ALCIPHRON : A POEM. AUTHOR OF BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ., LALLA ROOKH," ETC., ETC. CAREY AND HART, PHILADELPHIA. [TEXT: Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, January, 1840.1] AMID the vague mythology of Egypt, the voluptuous scenery of her Nile, and the gigantic mysteries of her pyramids, Anacreon Moore has found all of that striking matériel which he so much delights in working up, and which he has embodied in the poem before us. The design of the story (for plot it has none) has been a less consideration than its facilities, and is made subservient to its execution. The subject is comprised in five epistles. In the first, Alciphron, the head of the Epicurean sect at Athens, writes, from Alexandria, to his friend Cleon, in the former city. He tells him (assigning a reason for quitting Athens and her pleasures) that, having fallen asleep one night after pro 1 The reader will find it both interesting and profitable, as a comparative study of Poe's critical method, to place this review of "Alciphron" side by side with the joint review of "The Culprit Fay" by Joseph Rodman Drake, and "Alnwick Castle" by FitzGreene Halleck (Volume VIII., page 275 et seq.). Poe had the latter review in mind when writing the present one. Here his critical instinct urges him to laud the British poet, just as it had caused him to condemn the Americans. How far his judgment was superior to that of his contemporaries, who bestowed extravagant encomiums upon the native poets, time has proved. Poe sounds the keynote of his international, rather than national, attitude in the first pages of the Drake-Halleck criticism where he says that after a most servile deference to British critical dicta " "we are becoming boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom” "we forget that the world is the true theatre of the biblical histrio." - ED. tracted festivity, he beholds, in a dream, a spectre, who tells him that, beside the sacred Nile, he, the Epicurean, shall find that Eternal Life for which he had so long been sighing. In the second, from the same to the same, the traveller speaks, at large and in rapturous terms, of the scenery of Egypt; of the beauty of her maidens; of an approaching Festival of the Moon; and of a wild hope entertained that amid the subterranean chambers of some huge pyramid lies the secret which he covets, the secret of Life Eternal. In the third letter, he relates a love adventure at the Festival. Fascinated by the charms of one of the nymphs of a procession, he is first in despair at losing sight of her, then overjoyed at again seeing her in Necropolis, and finally traces her steps until they are lost near one of the smaller pyramids. In epistle the fourth (still from the same to the same) he enters and explores the pyramid, and, passing through a complete series of Eleusinian mysteries, is at length successfully initiated into the secrets of Memphian priestcraft; we learning this latter point from letter the fifth, which concludes the poem, and is addressed by Orcus, high priest of Memphis, to Decius, a prætorian prefect. A new poem from Moore calls to mind that critical opinion respecting him which had its origin, we believe, in the dogmatism of Coleridge - we mean the opinion that he is essentially the poet of fancy— the term being employed in contradistinction to imagination. "The fancy," says the author of the "Ancient Mariner," in his Biographia Literaria, "the fancy combines, the imagination creates. And this was intended, and has been received, as a distinction. If so at all, it is one without a difference; without even a difference of degree. The fancy as nearly creates as the imagina tion; and neither creates in any respect. All novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed; and this point is susceptible of the most positive demonstration see the Baron de Bielfeld, in his "Premiers Traits de L' Erudition Universelle," 1767. It will be said, perhaps, that we can imagine a griffin, and that a griffin does not exist. tainly, but its component parts. dium of known limbs and features Thus with all which seems to be new Not the griffin cer It is a mere compen of known qualities. which appears to be a creation of intellect. It is resoluble into the The wildest and most vigorous effort of mind cannot stand the test of this analysis. old. We might make a distinction, of degree, between the fancy and the imagination, in saying that the latter is the former loftily employed. But experience proves this distinction to be unsatisfactory. What we feel and know to be fancy, will be found still only fanciful, whatever be the theme which engages it. It retains its idiosyncrasy under all circumstances. No subject exalts it into the ideal. We might exemplify this by reference to the writings of one whom our patriotism, rather than our judgment, has elevated to a niche in the Poetic Temple which he does not becomingly fill, and which he cannot long uninterruptedly hold. We allude to the late Dr. Rodman Drake, whose puerile abortion, "The Culprit Fay," we examined, at some length, in a critique elsewhere,1 proving it, we think, beyond all question, to belong to that class of the pseudo-ideal, in dealing with which we find ourselves embarrassed between a kind of half-consciousness that we ought to admire, and the certainty that we do not. Dr. Drake was employed upon a good subject—at least it is a 1 Vol. VIII. subject precisely identical with those which Shakespeare was wont so happily to treat, and in which, especially, the author of “Lilian " has so wonderfully succeeded. But the American has brought to his task a mere fancy, and has grossly failed in doing what many suppose him to have done in writing an ideal or imaginative poem. There is not one particle of the true moiŋois about "The Culprit Fay." We say that the subject, even at its best points, did not aid Dr. Drake in the slightest degree. He was never more than fanciful. The passage, for example, chiefly cited by his admirers, is the account of the "Sylphid Queen ; and to show the difference between the false and true ideal, we collated, in the review just alluded to, this, the most admired passage, with one upon a similar topic by Shelley. We shall be pardoned for repeating here, as nearly as we remember them, some words of what we then said. The description of the Sylphid Queen runs thus :— But oh, how fair the shape that lay The loveliest of the forms of light; That veils the vestal planet's hue; Her eyes two beamlets from the moon Set floating in the welkin blue. Her hair is like the sunny beam, And the diamond gems which round it gleam Are the pure drops of dewy even That ne'er have left their native heaven. In the "Queen Mab" of Shelley, a Fairy is thus introduced : Those who had looked upon the sight, Saw not the yellow moon, Heard but the heavenly strains And thus described The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form Yet with an undulating motion, In these exquisite lines the faculty of mere comparison is but little exercised. that of ideality in a wonderful degree. It is probable that in a similar case Dr. Drake would have formed the face of the fairy of the “fibrous cloud," her arms of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the fair stars," and her body of the "twilight shadow." Having so done, his admirers would have congratulated him upon his imagination, not taking the trouble to think that they themselves could at any moment imagine a fairy of materials equally as good, and conveying an equally distinct idea. Their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy who admires the imagination displayed in Jack the Giant-Killer, and is finally rejoiced at discovering his own imagination to surpass that of the author, since the |