nistic to such setting. Except the famous | duty for the libretto of an opera, but it is "Indian Serenade I do not know any quite as noticeable in the ordinary songs poem of Shelley's that has been set with of the drawing-room. Now Moore is quite anything approaching to success, and in free from this blame. He may not have the best setting that I know of this the the highest and rarest strokes of poetic honeymoon of the marriage turns into a expression; but at any rate he seldom or "red moon" before long. That this is never sins against either reason or poetry not merely due to the fact that Shelley for the sake of rhythm and rhyme. He is likes intricate metres any one who exam- always the master not the servant, the ines Moore can see. That it is due merely artist not the clumsy craftsman. And this to the fact that Shelley, as we know from I say not by any means as one likely to Peacock, was almost destitute of any ear pardon poetical shortcomings in considerafor music is the obvious and common tion of musical merit, for, shameful as the explanation. But neither will this serve, confession may be, a little music goes a for we happen also to know that Burns, long way with me; and what music I do whose lyric, of a higher quality than like, is rather of the kind opposite to Moore's, assorts with music as naturally Moore's facile styles. Yet it is easy, even as Moore's own, was quite as deficient as from the musical view, to exaggerate his Shelley in this respect. So was Scott, facility. Berlioz is not generally thought who could yet write admirable songs to be a barrel-organ composer, and he bestowed sung. It seems therefore almost impossi- early and particular pains on Moore. ble, on the comparison of these three To many persons, however, the results instances, to deny the existence of some are more interesting than the analysis of peculiar musical music in poetry, which is their qualities and principles; so let us distinct from poetical music, though it may go to the songs themselves. To my fancy coexist with it or may be separated from the three best of Moore's songs, and three it, and which is independent both of tech- of the finest songs in any language, are nical musical training and even of what is "Oft in the Stilly Night," "When in commonly called "ear" in the poet. That Death I shall Calmly Recline," and "I Moore possessed it in probably the high- saw from the Beach." They all exemplify est degree, will I think, hardly be denied. what has been pointed out above, the comIt never seems to have mattered to him plete adaptation of words to music and whether he wrote the words for the air or music to words, coupled with a decidedly altered the air to suit the words. The high quality of poetical merit in the verse, two fit like a glove, and if, as is some- quite apart from the mere music. It can times the case, the same or a similar poet- hardly be necessary to quote them, for ical measure is heard set to another air they are or ought to be familiar to everythan Moore's, this other always seems in- body; but in selecting these three I have trusive and wrong. He draws attention in no intention I have an intention as difone case to the extraordinary irregularity ferent as may possibly be of distin of his own metre (an irregularity to which guishing them in point of general excelthe average pindaric is a mere jog-trot), lence from scores, nay hundreds of others. yet the air fits it exactly. Of course the "Go where Glory waits thee" is the first two feet which most naturally go to music, of the Irish melodies, and one of the most the anapæst and the trochee, are common-hackneyed by the enthusiasm of bygone est with him; but the point is that he Pogsons. But its merit ought in no way seems to find no more difficulty, if he does to suffer on that account with persons who not take so much pleasure, in setting com- are not Pogsons. It ought to be possible binations of a very different kind. Nor is for the reader, it is certainly possible for this peculiar gift by any means unimpor- the critic, to dismiss Pogson altogether, tant from the purely poetical side, the side to wave Pogson off, and to read anything on which the verse is looked at without as if it had never been read before. any regard to air or accompaniment. For the great drawback to "songs to be sung' in general since Elizabethan days (when, as Mr. Arber and Mr. Bullen have shown, it was very different) has been the constant tendency of the verse-writer to sacrifice to his musical necessities either meaning or poetic sound or both. The climax of this is of course reached in the ineffable balderdash which usually does

