tale

reader, "Avoid a mistake in attributing | Canning (who was an Oxford man and
to the writer any opinions in this book a scholar like ourselves, but very suc-
but what are spoken under his own cessful when we were not quite that),
name, is interesting but infantile. with the villain George the Third, who
We always know, we always should was a king and whose countenance did
know if we knew nothing else about not please us. We do not like lords,
him, from the constant presence of a but if we happen to know any particu-
common and unmistakable form when lar lord and he is polite to us, or has
Landor is putting Landor's opinions in pretty daughters with euphonious
the mouth of no matter who it may be. names, or is related to or connected in
If this to some extent communicates a some way with our own family, and has
charm to the various and voluminous not quarrelled with us, let us speak of
work concerned, it must be admitted him and his with a sweet and rotund
that it also imparts a certain monotony mouth. If anybody dares to interfere
to it. Greek or Roman, medieval or with our comfort, whether at Llan-
modern, political or amatory, literary or thony or Fiesole, in Paternoster Row
miscellaneous, the conversations simply or elsewhere, let us attend to the sacred
convey in stately English, the soon duty of literary justice by gibbeting the
well known and not exceedingly fresh fellow in as Dantean a manner as we
or wide ranging opinions of the author can manage. But when there is noth-
on mundane things, with occasional ing of this disturbing kind concerned,
and not particularly happy excursions and when our heart is full (as it very
into things divine. We know that
when any person of the other sex,
especially if she be very youthful, ap-
pears, she will herself deliver senti-
ments of an amiable but rather giggling
and missish mixture of archness and
innocence, while the interlocutor who
more particularly represents Landor
will address her and speak of her in the
style of a more cultivated, gentlemanly,
and gifted Mr. Tupman. We know
that if politics are in question, espe-
cially recent politics, the sentiments of
a generous but republican schoolboy
will equally appear. If the subject is
literature, woe to any one who speaks
ill of Southey or good of Gifford. Woe
again to any one who speaks ill of
Milton; but let nobody speak good of
him except in the particular way which
is satisfactory to Walter Savage Lan-
dor. We must always speak well of
Dr. Parr, for he was a friend of ours;
and we exchanged scholarship and po-
liteness with him when Warwickshire
militia would have none of us. But we
must not speak ill of Dr. Johnson, The conversations are full of de-
though he was a Tory and a Church-lightful things, and it is impossible for
man; for he was a Warwickshire man any fit reader to attempt them without
and therefore a very honest fellow. discovering these things. Let the sub-
Down with the wretch Pitt (against | ject admit of any description of natural
whom we took a grudge when we knew scenery, any dream-scene (Landor's
nothing about politics), with the ribald dreams are very nearly if not quite

often is) of the milk of human kind-
ness, and our head (as it generally is
when it is not in a state of inordinate
heat) full of the great wisdom and the
stately fame of the ancients, let us
write with that pen which is almost
always a golden one, as very few En-
glishmen had written before
us, and as
hardly one has written since.
I hope this summary is not too flip-
pant; I am sure that it is not in the
least unjust. An easy way of justify-
ing it would be to go through all the
conversations and characterize each as
we went. It would cost little trouble;
it would, without the pains of general-
izing for one moment, fill up as much
space as could possibly be allowed by
the most indulgent editor; and it would
save at least some readers the trouble
of reading Landor for themselves, or at
least of reading more of him than Mr.
Colvin has given. I do not wish to
avert a single reader from Mr. Colvin ;
but I should like to send some to Lan-
dor himself.

