The Express.
London, England, 1852-12-13 00:00:00

LITERATURE:

• Jisirso,rs, Journal and correspondence ,t now?: Moore.
Edited by the Itight liottuurahlt Lord Joan itUbBELL,
M.P.
.P.
h,
Loasawsluit equal judgment, good
feeling, Lord
and good taste, left his illustrious friend to
tell his own story. A brief explanatory preface
introduces Moore's " Memoirs, Journal, and Correa-
! poudence," which (at least in these first volumes)
are not obscured and encumbered with annotations,
—as in such books is too often the case. First, of
Lord John's part of the work. In whet he says of
Moore as a friend and a man we recognise that
gem knees and good sense which has made Lord
John so esteemed by his personal friends --so beloved
by his own family. In the allusions to polities
we find, no doubt, the peculiar views of tbe old
family Whuig, but expressed with a candour, a re-
spect for the differing views of others, an unobtru-
sive and unpretending sincerity, that enforces esteem
and liking. Lord John's critical do:manta are least
to our taste. Very respectable they arc, but very
common-place. They are the d ,etrines of the
original Edinburgh li,ricre retailed at second
hand ; but they are excusable in one whose One has
been mainly directed to politics, and whose literary
opinions must be little more than rum inCsecnce• of the
persuasions ho entertained when he had leisure to
attend to them.

Lord John's introductory remarks have, however,
a charm beyond what the moot ingenious and just
observations of a simple literatteur could possess.
'fho charge de% olved upon him by the ;stet in his
will was to " select and arrange his MSS., so that
some kind of publication might be the result that
would utfird the means of making a provision for his
wile and family." What was required fur the dis-
charge of such a task num simply de limey, good
sense, and knowledge of the world. All these Lord
John, it is clear, possesses in a rnre degree. lle is one of
the tew happy natures who havecunt rived, in the words
of Schiller, to "combine the clear views of the man of
the world with the earnestness of the young enthu-
siast" (mit Sclau amen Ernst des Weltinalin's
Blick). We admire and enjoy what he says of
Moore, the man and politician; and we tolerate Alva
ho is pleased to say of Moore, the poet. The family
of the poet have been redt,ced by death to the alto
alone, and advantage has been taken of this to ensure
for her an annuity, thereby leaving the noble editor
free to consult his own feelings and judgxn nt
in what he publishes or suppresses,—undisturbed
iby the consideration whether he is thereby
doing his beet for the pecuniary interest of his pro-
' tegi"?. Moore was a politician, a party man, and a
satirical wit. There will, therefore, be some diffi-
culty in deciding how much may be told at present.
Perhaps the satest side to err on now will be to
avoid excessive communicativeness, provided all
documents are pri served. The time will come when
all may be used without hurting any one's feelings--
the only valid season for present suppression.
Tho period to which the first volume extends is
not that in which this delicate question arises. Here
all is as yet plain sailing. It extends from the birth
of the poet in 1779 to 1413, about and immediately
before the time ashen that wicked wag "Toni
Browne the younger" first burst upon the town.
There is nothing to tell of this era that could well
annoy the most sensitive now alive. It is an era
that precedes most of the productions of Moore that
are likely to live—with, indeed, the important ex-
ception of someof his finest melodies. It is the period of
the poet's growth and development—perhaps the most
interesting to contemplate, so far as he is personally
concerned. Personally the life of Moore can bear

There is a unity in the man and the
poet, and that unity is such as to make us like him
better. A great man he can scarcely be called ; the
precise may question his claim to the title of "good " in
a high degree. But a man of genius; he unquestion-
ably was—a most fikenb:e man—and as men go, tar
better than the average run.
It is in the private life of Moore that we
must seek the key to his poetry. It wss the
blossom of his presence—the natural and necessary
efflorescence of the latter. Even as a child he was a
fascinating companion. A quick apprehension, a
vivacious fancy, a sentiment trank,and generous—
tender rather than deep, an irresistible craving for
social converse, singular power of felicitous expres-
sion, and a delicately susceptible ear for music, wero
his natural gifts. The society into which he was
thrown favoured the development of his peculiar
talents. His schoolmasters made him a show
declaimer ; his friends engaged him as an
amateur actor ; social circles encouraged hint
to cultivate music. The friends with whom he asso-
ciated awakened political enthusiasm, but a certain
epicurean disposition and fastidious taste kept him
an eclectic or theorist in politics. This and tho
restrictions on catholics threw him upon literature
as a vocation, and the prompting themes and subject
matter of his literary efforts he found in the social
circles to the charm of which he so highly contri-
buted.

