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of a prose relation, and thus obtains great advantages over his more stilted compeers. His is no poetical style, (such, for example, as the French have — a distinct style for a distinct purpose,) but an easy and ordinary prose manner, ornamented into poetry. By means of this he is enabled to enter, with ease, into details which would baffle any other versifier of the age, and at which La Martine would stand aghast. For any thing that we see to the contrary, Moore might solve a cubic equation in verse, or go through with the three several demonstrations of the binomial theorem, one after the other, or indeed all at the same time. His facility in this respect is truly admirable, and is, no ­doubt, the result of long practice after mature deliberation. We refer the reader to page 50, of the pamphlet now reviewed; where the minute and conflicting incidents of the descent into the pyramid are detailed with absolutely more precision than we have ever known a similar relation detailed with in prose.

In general dexterity and melody of versification the author of Lalla Rookh is unrivalled; but he is by no means at all times accurate, falling occasionally into the common foible of throwing accent upon syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Thus, in the lines which follow, where we have italicized the weak syllables:

And mark ‘tis nigh; already the sun bids —

While hark from all the temples a rich swell

I rushed into the cool night air —

He also too frequently draws out the word Heaven into two syllables — a protraction which it never will support.

His English is now and then objectionable, as, at page 26, where he speaks of

lighted barks

That down Syene’s cataract shoots,

makingshoots rhyme with flutes, below; also at page 6, and elsewhere, where the word none has improperly a singular, instead of a plural force. But such criticism as this is somewhat captious, for in general he is most highly polished.

At page 27, he has stolen his “woven snow’’ from the ventum textilem of Apuleius.

At page 8, he either himself has misunderstood the tenets of Epicurus, or wilfully misrepresents them through the voice of Alciphron. We incline to the former idea, however; as the philosophy of that most noble of the sophists is habitually perverted by the moderns. Nothing could be more spiritual and less sensual than the doctrines we so torture into wrong. But we have drawn out this notice at somewhat too great length, and must conclude. In truth, the exceeding beauty of “Alciphron’’ has bewildered and detained us. We could not point out a poem in any language which, as a whole, greatly excels it. It is far superior to Lalla Rookh. While Moore does not reach, except in rare snatches, the height of the loftiest qualities of some whom we have named, yet he has written finer poems than any, of equal length, by the ­greatest of his rivals. His radiance, not always as bright as some flashes from other pens, is yet a radiance of equable glow, whose total amount of light exceeds, by very much, we think, that total amount in the case of any cotemporary writer whatsoever. A vivid fancy; an epigrammatic spirit; a fine taste; vivacity, dexterity and a musical ear; have made him very easily what he is, the most popular poet now living — if not the most popular that ever lived — and, perhaps, a slight modification at birth of that which phrenologists have agreed to term temperament, might have made him the truest and noblest votary of the muse of any age or clime. As it is, we have only casual glimpses of that mens divinior which is assuredly enshrined within him.

E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS.

OUR most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) is Mr. William A. Jones, author of “The Analyst.” How he would write elaborate criticisms I cannot say; but his summary judgements of authors are, in general, discriminative and profound. In fact, his papers on Emerson and on Macaulay, published in “Arcturus,” are better than merely “profound,” if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for they are at once