knew much, and was not often caught in error. He held enlarged views on our colonial empire at an early period of life. He had studied social politics carefully, and could expound them advantageously. He loved his country well, and never, even when neglected, did his patriotism suffer any diminution. He was warmly attached to his profession, and the common soldiers followed and regarded him as a friend. He was severe and simple in his habits of life; and yet the natives of India, fond of display and ostentation, were soon and strongly attached to his character. He was eminently brave, and a great military commander; but it may be doubted whether he was not equally great as an administrator and organizer of civil government. His life was remarkably active, his labors peculiarly abundant; and he escaped the snares and temptations of idleness. His frame was never robust; and instead of his death now causing astonishment, it is surprising that he lived so long. He conquered and pacified Scinde, while laboring under disease that would have confined ordinary men to a bed-chamber, and enriched their physicians. His ardent and energetic mind might long before 1853 have worn out the frail and shattered body, in which, lacerated as it was by steel, torn by lead, and broken and bruised by all kinds of weapons, he was nevertheless, consistent with the family motto, "Ready, aye ready!" to think and to act, to bleed and suffer, to do or die for his country's honor, peace and welfare. He was buried at Portsmouth, and it little matters where that sadly cut and torn body was laid; but Britain has no dust stored in grand and national edifices, that in life labored more or labored better in her defense, or for her prosperity. He was carried to his grave by soldiers; and strong-minded men wept as they lowered his coffin to its place; as well they might, for in all that pomp of death and funereal splendor, England was poorer by a brave spirit-a noble heart lost to the land-a reformer in peace-and a leader in war whose name was strength to her friends and terror to her foes. The lionhearted chief, of whom it might be truly said, he never feared the face of man, sleeps where in danger's hour he would have lived or died-not in the centre of his countrynot in the midst of her millions, but in the outpost, the foreground, the vanguard of all the land. His friends have buried him where he would have stood, if England ever had been threatened by foreign foes; and while men long, and look, and pray for peace on earth, they need not forget that often peace is threatened by evil passions; and if soon again this nation has to encounter the shock of battle for existence, or for great principles, the eye is closed that would have directed her armies; the hand is cold and crumbling that would have grasped a stainless but a well-worn sword in her defense; and that chivalrous spirit has passed from us for ever, who in prosperity was often neglected by courtiers and politicians, because he was too honest to be diplomatic; but on whom, in adverse days, all trusted once; and all again, in darker hours and greater dangers, would have followed eagerly and trusted well. When it was said that Sir Charles J. Napier was dead, all men felt that England could not often mourn for an equal loss. From Hogg's Instructor. THOMAS MOORE AND LORD JOHN RUSSELL. BY GEORGE THIS is par excellence the age of biographies. And yet we have not heard, recently at least, of any systematic inquiry premised as to what are the qualifications and the duties of a genuine biographier. We propose, ere coming to Moore and his noble life-compiler, to prefix a few rapid remarks upon this subject. A biographer should himself have lived. If he has been a mere stucco-man-a Dr. Dryasdust, conversing with folios, rather than with facts or feelings, or the ongoing rush of human life-let him catalogue books, but avoid the biography of living men. There are those, too, who have lived; but who, like Coleridge, have lived collaterally, or aside, who have not properly digested into intellectual chyle the facts of their own history, and who are little better adapted for biography than sleep-walkers might be. A biographer should, if possible, have lived with the man whose life he undertakes to write. Dr. Johnson has added his weighty ipse dixit to a similar statement, and no one has served more thoroughly to substantiate it than his own biographer; for it is clear that, had Boswell undertaken to write the life of one with whom he had not lived, it had justified Johnson's statement, that Boswell was not fit to write the life of an ephemeron. Living with a man, in some cases-although we grant these are rare and peculiar-is nearly equal to all other qualifications for the office of a biographer, and can almost make up for the want of them all. We do not, however, seek to confound living with and living beside a man. It were possible to live for a century beside a man, and yet not have lived with him for a single hour. To live beside a man, requires only the element of contiguity; to live with him, implies knowledge, love, sympathy, and watchful observation of his character. A biographer should bear a certain specific resemblance to the subject of his work. He should be able to receive, if not to equal, his author, otherwise he may write VOL. XXX, NO. IV. GILFILLAN. a book of the size of the " Universal History," and yet not utter one genuine or worthy word about him. Some critics have dwelt on the disparities between Boswell and Johnson. These were wide and obvious; but the resemblances