If

this be done we shall hardly wonder at the delight which those famous men, our fathers who were before us, and who perhaps will not compare altogether badly with ourselves, took in Thomas Moore. "When he who Adores thee," is supposed on pretty good evidence to have been inspired by the most hollow and senseless of all pseudo-patriotic delusions, a delusion of which the best thing that can be

said is that "the pride of thus dying for" | away with an Irishwoman that occasioned it has been about the last thing that it this sweeping moral contrast) must be ever did inspire, and that most persons given up; but surely not so "Oh had we who have suffered from it have usually some Bright little Isle of our own." For had the good sense to take lucrative places indeed if one only had some bright little from the tyrant as soon as they could get isle of that kind, some "rive fidèle où l'on them, and to live happily ever after. But aime toujours," and where things in genthe basest, the most brutal, and the blood- eral are adjusted to such a state, then iest of Saxons may recognize in Moore's would Thomas Moore be the laureate of poem the expression of a possible, if not that bright and tight little island. a real, feeling given with infinite grace and pathos. The same string reverberates even in the thrice and thousand times hackneyed "Harp of Tara." Rich and Rare were the Gems she wore "is chiefly comic opera, but it is very pretty comic opera; and the two pieces "There is not in the Wide World" and "How Dear to me" exemplify, for the first but by no means for the last time, Moore's extraordinary command of the last phase of that curious thing called by the century that gave him birth sensibility. We have turned Sensibility out of doors; but he would be a rash man who should say that we have not let in seven worse devils of the gushing kind in her comparatively in

nocent room.

66

But it is alarming to find that we have not yet got through twenty-five pages out of some hundred or two, and that the "Irish Melodies" are not yet nearly exhausted. Not a few of the best-known of Moore's songs, including "Oft in the Stilly Night," are to be found in the division of "National Airs," which is as a whole a triumph of that extraordinary genius for setting which has been already noticed. Here is "Flow on, thou Shining River," here the capital When I touch the String," on which Thackeray loved to make variations. But "Oft in the Stilly Night” itself is far above the others. We do not say "stilly" now; we have been taught by Coleridge (who used to use it freely himself before he laughed at it) to laugh at "stilly" and "paly" and so forth. But the most acrimonious critic may be challenged to point out another weakness of the same kind, and on the whole the straightforward simplicity of the phrase equals the melody of the rhythm.

..

The Sacred Songs" need not delay us long, for they are not better than sacred songs in general, which is saying remarkably little. Perhaps the most interesting thing in them is the well-known couplet,

Then we may skip not a few pieces, only referring once more to "The Leg acy" ("When in Death I shall calmly recline"), an anacreontic quite unsurpass able in its own kind. We need dwell but briefly on such pieces as "Believe me if all those Endearing Young Charms," which is typical of much that Moore wrote, but does not reach the true devilmay-care note of Suckling, or as "By the Hope within us Springing," for Moore's warlike pieces are seldom or never good. But with "Love's Young Dream we come back to the style of which it is impossible to say less than that it is quite admirable in its kind. Then after a page or two we come to the chief cruces of Moore's pathetic and of his comic style, "The Last Rose of Summer," "The Young May Moon" and "The Minstrel Boy.' I cannot say very much for the last, which is tainted with the unreality of all Moore's Tyrtean efforts; but " The" Young May Moon," could not be better, and I am not going to abandon the rose, for all her perfume be something musty a potpourri rose rather than a fresh The song of O'Ruark with its altogether fatal climax,

one.

On our side is virtue and Erin,

On theirs is the Saxon and guilt(with the inimitable reflection it carries with it that it was an Irishman running

This world is but a fleeting show

For man's illusion given, which, as has justly been observed, contains one of the most singular estimates of the divine purpose anywhere to be found. But Moore might, like Mr. Midshipman Easy, have excused himself by remarking, "Ah! well, I don't understand these things." The miscellaneous division of

Ballads, Songs," etc., is much more fruitful. "The Leaf and the Fountain," beginning "Tell me, kind seer, pray thee," though rather long, is singularly good of its kind the kind of half-narrative ballad. So in a lighter strain is "The Indian Bark.” Nor is Moore less at home after his own fashion in the songs from the "Anthology."

