Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851Harper, Various (magazine)
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851
Harper, Various (magazine)
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
anticipate my catastrophe in that manner!" Perhaps so; but that which we
should like especially to know is whether Mr. B----m, who is mentioned
as being present at the enunciation of these courtesies, was Mr.
Brougham. If so, the flash of the keen gray eyes that followed the
compliment on the touching death of Alethe, must, to an observant
looker-on, have been one of the most entertaining incidents of the fête.
The smart political squibs, scattered like fire-flies through the dreary
waste of journalism during the last active years of Moore's life, are
not obnoxious to criticism. Squire Corn, Famished Cotton, Weeping
Chancellors, Salmagundian Kings, and knavish Benthamites, as penciled by
Moore, have passed from the domain of wit and verse into that of the
historian and the antiquary, into the hands of the collector of
forgotten trifles; and there we very willingly leave them, pleasant,
piquant, and welcome, as we fully admit them in their day to have been.
Moore has also written several pieces of religious verse, which,
although not of very high merit as poetry, finely at times bring out and
illustrate the Christian spirit in its most engaging aspect--unalloyed,
unclouded by the mists of fanatic sectarianism.
That Moore was not an inspired creative poet like Shakspeare, Milton,
Burns, and a few others, is true; but beneath those heaven-reaching
heights there are many still lofty eminences upon which gifted spirits
sit enthroned, their brows encircled with coronets bright with gems of
purest ray, serene, though pale, indeed, and dim in presence of the
radiant crowns of the kings of poetry and song, between whom also there
are degrees of glory; for immeasurably above all, far beyond even the
constellated splendor of
"The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle,"
soars Shakspeare, palm-wreathed and diademed with stars. One of these
lesser heights and circlets must unquestionably be awarded to Thomas
Moore. His wing, it must be admitted, is feeble, requiring artificial
stimulants and help to lift him above the ground a sufficient time for
warbling a brief melody. He did not sing as a flower exhales--from the
law and necessity of its nature; still there is at times a grace, and
tenderness, and music, about his carefully-polished snatches of song,
which the world is not sufficiently rich in to willingly let die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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