Lectures On The English Poets William Hazlitt

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168 ___ [10] There is the same idea in Blair's Grave. "------Its visits, Like those of angels, short, and far between." Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. "Few," and "far between," are the same thing. ___ Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects that people the sun's beam. "So work the honey-bees," extracting liquid sweets from opening buds; so the butterfly expands its wings to the idle air; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over summer seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of fairy fiction-- "Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster, And gaudy butterflies frolic around." The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead weight upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The infinite delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which he indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full force to the masses of things, from connecting them into a whole. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the great and permanent; it glances over the surfaces, the first impressions of things, instead of grappling with the deep-rooted prejudices of the
169 mind, its inveterate habits, and that "perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful, wants momentum and passion. It requires the same principle to make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well, the feeling of continued identity. The impressions of Mr. Moore's poetry are detached, desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten and fade like the rainbow's. Its sweetness evaporates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers! His gay laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love or wine, is better than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is first-rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect "nest of spicery"; where the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen. In this too, our bard resembles the bee--he has its honey and its sting. Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion and a consequent disappointment of public expectation. He should have left it to others to break conventions with nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any rate, have kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is not what people wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do; namely, whether he could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. The interest, however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the execution still turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of mind is the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding to the love and admiration of his age, and more than one country. "Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet,
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1 Lectures On The English Poets Wil
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3 Gentilhomme_, who had always spok
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5 into the likeness of whatever is
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7 "Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic
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9 dignified, delightful or distress
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11 Hang on each leaf and cling to e
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13 Harmonious numbers." As there ar
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15 and shrewdness has been heard to
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17 translated into an epic poem, by
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19 descriptions in the book of Job
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21 in the heart, another confirmati
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23 This is so true and natural, and
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25 nature and discrimination of cha
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27 The Serjeant at Law is the same
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29 He hadde a beres skin, cole-blak
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31 Therein a goldfinch leaping pret
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33 His hewe salwe, and pale as ashe
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35 Which that was holden pourest of
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37 never confounded the two styles
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39 description of the bog of Allan,
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41 For all that pleasing is to livi
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43 Colin Clout's vision, in the las
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45 And thousand other ways to bait
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47 Great liking unto many, but true
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49 Tho' they are made and moulded o
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51 institutions, to grow perfect an
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53 depth of passion, and another as
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55 had seen Hamlet, I should think
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57 of its own! Chaucer's characters
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59 The heavenly bodies that hang ov
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61 Its figure and its heat." Patroc
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63 half a dozen, and they are offen
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65 So that of Spenser: "The noble h
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67 is not so barren of resources. H
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69 to require. The following are so
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71 happiness, and the loss of it by
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73 choice of his subject. Not only
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75 these were yet to come. But stil
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77 class of readers; for it should
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79 because while they amused his fa
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81 On her white breast a sparkling
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83 poetry: there was a cant in the
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85 To Paraclete's white walls and s
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87 One would think (though there is
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89 both. If I had to choose, there
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91 has been denominated metaphysica
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93 quaint riddles in verse, which t
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95 The strange music of the waves,
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97 And from the bosom of yon droppi
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99 passages in this exquisite littl
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101 Along the mazy current. Low the
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103 descriptions of nature: he look
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105 And swallowing therefore withou
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107 it as a charge against religion
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109 the life, in stone. Almost all
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111 stand in her so silently, as if
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113 admire in Nature; the most insi
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115 above our heads, or plays throu
Page 117 and 118: 117 our minds. Each word in familia
Page 119 and 120: 119 "Little Will, the scourge of Fr
Page 121 and 122: 121 convincing than the arguments u
Page 123 and 124: 123 original genius. Its greatest m
Page 125 and 126: 125 facit versus_. His better geniu
Page 127 and 128: 127 objected to me, I say, let it b
Page 129 and 130: 129 in the gloom of an unconquerabl
Page 131 and 132: 131 And bathe thy breathing tresses
Page 133 and 134: 133 happiness of nature, and whose
Page 135 and 136: 135 Huge frame of giant hands, the
Page 137 and 138: 137 I am sorry that what I said in
Page 139 and 140: 139 and masterly? That a common boy
Page 141 and 142: 141 See! the whyte moone sheenes on
Page 143 and 144: 143 pompous in pretension, shews a
Page 145 and 146: 145 ready with every blast to toppl
Page 147 and 148: 147 reminds one of Launce's account
Page 149 and 150: 149 Evanishing amid the storm.-- Na
Page 151 and 152: 151 As Tammie glowr'd amaz'd, and c
Page 153 and 154: 153 Now, wha this tale o' truth sha
Page 155 and 156: 155 The dame brings forth, in compl
Page 157 and 158: 157 ear to the fearful accidents of
Page 159 and 160: 159 'Tis not the frost that freezes
Page 161 and 162: 161 popularity.--The love of fame d
Page 163 and 164: 163 the Muses; and that is not the
Page 165 and 166: 165 grown men and women as little g
Page 167: 167 mangles his ideas before they a
Page 171 and 172: 171 mind, the dark and glittering o
Page 173 and 174: 173 with ancient costume and a thea
Page 175 and 176: 175 Sir Walter, restless as a veeri
Page 177 and 178: 177 A cup of stone received the liv
Page 179 and 180: 179 And in my simple mind we cannot
Page 181 and 182: 181 reason. The licentiousness grew
Page 183 and 184: 183 Where was then the gentleman?"
Page 185 and 186: 185 Ancient Mariner is his most rem
Page 187: 187 Be now for ever taken from my s
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Lectures On The English Poets William Hazlitt

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