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T CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND, LONDON.

1819.

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(Extracted from a MS. letter of the BARON VON LAUERWINKEL.)

THE manner in which you express yourself concerning the poetry of Moore, is not unlike that which I have met with in many of your English journals, and is withal sufficiently natural to a person of your age and habits. Like you I admire the lively and graceful genius of this man; like you I appreciate the amiable temperament and dispositions which lend a charm to his verses, more touching than any thing which liveliness, grace, and genius alone could confer; but I cannot consent for a moment to class Mr Moore with the great poets of England-no more can I persuade myself that he is likely to go down to posterity as the national poet of Ireland. The claim which has lately been set up for him is one of no trifling import. It would not only assign to him a share of the same magnificent honours which have of right descended to Byron, Wordsworth, and Campbell, but mingle with his laurels another wreath such as the grateful affection of your own country has already woven for Scott and Burns. The friends of Mr Moore, or the admirers of his genius, have done no service either to the poet or to his works by their injudicious praises and their extravagant demands. The only effect of their zeal is, to make reflective men try the productions of their idol by a higher standard than they might otherwise have judged it necessary to apply. By rejecting, in behalf of their favourite, the honours which we willingly grant to a minor poet, they have compelled us to look at his VOL. IV.

productions with a severer eye, and to satisfy ourselves that he is by no means a great one.

To tell you the truth, had Mr Moore been a Frenchman or an Italian, nay. I am sorry to say it, had he been born a countryman of my ownhad similar pretensions been preferred in favour of similar productions among any other European people,-I know not that I should have been inclined to weigh them so scrupulously, or perhaps justified in rejecting them so decidedly. It is the belief of the most orthodox divines, that the guilt of a careless Christian is greater than that of an ignorant Heathen, even although the offences of the two men may have been externally and apparently alike.

Of him to whom much is given the more shall be required." I must do justice to your country, even although it should be at the expense of your favourite. The English poet who fails to be held great, chiefly because he chooses not to be pure, falls a splendid sacrifice before the altar to which he has brought an unacceptable offering. Even genius will not save him; and yet the highest genius will do much. We listen with sorrow to the pernicious sophisms, and gloomy despondings, which deform and darken the native majesty of Byron; but hope and trust are mingled with our sorrow, and we cannot suppose it would be less than blasphemy to despair of such a spirit. In Moore the redeeming power is less. He possesses not, whatever his nobler brother may do, the charm which might privilege

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