ECTIONS from 
 
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 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 EDITED, WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 ALPHONSO G. NEWCOMER 
 
 Associate Professor of English in the Leland Stanford 
 Junior University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, 
 
 HY 
 HENRY HOLT & CO.
 
 SRLB 
 URU 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE selections do not profess to be fairly 
 representative of Lander's prose. The aim has 
 been to include, not what is most characteristic, 
 but what is most interesting and instructive, there- 
 fore most suitable for those who are beginning 
 their studies in literature. For Landor must be 
 approached with circumspection: some of his most 
 characteristic work, delightful indeed as the 
 recreation of mature and meditative years, has no 
 place here. In the Introduction, however, an 
 attempt has been made to restore the balance. 
 But after all, and making the largest allowance for 
 personal taste, no selection can differ very much 
 from Mr. Colvin's. The fact is that of Landor's 
 several thousand pages of prose, that which can 
 make an appeal at once wide and deep can be 
 gathered into the compass of a modest volume. 
 The rest is like the vast plains of the Dakotas 
 fertile, but unpicturesque. 
 
 For the reassurance of those who still look askance 
 at the Imaginary Conversations, let Mr. Colvin's 
 opinion be cited, that to sound perpetually the 
 praises of De Quincey's prose is to call away atten- 
 tion from the best to the second best an opinion
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 in which the present editor, with all admiration for 
 De Quincey, entirely concurs. Not that Landor is 
 to supplant, but only to supplement, De Quincey, 
 Macaulay, Scott, and the rest, in a judicious course 
 of English reading. Such a course must often be- 
 gin with the second best at least it must begin 
 where interest is most readily engaged. But it 
 must not be allowed to degenerate into a romantic 
 debauch. And Lander's prose, one thinks, should 
 afford precisely the right corrective, doubly needed 
 at a time when the classic board is so frugally 
 spread. 
 
 Such speculations, however, do not settle a 
 question like this. Matthew Arnold was fond of 
 pointing out that the value of any discipline is to 
 be measured by its power of engaging the emotions 
 and thereby exerting an influence upon the sense 
 for conduct and the sense for beauty. By this test, 
 applied and observed in the classroom, the Imagi- 
 nary Conversations do not fail. Perhaps no element 
 in literature awakens a livelier response than the 
 dramatic, and in these dramatic dialogues the stu- 
 dent is brought face to face with matters of 
 enduring* interest. Humanity in its manifold as- 
 pects, with its clashes of opinion, its impulses to 
 action, its gradations of character, is always in the 
 foreground. There is no recital of facts to be 
 committed to memory, and there arc few flights 
 of rhetoric to invite desultory discussion of 
 words and sentences. But there is much that 
 will demand original insight and call forth 
 the highest powers of interpretation, whi'e the
 
 PREFACE. v 
 
 style in its absolute purity teaches silently its own 
 lesson. 
 
 The text of this edition is Mr. Crump's with 
 corrections of manifest errors, which text is in 
 turn Mr. Forster's with corrections and conven- 
 tionalized spelling and punctuation. 
 
 A. G. N. 
 
 STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CAL. 
 April, 1899.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION: 
 
 Lander's Position ix 
 
 Life x 
 
 Character, xvi 
 
 Work xxi 
 
 Poetry, xxii 
 
 Prose xxiii 
 
 Conversations, ....... xxvi 
 
 Philosophic, ...... xxix 
 
 Dramatic, xxxv 
 
 Political, ....... xxxix 
 
 Critical, xlii 
 
 Style, xliv 
 
 Achievement, ....... xlix 
 
 CHRONOLOGY, Iv 
 
 BlIlLIOGRAPHY, Ivi 
 
 SELECTIONS: 
 
 (t ^Esop and Rhodope i 
 
 u- Marcellus and Hannibal, 15 
 
 Scipio, Polybius, Pansetius, .... 21 
 
 Metellus and Marius, 26 
 
 ^Lucullus and Ciesar 32 
 
 Tiberius and Vipsania 47
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 SELECTIONS: 
 
 Wolfgang and Henry of Melctal, ... 52 
 
 *] Southey and Landor. ..... 59 
 
 ^ Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker, . . 72 
 
 3 Essex and Spenser, 89 
 
 ;iThe Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt, . . 96 
 
 I The Empress Catharine and Princess Dashkof, 101 
 
 Leofric and Godiva, . . . . . . in 
 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michel- Angelo Buonarroti, 1 1 9 
 
 General Kleber and French Officers, . . 125 
 
 Blucher and Sandt, 131 
 
 Selected Passages 137 
 
 NOTES, 149
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT can be no error of prejudgment to say that 
 Landor has taken very nearly his final station 
 among English men of letters. If that station is 
 not in the circle of the consecrated it is yet very 
 high among the elect, among those whose aims 
 and achievements alike set them safely above the 
 ranks of the merely great. Landor needs no 
 apologist to-day. It may be that his title to fame 
 has never been seriously questioned. But between 
 immoderate self-praise and uncritical disparage- 
 ment the title has sometimes been obscured. For 
 this man had the insolence of genius as scarcely 
 another since Pindar, and there have been not a 
 few, from Byron down, who have derided that inso- 
 lence unmercifully. On the other hand, it is not 
 strange that some, under the spell of a personality 
 so commanding and a voice so manifestly inspired, 
 should set no bounds to their eulogy. But there 
 have always been sober minds that knew how to 
 steer the middle course. And the sober minds are 
 now all that are left. 
 
 Still, the uniqueness of his position makes the 
 task of criticism delicate and difficult. We can- 
 not regard him as the prophet of any age, least of 
 all his own. Neither a leader nor a disciple, he 
 stands quite apart, and wherever the circle of his
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 horizon may lie, ours can only intersect it, the two 
 will never coincide. We cannot apply to him the 
 larger criticism of relations and movements, of 
 which indeed he himself knew nothing. We escape 
 one task, hut the standards of comparison which 
 facilitate and validate judgment escape us, leaving 
 us to measure him by himself alone. And he 
 would have wished it so. We know that the critic 
 who isolates his subject cuts his own clews. It is 
 what Landor did when he ventured upon criticism. 
 But when Landor becomes our subject, we have 
 the satisfaction of knowing that he isolated himself. 
 We can accept the responsibility and evade the 
 reproach. 
 
 At the worst we can fall back upon appreciation 
 and feel that when that is duly accorded our task 
 is done. There is not much to expound. Not that 
 Landor never preaches; he does so, quite too often 
 for the reader's peace of mind, and he doubtless in- 
 tended some portions of his work to be distinctly 
 doctrinal. Only, we know better than to look for con- 
 sistent doctrine from one whose logic was little more 
 than predilection. It would not be the part of wis- 
 dom then to dissect for truth. Vet truth has a way 
 of slipping out between inconsistencies, and the 
 debt of gratitude may as well be acknowledged. 
 Nor is truth the whole. In the presence of so con- 
 summate an art and so strong and individual an 
 artist, the most casual appraiser may not make 
 light of his task. 
 
 Walter Savage Landor was born in January, 1775,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 and died in the autumn of 1864. The octogenarians 
 of our literature, from Gower to Tennyson, we can 
 almost count on our fingers. Nonagenarians were 
 Izaak Walton, Thomas Hobbes, and Samuel Rogers. 
 Landor came within four months of being named 
 with the latter. We are not used to dealing with 
 nonagenarians. To read of a man who died no 
 longer ago than the close of our Civil War seeking 
 for a publisher back in 1823 when Byron was setting 
 forth on his fatal expedition to Greece, and then 
 to be told that this man was nearly fifty years old 
 at the time of the search puts us strangely out of 
 our reckoning. The right perspective of life eludes 
 us. Was this a young man seeking a publisher, or 
 an old one? And who were his contemporaries? 
 Macaulay? But Landor had published poetry and 
 might have been accounted famous before Macaulay 
 was born. Coleridge, then? But the young poet 
 Swinburne went to Florence to receive the old 
 poet's blessing half a life-time after Coleridge's 
 death. Living to become the debtor for more than 
 kindness of the Brownings in Italy, and the guest 
 of the sculptor-poet Story, whose death was but 
 recently recorded, he was yet, in his youth, with 
 some disparity of years it is true, the friend of 
 that Dr. Parr who could give vehement stamp for 
 stamp in a heated argument with Dr. Johnson. He 
 barely missed seeing Goldsmith. Time and dis- 
 tance dwindle as we look back through the over- 
 lapping lives of Landor, Johnson, Swift, Milton, 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 It was a matter of some pride to him that he too
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION, 
 
 "drank of Avon, a dangerous draught." For he 
 was born in the ancient town of Warwick, in 
 Warwickshire, about eight miles above the spot 
 that is linked forever with Shakespeare's name. 
 Becoming, like his famous countryman, a poet 
 and a dramatist, he exercised like him the poet's 
 right to send his fancy roaming through forests 
 of Arden that are doubtfully bounded by English 
 shires. Yet we like to see, or to imagine we 
 see, behind the love of trees and flowers that 
 so pervades the man's written words something 
 of the Warwickshire the child knew, the willow- 
 hung banks of the placid Avon, the majestic elms 
 and chestnut-woods, and the tall, luxuriant green 
 hedge-rows stretching mile upon mile. 
 
 The life of the child, however, was hardly idyllic. 
 The eldest son of well-conditioned parents, his 
 education and the nature of it were foregone con- 
 clusions. At the age of four and a half he was 
 sent away to school. Even upon the hardiest 
 nature such early orphanage must work lasting 
 injury, stunting the tender growths of sympathy, 
 substituting for the restraints of love the restraints 
 of authority, and leaving unlearned the joys of 
 obedience and self-denial. There is at least some 
 excuse for the perverse and haughty temper with 
 which Landor grew up to manhood. 
 
 The records of his youth are not abundant. Mr. 
 Forster, the friend of his latter years and his 
 authori/ed biographer, did not meet him till he 
 had passed sixty, when imagination was already be- 
 ginning to make myths of reminiscences and remi-
 
 INTRODUCTION. X11I 
 
 niscences of myths. Of course his education was 
 classical, of the old type so hard now to regard 
 approvingly and yet productive of such wonderful 
 results. Looked at through the recollections of its 
 martyrs, it would seem to have been one endless 
 task of writing Latin verses. And that accom- 
 plishment, genuine enough in Landor's case, for he 
 is one of the very few who have succeeded in writ- 
 ing real poetry in a dead language, is in itself a 
 barren thing. Yet when we read his Hellenics and 
 hear 
 
 through the trumpet of a child of Rome 
 Ring the pure music of the flutes of Greece, 
 
 or when we learn from Mrs. Browning how he 
 talked with her till " the ashes of antiquity burned 
 again" in his hands, we are readier to listen with 
 patience to the tales of how once the excellence of 
 his Latin verses won for his schoolfellows a holiday, 
 or how his later dismissal from Rugby was the re- 
 sult of his declining to correct the quantity of a 
 Latin syllable when indeed no correction could be 
 made. 
 
 After Rugby came a year and a half at Oxford. 
 But a foolish prank and a more foolish denial of 
 guilt made his further stay there impossible, and, not 
 yet twenty, he went to face the world in London. 
 The trite remark that well-learned lessons of hu- 
 mility and self-mastery are a better equipment for 
 life than any inheritance of wealth or influence 
 has seldom been so well illustrated. It is im- 
 possible to say that Landor succeeded in life.
 
 XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 His maintenance and social position were suffi- 
 ciently secure from the first, though of course 
 through no efforts of his own. His splendid intellect- 
 ual and imaginative endowment made possible the lit- 
 erary achievements which establish his fame. But 
 in prudence, tact, and all those delicate social ad- 
 justments and compromises that make for indi- 
 vidual and collective happiness, his history presents 
 a long series of failures, and he pathetically ad- 
 mitted as much in his old age. The details of his 
 successive quarrels with his father, his neighbors, 
 his publishers, with civil authorities need not be 
 repeated here. The quarrels themselves are of no 
 interest many men before and since have quarreled; 
 but where is the man who could solace himself 
 afterward as this man did, by writing a lyric or a 
 tragedy, or, should the whim so dictate, a Latin 
 poem on the death of Ulysses? betokening beneath 
 the tempestuous surface what unsounded depths of 
 calm! 
 
 He fell into the life that seemed ordained, the 
 life of a man of letters and leisure, varied chiefly 
 by his frequent changes of residence and friends. 
 One or two episodes stand out. In 1808, when all 
 England was stirred by Napoleon's aggressive de- 
 signs upon Spain, he impulsively rushed off to Co- 
 runna and devoted to the cause of the rising Span- 
 iards ten thousand reals and his personal services 
 for three months at the head of a troop enrolled 
 at his expense. That the enterprise came to 
 little beyond an honorarv colonel's commission 
 which some years later, in a fit of indignation, was
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 sent back to the restored King Ferdinand, cannot 
 detract from the magnanimity of the spirit that 
 prompted it. And poetry is the richer for it by the 
 tragedy of Count Julian. 
 
 The same impulsiveness is revealed in the 
 rather melodramatic story of his courtship. "By 
 Heaven ! " he exclaimed, as, entering a ballroom at 
 Bath, he was smitten with the vision of a pretty 
 face encircled with curls, " that's the nicest girl in 
 the room, and I'll marry her." And within six 
 weeks he made good his boast. The marriage was 
 not a happy one. After twenty-four years of grow- 
 ing estrangement came a final separation. One 
 might safely have prophesied as much of the man 
 who could write Latin Alcaics against the Ministry 
 during his honeymoon and inclose the verses, along 
 with the announcement of his marriage, to his old 
 Whig friend Parr. Still, it is only fair to add that 
 Mrs. Landor once interrupted his reading of his 
 own verses to watch a Punch performing on the 
 street. 
 
 Apart from several years spent in South Wales, 
 and at Llanthony Abbey in Monmouthshire, his 
 English residence was chiefly at Bath. Twice he 
 fled from unpleasantnesses of one kind or another 
 to Italy, the retreat of so many English men of 
 letters, where doubtless he consoled himself as he 
 fancied Boccaccio consoled Petrarch: "There is, 
 and ever will be, in all countries and under all 
 governments, an ostracism for their greatest men." 
 " Such men," writes Cleoneto Aspasia, thinking how 
 Pindar and /Eschylus had exchanged Greece for
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Sicily, "are under no dominion . . . We will reproach 
 them for emigration, when we reproach a man for 
 lying clown in his neighbor's field, because the 
 grass is softer in it than in his own." Besides, 
 Florence had driven forth Dante and Petrarch in 
 the past in all humility now she might receive 
 Landor. And at Florence and the neighboring 
 town of Fiesole he spent many of his most peaceful 
 and prolific years, weaving and wearing proudly his 
 "exotic laurel." Thither admirers came from 
 time to time to pay their tributes, and there he 
 found one or two friends to solace his lonely age. 
 There too, after nearly ninety years of tumultuous 
 life, came death, likewise a friend. And there, in 
 the English churchyard not far from the grave of 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whither she had pre- 
 ceded him by three years, he sleeps to-day. 
 
 These bare biographical facts but faintly re- 
 veal the character behind them. It is a char- 
 acter not easily understood, a strange combination 
 of fierceness and tenderness, of restless energy 
 and proud reserve. Perhaps few men have suc- 
 ceeded in uniting, in the same degree as Landor, 
 the active and the contemplative life. It was a 
 characteristic picture which he drew of himself at 
 Llanthony Abbey, employing his mornings in 
 cutting off the heads of the thistles with his stick 
 and musing among the beautiful and peaceful tribes 
 of the flowers. Characteristic, too, though perhaps 
 apocryphal, is the story which Kmcrson and others 
 have repeated after Milncs, that he once threw his
 
 INTRODUCTION. XVll 
 
 cook out of the window into a flower-bed, to exclaim 
 in immediate remorse, " Good God! I forgot the 
 violets." It was this nature that enabled him in boy- 
 hood to excel alike in boxing and in Latin, and in 
 manhood to produce through seventy turbulent years 
 a body of poetry and prose that for sustained 
 serenity stands quite without an equal. 
 
 Those who knew him well often likened him to a 
 lion, and we imagine the comparison was singularly 
 apt. The upright bearing, the proud poise of the 
 massive, firm-set head, the ruddy, prominent face, 
 with lifted eyebrows, large keen gray eyes, and 
 compressed lips drooping at the corners, the oft- 
 clenched hands, the full rich voice, and the resonant 
 crescendo laughter, were no less than leonine. 
 The external features are compatible too with 
 what we know of the inner nature the vitality of 
 spirit that conquered one generation after another 
 of fearful but fascinated admirers, and the vigor of 
 intellect that, beyond eighty years, compelled Car- 
 lyle's half-incredulous cry, "The unsubduable old 
 Roman! " But the lion slept sometimes, and the 
 Roman sheathed his sword. "I found him noble 
 and courteous," wrote Emerson of him in 1833, 
 " living in a cloud of pictures at his villa Gherar- 
 descha ... I had inferred from his books, or 
 magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of 
 Achillean wrath, ... an untamable petulance, . . . 
 but certainly on this May day his courtesy veiled 
 that haughty mind, and he was the most patient 
 and gentle of hosts." " Chivalresque of the old 
 school" is Mr. Kirkup's phrase; and Miss Kate
 
 XVI 11 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Field relates how, as she one day picked up his 
 glasses which he had accidentally dropped, he re- 
 sponded with instant wit and indescribable grace, 
 " Ah, this is not the first time you have caught my 
 eyes." 
 
 One would like to dwell upon the benignant side 
 of his character. He took delight in the society of 
 dogs and children, of beautiful girls and old men. 
 He was fond of music, though perhaps chiefly for 
 its associations "Alas, how very few things are 
 worth an old song? " His love of flowers amounted 
 to a passion, but he liked to see the shaping hand 
 of the artist among them, to find them in old, orderly 
 gardens. He imported for planting thousands of 
 cones of the cedars of Lebanon, as if old associa- 
 tions might be transplanted too. America, as the 
 home of Washington and freedom, was attractive 
 to his intellect, but it is doubtful whether the virgin 
 wilderness could have held his heart. He preferred 
 Italy with her history, her pictures, her cathedrals 
 and saints. He was something of an Epicure 
 after the old ideal an ideal which embraced 
 not a little that is Stoic. He was personally 
 fastidious in the extreme, kept religiously from 
 public dinners, preferring to dine alone in subdued 
 light, cultivated the pleasures of the senses through 
 abstemiousness, and by judicious alternation of 
 physical activity with seasons of meditation and 
 repose made life yield its richest enjoyments and 
 turned age itself into a benign and mellowing in- 
 fluence. 
 
 l.ut the melancholy record of his social failure
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 remains. His impetuous temper, his crotchets, his 
 prejudices, his unconquerable hatreds of kings, 
 priests, Frenchmen set him almost hopelessly out of 
 the society of his compeers. Modesty and humility 
 were never among his virtues. Of his personal and 
 intellectual gifts he had reason to be proud. But 
 reasonableness and consistency were also not among 
 his virtues. He knew the supreme worth of in- 
 tellect and culture, he was a Whig and a republi- 
 can, he professed to despise rank, and yet, like 
 De Quincey, though apparently with even less 
 warrant than De Quincey, he clung to the tradition 
 of a patrician descent and would have fought to 
 defend the memory of Sir Arnold Savage, a doubt- 
 ful ancestor whose name he bore. At school he 
 never competed for a prize, and the reason is to be 
 found in the first line of that quatrain which has 
 become classic vi.. <** 
 
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. 
 
 And we read the same pride, unbroken still though 
 tempered with pathos, in those other lines of his 
 old age in which he bewails the fate that made 
 him outlive his friends 
 
 Who had so many I could once count three. 
 
 Such an untamed, undisciplined, but august bar- 
 barian he remained to the end. With all his years, 
 his boasted philosophy, his familiar intercourse 
 with the wise men of antiquity, he cannot be said 
 to have attained the philosophic mind. He was a 
 man of splendid gifts who chose to be satisfied with
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 those gifts as he found them. He never thought of 
 learning from another how he might improve them 
 perhaps he never had a suspicion that they could 
 be improved. It was enough to feel that Nature 
 and Heaven had nobly dowered him. " I am not 
 inobservant of distinctions," he closes proudly a 
 letter written in his dotage to the English ambassa- 
 dor at Florence, "You by the favor of a minister 
 are the Marquis of Normanby, I by the grace of 
 God am WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR." 
 
 It was these things that proved so irritating to 
 all whose tolerance could not be extended to an- 
 other's intolerance. It was these things, too, 
 coupled with a natural exclusiveness of spirit, that 
 resulted in that lifelong semi-isolation which, 
 while picturesque in its way, worked disastrously 
 upon the man's whole moral and artistic product, 
 distorting its perspective, chilling its fervor, and 
 sapping its humanity. But the pride was so fear- 
 lessly paraded, the isolation so heroically endured, 
 that in the eyes of us who look from a safe distance 
 and through the tranquilizing medium of years the 
 personality suffers but little. We yield to the fas- 
 cination of the picture and turn from censure to 
 admiration. After all, wrongheadedness is more 
 tolerable than thickheadedness. He who errs 
 through pride or passion may rouse our anger- 
 he does not call down our contempt. We never 
 pity him, which is very much to his advantage in 
 the end. He has his foibles, we say, but, as Landor 
 himself so tersely put it, fie lias //is foibles is never 
 said of a weak man. " Circa t men," admits Dioge-
 
 IN TROD UC TION. x xi 
 
 nes in the conversation between him and Plato, 
 "too often have greater faults than little men ca.n 
 find room for." This great man had very many; 
 but they are buried with him, while the great 
 accomplishment stands. 
 
 And it will stand. There is little literary work 
 of the present century of which one can speak with 
 more confidence than of Landor's. For there is 
 little work that rises so clear of its age and environ- 
 ment or is less exposed to the fallacy of personal 
 and temporal estimates. He did not need to write 
 for money; he was not oppressed with the burden 
 of a message to be delivered to men. Fortune 
 placed him far above the pack of hungry reviewers; 
 temperament delivered him from the nightmare of 
 social reform. Sometimes indignation made his 
 verses. Sometimes, perhaps too often, as we have 
 seen, he felt moved to speak out for the needs of 
 the time as he conceived them, and he condescended 
 to homily. But the Landor who will live for us is 
 the Landor who took refuge from the clamor and 
 confusion of a restless age amid the eternal verities 
 of the human spirit and wrought their substance to 
 the beauty of his art. And he wrought unmoved 
 by base motives of profit or praise. He declared 
 that he neither bid nor cared for any man's praise. 
 If the profession of indifference ring not wholly 
 sincere, if beneath his too boisterous contempt of 
 the suffrages of the crowd we read a secret 
 chafing over its neglect, something may be con- 
 ceded to the hunger of human nature for rec-
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ognition and reward. The Homer of his Idyls 
 confesses to 
 
 A pardonable fault : we wish for listeners 
 Whether we speak or sing : the young and old 
 Alike are weak in this, wise and unwise. 
 
 But the certainty remains that Landor never abated 
 one jot of his high ideals to conciliate any form of 
 homage. 
 
 The high ideals must be conceded. If literature 
 did not grow out of the stress of his real life, it had 
 yet his entire adoration. He worked with undisguised 
 reverence for the work of his hands, and the stamp 
 of the consecrated artist is on all he did. His 
 poetry perhaps reflects this quality best. Before 
 his twenty-third year, when the passion and exuber- 
 ance of youth should be at their height, he wrote, 
 in blank verse, and only by the merest chance in 
 English instead of Latin, his heroic poem Gcbir, on 
 the theme of ambition, a marvel of concentration, 
 classic finish, and lofty and chaste imagery. He 
 claimed no lesser poets than Pindar and Milton for 
 his masters. Such work was not for the multitude. 
 It was not fervid and romantic enough, not suffi- 
 ciently charged with emotion, color, and sound. 
 And so with everything that followed. Apart from 
 several particularly striking or felicitous lines and 
 passages of a character to be described below, his 
 poetry has remained a sealed book to all but the 
 few who are fitted by temperament and cultivation 
 to appreciate it. His one considerable drama, the 
 tragedy of Count Julian, is carved as out of
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXlll 
 
 marble, with scarcely more human warmth or 
 charm. Perhaps his peculiar poetic genius found 
 its best expression in the severe Hellenics of his ma- 
 ture years. 
 
 Yet we must not overlook the countless fugitive 
 little lyrics and epigrams that were produced, some- 
 times almost improvised, amid sterner labors, and 
 that fairly rival in playful wit, tenderness, and 
 pathos the works of the world's masters of personal 
 and amatory verse from Anacreon and Catullus to 
 Andre" Chenier. Literature has nothing more ex- 
 quisite and few things more rememberable than 
 the eight lines in which the memory of Rose Ayl- 
 mer is enshrined. Indeed, of Landor's poetry in 
 general, epic, dramatic, or lyric, while it must be 
 admitted that it misses the qualities of supreme 
 greatness, it must also be said that it maintains a 
 high level of excellence, and that some of it fairly 
 attains perfection in its kind. To a passage like 
 The Death of Artemidora y first printed in Pericles 
 and Aspasia, it is idle to bring the scales. 
 
 Between Landor's poetry and his prose one 
 hesitates to adjudge precedence. He bore the al- 
 most unique distinction of writing in the two modes 
 with equal ease. No doubt his fame rests chiefly 
 on his prose. Though narrower in range, it is larger 
 in bulk, about as four to one, and this disparity, 
 from so quintessential a pen, is real. Prose should 
 prove a more native element, one thinks, to him 
 who believed in a "gentle and regular and long 
 fermentation " before composition. In prose, too, 
 the touchstones are fewer, for the masters are few.
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and Landor takes his seat among them without 
 dispute. The Pericles and Aspasia is one of those 
 final achievements which criticism cannot touch. 
 The surprise is that such pure imagination and 
 flawless art should find an adequate medium in 
 prose. We are taught a new reverence for this 
 humble servant of our daily thoughts. 
 
 Three of these prose compositions rose to the dig- 
 nity of " works." The Citation and Examination of 
 William Shakespeare was the first and the least. The 
 idea of portraying this universal genius in his imma- 
 turity, and under a disgrace with which Landor was 
 quite too prone to sympathize, was audacious enough. 
 But the execution failed. The piece gains less than 
 might havebeen expected from the author's personal 
 knowledge of the scene of the traditional deer- 
 stealing, and it loses immeasurably by its theolo- 
 gizing and its heavy attempts at Elizabethan 
 dialect and country-wit. Pericles and Aspasia, 
 which followed, has already been mentioned. It 
 is in the form of an epistolary correspondence 
 throughout, and aims to restore to the imagin- 
 ation with some detail the golden age of Greece. 
 It may not be the real Greek life that we get in 
 its pages we cannot know; but no true lover of 
 that vanished vision will have it otherwise. Be- 
 yond the possibility of exaggeration at least the 
 ancient glory must have been, to light up such reflec- 
 tions after two thousand years. It is something of a 
 descent to the Pentameron, which came last. But 
 here, too, Landor is a loving restorer of the antique. 
 Boccaccio converses with Petrarch until mediaeval
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 Tuscany lives again. The appraisement of Dante by 
 the lesser poet, whether we name him Petrarch or 
 Landor, is narrow and disappointing, yet redeemed 
 by some things that must surely compel the forgive- 
 ness of the great Florentine's most jealous admirers. 
 Landor began his writings in prose, however, 
 with the work which is still most closely linked 
 with his memory, namely, those Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions that he poured so copiously through the press 
 between 1824 and 1829 and fitfully to the very end. 
 It was these that first wrung from the general 
 public a chary applause and firmly established the 
 name of the author, who was then already fifty 
 years old. His longer prose pieces described 
 above followed most of them in time, and, as we 
 have seen, conformed to them in method with only 
 a slight variation in the case of Pericles and Aspasia. 
 This method, which constitutes his sole prose 
 method (though still with no narrow range), was 
 virtually a new one. The dialogue as a literary 
 form is as old as Plato, indeed as old as the drama 
 or the epic, but the imaginary conversation between 
 great men or women of the past was impossible at 
 an early stage of history, and nothing of the kind 
 before Landor's, and scarcely anything since, has 
 met with any measure of success. In the face of 
 Landor's success it seems foolish to hint that his 
 choice of method was not wholly wise. But few 
 things that he did were wholly wise. His parsimony 
 of phrase, his weak narrative talent, his gift for 
 description, his proneness to moralize, might well 
 have argued failure in so essentially dramatic a
 
 XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thing as the ideal dialogue. And from the dramatic 
 standpoint he does often fail. But again he 
 succeeds by virtue of powers that overrode his 
 weaknesses. Supreme among these was the poet's 
 gift of imagination. The vision of past ages was 
 on his eyes, the voices of great men were in his 
 ears of heroes, priests, poets, sages, kings. Even 
 when the great voices fail we have always one to 
 replace them Landor's own. Sometimes the sub- 
 stitution strikes harsh or thin, but not often. The 
 poet seldom fails to rise to the level of whatever 
 greatness. 
 
 It is worth while to examine more closely the 
 method of these conversations, " so delightful to 
 read in, so hard to read through," and containing, 
 if we may trust Landor's own estimate, a body of 
 prose unequaled by a single author in two thousand 
 years. They number more than one hundred and 
 fifty and vary in length from two to ten or even 
 a hundred pages, making five or six weighty 
 volumes. Of this extensive and diverse material 
 there can be no final classification. In Mr. 
 Forster's edition there are five divisions: Classical 
 Dialogues (Greek and Roman), Dialogues of 
 Sovereigns and Statesmen, of Literary Men, of 
 Famous Women, and Miscellaneous Dialogues. 
 Mr. Colvin, considering more especially the nature 
 of their contents, would separate them into 
 Dramatic on the one hand and Reflective and 
 Discursive on the other. In the further discussion 
 of them here they will be considered in the two
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 major divisions of Philosophic and Dramatic and 
 the two minor ones of Political and Critical. 
 
 The method of construction is the simplest of 
 dialogue methods. Two characters, or sometimes 
 more, from a chosen period of history or even 
 from the writer's own circle of acquaintances not 
 excluding himself, are brought together upon any 
 or no pretext and discourse upon whatever subjects 
 may be supposed to engage their interests. The 
 discourse is not necessarily consecutive. In the 
 longer dialogues, the speakers range freely from 
 politics to poetry, from cathedrals to kitchens. 
 A story even may be introduced, though seldom 
 happily, for Landor's tales have not the charm 
 of his beloved Boccaccio's. Sometimes there 
 is a beautiful or majestic background, as when 
 Epicurus walks with his girl pupils in his garden, 
 or when Sir Philip Sidney invites Greville to a seat 
 beneath his oak, but in general there is only the 
 barest suggestion of scene, and the characters 
 stand forth as nakedly as the actors on an ancient 
 stage. Stage directions, of course, are not required, 
 though hints of the action, as of the background, 
 are sometimes to be found in the words of the inter- 
 locutors. The hints are not always so deftly given 
 as to conceal their dramatic purpose, but life and 
 picturesqueness are gained; as when Sergius is 
 made to say, after a ribald jest, "Mahomet, thou 
 art the heartiest laugher under heaven; prythee 
 let thy beard cover thy throat again "; or as when 
 Princess Mary expostulates with Elizabeth, "But 
 why call me HigJiness, drawing back and losing
 
 XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 half your stature in the circumference of the 
 courtesy." 
 