"It is true that the same fault may be found here which has been found with his "Anacreon," and that it is all the more sensible because at least in some cases

the originals are much higher poetry than | Byron or Shelley or Wordsworth, but still the pseudo-Teian. To the form and style a position high enough and singularly isoof Meleager Moore could not pretend; lated at its height. Viewed from the point but as these are rather songs on Greek of strictly poetical criticism, he no doubt motives than translations from the Greek, ranks only with those poets who have exthe slackness and dilution matter less. pressed easily and acceptably the likings But the strictly miscellaneous division and passions and thoughts and fancies of holds some of the best work. We could the average man, and who have expressed no doubt dispense with the well-known these with no extraordinary cunning or ditty (for once very nearly the rubbish witchery. To go further in limitation, the with which Moore is so often and so un- average man, of whom he is thus the bard, justly charged) where Posada rhymes of is a rather sophisticated average man, necessity to Granada, and where, quite without very deep thoughts or feelings, against the author's habit, the ridiculous without a very fertile or fresh imagination term sultana is fished out to do similar or fancy, with even a touch - a little duty in reference to the Dulcinea, or touch of cant and gush and other derather to the Maritornes of a muleteer. fects incident to average and sophisticated But this is quite an exception, and as a humanity. But this humanity is at any rule the facile verse is as felicitous as it time and every time no small portion of is facile. Perhaps no one stands out very humanity at large, and it is to Moore's far above the rest; perhaps all have more credit that he sings its feelings and its or less the mark of easy variations on a thoughts so as always to get the human few well-known themes. The old com- and durable element in them visible and parison that they are as numerous as audible through the trappings of convenmotes, as bright, as fleeting, and as indi- tion. If he does not always ring true, a vidually insignificant, comes naturally much smaller part of him rings false than enough to the mind. But then they are happens with far more pretentious poets. very numerous, they are very bright, and Again, he has that all-saving touch of if they are fleeting, their number provides humor which enables him, sentimentalist plenty more to take the place of that which as he is, to be an admirable comedian as passes away. Nor is it by any means true well. Yet again, in carrying out these that they lack individual significance. various, not always very elevated or dignified, functions of his, he has the two qual ities which one must demand of a poet who is a poet, and not a mere maker of rhymes. His note of feeling, if not full or deep, is true and real. His faculty of expression is not only considerable, but it is also distinguished; it is a faculty which in the same measure and degree nobody else has possessed. On one side he had the gift of singing those admirable songs

This enumeration of a few out of many ornaments of Moore's muse will of course irritate those who object to the "brick-ofthe-house" mode of criticism; while it may not be minute enough, or sufficiently bolstered by actual quotation, to please those who hold that simple extract is the best, if not the only tolerable form of criticism. But the critic is not alone in finding that, whether he carry his ass or ride upon it, he cannot please all his public. songs in every sense of the word-of What has been said is probably enough, which we have been talking. On the othin the case of a writer whose work, though er, he had the gift of right satiric verse as a whole rather unjustly forgotten, sur-to a degree which only three others of the vives in parts more securely even than great dead men of this century in England the work of greater men, to remind readers of at least the outlines and bases of his claim to esteem. And the more those outlines are followed up, and the structure founded on those bases is examined, the more certain, I think, is Moore of recovering, not the position which M. Vallat would assign to him of the greatest lyrist of England (a position which he never held and never could hold except with very prejudiced or very incompetent judges), not that of the equal of Scott or

Canning, Praed, and Thackeray — have reached, and of a stamp which was not identical with anything of theirs. Besides all this, he was a considerable man of letters. But your considerable men of letters, after flourishing, turn to dust in their season, and other considerable or inconsiderable men of letters spring out of it. The true poets and even the true satirists abide, and both as a poet and a satirist Thomas Moore abides and will abide with them. GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

From The National Review.
CORYAT'S CRUDITIES, 1611.

