shared the intimacy of all the greatest men and writers of an era more prolific in great men and great geniuses than any since that of SHAKSPEARE, and RALEIGH, and SIDNEY; and dividing his time between the quiet charms of domestic ease and the smiles of the most elevated society, he may be pronounced a happy and a fortunate man. As a song writer, he doubtless stands unrivalled. His versification is exquisitely finished, harmonious, and musically toned. The sense is never obviously sacrificed to the sound; on the contrary, he delights in that species of antithetical and epigrammatic turn, which is generally held to excuse some roughness, and to be scarcely compatible with perfect melody of rhythm. In grace, both of thought and diction, in easy fluent wit, in melody, in brilliancy of fancy, in warmth and depth of sentiment, and even in purity and simplicity, when he chooses to be pure and simple, no one is superior to MOORE: but in grandeur of conception, power of thought, and, above all, unity of purpose, and a great aim, he is singularly deficient, and these are necessary to the character, not of a sweet minstrel, but of a great poet. THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS. "Tis moonlight over Oman's sea; Her banks of pearl and palmy isles Bask in the night-beam beauteously, And her blue waters sleep in smiles. Of trumpet and the clash of zel, The music of the bulbul's nest, Or the light touch of lover's lutes, To sing him to his golden rest! All hush'd-there's not a breeze in motion, Nor leaf is stirr'd nor wave is driven;- Can hardly win a breath from heaven. Mid eyes that weep, and swords that strike ;- To carnage and the Koran given, Engraven on his reeking sword ;— When such a wretch before thee stands Turning the leaves with blood-stain'd hands, And wresting from its page sublime His creed of lust and hate and crime? E'en as those bees of Trebizond,— Which, from the sunniest hours that glad With their pure smile the gardens round, Draw venom forth that drives men mad! Never did fierce Arabia send A satrap forth more direly great; Never was Iran doom'd to bend Beneath a yoke of deadlier weight. Her throne had fallen-her pride was crush'd- By the white moonbeam's dazzling power: None but the loving and the loved Should be awake at this sweet hour. And see where, high above those rocks |