 No fact needs more to be impressed upon one 
 who would understand these conversations than 
 that history constitutes for them only a point of 
 departure. Landor's ends were literary, ethical, 
 critical anything but historical. The learning 
 displayed is varied, but seldom profound. Pro- 
 found insight he had, but profound scholarship 
 he had not. He did not build so much upon pa- 
 tient investigation as upon wide reading and pro- 
 longed reflection. Many of the dialogues were 
 composed aloud among the hills of Fiesole. Books 
 once read were given away, and he cared to remem- 
 ber them only well enough to keep from repeating 
 any part of their contents. His recollections were 
 overlaid with additions of his imagination until there 
 grew up a second history, or rather mythology, of 
 his own. And of this mythology the conversations 
 were made. Of course he generally preserved the 
 historical background, and he did not disdain occa- 
 sional allusions to familiar facts or traditions, as 
 when we find Diogenes chaffing Plato over the 
 affair of the plucked fowl, or Polycrates pursued by 
 his discarded ring. But, jealously guarding his 
 claim to the title of poet, of creative writer, he 
 adhered rigidly to the plan of using no phrases his- 
 torically recorded of his personages. An anach- 
 ronism, too, was only a license, remember the sav- 
 ing title Imaginary, and gave him no more con- 
 cern than it gave Shakespeare. " Poetry is not 
 tied to chronology," he would say with scorn. And
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxix 
 
 so Bacon is made to seek consolation of Hooker, 
 who died twenty years before Bacon's fall, and 
 Machiavelli draws a lesson from the defeat of the 
 Spanish Armada! With such a purpose and method 
 it was inevitable that there should be some ideali- 
 zation. We may never assume that an historical 
 character was as great or as little as Landor por- 
 trays it. Yet an idealized portrait is sometimes 
 truer than a photograph. It gives us more of the 
 man than externals can show his dreams and 
 aspirations no less than the scars on his cheek or 
 the badges on his coat. In a spiritual sense a man 
 is what he would become if circumstances per- 
 mitted complete self-realization. The poet's trans- 
 figured heroes are only men as they idealized 
 themselves to themselves. We are told that a 
 friend of Lord Dudley's, reading to him one of 
 these Conversations, exclaimed upon concluding, 
 " Is not that exactly what Cicero would have said? " 
 "Yes, if he could! " was Lord Dudley's answer. 
 
 The first division of the Conversations which we 
 have chosen to make is the Philosophic. After 
 poet, Landor would perhaps have called him- 
 self philosopher. And, though his abilities did 
 not lie in the direction of abstract thinking, 
 nnd though he did not and could not build up 
 A coherent system of philosophy, his ethical pro- 
 clivities and his faculty for "the reflective exhibi- 
 tion of certain types of character " led him frequently 
 to bring the world's great philosophers on the stage. 
 His professed favorites were Epicurus and Epicte-
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tus, though the latter appears in but one brief dia- 
 logue. Cicero and Bacon he also admired. His 
 deep-seated antipathy to Plato is one of the anom- 
 alies of his character. Few judgments of his 
 upon the great disciple of Socrates and teacher 
 of Aristotle, whom he regards as an unworthy dis- 
 ciple and a dangerous teacher, without wisdom, wit, 
 or imagination, a mere quibbler " sticking pins in 
 every chair on which a sophist is likely to sit 
 down," are worthy of serious consideration. But 
 on the whole we can gather no mean account of the 
 philosophers and philosophies of antiquity from his 
 pages. 
 
 From the standpoint of art, the philosophic con- 
 versations have grave defects. There is too much 
 consciousness in the manner at times, a suspicion of 
 fanfaronade Landor parading his wisdom as, in 
 one of the dialogues, Lncullus parades his wealth 
 and Epicurean tastes. There is the lack of con- 
 secutiveness, too, already noted. It is no excuse to 
 say that actual conversations rarely have unity of 
 purpose: an ideal conversation should have, 
 therein lies the artist's opportunity. Digression 
 there may be, but not divagation. When Landor 
 defended his practice, we may suspect that he was 
 only attempting to cover a defect. 
 
 Hut this defect becomes still more conspicuous 
 through another defect, which should have made 
 unity at least easy to secure. For often there is no 
 real conversation at all, only a monologue. It is all 
 give and no take. One character is selected to 
 become the mouthpiece of certain opinions, while
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxxi 
 
 the secondary character serves merely as a foil or 
 sometimes even as a target. The first speaker 
 declaims, while the second speaker's sole business 
 is to give the cue for each new declamation. Or it 
 may be that the speakers are so much at one in 
 opinion and so destitute of any other characteriza- 
 tion that the reader actually finds it immaterial to 
 remember which interlocutor is speaking. Of what 
 use then, we ask, is the dramatic form, except to 
 enable Landor to deliver his opinions without the 
 trouble of organizing them into an essay or 
 treatise? What is gained by attaching the names 
 of Franklin and Washington to general diatribes 
 against national debts or religious dogmas? A con- 
 versation should develop and exhibit character, not 
 efface it. Even where dramatic truth is more espe- 
 cially sought by Landor, his characters are likely to 
 be painted with a broad brush and after a very 
 monotonous pattern. The heroic lowly, for ex- 
 ample, can seldom conceal their contempt for the 
 powerful, while the powerful are almost without 
 exception blind to heroism and incapable of under- 
 standing any motive but selfishness. 
 
 Again, a conversation should have animation, 
 diversity, diversity, that is, of the formal kind, 
 which is yet consistent with unity of substance. 
 Too many of these didactic conversations have not. 
 In other words, Landor the philosopher sometimes 
 drones. We concede it to be the most admirable 
 droning that ever was, but we nod under it none the 
 less. The defect was not wholly temperamental. 
 LanJjr could be sprightly, after a fashion: no one
 
 xxxil INTRODUCTION. 
 
 who remembers the playful unbending in the 
 Pentumeron or in Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa, 
 will deny it. And he could perceive, or feign to 
 perceive, the defect in Plato: "The voice ought 
 not to be perpetually nor much elevated in the 
 ethic and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if it 
 issued from a mask in the theater." But the later 
 dialogist is scarcely more given to modulation. 
 Possibly he suspected that his voice was unsteady 
 on the lower notes. At any rate, he was ready 
 with a defense: the dialogue of statesmen and 
 philosophers, he protested, "appertains to disser- 
 tation and should not resemble the dialogue of 
 comedians." Nevertheless, we feel that its aus- 
 terity constitutes the most serious limitation of this 
 part of his work. We would give a great deal for 
 more of the comic spirit, the airiness of tone, the 
 sparkling repartee, that have added so much to the 
 charm of occasional later experiments in this field 
 by lesser men. 
 
 It is in point of content that this severer portion 
 of Landor's work yields most to praise. His ethic 
 bias is everywhere strong. He was a creature of 
 prejudices; he could not eliminate the personal 
 equation. And he was overfond of supporting opin- 
 ions that others reject; he makes Epicurus boast of 
 having, all his life, planted those roots which other 
 people dug up and threw away. lUit when his 
 heart was right which was very often, nor is it 
 hard to detect when he poured forth that volumi- 
 nous torrent of noble sentiments which Emerson 
 summed up, with an unfortunate emphasis upon
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 
 
 their least lovely quality, as " wisdom, wit, and 
 indignation that are unforgetable. " In defense of 
 weakness, in scorn of hypocrisy, in praise of justice 
 and magnanimity, he does not weary. He may not 
 give us ultimate truth, truth as distinguished from 
 truths: a philosophy of life, we have said, it was 
 not his to build. Nor does he often descend to the 
 plane of homely wisdom which has been made 
 familiar to us by philosophers like Bacon and 
 Franklin. But in the domain of generous and lofty 
 sentiments, which every man likes to feel that he 
 would cultivate more diligently if only the stress of 
 life allowed, he has given a memorable utterance 
 to perhaps more truths than any other English 
 prose writer. And sometimes too the poet in 
 him triumphs so far over the mere reasoner that he 
 rises to a largeness of truth equaled only by the 
 great poets. " How near together," says Bishop 
 Burnet to Humphrey Hardcastle in a conversation 
 upon the nature of fame, "are things which appear 
 to us the most remote and opposite! how near to 
 death is life, and vanity to glory! How deceived 
 are we, if our expressions are any proof of it, in 
 what we might deem the very matters most subject 
 to our senses! The haze above our heads we call 
 the heavens, and the thinnest of air the firmament." 
 Passages like these give that strange pause which 
 the mind always suffers under a new revelation. 
 
 But largeness of abstract truth and sublimity of 
 utterance are, after all, matters of secondary 
 interest in a world of which man finds or fancies 
 himself the center. However great for us the
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION; 
 
 charm of sentiment in these philosophic dialogues, 
 still greater is the charm of character when charac- 
 ter is allowed to appear. For not all of Landor's 
 creatures are marionettes. Now and then the 
 fingers twitch, the eyes light up with sympathy, the 
 voices vibrate with human passion, and we find our- 
 selves on the threshold of the dramatic dialogues 
 with their array of beautiful or commanding per- 
 sonalities so magically summoned to life on this 
 mimic stage. There is the picture of Izaak Walton 
 tarrying on the bridge while his jade winces from 
 the stings of the fly that would make such a 
 delicious morsel for the strawberry-spotted trout or 
 the ash-colored grayling below. There is the same 
 Walton luring himself to a seat on the tulip-pied 
 turf of his friend, the " sunny saint, good master 
 William Oldways. " There is Addison as Steele 
 looked back upon him in the days of their friend- 
 ship, " in his arm-chair, his right hand upon his 
 heart under the fawn-colored waistcoat, his brow 
 erect and clear as his conscience; his wig even ami 
 composed as his temper, with measurely curls and 
 antithetical top-knots, like his style; the calmest 
 poet, the most quiet patriot: dear Addison! drunk, 
 deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with 
 truth and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, 
 and only the worse in one ruffle for the wine." 
 There is the figure of Demosthenes as Demos- 
 thenes is made to portray it himself, without a sin- 
 gle descriptive epithet yet none the less vivid and 
 complete: " I have seen the day, Eubulides, when 
 the most august of cities had but one voice within
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXV 
 
 her walls; and when the stranger on entering them 
 stopped at the silence of the gateway and said, 
 ' Demosthenes is speaking in the assembly of the 
 people.' " 
 
 By long contemplation of figures like these, the 
 great and greatly good and greatly wicked of all 
 ages, "shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread," 
 Landor was inevitably led to the construction of 
 those scenes which should portray them at some 
 crucial moment of their lives. These are the 
 Dramatic conversations proper. Helen in the pres- 
 ence of her wronged countryman Achilles, Hanni- 
 bal in triumph before Marcellus in death, Tiberius 
 torn between filial and husbandly love, Catharine 
 listening outside the door to the murder of her hus- 
 band, Spenser in desolation, Bacon in disgrace such 
 are the characters chosen and such are the essen- 
 tially tragic situations in which they are delineated. 
 The scenes are necessarily brief, and the conversa- 
 tions, scarcely above twenty in all, constitute but a 
 small fraction of the total number, though in every 
 way the most noteworthy fraction. For the poor- 
 est are rarely mediocre, engaging an interest that is 
 always near to fascination, while the best of them 
 exhibit Landor's power at its utmost reach. 
 
 But before they can be given their right measure 
 of praise, some limits must be noted to their scope 
 and method. One is a limit that inheres in their 
 nature. Drama is not history. This is not the 
 temper in which history is written. There are all 
 the temptations to the imagination, the freedom 
 from responsibility, the desire for effect, that
 
 xxx VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 assail the historical romancer. While Lanclor was 
 little tempted to insincere ostentation, nevertheless 
 the historian is sure to rise and declare, this is not 
 history. No, we can only answer, but it is poetry. 
 And some of us are not without the conviction that 
 fiction may be truer than fact. But, it may be 
 objected, Landor's characters are often not real 
 enough. His Maid of Orleans, his Agnes Sorel, we 
 cannot for a moment imagine to be the real women 
 of history. They are something more than voices, 
 yet scarcely flesh and blood. They are fine in their 
 way, but they are only creatures of imagination of 
 an imagination that gives them but a mimic, stage 
 life. And it must be admitted that while no man can 
 hope to recreate with entire fidelity an historical 
 character, the dramatist should at least give the 
 illusion of reality. Perhaps here again the fault 
 lies partly in the method. The drama deals more 
 safely with tradition than with history. Wagner, 
 setting about the composition of his great tetralogy, 
 rejected the historical Barbarossa for the legendary 
 Siegfried, and no doubt wisely. Shakespeare's 
 highest conceptions lie outside the [Kile of history. 
 And the more remotely into history Landor goes, 
 for his /Ksop and Khodope, his Marcellus and 
 Hannibal, his Leofric and (lodiva, the more suc- 
 cessful he is. 
 
 Vet Landor was not in himself a great dramatist, 
 like Shakespeare, Goethe, IJal/.ac, or even Hugo or 
 Dickens. He wanted the primary requisites, self- 
 effacement and a catholic sympathy. He could not 
 easily get out of himself, and when he could he
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxxvil 
 
 could not compass the wide range of human life, 
 from Audrey to Cordelia, from Falstaff to Lear. 
 Even within his range he was too prone, as we have 
 seen, to divide men off into classes without allowing 
 for individual distinctions. His priests are nearly 
 all hypocrites who pray for fine weather by the ba- 
 rometer. His women, nobly conceived as some of 
 them are, Mr. Colvin would set them next to 
 Shakespeare's! are likely to be now mannish and 
 coarse-fibered, now, in Mr. Colvin's own phrase, 
 "giggly, missish, and disconcerting." These are 
 serious deficiencies. But Landor met them in the 
 only way possible, and met them well. He is con- 
 tent with a character and a passion. He never 
 seeks the motley, nor crowds his stage. In 
 short, it is not drama that he gives us, but a dra- 
 matic situation. The situation itself is sometimes 
 tremendous no weaker word will describe it. 
 Bossuet, before the frivolous Duchess de Fon- 
 tanges, talks of the frailty of life, and the worn 
 text is transmuted into power by the slipping 
 of a ring from his age-shrunken finger, while its 
 clamorous fall upon the chamber floor reverberates 
 like the thunder of destiny in the ears of the star- 
 tled girl. It is but an idle criticism of such drama 
 to complain that there is no action. No action is 
 attempted. The characters are not there to do 
 anything, only to be and to suffer. There is neither 
 evolution nor climax, only a crisis the tension and 
 pause that come when a great soul grapples with 
 fate in an equal conflict. For this, character and 
 passion suffice.
 
 XXXV111 INTRODUCTION'. 
 
 The character, within Lander's limitations, does 
 not fail. Into a character not over subtle or com- 
 plex, one heroically good or monstrously evil, he 
 entered with ease, for his sympathies, if not broad, 
 were deep. But it is the central fire of passion that 
 suffuses his characters with life, transferring them 
 from the stage of the theater to the stage of the 
 world. Herein lies the secret of his dramatic power, 
 and the quality that differentiates the dramatic dia- 
 logues from the philosophic. In the philosophic 
 the characters are mechanically chosen and they 
 always speak from a stage, conscious of their audi- 
 ence. Sometimes they shrink to the thinnest masks, 
 whence only Lander's voice is heard. At best, 
 there is not sufficient passion to humanize and 
 realize them. They move and speak in a rare 
 atmosphere. They seldom condescend, even to 
 each other. Bosom-friends hold intercourse like 
 kings, each hedged by his own divinity, or like the 
 gods fabled by the philosophers, spherical and per- 
 fect. We long for some show of emotion, some 
 intimacy, some spontaneous human exchange; but 
 each preserves his inviolate rotundity and the only 
 contact is hard and punctual. There is some com- 
 pensation in the safety which all this restraint in- 
 sures. Rebukes, irony, badinage, even a coarse 
 jest, are passed with dignity and a kind of courtesy 
 and good breeding that preclude any fear on the 
 reader's part of a violent ending to the scene. Hut 
 this is not drama. Nor are the Dramatic dialogues 
 written in any such temper. Occasionally, indeed, 
 even they are marred by something of the same
 
 INTRODUCTION, xxxix 
 
 primness and formality. Unreasoning human im- 
 pulse is not always allowed to be a sufficient motive 
 for action the actor appeals first to the court of 
 his intellect. "Be seated, O Helena," says Achil- 
 les; and Helena complies only with a double 
 apology: " The feeble are obedient; the weary may 
 rest even in the presence of the powerful." But 
 in more inspired moments wisdom itself becomes 
 warmed, and what would have been a philosophic 
 abstraction, cold and sententious, from the lips of 
 Cicero or Epictetus, is glorified by being put into 
 the mouth of human passion and applied in a crisis 
 of human life. And when Lander's sympathy is 
 once wholly engaged, when his characters take 
 possession of him, and their passions, refined by 
 suffering, exalted by self-sacrifice, frenzied by 
 grief, surge beyond his control till he can only 
 watch and weep over them, as he did over the in- 
 comparable Tiberius and Vipsania, the illusion is 
 complete. Drama and life are one. 
 
 The Political and Critical dialogues are upon a 
 much lower plane. The Political in particular, or 
 those portions of the more desultory conversations 
 that touch upon political themes, have little value 
 of substance and tend too much toward the declama- 
 tory in style. Mr. Colvin sums the matter up 
 when he says that in the sphere of politics and 
 government Landor never got much beyond the 
 elementary principles of love of freedom and hatred 
 of tyranny. He had not the civic temperament. 
 He professed to despise politicians. He was sus- 
 picious of the integrity of men in public life. He
 
 xl IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 never affiliated closely with any party, holding 
 tenaciously to his own not always consistent views. 
 He knew the Tories would hate him for his abhor- 
 rence of the Holy Alliance, the Whigs for his con- 
 tempt of Napoleon. At Oxford he had worn his 
 hair without powder ("in a queue tied with black 
 ribbon") at the risk of being stoned for a republi- 
 can; and he remained an ardent republican in sen- 
 timent all his days. But his instincts were quite too 
 aristocratic to enable him to go the full length of 
 democracy. "Let me confess to you," Cleone 
 writes to Aspasia, " I do not like your sheer 
 democracies." The difficulty with him was to rec- 
 oncile the rights of the individual as represented by 
 himself with the rights of the individual as repre- 
 sented by the "average man." Monarchy's yoke of 
 oppression was intolerable, but scarcely less so was 
 democracy's yoke of equality. He could not, like 
 Whitman, call every boor brother. With personal 
 prejudices and poetic sensibilities thus always at 
 war with an intellectual ideal, enacting in his own 
 breast the conflict of Marino Faliero, doge of that 
 Venice whose republican form of government he 
 praised as the happiest on earth, his opinions on 
 statecraft were not likely to be consistent or con- 
 vincing. He exalted Prince Louis Napoleon far above 
 that prince's renowned uncle. His unpleasant ex- 
 perience with English courts of law made him bitter 
 against English justice. He was fond of satirizing 
 English institutions in general, though such satire, 
 put into the mouth of a Russian despot or an absurd 
 Chinese mandarin, lost much of its effect. He re-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xli 
 
 mained provincially British, however, in his hatred 
 of the French, with whom he believed vain-glory, 
 insolence, perfidy, and inhumanity to be ingrained 
 national traits. The French Revolution had been 
 a fine thing to warm the heart of youth, but its 
 agents were wicked, its issues calamitous. France 
 could invent only "her emblematic balloon, the 
 symbol of herself, flimsy, varnished, inflated, rest- 
 less, wavering, swaggering." Clearly Landor was 
 no Solon in modern politics. He worked best 
 among the passions that are viewed through the 
 subdued light of centuries. The statesmanship of 
 Pericles, the policy of Athens, the military exploits 
 of Scipio ^Emilianus, afforded him more congenial 
 themes. 
 
 It would be easy to make light of these defects 
 by regarding them as only the accidents of one kind 
 of greatness, the defects of a quality. Could we 
 for a moment ignore the existence of his strong 
 prejudices, we might really feel that Lander's views 
 upon contemporary politics and history are rendered 
 worthless by the very range of his vision. Not 
 that he was a prophet of the future in that capac- 
 ity he succeeded exactly as all others, hitting and 
 missing. Writing in 1824, he made Franklin de- 
 clare that wars would be impossible among our 
 newly federated States which nevertheless he 
 lived to see; while in 1851, with an augury to which 
 events in the close of the century are giving at least 
 a passing interest, he anticipated an alliance of 
 America with England, and remarked that the 
 possession of California had opened the Pacific and
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Indian seas to the Americans, "who must within 
 the lifetime of some now born predominate in both." 
 But Landor did see the drift of things in the large. 
 " All governments run ultimately into the great gulf 
 of despotism, widen or contract them, straighten or 
 divert them, as you will. From this gulf the Prov- 
 idence that rules all nature liberates them. Again 
 they return, to be again absorbed, at periods not 
 foreseen or calculable." Before this magnificent 
 spectacle of history seen entire, what are all the 
 petty tricks and makeshifts of statecraft, the tem- 
 porizing and compromising of calculating politicians? 
 At least the eye that could see this may be forgiven 
 fordistorting the perspective of nearer objects, and 
 we can understand Landor's assertion that the 
 writing of political dialogues was a most difficult 
 task, since "a man does not lose so much breath 
 by raising his hand above his head as by stooping 
 to tie his shoe-string." 
 
 His ventures into the quieter field of literary 
 criticism were in general more successful. It 
 is true he did not understand criticism as we 
 understand it to-day. He came somewhat before 
 Sainte-Beuve and his disciples. Sympathy with an 
 author or his purpose was allowed to play little 
 part. He treated a poem much like a statue, as 
 a detached work of art, a creation of objective 
 beauty in which the moral idea is nothing, the form 
 everything. This means that much of his criticism 
 was spent upon mere technical details, such as 
 words, meters, and sounds. Kvcn a very intelli- 
 gent and alert reader may be supposed to care
 
 INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 little for the slight incongruity of such a phrase as 
 "lips essayed to groan," yet Landor delights in 
 searching a poem of Byron's or Wordsworth's line 
 by line for just such flaws as this. It is like the 
 folly, which he somewhere satirizes, of throwing 
 pin-cushions at the Belvedere Apollo. Nor can we 
 follow him in his rapture over Tibullus because of 
 the latter's "judicious preference of the spondee 
 as one foot of the first hemistich of the pentam- 
 eter." The criticism may have some value as 
 coming from so expert a classical metrist, but 
 even this is doubtful if the fling at the " skittish 
 Sapphic," which he puts into the mouth of Pollio, 
 be allowable evidence. He spent much time over 
 English spelling and could scarcely be dissuaded 
 from introducing sweeping reforms into his printed 
 works. His prejudices, too, clouded his judgment. 
 He makes Time the final and infallible arbiter of 
 all men's work except Plato's. He ranked as a 
 great poet his friend Southey, whose gander, 
 Byron declared with characteristic irreverence, he 
 mistook for a swan. He praised Wordsworth until 
 he heard him sneer at Southey's poetry, and then: 
 "Among all the bran in the little bins of Mr. 
 Wordsworth's beer-cellar there is not a legal quart 
 of stout old English beverage." He descends to 
 puerilities. He finds metrical passages in the prose 
 of Demosthenes and rhymes in Plato, though such 
 things can be discovered in any great body of 
 prose, his own not excepted. He carps at the 
 anachronism, in Paradise Lost, of Satan's phalanx 
 moving to the Dorian mood, and at Adam's speak-
 
 xliv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ing of the sun painting mists with gold when Adam 
 could know nothing of paint or gold; not seeing 
 that such strictures, pushed to their logical limit, 
 would destroy the possibility of putting any words 
 at all into the mouth of Adam, or of writing any 
 Paradise Lost. But when all this is said, there 
 remains much criticism of such a high quality, so 
 prodigious in range of knowledge and taste, so 
 judicial and sincere in tone, as to command both 
 respect and gratitude. He has passed by few of 
 the world's gre^t writers without some luminous 
 observation. Many, like Pindar, Catullus, Cicero, 
 Petrarch, Boccaccio, get quite their full meed of 
 praise. If he did Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, 
 for example, scant justice, he made ample amends 
 in his generous appreciation of his other contem- 
 poraries, Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and Southey, and, 
 above all, of his earlier countryman through whose 
 "trumpet burst God's word," his master, Milton. 
 
 Touching the style in which this varied matter is 
 clothed it must be said at once that, could such a 
 computation be made, Lander's prose would proba- 
 bly be found to unite in itself more excellences with 
 fewer defects than that of any other English writer. 
 Other names rise more readily to the lips, because 
 other men have surpassed him in some specific 
 quality Pater in subtle sensuousness, Ruskin in 
 richness of passionate coloring, De Quincey in 
 volume of sound, Lamb in sweetness, Milton and 
 Hooker in sheer pomp of phrase and we are prone 
 to judge a man by his highest achievement; but for
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlv 
 
 artistic balance of many virtues he stands fairly 
 alone. He might even have surpassed some of 
 these in their own qualities had he not held rigor- 
 ously to an ideal of prose which kept it from in- 
 vading the province of any other art, and especially 
 poetry. He attained distinction, not by running 
 after strange gods, but by refusing to run after 
 them. He performed the really great feat of 
 achieving individuality of style without mannerism. 
 There is scarcely an ear-mark to know it by, and 
 yet it is all unmistakably Landorian. 
 
 Among the pervading qualities which made for 
 this distinction, perhaps the most jealously guarded 
 was originality an originality that never, of course, 
 degenerated to idiosyncrasy. It is not merely 
 that he avoided the thousand and one phrases 
 which are current in our speech and which 
 serve the journalist so well because they are 
 already perfected and polished and fitted to their 
 place. These are dialect and were necessarily 
 banned for their vulgarity, though possibly there 
 was a degree of snobbishness in such studious ban- 
 ning. But, more than this, his style is almost en- 
 tirely without a suspicion of indebtedness. Save 
 for a word at rare intervals from the Elizabethans 
 or from the Bible, not a phrase, not a figure, not 
 the turn of a thought, ever suggests a forerunner. 
 If a passage once written was discovered to have a 
 prototype, it was immediately rejected. He carried 
 this independence so far as even to disdain quota- 
 tion. To disdain it of course was not to escape it. 
 Had he stopped to reflect how relative this matter
 
 xlvi I 
 
 is, how far subtler than the mere echoing of words, 
 he would have realized that there is no escape. 
 Nevertheless, the instinct to avoid bald quotation 
 was peculiarly fine and true. Nothing could better 
 attest his own appreciation of style. Interject 
 a characteristic phrase from Rossini into one of 
 Chopin's nocturnes and where is harmony? But 
 the harmony of tone was purchased dearly. His 
 proud refusal to draw upon the stores of other 
 minds leaves his work barren by the side of a 
 Macaulay's or a Lowell's. He was richer than 
 these men in his own resources, but he was not 
 a Shakespeare to stand alone. 
 
 The purity of his style is almost as much beyond 
 question as its originality. He was highly incensed 
 at those modern authors who permitted themselves 
 to defile our well of English. He seemed to feel 
 himself almost alone in his loyalty; Carlyle's 
 Frederick the Great convinced him that he wrote 
 " two dead languages Latin and English." For- 
 eign words he eschewed. New words he was 
 slow to accept, though he did not, like Macaulay, 
 affect to scorn a coinage, feeling that "all words 
 are good which come when they are wanted." 
 Thus he admitted J'hryzianise ; and he wrote the- 
 vphtigints in one edition, though his conservative 
 fears expunged it in the next. Archaisms found 
 more favor with him, and the unfamiliar words 
 which even readers ot wide range; will come upon 
 here and there /V,// ( v/A>//.c, irrisorv, intempestire, 
 ii'isi-rftdtii'H, /V/T/iW, v'/r, v,v/Vc/ arc mostly of this 
 class. It is possible, however, that these were
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlvii 
 
 constructed from his knowledge of Latin rather 
 than drawn from his reading in old English. Such 
 is almost certainly the case with the few technical 
 terms of science, like carious and ebulliate, for he 
 was little interested in the sciences. He had a 
 keen sense of the meaning of words. He was not 
 to be deceived by the poetic glamour of an absurd 
 phrase like "unbidden tears," and he has some- 
 where intimated that "God's anointed " is nothing 
 other than " God's greased." 
 
 But there is another quality, not wholly unrelated 
 to originality and purity, which every reader soon 
 learns to associate with Lander's style, and for 
 which perhaps the best name is severity. The 
 presence of the severe eye and the severe hand is 
 manifest on every page. No modern writer has 
 adhered more inflexibly to the Greek ideal of jArjdtv 
 ayav nothing overmuch. Every excrescence of 
 thought, every superfluity of phrase, down to the 
 last particle, is shorn away. The elliptical Pindar 
 and the sententious Bacon excite his approval. 
 Obscurity he professed to abhor, but he abhorred 
 prolixity more, and we are sometimes left face to 
 face with a bare ejaculation and no clew to its 
 meaning. He that runs may not read Landor. 
 
 And this compression of matter, which makes 
 him the most aphoristic writer between Bacon and 
 Emerson, is only greater than the vigilant restraint 
 everywhere exercised over form. He was averse 
 from the many rhetorical tricks hyperbole, bal- 
 ance, repetition, antithesis that make the stock in 
 trade of more superficially brilliant writers. What-
 
 xlviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ever was gaudy was to him meretricious and vulgar. 
 Ornament he would have, some remission of 
 severity, but only of the richest brocade, and 
 never tinsel. In just one direction, perhaps, he 
 relaxed his severity too far. He was tempted to 
 excess of figures, the temptation of the imaginative 
 mind. He held that metaphors should be used 
 sparingly: "that man sees badly who sees every- 
 thing double." Vet his own metaphors are frequent 
 and full. He resorted most freely to the similitude, 
 which he employed to explain and enforce a fore- 
 going aphorism. Thus, for example, Bacon is made 
 to defend chastity of style: 
 
 Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to 
 order and grace ; and the beauty that is not liberal is sought the 
 most ardently and loved the longest. The Graces have their 
 zones, and Venus her cestus. 
 
 And thus Agnes Sorel sighs over the instability of 
 love : 
 
 Alas ! Alas ! Time loosens man's affections. I may become 
 unworthy. In the sweetest (lower there is much that is not fra- 
 grance, and which transpires when the freshness has passed away. 
 
 Such figures, it must be admitted, have a beauty 
 quite independent of their use. I'.ut even of beautv 
 there may be a surfeit. besides, they are over- 
 refined. They are not wild-flowers of the imagina- 
 tion, but carefully tended plants. Thev affect us 
 somewhat as Abdul's handmaiden, Almeida, whose 
 human qualities, in Kilipp.) I.ippi's description, 
 presented themselves always beneath an exterior
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlix 
 
 "cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine gathered 
 before sunrise." We feel the allurement, as of 
 something supersensually sensuous, but we are not 
 warmed beyond admiration. 
 
 The old question will thrust itself forward here, 
 whether we are to range Landor with the classic or 
 with the romantic writers. Critics cannot quite 
 agree, though usually uniting with Mr. Colvin in 
 placing him on the classic side. Surely the matter, 
 though not simple, is clear. There were two men 
 in Landor one of very romantic temper, which 
 was always rising to the surface and impressing 
 itself upon those who came into casual contact 
 with him; the other, serene and self-controlled, 
 reserved for his few intimate friends, and betrayed 
 to the world only in his works of purest art. Right 
 here indeed is the main wonder, that a man of such 
 tremendous energies, such perverse and impetuous 
 self-will, should achieve this well-nigh absolute 
 restraint. Passionate, rebellious, individualistic 
 by nature, when he approaches his art how calm 
 and conservative! how he ranges his forces on the 
 side of law and order, confronting the barbarian 
 hordes of the romanticists with a solid Macedonian 
 phalanx! For classicism means predominance of 
 intellect and the sense for artistic restraint, while 
 romanticism means predominance of emotion and 
 the impulse toward natural freedom. The one 
 makes for definiteness of conception, severity of 
 form, simplicity, purity, permanence; the other for 
 subtlety of impression, riot of color, exuberance, 
 lawlessness, change. It is n >t that Landor totally
 
 1 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 repressed his romantic tendencies. They show 
 quite frequently enough to account for the con- 
 fusion of critics. It would be strange indeed if no 
 traces of the man who echoed the republican senti- 
 ments of Milton and lauded the sensuous art of 
 Keats should be found in all his voluminous works, 
 professedly dramatic and objective though they be. 
 And the traces are there now in a touch of most 
 delicate nature-feeling, now in a bit of arabesque 
 description, now in a cry of very human passion. 
 Hut for the most part Landor the artist sits above 
 unmoved, judging and regulating. 
 
