FullReads

The volume opens with “Lalla Rookh,” a proceeding which, if not justified by chronology, is completely justified by the facts that Moore was to his contemporaries the author of that poem chiefly, and that it is by far the most considerable thing not only in mere bulk, but in arrangement, plan, and style, that he ever did. Perhaps I am not quite a fair judge of “Lalla Rookh.” I was brought up in what is called a strict household where, though the rule was not, as far as I can remember, enforced by any penalties, it was a point of honour that in the nursery and school-room none but “Sunday books” should be read on Sunday. But this severity was tempered by one of the easements often occurring in a world which, if not the best, is certainly not the worst of all possible worlds. For the convenience of servants, or for some other reason, the children were much more in the drawing-room on Sundays than on any other day, and it was an unwritten rule that any book that lived in the drawing-room was fit Sunday-reading. The consequence was that from the time I could read, till childish things were put away, I used to spend a considerable part of the first day of the week in reading and re-reading a collection of books, four of which were Scott’s poems, “Lalla Rookh,” The Essays of Elia (First Edition,–I have got it now), and Southey’s Doctor. Therefore it may be that I rank “Lalla Rookh” rather too high. At the same time, I confess that it still seems to me a very respectable poem indeed of the second rank. Of course it is artificial. The parade of second, or third, or twentieth-hand learning in the notes makes one smile, and the whole reminds one (as I daresay it has reminded many others before) of a harp of the period with the gilt a little tarnished, the ribbons more than a little faded, and the silk stool on which the young woman in ringlets used to sit much worn. All this is easy metaphorical criticism, if it is criticism at all. For I am not sure that, when the last age has got a little farther off from our descendants, they will see anything more ludicrous in such a harp than we see in the faded spinets of a generation earlier still. But much remains to Lalla if not to Feramorz. The prose interludes have lost none of their airy grace. Even Mr. Burnand has not been able to make Mokanna ridiculous, nor have the recent accounts of the actual waste of desert and felt huts banished at least the poetical beauty of “Merou’s bright palaces and groves.” There are those who laugh at the bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream: I do not. “Paradise and the Peri” is perhaps the prettiest purely sentimental poem that English or any other language can show. “The Fire Worshippers” are rather long, but there is a famous fight–more than one indeed–in them to relieve the monotony. For “The Light of the Harem” alone I have never been able to get up much enthusiasm; but even “The Light of the Harem” is a great deal better than Moore’s subsequent attempt in the style of “Lalla Rookh,” or something like it, “The Loves of the Angels.” There is only one good thing that I can find to say of that: it is not so bad as the poem which similarity of title makes one think of in connection with it–Lamartine’s disastrous “Chute d’un Ange.”

As “Lalla Rookh” is far the most important of Moore’s serious poems, so “The Fudge Family in Paris” is far the best of his humorous poems. I do not forget “The Two-penny Postbag,” nor many capital later verses of the same kind, the best of which perhaps is the Epistle from Henry of Exeter to John of Tchume. But “The Fudge Family” has all the merits of these, with a scheme and framework of dramatic character which they lack. Miss Biddy and her vanities, Master Bob and his guttling, the eminent turncoat Phil Fudge, Esq. himself and his politics, are all excellent. But I avow that Phelim Connor is to me the most delightful, though he has always been rather a puzzle. If he is intended to be a satire on the class now represented by the O’Briens and the McCarthys he is exquisite, and it is small wonder that Young Ireland has never loved Moore much. But I do not think that Thomas Brown the Younger meant it, or at least wholly meant it, as satire, and this is perhaps the best proof of his unpractical way of looking at politics. For Phelim Connor is a much more damning sketch than any of the Fudges. Vanity, gluttony, the scheming intrigues of eld, may not be nice things, but they are common to the whole human race. The hollow rant which enjoys the advantages of liberty and declaims against the excesses of tyranny is in its perfection Irish alone. However this may be, these lighter poems of Moore are great fun, and it is no small misfortune that the younger generation of readers pays so little attention to them. For they are full of acute observation of manners, politics, and society by an accomplished man of the world, put into pointed and notable form by an accomplished man of letters. Our fathers knew them well, and many a quotation familiar enough at second hand is due originally to the Fudge Family in their second appearance (not so good, but still good) many years later, to “The Two-penny Postbag” and to the long list of miscellaneous satires and skits. The last sentence is however to be taken as most strictly excluding “Corruption,” “Intolerance,” and “The Sceptic.” “Rhymes on the Road,” travel-pieces out of Moore’s line, may also be mercifully left aside: and “Evenings in Greece;” and “The Summer Fete” (any universal provider would have supplied as good a poem with the supper and the rout-seats) need not delay the critic and will not extraordinarily delight the reader. Not here is Moore’s spur of Parnassus to be found.