Moore had earned his fame by writings, amatory, political, and satirical, which it came natural to him to produce, because he was "a poetical animal"; _Lalla Rookh_ was, in great measure, work done against the grain, and relying for its success on the secondary qualities of elaborate finish, profusion of ornament, and variety of interest. These qualities, however, were present in no common degree, and the poem's success is not to be wondered at. The dose of novelty in style was just sufficient to attract, without offending by its revolt against "the Popish sing-song." It was indeed so perfectly in the fashion of its time, as to be inevitably demoded after a lapse of years. The florid loops and curves of the Regency period in decorative art have their equivalent in Moore's profuse and lengthily elaborated metaphors. Certain features of the work must be unreservedly condemned. The prose narrative in which the four poems are set is deplorable--sprightly beyond endurance; and in the _Veiled Prophet_ Moore tears one passion after another to tatters in bursts of sheer rhetoric. Yet even here good lines are plenty, though they are all in metaphors, or some other excrescence; for instance-- "Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan The flying throne of star-taught Soliman." In _Paradise and the Peri_ we have a production more within the poet's range. A prettier example of an _Arabian Nights Tale_, done into springing, easy verse, it would be difficult to find. The idea, neat and graceful, could have been treated within the compass of a song, which should tell how the exiled Peri was promised admittance if she brought "the gift that is most dear to Heaven"; how she tried first the patriot hero's life-blood--(shed in vain); then the last sigh of the maiden who chose to share the death of her true love; and, last of all, how she won home with the tear of repentance from a Byronic sinner. All through the poem there is the suggestion of singing, and, as Scott said, "Moore beats us all at a song." From "The Fire Worshippers" I have quoted already the best passages, those which express most fully the germinal idea. One may add an energetic denunciation, which had its full application, for instance, to Leonard McNally, Emmet's advocate, who defended most of the Irish political prisoners during a long period of time, and regularly sold the secrets of his defence to the Government.