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nothing to the image; the regum turres' are particularized, and thus the lesson is brought home with more startling truth -but there is no creation.

In the following often-quoted lines of Dubartas

'Loin des murs flamboyans qui renferment le molde,
Dans le centre caché d'une clarté profonde,

Dieu repose en lui-même-'

the first line presents a highly imaginative picture; but, be it observed, it belongs, not to the Frenchman, but to Lucretius:'Extra flammantia monia mundi :'

Which Moore has borrowed from one or both :—

'As far

As the universe spreads her flaming wall.'

The second is a conceit, the offspring of spurious Fancy; for it does not present a simple image, but expresses an antithetical idea-the invisibility of an object placed in an intense light. And it is still a conceit in Milton, whether borrowed or not :.

'Dark with excessive light Thy skirts appear;

Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest seraphim

Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.'

And still more in Dryden, who expands the thought into a fine couplet, after his own fashion :

'Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light

A blaze of glory, which defies the sight.'

The last two lines, in the passage from Milton, are taken from another source, as Mr. Hallam has pointed out-the following noble verses of an obscure Italian poet, Girolamo Preti:

:

Tu, per soffrir della cui luce i rai
Si fan dell' ale i serafini un velo.'

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But Mr. Hallam has omitted to add, that the original of both is in the vision of Isaiah :- Each one' of the Seraphim 'had 'six wings with twain he covered his face, and with twain 'he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.' And the effort of what the critics already quoted call Fancy, but which we term Thought, is plainly seen in these modern imitations,

in assigning a reason for the appearance. Imagination rests contented with creating, and never condescends to explain or justify. The whole passage, as was to be expected, has given birth to a variety of pretty concettini. See the Loves of the Angels,' passim. For instance

Oft, when from Alla's lifted brow

A lustre came, too bright to bear,
And all the seraph ranks would bow,

And shade their dazzled sight, nor dare

To look upon the effulgence there,' &c.

And

Milton is full of such conceits as that above quoted. it may perhaps be suggested, as the most marked of all the distinctions between very early poetry and that of modern days, that in the former the creative faculty generally appears pure and naked, and absolutely unconnected with the reflective. In all modern poets, and most, perhaps, in the greatest of all, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Thought seems to struggle with Imagination for the mastery; and the one and the other preduce their effects in such rapid succession, and so interchangeably, that nothing can be more difficult than to assign their respective provinces.

Very different is the fate which a fine image meets, when it passes successively through the hands of a series of poets of the imaginative order. Each impregnates it with his own peculiar colouring each communicates to it something additional, which calls up a new vision to the mental eye, and is in truth a fresh creation.

In the venerable passage

'And even as the race of leaves, ev'n such is that of man,
Them on the ground the wind doth strew,' &c.

the reader recognizes (what, as we have said, is comparatively rare in ancient poets) an effort at once of Imagination or Fancy, connecting the frail existence of humanity with that of the leaf-and of Thought, drawing out the parallel between the reproduction of the leaves and of generation of mankind,

The turn, or antithesis, has been made use of by hundreds of poets of the secondary or unimaginative order, from Moschus down-wards. The image has passed into the hands of all the greater masters of the art.

In Virgil it is associated with the idea of multitude:

،

Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia......

So in Milton; but he immediately connects it with locality, and gives it a picturesque colouring :

:

Thick as autumnal leaves which strew the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades

High overarched enbower......

In Dante, ever working out the minute circumstances of his pictures, and clinging closely to the shows of things,' the image suggested is that of the gradual fall, leaf by leaf, compared with the dropping of the melancholy ghosts, one by one, into the inevitable bark :

Come d'autunno si levan le foglie

L'una appresso dell' altra, infin che l' ramo
Rende alla terra tutte le sue spoglie,

Similemente il mal seme d'Adamo
Gittasi da quel lito ad una ad una.'

Spenser personifies the agent as well as the patients :'With his sword disperst the raskall flocks,

Which fled asunder, and him fell before,

As wither'd leaves drop from their dried stocks,

When the wroth western wind doth reave their locks.' From whom, lastly, Shelley receives the treasure; and adds a peculiar circumstance, that of reversing the image, and with wonderful effect.