IT is possible that readers of Cotton's continuation of Walton's "Angler," may remember the passage in which Viator, travelling for the first time among the Derbyshire hills, exclaims to his guide and future host: "Well, if I ever come to London, of which many a man there, were he in my place, would make a question, I will sit down and write my travels, and, like Tom Coriate, print them at my own charge."

It is possible, too, that in respect of this passage they may have asked themselves the question: "Who was Tom Coriate?" This question I will endeavor to answer, first briefly, then at greater length.

voy, Rhaetia, commonly called the Grisons country, Helvetia alias Switzerland, some parts of High Germany and the Netherlands, hastily digested in the hungry air of Odcomb, in the county of Somerset, and now disposed to the nourishment of the travelling members of this kingdom."

Without enlarging on the historical and architectural antiquities of the places he visited, which are doubtless more correctly described in the pages of a modern guidebook, it will be sufficient, first, briefly to trace the course taken by Coryat, giving, here and there, some of his impressions in his own quaint language; next, to put together a few passages which may enable us to form an estimate of his character; lastly, to offer some considerations on the comparative advantages of travel in the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.

Tom Coriate was an English traveller, who was born in 1577, and died in 1617. In May, 1608, Coryat embarks at Dover, A native of Odcomb, in Somerset, he was and reaches Calais in seven hours. From early seized with an irresistible desire to Calais he proceeds to Montreuil and Absee foreign countries. In 1608 he started beville, passing, on this side Abbeville, on the travels in Europe which are the through "the goodly forest called Vesubject of the volume he has left us, and ronne," where, he says, "a Frenchman of the present paper. His European tour that was in our company spake to us to served but to whet his appetite for adven- take our swords in our hands, because ture, and four years later he made his way sometimes there were false knaves in to Jerusalem, whence he penetrated the many partes of the forest, that lurke under recesses of Persia, and finally arrived at trees and shrubs, and suddenly set upon the capital of the States of the Great Mo-travellers and cut their throates, except gul. The fatigue of these travels, which he had accomplished almost exclusively on foot, had exhausted his strength. With much difficulty he reached Surat, where he expired, in the sixth year of his Asiatic exploration.

It is characteristic of the want of enthusiasm with which we speak of our half-forgotten worthies, that Coriate's biographer in an English dictionary, describes him briefly with the words, "An eccentric character, son of the preceding;" while the writer in the "Biographie Universelle "praises him as "le type de ces voyageurs que rien ne rebute, et tels que la grande Bretagne en a produit plus que toute autre nation." Perhaps it is also characteristic that the same writer gives the title of Coryat's book as Coryat's "Erudities." This, always assuming that the word exists, is not a bad title for the

collection of information plentifully interlarded with Latin and Greek, which has come down to us under Coryat's name; but it is not the title which Coryat gave his book. The exact terms of the latter are : Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels in France, Sa

66

Rose's Biographical Dictionary.

the true men be too strong for them." At Amiens, the next important stage, he fails not to notice the cathedral, "the very Queen of all the churches in France, and the fairest I ever saw till then.” Travelling by Bretueil and Clermont, he enters Paris, recording how "a little this side Paris there is the fayrest gallows I ever saw, built on a little hillock called Mt. Falcon, which consisteth of 14 fayre pillars of freestone." At Paris he met Casaubon, "with whom," he says, “I had much familiar conversation near unto St. German's gate, within the city. I found him very affable, and courteous, and learned in his discourses, and by so much the more willing to give me entertainment by how much the more I made relation to him of his learned workes, whereof some

I have read."