unapproached), any passage dealing | Duke de Richelieu, Sir Firebrace Cotes, with the greater and simpler emotions, Lady G, and Mr. Normanby" is any reflection on the sublime common-worthy. "The Emperor of China and places of life, and Landor is almost Tsing-ti" is probably the very worst of entirely to be depended upon. It does all the imitations of Montesquieu; and not matter, it never with him matters on at least some others as harsh a judgmuch, what the nominal subject is; ment would have to be passed if they the best things written in connection were critically judged at all. with it are sure to be fine and may There are, however, few writers on very likely be superb. In the "Peri- whom it must be more repugnant to cles and Aspasia" (which indeed is not any lover of literature to pass harsh conversation in form but is hardly judgments, because there are few, if distinguishable from it), in "The Pen- any, who have themselves combined tameron," in many of the classical dia- such an intense love for literature with logues, and in not a few of the literary such noble practice in it. For the two men the author will be found quite things are by no means always comat his best. The famous " Epicurus, bined, and Wordsworth is far from Leontium, and Ternissa" probably being the only great writer who may shows him at almost his very best, and be said to have had a very lukewarm at very nearly his very worst. In the affection for any writings but his own. dialogues of sovereigns and statesmen And the quality of production is in I should say (and not in the least be- Landor's case of extraordinary strength cause I generally disagree with the and peculiarity. On all happy occapolitical views there expressed) that he sions when his hand is in, when the is at his very worst. For politics is, right subject is before him, and when after all, an eminently practical sci- he is not tempted away from it into the ence, and of the practical spirit Landor indulgence of some whim, into the had literally nothing. His only plan memory of some petty wrong, into the was to put more or less odious or ridicu- repetition of some tiresome crotchet, lous statements in the mouths of per- he manages language literally as a sons with whom he does not agree, to great musician manages the human mop and mow at them, or to denounce voice or some other organ of sound. them in Ciceronian strains of invective. The meaning, though it is often noble, The infallible test of a political writer, is never the first thing in Landor, and I think, is the reflection, "Should I like in particular it is quite useless to go to to have this man on my side or not?" him for any profound, any novel, any For my part whenever I read Landor's far-reaching thought. The thought is political utterances I say, "Thank at best sufficient, and it very frequently is that; but it seldom makes any tax The dialogues of famous women are upon even the most moderate underin the same way flawed by that artificial standing, and it never by any chance and namby-pamby conception of the averts attention from the beauty and female character which has already the finish of the vesture in which it is been touched upon; while the miscel- clothed. The famous dreams which laneous conversations obviously defy close "The Pentameron " are things analysis as a whole. The author has of which it is almost impossible to tire. left nothing better than some of them, Nowhere else, perhaps, in English does such as the long, curious, unequal, but prose style, while never trespassing admirable "Penn and Peterborough ;" into that which is not prose, accompany while in others he sinks almost below itself with such an exquisite harmony the level of rational thought. "Lord of varied sound; nowhere is there such Coleraine, Rev. Mr. Bloombury, and a complicated and yet such an easily Rev. Mr. Swan" is fully worthy of the appreciable scheme of verbal music. author of the "Examination." It The sense is, as has been said, just sufficient; it is no more; it is not in

Heaven! he is on the other."

would be difficult to say, of whom "The

Ja

R2

TH

with indulgence in literary frippery, he cannot for one moment be charged. In this respect, and perhaps in this respect only, his taste was infallible. His good angel was fatally remiss in its warnings on many points wherein such taste is concerned, but in this never.