، Thou wild west wind ! thou breath of autumn's being,
Before whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes

It is evident that the spurious fancy of which we have spoken is an inferior quality in the scale of poetical excellences to that genuine sort which is merely imagination under another aspect. And yet it would be a most uncatholic and intolerant view of the subject to exclude it from that scale altogether. In point of fact, so accustomed are we to look on Imagination as the poetical faculty par excellence, as undoubtedly it is, that we are sometimes induced to regard it hastily as the only one; to consider poetry as strictly and wholly the

expression of Imagination. This is not the case only with the pedantic Wordsworthian school of critics who now inundate this country, but with others of more comprehensive views. And we doubt whether many have reflected how very large a proportion of the pleasure which we derive from poetry is really drawn from the expression of Thought in its various forms-indignant, energetic, graceful, witty, fanciful-without one particle of the creative faculty being concerned in it. To this class belong almost all the satirists, from Horace and Juvenal, to Boileau, Pope, Churchill, whether severe in their indignation, or playing with the follies of mankind. It includes also the rhetorical poets - Lucan, Corneille, and the like; and the conceited,' commonly and mistakenly called fanciful, Donne, Cowley, Marini, Gongora, and their respective followers. It is Thought or Reflection which gives the peculiar tinge of manly energy to the verse of Dryden-which sparkles in graceful criticism in Horace - which enlivens throughout with an indulgent philosophy and playful lessons of worldly wisdom, the charming narrative of Ariosto. And, to complete the catalogue, Thought and Passion, without one scruple of the strictly poetical Imagination, form the whole stock in trade of a nation of no mean rank in poetical literature-the French. There is no such thing as an imaginative French poet or poem hardly a scene or a passage. But Thought, in all the various forms which we have enumerated, borrowing and turning to the best account the creations of a higher faculty, constitutes the staple commodity of the whole race of French poets; and is blended in those of a higher order with the powerful and harmonious expression of Passion -something, again, wholly distinct from Imagination proper We have gone rather the more at length into this attempt to establish a distinction sometimes overlooked, from an anxiety to guard ourselves against any suspicion of unduly depreciating the poet whose works are now before us, when we rank that Fancy, which is commonly reputed to be his peculiar excellence, in the secondary class already described. He cannot be called an imaginative writer; and, therefore, not 'Fancy's child' in the truest or highest sense in the sense

VOL. III.

5

in which we have termed Fancy a creative quality. Not that he is by any means destitute of the first of poetical faculties, but that it is certainly not his characteristic or distinguishing excellence. His Fancy, like that of Donne and Cowley, is Wit;-wit, not only under the control of a better taste than theirs, but likewise of a purer feeling; wit suggesting images and thoughts with wonderful profusion, and a gracefulness often scarcely less admirable ; - often too profuse, no doubt, for compactness, and too graceful for strength, but uniformly brilliant, and yet relieved from monotony by its singular buoyancy.

But rich as this Wit or Fancy is, we believe that those do Mr. Moore great injustice who assign it as the attribute through which he is principally to live. To us at least, and we suspect to the infinite majority of his readers, the real charm of his poetry lies not there. It is when he speaks to the heart, not the head, that he is in his own element. The exquisite truth of sentiment, sometimes gay and sometimes melancholy, but always refined into the most perfect keeping with the common sympathies of men-this is far more delightful to us than all the more ambitious qualities of his muse. In our opinion, he may very safely allow his critics to dispute as much as they will about the real or false brilliancy of the oriental descriptions in Lalla Rookh, or the Rabbinical prettinesses of the Loves of Angels. Both have been translated into some dozen languages, and honoured, it appears, with all manner of royal and courtly observance; (1)

(') 'Among the incidents connected with this work, I must not omit to notice the splendid divertissements, founded upon it, which were acted at the Chateau Royal of Berlin, during the visit of the Grand Duke Nicholas to that capital in the year 1822. The different stories composing the work were represented in tableaux vivans and songs; and, among the crowd of royal and noble persons engaged in the performances, I shall mention those only who represented the principal characters, and whom I find there enumerated in the published account of the divertissement.

Fadladin, Count Haack, Marechal de Cour.

Aliris, Roi de Bucharie, S. A. I. Le Grand Duc.

Lallah Roukh, S. A. L. La Grande Duchesse.

Aurungzeb, le Grand Mogol, S. A. R. Le Prince Guillaume.
Abdallah, Pere d' Aliris, Le Duc de Cumberland.

La Reine, son Epouse, S. A. R. La Princesse Louise Radzivill."

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