*

TESTIMONY OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES.

485

Elohim. Much important light has been thrown on this subject by Ewald, Hengstenberg, and Hävernick, to whose works we must refer the reader, contenting ourselves with having thus briefly stated what we doubt not is the true solution of the fact in question. The alleged date of the composition of the two classes of documents we must also leave, as the question involves those minute cavils to which we have already referred, and on which we have already declined to enter.

Our space is exhausted, and we must now bring this article to a close. In doing so we cannot refrain from expressing a wish that some competent scholar would take up and thoroughly discuss the whole subject of the Old Testament canon. We should like to see the various questions which such a discussion would embrace, handled by a mind which, though familiar with German theological literature, had not become tinged with a German mania, but would look at the subject from a genuine English point of view, and discuss it after the fashion of one who had been disciplined, in the school of Bacon, and Butler, and Paley, to the scrutiny of questions of evidence, and the proper management of hypotheses. From the efforts of such a man, patiently, comprehensively, and intelligently devoting himself to the subject, we should anticipate such a defence of the authenticity and genuineness of the sacred books of the Jews, as would, for this generation at least, constrain the scoffer and the sceptic, if not convinced, at any rate to keep silence for very shame.

In the meantime let us not forget, that come of such inquiries in the hands of men what may, the Christian church has the testimony of its divine Head in favour of the Old Testament scriptures. There can be no doubt that the Jewish canon was the same in our Lord's day as it is now; and there can be as little doubt that, had that canon been either wholly or partially spurious, He, the faithful and true witness, would never have treated it as if it were genuine, or commended it to the confidence of his followers, as He has done. No less decided is the testimony of the apostles, whose numerous citations from the Old Testament, and references to it, all proceed upon the assumption that it is genuine and uncorrupt; and some of whom have pronounced upon it the highest eulogiums as respects the divinity of its origin and the value of its contents. We would not, on the ground of such assurances, decline those historico-critical investigations by which the claims of the Jewish scriptures are to be tested; but we would go to them with the conviction strongly impressed upon us that only error and ignorance can lead to a conclusion unfavourable to these claims, and that no ingenuity or learning * Die Composition der Genesis Kritisch untersucht. Braunschwig, 1252.

NO. XXX.

K K

can ever effectually shake pretensions to which Christ and his apostles have lent the full sanction of their infallible authority.

We scarcely need say that the assailants of the Old Testament, have attacked its Theology not less than its Canonical Authority. To the former topic we hope ere long to call the attention of our readers in a separate article.

ART. VIII.-The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. London. Longman & Co. 1850.

POOR Tom Moore, he had so long ceased to be one of us, that it needed his death to put us in mind of his existence in our days. For seventeen years or more he had, so far as the public knew, laid aside his pen, leaving the literary field open to younger or more persevering writers; for three years he had been in a state of senile childishness, recovery from which was impossible; and when, on the 26th of February last, he died at the cottage in Wiltshire, where he had resided in quiet privacy for a third part of his whole life, only one of his London friends went to see his remains interred in the neighbouring churchyard. But though he had been thus detached from the connexions of the present so long as to stand associated rather with the past generation than with this, few heard with indifference that Tom Moore was gone. Passing from the thought of him as the disabled old man of seventy-two, tended like an infant in a remote English cottage, people imagined him again as he was in his prime, the guest of Holland House, the companion of Byron and Scott, the pride and pet of the whigs, the brilliant little light of a period passed

away.

'My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee!'

So sang Byron thirty-five years ago; and so, on another kind of parting, may we say also. We, too, are hasting on towards new scenes and things, in the midst of which, we may be sure, Tom Moore and all that he was will be a daily decreasing recollection; let us turn back, therefore, ere we go, and make the last look at the little fellow a long one.

Moore will be remembered in England chiefly as the songwriter of artificial life. He was pre-eminently the poet of the festive hour in polished social circles. The productions in which his talent rose to the rank of a peculiar gift were his verses written to be sung, or to be imagined as sung, by the human

voice in scenes of gay and genial intercourse, where, with the wine-bowl in the midst, men meet each other to blend wit and sentiment; or where, to add to the more feminine witchery of light, and flowers, and bright eyes, there is required the charm of appropriate music. The element of Moore as a poet, we repeat, was the festive; not the festive either, in all its extent, but the festive of modern life amid the elegancies of rooms and cities. It was with a translation of the Odes of Anacreon in his hand that he first came over to London, a scholarly young Irishman, bent on literary distinction; and all his life he was true to that beginning. In the collected edition of his poetical works, indeed, the contents taken as a whole, distribute themselves into three portions, differing somewhat in kind,—his narrative poems of Lalla Rookh and The Loves of the Angels; a variety of political squibs and satires, written in the interest of the whigs, between 1809 and 1832; and his numerous songs, or lyrical pieces, published at various times during his literary life. But the truest and most special effusions of his genius were his songs, and it is by these that he will be best remembered.

The readers of Lalla Rookh are becoming fewer and fewer; and yet the poem is as agreeable a specimen of narrative in verse as one could wish to take up to beguile an evening of lassitude or leisure. Moore himself tells the circumstances in which it was schemed and composed; and the story in these days of grumbling between publishers and authors, is worthy of being quoted.

