es 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,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

The same might be said of Mr. Moore's seeking to bind an epic crown, or
the shadow of one, round his other laurels.

If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron (judging
from t