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a few others. He contributed these poems to the Morning Chronicle after he had made a reputation by the "Pleasures of Hope," and before he settled in London to the more commonplace literary labor in which he spent the rest of his life. So doubtful was Campbell of the value of these lyrics that he would not put his name to them, for fear of compromising the reputation of the author of the "Pleasures of Hope." Now, I should say it was a result of the ideas of literary dignity in which he had been brought up that Campbell should have feared that "Hohenlinden " and "Ye Mariners of England" would appear too trifling for a poet of the rank that his first poem gave him. It was an example of the force of the same restraint of habit that kept Gray from "speaking out." Like Gray, Campbell lacked the courage of his imagination. The incubus of literary tradition lay heavy on him. He had a distrustful critic within, the creation of scholastic training, which clung to the skirts of his imagination and impeded its freedom of movement whenever it tried to burst away from the beaten track. His diffidence about "Hohenlinden" is sometimes quoted as an example of the saw that "genius is unconscious of its own excellence." But against this must be set the fact that late in life Campbell considered that "O'Connor's Child" was his best poem, and that in this he has the support of most people who are familiar with his poetry. It is unlike his popular lyrics, in the fact that it takes more than one reading to appreciate, but it is worth the trouble of reading more than once. Some think that if "Gertrude of Wyoming " had been published before the "Pleasures of Hope" it might have ranked as his chief work, but the subject is too remote to have achieved any great amount of popularity.

The year after the publication of the "Pleasures of Hope," another young poetic adventurer, an Irishman,

crossed St. George's Channel with his bundle of MSS. in search of a publisher and subscribers in London. The MSS. in his case were only metrical translations from a Greek poet, Anacreon, artificial verses in praise of love and wine. Yet in a few months this adventurer, though he was only just out of his teens, and his father was nothing more eminent than a humble Dublin grocer in a small shop in a small street, became one of the lions of London society, and numbered the Prince of Wales among the subscribers to a sumptuous edition of his translations. From that time forward he held a place among the most popular poets of his generation. Publishers, whose business it is to gauge the public estimation of writers, furnish a sure test of popularity at least, however much that may be at variance with critical verdict, in the prices that they are willing to pay for poems. And even after Byron had appeared in the field, when Mr. Perry of the Morning Chronicle was negotiating as a friend with the Longmans the sale of a work by Thomas Moore, he was in a position to stipulate that the price should be as high as had ever been paid for a poem of the same length. The poem was not then written or even planned: it was only understood that the subject should be Oriental; and this was the rate of remuneration for which Moore's friend bargained. For so many lines, to be paid for on delivery, the poet was to receive three thousand pounds. Scott was paid this sum for "Rokeby," and Perry argued that Moore could not take less. The publishers assented, thereby showing that Moore at the time was, in their opinion, as popular with the buyers of poetry as Scott.

If we were to look for the secret of Moore's popularity in his poetry alone, we should be doing an injustice both to him and to the taste of the generation with whom he was such a favorite. He was personally popular; he impressed society otherwise than by his poems; these were but a part of his claims to admiring

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recognition. If we open a collection of his poems now, and read his “Odes of Anacreon," to which the Prince of Wales and other notabilities of rank subscribed, we desist after a time with something of the disgust we should feel at a profuse display of pretty, sham jewelry. The ample brimming bowls and goblets of wine, the wreaths and garlands of roses, the rich perfumes, the sparkling eyes, and the golden tresses, and the snowy necks, are well enough in moderation, but some eighty odes of such materials pall for lack of variety. Any variety that there is lies within the narrowest limits : now it is a bowl and now it is a goblet, now we drink and now we quaff, now it is a bud and now it is a full-blown rose, now a garland and now a cluster, now ringlets and now tresses; but it is always wine and flower, with little variation of phrase. We are soon surfeited with such sentiment, and disposed to laugh at its artificiality. Moore's prettinesses, always expressed in soft and melodious verse, were probably a pleasant surprise to a generation weary of didactic poems; but if we have a liking for such things now, we can find more genuine articles of the same kind, compounded with much higher art, in the poetry of the seventeenth century, the volumes of Queen Henrietta's poets, Lovelace, and Carew, and Suckling, and, above all, Herrick.

Nor were his original poems, published soon after under the pseudonym of Tom Little, in the least of higher quality. They were little poems, indeed, generally spun up to some glittering conceit, as commonplace as it is glittering. No poet of the eighteenth century, in the days when the great patrons of poetry were connoisseurs of the art, would have dared to submit effusions so very poor in thought, and vulgar in sentiment. There is a poem on Variety, for example. Variety is the great charm of nature.

"Ask what prevailing, pleasing power,
Allures the sportive, wandering bee

To roam untired from flower to flower,
He'll tell you 'tis variety.

"Look Nature round, her features trace,
Her seasons, all her changes see;
And own, upon Creation's face,

The greatest charm's variety."

Therefore, following nature's law, the poet will seek variety. But no: there is "the nymph he loves," this is "Patty"; he can never be false to her.

"But Patty, not a world of charms

Could e'er estrange my heart from thee;

No, let me ever seek those arms:

There still I'll find variety."

What poor stuff is this compared with Lovelace's "Paradox," of which it is a Brummagem imitation:

We have seen Moore in his jocosely sentimental vein ; see him next in his maudlin love-sickness.

'Have you not seen the timid tear

Steal trembling from mine eye?
Have you not marked the flush of fear,
Or caught the murmured sigh?
And can you think my love is chill,

Nor fixed on you alone?

And can you rend by doubting still
A heart so much your own?

To you my soul's affections move
Devoutly, warmly true;
My life has been a task of love,

One long, long thought of you.
If all your tender faith be o'er,

If still my truth you'll try ;
Alas! I know but one proof more,

I'll bless your name and die."

Such are fair specimens of the poems of Tom Little, so famous in their day, and if we take them as they read, after making all allowance for the novelty of the strain when they appeared, and for the very slight interest in poetry and consequent want of discrimination in London society at the time, we cannot but be astonished that the author should have jumped at once into a foremost place, even although Wordsworth and Coleridge had so much