 This will go far, too, toward explaining his unique 
 position apart from men of the second order of 
 genius, yet distinctly below those of the first. He 
 aimed to stand with the latter in possessing both 
 the romantic and the classic temper and preserving 
 them in perfect balance. Or, as he might have 
 formulated to himself what was of course never a 
 distinctly conscious aim, he tried to maintain a 
 richly endowed nature in harmonious development. 
 Thus far he succeeded, but unfortunately his in- 
 tellect was not of the first order. Had he realized 
 this and given free play to his romantic tendencies, 
 he would have attracted at once that wide public 
 which is always susceptible to emotional appeals 
 and is caught by glitter and noise. But he set his 
 face the other way, subduing his nature to the 
 measure of his intellect and aspiring to the company 
 of Homer and Shakespeare. The balance was se- 
 cured, but the companionship must be denied, for 
 he lacked the highest attribute of pure intellect,
 
 IN TROD UCTION. 1 i 
 
 the faculty for synthesis and organization, without 
 which no depth or fervor of imagination can pro- 
 duce a transcendent work of art. 
 
 So far as mere style goes, the effect of this classic 
 restraint is disappointing upon all but those who 
 rejoice in the gift, or suffer under the affliction, of 
 what pathology knows as hypersesthesia. The 
 recently discovered Delphic hymn to Apollo seems 
 to us strangely monotonous in its melody. But it 
 is only a type of all Greek art. The modulation is 
 there, so surely as the entasis is in the shaft] of 
 the Doric column, though our ears and eyes, long 
 dulled by the violences done in the name of romanti- 
 cism, may need a requickening to perceive them. 
 So there are modulations in Landor's art con- 
 descensions enough to ear and eye. There are no 
 bursts of sound, it may be, but there is mellifluous 
 music everywhere and scarcely a sentence that is 
 not tuneful. And the monotint of many a somber 
 passage is relieved by an exquisite picture, clear in 
 outline as a vase-painting and delicately colored as 
 an aquarelle. Quite beyond any graphic art indeed 
 is Petrarca's limning of " the peculiar and costly 
 decoration of our Tuscan villas: the central turret, 
 round which the kite perpetually circles in search 
 of pigeons or smaller prey, borne onward, like the 
 Flemish skater, by effortless will in motionless 
 progression." Or take this from the only tedious 
 story that Chaucer ever told: 
 
 Soon however that quarter of the field began to show its herb- 
 age again in larger spaces ; and at the distant sound of the 
 French trumpets, which was shrill, fitful, and tuneless, the broken
 
 Hi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ranks of the enemy near him waved like a tatterea banner in the 
 wind, and melted, and disappeared. 
 
 One thing, however, which Landor intended as an 
 amenity of his style must be rated as a serious 
 defect. It is a pity that he did not estimate more 
 rightly his poor gift for humor. Purely as humor, 
 it is not often acceptable. As just intimated, he 
 puts a tale into the mouth of Chaucer which might 
 almost perturb the rest of that gentle spirit. And 
 the humor is made inexpressibly worse when it 
 descends to indelicacy one of the manifestations of 
 what Arnold has called, with less than his usual 
 felicity, "the provincial note." We remember, of 
 course, that he was a child of the eighteenth century, 
 of an age considerably less sensitive than ours. 
 Anil he grew more scrupulous as he grew older, 
 canceling here and there. Hut enough remains 
 to give every sensitive reader pain. When, for 
 example, Achilles tells how his father went with the 
 brothers of Helena to hunt the boar in the brakes 
 of Kalydon, and Helena responds, "Horrible 
 creatures! boars I mean," we can but sympathize 
 with Mr. dilvin's desire to suppress the irrelevant 
 exclamation. Again, toward the end of the conver- 
 sation between Fra Filippo I,ippi and 1'ope Kugenius 
 the Fourth then.- is a passage that may well be 
 cpioted here, so typical is it throughout of Lan- 
 dor's genius, in which the proudest strength but too 
 often betrays some fatal weakness. 
 
 /'/////.'. In the lieantiful little town of I'mtn, reposing in its 
 idleness .-i^.iin-.t tin- hill that proh-t N it fnmi tlic north, and look- 
 ing over fertile iii'-.i'loux, souths .ud t<> l'".;i;i'> C.ij.uio, westward
 
 INTRODUCTION. liii 
 
 toPistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited 
 by the sisters to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of 
 fifteen, my own sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me 
 work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance had already 
 looked down on every beholder lower by the knees. I myself, 
 who had made her, could almost have worshiped her. 
 
 Eugenius. Not while incomplete ; no half-virgin will do. 
 
 Filippo. But there knelt Lucrezia ! there she knelt ! first look- 
 ing with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder 
 and grateful delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be 
 divided ? Twere a pity ! There was enough for me : there is 
 never enough for the Madonna. Resolving on a sudden that the 
 object of my love should be the object of adoration to thousands, 
 born and unborn, I swept my brush across the maternal face, and 
 left a blank in heaven. The little girl screamed : I pressed her 
 to my bosom. 
 
 No praise would seem extravagant for this narra- 
 tive of Filippo's, which comes upon a jaded literary 
 taste with a pleasure so exquisite, so intense, as 
 scarcely to be described but in terms of pain. 
 And then to have it marred by that inane jest! 
 Was there no other way in which Landor could 
 satisfy his desire to ridicule the pope? It is the 
 brush across the Madonna's face. The feeling it 
 arouses is deeper than irritation, it is poignant 
 sorrow. The pity of it ! we say, as when we gaze on 
 the mutilated Venus of Milo. Only there it is the 
 void, the defect, here it is the blemish. Where so 
 much else is perfect to the last touch, why not all? 
 The artist's taste was never sure, even when his art 
 was at its highest. 
 
 But the nice adjustment of these conflicting 
 claims becomes an endless and idle task. The
 
 1 i V IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 balance has already been struck, and we must con- 
 clude as we began. Speaking of his fame, Landor 
 declared, in words which no critic can refrain from 
 quoting: " I shall dine late; but the dining-room 
 will be well lighted, the guests few and select." By 
 attempting thus to anticipate the verdict of pos- 
 terity, he only hampered and delayed that verdict. 
 For it has been hard to treat dispassionately one 
 who could rarely be dispassionate, hard not to be 
 either roused to antagonism or moved to disdain. 
 But a few years suffice to remove such obstructions, 
 and we see clearly enough now that Landor was 
 right. Fame is at best a foolish thing, the world's 
 unhonored note for value received, but we know 
 what measure of it falls to this man. Without 
 Carlyle's strenuous insistence upon conduct, with- 
 out Arnold's anxious concern for truth, without 
 Kuskin's passionate worship of beauty, it was yet 
 his to combine in some degree the virtues of all and 
 to present both precepts of wisdom and inspiration 
 to noble life under forms of imperishable beauty 
 and power.
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 1775. Landor born at Warwick, January 30. 
 
 c. 1779. To school at Knowle. 
 
 c. 1785. To Rugby. 
 
 1793- A commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. 
 
 1794-98. London and Wales. 
 
 1799-1808. Chiefly at Bath. 
 
 1808. With the army in Spain. 
 
 1811. Marries Julia Thuillier. At Llanthony Abbey, 
 
 Monmouthshire. 
 1814. To Tours. 
 i 8l 5-35- In Italy: Como, Pisa, Pistoia, Florence (1821), 
 
 Fiesole (Villa Gherardesca, 1829). 
 1835-58. In England, chiefly at Bath. 
 1858-64. In Italy : Fiesole, Siena, Florence (1859). 
 1864. Died at Florence, September 17.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 1795. Poems. 
 
 1798. Gebir ; a Poem in Seven Books. 
 
 1800. Poems from the Arabic and Persian. 
 
 1803. Gebirus. [The Latin version of Gebir]. 
 
 1806. Simonidca. 
 
 1812. Count Julian : a Tragedy. 
 
 1815. Idyllia nova quinque Ileroum atque Heroidum. 
 
 Oxford. 
 
 1820. Idyllia Heroica dccem. Pisa. 
 1824-29. Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and 
 
 .Statesmen, etc. London. Vols. i. and ii., 1824; 
 
 second cd., corrected and enlarged, 1826. Vol. iii., 
 
 iS-jS. Yols. iv. and v., 1829. 
 1834. Citation and Kxamination of William Shakespeare. 
 
 1836. I'erielcs and Aspasia. 
 
 1837. The Pentameron and Pentalo^ia. 
 
 1839. Andrea of Hungary and Giovanna of Naples. 
 1841. Fra Rupert. 
 
 1847. Poemata et Inscription's. 
 
 1847. The Hellenics. (Translations of the Idyllia with 
 
 additions.) 
 1853. The Last Fruit olT an Old Tree. 
 
 1858. Dry Sticks, fagoted by Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 1859. The Hellenics, Knlarvred. 
 
 i8(>3. Heroic Idyls, with additional poems. 
 
 1840. Works. London, 2 vols. 
 
 iS~(>. Works and Life. F.d. by John Forster, London, 8 
 vols. The prose works were reprinted 1883-88, 
 Boston, 7 vuls. 
 
 Ivi
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ivii 
 
 1891-92. Works. Ed. by C. G. Crump. London, 10 vols. 
 
 Variorum edition, with notes; text based on 
 
 Forster. 
 1882. Selections. Arr. and ed. by Sidney Colvin. London. 
 
 Selections have also been edited by G. -S. Hillard, 
 Boston, 1856; by Havelock Ellis, London, 1886 (Pentam- 
 eron, 1889, Pericles and Aspasia, 1890); by W. B. S. 
 Clymer, Boston, 1898.
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. 
 
 Walter Savage Landor: a Biography. By John Forster. 
 London, 2 vols., 1869. Revised and printed as vol. i. of 
 1876 ed. of Works and Life. Newed., 1895. Authorized, 
 full, frank, trustworthy, but cumbrous and often uncritical. 
 
 Landor. By Sidney Colvin. English Men of Letters. 
 London, 1884. Condensed, precise, discriminating. 
 
 Some Letters to Miss Mary ttoyle. Century, Feb., 1888. 
 
 Letters and other Unpublished Writings of Walter 
 Savage Landor. Ed. by Stephen Wheeler. London, 
 1897. Contains a full bibliography. 
 
 Letters of Walter Savage Landor, Private and Public. 
 Ed. by Stephen Wheeler. London, 1899. 
 
 See also Landor in Ency. Brit, by Mr. Swinburne, and 
 in Diet, of Nat. Biog. by Mr. Leslie Stephen. Also Leigh 
 Hunt's Lord Jlyron and /tix Contemporaries, 1827; Coun- 
 tess of Blessington's Idler in Italy, 1839; Home's Neiu 
 Spirit of the Age (art. partly by Miss Barrett), 1844; 
 Madden's Lit. Life and Corr. of Countess of lUessington, 
 1855; Emerson's English Trails, 1856; Kate Field's Last 
 Days of Landor , All. Mo., 1866; Crabb Robinson's Diary, 
 1869; Chas. Dickens in All the Year Round, 1869; Mrs. 
 E. Lynn Linton's Reminiscences in l r raser's, 1870; Lord 
 Houghton's Monographs, 1873; The Landor- lUessington 
 Papers in Nieoll and Wise's Lilerarv Anecdotes of tiie 
 Nineteenth Century, London, 1896; and An Open Letter 
 to R. ll r . I-'merson, in the- same. 
 
 de Vere, Aubrey. Landor'' s [\>e/ry. Essays, Chiefly on 
 Poetry, 1887. 
 
 jt Dowden, Edward. Studies in Literature. London, 
 1892. A study of Landor's temperament and art.
 
 BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. lix 
 
 Lowell, J. R. Latest Literary Essays. Article written 
 as introduction to the Letters of Landor in the Century, 
 1888. 
 
 Scudder, Horace E. Landor as a Classic. Men and 
 Letters. Boston, 1887. 
 
 Stedman, E. C. Victorian Poets. Boston, 1875. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library \ 1879. A temper- 
 ate review of the style and motive of the Imaginary Con- 
 versations. 
 
 Swinburne, A. C. Song for the Centenary of Walter 
 Savage Landor. A dithyrambic summary and eulogy of 
 Lander's life and work. 
 
 Woodberry, G. E. At I. Monthly, vol. 51. Studies in 
 Letters and Life, Boston, 1890. The " objective " charac- 
 ter of Lander's work is given emphasis. 
 
 See also the critical introductions to the various editions 
 of works and selections.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 
 
 Hesop anD tRbofcope. 
 
 sEsop. And so, our fellow-slaves are given to 
 contention on the score of dignity? 
 
 RhodopZ. I do not believe they are much addicted 
 
 to contention; for, whenever the good Xanthus 
 
 5 hears a signal of such misbehaviour, he either 
 
 brings a scourge into the midst of them, or sends 
 
 our lady to scold them smartly for it. 
 
 sEsop. Admirable evidence against their pro- 
 pensity! 
 
 10 Rhodopt. I will not have you find them out so, 
 nor laugh at them. 
 
 sEsop. Seeing that the good Xanthus and our 
 
 lady are equally fond of thee, and always visit thee 
 
 both together, the girls, however envious, cannot 
 
 15 well or safely be arrogant, but must of necessity 
 
 yield the first place to thee. 
 
 Rhodopt. They indeed are observant of the 
 kindness thus bestowed upon me; yet they afflict 
 me by taunting me continually with what I am un- 
 20 able to deny. 
 
 sEsop. If it is true, it ought little to trouble 
 thee; if untrue, less. I know, for I have looked
 
 2 JESOP AND RHODOP&. 
 
 into nothing else of late, no evil can thy heart have 
 admitted: a sigh of thine before the gods would 
 remove the heaviest that could fall on it. Pray 
 tell me what it may be. Come, be courageous; be 
 cheerful! I can easily pardon a smile if thou em- 5 
 pleadest me of curiosity. 
 
 RhoJop}. They remark to me that enemies or 
 robbers took them forcibly from their parents 
 and that and that 
 
 Likely enough: what then? Why desist 10 
 from speaking? why cover thy face with thy hair 
 and hands? Rhodope! Rhodope! dost thou weep, 
 moreover? 
 
 R ho Jo ft. It is so sure! 
 
 sEsop. Was the fault thine? 15 
 
 RhoJopc. () that it were! if there was any. 
 
 sEsop. While it pains thee to tell it, keep thy 
 silence; but when utterance is a solace, then im- 
 part it. 
 
 RhoJopc. They remind me (oh! who could have 20 
 had the cruelty to relate it) that my father, my own 
 dear father 
 
 sl'.sop. Say not the rest: I know it: his day has 
 come. 
 
 RhoJop?. sold me, sold me. You start: you did 25 
 not at the lightning last night, nor at the rolling 
 sounds above. And do you, generous yKsop! do 
 you also call a misfortune a disgrace? 
 
 *-Esop. If it is, I am among the most disgraceful 
 of men. Didst thou dearly love thy father? 3 
 
 J\/ii>Ji>pt'. All loved him. He was very fond of 
 me.
 
 &SOP AND RHODOP&. 3 
 
 . And yet sold thee ! sold thee to a stranger! 
 Rhodopt. He was the kindest of all kind fathers, 
 nevertheless. Nine summers ago, you may have 
 heard perhaps, there was a grievous famine in our 
 5 land of Thrace. 
 
 jfcsop. I remember it perfectly. 
 Rhodopt. O poor ^Esop! and were you too fam- 
 ishing in your native Phrygia? 
 
 jfcsop. The calamity extended beyond the narrow 
 10 sea that separates our countries. My appetite was 
 sharpened; but the appetite and the wits are 
 equally set on the same grindstone. 
 
 Rhodopt. I was then scarcely five years old; my 
 mother died the year before: my father sighed at 
 15 every funeral, but he sighed more deeply at every 
 bridal, song. He loved me because he loved her 
 who bore me: and yet I made him sorrowful whether 
 I cried or smiled. If ever I vexed him, it was be- 
 cause I would not play when he told me, but 
 20 made him, by my weeping, weep again. 
 
 sEsop. And yet he could endure to lose thee! he, 
 thy father! Could any other? could any who lives 
 on the fruits of the earth, endure it? O age, that 
 art incumbent over me! blessed be thou; thrice 
 25 blessed! Not that thou stillest the tumults of the 
 heart, and promisest eternal calm, but that, pre- 
 vented by thy beneficence, I never shall experience 
 this only intolerable wretchedness. 
 
 Rhodopc. Alas! alas! 
 
 30 sEsop. Thou art now happy, and shouldst not 
 utter that useless exclamation. 
 
 Rhodop'i'. You said something angrily and vehe-
 
 4 ^ESOP AND RHODOP&. 
 
 mently when you stepped aside. Is it not enough 
 that the handmaidens doubt the kindness of my 
 father? Must so virtuous and so wise a man as 
 yKsop blame him also? 
 
 sEsop. Perhaps he is little to be blamed; certainly 5 
 he is much to be pitied. 
 
 Rhodop'e. Kind heart! on which mine must never 
 rest! 
 
 ALsop. Rest on it for comfort and for counsel 
 when they fail thee: rest on it, as the deities on 10 
 the breast of mortals, to console and purify it. 
 
 Rhodopi. Could I remove any sorrow from it, I 
 should be contented. 
 
 sEsop. Then be so; and proceed in thy narra- 
 tive. 15 
 
 Rhodope. Bear with me a little yet. My thoughts 
 have overpowered my words, and now themselves 
 are overpowered and scattered. Forty-seven days 
 ago (this is only the forty-eighth since I beheld you 
 first) I was a child; I was ignorant, I was care- 20 
 less. 
 
 sEsop. If these qualities are signs of childhood, 
 the universe is a nursery. 
 
 Rhodop'e. Affliction, which makes many wiser, 
 had no such effect on me. Hut reverence and love 25 
 (why should I hesitate at the one avowal more than 
 at the other?) came over me, to ripen my under- 
 standing. 
 
 sEsop. O Rhodope! we must loiter no longer 
 upon this discourse. 3 
 
 Rhodope. Why not? 
 
 sEsop. Pleasant is yonder beanfield, seen over
 
 jESOP AND RHODOP&. 5 
 
 the high papyrus when it waves and bends: deep 
 laden with the sweet heaviness of its odour is the 
 listless air that palpitates dizzily above it; but 
 Death is lurking for the slumberer beneath its 
 5 blossoms. 
 
 Rhodopt. You must not love then! but may 
 not I? 
 
 We will, but - 
 
 Rhodopt. We ! O sound that is to vibrate on my 
 10 breast for ever! O hour, happier than all other 
 hours since time began! O gracious gods! who 
 brought me into bondage! 
 
 ALsop. Be calm, be composed, be circumspect. 
 We must hide our treasure that we may not lose it. 
 15 Rhodope. I do not think that you can love me; and 
 I fear and tremble to hope so. Ah, yes; you have 
 said you did. But again you only look at me, and 
 sigh as if you repented. 
 
 sEsop. Unworthy as I may be of thy fond regard, 
 aolamnot unworthy of thy fullest confidence: why 
 distrust me? 
 
 Rhodop^. Never will I! never, never! To know 
 that I possess your love surpasses all other knowl- 
 edge, dear as is all that I receive from you. I 
 25 should be tired of my own voice if I heard it on 
 aught beside: and even yours is less melodious 
 in any other sound than Rhodopt. 
 
 sEsop. Do such little girls learn to flatter? 
 Rhodopt. Teach me how to speak, since you 
 3o could not teach me how to be silent. 
 
 sEsop. Speak no longer of me, but of thyself; 
 and only of things that never pain thee.
 
 6 & SOP A.VD RIIODOP&. 
 
 Rhodopt. Nothing can pain me now. 
 
 .-Esop. Relate thy story then, from infancy. 
 
 Rhodopt. I must hold your hand: I am afraid of 
 losing you again. 
 
 sEsop. Now begin. Why silent so long? 5 
 
 Rhodopl:. I have dropped all memory of what is 
 told by me and what is untold. 
 
 sEsop. Recollect a little. I can be patient with 
 this hand in mine. 
 
 Rhodope. I am not certain that yours is any help 10 
 to recollection. 
 
 .-Es(>p. Shall I remove it? 
 
 Rhodopf. O! now I think I can recall the whole 
 story. What did you say? did you ask any ques- 
 tion? 15 
 
 . A'.w>/>. None, excepting what them hast answered. 
 
 Rluhiope. Never shall I forget the morning when 
 my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, 
 exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys 
 of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He watched 20 
 the merchant out of the door, and then looked 
 wistfully into the corn-chest. I, who thought 
 there was something worth seeing, looked in also, 
 and, finding it empty, expressed my disappoint- 
 ment, not thinking, however, a!>out the corn. \ 25 
 faint and transient smile came over his countenance 
 at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, 
 stretched it out with both hands before me, and 
 then cast it over my shoulders. 1 looked down on 
 the glittering fringe and s< reamed with joy. He 30 
 then went out; and 1 know not what flowers lie 
 gathered, but he gathered many; and some he
 
 JESOP AND RHODOP&. ^ 
 
 placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I 
 told him with captious pride, first that I could 
 arrange them better, and again that I would have 
 only the white. However, when he had selected all 
 5 the white, and I had placed a few of them accord- 
 ing to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) 
 he might crown me with the remainder. The splen- 
 dour of my apparel gave me a sensation of author- 
 ity. Soon as the flowers had taken their station 
 
 10 on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at 
 the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could 
 have seen how they appeared! But he knew that 
 there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, 
 and perhaps we divided the latter (alas! not both) 
 
 15 pretty equally. He now took me into the market- 
 place, where a concourse of people was waiting 
 for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and 
 looked at me; some commending, others disparag- 
 ing; but all agreeing that I was slender and 
 
 20 delicate, that I could not live long, and that I 
 should give much trouble. Many would have 
 bought the chlamys, but there was something less 
 salable in the child and flowers. 
 
 sEsop. Plad thy features been coarse and thy 
 
 25 voice rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks 
 and found no fault in thee. 
 
 Rhodopt. As it was, every one had bought ex- 
 actly such another in time past, and been a loser by 
 it. At these speeches I perceived the flowers trem- 
 
 30 ble slightly on my bosom, from my father's agitation. 
 Although he scoffed at them, knowing my healthi- 
 ness, he was troubled internally, and said many
 
 8 ^ESOP AND RIlODOPk. 
 
 short prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning 
 his head aside. Proud was I, prouder than ever, 
 when at last several talents were offered for me, 
 and by the very man who in the beginning had un- 
 dervalued me the most, and prophesied the worst 5 
 of me. My father scowled at him, and refused the 
 money. I thought he was playing a game, and 
 began to wonder what it could be, since I never had 
 seen it played before. Then I fancied it might be 
 some celebration because plenty had returned to 10 
 the city, insomuch that my father had bartered the 
 last of the corn he hoarded. I grew more and more 
 delighted at the sport. IJut soon there advanced 
 an elderly man, who said gravely, "Thou hast 
 stolen this child: her vesture alone is worth above 15 
 a hundred drachmas. Carry her home again to her 
 Barents, and do it directly, or Nemesis and the 
 Eumenides will overtake thee." Knowing the esti- 
 mation in which my father had always been holden 
 by his fellow-citizens, I laughed again, and pinched 20 
 his ear. He, although naturally choleric, burst 
 forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but 
 said calmly, " I think I know thee by name, O 
 guest! Surely tiiou art Xanthus the Samian. De- 
 liver this child from famine." 25 
 
 Again I laughed aloud and heartily; and thinking 
 it was now my part of the game, I held out both my 
 arms and protruded my whole body toward the 
 stranger. He would not receive me from my 
 father's neck, but he asked me with benignity and 30 
 solicitude if I was hungry; at which 1 laughed 
 again, and more than ever: for it was early in the
 
 JESOP AND RHODOPh. 9 
 
 morning, soon after the first meal, and my father 
 had nourished me most carefully and plentifully in 
 all the days of the famine. But Xanthus, waiting 
 for no answer, took out of a sack, which one of his 
 5 slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten bread 
 and a piece of honey-comb, and gave them to me. 
 I held the honey-comb to my father's mouth, think- 
 ing it the most of a dainty. He dashed it to the 
 ground; but, seizing the bread, he began to devour 
 
 10 it ferociously. This also I thought was in play; 
 and I clapped my hands at his distortions. But 
 Xanthus looked on him like one afraid, and smote 
 the cake from him, crying aloud, " Name the price." 
 My father now placed me in his arms, naming a 
 
 15 price much below what the other had offered, say- 
 ing, "The gods are ever with thee, O Xanthus! 
 therefore to thee do I consign my child." But 
 while Xanthus was counting out the silver, my 
 father seized the cake again, which the slave had 
 
 20 taken up and was about to replace in the wallet. 
 His hunger was exasperated by the taste and the de- 
 lay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning 
 round in the old woman's bosom who had received 
 me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father strug- 
 
 25gling on the ground, livid and speechless. The 
 more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried 
 me away; and many were soon between us. Little 
 was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of 
 famine long before: alas! and he had suffered them 
 
 30 for me. Do I weep while I am telling you they 
 ended? I could not have closed his eyes; I was too 
 young: but I might have received his last breath,
 
 10 MSOP AND RHODOP&. 
 
 the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you 
 now think him blunuible, () .Ksop? 
 
 .-Esop. It was sublime humanity: it was forbear- 
 ance and self-denial which even the immortal gods 
 have never shown us. He could endure to perish 5 
 by those torments which alone are both acute and 
 slow; he could number the steps of death and miss 
 not one: but he could never see thy tears, nor let 
 thee see his. () weakness above all fortitude! 
 (ilory to the man win; rather bears a grief corroding 10 
 his breast, than permits it to prowl beyond, and to 
 prey on the tender and compassionate! Women 
 commiserate the brave, and men the beautiful. The 
 dominion of 1'ity has usually this extent, no wider. 
 Thy father was exposed to the obloquy not only of 15 
 the malicious, but also of the ignorant and thought- 
 less, who condemn in the unfortunate what they ap- 
 plaud in the prosperous. There is no shame in 
 poverty or in slavery, if we neither make ourselves 
 poor by our improvidence nor slaves by our venality. 20 
 The lowest and highest of the human race are 
 sold : most of the intermediate are also slaves, but 
 slaves who bring no money in the market. 
 
 Rhodope. Surely the great and powerful are never 
 to be purchased, are they? 25 
 
 sEsop. It may be a defect in my vision, but I 
 cannot see greatness on the earth. What they tell 
 me is great and aspiring, to me seems little and 
 crawling. Let me inert thy question with another. 
 What monarch gives his daughter for nothing? 30 
 Kither he receives stone walls and unwilling cities in 
 return, or he barters her for a parcel of spears and
 
 JSSOP AND RHODOP&. II 
 
 horses and horsemen, waving away from his declin- 
 ing and helpless age young joyous life, and tramp- 
 ling down the freshest and the sweetest memories. 
 Midas in the height of prosperity would have given 
 5 his daughter to Lycaon, rather than to the gentlest, 
 the most virtuous, the most intelligent of his sub- 
 jects. Thy father threw wealth aside, and placing 
 thee under the protection of Virtue, rose up from 
 the house of Famine to partake in the festivals of 
 
 10 the gods. 
 
 Release my neck, O Rhodope ! for I have other 
 questions to ask of thee about him. 
 
 Rhodop^. To hear thee converse on him in such 
 a manner I can do even that. 
 
 15 sEsop. Before the day of separation was he never 
 sorrowful? Did he never by tears or silence reveal 
 the secret of his soul? 
 
 Rhodop^. I was too infantine to perceive or im- 
 agine his intention. The night before I became the 
 
 20 slave of Xanthus, he sat on the edge of my bed. I 
 pretended to be asleep: he moved away silently and 
 softly. I saw him collect in the hollow of his hand 
 the crumbs I had wasted on the floor, and then eat 
 them, and then look if any were remaining. I 
 
 25 thought he did so out of fondness for me, remem- 
 bering that, even before the famine, he had often 
 swept up off the table the bread I had broken, and 
 had made me put it between his lips. I would not 
 dissemble very long, but said, 
 
 3 " Come, now you have wakened me, you must 
 
 sing me asleep again, as you did when I was little." 
 
 He smiled faintly at this, and, after some delay,
 
 12 &SOP AND RHODOP&. 
 
 when he had walked up and down the chamber, thus 
 began: 
 
 "I will sing to thee one song more, my wakeful 
 Rhodope! my chirping bird! over whom is no 
 mother's wing! That it may lull thee asleep, I 5 
 will celebrate no longer, as in the days of wine and 
 plenteousness, the glory of Mars, guiding in their 
 invisibly rapid onset the dappled steeds of Rhresus. 
 What hast thou to do, my little one, with arrows 
 tired of clustering in the quiver? How much 10 
 quieter is thy pallet than the tents which whitened 
 the plain of Simois! What knowest thou about 
 the river Eurotas? What knowest thou about its 
 ancient palace, once trodden by assembled gods, 
 and then polluted by the Phrygian? What knowest 15 
 thou of perfidious men or of sanguinary deeds? 
 
 "Pardon me, O goddess who presides! in Cy- 
 thera! I am not irreverent to thee, but ever grate- 
 ful. May she upon whose brow I lay my hand 
 praise and bless thee for evermore! 20 
 
 " Ah, yes! continue to hold up above the cover- 
 let those fresh and rosy palms clasped together: her 
 benefits have descended on thy beauteous head, my 
 child! The Fates also have sung, beyond thy hear- 
 ing, of pleasanter scenes than snow-fed Hebrus; of 25 
 more than dim grottoes and sky-bright waters. 
 Even now a low murmur swells upward to my ear: 
 and not from the spindle comes the sound, but 
 from those who sing slowly over it, bending all 
 three their tremulous heads together. I wish thou yc. 
 couldst hear it; for seldom are their voices so sweet. 
 Thy pillow intercepts the song perhaps: lie down
 
 &SOP AND RHODOP&. 13 
 
 again, lie down, my Rhodope! I will repeat what 
 they are saying: 
 
 " ' Happier shalt thou be, nor less glorious, than 
 even she, the truly beloved, for whose return to the 
 5 distaff and the lyre the portals of Taenarus flew open. 
 In the woody dells of Ismarus, and when she bathed 
 among the swans of Strymon, the nymphs called 
 her Eurydice. Thou shalt behold that fairest and 
 that fondest one hereafter. But first thou must 
 
 logo into the land of the lotos, where famine never 
 cometh, and where alone the works of man are 
 immortal.' 
 
 " O my child! the undeceiving Fates have uttered 
 this. Other powers have visited me, and have 
 
 15 strengthened my heart with dreams and visions. 
 We shall meet again, my Rhodope! in shady groves 
 and verdant meadows, and we shall sit by the side 
 of those who loved us." 
 
 He was rising: I threw my arms about his neck, 
 
 20 and, before I would let him go, I made him promise 
 to place me, not by the side, but between them; for 
 I thought of her who had left us. At that time 
 there were but two, O ^Esop! 
 
 You ponder: you are about to reprove my assur- 
 
 25 ance in having thus repeated my own praises. I 
 would have omitted some of the words, only that it 
 might have disturbed the measure and cadences, 
 and have put me out. They are the very words my 
 dearest father sang; and they are the last. Yet, 
 
 30 shame upon me! the nurse (the same who stood lis- 
 tening near, who attended me into this country) 
 could remember them more perfectly: it is from
 
 14 JESOP AND RHODOP&. 
 
 her I have learned them since; she often sings 
 them, even by herself. 
 
 -Esop. So shall others. There is much both in 
 them and in thee to render them memorable. 
 
 Rhodopt. Who flatters now? 5 
 
 sEsop. Flattery often runs beyond Truth, in a 
 hurry to embrace her; but not here. The dullest 
 of mortals, seeing and hearing thee, could never 
 misinterpret the prophecy of the Fates. 
 
 If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of 10 
 years, and could stand on the mountain-top, and 
 could look again far before me at the bright ascend- 
 ing morn, we would enjoy the prospect together; 
 we would walk along the summit hand in hand, O 
 Rhodope! and we would only sigh at last when we 15 
 found ourselves below with others.
 
 flDarcellus anfc Ibannibal. 
 
 Hannibal. Could a Numidian horseman ride no 
 faster? Marcellus! ho! Marcellus! He moves not 
 he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers? Stand 
 wide, soldiers wide, forty paces give him air 
 5 bring water halt! Gather those broad leaves, and 
 all the rest, growing under the brushwood unbrace 
 his armour. Loose the helmet first his breast rises. 
 I fancied his eyes were fixed on me they have rolled 
 back again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? 
 
 10 This horse? It was surely the horse of Marcellus! 
 Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too, 
 sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger. 
 