were stronger and subtler far. As to intellect, there was between them a "great gulf fixed;" but in creed, temperament, moral character, native tastes, and acquired predilections, the two were nearly identical. So that Boswell's Johnson is no paradox in literature: it is the inevitable result of the contact of two minds strangely dissimilar, and still more singularly like each other as inevitable as the connection between the earth and the sun. A biographer should have a strong love and admiration for the subject of the life. He should see him as he is, faults and virtues; but should have a preponderating estimate of the excellences of the character. He should go to his task as to a sacred duty, and should hold his pen as if it were the brand of an altar. A biography like that of Miss Seward by Scott, written without any sympathy, real or pretended, with the person, is a nuisance on the earth. Boswell was in many things a second-rate man; but in love for his theme he was never equalled, and this has given him his great biographical eminence. A biographer, again, should understand the relation existing between his hero and his times, and should be able philosophically to adjust him in position to his contemporaries. And, in fine, he should see, and fix on, and paint the real life of the character, shearing off all superfluities, generalizing minor details, seeking to show the element of progress and growth in the man's history, and striving to give to his book an artistic unity. Assuming this high standard, very few lives, indeed, come up to the mark. Boswell's book is inimitably like, but it is rather a literal likeness than a work of high art. Moore's "Sheridan" is a flaring, though powerful daub. His " Byron" is much better in 81 composition, but has a certain air of untruth- Smallness is some how inseparably connectfulness and special pleading around it. John-ed with our notion of Moore, as well as with son's "Savage" is a splendid representation that of some other distinguished men of the of a worthless subject-like an ass or a pig from the pencil of Morland, or a "sad-dog' by Landseer. Scott's lives are gossipping and sketchy, without much force or firmness of execution. Cunningham's are racy, but deficient in careful finish. Southey's "Nelson" is one of the most delightful, and Croly's "Burke" one of the most forcible, of biographies. Macaulay's articles on Clive, Chatham, and Hastings are, in reality, brief and brilliant lives. On the whole, however, our age has its Plutarch yet to seek, and has not, we are sorry to say, found him in Lord John Russell. Our purpose, however, is less to speak of the biographer than to submit some remarks on the subject of the biography of that brilliant but not bulky son of Erin, dear "Tom Little." The literature of Ireland has been charged with a certain air of sternness and gloom, as if in keeping with the fate and fortunes of that beautiful but unlucky land-that land of famine and fertility, of wit and folly, of magnificent scenery and of starving soulsthat brilliant blot, that splendid degradation, that bright and painful paradox among the nations of the world. Gay, indeed, sometimes their writers are, but their gayety is often breaking down, dying away into a "quaver of consternation;" and the three highest writers, incomparably, that Ireland has produced-Berkeley, Burke, and Swiftare all serious in essence, although the last of them is often light and frivolous in man ner. Even with Goldsmith's humor a cer tain sadness at times mingles. Croly is generally lofty and fierce, like Hercules ago nizing under Nessus' shirt, and tossing Eta's pines into the air. But Moore was really a lightsome and chirruping being. It may be that he had not depth enough to be otherwise; but certainly not only is his mirth never melancholy, but his serious vein is never deeply tragical. He touches with the same light, careless, but graceful hand, the springs of laughter and the sources of tears. He is, perhaps, the least suggestive of all poetic writers. Musical, picturesque, elegant and fanciful, he is seldom thoughtful or truly imaginative. Who would give much "for the thought" of a cricket on the hearth, or of a fire-fly buzzing through the midnight? It is enough that it pursues its own way to music, and that all eyes follow with pleasure its tiny procession. day. All about him is as small as it is brilliant. His clenched fist of anger is just a nut-his love is an intense burning dropthe dance of his fancy is as if "on the point of a needle;" and when in the Anacreontic vein he tipples, it is in "thimblesful." His spite and hatred, again, form a sting small but very sharp, and which never spills an infinitesimal drop of the venom. He is, in fact, a poetic homoeopath, and, whether he try to kill you with laughter or to cure you by sense, he must deal in minute and intensely concentrated doses. And, whatever may be the case in medicine, there can be no question that, in satire and song, compound division is a most powerful, almost magical rule. Ireland's writers have often been praised and often blamed for their imagination; but, in fact, not above two or three of them have possessed any thing more than a vivid fancy. Swift had plenty of wit, and inventiveness, and coarse fancy, and sense, and a humor "dry as a remainder biscuit after a voyage;" but he had not a spark of the fusing, unifying, inspiring imaginative power. Goldsmith rose often to high poetic eloquence-he was an exquisite artist, but hardly in the full sense a bard. Burke possessed the true vatistic gift, but