The following lines are the very perfection of Della Cruscan sentiment, and affected orientalism of style.  The Peri exclaims on finding that old talisman and hackneyed poetical machine, “a penitent tear”—­

  “Joy, joy forever! my task is done—­
  The gates are pass’d, and Heaven is won! 
  Oh! am I not happy?  I am, I am—­
  To thee, sweet Eden! how dark and sad
  Are the diamond turrets of Shadukiam,
  And the fragrant bowers of Amberabad.”

There is in all this a play of fancy, a glitter of words, a shallowness of thought, and a want of truth and solidity that is wonderful, and that nothing but the heedless, rapid glide of the verse could render tolerable:——­it seems that the poet, as well as the lover,

  “May bestride the Gossamer,
  That wantons in the idle, summer air,
  And yet not fall, so light is vanity!”

Mr. Moore ought not to contend with serious difficulties or with entire subjects.  He can write verses, not a poem.  There is no principle of massing or of continuity in his productions—­neither height nor breadth nor depth of capacity.  There is no truth of representation, no strong internal feeling—­but a continual flutter and display of affected airs and graces, like a finished coquette, who hides the want of symmetry by extravagance of dress, and the want of passion by flippant forwardness and unmeaning sentimentality.  All is flimsy, all is florid to excess.  His imagination may dally with insect beauties, with Rosicrucian spells; may describe a butterfly’s wing, a flower-pot, a fan:  but it should not attempt to span the great outlines of nature, or keep pace with the sounding march of events, or grapple with the strong fibres of the human heart.  The great becomes turgid in his hands, the pathetic insipid.  If Mr. Moore were to describe the heights of Chimboraco, instead of the loneliness, the vastness and the shadowy might, he would only think of adorning it with roseate tints, like a strawberry-ice, and would transform a magician’s fortress in the Himmalaya (stripped of its mysterious gloom and frowning horrors) into a jeweller’s toy, to be set upon a lady’s toilette.  In proof of this, see above “the diamond turrets of Shadukiam,” &c.  The description of Mokanna in the fight, though it has spirit and grandeur of effect, has still a great alloy of the mock-heroic in it.  The route of blood and death, which is otherwise well marked, is infested with a swarm of “fire-fly” fancies.

  “In vain Mokanna, ’midst the general flight,
  Stands, like the red moon, in some stormy night. 
  Among the fugitive clouds, that hurrying by,
  Leave only her unshaken in the sky.”

This simile is fine, and would have been perfect, but that the moon is not red, and that she seems to hurry by the clouds, not they by her.  The description of the warrior’s youthful adversary,

 ——­“Whose coming seems
  A light, a glory, such as breaks in dreams.”—­