 Gaulish Chieftain. Execrable thief! The golden 
 chain of our king under a beast's grinders! The ven- 
 
 15 geance of the gods hath overtaken the impure 
 
 Hannibal. We will talk about vengeance when we 
 have entered Rome, and about purity among the 
 priests, if they will hear us. Sound for the surgeon. 
 That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep 
 
 20 as it is. The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. 
 Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is 
 at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood alone 
 between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice 
 and cannot. How awfully serene a countenance! 
 
 25 Such as we hear are in the Islands of the Blessed. 
 And how glorious a form and stature! Such too
 
 16 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 
 
 was theirs! They also once lay thus upon the earth 
 wet with their blood few other enter there. And 
 what plain armour! 
 
 Gaulish Chieftain. My party slew him indeed I 
 think I slew him myself. I claim the chain: it be- 5 
 longs to my king; the glory of Gaul requires it. 
 Never will she endure to see another take it: rather 
 would she lose her last man. We swear! we swear! 
 
 Hannibal. My friend, the glory of Marcel 1 us did 
 not require him to wear it. When he suspended the 10 
 arms of your brave king in the temple, he thought 
 such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. 
 The shield he battered down, the breast plate he 
 pierced with his sword these he showed to the 
 people and to the gods; hardly his wife and little 15 
 children saw this, ere his horse wore it. 
 
 Gaulish Chieftain. Hear me, O Hannibal! 
 
 Hannibal. What! when Marcellus lies before me? 
 when his life may perhaps be recalled? when I may 
 lead him in triumph to Carthage? when Italy, Sicily, 20 
 Greece, Asia, wait to obey me? Content thee! I 
 will give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such. 
 
 Gaulish Chi ff tain. For myself? 
 
 Hannibal. For thyself. 
 
 Gaulish Chieftain. And these rubies and emeralds, 25 
 and that scarlet 
 
 Hannibal. Yes, yes. 
 
 Gaulish Chieftain. O glorious Hannibal! uncon- 
 querable hero! O my happy country! to have such 
 an ally and defender. I swear eternal gratitude 30 
 yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity. 
 
 Hannibal. In all treaties we fix the time: I could
 
 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 17 
 
 hardly ask a longer. Go back to thy station. I 
 would see what the surgeon is about, and hear what 
 he thinks. The life of Marcellus! the triumph of 
 Hannibal! what else has the world in it? Only 
 5 Rome and Carthage: these follow. 
 
 Surgeon. Hardly an hour of life is left. 
 
 Marcellus. I must die then ! The gods be praised! 
 The commander of a Roman army is no captive. 
 
 Hannibal (to the Surgeon). Could not he bear a 
 10 sea-voyage? Extract the arrow. 
 
 Surgeon. He expires that moment. 
 
 Marcellus. It pains me: extract it. 
 
 Hannibal. Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on 
 your countenance, and never will I consent to hasten 
 15 the death of an enemy in my power. Since your re- 
 covery is hopeless, you say truly you are no captive. 
 
 (To the Surgeon.} Is there nothing, man, that can 
 assuage the mortal pain? for, suppress the signs of 
 it as he may, he must feel it. Is there nothing to 
 20 alleviate and allay it? 
 
 Marcel/us. Hannibal, give me thy hand thou 
 hast found it and brought it me, compassion. 
 
 (To the Surgeon.) Go, friend; others want thy 
 aid; several fell around me. 
 
 25 Hannibal. Recommend to your country, O Mar- 
 cellus, while time permits it, reconciliation and 
 peace with me, informing the Senate of my supe- 
 riority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. 
 The tablet is ready: let me take off this ring try 
 30 to write, to sign it at least. Oh, what satisfaction 
 I feel at seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and 
 even to smile!
 
 1 8 AtARCKI.I.rS AND HANN/ltAf.. 
 
 Marcfllus. Within an hour or less, with how 
 severe a brow would Minos say to me, " Marcellus, 
 is this thy writing? " 
 
 Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, 
 and she still hath many left. 5 
 
 Hannibal. Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you 
 this? I confess in shame the ferocity of my coun- 
 trymen. Unfortunately, too, the nearer posts are 
 occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The 
 Numidians are so in revenge; the Gauls both in 10 
 revenge and in sport. My presence is required at 
 a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or 
 other, learning, as they must do, your refusal to 
 execute my wishes for the common good, and feel- 
 ing that by this refusal you deprive them of their 15 
 country, after so long an absence. 
 
 Marcellns. Hannibal, thou art not dying. 
 
 Hannibal. What then? What mean you? 
 
 Marcellns. That thou mayest, and very justly, 
 have many things yet to apprehend: I can have 20 
 none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to 
 me: mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is 
 forced to be absent; and his authority goes away 
 with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the 
 semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the 25 
 regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power 
 conferred on tliee by thy nation- 1 Or wouldst thou 
 acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole 
 fault, less plenary than thy adversary's? 
 
 I have spoken too much : let me rest; this mantle 30 
 oppresses me. 
 
 Hannibal. 1 placed mv mantle on your head when
 
 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 19 
 
 the helmet was first removed, and while you were 
 lying in the sun. Let me fold it under, and then 
 replace the ring. 
 
 Marcellus. Take it, Hannibal. It was given me 
 5 by a poor woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and 
 who covered it with her hair, torn off in desperation 
 that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought 
 I that her gift and her words should be mine. How 
 suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation 
 10 of the most helpless! Let that ring and the mantle 
 under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. 
 The time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the 
 gods alone know whether as conqueror or con- 
 quered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, 
 15 and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy 
 adverse fortune, they will remember on whose 
 pillow their father breathed his last; in thy pros- 
 perous (Heaven grant it may shine upon thee in 
 some other country!) it will rejoice thee to protect 
 20 them. We feel ourselves the most exempt from 
 affliction when we relieve it, although we are then 
 the most conscious that it may befall us. 
 
 There is one thing here which is not at the dis- 
 posal of either. 
 25 Hannibal. What? 
 
 Marcellus. This body. 
 
 Hannibal. Whither would you be lifted? Men 
 are ready. 
 
 Marcellus. I meant not so. My strength is fail- 
 So ing. I seem to hear rather what is within than 
 what is without. My sight and my other senses 
 are in confusion. I would have said This body,
 
 20 M. ,4 A' CELL US A. YD II A XXI B A L. 
 
 when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no 
 more worthy of thy notice than of mine; but thy 
 glory will not let thce refuse it to the piety of my 
 family. 
 
 Hannibal. You would ask something else. I per- 5 
 ceive an inquietude not visible till now. 
 
 Mareellus. Duty and Death make us think of 
 home sometimes. 
 
 Hannibal. Thitherward the thoughts of the con- 
 queror and of the conquered fly together. 10 
 
 Mareellus. Hast thou any prisoners from my 
 escort? 
 
 Hannibal. A few dying lie about and let them 
 lie they are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a 
 distance, flying, and but one brave man among 15 
 them he appeared a Roman a youth who turned 
 back, though wounded. They surrounded and 
 dragged him away, spurring his horse with their 
 swords. These Etrurians measure their courage 
 carefully, and tack it well together before they put 20 
 it on, but throw it off again with lordly ease. 
 
 Mareellus, why think about them? or does aught 
 else disquiet your thoughts? 
 
 Mareellus. I have suppressed it long enough. 
 My son my beloved son! 25 
 
 Jf^nnibal. Where is he? Can it be? Was he with 
 you? 
 
 Mareellus. He would have shared my fate and 
 has not. (iods of mycountrv! beneficent through- 
 out life to me, in drath surpassingly beneficent : 130 
 render you, for the last time, thanks.
 
 IP. Scipio Hemilfanus, polsbius, panaztius. 
 
 Scipio, Polybius, if you have found me slow in 
 rising to you, if I lifted not up my eyes to salute 
 you on your entrance, do not hold me ungrateful. 
 Proud there is no danger that you will ever call me: 
 5 this day of all days would least make me so; it 
 shows me the power of the immortal gods, the 
 mutability of fortune, the instability of empire, 
 the feebleness, the nothingness of man. The 
 earth stands motionless; the grass upon it bends 
 10 and returns, the same to-day as yesterday, the 
 same in this age as in a hundred past; the sky 
 darkens and is serene again; the clouds melt away, 
 but they are clouds another time, and float like 
 triumphal pageants along the heavens. Carthage 
 15 is fallen, to rise no more! The funereal horns 
 have this hour announced to us that, after eight- 
 een days and eighteen nights of conflagration, her 
 last embers are extinguished. 
 
 Polybius. Perhaps, O ^Emilianus, I ought not to 
 20 have come in. 
 
 Scipio. Welcome, my friend. 
 
 Polybius. While you were speaking, I would by 
 no means interrupt you so idly as to ask you to 
 whom you have been proud, or to whom could you 
 25 be ungrateful? 
 
 Scipio. To him, if to any, whose hand is in mine; to
 
 22 SCfPIO AtMIUAXVS, POLYBIUS, PAN&TIUS. 
 
 him on whose shoulder I rest my head, weary with 
 presages and vigils. Collect my thoughts for me, 
 O my friend! the fall of Cathage hath shaken and 
 scattered them. There are moments when, if we 
 are quite contented with ourselves, we never can 5 
 remount to what we were before. 
 
 Folybius. Panrctius is absent. 
 
 Scipio. Feeling the necessity, at the moment, 
 of utter loneliness, I despatched him toward the 
 city. There may be (yes, even there) some suffer- 10 
 ings which the Senate would not censure us for 
 assuaging. But behold he returns! We were 
 speaking of you, Pan;etius! 
 
 Pamctius. And about what beside? Come, hon- 
 estly tell me, Polybius, on what are you reflect- 15 
 ing and meditating with such sedately intense 
 enthusiasm? 
 
 Polybius. After the burning of some village, or 
 the overleaping of some garden-wall, to extermi- 
 nate a few pirates or highwaymen, I have seen the 20 
 commander's tent thronged with officers; I have 
 heard as many trumpets around him as would have 
 shaken down the places of themselves; 1 have seen 
 the horses start from the pnutorium, as if they 
 would fly from under their trappings, and spurred 25 
 as if they were to reach the east and west before 
 sunset, that nations might hear of the exploit, and 
 sleep soundly. And now do I behold in solitude, 
 almost in gloom, and in such silence that, unless 
 my voice prevents it, the grasshopper is audible, 30 
 him who has levelled to the earth the strongest and 
 most populous of cities, the wealthiest and most
 
 SCI P 10 ^MILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN&TIUS. 23 
 
 formidable of empires. I had seen Rome; I had 
 seen (what those who never saw never will see) 
 Carthage! I thought I had seen Scipio; it was but 
 the image of him: here I find him. 
 5 Scipio. There are many hearts that ache this 
 day; there are many that never will ache more: 
 hath one man done it? one man's breath? What 
 air upon the earth, or upon the waters, or in the 
 void of heaven is lost so quickly? It flies away at 
 
 10 the point of an arrow, and returns no more! the 
 
 sea-foam stifles it! the tooth of a reptile stops it! 
 
 a noxious leaf suppresses it. What are we in our 
 
 greatness? whence rises it? whither tends it? 
 
 Merciful gods! may not Rome be what Carthage 
 
 15 is? May not those who love her devotedly, those 
 who will look on her with fondness and affection 
 after life, see her in such condition as to wish she 
 were so? 
 
 Polybius. One of the heaviest groans over fallen 
 
 20 Carthage burst from the breast of Scipio! Who 
 would believe this tale? 
 
 Scipio. Men like my Polybius: others must never 
 hear it. 
 
 Polybius. You have not ridden forth, /Emilianus, 
 
 25 to survey the ruins? 
 
 Scipio. No, Polybius: since I removed my tent to 
 avoid the heat from the conflagration, I never have 
 ridden nor walked nor looked toward them. At 
 this elevation, and three miles off, the temperature 
 
 30 of the season is altered. I do not believe, as those 
 about me would have persuaded me, that the gods 
 were visible in the clouds; that thrones of ebony
 
 24 SCIPIO &MILIANUS, POL YBIUS, PAN A? TIUS. 
 
 and gold were scattered in all directions; that 
 broken chariots, and flaming steeds, and brazen 
 bridges, had cast their fragments upon the earth; 
 that eagles and lions, dolphins and tridents, and 
 other emblems of power and empire, were visible b 
 at one moment and at the next had vanished; that 
 purple and scarlet overspread the mansions of the 
 gods; that their voices were heard at first con- 
 fusedly and discordantly; and that the apparition 
 closed with their high festivals. I could not keep 10 
 my eyes on the heavens: a crash of arch or of 
 theatre or of tower, a column of flame rising higher 
 than they were, or a universal cry as if none until 
 then had perished, drew them thitherward. Such 
 were the dismal sights and sounds, a fresh city 15 
 seemed to have been taken every hour for seven- 
 teen days. This is the nineteenth since the smoke 
 arose from the level roofs and from the lofty tem- 
 ples; and thousands died, and tens of thousands 
 ran in search of death. 20 
 
 Calamity moves me; heroism moves me more. 
 That a nation whose avarice we have so often rep- 
 rehended should have cast into the furnace gold 
 and silver, from the insufficiency of brass and iron 
 for arms; that palaces the most magnificent should -5 
 have been demolished by the proprietor for their 
 beams and rafters, in order to build a fleet against 
 us; that the ropes whereby the slaves hauled them 
 down to the new harbour should in part be com- 
 posed of hair, for one lock of which kings would 30 
 have laid down their diadems; that Asdrubal 
 should have found equals, his wife none, my
 
 SCIPIO /EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN&TIUS. 25 
 
 mind, my very limbs, are unsteady with admira- 
 tion! 
 
 O Liberty! what art thou to the valiant and 
 brave, when thou art thus to the weak and timid? 
 5 dearer than life, stronger than death, higher 
 than purest love. Never will I call upon thee 
 where thy name can be profaned, and never shall 
 my soul acknowledge a more exalted Power than 
 thee.
 
 flDctcllus anfc /iDarius. 
 
 Alctellus. Well met, Cuius Marius! My orders 
 are to find instantly a centurion who shall mount 
 the walls; one capable of observation, acute in 
 remark, prompt, calm, active, intrepid. The Nu- 
 mantians are sacrificing to the gods in secrecy; 5 
 they have sounded the horn once only, and 
 hoarsely and low and mournfully. 
 
 Marias. \Vas that ladder 1 see yonder among the 
 caper-bushes and purple lilies, under where the fig- 
 tree grows out of the rampart, left for me? iu 
 
 Mctcllns. Kven so, wert thoti willing. Wouldst 
 thon mount it? 
 
 M>.i> ins. Rejoicingly. If none are below or near, 
 may I explore the stale of things by entering the 
 city? 15 
 
 Mcltllits. Use thy discretion in that. 
 
 What seest thou? U'ouldst thou leap down? Lift 
 the ladder. 
 
 Mai-ins. Are there spikes in it where it sticks in 
 the turf? 1 should slip else. 20 
 
 Mt'lcllns. I low! bravest of our centurions, art 
 even tlum afraid? Seest thou any one by? 
 
 Miii'ins. Ay; some hundreds close beneath me. 
 
 MttiUna. Retire, then. Hasten back; I will pro- 
 trct t h v descent. 25 
 
 Miii'ins. May J speak, () Metellus, without an 
 oilence to discipline? 
 
 36
 
 METELLUS AND MAR1US. 27 
 
 Metcllus. Say. 
 
 Marius. Listen! Dost thou not hear? 
 
 Metellus. Shame on thee! alight, alight! my 
 shield shall cover thee. 
 
 5 Marius. There is a murmur like the hum of bees 
 in the bean-field of Cereate; for the sun is hot, and 
 the ground is thirsty. When will it have drunk up 
 for me the blood that has run, and is yet oozing on 
 it, from those fresh bodies! 
 
 10 Metellus. How! We have not fought for many 
 days; what bodies, then, are fresh ones? 
 
 Marius. Close beneath the wall are those of 
 infants and of girls; in the middle of the road are 
 youths, emaciated; some either unwounded or 
 15 wounded months ago; some on their spears, others 
 on their swords: no few have received in mutual 
 death the last interchange of friendship; their 
 daggers unite them, hilt to hilt, bosom to bosom. 
 
 Metellus. Mark rather the living, what are they 
 20 about? 
 
 Marius. About the sacrifice, which portends 
 them, I conjecture, but little good, it burns sul- 
 lenly and slowly. The victim will lie upon the pyre 
 till morning, and still be unconsumed, unless they 
 25 bring more fuel. 
 
 I will leap down and walk on cautiously, and 
 return with tidings, if death should spare me. 
 
 Never was any race of mortals so unmilitary as 
 these Numantians: no watch, no stations, no pali- 
 30 sades across the streets. 
 
 Metellus. Did they want, then, all the wood for 
 the altar?
 
 28 ME TELL US AND MARIUS. 
 
 Marius. It appears so, I will return anon. 
 
 Metellus. The gods speed thee, my brave, honest 
 Marius! 
 
 Marius (returned}. The ladder should have been 
 better spiked for that slippery ground. I am down 5 
 again safe, however. Here a man may walk 
 securely, and without picking his steps. 
 
 Metellus. Tell me, Gains, what thou sawest. 
 
 Marius. The streets of Numantia. 
 
 Metellus. Doubtless; but what else? 10 
 
 Marius. The temples and markets and places of 
 exercise and fountains. 
 
 Metellus. Art thou crazed, centurion? what more? 
 Speak plainly, at once, and briefly. 
 
 Marius. I beheld, then, all Numantia. 15 
 
 Metellus. Has terror maddened thee? hast thou 
 descried nothing of the inhabitants but those car- 
 casses under the ramparts? 
 
 Marius. Those, O Metellus, lie scattered, al- 
 though not indeed far asunder. The greater part of 20 
 the soldiers and citizens of the fathers, husbands, 
 widows, wives, espoused were assembled together. 
 
 Metellus. About the altar? 
 
 Marius. Upon it. 
 
 Metellus. So busy and earnest in devotion! but 25 
 how all upon it? 
 
 Marius. It blazed under them, and over them, 
 and round about them. 
 
 Metellus. Immortal gods! Art thou sane, Caius 
 Marius? Thy visage is scorched : thy speech may 30 
 wander after such an enterprise; thy shield burns 
 my hand.
 
 METELLUS AND MARIUS. 29 
 
 Marius. I thought it had cooled again. Why, 
 truly, it seems hot: I now feel it. 
 Metellus. Wipe off those embers. 
 Marius. 'Twere better: there will be none oppo- 
 5 site to shake them upon, for some time. 
 
 The funereal horn, that sounded with such feeble- 
 ness, sounded not so from the faint heart of him who 
 blew it. Him I saw; him only of the living. Should I 
 say it? there was another: there was one child whom 
 10 its parent could not kill, could not part from. She 
 had hidden it in her robe, I suspect; and, when the 
 fire had reached it, either it shrieked or she did. 
 For suddenly a cry pierced through the crackling 
 pinewood, and something of round in figure fell 
 15 from brand to brand, until it reached the pavement, 
 at the feet of him who had blown the horn. I 
 rushed toward him, for I wanted, to hear the whole 
 story, and felt the pressure of time. Condemn not 
 my weakness, O Caecilius! I wished an enemy to 
 20 live an hour longer; for my orders were to explore 
 and bring intelligence. When I gazed on him, in 
 height almost gigantic, I wondered not that the 
 blast of his trumpet was so weak: rather did I 
 wonder that Famine, whose hand had indented 
 25 every limb and feature, had left him any voice 
 articulate. I rushed toward him, however, ere my 
 eyes had measured either his form or strength. He 
 held the child against me, and staggered under it. 
 
 "Behold," he exclaimed, "the glorious ornament 
 30 of a Roman triumph ! " 
 
 I stood horror-stricken; when suddenly drops, as 
 of rain, pattered down from the pyre. I looked;
 
 3 METELLUS AND MARIUS. 
 
 and many were the precious stones, many were the 
 amulets and rings and bracelets, and other barbaric 
 ornaments, unknown to me in form or purpose, that 
 tinkled on the hardened and black branches, from 
 mothers and wives and betrothed maids; and some, 5 
 too, I can imagine, from robuster arms things of 
 joyance, won in battle. The crowd of incumbent 
 bodies was so dense and heavy that neither the fire 
 nor the smoke could penetrate upward from among 
 them; and they sank, whole and at once, into the 10 
 smouldering cavern eaten out below. He at whose 
 neck hung the trumpet felt this, and started. 
 
 "There is yet room," he cried, "and there is 
 strength enough yet, both in the element and in 
 me." 15 
 
 He extended his withered arms, he thrust for- 
 ward the gaunt links of his throat, and upon 
 gnarled knees, that smote each other audibly, tot- 
 tered into the civic fire. It like some hungry and 
 strangest beast on the innermost wild of Africa, 20 
 pierced, broken, prostrate, motionless, gazed at by 
 its hunter in the impatience of glory, in the delight 
 of awe panted once more, and seized him. 
 
 I have seen within this hour, O Metellus, what 
 Rome in the cycle of her triumphs will never see, 25 
 what the Sun in his eternal course can never show 
 her, what the Earth has borne but now, and must 
 never rear again for her, what Victory herself has 
 envied her, a Xumantian. 
 
 Afetelltts. We shall feast to-morrow. Hope, 30 
 Caius Marius, to become a tribune: trust in 
 fortune.
 
 ME TELL US AND MARIUS. 31 
 
 Marius. Auguries are surer: surest of all is per- 
 severance. 
 
 Metellus. I hope the wine has not grown vapid 
 in my tent: I have kept it waiting, and must now 
 5 report to Scipio the intelligence of our discovery. 
 Come after me, Caius. 
 
 Marius (alone). The tribune is the discoverer! 
 the centurion is the scout! Caius Marius must 
 enter more Numantias. Light-hearted Crccilius, 
 lothou mayest perhaps hereafter, and not with 
 humbled but with exulting pride, take orders from 
 this hand. If Scipio's words are fate, and to me 
 they sound so, the portals of the Capitol may shake 
 before my chariot, as my horses plunge back at the 
 15 applauses of the people, and Jove in his high dom- 
 icile may welcome the citizen of Arpinum.
 
 Xucullus anfc Ga:sar. 
 
 dcsar. Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately 
 and unattended for reasons which you will know; 
 confiding, I dare not say in your friendship, since 
 no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but 
 in your generous and disinterested love of peace. 5 
 Hear me on. Cneius Pompeius, according to the 
 report of my connections in the city, had, on the 
 instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to 
 solicit his dependents to strip me ignominiously of 
 authority. Neither vows nor affinity can bind him. 10 
 He would degrade the father of his wife; he would 
 humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the 
 unborn; he would poison his own nascent love 
 at the suggestion of Ambition. Matters are now 
 brought so far that either he or I must submit to a 15 
 reverse of fortune; since no concession can assuage 
 his malice, divert his envy, or gratify his cupidity. 
 No sooner could I raise myself up, from the con- 
 sternation and stupefaction into which the certainty 
 of these reports had thrown me, than I began to 20 
 consider in what manner my own private afflictions 
 might become the least noxjous to the republic. 
 Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more 
 naturally and more securely, to whose bosom could 
 I commit and consign more sacredly the hopes and 25 
 destinies of our beloved country, than his who laid
 
 LUCULLUS AND CAESAR. 33 
 
 down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the 
 vigour of youth, in the pride of triumph, when 
 Dignity solicited, when Friendship urged, en- 
 treated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself 
 5 invited and beckoned to him from the senatorial 
 order and from the curule chair? Betrayed and 
 abandoned by those we had confided in, our next 
 friendship, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any 
 will venture in those places of desolation, flies for- 
 
 10 ward instinctively to what is most contrary and dis- 
 similar. Coesar is hence the visitant of Lucullus. 
 
 Lucullus. I had always thought Pompeius more 
 moderate and more reserved than you represent 
 him, Caius Julius; and yet I am considered in 
 
 15 general, and surely you also will consider me, but 
 little liable to be prepossessed by him. 
 
 Cczsar. Unless he may have ingratiated himself 
 with you recently, by the administration of that 
 worthy whom last winter his partisans dragged 
 
 20 before the Senate, and forced to assert publicly 
 that you and Cato had instigated a party to circum- 
 vent and murder him; and whose carcass, a few 
 days afterward, when it had been announced that 
 he had died by a natural death, was found covered 
 
 25 with bruises, stabs, and dislocations. 
 
 Lucullus. You bring much to my memory which 
 had quite slipped out of it, and I wonder that it 
 could make such an impression on yours. A proof 
 to me that the interest you take in my behalf began 
 
 30 earlier than your delicacy will permit you to ac- 
 knowledge. You are fatigued, which I ought to 
 have perceived before.
 
 34 LUCUI.l.rS AND CAESAR. 
 
 Ctesar. Not at all; the fresh air has given me 
 life and alertness: 1 feel it upon my cheek even in 
 the room. 
 
 LiicnUus. After our dinner and sleep, we will 
 spend the remainder of the day on the subject of 5 
 your visit. 
 
 Cicsar. Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver 
 with cold upon the mountain here; and truly I my- 
 self was not insensible to the change of climate, in 
 the way from Mutina. I0 
 
 What white bread! I never found such even at 
 Naples or Capua. This Formian wine (which I 
 prefer to the Chian), how exquisite! 
 
 Lucnllus. Such is the urbanity of Crcsar, even 
 while he bites his lip with displeasure. How! 15 
 surely it bleeds! Permit me to examine the cup. 
 
 Cu'Siir. I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim 
 in the carriage: the gold is rough there. 
 
 I.ttiullits. Marcipor, let me never see that cup 
 again! \o answer, 1 desire. My guest pardons 20 
 heavier faults. Mind that dinner be prepared for 
 us shortly. 
 
 Ctrsiir. In the meantime, I.ncullns, if your 
 health permits it, shall we walk a few paces round 
 the villa? for 1 have not seen anything of the kind 25 
 before. 
 
 You are surveying the little lake be- 
 side us. It contains no fish, birds never alight 
 on it, the water is extremely pure and cold; the 
 walk round is pleasant, imt only because there is 30 
 always a gentle bree/.e from it, but because the
 
 LUCULLUS AND C&SAR. 35 
 
 turf is fine, and the surface of the mountain on this 
 summit is perfectly on a level to a great extent in 
 length not a trifling advantage to me, who walk 
 often and am weak. I have no alley, no garden, 
 5 no enclosure; the park is in the vale below, where 
 a brook supplies the ponds, and where my serv- 
 ants are lodged; for here I have only twelve in 
 attendance. 
 
 Casar. What is that so white, toward the 
 10 Adriatic? 
 
 Lucullits. The Adriatic itself. Turn round and 
 
 you may descry the Tuscan Sea. Our situation is 
 
 reported to be among the highest of the Apennines. 
 
 Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is 
 
 15 ready. Pass this way. 
 
 This other is my dining-room. You expect the 
 dishes. 
 
 Ccesar. I misunderstood, I fancied 
 Lucullus. Repose yourself, and touch with the 
 20 ebony wand, beside you, the sphinx on either of 
 those obelisks, right or left. 
 
 Ccesar. Let me look at them first. 
 Lucullus. The contrivance was intended for one 
 person, or two at most, desirous of privacy and 
 25 quiet. The blocks of jasper in my pair, and of 
 porphyry in yours, easily yield in their grooves, 
 each forming one partition. There are four, con- 
 taining four platforms. The lower holds four 
 dishes, such as sucking forest-boars, venison, 
 30 hares, tunnies, sturgeons, which you will find 
 within; the upper three, eight each, but diminu-
 
 3<5 LUCULLUS AND CJLSAR. 
 
 tive. The confectionery is brought separately, for 
 the steam would spoil it, if any should escape. 
 The melons are in the snow, thirty feet under us: 
 they came early this morning from a place in the 
 vicinity of Luni, so that I hope they may be crisp, 5 
 independently of their coolness. 
 
 Cffsar. I wonder not at anything of refined 
 elegance in Lucullus; but really here Antiochia 
 and Alexandria seem to have cooked for us, and 
 magicians to be our attendants. 10 
 
 Lucullus. The absence of slaves from our repast 
 is the luxury, for Marcipor alone enters, and he 
 only when I press a spring with my foot or wand. 
 When you desire his appearance, touch that chal- 
 cedony just before you. 
 
 Ciesar. I eat quick and rather plentifully; yet 
 the valetudinarian (excuse my rusticity, for I re- 
 joice at seeing it) appears to equal the traveller in 
 appetite, and to be contented with one dish. 
 
 Lucullus. It is milk: such, with strawberries, 20 
 which ripen on the Apennines many months in con- 
 tinuance, and some other berries of sharp and 
 grateful flavour, has been my only diet since my 
 first residence here. The state of my health re- 
 quires it; and the habitude of nearly three months 25 
 renders this food not only more commodious to my 
 studies and more conducive to my sleep, but also 
 more agreeable to my palate than any other. 
 
 Ciesar. Returning to Rome or ]5aia>, you must 
 domesticate and tame them. The cherries you 30 
 introduced from Pont us are now growing in Cisal- 
 pine and Transalpine Ciaul; and the largest and
 
 LUCULLUS AND C&SAR. 37 
 
 best in the world, perhaps, are upon the more 
 sterile side of Lake Larius. 
 
 Lucullus. There are some fruits, and some virtues, 
 which require a harsh soil and bleak exposure for 
 5 their perfection. 
 
 Casar. In such a profusion of viands, and so 
 savoury, I perceive no odour. 
 
 Lucullus. A flue conducts heat through the com- 
 partments of the obelisks; and, if you look up, you 
 
 10 may observe that those gilt roses, between the 
 astragals in the cornice, are prominent from it half 
 a span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between 
 which and the outer is a perpetual current of air. 
 We are now in the dog-days; and I have never felt 
 
 15 in the whole summer more heat than at Rome 
 in many days of March. 
 
 Casar. Usually you are attended by troops of 
 domestics and of dinner-friends, not to mention 
 the learned and scientific, nor your own family, 
 
 20 your attachment to which, from youth upward, is 
 one of the higher graces in your character. Your 
 brother was seldom absent from you. 
 
 Lucullus. Marcus was coming; but the vehement 
 heats along the Arno, in which valley he has a 
 
 25 property he never saw before, inflamed his blood, 
 and he now is resting for a few days at Fresulrc, a 
 little town destroyed by Sylla within our memory, 
 who left it only air and water, the best in Tuscany 
 The health of Marcus, like mine, has been clcclin- 
 
 30 ing for several months: we are running our last 
 race against each other, and never was I, in youth 
 along the Tiber, so anxious of first reaching the
 
 38 LUCULLUS AND CAESAR. 
 
 goal. I would not outlive him: I should reflect 
 too painfully on earlier days, and look forward too 
 despondently on future. As for friends, lampreys 
 and turbots beget them, and they spawn not amid 
 the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company 5 
 with more than two is a Gaulish and German thing. 
 I can hardly bring myself to believe that I have 
 eaten in concert with twenty; so barbarous and 
 herdlike a practice does it now appear to me such 
 an incentive to drink much and talk loosely; not 10 
 to add, such a necessity to speak loud, which is 
 clownish and odious in the extreme. On this 
 mountain summit I hear no noises, no voices, not 
 even of salutation; we have no flies about us, and 
 scarcely an insect or reptile. 15 
 
 Cicsar. Your amiable son is probably with his 
 uncle: is he well? 
 
 Lucitllus. Perfectly. lie was indeed with my 
 brother in his intended visit to me; but Marcus, 
 unable to accompany him hither, or superintend 20 
 his studies in the present state of his health, sent 
 him directly to his Uncle Cato at Tusculum a 
 man fitter than either of us to direct his education, 
 and preferable to any, excepting yourself and 
 Marcus Tullius* in eloquence and urbanity. 25 
 
 Ctcsar. Cato is so great that whoever is greater 
 must be the happiest and first of men. 
 
 Luciilliis. That any such be still existing, O 
 Julius, ought to excite no groan from the breast of 
 a Roman citi/cn. 15ut perhaps I wrong you; per- 30 
 haps your mind was forced reluctantly back again, 
 on your past animosities and contests in the Senate.
 