it was often wasted on barren fields of prophecy. Berkeley's power of imagination was commensurate with his intellect, but both were in some measure thrown away upon arenas of abstraction, where no grass grew or corn waved, whatever flowers might spring. The recent popu lar writers or speakers of Ireland-such as Carleton, Banim, Lover, Lever, Shiel, and a hundred more-are profuse in fancy, humor, wit, and talent, but have not given us much that has, in earnestness, depth and originality, the elements of permanent power. Next to Burke and Berkeley, O'Connell, after all, was the greatest poet that the Green Isle has produced. He could and did, at times, trifle with the subordinate feelings of human nature, and use them at his wild or wicked will: he could always touch and command the passions; but he sometines also appealed, with overwhelming power, to the deepest springs of the human imagination, and the soul of his hearers rose ever and anon, like an apparition, at his bidding. Nor did Moore possess the highest order of imagination. He was rather swift than strong rather lively than profound—rather us try and construct an outline of our own, which may, perhaps, be somewhat better than the famous Shaksperean one-"A poet is that is as much to say, is a poet." a mimic of exquisite taste and universal talent than a poet. It is disgraceful to think that, while Shelley and Wordsworth were in their lifetime treated either with cold neglect or with fierce hostility, Moore was a very pet of We name as the first element of a poetpopularity. For this we are disposed, after first, we mean, morally-the element of earall, to blame not only the public, but still nestness. All earnest men are not poets, but more the critics of that day. We have all every poet must be an earnest man. And he heard of Warwick the king-maker. Jeffrey must feel that poetry is the most earnest of and Gifford were the poet-makers of that all things next to religion. Religion is the period, and neither of them were entirely worship of the True, as Goodness going up worthy of their high vocation. We attach to heaven in incense. Poetry is the worship less blame to the latter of these, for he was of the True, as Beauty going up to heaven deficient in the very first elements of poetical on the breath of flowers. But each is worcriticism, and his verdicts on poetry are as ship, and every poet should regard his gift worthless as those of a blind man on the with a devout eye. The column of his paintings of Raphael, or those of one desti- thought should not only be large and bright, tute of a musical ear on the oratorios of but it should point upward like a sun-tipped Handel. He could only bark and rave, like spire, or the flame of a sacrifice. Not only, a disappointed bloodhound, around that too, should he regard his art as an act of magic circle from which he was for ever ex- worship, but he should be ever working at cluded. But Jeffrey was deserving of far the problem of uniting it with Religion. He more emphatic condemnation, since he per- should feel, that not till Truth, Beauty, and mitted personal and party feelings to inter- Goodness are seen to be one, can Poetry refere with the integrity of his critical jurisdic- ceive her final consecration, or Religion put tion. Crabbe, the Whig, he over-praised; on her softest and brightest attire. A poet, Wordsworth, the Tory, he abused; Byron, 2dly, will be a maker. He will create by the lord, he magnified considerably above breathing his own spirit, which is a far-off his merit; Burns, the ploughman and gau- sigh of God, into the waste and cold vacuiger, he sought to push down below his level, ties of mental space. He will-if we dare although of this he was deeply ashamed be- apply the words, in a very subordinate sense, fore his death. To the universally popular of course-hang his earth upon nothing, Scott, as a novelist, he did ample justice. and stretch out his glowing north over the To the outcast son of Genius, that "phan- empty space." His work, when made, will tom among men," the brave, gifted, although come out softly, sweetly, and sure of welcome, unhappily blinded, Shelley, he never once as a new star amid her silent sisterhood, or alluded, till he had been seven years slum- as the moon has just in our sight appeared, bering in the Italian dust. Moore and like an expected and longed-for lady into her Campbell, as sharers of his politics and room of state, to complete the glories of this pleasures, he contributed to exalt to unbound-resplendent summer-eve. His poem, displaced popularity. Southey and Coleridge, the Conservative Christians, he did all he could to crush. Nor was this, as in Gifford's case, the effect of gross ignorance of what poetry was; for this plea cannot be put in in behalf of one who has so exquisitely criticised Shakspere, Ford, and others who were poets, and who has so sternly shown that Swift was none. It was, we repeat, the effect of small spites, and piques, and the like contemptible feelings, which were too often allowed to blunt his unquestionable acuteness of intellect, and to deaden his as unquestionable warmth of feeling and of heart. Perhaps we may at this point be asked, if Moore was not a poet, who is, and wherein lies the differentia of a poet? Now here, without thinking, if possible, about any former definitions or descriptions of others, let ing no other, copying no other, interfering with no other, takes up at once, gravely or gaily, consciously or unconsciously, its appointed and immortal place. Not that all men at once see its glory or its true relation to its kindred orbs. But it is seen by many, and felt by more, and shall at last be acknowledged by all. When a "new thing" does thus appear on the earth, there is sometimes only silent wonder, and sometimes only a deep half-uttered love, and sometimes a shout of welcome, (just as Christians and Mahomedans receive, in different fashions and forms of gladness, the same sun and moon coming forth from the same chambers of the east,) but at last all three are united, and, by being united, are intensified and increased. 