a satirical poet, and a prose wriAs an amatory poet he assumed, every one knows, the nom de guerre of Tommy Little, and as such do not his merits and demerits live in the verse of Byron and in the prose of Jeffrey? These poems. lively, gay, shallow, meretricious, were the sins of youth; they were not, like "Don Juan," the deliberate abominations of guilty and hardened manhood. Their object was to crown vice, but not to deny the existence of virtue. They were unjustifiably warm in their tone and coloring, but they did not seek to pollute the human heart itself. It was reserved for a mightier and darker spirit to make the desperate and infernal attempt, and to include in one "wide waft" of scorn and disbelief the existence of faithfulness in man and of innocence in woman. Little's lyrics, too, were neutralized by their general feebleness; they were pretty, but wanted body, unity, point, and power. Consequently, while they captivated idle lads and lovesick misses, they did comparatively little injury. It is indeed ludicrous, looking back through the vista of forty years, and thinking of the dire puddle and pother which such tiny transgressions produced among the critics and moralists of the time; they seem actually to have dreamed that the morality of Britain, which had survived the dramatists of Queen Elizabeth's day, the fouler fry of Charles II's playwrights, the novels of Fielding and Smollett, the numerous importations of iniquity from the Continent, was to fall below a few madrigals and double-entendres. No, like "dew-drops from the lion's mane," it shook them off, and pursued its way without impediment or pause. Whatever mischief was intended, little we are sure was done. As a narrative poet, Moore aimed at higher things, and, so far as praise and popularity went, with triumphant success. His "Lalla Rookh" came forth amid a hum of general expectation. It was rumored that he had written a great epic poem; that Catullus had matured into Homer expectations were too sanguine to be realized. It was soon found that "Lalla Rookh" was no epic-was not a great These poem at all-that it was only a short series of Oriental tales, connected by a slight but exquisite framework. Catullus, though stripped of many of his voluptuous graces, and much of his false and florid taste, remained Catullus still. And the greatest admirer of the splendid diction, the airy verse, the melodramatic incident, the lavish fancy of the poem, could not but say, if the comparison came upon his mind at all" Ye critics, say how poor was this to Homer's style!" The unity, the compactness, the interest growing to a climax, the heroic story, the bare and grand simplicity of style-all the qualities we expect in the epic, were wanting in "Lalla Rookh." It was not so much a poem, indeed, as a rhymed romance. Still its popularity was instant and boundless. If it did not become a great, still, steadfast luminary in the heaven of song, it flashed before the eye of the world brief, beautiful, gorgeous, and frail "A tearless rainbow, such as span The unclouded skies of Peristan." And even yet, after the lapse of twenty years, there are many who, admiring the fine moral of "Paradise and the Peri," or melted by the delicate pathos of the "Fireworshippers," own the soft seductions of "Lalla Rookh," and in their hearts, if not in their understandings, prefer it to the chaster and more powerful poetry of the age. The "Loves of the Angels" was a bolder but not a more successful flight. It was a tale of the “ Arabian heaven;" and there is nothing certainly, in these wondrous "thousand and one nights," more rich, beautiful, and dreamlike in its imagination and pathos, as in those impassioned stories. But it was only a castle in the clouds after all— one of those brilliant but fading pomps which the eye of the young dreamer sees "for ever flushing round a summer's sky." Its angels were mere winged dolls compared to the "celestial ardors" whom Milton has portrayed, or even to those proud and impassioned beings whom Byron has drawn. In fact, the poem was unfortunate in appearing about the same time with Byron's "Heaven and Earth," which many besides us consider his finest production as a piece of art. Mere atoms of the rainbow fluttering round were the pinions of Moore's angels compared to the mighty wings of those burning ones who came down over Ararat, drawn by the loadstars which shone in the eyes of the "daughters of men," and for which, without a sigh, they "lost eternity." And what comparison between the female characters in the one poem and the two whom we see in the other, waiting with uplifted eyes and clasped hands for the descent of their celestial lovers, like angels for the advent of angels? And what scene in Moore can be named beside the deluge in Byron; with the gloomy silence of suspense which precedes it-the earnest whispers heard among the hills at dead of night, which tell of its coming-the waters rising solemnly to their work of judgment, as if conscious of its justice and grandeur-the cries heard of despair, of fury, of blasphemy, as if the poet himself were drowning in the surge—the milder and softer wail of resignation mingling with the sterner exclamations-the ark in the distance the lost angels clasping their lost loves, and ascending with them from the doom of the