 LUCULLUS AND C^SAR. 39 
 
 Casar. I revere him, but cannot love him. 
 Lucullus. Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with 
 reason; and I would pity rather than reprove 
 you. 
 
 5 On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is 
 no gilding, and little painting a mere trellis of 
 vines bearing grapes, and the heads, shoulders, 
 and arms, rising from the cornice only, of boys and 
 girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for 
 
 10 them : nothing overhead; no giants tumbling down, 
 no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and Venus caught 
 at mid-day, no river-gods pouring out their urns 
 upon us; for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat 
 ceiling, I think nothing so absurd as a storied one. 
 
 15 Before I was aware, and without my participation, 
 the painter had adorned that of my bed-chamber 
 with a golden shower, bursting from varied and 
 irradiated clouds. On my expostulation, his ex- 
 cuse was that he knew the Danae of Scopas, in a 
 
 20 recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of 
 the room. The walls, behind the tapestry and 
 pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days the 
 whole fabric was put together and habitable. 
 
 The wine has probably lost its freshness: will 
 
 25 you try some other? 
 
 C(csar. Its temperature is exact; its flavour ex- 
 quisite. Latterly I have never sat long after din- 
 ner, and am curious to pass through the other 
 apartments, if you will trust me. 
 
 30 Luciillns. I attend you. 
 
 Cxsar. Lucullus, who is here? What figure is 
 that on the poop of the vessel? Can it be
 
 40 LUCULLUS AXD CMSAR. 
 
 Lucullus. The subject was dictated by myself; 
 you gave it. 
 
 Ctfsar. Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! 
 How vividly the sun strike's against the snows on 
 Taurus! The gray temples and pier-head of 5 
 Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental 
 mound on the left is half in shade. In the coun- 
 tenance of those pirates 1 did not observe such 
 diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back: 
 I did not indeed mark them or notice them at all. 10 
 
 Lucullus. The painter in this fresco, the last 
 work finished, had dissatisfied me in one particular. 
 "That beautiful young face," said I, "appears not 
 to threaten death." 
 
 "Lucius," he replied, "if one muscle were 15 
 moved it were not Cujsar's: beside, he said it jok- 
 ingly, though resolved." 
 
 "I am contented with your apology, Antipho; 
 but what are you doing now ? for you never lay 
 down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk and 20 
 argue. The lines of that smaller face in the dis- 
 tance are the same." 
 
 " Not the same," replied he, " nor very different: 
 it smiles, as surely the goddess must have done at 
 the first heroic act of her descendant." 25 
 
 Cicsar. In her exultation and impatience to press 
 forward she seems to forget that she is standing at 
 the extremity of the shell, which rises up behind 
 out of the water; and she takes no notice of the 
 terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would 30 
 detain her, nor of this who i^ Hying off and looking 
 back. The reflection of the shell has given a
 
 LUCULLUS AND CsESAR. 4* 
 
 warmer hue below the knee; a long streak of yellow 
 light in the horizon is on the level of her bosom, 
 some of her hair is almost lost in it; above her 
 head on every side is the pure azure of the heavens. 
 5 Oh! and you would not have led me up to this? 
 You, among whose primary studies is the most 
 perfect satisfaction of your guests! 
 
 LuciiUus. In the next apartment are seven or 
 eight other pictures from our history. 
 
 10 There are no more: what do you look for? 
 
 Ctvsar. I find not among the rest any descriptive 
 of your own exploits. Ah, Lucullus! there is no 
 surer way of making them remembered. 
 
 This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, 
 
 15 is the music-room. 
 
 Lucullus. No, indeed; nor can I be said to have 
 one here; for I love best the music of a single in- 
 strument, and listen to it willingly at all times, 
 but most willingly while I am reading. At such 
 
 20 seasons a voice or even a whisper disturbs me; 
 but music refreshes my brain when I have 
 read long, and strengthens it from the begin- 
 ning. I find also that if I write anything in 
 poetry (a youthful propensity still remaining), it 
 
 25 gives rapidity and variety and brightness to my 
 ideas. On ceasing, I command a fresh measure 
 and instrument, or another voice; which is to 
 the mind like a change of posture, or of air to the 
 body. My health is benefited by the gentle play 
 
 30 thus opened to the most delicate of the fibres. 
 
 Ctcsar. Let me augur that a disorder so tractable 
 may be soon removed. What is it thought to be ?
 
 42 LU CULL US A.VD CSESAR. 
 
 Luciilliis. There are they who would surmise and 
 signify, and rny physician did not long attempt to 
 persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms 
 of /Kietes have supplied me with some other plants 
 than the cherry, and such as I should be sorry to 5 
 see domesticated here in Italy. 
 
 Cicscir. The gods forbid! Anticipate better things! 
 The reason of Lucullus is stronger than the medica- 
 ments of Mithridates; but why not use them, too? 
 Let nothing be neglected. You may reasonably hope 10 
 for many years of life: your mother still enjoys it. 
 
 Lucullus. To stand upon one's guard against 
 Death exasperates her malice and protracts our 
 sufferings. 
 
 Ctcsar. Rightly and gravely said: but your 15 
 country at this time cannot do well without you. 
 
 Lucullus. The bowl of milk, which to-day is pre- 
 sented to me, will shortly be presented to my 
 Manes. 
 
 Cu'sar. Do you suspect the hand? 20 
 
 Lucullus. I will not suspect a Roman: let us con- 
 verse no more about it. 
 
 dcsar. It is the only subject on which I am 
 resolved never to think, as relates to myself. 
 Life may concern us, death not; for in death we 25 
 neither can act nor reason, we neither can persuade 
 nor command; and our statues are worth more than 
 we are, let them be but wax. Lucius, I will not 
 divine your thoughts; I will not penetrate into 
 your suspicions, nor suggest mine. 1 am lost in 30 
 admiration of your magnanimity and forbearance 
 that your only dissimulation should be upon the
 
 LUCULLUS AND CsESAR. 43 
 
 guilt of your assassin; that you should leave him 
 power, and create him virtues. 
 
 Lucullus. Hear me, and believe me. I am about 
 to mount higher than triumviral tribunal, or than 
 5 triumphal car. They who are under me will turn 
 their faces from me; such are the rites: but not a 
 voice of reproach or of petulance shall be heard, when 
 the trumpets tell our city that the funereal flames 
 are surmounting the mortal spoils of Lucullus. 
 
 10 Ciesar. Mildest and most equitable of men! I 
 have been much wronged; would you also wrong 
 me? Lucius, you have forced from me a tear before 
 the time. I weep at magnanimity; which no man 
 does who wants it. 
 
 15 Lucullus. Why cannot you enjoy the command of 
 your province, and the glory of having quelled so 
 many nations? 
 
 Cccsar. I cannot bear the superiority of another. 
 Lucullus. The weakest of women feel so; but 
 
 20 even the weakest of them are ashamed to acknowl- 
 edge it: who hath ever heard anyone? Havejw/, 
 who know them widely and well? Poetasters and 
 mimes, labouring under such infirmity, put the mask 
 on. You pursue glory: the pursuit is just and 
 
 25 rational; but reflect that statuaries and painters 
 have represented heroes calm and quiescent, not 
 straining and panting like pugilists and gladiators. 
 
 From being for ever in action, for ever in conten- 
 tion, and from excelling in them all other mortals, 
 
 30 what advantage derive we? 1 would not ask what 
 satisfaction, what glory? The insects have more
 
 44 LUCULLVS AND C.ESAK. 
 
 activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, 
 even inert matter more firmness and stability; the 
 gods alone more goodness. To the exercise of this 
 every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor 
 you westward have found any exhausted by contests 5 
 for it. 
 
 Must we give men blows because they will not 
 look at us? or chain them to make them hold the 
 balance evener? 
 
 Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you 10 
 are, much less for what you would be; since no one 
 can well measure a great man but upon the bier. 
 There was a time when the most ardent friend to 
 Alexander of Macedon would have embraced the 
 partisan for his enthusiasm, who should have com- 15 
 pared him with Alexander of Pherre. It must have 
 been at a splendid feast, and late at it, when Scipio 
 should have been raised to an equality with 
 Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been whis- 
 pered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, "If he 20 
 goes on so, he will tread down the sandal of Mar- 
 cus Antonius in the long run, and perhaps leave 
 Hortensius behind." Officers of mine, speaking 
 about you, have exclaimed with admiration, " lie 
 fights like Cinna." Think, Cains Julius (for you 25 
 have been instructed to think both as a poet and as 
 a philosopher), that among the hundred hands of 
 Ambition, to whom we may attribute them more 
 properly than to I'riareus, there is not one which 
 holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her 3 
 course, what appears great is small, and what 
 appears small is great. Our estimate of men is apt
 
 LUCULLUS AND CAESAR. 45 
 
 to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or 
 more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often 
 leave those we should keep by us, run after those 
 we should avoid, and call importunately on others 
 5 who sit quiet and will not come. We cannot at 
 once catch the applause of the vulgar and expect 
 the approbation of the wise. What are parties? 
 Do men really great ever enter into them? Are 
 they not ball-courts, where ragged adventurers 
 
 10 strip and strive, and where dissolute youths abuse 
 one another, and challenge and game and wager? 
 If you and I cannot quite divest ourselves of 
 infirmities and passions, let us think however that 
 there is enough in us to be divided into two por- 
 
 15 tions, and let us keep the upper undisturbed and 
 pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in dreariness 
 and in clouds, variable and stormy; but it is not 
 the highest: there the gods govern. Your soul is 
 large enough to embrace your country: all other 
 
 20 affection is for less objects, and less men are 
 capable of it. Abandon, O Caesar! such thoughts 
 and wishes as now agitate and propel you: leave 
 them to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and 
 miry intellects. Fortunate may we call ourselves to 
 
 25 have been born in an age so productive of elo- 
 quence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us would 
 be excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these 
 honours. He who can think dispassionately and 
 deeply as I do, is great as I am; none other. But 
 
 30 his opinions are at freedom to diverge from mine, as 
 mine are from his; andindeed,onrecollection,I never 
 loved those most who thought with me, but those
 
 46 LL7CUIJ.CS AXD C.-ESAK. 
 
 rather who deemed my sentiments worth discussion, 
 and who corrected me with frankness and affability. 
 
 Cicsar. Lucullus, you perhaps have taken the 
 wiser and better part, certainly the pleasanter. I 
 cannot argue with you: I would gladly hear one who 5 
 could, but you again more gladly. I should think 
 unworthily of you if 1 thought you capable of yield- 
 ing or receding. 1 do not even ask you to keep our 
 conversation long a secret, so greatly does it pre- 
 ponderate in your favour; so much more of gen- 10 
 tleness, of eloquence, and of argument. 1 came 
 hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities, and 
 sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To- 
 night I sleep in yours, and, if your dinner does not 
 disturb me, shall sleep soundly. You go early to 15 
 rest, I know. 
 
 Lucullus. Not, however, by daylight. Be assured, 
 Caius Julius, that greatly as your discourse afflicts 
 me, no part of it shall escape my lips. If you ap- 
 proach the city with arms, with arms I meet you; 20 
 then your denouncer and enemy, at present your 
 host and confidant. 
 
 dcsar. I shall conquer you. 
 
 Lucullus. That smile would cease upon it: you 
 sigh already. 25 
 
 Cicsar. Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall 
 overcome my oppressor: I know my army and 
 myself. A sigh escaped me, and many more will 
 follow; but one transport will rise amid them, when, 
 vanquisher of my enemies and avenger of my dig- 30 
 nity, 1 press again the hand of Lucullus, mindful of 
 this day.
 
 TTibertus anb Dipsania. 
 
 Tiberius. Vipsania, my Vipsania, whither art thou 
 walking? 
 
 Vipsania. Whom do I see? my Tiberius? 
 
 Tiberius. Ah! no, no, no! but thou seest the 
 
 5 father of thy little Drusus. Press him to thy heart 
 
 the more closely for this meeting, and give him 
 
 Vipsania. Tiberius! the altars, the gods, the 
 destinies, are between us I will take it from this 
 hand; thus, thus shall he receive it. 
 10 Tiberius. Raise up thy face, my beloved! I must 
 not shed tears. Augustus! Livia! ye shall not 
 extort them from me. Vipsania! I may kiss thy 
 head for I have saved it. Thou sayest nothing. 
 I have wronged thee; ay? 
 
 15 Vipsania. Ambition does not see the earth she 
 treads on; the rock and the herbage are of one 
 substance to her. Let me excuse you to my heart, 
 O Tiberius. It has many wants; this is the first 
 and greatest. 
 
 20 Tiberius. My ambition, I swear by the immortal 
 gods, placed not the bar of severance between us. 
 A stronger hand, the hand that composes Rome 
 and sways the world 
 
 Vipsania. Overawed Tiberius. I know it; Angus- 
 25 tus willed and commanded it. 
 
 Tiberius. And overawed Tiberius! Power bent 
 
 47
 
 48 TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. 
 
 Death terrified, a Nero! What is our race, that 
 any should look down on us and spurn us? Augus- 
 tus, my benefactor, 1 have wronged thee! Livia, 
 my mother, this one cruel deed was thine! To 
 reign, forsooth, is a lovely thing. O womanly ap- 5 
 petite! Who would have been before me, though 
 the palace of Caesar cracked and split with emperors, 
 while I, sitting in idleness on a cliff of Rhodes, eyed 
 the sun as he svvang his golden censer athwart the 
 heavens, or his image as it overstrode the sea? 1 10 
 have it before me; and, though it seems falling on 
 me, I can smile at it just as I did from my little 
 favourite skiff, painted round with the marriage of 
 Thetis, when the sailors drew their long shaggy hair 
 across their eyes, many a stadium away from it, to 15 
 mitigate its effulgence. 
 
 These, too, were happy days: days of happiness 
 like these I could recall and look back upon with 
 unaching brow. 
 
 O land of Greece! Tiberius blesses thee, bidding 2 o 
 thee rejoice and flourish. 
 
 Why cannot one hour, Vipsania, beauteous and 
 light as we have led, return? 
 
 Vipsania. Tiberius! is it to me that you were 
 speaking? I would not interrupt you ; but I thought 25 
 I heard my name as you walked away and looked up 
 toward the East. So silent! 
 
 Tibefius. Who dared to call thee? Thou wert 
 mine before the gods do they deny it? Was it my 
 
 fault 30 
 
 Vipsania. Since we are separated, and for ever, 
 O Tiberius, let us think no more on the cause of it.
 
 TIBERIUS AMD VIPSANIA. 49 
 
 Let neither of us believe that the other was to 
 blame: so shall separation be less painful. 
 
 Tiberius. O mother! and did I not tell thee what 
 she was? patient in injury, proud in innocence, 
 5 serene in grief! 
 
 Vipsania. Did you say that too? But I think it 
 was so: I had felt little. One vast wave has washed 
 away the impression of smaller from my memory. 
 Could Livia, could your mother, could she who was 
 
 10 so kind to me 
 
 Tiberius. The wife of Caesar did it. But hear me 
 now; hear me: be calm as I am. No weaknesses 
 are such as those of a mother who loves her only 
 son immoderately; and none are so easily worked 
 
 15 upon from without. Who knows what impulses she 
 received? She is very, very kind; but she regards 
 me only, and that which at her bidding is to encom- 
 pass and adorn me. All the weak look after Power, 
 protectress of weakness. Thou art a woman, O 
 
 20 Vipsania! is there nothing in thee to excuse my 
 mother? So good she ever was to me! so loving! 
 
 Vipsania. I quite forgive her: be tranquil, O 
 Tiberius! 
 
 Tiberius. Never can I know peace never can I 
 
 25 pardon any one. Threaten me with thy exile, thy 
 separation, thy seclusion! Remind me that another 
 climate might endanger thy health! There death 
 met me and turned me round. Threaten me to take 
 our son from us our one boy, our helpless little 
 
 30 one him whom we made cry because we kissed him 
 both together! Rememberest thou? Or dost thou 
 not hear? turning thus away from me!
 
 5 TIBEKIfS AXD I' IPS A. VI. 4. 
 
 Vipsania. I hear; 1 hear! Oh cease, my sweet 
 Tiberius! Stamp not upon that stone: my heart 
 lies under it. 
 
 Tiberius. Ay, there again death, and more than 
 death, stood before me. Oh, she maddened me, 5 
 my mother did, she maddened me she threw me to 
 where I am at one breath. The gods cannot replace 
 me where I was, nor atone to me, nor console me, 
 nor restore my senses. To whom can I fly; to 
 whom can I open my heart; to whom speak plainly? 10 
 There was upon the earth a man I could converse 
 with, and fear nothing; there was a woman, too, I 
 could love, and fear nothing. What a soldier, what 
 a Roman, was thy father, () my young bride! How 
 could those who never saw him have discoursed so 15 
 rightly upon virtue! 
 
 I'ipsa/iia. These words cool my breast like press- 
 ing his urn against it. He was brave: shallTiberius 
 want courage? 
 
 Tiberius. My enemies scorn me. I am a garland 20 
 dropped from a triumphal car, and taken up and 
 looked on for the place I occupied; and tossed 
 away and laughed at. Senators! laugh, laugh! 
 Your merits may be yet re-warded be of good 
 cheer! Counsel me, in your wisdom, what services 25 
 I can render you, conscript fathers! 
 
 I'if-sania. This seems mockery: Tiberius did not 
 smile so, once. 
 
 7/7v.vvV/.v. They had not then congratulated me. 
 
 I'ipsania. On what? 30 
 
 Tiberius. And it was not because she was beauti- 
 ful, as they thought her, and virtuous, as I know
 
 TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. 51 
 
 she is; but because the flowers on the altar were to 
 be tied together by my heart-string. On this they 
 congratulated me. Their day will come. Their 
 sons and daughters are what I would wish them to 
 5 be: worthy to succeed them. 
 
 Vipsania. Where is that quietude, that resigna- 
 tion, that sanctity, that heart of true tenderness? 
 Tiberius. Where is my love? my love? 
 Vipsania. Cry not thus aloud, Tiberius! there is 
 
 loan echo in the place. Soldiers and slaves may 
 burst in upon us. 
 
 Tiberius. And see my tears? There is no echo, 
 Vipsania; why alarm and shake me so? We are too 
 high here for the echoes: the city is below us. 
 
 15 Methinks it trembles and totters: would it did! 
 from the marble quays of the Tiber to this rock. 
 There is a strange buzz and murmur in my brain; 
 but I should listen so intensely, I should hear the 
 rattle of its roofs, and shout with joy. 
 
 20 Vipsania. Calm, O my life! calm this horrible 
 transport. 
 
 Tiberius. Spake I so loud? Did I indeed then and 
 send my voice after a lost sound, to bring it back; 
 thou fanciedest it an echo? Wilt not thou laugh 
 
 25 with me, as thou wert wont to do, at such an error? 
 What was I saying to thee, my tender love, when I 
 commanded I know not whom to stand back, on 
 pain of death? Why starest thou on me in such agony? 
 Have I hurt thy fingers, child? I loose them; now 
 
 30 let me look! Thou turnest thine eyes away from 
 me. Oh! oh! I hear my crime! Immortal gods! I 
 cursed then audibly, and before the sun, my mother!
 
 aufc Ifoenrp of /IDelctal. 
 
 Wolfgang. Old man, thou knowest, I doubt not, 
 why thou art brought before me. 
 
 Henry. For having been the preserver of Arnold. 
 
 Wolfgang. For harbouring and concealing an 
 outlaw. 5 
 
 Henry. We all are outlaws. 
 
 Wolfgang. What! and confess it? 
 
 Henry. Where there is a law for none, what else 
 can we be ? 
 
 Wolfgang. In consideration of thy age and here- 10 
 tofore good repute, our emperor in his clemency 
 would remit the sentence passed on thy offence, 
 taking only thy plough and oxen in punishment of 
 disobedience. 
 
 Henry. Ploughs and oxen are not instruments 15 
 and furtherers of disobedience. Why were they 
 taken from me before? Had they never been seized 
 by his Apostolic Majesty, and had not the great man 
 Gcssler told me that I, a hoary traitor, should be 
 yoked in place of them, my valiant son had never 2 o 
 cursed him and his master. 
 
 Wolfgang. I turn pale with horror. Curse the 
 right-hand of tin: Almighty ! 
 
 Henry. \Ve were told that Man was his image, 
 long before we ever heard that a dry marten-skin 25 
 on the shoulder, and a score of cut pebbles on the
 
 WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL. 53 
 
 head, made any creature his right-hand. This right- 
 hand does little else than, like children, strip the 
 image, or, just as they do, break the head of one 
 against the head of another. 
 
 5 Wolfgang. What particular hardship couldstthou 
 complain of? 
 
 Henry. Only that, whenever there was a fine 
 day, my oxen were taken for the emperor's use, and 
 that my boy was forced to guide them. 
 
 10 Wolfgang. You had many days left. 
 
 Henry. Ay, verily; all winter, from the first of 
 November to the first of April. While the snow was 
 from five to three feet deep, I might plough, sow, 
 and harrow. A green turf was an imperial rescript; 
 
 15 and I never saw one in the morning but I met 
 a soldier at my gate ere noon, and my two poor 
 beasts were unhoused. 
 
 Wolfgang. Factious man! the mildest govern- 
 ments in the world have always exacted this trifle in 
 
 20 payment for their protection. Where there is little 
 coin, there must be labour or its produce; and how 
 much better is it to give the half, or rather more, 
 to a lawful master, than the whole to robbers! But 
 indeed this half is not given: all in right is Caesar's. 
 
 25 Thy Bible says, " Give unto Caesar that which is Coa- 
 sar's, and unto Clod that which is God's." It does 
 not say, " Keep anything," which it would doif any- 
 thing remained. Dost whistle, rogue? 
 
 Henry. I cry you mercy, Sir Wolfgang. About 
 
 30 the Scripture I dare argue nothing; but about the 
 thieves, what thieves have we here? Who is dis- 
 posed to take away kid or pullet from us? Cannot
 
 54 WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL. 
 
 we, who are in our own houses, defend them as 
 well as those who are some hundred miles off? 
 And, when we cannot, is not our neighbour as ready 
 to help us as they are? Yet our neighbour would 
 blush to ask a spoonful of salt for doing it. 5 
 
 Wolfgang. Malcontent! what woulclst thou say 
 if thy master should forbid thee to turn thy barley 
 into malt, or to plant thy garden, or any plot of it, 
 with hops? 
 
 Henry. I dare not imagine this wrong. To order 10 
 me how to crop my garden or how to mix my 
 tankard! To forbid the earth to give its increase in 
 due season is the heaviest and the rarest curse of 
 God. Never, I trust, will our nation be so heart- 
 less as to endure a like interdict from the wrath of 15 
 man. 
 
 Wolfgang. There is no danger: nevertheless, why 
 not profit by example, and avoid the chances of mis- 
 chief? The tortoise, well protected as it is, draws 
 in its head at the touch of a child. 20 
 
 Henry. I will do the same when I am a tortoise. 
 But we Swit/.ers have our -rights and privileges: we 
 may kill even a hare if we find him in our corn, pro- 
 vided the land be our freehold. What nation in 
 Christendon can say the same, beyond these 11101111-25 
 tains? We alone arc raised to an equality with the 
 beasts and birds; we alone can leave our country; 
 we alone pine and perish if we are long absent 
 from it. 
 
 Wolfgang. Is that a privilege? 3 
 
 Henry. No, my lord judge: it may be a want, a 
 weakness; but those who are subject to it are
 
 WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL. 55 
 
 exempt from many others. Of what are they not 
 capable in defence of their country, to whom she is 
 so dear! We see our parents and children carried 
 to the grave; we lose sight of them, and bear it 
 5 manfully: on losing sight of our country our hearts 
 melt away. 
 
 Wolfgang. Brave men bear it. I left my country 
 to perform my duties in this; and what country is 
 pleasanter than Austria, or more productive of cat- 
 ro tie and game, of river-fish and capons? 
 
 Henry. All men have a birth-place, Sir Wolfgang; 
 but all men have not a country. Nay, there are 
 some who have it not, and who possess almost half 
 a province, with tolls and mills and chases and 
 15 courts and prisons, and whatever else can make the 
 great contented. 
 
 Wolfgang. I should be censurable if I listened 
 
 longer to such idle and wild discourse. The people 
 
 of Burgundy are subject to more hardships than 
 
 2othou art; so are those of Swabiaand of France. Be 
 
 obedient and grateful, seeing that others fare worse. 
 
 Henry. If my ear is frost-bitten, your worship's 
 
 toe may be frost-bitten off and never cure me. 
 
 Wolfgang. Be comforted and satisfied. The out- 
 25 lawry of thy son Arnold is reversed, on payment of 
 a slender fine for the proclamation of it, and of 
 another for its annulment, not much heavier. 
 
 At the same time I am also commanded to de- 
 nounce unto thee that, if ever thou secst thy son 
 30 again, thou be deprived of eye-sight. 
 
 Henry. I am deprived of eye-sight if I do not see
 
 56 WOLFGAKG AXD II1-XKY OP MELCTAL. 
 
 him. Of sun ami snows \ve have seen enough at 
 seventy. Ho! Arnold! Arnold! help! 
 
 Arnold. Father! who hurts tliee ? Who threatens 
 thee? Off, gentlemen! Off, strangers! Off, soldiers! 
 Slaves, miscreants, Austrians, stand off! 5 
 
 Wolfgang- Murder in my presence! 
 
 Henry. They bleed all five under thy yew-stick 
 one is dying I was faint: I am not so now; fly, in 
 the name of God! Again, I pray thee, Arnold, if thou 
 lovest thy father, go, begone! I command thee. JQ 
 
 Arnold. O God! I heard thy name and was dis- 
 obedient: my father has commanded and I obey 
 forgive me, O my God! 
 
 ll'olfgang. Seize him, the traitor. Dastards but 
 perhaps it may be better to catch him anywhere 15 
 else. Who would have thought it! fair as morning, 
 ardent as noon, and terrible as midnight on the 
 shoals. Thou at least canst not run so fast. 
 
 Henry. I hope I cannot. 
 
 irolfgang. Anastasius, call the priest, Reginald 20 
 Grot, to strengthen him with admonition, and Sigis- 
 mund I.ockhart, the greffier, to translate the sen- 
 tence into the vulgar tongue; and to read it before 
 the people, in the name of his Apostolic Majesty 
 the Kmperor and King, Albert, by the grace of God, 25 
 et cetera ; and in the public square to provide that 
 the sentence be well and duly executed, forthwith. 
 
 Hfnry. Send also for the great man Gessler; tell 
 him to come and see a sight: he has not many more 
 such to see. Welcome, good Reginald! welcomes*) 
 too, my worthy master I.ockhart! Come, thy band 
 sits well enough, let it rest; begin.
 
 WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL. 57 
 
 Lockhart. The instrument must be translated, 
 a good hour's labour yet, to the ablest clerk. 
 
 Henry. Reginald, thou pressest my hand, and 
 sayest nothing. Dust thou turn thy back upon me? 
 5 Is this thy comfort? 
 
 Reginald. There is a Comforter who has given thee 
 strength, and taken mine from me; keep it, good 
 old man; do my tears hurt thee? 
 
 Henry. They do, indeed; go home, blessed soul! 
 
 10 1 never knew thy temper until now. Many have 
 turned away from me before, but none to hide their 
 compassion at my sufferings. What a draught of 
 sight have I taken with my lord judge Wolfgang! 
 It lasts me yet, and will last me for life. O my 
 
 15 youngeagle, my own Arnold ! I shall never see thee 
 more upon the rocks of Uri; never shall I tremble 
 at thy hardihood, nor press thee to my bosom for 
 reproaching thee too much about it. But I shall 
 hear thy carols in the woods of Underwald. Let 
 
 20 them be blithe as usual; let them be blither still, 
 for 1 shall more want pastime, and shall listen for 
 sweet sounds all day long. Do not ask me again, 
 as in the Lay of the Leap, whether thou hast given 
 me the heart-ache. I was always in thy songs be- 
 
 25 fore they ended, even where spring and summer, 
 even where youth and fair maidens, were discoursed 
 of. Prythee, do not go on so. Above all, 1 charge 
 thee, Arnold, never say, " O my poor father! art 
 thou blind for me!" I was fancying my Arnold at 
 
 30 my side. Foolish old man, with my eyes yet open, 
 and their two balls unbroken. Is this the place? 
 Blow away, boys! the weather is misty; it will
 
 58 WOLFGANG A.VD HENRY OF MELCTAL. 
 
 not light: this arrow head is too blunt; have you 
 nothing better? My old eyes are sunken and tough. 
 Ay, that seems sharper: put it just under the piece 
 of mountain-ash; it will soon redden there. Well 
 done, boy, that is right. 5
 
 Soutbes ant> Xant>or. 
 
 Landor. And now open your Paradise Lost. 
 Southey. Shall we begin with it immediately? 
 or shall we listen a little while to the woodlark? 
 He seems to know what we are about; for there is a 
 5 sweetness, a variety, and a gravity in his cadences, 
 befitting the place and theme. Another time we 
 might afford the whole hour to him. 
 
 Landor. The woodlark, the nightingale, and the 
 ringdove have made me idle for many, even when I 
 
 10 had gone into the fields on purpose to gather fresh 
 materials for composition. A little thing turns me 
 from one idleness to another. More than once, 
 when I have taken out my pencil to fix an idea on 
 paper, the smell of the cedar, held by me uncon- 
 
 15 sciously across the nostrils, hath so absorbed the 
 senses, that what I was about to write down has van- 
 ished, altogether and irrecoverably. This vexed 
 me; for although we may improve a first thought, 
 and generally do, yet if we lose it, we seldom or never v 
 
 20 can find another so good to replace it. The latter- 
 math has less substance, succulence, and fragrance 
 than the summer crop. I dare not trust my memory 
 
 ^ for a moment with anything of my own: it is more 
 faithful in storing up what is another's. But am I 
 
 25 not doing at this instant something like what I 
 told you about the pencil? If the loss of my own
 
 60 SOU THEY AXD LAN DOR. 
 
 thoughts vexed me, how much more will the loss of 
 yours! Now, pray, begin in good earnest. 
 
 Southey* Before we pursue the details of a poem, 
 it is customary to look at it as a whole, and to con- 
 sider what is the scope and tendency, or what is usu- 5 
 ally called the moral. JJut surely it is a silly and 
 stupid business to talk mainly about the moral of a 
 poem, unless it professedly be a fable. A good 
 epic, a good tragedy, a good comedy, will inculcate 
 several. Homer does not represent the anger of 10 
 Achilles as being fatal or disastrous to that hero, 
 which would be what critics call poetical justice; 
 but he demonstrates in the greater part of the 
 Iliad the evil effects of arbitrary power, in alienating 
 an elevated soul from the cause of his country. 15 
 In the Odyssea he shows that every obstacle yields 
 to constancy and perseverance; yet he does not pro- 
 pose to show it: and there are other morals no less 
 obvious. Why should the machinery of the longest 
 poem be drawn out to establish an obvious truth, 20 
 which a single verse would exhibit more plainly, and 
 impress more memorably? Both in epic and dra- 
 matic poetry it js action, and not moral, that is first 
 demanded. The feelings and exploits of the prin- 
 cipal agent should excite the principal interest. 25 
 The two greatest of human compositions are here 
 defective: I mean the Iliad and Paradise Lost. 
 Agamemnon is leader of the confederate Greeks 
 before Troy, to avenge the cause of Menelaus; yet 
 not only Achilles and I Homed on his side, but Hec-3<j 
 tor and Sarpedon on the opposite, interest us more 
 than the "king of men," the avenger, or than his
 
 SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 61 
 
 brother, the injured prince, about whom they all are 
 fighting. In the Paradise Lost no principal char- 
 acter seems to have been intended. There is 
 neither truth nor wit however in saying that Satan 
 5 is hero of the piece, unless, as is usually the case in 
 human life, he is the greatest hero who gives the 
 widest sway to the worst passions. It is Adam who 
 acts and suffers most, and on whom the conse- 
 quences have most influence. This constitutes him 
 
 10 the main character; although Eve is the more inter- 
 esting, Satan the more energetic, and on whom the 
 greater force of poetry is displayed. The Creator 
 and his angels are quite secondary. 
 
