created. The worst defect of his poetry is its want of depth. But when his feelings were deeply stirred, as they were in the Irish Melodies and in one or two of the more personal lyrics, he displayed powers of which the rest of his work gives little suspicion.

Apart from two youthful indiscretions, Odes of Anacreon (1800) and Poems by the late Thomas Little (1801), which are now hardly remembered except by the allusions in Byron's letters and English Bards, his first notable work was Epistles, Odes, and other Poems (1806) which, thanks to its strictures on the United States, gave occasion to his farcical duel with Jeffrey. This was followed in the next year by the first number of Irish Melodies (1807-1834). The best of these were inspired by the memory of Robert Emmet, the noblest and purest of Irish patriots, with whom Moore had formed a devoted friendship in his college days. "When he who adores Thee" and "O, breathe not his Name," among others, are a monument to this affection, and to the love of country with which it was bound up. In these and The Minstrel Boy, and others besides, we have the perfection of patriotic poetry, strongly felt and spontaneously expressed. We have also a most melodious rhythm, such as was seldom lacking in Moore's verse, but which here takes a deeper note than usual. The same note makes itself heard, but more seldom, in the National Airs (1815), for instance in the Echo and "Oft in the stilly Night," which represent the high-water mark of the purely lyric, as distinct from the patriotic, inspiration of

the author. It would be hard to find a simpler or more graceful embodiment of feelings "which find an echo in every heart" than is offered by these poems.

The only other serious work which calls for mention is Lalla Rookh (1817), the "magnum opus" on which his fame as poet traditionally rests.1 In glitter, and easy flow of melody, the poems which form the staple of this collection are incomparable. The eastern atmosphere, at least in its grosser elements, is happily caught; and, in the main, the stories are excellently told. But beyond this there is little to praise. The sentiment is superficial, and it is greatly overcharged. The suggestion of Byron's Tales is too palpable; and the nobler qualities, which lift the Giaour and others above the level of the Bazaar and the Harem, are conspicuously absent. There is nothing of Byron's fire and passion; nothing of the "unconquerable will" which makes itself felt even in the earlier and less memorable efforts of "the great Napoleon of the realms of rhyme."

The lighter side of Moore's talent is less open to question. His easy style was exactly suited to the kind of satire at which he aimed; and it is barbed by an unfailing flow of wit. The chief works under this head are The Twopenny Post-bag (1813) and the Fudge Family in Paris (1817). The former is a series of lively skits upon the Regent and his intimates; the latter, like the Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823),

1 The Loves of the Angels (1823) seems never to have been popular, and is now forgotten.

is full of equally lively banter on legitimacy and other fashionable absurdities. The Regent does not seem to have taken the satire much to heart. But it probably did more to discredit him than most of the grosser denunciations of which he was the victim; and, in literary power, none of the heavier artillery can claim to have been a match for the Lilliputian darts of Moore.

From the poets we turn to glance at the history of the Drama, the Novel, and the lighter forms of verse. Tragedy- In Tragedy, apart from those whose chief Miss Baillie. work was done in other fields, there is but one name of any importance-Joanna Baillie (17621851). The fame of this lady, who had a great charm of character, stood very high with her contemporaries, with none more so than Scott. But her dramas, verse and prose, tragedy and comedy, are now almost forgotten. Her earliest plays, Basil and De Montfort, -the latter has a heroine manifestly drawn with an eye to the majestic presence of Mrs Siddons,-were apparently ranked highest by her admirers. But they are lacking in action, and are concerned too exclusively with the portraiture of certain moods, in both cases rather of a sentimental cast, which the authoress had not the strength to make truly dramatic. Her style, too, though not without gleams of poetry, is commonly borrowed from the traditional frippery of the tragic wardrobe, and it is liable to sink into the merest bathos. Perhaps the chief importance of Miss Baillie

is to have reflected, in a mild form, the romantic tendencies of the period; and that, not only in her sentiment, but in her choice of subject and surroundings. She goes as far as the lower Empire and Ceylon for her plots; and when she returns home, it is to celebrate witchcraft. It is just to mention that in some of her lyrics—for instance, the Shepherd's Song -she strikes a far truer note than she was able to do in tragedy.

The only other tragedies of mark are those written by Coleridge and Wordsworth during their apprenticeship; Osorio (written in 1797; recast,

Osorio.

acted, and published as Remorse in 181213) and The Borderers (1795-96). Neither Osorio, at least in its original form, nor The Borderers could claim to be acting plays, though both were offered to the management of one or other of the London theatres. But both contain fine poetry; and both are, in a certain sense, dramatic. The former is conceived and written in the highest strain of romance, not without unmistakable echoes of Die Räuber. The scene is cast in Spain, at the height of the Moresco persecution; it abounds in murders, real and supposed, in incantations, dreams, dungeons, and sepulchral caverns. But the merits of the play are independent of these rather naïve expedients. The passages printed in Lyrical Ballads as "The Foster-Mother's Tale" and "The Dungeon" are romantic in the truest and best sense; and there are touches of natural detail worthy of "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison" and The Ancient Mariner. What

is more to the purpose, the figure of Osorio himself is finely conceived, though the execution must be admitted often to fall short of the design. The coherence of the play was decidedly strengthened in the later version; but this advantage was more than outweighed by the excision of the poetical passages and the general loss of freshness.

The

To the purposes of the stage The Borderers, as Wordsworth well knew, was even worse adapted than Osorio; for it is almost wholly devoid of Borderers. action. Nor again has it the charm of language and imagery which belongs to the companion play of Coleridge. Its interest lies solely in the defiant malignity of Oswald, and in the mental struggles of the victim whom he holds in his grasp. Both characters were avowedly suggested by what Wordsworth himself had seen and inferred during his time in revolutionary France; both, on the whole, are drawn with penetrating insight; and the latter, the self-appointed scourge of God, falls little, if at all, short of the demands of tragedy. The play has obvious affinities with Othello, which we know to have been "pre-eminently dear" to Wordsworth; it has also, like Osorio, certain points in common with Die Räuber. But it would be rash to say that either of these was consciously before the mind of the poet when he wrote; nor is the question of much moment. For The Borderers, both in its defects and its merits, is a work of striking originality. It reflects, with even more fidelity than The Prelude, the working of the poet's mind at the chief