From Paris he goes due south, by Fontainebleau, striking the Loire at Briare, and following its course upwards, past Nevers, Moulins, and St. Geran. Of Nevers he remarks: "I never saw so many roguish Egyptians together in any one place as at Nevers, where there was a great multitude of men, women, and children of them, that disguise their faces as our counterfeit western Egyptians in England. For both

their haire and their faces looked so blacke | in which he finds much to admire. The as if they were recked out of hel, and sent cathedral, the library of Cardinal Borrointo the world by great Beelzebub, to ter- meus, "the singular beautiful monastery rify and astonish mortal men." At Lyons, of Ambrosian monks, and the citadell, "a citie founded by that worthy Roman with its Basiliskes, so great that they gentleman, Munatius Planius," he lies at could easily contain the body of a very the sign of the Three Kings, which had corpulent man," all these were visited just been vacated by the Earl of Essex and commended in turn. From Milan he and his train. A short journey now follows the course of the Po to Cremona brought Coryat into Savoy, and he reaches and Mantua, and so by Padua to Venice. Chambery by crossing the mountain The journey was not without some inconAigue-belette, an incident which he thus veniences, as appears from his own words. "At our inne at Sangona I noticed such exceeding abundance of flies that they had wooden flaps to beate them away, such as we call in Latin nuncaria. For no sooner could a dish of meate be laid upon the table but there would incontinently be a thousand flies in it. I told my fellowtravellers at dinner that if the Emperor Domitian had been now alive he would have done us some pleasure in driving away those flies."

describes :

"Certaine poore fellows, which get their living especially by carrying men in chaires from the toppe of the hill to the foote thereof, made a bargain with some of my company to carry them downe in chaires when they came to the toppe of the mountaine, so that I kept them company towards the toppe. But they being desirous to get some money of me, led me such an extreme pace towards the toppe that, how much soever I labored to keepe Padua, as the seat of the university, and them company, I could not possibly per- the birthplace of Livy, has much to interform it. So that at last, finding that faintest him. He observes that the number of nesse in myself that I was not able to follow them any longer, though I would even break my heart with striding, I compounded with them for a carcadew, which is 18 pence English, to be carried to the toppe of the mountaine. This was the manner of their carrying of me: They did put two slender poles through certaine wooden rings, which were at the foure corners of the chaire, and so carried me on theire shoulders, sitting in the chaire, but such was the miserable paines that the poore slaves willingly undertook for the gaine of that carcadew, that I would not have done the like for 500. [The ways were exceeding difficult in regard of the steepnesse and hardnesse thereof, for they were all rocky tetricosa et sale brosa.] The Alpes, after I had once descended from the Mountain Aigue-belette, enclosed me on every side, like walls, till I was past Mt. Cenis, even for the space of sixty miles."

students at the time of his visit was fifteen hundred, and that this university was more frequented than any in Christendom by foreign students. I believe the number at present is one thousand. His reasons for believing that a house pointed out to him as that of Livy was actually that which had been inhabited by the historian are not such as would be held valid at the present day. "First, for that the very antiquity of the structure doth signify that it is very ancient. Second, because Í perceived that it was the received opinion of the learned men of Padua that Livie dwelt therein. Thirdly, for that I am perswaded that the most barbarous that ever wasted Padua, such as the Hunnes and Longobardes, were not so voide of humanitie but that in the very middest of theire depopulation and fiering of the city they would endeavor to spare the house of Livie (at the least if they knew which was his) and to preserve it to posterity for a monument of so fa

Of Turin he has little to say. "Formous a man.' during that time I was in the citie I found so greate a distemperature in my body, by drinking the sweet wines of Piemont, that caused a grievous inflammation in my face and hands, so that I had but small desire to walk much abroad in the streetes." He was now in the plains of Lombardy, which seemed to him the very Elysian fields so much decantated and celebrated by the verses of poets, or the temple or paradise of the world. His way lay by Vercelli to Milan (then in the hands of the Spaniards)

At Venice Coryat stayed no less than six weeks, which he declares was the happiest time in his life. He is full of admiration for the Euripi, or little armes of the sea, the gondoliers, who are in his opinion altogether as swift as our rowers about London. While for the Piazza of St. Mark, "Truly such is the stupendious (to use a strange epitheton for so strange and rare a place as this) is the glory of it that at my first entrance thereof it did even amaze or rather ravish my senses.