"Shiel (that's an Irish friend) says I am the first poet of the day, and join the beauty of the Birdof-Paradise's plumes to the strength of the eagle's wing." Fancy a man copying that sort of thing into his own Diary, and regaling himself with it!

Yet he is full of good feeling - does not cherish resentments - lets who will pat him on the shoulder (though he prefers a lord's pat). Then he forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so out with Jeffrey that a duel nearly came of it; but afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend for years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain -far more than his artificialities of make-up would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue with the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), he determines on good advisement to be away with it; and so goes smack into the den of the great publisher and gives him his hand such action balances a great deal of namby-pambyism.

But what surprises more than all about Moore, is the very great reputation that he had in his day. We, in these latter times, have come to reckon him (rather rashly, perhaps) only an arch gossipper of letters-a butterfly of those metro

MOORE'S REPUTATION.

161

politan gardens - easy, affable, witty, full of smiles, full of good feeling, full of pretty little

rhythmical utterances — singing songs as easy as a sky-lark (and leaving the sky thereafter as empty); planting nothing that lifts great growth, or tells larger tale than lies in his own lively tintinnabulation of words.

Yet Byron said of him: "There is nothing Moore may not do, if he sets about it." Sydney Smith called him "A gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honorable." Leigh Hunt says: "I never received a visit from him, but I felt as if I had been talking with Prior or Sir Charles Sedley." It is certain that he must have been a most charming companion. Walter Scott says: "It would be a delightful addition to life if Thomas Moore had a cottage within two miles of me." Indeed, he was always quick to scent anything that might amuse, and to store it up. His diaries overflow with these bright specks and bits of talk, which may kindle a laugh, but do not nestle in the memory.

But considered as a poet whose longish work ought to live and charm the coming generations,

his reputation certainly does not hold to the old illuminated heights. Poems of half a century ago, which Lalla Rookh easily outshone, have now put the pretty orientalisms into shade. Nor can we understand how so many did, and do, put such twain of verse-makers as Byron and Moore into one leash, as if they were fellows in power. In the comparison the author of the Loves of the Angels seems to me only a little important-looking, kindly pug-nicely combed, with ribbons about the neck-in an embroidered blanket, with jingling bells at its corners; and Byron-beside him a lithe, supple leopard, with a tread that threatens and a dangerous glitter in the eye. Milk diet might sate that other; but this one, if occasion served, would lap blood.

In the pages that follow we shall, among others, more or less notable, encounter again that lithe leopard in some of his wanton leaps into verse, into marriage, into exile, and into the pit of death at Missolonghi.

WE

CHAPTER V.

E opened our budget in the last chapter with the Quarterly Review, which was just getting upon its legs through the smart, keen, and hard writing of Mr. William Gifford. It throve afterward under the coddling of the most literary of the Tory gentlemen in London, and its title has always been associated with the names of John Wilson Croker, of Dr. Southey, and of Mr. Lockhart. It is a journal, too, which has always been tied by golden bonds to the worship of tradition and of vested privilege, and which has always been ready with its petulant, impatient bark of detraction at reform or reformers, or at any books which may have had a scent of Liberalism. Leigh Hunt, of course, came in for periodic scathings-some of them deserved; some not deserved. Indeed, I am half

163

disposed to repent what may have seemed a too flippant mention of this very graceful poet and essayist. Of a surety, there is an abounding affluence of easy language- gushing and disporting over his pages which lures one into reading and into dreamy acquiescence; but read as much as we may, and as long as we will, we shall go away from the reading with a certain annoyance that there is so little to keep out of it all so little that sticks to the ribs and helps.

As for the poet Moore, of whom also we may have spoken in terms which may seem of too great disparagement to those who have loved to linger in his

"Vale of Cashmere

With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave.

Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear

As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,"

no matter what may become of these brilliant orientalisms, or of his life of Byron, or of his diaries, and his "Two-penny Post Bag," it is certain that his name will be gratefully kept alive by his sparkling, patriotic, and most musical Irish