The lines placed at the head of this sketch, from a contemporary writer, appear to us very descriptive of Mr. Moore’s poetry.  His verse is like a shower of beauty; a dance of images; a stream of music; or like the spray of the water-fall, tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light.  The characteristic distinction of our author’s style is this continuous and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allusions.  He ought to write with a crystal pen on silver paper.  His subject is set off by a dazzling veil of poetic diction, like a wreath of flowers gemmed with innumerous dewdrops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in liquid softness and pearly light, while the song of birds ravishes the ear, and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens Heaven’s smiling portals, Peris and nymphs peep through the golden glades, and an Angel’s wing glances over the glossy scene.

  “No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground,
  No arboret with painted blossoms drest,
  And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
  To bud out fair, and its sweet smells throw all around.

  No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring;
  No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;
  No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;
  No song, but did contain a lovely dit: 
  Trees, branches, birds, and songs were framed fit
  For to allure frail minds to careless ease."....

Mr. Campbell’s imagination is fastidious and select; and hence, though we meet with more exquisite beauties in his writings, we meet with them more rarely:  there is comparatively a dearth of ornament.  But Mr. Moore’s strictest economy is “wasteful and superfluous excess:”  he is always liberal, and never at a loss; for sooner than not stimulate and delight the reader, he is willing to be tawdry, or superficial, or common-place.  His Muse must be fine at any rate, though she should paint, and wear cast-off decorations.  Rather than have any lack of excitement, he repeats himself; and “Eden, and Eblis, and cherub-smiles” fill up the pauses of the sentiment with a sickly monotony.—­It has been too much our author’s object to pander to the artificial taste of the age; and his productions, however brilliant and agreeable, are in consequence somewhat meretricious and effeminate.  It was thought formerly enough to have an occasionally fine passage in the progress of a story or a poem, and an occasionally striking image or expression in a fine passage or description.  But this style, it seems, was to be exploded as rude, Gothic, meagre, and dry.  Now all must be raised to the same tantalising and preposterous level.  There must be no pause, no interval, no repose, no gradation.  Simplicity and truth yield up the palm to affectation and grimace.  The craving of the public mind after novelty and effect is a false and uneasy appetite that must be pampered with fine words at every step—­we must be tickled with sound, startled with shew, and relieved