 Landor. Must we not confess that every epic 
 
 15 hitherto has been defective in plan; and even that 
 each, until the time of Tasso, was more so than its 
 predecessor? Such stupendous genius, so much 
 fancy, so much eloquence, so much vigour of intel- 
 lect, never were united as in Paradise Lost. Yet it 
 
 20 is neither so correct nor so varied as the Iliad, nor, 
 however important the action, so interesting. The 
 moral itself is the reason why it wearies even those 
 who insist on the necessity of it. Founded on an 
 event believed by nearly all nations, certainly by all 
 
 25 who read the poem, it lays down a principle which 
 concerns every man's welfare, and a fact which 
 every man's experience confirms: that great and ir- 
 remediable misery may arise from apparently small 
 offences. 15ut will any one say that, in a poetical 
 
 30 view, our certainty of moral truth in this position 
 is an equivalent for the uncertainty which of the 
 agents is what critics call the hero of the piece?
 
 62 SOU THEY AND LAN DOR. 
 
 Southey. We are informed in the beginning of 
 the Iliad that the poet, or the Muse for him, is 
 about to sing the anger of Achilles, with the disas- 
 ters it brought down on the Greeks. But these dis- 
 asters are of brief continuance, and this anger ter- 5 
 minates most prosperously. Another fit of anger 
 from another motive, less ungenerous and less self- 
 ish, supervenes; and Hector falls because Patroc- 
 lus had fallen. The son of Peleus, whom the poet 
 in the beginning proposed for his hero, drops sud- 10 
 denly out of sight, abandoning a noble cause from 
 an ignoble resentment. Milton, in regard to the 
 discontinuity of agency, is in the same predicament 
 as Homer. 
 
 Let us now take him more in detail. He soon 15 
 begins to give the learned and less obvious significa- 
 tion to English words. In the sixth line, 
 
 That on the secret top, etc. 
 Here secret is in the same sense as Virgil's 
 
 Secrclosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem. 20 
 
 Would it not have been better to omit the fourth 
 and fifth verses, as encumbrances, and deadeners 
 of the harmony; and for the same reason, the four- 
 teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth? 
 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 25 
 
 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
 * Thirds unattcmptcd yet in pruse or rhyme. 
 
 Landor. Certainly much better: for the harmony 
 of the sentence is complete without them, and they 
 make it gasp for breath. Supposing the fact to be 30
 
 SOU THEY AND LANDOR. 63 
 
 true, the mention of it is unnecessary and un- 
 poetical. Little does it become Milton to run in 
 debt with Ariosto for his 
 
 Cose non dette mai ne in prosa o in rima. 
 
 5 Prosaic enough in a rhymed romance, for such is the 
 Orlando with all its spirit and all its beauty, and far 
 beneath the dignity of the epic. 
 
 Southey. Beside, it interrupts the intensity of 
 the poet's aspiration in the words, 
 
 10 And chiefly thou, O Spirit ! 
 
 Again: I would rather see omitted the five which 
 follow that beautiful line, 
 
 Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss. 
 
 Landor. The ear, however accustomed to the 
 
 15 rhythm of these sentences, is relieved of a burden 
 by rejecting them; and they are not wanted for 
 anything they convey. 
 
 Southey. I am sorry that Milton (v. 34) did not 
 always keep separate the sublime Satan and " the 
 
 20 infernal Serpent." The thirty-eighth verse is the 
 first hendecasyllabic in the poem. It is much to be 
 regretted, I think, that he admits this metre into 
 epic poetry. It is often very efficient in the dra- 
 matic, at least in Shakspeare, but hardly ever in 
 
 25 Milton. He indulges in it much less fluently in the 
 Paradise Lost than in the Paradise Regained. In 
 the seventy-third verse he tells us that the rebel- 
 lious angels are 
 
 As far removed from God and light of heaven 
 
 30 As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
 
 64 SOUTHEY AXD LAX DOR. 
 
 Not very far for creatures who could have measured 
 all that distance, and a much greater, by a single 
 act of the will. 
 
 V. 188 ends with the word repair; 191 with despair. 
 
 335. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 5 
 
 In -which they nitre. 
 
 Landor. We are oftener in such evil plight of 
 floundering in the prosaic slough about your neigh- 
 bourhood than in Bunhill Fields. 
 
 360. And Powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones. 10 
 
 Excuse my asking why you, and indeed most poets 
 in most places, make a monosyllable of heaven? I 
 observe you treat spirit in the same manner; and 
 although not peri/, yet perilous. I would not insist 
 at all times on an iambic foot, neither would I de- 15 
 prive these words of their right to a participation 
 in it. 
 
 Southey. I have sei/ed all fair opportunities of 
 introducing the tnbjrajih.ys, and these are the words 
 that most easily afford one. 1 have turned over the 20 
 leaves as far as verse 584, where 1 wish he had 
 written Damascus (as he does elsewhere) for Da- 
 )nasii\ which never was the Knglish appellation. 
 Beside, he sinks the last vowel in Meroc in Paradise 
 Regained, which follows; and should consistently 25 
 have done the same in Damasco, following the prac- 
 tice of the Italian poets, which certainly is better 
 than leaving the vowels open and gaping at one 
 another. 
 
 540,. Anon they move yj 
 
 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood.
 
 SOU THEY AND LANDOR. 65 
 
 Thousands of years before there were phalanxes, 
 schools of music, or Dorians. 
 
 Landor. Never mind the Dorians, but look at 
 Satan: 
 
 5 571. And now his heart 
 
 Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
 
 Glories! 
 
 What an admirable pause is here! I wish he had 
 not ended one verse with "his heart," and the next 
 10 with " ///V strength. " 
 
 Southey. The fourth book contains several imper- 
 fections. The six verses after 165 efface the de- 
 lightful impression we had just received. 
 
 181. At one slight bound high overleapt all bound. 
 
 15 Such a play on words, so grave a pun, is unpardon- 
 able: and such a prodigious leap is ill represented 
 by the feat of a wolf in a sheepfold; and still worse 
 by 
 
 188. A thief bent to unhoarJ {\\zcash 
 
 20 Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, 
 
 Cross-bar r'd and bolted fast, fear no assault, 
 In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles. 
 
 Landor. This "in at the window" is very unlike 
 the " bound high above all bound " and climbing 
 25 " o'er the tiles" is the practice of a more deliberate 
 burglar. 
 
 193. So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. 
 
 I must leave the lewd hirelings where I find
 
 66 SOU THEY AND LAN DOR. 
 
 them: they are too many for me. I would gladly 
 have seen omitted all between verses 165 and 205. 
 Southey. 
 
 252. Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks 
 
 Grazing the tender herb. 
 
 There had not yet been time for flocks, or even for 5 
 one flock. 
 
 Landor. At verse 297 commences a series of 
 verses so harmonious that my ear is impatient of 
 any other poetry for several days after I have read 
 them. I mean those which begin, 10 
 
 For contemplation he and valour formed, 
 For softness she and sweet attractive grace; 
 
 and ending with, 
 
 And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 
 
 Southey. Here, indeed, is the triumph of our 15 
 language, and I should say of our poetry, if, in 
 your preference of Shakspearc, you could endure 
 my saying it. But, since we seek faults rather 
 than beauties this morning, tell me whether you 
 are quite contented with, 20 
 
 She, as a veil, down to the slender waist 
 Her unadorned golden tresses wore, 
 Dishevell'd, hut in wanton ringlets waved 
 As the vine curls her tendrils; which implied 
 Subjection, i>ul required with gentle sway, 25 
 
 And by her yielded, l<y him l<est receii'fd. 
 
 Landor. Stopping there, you break the link of 
 harmony just above the richest jewel that poetry 
 ever wore:
 
 .** 
 
 SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 
 
 Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, 
 And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 
 
 I would rather have written these two lines than 
 all the poetry that has been written since Milton's 
 5 time in all the regions of the earth. We shall see 
 again things equal in their way to the best of them; 
 but here the sweetest of images and sentiments is 
 seized and carried far away from all pursuers. 
 
 V 
 
 Southey. We open the twelfth book: we see land 
 
 o at last. 
 
 Landor. Yes, and dry land too. Happily the 
 twelfth is the shortest. In a continuation of six 
 hundred and twenty-five flat verses, we are pre- 
 pared for our passage over several such deserts 
 
 15 of almost equal extent, and still more frequent, in 
 Paradise Regained. But, at the close of the 
 poem now under our examination, there is a brief 
 union of the sublime and the pathetic for about 
 twenty lines, beginning with "All in bright array." 
 
 20 We are comforted by the thought that Provi- 
 dence had not abandoned our first parents, but was 
 still their guide; that, although they had lost Para- 
 dise, they were not debarred from Eden; that, 
 although the angel had left them solitary and sor- 
 
 25 rowing, he left them "yet in peace." The ter- 
 mination is proper and complete. 
 
 In Johnson's estimate I do not perceive the un- 
 fairness of which many have complained. Among 
 his first observations is this: " Scarcely any recital 
 
 30 is wished shorter for the sake of quickening the
 
 68 SOU THEY AXD LAN DOR. 
 
 main action." This is untrue: were it true, why 
 remark, as he does subsequently, that the poem is 
 mostly read as a duty, not as a pleasure. I think it 
 unnecessary to say a word on the moral or the sub- 
 ject; for it requires no genius to select a grand 5 
 one. The heaviest poems may be appended to the 
 loftiest themes. Andreini and others, whom Milton 
 turned over and tossed aside, are evidences. It 
 requires a large stock of patience to travel through 
 Vida; and we slacken in our march, although ac- 10 
 companied with the livelier sing-song of Sannazar. 
 Let any reader, who is not by many degrees more 
 pious than poetical, be asked whether he felt a 
 very great interest in the greatest actors of Para- 
 dise Lost, in what is either said or done by the 15 
 angels or the Creator; and whether the humblest 
 and weakest does not most attract him. Johnson's 
 remarks on the allegory of Milton are just and 
 wise; so are those on the non-materiality or non- 
 immateriality of Satan. These faults might have 20 
 been easily avoided; but Milton, with all his 
 strength, chose rather to make antiquity his shield- 
 bearer, and to come forward under a protection 
 which he might proudly have disdained. 
 
 SoiitJiey. You will not countenance the critic, nor 25 
 Dryden whom he quotes, in saying that Milton 
 "saw Nature through the spectacles of books"? 
 
 LanJor. Unhappily, both he and Dryden saw 
 Nature from between the houses of Fleet Street. 
 If ever there was a poet who knew her well, and 30 
 described her in all her loveliness, it was Milton. 
 In the Paradise Lost how profuse in his descrip-
 
 SOU THEY AND LAN DOR. 69 
 
 tions, as became the time and place! In the 
 Allegro and Penseroso how exquisite and select ! 
 
 Johnson asks, "What Englishman can take 
 delight in transcribing passages which, if they 
 5 lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish in some 
 degree the honour of our country!" I hope the 
 honour of our country will always rest on truth and 
 justice. It is not by concealing what is wrong 
 that anything right can be accomplished. There 
 
 10 is no pleasure in transcribing such passages; but 
 there is great utility. Inferior writers exercise no 
 interest, attract no notice, and serve no purpose. 
 Johnson has himself done great good by exposing 
 great faults in great authors. His criticism on 
 
 15 Milton's highest work is the most valuable of all 
 his writings. He seldom is erroneous in his cen- 
 sures; but he never is sufficiently excited to ad- 
 miration of what is purest and highest in poetry. 
 He has this in common with common minds (from 
 
 20 which, however, his own is otherwise far remote), 
 to be pleased with what is nearly on a level with 
 him, and to drink as contentedly a heady bever- 
 age, with its discoloured froth, as what is of the 
 best vintage. He is morbid, not only in his weak- 
 
 25 ness, but in his strength. There is much to par- 
 don, much to pity, much to respect, and no little 
 to admire, in him. 
 
 After I have been reading the Paradise Lost, 
 I can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I 
 
 30 seem to have left the music of Handel for the 
 music of the streets, or at best for drums and fifes. 
 Although in Shakspeare there are occasional
 
 7 SOUTH 'EV AND LANDOR. 
 
 bursts of harmony no less sublime; yet, if there 
 were many such in continuation, it would be hurt- 
 ful, not only in comedy, but also in tragedy. The 
 greater part should be equable and conversational. 
 I For, if the excitement were the same at the begin- 5 
 \ning, the middle, and the end; if consequently 
 (as must be the case) the language and versifica- 
 tion were equally elevated throughout, any long 
 poem would be a bad one, and, worst of all, a 
 drama. In our English heroic verse, such as 10 
 Milton has composed it, there is a much greater 
 variety of feet, of movement, of musical notes 
 and bars, than in the Greek heroic; and the final 
 sounds are incomparably more diversified. My 
 predilection in youth was on the side of Homer; 15 
 for I had read the Iliad twice, and the Odyssea once, 
 before the Paradise Lost. Averse as I am to every- 
 thing relating to theology, and especially to the 
 view of it thrown open by this poem, I recur to it 
 incessantly as the noblest specimen in the world of 20 
 eloquence, harmony, and genius. 
 
 Southey. Learned and sensible men are of opinion 
 that the Paradise Lost should have ended with 
 the words, "Providence their guide." It might 
 very well have ended there; but we are unwilling 25 
 to lose sight all at once of our first parents. Only 
 one more glimpse is allowed us: we are thankful 
 for it. We have seen the natural tears they 
 dropped; we have seen that they wiped them soon. 
 And why was it? Not because the world was all 30 
 before them; but because there still remained for 
 them, under the guidance of Providence, not in-
 
 SOU THEY AND LAN DOR. 7* 
 
 deed the delights of Paradise, now lost for ever, 
 but the genial clime and calm repose of Eden. 
 
 Landor. It has been the practice in late years to 
 supplant one dynasty by another, political and 
 5 poetical. Within our own memory, no man had 
 ever existed who preferred Lucretius on the whole 
 to Virgil, or Dante to Homer. But the great 
 Florentine, in these days, is extolled high above 
 the Grecian and Milton. Few, I believe, have 
 
 10 studied him more attentively or with more delight 
 than I have; but beside the prodigious dispro- 
 portion of the bad to the good, there are funda- 
 mental defects which there are not in either of the 
 other two. In the Divina Commedia the charac- 
 
 15 ters are without any bond of union, any field of 
 action, any definite aim. There is no central light 
 above the Bolge; and we are chilled in Paradise 
 even at the side of Beatrice. 
 
 Southey. Some poetical Perillus must surely have 
 
 20 invented the terza rima. I feel in reading it as a 
 school-boy feels when he is beaten over the head 
 with a bolster. 
 
 Landor. We shall hardly be in time for dinner. 
 What should we have been if we had repeated with 
 
 25 just eulogies all the noble things in the poem we 
 have been reading? 
 
 Southey. They would never have weaned you 
 from the Mighty Mother who placed her turreted 
 crown on the head of Shakspeare. 
 
 30 Landor. A rib of Shakspeare would have made^ 
 a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets \ 
 born ever since.
 
 Bnbrew /IDarvel aufc Bisbop parfeer, 
 
 Parker. Most happy am I to encounter you, Mr. 
 Marvel. It is some time, I think, since we met. 
 May I take the liberty of inquiring what brought 
 you into such a lonely quarter as Bunhill Fields? 
 
 Marvel. My lord, I return at this instant from 5 
 visiting an old friend of ours, hard by, in Artillery 
 Walk; who, you will be happy to hear, bears his 
 blindness and asthma with truly Christian courage. 
 
 Parker. And pray, who may that old friend be, 
 Mr. Marvel? 10 
 
 Marvel. Honest John Milton. 
 
 Parker. The same gentleman whose ingenious 
 poem, on our first parents, you praised in some 
 elegant verses prefixed to it? 
 
 Marvel. The same who likewise, on many occa- I5 
 sions, merited and obtained your lordship's appro- 
 bation. 
 
 Parker. I am happy to understand that no 
 harsh measures were taken against him, on the 
 return of our most gracious sovereign. And it 20 
 occurs to me that you, Mr. Marvel, were earnest 
 in his behalf. Indeed, 1 myself might have stirred 
 upon it, had Mr. Milton solicited me in the hour 
 of need. 
 
 Marvel. Me is grateful to the friends who con- 25 
 suited at the same time his dignity and his safety; 
 but gratitude can never be expected to grow on a
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 73 
 
 soil hardened by solicitation. Those who are the 
 most ambitious of power are often the least ambi- 
 tious of glory. It requires but little sagacity to 
 foresee that a name will become invested with eter- 
 5 nal brightness by belonging to a benefactor of 
 Milton. I might have served him! is not always the 
 soliloquy of late compassion or of virtuous repent- 
 ance: it is frequently the cry of blind and impo- 
 tent and wounded pride, angry at itself for having 
 
 10 neglected a good bargain, a rich reversion. Be- 
 lieve me, my lord bishop, there are few whom God 
 has promoted to serve the truly great. They are 
 never to be superseded, nor are their names to be 
 obliterated in earth or heaven. Were I to trust 
 
 15 my observation rather than my feelings, I 
 should believe that friendship is only a state of 
 transition to enmity. The wise, the excellent in 
 honour and integrity, whom it was once our ambi- 
 tion to converse with, soon appear in our sight no 
 
 20 higher than the ordinary class of our acquaintance; 
 then become fit objects to set our own slender 
 wits against, to contend with, to interrogate, to 
 subject to the arbitration, not of their equals, but 
 of ours; and, lastly, what indeed is less injustice 
 
 25 and less indignity, to neglect, abandon, and dis- 
 own. 
 
 Parker. I never have doubted that Mr. Milton is 
 a learned man indeed, he has proven it; and there 
 are many who, like yourself, see considerable merit 
 
 30111 his poems. I confess that lam an indifferent 
 judge in these matters; and I can only hope that he 
 has now corrected what is erroneous in his doctrines.
 
 74 ANDREW M ARTEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 Marvel. Latterly, he hath never changed a jot, in 
 acting or thinking. 
 
 Parker. Wherein 1 hold him blamable, well aware 
 as I am that never to change is thought an indication 
 of rectitude and wisdom. Iut if everything in this 5 
 world is progressive; if everything is defective; if 
 our growth, if our faculties, are obvious and certain 
 signs of it then surely we should and must be dif- 
 ferent in different ages and conditions. Conscious- 
 ness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness 10 
 of understanding; anil correction of error is the 
 plainest proof of energy and mastery. 
 
 Marvel. No proof of the kind is necessary to my 
 friend; and it was not always that your lordship 
 looked down on him so magisterially in reprehen- 15 
 sion, or delivered a sentence from so commanding 
 an elevation. 1, who indeed am but a humble man, 
 am apt to question my judgment where it differs 
 from his. I am appalled by any supercilious glance 
 at him, and disgusted by any austerity ill assorted 20 
 with the generosity of his mind. When I consider 
 what pure delight we have derived from it, what 
 treasures of wisdom it has conveyed to us, 1 find 
 him supremely worthy of my gratitude, love, and 
 veneration; and the neglect in which I now dis- 25 
 cover him leaves me only the more room for the 
 free effusion of these sentiments. How shallow in 
 comparison is everything else around us, trickling 
 and dimpling in the pleasure-grounds of our litera- 
 ture! If we are to build our summer-houses against 30 
 ruined temples, let us at least abstain from ruining 
 them for the purpose.
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 75 
 
 Parker. Nay, nay, Mr. Marvel! so much warmth 
 is uncalled for. 
 
 Marvel. Is there anything offensive to your lord- 
 ship in my expressions? 
 
 5 Parker. I am not aware that there is. But let us 
 generalise a little; for we are prone to be touchy 
 and testy in favour of our intimates. 
 
 Marvel. I believe, my lord, this fault, or sin, or 
 whatsoever it may be designated, is among the few 
 10 that are wearing fast away. 
 
 Parker. You will find your opinions discounte- 
 nanced by both our universities. 
 
 Marvel. I do not want anybody to corroborate my 
 opinions. They keep themselves up by their own 
 15 weight and consistency. Cambridge on one side 
 and Oxford on the other could lend me no effectual 
 support; and my skiff shall never be impeded by the 
 sedges of Cam, nor grate on the gravel of Isis. 
 
 Parker. Mr. Marvel, the path of what we fondly 
 20 call patriotism is highly perilous. Courts at least 
 are safe. 
 
 Marvel. I would rather stand on the ridge of 
 
 Etna than lower my head in the Grotto del Cane. 
 
 By the one I may share the fate of a philosopher; 
 
 25 by the other I must suffer the death of a cur. 
 
 Parker. We are all of us dust and ashes. 
 
 Marvel. True, my lord; but in some we recognise 
 
 the dust of gold and the ashes of the phoenix; in 
 
 others, the dust of the gateway and the ashes of 
 
 30 turf and stubble. With the greatest rulers upon 
 
 earth, head and crown drop together, and are over-
 
 76 ANDREW MARVEL AtfD BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 looked. It is true, we read of them in history; but 
 we also read in history of crocodiles and hyanias. 
 With great writers, whether in poetry or prose, 
 what falls away is scarcely more or other than a 
 vesture. The features of the man are imprinted 5 
 on his works; and more lamps burn over them, and 
 more religiously, than are lighted in temples or 
 churches. Milton, and men like him, bring their 
 own incense, kindle it with their own fire, and leave 
 it unconsumed and unconsumable; and their music, 10 
 * by day and by night, swells along a vault commensu- 
 rate with the vault of heaven. 
 
 Parker. Mr. Marvel, I am admiring the extremely 
 fine lace of your cravat. 
 
 Marvel. It cost me less than lawn would have 15 
 done; and it wins me a reflection. Very few can 
 think that man a great man whom they have been 
 accustomed to meet dressed exactly like them- 
 selves; more especially if they happen to find him, 
 not in park, forest, or chase, but warming his limbs - 
 by the reflected heat of the bricks in Artillery 
 Walk. In England, a man becomes a great man by 
 living in the middle of a great field; in Italy, by 
 living in a walled city; in France, by living in a 
 courtyard: no matter what lives they lead there. 25 
 
 Parker. I am afraid, Mr. Marvel, there is some 
 slight bitterness in your observation. 
 
 Marvel. Bitterness, it may be, from the bruised 
 laurel of Milton. 
 
 What falsehoods will not men put on, if they can 30 
 only pad them with a little piety! And how few 
 will expose their whole faces, from a fear of being
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 77 
 
 frost-bitten by poverty! But Milton was among 
 the few. 
 
 Parker. Already have we had our Deluge: we are 
 now once more upon dry land again, and we behold 
 5 the same creation as rejoiced us formerly. Our 
 late gloomy and turbulent times are passed for ever. 
 Marvel. Perhaps they are, if anything is for ever; 
 but the sparing Deluge may peradventure be com- 
 muted for unsparing Fire, as we are threatened. 
 
 10 The arrogant, the privileged, the stiff upholders of 
 established wrong, the deaf opponents of equitable 
 reformation, the lazy consumers of ill-requited 
 industry, the fraudulent who, unable to stop the 
 
 j^L^purse of the sun, pervert the direction of the 
 
 15 gnomon all these, peradventure, may be gradually 
 consumed by the process of silent contempt, or 
 suddenly scattered by the tempest of popular indig- 
 nation. As we see in masquerades the real judge 
 and the real soldier stopped and mocked by the 
 
 20 fictitious, so do we see in the carnival of to-day 
 the real man of dignity hustled, shoved aside, and 
 derided by those who are invested with the 
 semblance by the milliners of the court. The 
 populace is taught to respect this livery alone, and 
 
 25 is proud of being permitted to look through the 
 grating at such ephemeral frippery. And yet false 
 gems and false metals have never been valued 
 above real ones. Until our people alter these 
 notions; until they estimate the wise and virtuous 
 
 30 above the silly and profligate, the man of genius 
 above the man of title; until they hold the knave 
 and cheat of. St. James's as low as the knave and
 
 7 8 ANDRE W MA R I 'EL A ND BISHOP PA Rh'ER. 
 
 cheat of St. Giles's they are fitter for the slave- 
 market than for any other station. 
 
 Parker. You would have no distinctions, I fear. 
 
 Marvel. On the contrary, I would have greater 
 than exist at present. You cannot blot or burn out 5 
 an ancient name; you cannot annihilate past ser- 
 vices; you cannot subtract one single hour from 
 eternity, nor wither one leaf on his brow who hath 
 entered into it. Sweep away from before me the 
 soft grubs of yesterday's formation, generated by 10 
 the sickliness of the plant they feed upon; sweep 
 them away unsparingly then will you clearly see 
 distinctions, and easily count the men who have 
 attained them worthily. 
 
 Parker. In a want of respect to established power 15 
 and principles originated most of the calamities we 
 have latterly undergone. 
 
 Marvel. Say rather, in the averseness of that 
 power and the inadequacy of those principles to 
 resist the encroachment of injustice; say rather, 20 
 on their tendency to distort the poor creatures 
 swaddled up in them; add, moreover, the reluctance 
 of the old women who rock and dandle them to 
 change their habiliments fur fresh and wholesome 
 ones. A man will break the windows of his own 25 
 house, that he may not perish by foul air within; 
 now, whether is he, or those who bolted the door 
 on him, to blame for it? If he is called mad or 
 inconsiderate, it is only by those who arc ignorant 
 of the cause and insensible of the urgency. I 30 
 declare I am rejoiced at seeing a gentleman, whose 
 ancestors have signally served their country, treated
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 79 
 
 with deference and respect; because it evinces a 
 sense of justice and of gratitude in the people, and 
 because it may incite a few others, whose ambition 
 would take another course, to desire the same. 
 5 Different is my sentence, when he who has not 
 performed the action claims more honour than he 
 who performed it, and thinks himself the worthier 
 if twenty are between them than if there be one or 
 none. Still less accordant is it with my principles, 
 
 xoand less reducible to my comprehension, that they 
 who devised the ruin of cities and societies should 
 be exhibited as deserving much higher distinction 
 than they who have corrected the hearts and 
 enlarged the intellects, and have performed it not 
 
 15 only without the hope of reward, but almost with 
 the certainty of persecution. 
 
 Parker. Ever too hard upon great men, Mr. 
 Marvel! 
 Marvel. Little men in lofty places, who throw 
 
 20 long shadows because our sun is setting, the man 
 so little and the places so lofty, that, casting my 
 pebble, I only show where they stand. They would 
 be less contented with themselves, if they had 
 obtained their preferment honestly. Luck and 
 
 25 dexterity always give more pleasure than intellect 
 and knowledge; because they fill up what they fall 
 on to the brim at once, and people run to them 
 with acclamations at the splash. Wisdom is re- 
 served and noiseless, contented with hard carn- 
 
 30 ings, and daily letting go some early acquisition, 
 to make room for better specimens. But great 
 is the exultation of a worthless man, when he
 
 8o ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 receives, for the chips and raspings of his Bride- 
 well logwood, a richer reward than the best and 
 wisest for extensive tracts of well-cleared truths; 
 when he who has sold his country 
 
 Parker. Forbear, forbear, good Mr. Marvel! 5 
 
 Marvel. When such is higher in estimation than 
 he who would have saved it; when his emptiness is 
 heard above the voice that hath shaken Fanati- 
 cism in her central shrine, that hath bowed down 
 tyrants to the scaffold, that hath raised up nations 10 
 from the dust, that alone hath been found worthy 
 to celebrate, as angels do, creating and redeeming 
 Love, and to precede with its solitary sound the 
 trumpet that will call us to our doom. 
 
 Parker. I am unwilling to feign ignorance of the 15 
 gentleman you designate; but really now you would 
 make a very Homer of him. 
 
 Marvel. It appears to me that Homer is to Milton 
 what a harp is to an organ, though a harp under the 
 hand of Apollo. 20 
 
 Parker. I have always done him justice; I have 
 always called him a learned man. 
 
 Marvel. Call him henceforward the most glorious 
 one that ever existed upon earth. If two Bacon 
 and Shakspeare have equalled him in diversity and 25 
 intensity of power, did either of these spring away 
 with such resolution from the sublimest heights of 
 genius, to liberate and illuminate with patient labour 
 the manacled human race? And what is his recom- 
 pense? The same recompense as all men like him 30 
 have received, and will receive for ages. Perse- 
 cution follows righteousness; the Scorpion is next
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 8l 
 
 in succession to Libra. The fool, however, who 
 ventures to detract from Milton's genius, in the 
 night which now appears to close on him, will, 
 when the dawn has opened on his dull ferocity, be 
 5 ready to bite off a limb, if he might thereby limp 
 away from the trap he has prowled into. Among 
 the gentler, the better, and the wiser, few have 
 entered yet the awful structure of his mind; few 
 comprehend, few are willing to contemplate, its 
 Jovastness. Politics now occupy scarcely a closet in 
 it. We seldom are inclined to converse on them; 
 and, when we do, it is jocosely rather than austerely. 
 For even the bitterest berries grow less acrid when 
 they have been hanging long on the tree. 
 
 *** 
 
 15 Parker. Dear me ! what a memory you possess, 
 good Mr. Marvel! You pronounce Latin verses 
 charmingly. I wish you would go on to the end of 
 the book. 
 
 Marvel. Permit to go on a shorter distance, to 
 
 20 the conclusion of my remarks. As popery caused 
 the violence of the Reformers, so did prelaty (the 
 same thing under another name) the violence of the 
 Presbyterians and Anabaptists. She treated them 
 inhumanly: she reduced to poverty, she exiled, 
 
 25 she maimed, she mutilated, she stabbed, she shot, 
 she hanged, those who followed Christ in the nar- 
 row and quiet lane, rather than along the dust of 
 j the market-road, and who conversed with him 
 rather in the cottage than the tollbooth. She 
 
 30 would have nothing pass unless through her hands; 
 and she imposed a heavy and intolerable tax on the
 
 8 2 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 necessaries both of physical and of spiritual life. 
 This baronial privilege our Parliament would have 
 suppressed; the King rose against the suppres- 
 sion, and broke his knuckles in the cogs of the 
 mill. 5 
 
 Parker. Sad times, Mr. Marvel, sad times! It 
 fills me with heaviness to hear of them. 
 
 Marvel. Low places are foggy first; days of sad- 
 ness wet the people to the skin; they hang loosely 
 for some time upon the ermine, but at last they 10 
 penetrate it, and cause it to be thrown off. I do 
 not like to hear a man cry out with pain; but I 
 would rather hear one than twenty. Sorrow is the 
 growth of all seasons; we had much, however, to 
 relieve it. Never did our England, since she first 15 
 emerged from the ocean, rise so high above sur- 
 rounding nations. The rivalry of Holland, the 
 pride of Spain, the insolence of France, were 
 thrust back by one finger each; yet those countries 
 were then more powerful than they had ever been. 20 
 The sword of Cromwell was preceded by the mace 
 of Milton; by that mace which, when Oliver had 
 rendered his account, opened to our contemplation 
 / the garden-gate of Paradise. And there were some 
 around not unworthy to enter with him. In the 25 
 compass of sixteen centuries, you will not number 
 on the whole earth so many wise and admirable men 
 as you could have found united in that single day, 
 when England showed her true magnitude and 
 solved the question, \Vhich is most, one or a million ? 30 
 There were giants in those days; but giants who 
 feared (lod, and not who fought against him. Less
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 83 
 
 men, it appears, are braver. They show him a legal 
 writ of ejectment, seize upon his house, and riot- 
 ously carouse therein. But the morning must 
 come; and heaviness, we know, cometh in the 
 5 morning. 
 
 Parker. Wide is the difference between carousal 
 and austerity. Your friend miscalculated the steps 
 to fortune, in which, as we all are the architects of 
 our own, if we omit the insertion of one or two, the 
 10 rest are useless in furthering our ascent. He was 
 too passionate, Mr. Marvel, he was indeed. 
 
 Marvel. Superficial men have no absorbing pas- 
 sion: there are no whirlpools in a shallow. I have 
 often been amused at thinking in what estimation 
 15 the greatest of mankind were holden by their con- 
 temporaries. Not even the most sagacious and 
 prudent one could discover much of them, or could 
 prognosticate their future course in the infinity of 
 space! Men like ourselves are permitted to stand 
 20 near, and indeed in the very presence of, Milton. 
 What do they see ? dark clothes, gray hair, and 
 sightless eyes! Other men have better things: 
 other men, therefore, are nobler! The stars them- 
 selves are only bright by distance; go close, and all 
 25 is earthy. But vapours illuminate these: from the 
 breath and from the countenance of God comes 
 light on worlds higher than they, worlds to which 
 he has given the forms and names of Shakspeare 
 and of Milton. 
 