itself peculiarly arresting. Although alas! when he unbends this pride, too the sentiment is heartfelt, it is not ex- often clumsily and even indecently tremely passionate. But it is perfectly gamesome. But with tawdriness, even and exactly married to the verbal music, and the verbal music is perfectly and exactly married to it. Again, it is a whole; if not perhaps quite flawless, yet with flaws which are comparatively unimportant. It does not consist, as "fine" writing too often does, of a certain number of more or less happy If we set ourselves to discover the phrases, notes, or passages strung to- particular note in Landor which occagether. It is, as I have called it, a sions these discords we shall find it I "scheme; "" a thing really deserving believe in a quality which I can only those terms from the science of actual call, as I have called it, silliness. music which have been so frequently | There are other great men of letters and tediously abused in literary criti- who have as much or even more of the cism. Moreover the qualities which quality of childishness; but that is a exist pre-eminently in this and other different thing. Lafontaine and Goldgreat passages of Landor appear every-smith are the two stock examples of where on smaller scales in his prose. childishness in literary history; and It is never safe, except when he at- childish enough they were, almost inextempts the comic, to skip a single page. cusably so in life. But when we find Anywhere you may come across, in five them with pen in hand we never think words or in five hundred, the great of them as of anything but very clever Landorian phrase, the sentence cun- men. Landor alone, or almost alone, ningly balanced or intentionally and has written like an angel and like poor deftly broken, the paragraph built with Poll, and written like both at once. a full knowledge of the fact that a para- Hazlitt was quite as wrongheaded as graph is a structure and not a heap, Landor, and much more bad-blooded. the adjective wedded to its proper sub- Peacock was, at any rate in his earlier stantive, not indulging in unseemly years, as much the slave of whimsical promiscuity, the clause proceeding crazes. Coleridge was as unpractical. clearly and steadily to the expression His own dear friend Southey had alof the thought assigned to it. What- most as great a difficulty in adjusting ever deficiencies there may be in Lan- the things and estimates of the study dor (and, as has been and will be seen, to the estimates and the things of the they are not few) he is seldom if ever forum. De Quincey was even more guilty of the worst and the commonest bookish and unworldly. But even in fault of the ornate writer, a superabun- passages of these men with which we dance of ornament. Of his two con- least agree we do not find positive sillitemporaries who tried styles somewhat ness, a positive incapacity to take the similar in point of ornateness, Wilson standpoint and the view of a full-grown constantly becomes tawdry, while De man who has or ought to have mingled Quincey sometimes approaches tawdri- with and jostled against the things of ness. Of this, nearly the worst of lit- the world and of life. We do find this erary vices, Landor was constitutionally in Landor. His apologists have admitalmost incapable; and his models and ted that he was always more or less of methods had converted his natural in- a schoolboy; I should say that he was aptitude into a complete and absolute always more or less of a baby. immunity. He is sometimes, especially The time-honored Norman definition in his fits of personal dignity and scorn, of a man is "One who fights and couna little too stately for the subject-the sels." Landor had in almost superjokes of our rude forefathers on the abundant measure that part of man Castilian strut may recur to us. He is, which fights; he was abnormally defiVOL. LXXXI. 4204

LIVING AGE.

cient in the part which counsels. In three sets of models, the classics, the some cases where taste (of certain, not English writers of the seventeenth cenof all kinds), scholarship, poetic inspira- tury, and the Italians (for of French, tion, chivalry (again of certain kinds), German, and, if I mistake not, Spanish, and the like could supply the place of as well as of large tracts of English, he judgment and ratiocinative faculty, he knew but little) had each in them cerhas done nobly, even without taking tain evil precedent suggestions for a into account that matchless gift of ex- jester. Landor with unerring infelicity pression which never deserts him for seized on these, combined them, worked long together. But in any kind of rea- them fully out, and produced things soning proper he is as an infant in very terrible, things which range from arms; and in that faculty which, the concentrated dreariness of the (though sometimes it be divorced from "Examination" and the conversation it) comes nearest to the ratiocinative, between Pitt and Canning to the smaller the faculty of humor, he is almost as flashes-in-the-pan of joking dulness defective. Here I know there is great which are scattered about his writings difference and discrepancy between passim. those who should agree; but I shall Another thing which is extremely boldly avow that I think Landor's at- noticeable about Landor is the marveltempts both at humor and at wit for lously small difference between his the most part simply deplorable, as poetry and his prose. Except again deplorable as his idol Milton's. Some Milton (an instance ominous and full persons whom I respect, as well as of fear) and perhaps Wordsworth, I others whom I do not, have professed know no other English writer of the to see a masterpiece of humor in "The first class of which this can be said. Examination of William Shakespeare." But Landor has versified, or almost If by a majority of competent critics it versified, some of his actual conversais admitted that it is such, I must be a tions, and has left explicit declaration heretic, yet at least a heretic who can that not a few of his poems are simply rejoice in Aristophanes (whom Landor conversations in verse. He would have did not wholly like), in Lucian (in us believe that verse was his amusewhom he saw much banter and some ment, prose his serious business ; but wisdom but little wit), in Rabelais (of it is certain that he began, and for years whom he knew little and whom he continued to write nothing but verse evidently did not like even so much as for publication in any lasting form. he liked Aristophanes), in Swift (at And of the vast stores of work (forty or whom he is always girding and grudg-fifty thousand lines of verse and some ing), in Fielding (whom he seldom or three thousand large and closely printed never mentions), in Thackeray (of pages of prose) which remain to his whom, though Landor was his contem- credit, the verse might almost always porary and survived him, I think as be, according to the old trick, unmuch may be said), and divers others. rhymed" and made into prose, with The fact is that the entire absence of but slight alterations; the prose, with proportion in matter, so strangely con- certain allowances for greater exubertrasted with his excellent sense of pro-ance and verbosity, in parts might with portion in style, which characterized hardly greater trouble be arranged into Landor appears in this matter of the Landorian verse. The sententious, inhumorous, not perhaps more strongly tense, rhythmical phrase is the same in but, more eminently than anywhere both; the poetical intuition of sights else. It was not that humorous ideas and sounds, and other delights of sense, did not visit him, for they did; but he did is not more obvious in one than in not in the least know how to deal with the other. The absence of continuous them. He mumbles a jest as a bull-logical thought is not greater here than dog worries or attempts to worry a rat there; the remoteness from what may when he is set to that alien art. His be called the sense of business is always