waters to what we feel and know must be a direr doom? We have spoken already of Moore's character as a witty poet, and need only now refer to the titles of his principal humorous compositions, such as the "Fudge Family in Paris" the "Twopenny Post-Bag;" "Cash, Corn Currency, and Catholics," &c. They constitute a perfect gallery of fun without ferocity, without indecency, and without more malice than serves to give them poignancy and point. From Moore's "Life of Sheridan" we might almost fancy that, though he had lisped in numbers, and early obtained. a perfect command of the language and versification of poetry, yet that he was only beginning, or had but recently begun to write prose. The juvenility, the immaturity, the false glare, the load of useless figure, the ambition and effort of that production, are amazing in such a man at such an age. It contains, of course, much fine and forcible writing; but even Sheridan himself, in his most ornate and adventurous prose, which was invariably his worst, is never more unsuccessful than is sometimes his biographer. Perhaps it was but fitting that the life of such a heartless, faithless, though brilliant charlatan, should be written in a style of elaborate falsetto and fudge. We have a very different opinion indeed of his "Life of Byron." It is not, we fear, a faithful or an honest record of that miserable and guilty mistake the life of Byron. We have heard that Dr. MacGinn, by no means a squeamish man, who was at first employed by Murray to write his biography, and had the materials put into his hands, refused, shrinking back disgusted at the masses of falsehood, treachery, heartlessness, malignity, and pollution which they revealed. The same materials were submitted to Moore, and from them he has constructed an image of his hero, bearing, we suspect, as correct a resemblance to his character as the ideal busts which abound do to his face. When will biographers learn that their business, their sole business, is to tell the truth or to be silent? How long will the public continue to be deceived by such gilded falsehoods as form the staple of obituaries and memoirs? It is high time that such were confined to the corners of newspapers and of churchyards. We like Moore's "Byron," not for its subject or its moral tone, but solely for its literary execution. It is written throughout in a clear, chaste, dignified and manly manner; the criticism it contains is eloquent and discriminating, and the friendship it discovers for Byron, if genuine, speaks much for its author's generosity and heart. We must not speak of his other prose productions-his "Epicurean," "History of Ireland," &c. The wittiest thing of his in prose we have read is an article in the "Edinburgh Review" on 66 Boyd's Lives of the Fatherr," where, as in Gibbon, jests lurk under loads of learning, double-entendres disguise themselves in Greek, puns mount and crackle upon the backs of huge folios, and where you are at a loss whether most to chuckle at the wit, to detest the animus, or to admire the erudition. We had nearly omitted, which had been unpardonable, all mention of the "Irish Melodies"-those sweet and luscious strains which have hushed ten thousand drawingrooms and drawn millions of such tears as drawing-rooms shed, but which have seldom won their way to the breasts of simple unsophisticated humanity—which are to the songs of Burns what the lute is to the linnet-and which, in their title, are thus far unfortunate that, however melodious, they are not the melodies of Ireland. It was not Moore but Campbell who wrote "Erin Mavourneen." "He," says Hazlitt, "has changed the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box." Such is our ideal of Thomas Moore. If it do not come up to the estimate of some of his admirers, it is faithful to our own impressions, and what more from a critic can be required? We only add, that admired by many as a poet, by all as a wit, he is as a man the object of universal regard; and we believe there is not one who knows him but would be ready to join in the words "Were it the last drop in the well, 'Tis to thee that I would drink ; Would be peace to thee and thine, ISAAC TAYLOR. CHRISTIANITY has been much indebted to its lay supporters and defenders. Without professing to give a complete list of the illustrious laymen who have either advocated its evidences or expounded its doctrines, we may simply remind the reader of the names of Milton, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Addison, Lord Lyttelton, Charles Leslie, Soame Jenyns, Dr. Johnson, and Cowper, which belong to other ages than the present; while, as respects our own times, it may be enough to mention Coleridge, Southey, Douglas of Cavers, Robert Ainslie, Thomas Erskine of Linlathan, Bowdler, Wilberforce, and Isaac Taylor. Of this latter list, Coleridge, partly in his other writings, but chiefly in his "Table-talk," illustrated the general and more remote bearings of Christianity, the points where it touches upon the other sciences. Southey has stood up bravely for its external bulwarks, and exemplified its consistent morals. Douglas, to use the language of another, "eagle-eyed and eloquent, has anticipated time, and, surveying the world, has laid down the laws of general amelioration." Ainslie has broken down the great leading |