 30 Parker. After all, I doubt whether much of his 
 doctrine is remaining in the public mind. 
 
 Marvel. Others are not inclined to remember
 
 84 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 all that we remember, and will not attend to us if 
 we propose to tell them half. Water will take up 
 but a certain quantity of salt, even of the finest and 
 purest. If the short memories of men are to be 
 quoted against the excellence of instruction, your 5 
 lordship would never have censured them from the 
 pulpit for forgetting what was delivered by their 
 Saviour. It is much, my lord bishop, that you 
 allow my friend even the pittance of praise you 
 have bestowed; for, if you will permit me to ex- 10 
 press my sentiments in verse, which I am in the 
 habit of doing, I would say 
 
 Men like the ancient kalends, nones, and ides, 
 Are reckoned backward, and the first stand last. 
 
 I am confident that Milton is heedless of how 15 
 little weight he is held by those who are of none; 
 and that he never looks toward those somewhat 
 more eminent, between whom and himself there 
 have crept the waters of oblivion. As the pearl 
 ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the 20 
 tomb all the fame that is truly precious. In fame 
 he will be happier than in friendship. Were it pos- 
 sible that one among the faithful of the angels 
 could have suffered wounds and dissolution in his 
 conflict with the false, I should scarcely feel 25 
 greater awe at discovering on some bleak mountain 
 the bones of this our mighty defender, once shining 
 in celestial panoply, once glowing at the trumpet- 
 blast of (iod, but not proof against the desperate 
 and the damned, than I have felt at entering the 30 
 humble abode of Milton, whose spirit already
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 85 
 
 reaches heaven, yet whose corporeal frame hath no 
 quiet or safe resting-place here below. And shall 
 not I, who loved him early, have the lonely and sad 
 privilege to love him still? Or shall fidelity to power 
 
 5 be a virtue, and fidelity to tribulation an offence? 
 
 Parker. We may best show our fidelity by our 
 discretion. It becomes my station, and suits my 
 principles, to defend the English Constitution, both 
 in Church and State. 
 
 10 Marvel. You highly praised the Defence of the 
 English People; you called it a masterly piece of 
 rhetoric and ratiocination. 
 
 Parker. I might have admired the subtilty of it, 
 and have praised the Latinity. 
 
 15 Marvel. Less reasonably. But his godlike mind 
 shines gloriously throughout his work ; only perhaps 
 we look the more intently at it for the cloud it 
 penetrates. Those who think we have enough of 
 his poetry still regret that we possess too little of 
 
 20 his prose, and wish especially for more of his his- 
 torical compositions. Davila and Bacon 
 
 Parker. You mean Lord Verulam. 
 Marvel. That idle title was indeed thrown over 
 his shoulders; but the trapping was unlikely to rest 
 
 25 long upon a creature of such proud paces. He and 
 Davila are the only men of high genius among the 
 moderns who have attempted it; and the greater 
 of them has failed. He wanted honesty, lie per- 
 verted facts, he courted favour: the present in his 
 
 30 eyes was larger than the future. 
 
 Parker. The Italians, who far excel us in the 
 writing of history, are farther behind the ancients.
 
 86 ANDRE IV MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 Marvel. True enough. From Guicciardini and 
 Machiavelli, the most celebrated of them, we 
 acquire a vast quantity of trivial information. 
 There is about them a sawdust which absorbs much 
 blood and impurity, and of which the level surface 5 
 is dry; but no traces by what agency rose such 
 magnificent cities above the hovels of France and 
 Germany, none 
 
 Ut fortis Etruria crevit, 
 
 or, on the contrary, how the mistress of the world 10 
 sank in the ordure of her priesthood. 
 
 Scilicet et rerum facta est nequissima Roma. 
 
 We are captivated by no charms of description, we 
 are detained by no peculiarities of character: we 
 hear a clamorous scuffle in the street, and we close 15 
 the door. How different the historians of anti- 
 quity! We read Sallust, and always are incited by 
 the desire of reading on, although we are sur- 
 rounded by conspirators and barbarians; we read 
 Livy, until we imagine we are standing in an august 20 
 pantheon, covered with altars and standards, over 
 which are the four fatal letters that spellbound all 
 mankind.* We step forth again among the mod- 
 ern Italians: here we find plenty of rogues, plenty 
 of receipts for making more; and little else. In 25 
 the best passages, we come upon a crowd of dark 
 reflections, which scarcely a glimmer of glory 
 pierces through; and we stare at the tenuity ot the 
 spectres, but never at their altitude. 
 
 Give me the poetical mind, the mind poetical in 3 
 *S. P. <. K.
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER. 87 
 
 all things; give me the poetical heart, the heart ofl 
 hope and confidence, that beats the more strongly j 
 and resolutely under the good thrown down, and ' 
 raises up fabric after fabric on the same founda- 
 5 tion. 
 
 Parker. At your time of life, Mr. Marvel? 
 Marvel. At mine, my lord bishop! I have lived 
 with Milton. Such creative and redeeming spirits 
 are like kindly and renovating Nature. Volcano 
 
 10 comes after volcano; yetcovereth she with herbage 
 and foliage, with vine and olive, and with what- 
 ever else refreshes and gladdens her the Earth that 
 has been gasping under the exhaustion of her 
 throes. 
 
 15 Parker. He has given us such a description of 
 Eve's beauty as appears to me somewhat too pic- 
 torial, too luxuriant, too suggestive, too I know 
 not what. 
 
 Marvel. The sight of beauty, in her purity and 
 
 20 beatitude, turns us from all unrighteousness, and 
 is death to sin. 
 
 Parker. Before we part, my good Mr. Marvel, 
 let me assure you that we part in amity, and that 
 I bear no resentment in my breast against your 
 
 25 friend. I am patient'of Mr. Milton; I am more 
 than patient, I am indulgent, seeing that his in- 
 fluence on society is past. 
 
 Marvel. Past it is, indeed. What a deplorable 
 thing is it that folly should so constantly have 
 
 30 power over wisdom, and wisdom so intermittently 
 over folly! But we live morally, as we used to live 
 politically, under a representative system; and the
 
 88 ANDREW MARVEL AXD BISHOP PARKER. 
 
 majority (to employ a phrase of people at elections) 
 carries the day. 
 
 Parker. Let us piously hope, Mr. Marvel, that 
 God in his good time may turn Mr. Milton from 
 the error of his ways, and incline his heart to re- 5 
 pentance, and that so he may finally be prepared 
 for death. 
 
 Marvel. The wicked can never be prepared for 
 it; the good always are. What is the preparation 
 which so many ruffled wrists point out? to gabble 10 
 over prayer and praise and confession and contri- 
 tion. My lord, heaven is not to be won by short 
 hard work at the last, as some of us take a degree 
 at the university, after much irregularity and negli- 
 gence. I prefer a steady pace from the outset to 15 
 the end; coming in cool, and dismounting quietly. 
 Instead of which, I have known many old play- 
 fellows of the Devil spring up suddenly from their 
 beds, and strike at him treacherously; while he, 
 without a cuff, laughed and made grimaces in the 20 
 corner of the room.
 
 anfc Spenser. i*Yi 
 
 Essex. Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from 
 Ireland, I sent a message to thee, good Edmund, 
 that 1 might learn, from one so judicious and dis- 
 passionate as thou art, the real state of things in 
 5 that distracted country; it having pleased the 
 Queen's Majesty to think of appointing me her 
 deputy, in order to bring the rebellious to sub- 
 mission. 
 
 Spenser. Wisely and well considered; but more 
 10 worthily of her judgment than her affection. May 
 your lordship overcome, as you have ever done, the 
 difficulties and dangers you foresee. 
 
 Essex. We grow weak by striking at random; and 
 knowing that I must strike, and strike heavily, I 
 15 would fain see exactly where the stroke shall fall. 
 
 Now what tale have you for us? 
 
 Spenser. Interrogate me, my lord, that I may 
 answer each question distinctly, my mind being in 
 sad confusion at what I have seen and undergone. 
 20 Essex. Give me thy account and opinion of these 
 very affairs as thou leftest them; for I would rather 
 know one part well than all imperfectly; and the 
 violences of which 1 have heard within the day sur- 
 pass belief. 
 
 89
 
 9 ESSEX AND SPENSER. 
 
 Why wecpest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the 
 rebels sacked thy house? 
 
 Spenser. They have plundered and utterly de- 
 stroyed it. 
 
 Essex. I grieve for thee, and will see thee 5 
 righted. 
 
 Spenser. In this they have little harmed me. 
 
 Essex. How! I have heard it reported that thy 
 grounds are fertile, and thy mansion large and 
 pleasant. 10 
 
 Spenser. If river and lake and meadow-ground and 
 mountain could render any place the abode of pleas- 
 antness, pleasant was mine, indeed! 
 
 On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep con- 
 tentment. Under the dark alders did I muse and '5 
 meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares, 
 and my playfullesl fancy was with kindly wishes. 
 Ah! surely of all cruelties the worst is to extinguish 
 our kindness. Mine is gone: I love the people and 
 the land no longer. My lord, ask me not about 20 
 them: I may speak injuriously. 
 
 Essex. Think rather, then, of thy happier hours 
 and busier occupations; these likewise may instruct 
 me. 
 
 Spenser. The first seeds I sowed in the garden, 25- 
 erc the old castle was made habitable for my lovely 
 bride, were acorns from IVnshurst. 1 planted a 
 little oak before my mansion at the birth of each 
 child. My sons, I said to myself, shall often play 
 in the shade of them when I am gone; and every 30 
 year shall they take the measure of their growth, as 
 fondly as I take theirs.
 
 ESSEX AND SPENSEK. 91 
 
 Essex. Well, well; but let not this thought make 
 thee weep so bitterly. 
 
 Spenser. Poison may ooze from beautiful plants; 
 deadly grief from dearest reminiscences. 
 5 I must grieve, 1 must weep: it seems the law of 
 God, and the only one that men are not disposed to 
 contravene. In the performance of this alone do 
 they effectually aid one another. 
 
 Essex. Spenser! I wish I had at hand any argu- 
 xomentsor persuasions of force sufficient to remove 
 thy sorrow; but, really, I am not in the habit of see- 
 ing men grieve at anything except the loss of favour 
 at court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-hound. And 
 were I to swear out my condolences to a man of thy 
 15 discernment, in the same round roll-call phrases we 
 employ with one another upon these occasions, I 
 should be guilty, not of insincerity, but of insolence. 
 True grief hath ever something sacred in it; and, 
 when it visiteth a wise man and a brave one, is most 
 20 holy. 
 
 Nay, kiss not my hand: he whom God smiteth 
 hath God with him. In his presence what am I? 
 
 Spenser. Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, 
 when you see aright who is greater. May he guide 
 25 your counsels, and preserve your life and glory! 
 
 Essex. Where are thy friends? Are they with 
 thee? 
 
 Spenser. Ah, where, indeed! Generous, true- 
 hearted Philip! where art thou, whose presence was 
 30 unto me peace and safety; whose smile was con- 
 tentment, and whose praise renown? My lord! I 
 cannot but think of him among still heavier losses:
 
 92 ESSEX AND SPENSER. 
 
 he was my earliest friend, and would have taught me 
 wisdom. 
 
 Essex. Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not 
 require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; 
 rebuild thine house: the Queen and Council, I ven- 5 
 ture to promise thee, will make ample amends for 
 every evil thou hast sustained. What! does that 
 enforce thee to wail yet louder? 
 
 Spenser. Pardon me, bear with me, most noble 
 heart! I have lost what no Council, no Queen, no 10 
 Essex, can restore. 
 
 Essex. We will see that. There are other swords, 
 and other arms to wield them, beside a Leicester's 
 and a Raleigh's. Others can crush their enemies, 
 and serve their friends. 15 
 
 Spenser. O my sweet child! And of many so 
 powerful, many so wise and so beneficent, was there 
 none to save thee? None! none! 
 
 Essex. I now perceive that thou lamentest what 
 almost every father is destined to lament. Ilappi-zo 
 ness must be bought, although the payment may be 
 delayed. Consider; the same calamity might have 
 befallen thee here in London. Neither the houses 
 of ambassadors, nor the palaces of kings, nor the 
 altars of God himself, are asylums against death. 25 
 How do I know but under this very roof there may 
 sleep some latent calamity, that in an instant shall 
 cover with gloom every inmate of the house, and 
 every far dependent? 
 
 Spenser. God avert it! 3,, 
 
 Essex. Every day, every hour of the year, do hun- 
 dreds mourn what thou mournest.
 
 ESSEX AND SPENSER. 93 
 
 Spenser. Oh, no, no, no! Calamities there are 
 around us; calamities there are all over the earth; 
 calamities there are in all seasons: but none in any 
 season, none in any place, like mine. 
 5 Essex. So say all fathers, so say all husbands. 
 Look at any old mansion-house, and let the sun 
 shine as gloriously as it may on the golden vanes, or 
 the arms recently quartered over the gateway or the 
 embayed window, and on the happy pair that haply 
 
 10 is toying at it: nevertheless, thou mayest say that 
 of a certainty the same fabric hath seen much 
 sorrow within its chambers, and heard many wail- 
 ings; and each time this was the heaviest stroke of 
 all. Funerals have passed along through the stout- 
 
 15 hearted knights upon the wainscot, and amid the 
 laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old servants 
 have shaken their heads, as if somebody had 
 deceived them, when they found that beauty and 
 nobility could perish. 
 
 20 Edmund! the things that are too true pass by us 
 as if they were not true at all; and when they have 
 singled us out, then only do they strike us. Thou 
 and I must go too. Perhaps the next year may blow 
 us away with its fallen leaves.* 
 
 25 Spenser. For you, my lord, many years (I trust) 
 are waiting: I never shall see those fallen leaves. 
 No leaf, no bud, will spring upon the earth before I 
 sink into her breast for ever. 
 
 Essex. Thou, who art wiser than most men, 
 
 aoshouldst bear with patience, equanimity, and cour- 
 age what is common to all. 
 
 Spenser. Enough, enough, enough! Have all men 
 * It happened so.
 
 94 ESSEX AND SPKNSER. 
 
 seen their infant burned to ashes before their 
 eyes? 
 
 Essex. Gracious God! Merciful Father! what is 
 this? 
 
 Spenser. Burned alive! burned to ashes! burned 5 
 to ashes! The flames dart their serpent tongues 
 through the nursery-window. I cannot quit thee, 
 my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund! 
 Oh, these flames! They persecute, they enthrall 
 me; they curl round my temples; they hiss upon 10 
 my brain; they taunt me with their fierce, foul 
 voices; they carp at me, they wither me, they con- 
 sume me, throwing back to me a little of life to roll 
 and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, 
 my lord, the things you wish to know from me: 1 15 
 may answer them; 1 am now composed again. 
 Command me, my gracious lord! 1 would yet 
 serve you: soon I shall be unable. You have 
 stooped to raise me up; you have borne with me; 
 you have pitied me, even like one not powerful. 20 
 You have brought comfort, and will leave it with me; 
 for gratitude is comfort. 
 
 Oh! my memory stands all a tip-toe on one burn- 
 ing point: when it drops from it, then it perishes. 
 Spare me: ask me nothing; let me weep before you 25 
 in peace, the kindest act of greatness. 
 
 Essex. I should rather have dared to mount into 
 the midst of the conflagration than I now dare 
 entreat thee not to weep. The tears that overflow 
 thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch and heal it in 30 
 their sacred stream ; but not without hope in God. 
 
 tycnsi'r. My hope in God is that I may soon see
 
 ESSEX AND SPENSER. 95 
 
 again what he has taken from me. Amid the myriads 
 of angels, there is not one so beautiful; and even 
 he (if there be any) who is appointed my guardian 
 could never love me so. Ah! these are idle 
 5 thoughts, vain wanderings, distempered dreams. 
 If there ever were guardian angels, he who so 
 wanted one my helpless boy would not have left 
 these arms upon my knees. 
 
 Essex. God help and sustain thee, too gentle 
 
 10 Spenser! I never will desert thee. But what am I? 
 Great they have called me! Alas, how powerless 
 then and infantile is greatness in the presence of 
 calamity! 
 
 Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and 
 
 15 down the gallery. Bravely done! I will envy no 
 more a Sidney or a Raleigh.
 
 ZTbe Xafcp OLisle an& EUsabetb Oaunt. 
 
 Lady Lisle. Madam, I am confident you will 
 pardon me; for affliction teaches forgiveness. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. From the cell of the condemned 
 we are going, unless my hopes mislead me, where 
 alone we can receive it. 5 
 
 Tell me, I beseech you, lady! in what matter or 
 manner do you think you can have offended a poor 
 sinner such as I am. Surely we come into this 
 dismal place for our offences; and it is not here that 
 any can be given or taken. 10 
 
 Lady Lisle. Just now, when I entered the prison, 
 I saw your countenance serene and cheerful; you 
 looked upon me for a time with an unaltered eye; 
 you turned away from me, as I fancied, only to utter 
 some expressions of devotion; and again you looked 15 
 upon me, and tears rolled down your face. Alas 
 that I should, by any circumstance, any action or 
 recollection, make another unhappy! Alas that I 
 should deepen the gloom in the very shadow of 
 death! 20 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. He comforted: you have not 
 done it. (irief softens and melts and flows away 
 with tears. 
 
 I wept because another was greatly more wretched 
 than myself. 1 wept at that black attire at that 25 
 attire of modesty and of widowhood.
 
 LADY LISLE AND ELIZABETH GAUNT. 97 
 
 Lady Lisle. It covers a wounded, almost a broken 
 heart an unworthy offering to our blessed 
 Redeemer. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. In his name let us now rejoice! 
 5 Let us offer our prayers and our thanks at once 
 together! We may yield up our souls, perhaps, at 
 the same hour. 
 
 Lady Lisle. Is mine so pure? Have I bemoaned, 
 
 as I should have done, the faults I have committed? 
 
 10 Have my sighs arisen for the unmerited mercies of 
 
 my God; and not rather for him, the beloved of my 
 
 heart, the adviser and sustainer I have lost? 
 
 Open, O gates of Death! 
 
 Smile on me, approve my last action in this world, 
 15 O virtuous husband! O saint and martyr! my 
 brave, compassionate, and loving Lisle! 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. And cannot you, too, smile, 
 
 sweet lady? Are not you with him even now? Doth 
 
 body, doth clay, doth air, separate and estrange free 
 
 20 spirits? Bethink you of his gladness, of his glory; 
 
 and begin to partake them. 
 
 Oh! how could an Englishman, how could twelve, 
 condemn to death condemn to so great an evil as 
 they thought it and may find it this innocent and 
 25 helpless widow? 
 
 Lady Lisle. Blame not that jury! blame not the 
 jury which brought against me the verdict of guilty. 
 I was so: I received in my house a wanderer who 
 had fought under the rash and giddy Monmouth. 
 30 He was hungry and thirsty, and I took him in. My 
 Saviour had commanded, my King had forbidden it. 
 
 Yet the twelve would not have delivered me over
 
 9 8 LADY LISLE AXD ELIZABETH GAUNT. 
 
 to death, unless the judge had threatened them 
 with an accusation of treason in default of it. 
 Terror made them unanimous: they redeemed their 
 properties and lives at the stated price. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. I hope, at least, the unfortunate 5 
 man whom you received in the hour of danger may 
 avoid his penalty. 
 
 Lady Lisle. Let us hope it. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. I, too, am imprisoned for the 
 same offence; and I have little expectation that he 10 
 who was concealed by me hath any chance of happi- 
 ness, although he hath escaped. Could I find the 
 meansof conveying to him a small pittance, I should 
 leave the world the more comfortably. 
 
 Lady Lisle. Trust in Clod; not in one thing or 15 
 another, but in all. Resign the care of this wanderer 
 to his guidance. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. He abandoned that guidance. 
 
 Lady Lisle". Unfortunate! how can money then 
 avail him? 20 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. It might save him from distress 
 and from despair, from the taunts of the hard- 
 hearted, and from the inclemency of the godly. 
 
 Lady Lisle. In godliness, O my friend! there can- 
 not be inclemency. 25 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. You are thinking of perfection, 
 my dear lady; and I marvel not at it, for what else 
 hath ever occupied your thoughts! Hut godliness, 
 in almost the best of us, often is austere, often 
 uncompliant and rigid proner to reprove than 1030 
 pardon, to drag back or thrust aside than to invite 
 and help onward.
 
 LADY LISLE AND ELIZABETH GAUNT. 99 
 
 Poor man! I never knew him before; I cannot 
 tell how he shall endure his self-reproach, or whether 
 it will bring him to calmer thoughts hereafter. 
 
 Lady Lisle. I am not a busy idler in curiosity; 
 
 5 nor, if I were, is there time enough left me for 
 
 indulging in it; yet gladly would I learn the history 
 
 of events, at the first appearance so resembling 
 
 those in mine. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. The person's name I never may 
 
 lodisclose; which would be the worst thing I could 
 betray of the trust he placed in me. He took 
 refuge in my humble dwelling, imploring me in the 
 name of Christ to harbour him for a season. Food 
 and raiment were afforded him unsparingly; yet his 
 
 15 fears made him shiver through them. Whatever I 
 could urge of prayer and exhortation was not want- 
 ing; still, although he prayed, he was disquieted. 
 Soon came to my ears the declaration of the King, 
 that his Majesty would rather pardon a rebel than 
 
 20 the concealerof a rebel. The hope was a faint one; 
 but it was a hope, and I gave it him. His thanks- 
 givings were now more ardent, his prayers more 
 humble, and oftener repeated. They did not 
 strengthen his heart: it was unpurified and unpre- 
 
 25 pared for them. Poor creature! he consented with 
 it to betray me; and I am condemned to be burned 
 alive. Can we believe, can we encourage the hope, 
 that in his weary way through life he will find those 
 only who will conceal from him the knowledge of 
 
 30 this execution? Heavily, too heavily, must it weigh 
 on so irresolute and infirm a breast. 
 Let it not move you to weeping.
 
 100 LADY LISLE AND ELIZABETH GAUNT. 
 
 Lady Lisle. It does not; oh! it does not. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. What, then? 
 
 Lady Lisle. Your saintly tenderness, your heavenly 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt. No, no: abstain! abstain! It was 5 
 I who grieved; it was I who doubted. Let us now 
 be firmer: we have both the same rock to rest upon. 
 See! I shed no tears. 
 
 I saved his life, an unprofitable and (I fear) a joy- 
 less one; he, by God's grace, has thrown open to 10 
 me, and at an earlier hour than ever I ventured to 
 expect it, the avenue to eternal bliss. 
 
 Lady Lisle. O my good angel! that bestrewest 
 with fresh flowers a path already smooth and pleas- 
 ant to me, may those timorous men who have K 
 betrayed, and those misguided ones who have prose- 
 cuted us, be conscious on their death-beds that we 
 have entered it! and they too will at last find rest.
 
 Catharine. Into his heart! into his heart! If he 
 escapes, we perish. 
 
 Do you think, Dashkof, they can hear me through 
 the double door? Yes; hark! they heard me: they 
 5 have done it. 
 
 What bubbling and gurgling! he groaned but 
 once. 
 
 Listen! his blood is busier now than it ever was 
 before. I should not have thought it could have 
 10 splashed so loud upon the floor, although our bed, 
 indeed, is rather of the highest. 
 
 Put your ear against the lock. 
 
 Dashkof. I hear nothing. 
 
 Catharine. My ears are quicker than yours, and 
 
 15 know these notes better. Let me come. Hear 
 
 nothing! You did not wait long enough, nor with 
 
 coolness and patience. There! there again! The 
 
 drops are now like lead: every half-minute they 
 
 penetrate the eider-down and the mattress. How 
 
 20 now! which of these fools has brought his dog with 
 
 him? What tramping and lapping! the creature 
 
 will carry the marks all about the palace with his 
 
 feet and muzzle. 
 
 Dashkof. Oh, heavens! 
 25 Catharine. Are you afraid?
 
 102 THE EMPRESS CATHARINE 
 
 Dashkof. There is a horror that surpasses fear, 
 and will have none of it. I knew not this before. 
 
 Catharine. You turn pale and tremble. You 
 should have supported me, in case I had required it. 
 
 Dashkof. I thought only of the tyrant. Neither 5 
 in life nor in death could any one of these mis- 
 creants make me tremble. But the husband slain 
 by his wife! I saw not into my heart; I looked not 
 into it, and it chastises me. 
 
 Catharine. Dashkof, are you, then, really unwell? 10 
 
 Dashkof. What will Russia, what will Europe, 
 say? 
 
 Catharine. Russia has no more voice than a 
 whale. She may toss about in her turbulence; but 
 my artillery (for now, indeed, I can safely call it 15 
 mine) shall stun and quiet her. 
 
 Dashkof. God grant 
 
 Catharine. I cannot but laugh at thee, my pretty 
 Dashkof! God grant, forsooth! He has granted 
 all we wanted from him at present the safe re- 20 
 moval of this odious Peter. 
 
 Dashkof. Yet Peter loved you ; and even the 
 worst husband must leave, surely, the recollection 
 of some sweet moments. The sternest must have 
 trembled, both with apprehension and with hope, 25 
 at the first alteration in the health of his consort; 
 at the first promise of true union, imperfect with- 
 out progeny. Then, there are thanks rendered to- 
 gether to heaven, and satisfactions communicated, 
 and infant words interpreted; and when the one 30 
 has failed to pacify the sharp cries of babyhood, 
 pettish and impatient as sovereignty itself, the
 
 AND PRIXCESS DAS11KOF. 103 
 
 success of the other in calming it, and the unenvied 
 triumph of this exquisite ambition, and the calm 
 gazes that it wins upon it. 
 
 Catharine. Are these, my sweet friend, your 
 
 5 lessons from the Stoic school? Are not they, 
 
 rather, the pale-faced reflections of some kind 
 
 epithalamiast from Livonia or Bessarabia? Come, 
 
 come away. I am to know nothing at present of the 
 
 deplorable occurrence. Did not you wish his death? 
 
 10 Dashkof. It is not his death that shocks me. 
 
 Catharine. I understand you: beside, you said as 
 much before. 
 
 Dashkof. I fear for your renown. 
 Catharine. And for your own good name ay, 
 15 Dashkof? 
 
 Dashkof. He was not, nor did I ever wish him to 
 be, my friend. 
 
 Catharine. You hated him. 
 
 Dashkof. Even hatred may be plucked up too 
 20 roughly. 
 
 Catharine. Europe shall be informed of my rea- 
 sons, if she should ever find out that I counte- 
 nanced the conspiracy. She shall be persuaded 
 that her repose made the step necessary; that my 
 25 own life was in danger; that I fell upon my knees 
 to soften the conspirators; that, only when I had 
 fainted, the horrible deed was done. She knows 
 already that Peter was always ordering new exer- 
 cises and uniforms; and my ministers can evince 
 30 at the first audience my womanly love of peace. 
 
 Dashkof. Europe may be more easily subjugated 
 than duped.
 
 104 THE EMPRESS CA THA KIKE 
 
 Catharine. She shall be both, God willing. 
 
 Dashkof. The majesty of thrones will seem en- 
 dangered by this open violence. 
 
 Catharine. The majesty of thrones is never in 
 jeopardy by those who sit upon them. A sovereign 5 
 may cover one with blood more safely than a sub- 
 ject can pluck a feather out of the cushion. It is 
 only when the people does the violence that we 
 hear an ill report of it. Kings poison and stab one 
 another in pure legitimacy. Do your republican 10 
 ideas revolt from such a doctrine? 
 
 Dashkof. I do not question this right of theirs, 
 and never will oppose their exercise of it. But if 
 you prove to the people how easy a matter it is to 
 extinguish an emperor, and how pleasantly and 15 
 prosperously we may live after it, is it not probable 
 that they also will now and then try the experiment; 
 particularly, if any one in Russia should hereafter 
 hear of glory and honour, and how immortal are 
 these by the consent of mankind, in all countries 20 
 and ages, in him who releases the world, or any 
 part of it, from a lawless and ungovernable despot? 
 The chances of escape are many, and the greater if 
 he should have no accomplices. Of his renown 
 there is no doubt at all: that is placed above 25 
 chance and beyond time, by the sword he hath 
 exercised so righteously. 
 
 Catliarinc. True; but we must reason like demo- 
 crats no longer. Republicanism is the best thing 
 we can have, when we cannot have power; but 11030 
 one ever held the two together. 1 am now 
 autocrat.
 
 AND PRINCESS DASHKOF. 105 
 
 Dashkof. Truly, then, may I congratulate you. 
 The dignity is the highest a mortal can attain. 
 
 Catharine. I know and feel it. 
 
 Dashkof. I wish you always may. 
 5 Catharine. I doubt not the stability of power: I 
 can make constant both fortune and love. My 
 Dashkof smiles at this conceit: she has here the 
 same advantage, and does not envy her friend even 
 the autocracy. 
 10 Dashkof. Indeed I do, and most heartily. 
 
 Catharine. How? 
 
 Dashkof. I know very well what those intended 
 
 who first composed the word; but they blundered 
 
 egregiously. In spite of them, it signifies power 
 
 15 over oneself of all power the most enviable, and 
 
 the least consistent with power over others. 
 
 I hope and trust there is no danger to you from 
 any member of the council-board inflaming the 
 guards or other soldiery. 
 
 20 Catharine. The members of the council-board did 
 not sit at it, but upon it; and their tactics were 
 performed cross-legged. What partisans are to be 
 dreaded of that commander-in-chief whose chief 
 command is over pantaloons and facings, whose ut- 
 25 most glory is perched on loops and feathers, and 
 who fancies that battles are to be won rather by 
 pointing the hat than the cannon? 
 
 Dashkof. Peter was not insensible to glory; few 
 
 men are: but wiser heads than his have been per- 
 
 3Qplexed in the road to it, and many have lost it by 
 
 their ardour to attain it. I have always said that, 
 
 unless we devote ourselves to the public good, we
 
 106 THE EMPRESS CATHARINE 
 
 may perhaps be celebrated; but it is beyond the 
 power of fortune, or even of genius, to exalt us above 
 the dust. 
 
 Catharine. Dashkof, you are a sensible, sweet 
 creature; but rather too romantic on principle, and 5 
 rather too visionary on glory. I shall always both 
 esteem and love you; but no other woman in Europe 
 will be great enough to endure you, and you will 
 really put the men hors dc combat. Thinking is an 
 enemy to beauty, and no friend to tenderness. Men 10 
 can ill brook it one in another; in women it renders 
 them what they would fain call "scornful" (vain 
 assumption of high prerogative!) and what you 
 would find bestial and outrageous. As for my rep- 
 utation, which 1 know is dear to you, I can pur- 15 
 chase all the best writers in Europe with a snuff- 
 box each, and all the remainder with its contents. 
 Not a gentleman of the Academy but is enchanted 
 by a toothpick, if 1 deign to send it him. A 
 brilliant makes me Semiramis; a watch-chain, 20 
 Venus; a ring, Juno. Voltaire is my friend. 
 
 Dashkof. Me was Frederick's. 
 
 Catharine. I shall be the Pucclle of Russia. No! 
 I had forgotten; he has treated her scandalously. 
 
 Dashkof. Does your Majesty value the flatteries 25 
 of a writer who ridicules the most virtuous and 
 glorious of his nation; who crouched before that 
 monster of infamy, Louis XV. ; and that worse 
 monster, the king his predecessor? He reviled, 
 with every indignity and indecency, the woman 30 
 who rescued France; and who alone, of all that 
 ever led the armies of that kingdom, made its
 
 AND PRINCESS DASHKOF. 107 
 
 conquerors the English tremble. Its monarchs 
 and marshals cried and ran like capons, flapping 
 their fine crests from wall to wall, and cackling at 
 one breath defiance and surrender. The village 
 5 girl drew them back into battle, and placed the 
 heavens themselves against the enemies of Charles. 
 She seemed supernatural: the English recruits 
 deserted; they would not fight against God. 
 