66

question with every writer is, "Could we spare him? Could we do without him?" Most assuredly, if we tried to do without Landor, we should lose something with which no one else could supply us.

the same, whether the syllables in a ical
line be limited to ten at most, or may
run on to as many as the limits of the
page will admit.
Although he was
conscious of, and generally avoided the
mistake of introducing definitely poetic
rhythm into prose, it is astonishing how
close is the resemblance of a short stave
of his verse to a sentence of his prose.
It is owing to this, among other things,
that his form of verse is as compared
with that of others a rather severe
form, while his prose is, compared with
that of others, rather florid. It is owing
to this that, while some of the very
happiest efforts of his verse have the
simplicity and directness of the ancient
epigram, some of the most agreeable
efforts of his prose have in the proper
sense an idyllic character.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

From All The Year Round.

THE ISLAND OF PENANCE.

PILGRIMAGES of a religious kind worked by excursion trains do not very highly commend themselves to the average intelligence of our day. There may be a measure of respectable piety in the hearts of certain of the pilgrims, if not in the majority of them; but it is hard not to be more than a little suspicious of the master minds which institute and control the pilgrimages, especially when there is money at stake, and miracles are promised to those who attend fitly disposed to welcome and appreciate them.

The Island of Penance, in Lough Derg of County Donegal, suggests these remarks. It is the mean survival of as capital a piece of superstitious chicane as ever robbed our poor foolish ancestors of their groats and rose nobles. The old legend is familiar to many people. Yet it is worth while to recapitulate it in few words. Of course, Saint Patrick is the soul and centre of it. The good saint was, we are told, so grieved at his inability to induce the pagans of Donegal to believe in a future state that he prayed earnestly for special enlightenment, the better to be able to convert those incredulous heathens. His prayer was

And so we have in Landor an almost unmatched example of the merits and the defects of style by itself. To attempt once more to narrow down the reasons of both, I should say that they lie in his having had nothing particular to say with a matchless faculty for saying anything. When the latter faculty is exercised sparingly on the former defect, we often get some of the finest things in literature. The writer's idiosyncrasy is not too hardly pressed; it has no time to tire us; the freshness and savor of it remain upon our palate; and we appreciate it to the full, perhaps indeed beyond the full. But when the thing is administered in larger and ever larger doses the intensity of the flavor palls and the absence of anything else, besides and behind the flavor, begins to tell. Yet at his very best, and taken in not too large quantities, Landor is the equal of all but the greatest, perhaps of the greatest themselves. And if, ac- answered. He was guided supernatcording to a natural but rather foolish urally to an island in Lough Derg, fashion, we feel at any time inclined to and there shown a "privy entrie into regret that he lived so long and had so hell." His experiences subsequently much time to accumulate indifferent as were just what one would suppose. well as good work, let us remember on He saw the damned in a very miserthe other hand that his best work is able plight. The same 66 privilege scattered over almost every period of was to be accorded also to others. his life, except the very last and the Thus we may presume the Donegal very first, and that the best of it is of a heathen were converted much as a kind worth wading through volumes of man is whipped into betterness. inferior work to secure. The true crit

Once established and accepted, in