This simile is fine, and would have been perfect, but that the moon is not red, and that she seems to hurry by the clouds, not they by her.
The description of the warrior’s youthful adversary,
——‘Whose coming seems
A light, a glory, such as breaks in dreams——’
is fantastic and enervated—a field of battle has nothing to do with dreams:—and again, the two lines immediately after,
‘And every sword, true as o’er billows dim
The needle tracks the load-star, following him’—
are a mere piece of enigmatical ingenuity and scientific mimminee-pimminee.
We cannot except the Irish Melodies from the same censure. If these national airs do indeed express the soul of impassioned feeling in his countrymen, the case of Ireland is hopeless. If these prettinesses pass for patriotism, if a country can heave from its heart’s core only these vapid, varnished sentiments, lip-deep, and let its tears of blood evaporate in an empty conceit, let it be governed as it has been. There are here no tones to waken Liberty, to console Humanity. Mr. Moore converts the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box![[64]]—We do except from this censure the author’s political squibs, and the ‘Twopenny Post-bag.’ These are essences, are ‘nests of spicery,’ bitter and sweet, honey and gall together. No one can so well describe the set speech of a dull formalist,[[65]] or the flowing locks of a Dowager,
‘In the manner of Ackermann’s dresses for May.’