His style—more especially in verse—is essentially
his own. Its main—perhaps its sole defect—
is that festal facility of words which ho
obtained from his early declamatory and
histrionic exercises. Its principal merits are that
cicarness and ease which arc owing to his more con-
versational than school training, end that exquisite
musical cadence which he owed to his combination of
the arts of poetry and music. So much for the me-
dium of expression. His thought has more of fancy
than imagination. He does not dwell with earnest-
ness upon one or two great ideas, and breathe a reality
and intenser life into them. He flits from thought
to thought, from image to image, from
sentiment to sentiment. His light, graceful,
varied, redundant ideas find utterance in words so
clear as to show them in their naked beauty, so mu-
sical as to excite a rapturous sentiment that prepares
to feel their charms more intensely. This peculiarity
of the poet's mind determines his success and failure.
He is never sublime, never profound, often indig-
nantly vigorous, more often fascinatingly playful—
sometimes scattering beautiful ideas round, sometimes
wicked pleasantries. Greater poets we have had
both among his predecessors and contemporaries, a
more perfect poet of his kind never.
His lyrical effusions are the most successful. This
they owe to the complete identification of the sound
and sentiment with the music—an identification
which imparts a value to some of them whose literary
merit is at least questionable, and heightens that even
of the most beautiful! Next in order comes his
exquisitely melodious "Light of the Harem ;" next
his playful satyric effusions. His more laboured
and aspiring poems we confess we care less
for. His prose has been deemed flippant.
Perhaps it is; but it is full of matter. So
much strange out of the way learning was
assuredly never brought together with so much of
eloquent pleasantry, or made the channel of such
judicious and instruc'ivc remarks. Of his earlier
poetical sins we would say as little as possible. The
best thing for all parties is to forget them. We can-
not, however, so entirely forget them as to wish that
the remembrance of them in after life had sometimes
tempered the acerbity of his remarks on writers
who had less offended than himself in his own way.
His moralisations to which we allude are those of
a man who fancies he has grown virtuous simply
because his voluptuous impulses have been deudened
by age.
The contents of the first volume are an auto-
biography embracing the first twenty years of
Moored life; letters from the earliest produceable
effusions of the sort to Isl:i and • statement
respecting his duel with Jeffrey. The letters are
eminently natural and ph Astlig ; those to his mother
admirable beyond what words can express. The
memoir is supetfirial enough. The statement respect-
ing the duel is curious, us showing Low touch all
concerned disapproved of what they were doing.
The volumes, in a word, are a valuable addition to the
biographical treasures of our language.

THE Pori'. NO Corot:Hon.—The following is an
extinct from a letter recently received from Rome: " A
short time since a disciple or M. Robin was iu Rome, nod,
aliong his conjuring trick., he handag. d hi. wile's Ile.,
placed Int in another part of the theatre, and asked her
what he hat in his band, where it was made, and ether
questions. This trick, so c imrnon in England, wes thought
aojwonderful in Rome that when the Pope's Vicar heard
of it he suspended the performance, although the announce-
ment had been stock all over the city. The conjunct was
called before his Eminence, charged with being in'. ague
with the black gentleman la.low, end threatened with ell
aortit of things. The poor roan, to get himself nut the
serape, was obliged to divulge the sm•ret of the trick u ter
which the performance was allowed to be continued. I
mention this that vim navy judge of the hatealectual statu of
the Eternal City."