3d, Ă poet should be a philosopher. Not that he should be expected to write merely didactic. poems, as they are called, (so named, we suppose, as lucus from non lucendo, because they teach nothing!) but that his works should be suffused with the deep, sober lustre of careful thought. Wordsworth, appreciating from experience this last, best power of the poet, speaks of "Years that bring the philosophic mind." But its coming does not always depend upon years. It may, and does often, come in moments. One sudden glance at earth or sky, at man or woman, often accomplishes the work; and we are aware of a Presence who has his dwelling "in the light of setting suns," and whom, without even attempting to measure, we are able to see. Not every true poet has been permitted to attain the full philosophic development, and all who do not, die they at what age they may, die young poets; but the germ of it is strong in most of them, and comes out in many. The secret of it, perhaps, lies in a proper conception of the wholeness and unity of things, and in the attempt to imitate and reproduce this in the effects of poetry. We may, perhaps, arrange, according to these thoughts, poets, so called, into the following classes-There is, first, the feeble rhymster, who has neither talent, nor cleveress, nor genius; who has merely words, plentiful or scarce, musical or harsh, to express commonplaces, or to echo, and echo ill, the utterances of other writers. This man, in describing a river, will call it the "beautiful," the "lovely," or the "glittering" stream. A mountain is, of course, the "lofty and magnificent." The ocean is "the se rene," or "stormy," or "tremendous." The sky is the "blue," the " deep," the “awful.” Then comes the clever copyist, the elegant mimic of many or all styles, who has the power of representing the effects of genius so successfully, that he is sometimes mistaken for a universal type of the class. This writer will imitate Byron's "Address to the Rhine," Coleridge's "Ode to Mont Blanc," Pollok's splendid "Apostrophe to the Ocean," and Shelley's "Cloud or Skylark." The third is the man of talent, the stern literal painter, who represents, and represents accurately, what he sees, neither less nor more, omitting that ideal haze or halo which, to the eye of imagination, every object wears. He will faithfully enumerate the old castles which crown the river's side, and forget none of the fine seats which surround it, nor any of the lakes which the mountain's brow commands, nor any of the isles which gem the ocean's breast, nor shall one of the stars of midnight be dropped from his catalogue. The fourth is the artist, who does look upon objects at an ideal angle, and through the anointed and anointing medium of a poet's eye, but does not see them in their religious relation or universal bearings. The river to him, like the Po to Byron, is the river of his "ladye-love," and her image sleeps in and softens the waters. The mountain is the mate of the storm, and the nursery of the eagle, and the stepping-stone for the genii of the elements, as they pass along from zone to zone. The ocean is the " melancholy main" of Thomson, melancholy in its everlasting wanderings and the shipwrecks it is compelled to enact and witness; or the "awful penitent" of Alexander Smith, scourged by the relentless winds for some secret and abysmal crime which its every froth-drop feels, but which all its tongues on all its shores are unable to reveal; and the sky is a high and vaulted buckler "bossed" with stars. The fifth is the prophet, who adds to the power wherewith the artist paints the imaginative or fanciful aspects of nature and of man, an earnest conviction and a clear sight of the moral purposes and lessons they are struggling to teach, and sees all things under the solemn chiaro-scuro of the Divinity. To him the river suggests, now the "mighty stream of moral tendency" stirred by the breath of God, and now the "clear river springing from under the throne of the Lamb." The ocean is God's Eye, a steadfast watcher and witness of the sins of earth, as it were mirroring them upwards to the moon, as she wore softly and lingeringly to heaven. The mountain is a pillar to the Eternal Throne, or an altar for his worship. And the sky is the dome of his temple, and the emblem of his all-embracing protection and love. The last variety is the philosophic poet, who tries, as we have already seen, to form some grand scheme of the universe, and to reflect it in his poetry. Him the river reminds of the Milky Way, and seems at once as mysterious and as clear as that foaming cataract of suns, and reflects the ever-fluid motion and recurrence of all things upon themselves. The mountain will be an image of the steadfast unity, which is as certain as the perpetual progress of the creation; and the ocean below, apparently capricious, but really fixed in its movements, and the sky above, apparently stiff as iron, but in reality changeable as water, will tell him strange tidings, and seem strange types of the resemblances and |