Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/386

 he does not sharpen his wit on the edge of human agony, like the House of Commons' jester, nor strew the flowers of fancy, like the Jesuit Burke, over the carcase of corruption, for he is a man not only of wit and fancy, but of common sense and common humanity. He sees for himself, and he feels for others. He employs the arts of fiction, not to adorn the deformed, or disguise the false, but to make truth shine out the clearer, and beauty look more beautiful. He does not make verse, "immortal verse," the vehicle of lies, the bawd of Legitimacy, the pander of antiquated prejudices, and of vamped-up sophistry; but of truths, of home, heartfelt truths, as old as human nature and its wrongs. Mr. Moore calls things by their right names: he shews us kings as kings, priests as priests, knaves as knaves, and fools as fools. He makes us laugh at the ridiculous, and hate the odious. He also speaks with authority, and not as certain scribes that we could mention. He has been at Court, and has seen what passes there.

"'Tam knew what's what full brawly.'"

But he was a man before he became a courtier, and has continued to be one afterwards; nor has he forgotten what passes in the human heart. From what he says of the Prince, it is evident that he speaks from habits of personal intimacy: he speaks of Lord Castlereagh as his countryman. In the Epistles of the Fudge Family, we see, as in a glass without a wrinkle, the mind and person of Royalty in full dress, up to the very throat, and we have a whole-length figure of his Lordship, in the sweeping, serpentine line of beauty, down to his very feet. —We have heard it said of our poet, by a late celebrated wit and orator, that "there was no man who put so much of his heart into his fancy as Tom Moore; that his soul seemed as if it were a particle of fire separated from the sun, and were always fluttering to get back to that source of light and heat." We think this