some of the most simply and conclusively perfect lines that our own or any other language can show. They float stately as swans on the tamer level of his ordinary verse. Some of his shorter poems are perfect as crystals. His metaphors are nobly original; they stand out in their bare grandeur like statues against a background of sky; his similes are fresh, and from nature; he plucks them as he goes, like wild-flowers, nor interrupts his talk. An intellectual likeness between him and Ben Jonson constantly suggests itself to me. Both had burly minds with much apparent coarseness of fibre, yet with singular delicacy of temperament. In politics he was generally extravagant, yet so long ago as 1812 he was wise enough (in a letter to Southey) to call war between England and America civil war, though he would not have been himself if he had not added, "I detest the Americans as much as you do." In 1826 he proposed a plan that would have pacified Ireland and saved England sixty years of odious mistake. Ten or twelve years ago I tried to condense my judgment of him into a pair of quatrains, written in a copy of his works given to a dear young friend on her marriage. As they were written in a happier mood than is habitual with me now, I may be pardoned for citing them here with her permission, and through her kindness in sending me a copy: "A villa fair, with many a devious walk Darkened with deathless laurels from the sun, Fixed here in marble, Rome and Athens gleam; Here is Arcadia, here Elysium too; Anon an English voice disturbs our dream, And Landor's self can Landor's spell undo." His books, as I seem to have hinted here, are especially good for reading aloud in fitly sifted company, and I am sure that so often as the experiment is tried this company will say, with Fran cesca: "Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso." Only Landor was fond of saying that he should sup late, but that the hall would be well lighted, and the company, if few, of the choicest. The table, indeed, has been long spread, but will he sit down till the number of the guests is in nearer proportion to that of the covers? It is now forty years since the collected edition of his works was published, probably, as was usual in his case, a small one. one re-impression has yet been called for. Mr. Forster's biography of him is a long plea for a new trial. It is a strange fate for a man who has written so much to interest, to instruct, to delight, and to inspire his fellow-men. Perhaps it is useless to seek any other solution of the riddle than the old habent sua fata libelli. But I envy the man who has before him the reading of those books for the first time. He will have a sensation as profound as that of the peasant who wandered in to where Kaiser Rothbart sits stately with his knights in the mountain cavern biding his appointed time. I saw Landor but once - when I went down from London, by his invitation, to spend a day with him |