'It was about the year 1812 that, impelled far more by the encouraging suggestions of friends than impelled by any confident promptings of my own ambition, I was induced to attempt a poem upon some oriental subject, and of those quarto dimensions which Scott's late triumphs in that form had then rendered the regular poetical standard. A negotiation on the subject was opened with the Messrs. Longman in the same year, but, from some causes which have now escaped my recollection, led to no decisive result; nor was it till a year or two after that any further steps were taken in the matter, their house being the only one, it is right to add, with which, from first to last, I had any communication upon the subject. On this last occasion, an old friend of mine, Mr. Perry, kindly offered to lend me the aid of his advice and presence in the interview which I was about to hold with the Messrs. Longman, for the arrangement of our mutual terms, and, what with the friendly zeal of my negotiator on the one side, and the prompt and liberal spirit with which he was met on the other, there has seldom occurred any transaction in which trade and poesy have shone out so advantageously in each other's eyes. The short discussion that then took place between the two parties may be comprised in a very few sentences. I am of opinion,' said Mr. Perryenforcing his view of the case by arguments which it is not for me to

cite that Mr. Moore ought to receive for his poem the largest price that has been given, in our day, for such a work.' That was,' answered the Messrs. Longman, 'three thousand guineas.' 'Exactly so,' replied Mr. Perry; and no less a sum ought he to receive.' It was then objected, and very reasonably, on the part of the firm, that they had never yet seen a single line of the poem; and that a perusal of the work ought to be allowed to them, before they embarked so large a sum in the purchase. But no; the romantic view which my friend, Perry, took of the matter was that this price should be given as a tribute to reputation already acquired, without any condition for a previous perusal of the new work. This high tone, I must confess, not a little startled and alarmed me; but, to the honour and glory of romance as well on the publishers' side as the poet's-this very generous view of the transaction was, without any difficulty, acceded to, and the firm agreed, before we separated, that I was to receive three thousand guineas for my poem. At the time of this agreement, but little of the work, as it stands at present, had yet been written. But the ready confidence in my success shown by others, made up for the deficiency of that requisite feeling within myself, while a strong desire not wholly to disappoint this 'auguring hope' became almost a substitute for inspiration. In the year 1815, therefore, having made some progress in my task, I wrote to report the state of the work to the Messrs. Longman, adding that I was now most willing and ready, should they desire it, to submit the manuscript for their consideration. Their answer to this offer was as follows:-We are certainly impa'tient for the perusal of the poem; but solely for our gratification. 'Your sentiments are always honourable.' I continued to pursue my task for another year, being likewise occasionally occupied with the Irish Melodies, two or three numbers of which made their appearance during the period employed in writing Lalla Rookh. At length, in the year 1816, I found my work sufficiently advanced to be placed in the hands of the publishers.'

This story of the way in which Lalla Rookh came to be written is a kind of indication to the critic in what class of compositions he is to place the poem. It is not to be placed along with the compositions of Wordsworth, Shelley, or Keats, nor is it to be tried by the same tests that are applied to compositions of that order. It is simply a romance, or rather a series of romances, in verse, written for the purpose of pleasing that portion of the public who like the genial entertainment of literature, and are willing to pay for a continual supply of it. At the time when it was written, poetry, and, above all, narrative poetry, was the literary form chiefly in fashion, and best paid for by publishers.

Then Murray with his Miller did combine,
To yield the Muse just half a crown per line.'

The metrical romances of Scott, in particular, had given an impulse to this kind of literary activity, just as his subsequent prose

romances helped to set that fashion of the novel which has continued longer in favour. It is natural and necessary that the literary talent of a country should thus have its successive modes; that, at one time, the best talent should set, as in Queen Elizabeth's time, towards the drama; at another towards the essay; at another towards the metrical romance; and, at another, towards the novel, whether in three volumes or in serial numbers. But while the favour shown some forty years ago to the poetical form of composition over any other, served but as an indirect encouragement to poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose minds followed a higher rule than that of the obvious book-market; and while even the more popular Byron was led by his own independent bent, and had the large sums paid him for his poems. thrust upon him, in spite of his original intention never to receive money for what he wrote; Moore's Lalla Rookh was, confessedly, a direct inspiration of the Row. Scott had got a thousand guineas for his Marmion, and large sums for his other poems; and Moore was induced, by the persuasion of his friends, to attempt something in the same line. There was, of course, no disgrace in this, any more than in Ben Jonson's turning his attention to the drama because others had made money by it; the only question is, how far the performance proved the determination to have been fortunate.

Within the bounds of his general resolution to produce a poetical romance in quarto, after the example of Scott, Moore certainly did consult his own powers and tastes. Leaving the feudal and all its associations to his contemporary, he put comparison, as regards the subject of his composition, out of the question, by going away to the oriental. While the stalwart imagination of the Scottish romancist was at home in the feudal past, so that it moved amid castles, and abbeys, and donjon-keeps, and knights in armour, and stout yeomen, and all the et ceteras of the Teutonic antique, as familiarly as if they were things of today, the Anacreontic little bard of Ireland felt that in that region he could do nothing. His element must be one in which a fancy accustomed to the graceful, and the artificially luxurious, could work; the background and the circumstantials must consist of such things as moonlit gardens, terraces, alcoves, porphyry pillars, silken canopies, moresques, crimson couches, marble fountains, and lamps of perfumed oil; while the favourite living figures that would appear amid all this magnificence would be imaginary fair ones of all kinds,-light-haired blue-eyed, darkhaired dove-eyed, or black-eyed raven-ringleted, beauties. It hardly needed the recollection of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments to suggest to such a poet that he should lay his scenes