 Catharine. Fools and bigots! 
 
 10 Dashkof. The whole world contained none other, 
 excepting those who fed upon them.. The Maid of 
 Orleans was pious and sincere: her life asserted it; 
 her death confirmed it. Glory to her, Catharine, if 
 you love glory. Detestation to him who has pro- 
 is faned the memory of this most holy martyr the 
 guide and avenger of her king, the redeemer and 
 saviour of her country. 
 
 Catharine. Be it so; but Voltaire buoys me up 
 above some impertinent, troublesome qualms. 
 20 Dashkof. If Deism had been prevalent in Europe, 
 he would have been the champion of Christianity; 
 and if the French had been Protestants, he would 
 have shed tears upon the papal slipper. He buoys up 
 no one: for he gives no one hope. He may amuse: 
 25 dulness itself must be amused, indeed, by the 
 versatility and brilliancy of his wit. 
 
 Catharine. While I was meditating on the great 
 action I have now so happily accomplished, I some- 
 times thought his wit feeble. This idea, no doubt, 
 30 originated from the littleness of everything in 
 comparison with my undertaking. 
 
 Dashkof. Alas! we lose much when we lose the
 
 108 THE EMPRESS CATHARINE 
 
 capacity of being delighted by men of genius, and 
 gain little when we are forced to run to them for 
 incredulity. 
 
 Catharine. I shall make some use of my philoso- 
 pher at Ferney. I detest him as much as you do; 5 
 but where will you find me another who writes so 
 pointedly? You really, then, fancy that people 
 care for truth? Innocent Dashkof! Believe me, 
 there is nothing so delightful in life as to find a 
 liar in a person of repute. Have you never heard 10 
 good folks rejoicing at it? Or, rather, can you 
 mention to me any one who has not been in raptures 
 when he could communicate such glad tidings? 
 The goutiest man would go on foot without a 
 crutch to tell his friend of it at midnight; and 15 
 would cross the Neva for the purpose, when he 
 doubted whether the ice would bear him. Men, 
 in general, are so weak in truth, that they are 
 obliged to put their bravery under it to prop it. 
 Why do they pride themselves, think you, on their 20 
 courage, when the bravest of them is by many de- 
 grees less courageous than a mastiff-bitch in the 
 straw? It is only that they may be rogues without 
 hearing it, and make their fortunes without render- 
 ing an account of them. 25 
 
 Now we chat again as we used to do. Your 
 spirits and your enthusiasm have returned. Courage, 
 my sweet Dashkof; do not begin to sigh again. 
 We never can want husbands while we are young 
 and lively. Alas! I cannot always be so. Ileigholso 
 Hut serfs and preferment will do: none shall re- 
 fuse me at ninety Paphos or Tobolsk.
 
 AND PRINCESS DASHKOF. 109 
 
 Have not you a song for me? 
 Dashkof. German or Russian? 
 Catharine. Neither, neither. Some frightful 
 word might drop might remind me no, nothing 
 
 5 shall remind me. French, rather: French songs 
 are the liveliest in the world. 
 Is the rouge off my face? 
 
 Dashkof. It is rather in streaks and mottles; 
 excepting just under the eyes, where it sits as it 
 
 10 should do. 
 
 Catharine. I am heated and thirsty: I cannot im- 
 agine how. I think we have not yet taken our cof- 
 fee was it so strong? What am I dreaming of? I 
 could eat only a slice of melon at breakfast; my duty 
 
 15 urged me then, and dinner is yet to come. Remem- 
 ber, I am to faint at the midst of it when the intel- 
 ligence comes in, or rather when, in despite of every 
 effort to conceal it from me, the awful truth has 
 flashed upon my mind. Remember, too, you are to 
 
 20 catch me, and to cry for help, and to tear those 
 fine flaxen hairs which we laid up together on the 
 toilet; and we are both to be as inconsolable as we 
 can be for the life of us. Not now, child, not now. 
 Come, sing. I know not how to fill up the interval. 
 
 25 Two long hours yet! how stupid and tiresome! I 
 wish all things of the sort could be done and be 
 over in a day. They are mightily disagreeable when 
 by nature one is not cruel. People little know my 
 character. I have the tenderest heart upon earth. 
 
 30 I am courageous, but I am full of weaknesses. I 
 possess in perfection the higher part of men, and 
 to a friend I may say it the most amiable part of
 
 110 THE EMPRESS CATHARINE. 
 
 women. Ho, ho! at last you smile: now your 
 thoughts upon that. 
 
 Dashkof. I have heard fifty men swear it. 
 
 Catharine. They lied, the knaves ! I hardly knew 
 them by sight. We were talking of the sad ne- 5 
 cessity. Ivan must follow next: he is heir to the 
 throne. I have a wild, impetuous, pleasant little 
 proteg^, who shall attempt to rescue him. I will 
 have him persuaded and incited to it, and assured 
 of pardon on the scaffold. He can never know the 10 
 trick we play him; unless his head, like a bottle of 
 Bordeaux, ripens its contents in the sawdust. Or- 
 ders are given that Ivan be despatched at the first 
 disturbance in the precincts of the castle; in short, 
 at the fire of the sentry. But not now, another 15 
 time: two such scenes together, and without some 
 interlude, would perplex people. 
 
 I thought we spoke of singing: do not make me 
 wait, my dearest creature! Now cannot you sing 
 as usual, without smoothing your dove's-throat with 20 
 your handkerchief, and taking off your necklace? 
 Give it me, then; give it me. I will hold it for 
 you: I must play with something. 
 
 Sing, sing; I am quite impatient.
 
 Xeofrfc anfc 
 
 Godiva. There is a dearth in the land, my sweet 
 Leofric! Remember how many weeks of drought we 
 have had, even in the deep pastures of Leicester- 
 shire; and how many Sundays we have heard the 
 5 same prayers for rain, and supplications that it would 
 please the Lord in his mercy to turn aside his anger 
 from the poor, pining cattle. You, my dear hus- 
 band, have imprisoned more than one malefactor 
 for leaving his dead ox in the public way; and other 
 
 10 hinds have fled before you out of the traces, in 
 which they, and their sons and their daughters, and 
 haply their old fathers and mothers, were dragging 
 the abandoned wain homeward. Although we were 
 accompanied by many brave spearmen and skilful 
 
 15 archers, it was perilous to pass the creatures which 
 the farm-yard dogs, driven from the hearth by the 
 poverty of their masters, were tearing and devour- 
 ing; while others, bitten and lamed, filled the air 
 either with long and deep howls or sharp and quick 
 
 20 barkings, as they struggled with hunger and feeble- 
 ness, or were exasperated by heat and pain. Nor 
 could the thyme from the heath, nor the bruised 
 branchesof the fir-tree, extinguish or abate the foul 
 odour. 
 
 25 Leofric. And now, Godiva, my darling, thou art 
 afraid we should be eaten up before we enter the
 
 112 LEOFKIC AND GODIVA. 
 
 gates of Coventry; or perchance that in the gardens 
 there are no roses to greet thee, no sweet herbs for 
 thy mat and pillow. 
 
 Godiva. Leofric, 1 have no such fears. This is 
 the month of roses: J find them everywhere since 5 
 my blessed marriage. They, and all other sweet 
 herbs, I know not why, seem to greet me wherever 
 I look at them, as though they knew and expected 
 me. Surely they cannot feel that I am fond of 
 them. I0 
 
 Leofric. O light, laughing simpleton! But what 
 wouldst thou? I came not hither to pray; and yet 
 if praying would satisfy thee, or remove the drought, 
 I would ride up straightway to Saint Michael's and 
 pray until morning. 
 
 Godiva. I would do the same, O Leofric! but God 
 hath turned away his ear from holier lips than mine. 
 Would my own dear husband hear me, if I implored 
 him for what is easier to accomplish, what he can 
 do like God? 20 
 
 Leofric. How! what is it? 
 
 Godiva. I would not, in the first hurry of your 
 wrath, appeal to you, my loving Lord, in behalf of 
 these unhappy men who have offended you. 
 
 Leofric. Unhappy! is that all? 25 
 
 Godiva. Unhappy they must surely be, to have 
 offended you so grievously. What a soft air breathes 
 over us! how quiet and serene and still an evening! 
 how calm are the heavens and the earth ! Shall none 
 enjoy them; not even we, my Leofric? The sun is 30 
 ready to set: let it never set, O Leofric, on your 
 anger. These are not my words: they are better
 
 LEOFRIC AND GODIVA. i3 
 
 than mine. Should they lose their virtue from my 
 unworthiness in uttering them? 
 
 Leofric. Godiva, wouldst thou plead to me for 
 rebels? 
 
 5 Godiva. They have, then, drawn the sword against 
 you? Indeed, I knew it not. 
 
 Leofric. They have omitted to send me my dues, 
 
 established by my ancestors, well knowing of our 
 
 nuptials, and of the charges and festivities they re- 
 
 10 quire, and that in a season of such scarcity my own 
 
 lands are insufficient. 
 
 Godiva. If they were starving, as they said they 
 
 were 
 
 Leofric. Must I starve too? Is it not enough to 
 15 lose my vassals? 
 
 Godiva. Enough! O God! too much! too much! 
 May you never lose them! Give them life, peace, 
 comfort, contentment. There are those among 
 them who kissed me in my infancy, and who blessed 
 20 me at the baptismal font. Leofric, Leofric! the 
 first old man I meet I shall think is one of those; 
 and I shall think on the blessing he gave, and (ah 
 me!) on the blessing I bring back to him. My heart 
 will bleed, will burst; and he will weep at it! he will 
 25 weep, poor soul, for the wife of a cruel lord who 
 denounces vengeance on him, who carries death 
 into his family! 
 
 Leofric. We must hold solemn festivals. 
 Godiva. We must, indeed. 
 3o Leofric. Well, then? 
 
 Godiva. Is the clamorousness that succeeds the 
 death of God's dumb creatures, are crowded halls,
 
 114 LEOFRIC AND GODIVA. 
 
 are slaughtered cattle, festivals? are maddening 
 songs, and giddy dances, and hireling praises from 
 parti-coloured coats? Can the voice of a minstrel 
 tell us better things of ourselves than our own in- 
 ternal one might tell us; or can his breath make our 5 
 breath softer in sleep? O my beloved! let every- 
 thing be a joyance to us: it will, if we will. Sad is 
 the day, and worse must follow, when we hear 
 the blackbird in the garden, and do not throb with 
 joy. But, Leofric, the high festival is strown by 10 
 the servant of God upon the heart of man. It is 
 gladness, it is thanksgiving; it is the orphan, the 
 starveling, pressed to the bosom, and bidden as its 
 first commandment to remember its benefactor. 
 We will hold this festival; the guests are ready: we 15 
 may keep it up for weeks, and months, and years 
 together, and always be the happier and the richer 
 for it. The beverage of this feast, O Leofric, is 
 sweeter than bee or flower or vine can give us: it 
 flows from heaven; and in heaven will it abundantly 20 
 be poured out again to him who pours it out here 
 unsparingly. 
 
 Leofric. Thou art wild. 
 
 Godira. I have, indeed, lost myself. Some Power, 
 some good kind Power, melts me (body and soul 25 
 and voice) into tenderness and love. O my hus- 
 band, we must obey it. Look upon me! look upon 
 me! lift your sweet eyes from the ground! J will 
 not cease to supplicate; I dare not. 
 
 Leofric. We may think upon it. 3 
 
 Godira. Never say that! What! think upon 
 goodness when you can be good' Let not the
 
 LEOFRIC AND GODIVA. 11$ 
 
 infants cry for sustenance! The mother of our 
 blessed Lord will hear them; us never, never after- 
 ward. 
 
 Leofric. Here comes the Bishop: we are but one 
 
 Smile from the walls. Why clismountest thou? no 
 
 bishop can expect it. Godiva! my honour and rank 
 
 among men are humbled by this. Earl Godwin will 
 
 hear of it. Up! up! the Bishop hath seen it: he 
 
 urgeth his horse onward. Dost thou not hear him 
 
 10 now upon the solid turf behind thee? 
 
 Godiva. Never, no, never will I rise, O Leofric, 
 until you remit this most impious tax, this tax on 
 hard labour, on hard life. 
 
 Leofric. Turn round: look how the fat nag canters, 
 
 15 as to the tune of a sinner's psalm, slow and hard- 
 
 breathing. What reason or right can the people 
 
 have to complain, while their bishop's steed is so 
 
 sleek and well caparisoned? Inclination to change, 
 
 desire to abolish old usages. Up! up! for shame! 
 
 20 They shall smart for it, idlers! Sir Bishop, I must 
 
 blush for my young bride. 
 
 Godiva. My husband, my husband! will you par- 
 don the city? 
 
 Leofric. Sir Bishop! I could not think you would 
 
 25 have seen her in this plight. Will I pardon? Yea, 
 
 Godiva, by the holy rood, will I pardon the city, 
 
 when thou ridest naked at noontide through the 
 
 streets! 
 
 Godiva. O my dear, cruel Leofric, where is the 
 30 heart you gave me? It was not so: can mine have 
 hardened it? 
 
 Bishop. Earl, thou abashest thy spouse; she
 
 n6 LEO PR 1C AXD GOD1VA. 
 
 turneth pale, and weepeth. Lady Godiva, peace be 
 with thee. 
 
 Godiva. Thanks, holy man! peace will be with me 
 when peace is with your city. Did you hear my 
 Lord's cruel word? 5 
 
 Bishop. I did, lady. 
 
 Godiva. Will you remember it, and pray against it. 
 
 Bishop. Wilt thou forget it, daughter? 
 
 Godiva. I am not offended. 
 
 Bishop. Angel of peace and purity 10 
 
 Godiva. But treasure it up in your heart: deem it 
 an incense, good only when it is consumed and 
 spent, ascending with prayer and sacrifice. And, 
 now, what was it? 
 
 Bishop. Christ save us ! that he will pardon the city 15 
 when thou ridest naked through the streets at noon. 
 
 Godiva. Did he not swear an oath? 
 
 Bishop. He sware by the holy rood. 
 
 Godiva. My Redeemer, thou hast heard it! save 
 the city! 20 
 
 Leofric. We are now upon the beginning of the 
 pavement: these are the suburbs. Let us think of 
 feasting: we may pray afterward; to-morrow we 
 shall rest. 
 
 Godiva. No judgments, then, to-morrow, Leofric? 25 
 
 Leofric. None: we will carouse. 
 
 Godiva. The saints of heaven have given me 
 strength and confidence; my prayers are heard; the 
 heart of my beloved is now softened. 
 
 Lcofric (aside}. Ay, ay they shall smart, though. 30 
 
 Godiva. Say, dearest i.eofric, is there indeed no 
 other hope, no other mediation?
 
 LEOFRIC AND CO DIVA. II? 
 
 Leofric. I have sworn. Beside, thou hast made 
 me redden and turn my face away from thee, and 
 all the knaves have seen it: this adds to the city's 
 crime. 
 
 5 Godiva. I have blushed too, Leofric, and was not 
 rash nor obdurate. 
 
 Leofric. But thou, my sweetest, art given to 
 blushing: there is no conquering it in thee. I wish 
 thou hadst not alighted so hastily and roughly: it 
 
 10 hath shaken down a sheaf of thy hair. Take heed 
 thou sit not upon it, lest it anguish thee. Well 
 done! it mingleth now sweetly with the cloth of 
 gold upon the saddle, running here and there, as if 
 it had life and faculties and business, and were 
 
 15 working thereupon some newer and cunninger 
 device. O my beauteous Eve! there is a Paradise 
 about thee! the world is refreshed as thou movest 
 and breathest on it. I cannot see or think of evil 
 where thou art. I could throw my arms even here 
 
 2oabout thee. No signs for me! no shaking of sun- 
 beams! no reproof or frown or wonderment I will 
 say it now then for worse I could close with my 
 kisses thy half-open lips, ay, and those lovely and 
 loving eyes, before the people. 
 
 25 Godiva. To-morrow you shall kiss me, and they 
 shall bless you for it. I shall be very pale, for to- 
 night I must fast and pray. 
 
 Leofric. I do not hear thee; the voices of the folk 
 are so loud under this archway. 
 
 30 Godiva (to /terse//). God help them! good kind 
 souls! I hope they will not crowd about me so to- 
 morrow. O Leofric! could my name be forgotten,
 
 n8 LEOFRIC AND GO DIVA. 
 
 and yours alone remembered! But perhaps my 
 innocence may save me from reproach; and how 
 many as innocent are in fear and famine! No eye 
 will open on me but fresh from tears. What a 
 young mother for so large a family! Shall my 5 
 youth harm me? Under God's hand it gives me 
 courage. Ah! when will the morning come? Ah! 
 when will the noon be over? 
 
 The story of Godiva, at one of whose festivals or fairs I was 
 present in my boyhood, h.is always much interested me ; and I 10 
 wrote a poem on it, sitting, I remember, by the square pool at 
 Rugby. When I showed it to the friend in whom I had most 
 confidence, he began to scoff at the subject ; and, on his reaching 
 the last line, his laughter was loud and immoderate. This Con- 
 versation has brought both laughter and stanza back to me, and 15 
 the earnestness with which I entreated and implored my friend 
 not to tell the Jtu/s, so heart-strickenly and desperately was 
 I ashamed. The verses are these, if any one else should wish 
 another laugh at me : 
 
 In every hour, in ever}' mood, 20 
 
 O lady, it is sweet and good 
 
 To bathe the soul in prayer; 
 And, at the close of such a day, 
 When we have rcased to bless and pray, 
 
 To dream on thy long hair. 25 
 
 May the peppermint be still growing on the bank in that place ! 
 
 W. S. L.
 
 IDittorfa Colonna 
 an& flDicbeUBnoelo Buonarrotti. 
 
 Vittoria. It was beautifully and piously said in 
 days of old, that, wherever a spring rises from the 
 earth, an altar should be erected. Ought not we, 
 my friend, to bear the same veneration to the genius 
 5 which springs from obscurity in the loneliness of 
 lofty places, and which descends to irrigate the 
 pastures of the mind with a perennial freshness and 
 vivifying force? If great poets build their own 
 temples, as indeed they do, let us at least offer up 
 
 10 to them our praises and thanksgivings, and hope to 
 render them acceptable by the purest incense of the 
 heart. 
 
 Michel-Angela. First, we must find the priests; 
 for ours are inconvertible from* their crumbling 
 
 15 altars. Too surely we are without an Aristoteles 
 to precede and direct them. 
 
 Vittoria. We want him, not only for poetry, but 
 philosophy. Much of the dusty perfumery, which 
 thickened for a season the pure air of Attica, was 
 
 20 dissipated by his breath. Calm reasoning, deep 
 investigation, patient experiment, succeeded to con- 
 tentious quibbles and trivial irony. The sun of 
 Aristoteles dispersed the unwholesome vapour that 
 arose from the garden of Academus. Instead of
 
 120 VITTORIA CQLOXNA 
 
 spectral demons, instead of the monstrous progeny 
 of mystery and immodesty, there arose tangible 
 images of perfect symmetry. Homer was recalled 
 from banishment; yKschylus followed; the choruses 
 bowed before him, divided, and took their stands. 5 
 Symphonies were heard, what symphonies! so 
 powerful as to lighten the chain that Jupiter had 
 riveted on his rival. The conquerors of kings until 
 then omnipotent, kings who had trampled on the 
 towers of Babylon, and had shaken the eternal 10 
 sanctuaries of Thebes, the conquerors of these 
 kings bowed their olive-crowned heads to the 
 sceptre of Destiny, and their tears ran profusely 
 over the immeasurable wilderness of human woes. 
 
 Michel-Angeh. We have no poetry of this kind 15 
 now, nor have we auditors who could estimate or 
 know it if we had. Yet, as the fine arts have raised 
 up their own judges, literature may, ere long, do the 
 same. Instead of undervaluing and beating down, 
 let us acknowledge and praise any resemblance we 20. 
 may trace to the lineaments of a past and stronger 
 generation. 
 
 Vittoria. But, by the manners and habitudes 
 of antiquity, ours are little to be improved. 
 Scholars who scorn the levity of Ariosto, and 25 
 speak disdainfully of the Middle Ages, in the very 
 centre of the enchantment thrown over them by the 
 magician of Ferrara, never think how much \ve owe, 
 not only to him, but also to those ages: never think 
 by what energies, corporeal and mental, from the bar- 30 
 barous soldier rose the partially polished knight; 
 and high above him, by slower degrees, the accom-
 
 AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTI. 121 
 
 plished and perfect gentleman, the summit of 
 nobility. 
 
 Michel-Angdo. Oh that Pescara were present! 
 Pescara! whom your words seem to have embodied 
 sand recalled! Pescara! the lover of all glory, but 
 mostly of yours, Madonna! he to whom your 
 beauty was eloquence and your eloquence beauty, 
 inseparable as the influences of Deity. 
 
 Vittoria. Present! and is he not? Where I am, 
 
 10 there is he, for evermore. Earth may divide; 
 Heaven never does. The beauty you speak of is the 
 only thing departed from me, and that also is with 
 him, perhaps. He may I hope he may see me 
 as he left me; only more pacified, more resigned. 
 
 15 After I had known Pescara, even if I had never 
 been his, I should have been espoused to him; 
 espoused to him before the assembled testimonies 
 of his innumerable virtues, before his genius, his 
 fortitude, his respectful superiority, his manly 
 
 20 gentleness. Yes, I should have been married to his 
 glory; and, neither in his lifetime nor when he left 
 the world, would I have endured, O Michel-Angelo, 
 any other alliance. The very thought, the very 
 words conveying it, are impiety. But friendship 
 
 25 helps to support that heavy pall to which the 
 devoted cling tenaciously for ever. 
 
 Michd- Angela. Oh! that at this moment 
 
 Vittoria. Hush! hush! Wishes are by-paths on 
 the declivity to unhappiness: the weaker terminate 
 
 30 in the sterile sand; the stronger, the vale of tears. 
 If there are griefs which we know there are so 
 intense as to deprive us of our intellects, griefs in
 
 122 VITTORIA COLONNA 
 
 the next degree of intensity, far from depriving us 
 of them, amplify, purify, regulate, and adorn them. 
 We sometimes spring above happiness, and fall on 
 the other side. This hath happened to me; but 
 strength enough is left me to raise myself up again, 5 
 and to follow the guide who calls me. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Surely God hath shown that mor- 
 tal what his own love is, for whom he hath har- 
 monised a responsive bosom, warm in the last as in 
 the first embraces. One look of sympathy, one 10 
 regret at parting, is enough, is too much: it bur- 
 dens the heart with overpayment. You cannot 
 gather up the blossoms which, by blast after blast, 
 have been scattered and whirled behind you. Are 
 they requisite? The fruit was formed within them 15 
 ere they fell upon the walk; you have culled it in its 
 season. 
 
 I'ittoria. Before we go into another state of exist- 
 ence, a thousand things occur to detach us imper- 
 ceptibly from this. To some (who knows to how 20 
 many?) the images of early love return with an 
 inviting yet a saddening glance, and the breast that 
 was laid out for the sepulchre bleeds afresh. Such 
 are ready to follow where they are beckoned, and 
 look keenly into the darkness they are about 1025 
 penetrate. 
 
 Did we not begin to converse on another subject? 
 Why have you not spoken to me this half-hour? 
 
 Afichel-Angeht. 1 see, (.) Donna Yittoria, 1 may 
 close the volume we were to read and criticise. 30 
 
 l'itl(>riii. Then, I hope you have something of your 
 own for me instead.
 
 AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTI. 123 
 
 Michel-Angela. Are you not tired of my verses? 
 Your smile is too splendid a reward, but too indis- 
 tinct an answer. Pray, pray tell me, Madonna! 
 and yet I have hardly the courage to hear you tell 
 5 me have I not sometimes written to you 
 
 Vittoria. My cabinet can answer for that. Lift 
 up your sphinx, if you desire to find it. Any thing 
 in particular? 
 
 Michel-Angela. I would say, written to you 
 10 with 
 
 Vittoria. With what? A golden pen? 
 
 Michel- Angela. No, no. 
 
 Vittoria. An adamantine one? 
 
 You child! you child! are you hiding it in my 
 
 15 sleeve? An eagle's plume? a nightingale's? a 
 
 dove's? I must have recourse to the living sphinx, 
 
 if there is any, not to the porphyry. Have you 
 
 other pens than these? I know the traces of them 
 
 all; and am unwilling to give you credit for any 
 
 20 fresh variety. But come, tell me, what is it? 
 
 Michel-Angela. I am apprehensive that I some- 
 times have written to you with an irrepressible gush 
 of tenderness, which is but narrowed and deepened 
 and precipitated by entering the channel of verse. 
 25 This, falling upon vulgar ears, might be misin- 
 terpreted. 
 
 Vittoria. If I have deserved a wise man's praise 
 and a virtuous man's affection, I am not to be 
 defrauded of them by stealthy whispers, nor de- 
 3oterred from them by intemperate clamour. She 
 whom Pescara selected for his own must excite the 
 envy of too many; but the object of envy is not the
 
 124 VITTORIA COLONNA. 
 
 sufferer by it: there are those who convert it even 
 into recreation. One star hath ruled my destiny 
 and shaped my course. Perhaps, no, not perhaps, 
 but surely, under that clear light I may enjoy 
 unreproved the enthusiasm of his friend, the 5 
 greatest man, the most ardent and universal genius, 
 he has left behind him. Courage! courage! Lift 
 up again the head which nothing on earth should 
 lower. When death approaches me, be present, 
 Michel-Angelo, and shed as pure tears on this hand 10 
 as I did shed on the hand of Pescara. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Madonna, they are these; they 
 are these! Endure them now, rather! 
 
 Merciful God! if there is piety in either, grant me 
 to behold her at that hour, not in the palace of a 15 
 hero, not in the chamber of a saint, but from thine 
 everlasting mansions!
 
 General Ikteber anfc jfrencb Officers. 
 
 AN English officer was sitting with his back 
 against the base of the Great Pyramid. He some- 
 times looked toward those of elder date and ruder 
 materials before him, sometimes was absorbed in 
 5 thought, and sometimes was observed to write in a 
 pocket-book with great rapidity. 
 
 "If he were not writing," said a French natural- 
 ist to a young ensign, " I should imagine him to 
 have lost his eyesight by the ophthalmia. He does 
 10 not see us: level your rifle; we cannot find a greater 
 curiosity." 
 
 The arts prevailed: the officer slided with 
 extended arms from his resting-place; the blood, 
 running from his breast, was audible as a swarm of 
 15 insects in the sand. No other sound was heard. 
 Powder had exploded; life had passed away: not a 
 vestige remained of either. 
 
 " Let us examine his papers," said the naturalist. 
 "Pardon me. sir," answered the ensign: "my 
 20 first inquiry on such occasions is What's o'clock? 
 and afterward I pursue my mineralogical re- 
 searches." 
 
 At these words he drew forth the dead man's 
 watch, and stuck it into his sash, while with the 
 25 other hand he snatched out a purse containing 
 some zecchins: every part of the dress was ex- 
 amined, and not quite fruitlessly.
 
 126 GENERAL KLEBER. 
 
 "See! a locket with the miniature of a young 
 woman!" Such it was: a modest and lovely 
 countenance. 
 
 "Ha! ha!" said the ensign: "a few touches, 
 a very few touches,- 1 can give them, and Adela 5 
 will take this for me. Two inches higher, and the 
 ball had split it: what a thoughtless man he was! 
 There is gold in it too: it weighs heavy. Peste! an 
 old woman at the back, gray as a cat." 
 
 It was the officer's mother, in her old age, as he 10 
 had left her. There was something of sweet piety, 
 not unsaddened by presage, in the countenance. 
 He severed it with his knife, and threw it into the 
 bosom of her son. Two foreign letters and two 
 pages in pencil were the contents of the pocket- 15 
 book. Two locks of hair had fallen out: one 
 rested on his eye-lashes, for the air was motionless, 
 the other was drawn to the earth by his blood. 
 
 The papers were taken to General Kleber by the 
 naturalist and his associate, with a correct recital 20 
 of the whole occurrence; excepting the appendages 
 of watch, zecchins, and locket. 
 
 "Young man," said Kleber gravely, "is this a 
 subject of merriment to you? Who knows whether 
 you or I may not be deprived of life as suddenly 25 
 and unexpectedly? lie was not your enemy: per- 
 haps he was writing to a mother or sister. God 
 help them! these suffer most from war: the heart 
 of the far-distant is the scene of its most cruel 
 devastations. Leave the papers; you may go: call 3 
 the interpreter." 
 
 He entered.
 
 GENERAL KLEBER. 127 
 
 "Read this letter." 
 
 " My adored Henry " 
 
 "Give it me, "cried the general: he blew a strong 
 fire from his pipe and consumed it. 
 5 "Read the other." 
 
 " My kind-hearted and beloved son " 
 
 "Stop: read the last line only." 
 The interpreter answered, "It contains merely 
 the name and address." 
 
 10 " I ask no questions: read them, and write them 
 down legibly." 
 
 He took the paper, tore off the margin, and 
 placed the line in his snuff-box. 
 
 "Give me that paper in pencil, with the mark of 
 15 sealing-wax on it." 
 
 He snatched it, shook some snuff upon it, and 
 shrunk back. It was no sealing-wax; it was a drop 
 of blood: one from the heart, one only; dry, but 
 seeming fresh. 
 20 "Read." 
 
 " Yes, my dear mother, the greatest name that exists among 
 mortals is that of Sidney. He who now bears it in the front of 
 battle could not succour me. I had advanced too far : I am how- 
 ever no prisoner. Take courage, my too fond mother : I am 
 25 among the Arabs, who detest the French ; they liberated me. 
 They report, I know not upon what authority, that Bonaparte has 
 deserted his army, and escaped from Egypt." 
 
 " Stop instantly," cried Kleber, rising. " Gentle- 
 men," added he to his staff-officers, " my duty 
 3 obliges me to hear this unbecoming language on
 
 128 GENERAL A'I.EBER. 
 
 your late commander-in-chief: retire you a few 
 moments. Continue." 
 
 " He hates every enemy according to his courage and his 
 virtues : lie abominates what he cannot debase, at home or 
 abroad." 5 
 
 "Oh!" whispered Kleber to himself, "he knows 
 the man so well! " 
 
 " The first then are Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith, whose friends 
 could expect no mercy at his hands. If the report be anything 
 better than an Arabian tale, I will surrender myself to his sue- 10 
 cessor as prisoner of war, and perhaps may be soon exchanged. 
 How will this little leaf reach you ? God knows how and when! " 
 
 " Is there nothing else to examine? " 
 
 " One more leaf." 
 
 "Read it." 15 
 
 "WRITTF.N IN KNCI.ANO ON TIIK HAITI, K OF ABOUKIR. 
 
 " Land of all marvels in all ages past, 
 
 Egypt ! I hail thee from a far-off shore ; 
 I hail thee, doom'd to rise again at last, 
 
 And flourish, as in early youth, once more. 20 
 
 " How long hast thou lain desolate! how long 
 
 The voice of gladness in thy halls hath ceas'd! 
 Mute, e'en as Memnon's lyre, the poet's song, 
 And half-suppress'd the chant of cloister'd priest. 
 
 " Even he, loquacious as a vernal bird, 25 
 
 Love, in thy plains and in thy groves is dumb ; 
 Nor on thy thousand Nile -fed streams is heard 
 The reed that whispers happier days to come. 
 
 " O'er cities shadowing some dread name divine 
 
 Palace and fane return the hyena's cry, 30 
 
 And hooficss camels in long single line 
 
 Stalk slow, with foreheads level to the sky.
 
 GENERAL KLEBER. 129 
 
 " No errant outcast of a lawless isle, 
 
 Mocker of heaven and earth, with vows and prayers, 
 Comes thy confiding offspring to beguile, 
 And rivet to his wrist the chain he wears. 
 
 5 " Britain speaks now : her thunder thou hast heard: 
 
 Conqueror in every land, in every sea ; 
 Valour and Truth proclaim the almighty word, 
 And, all thou ever hast been, thou shalt be." 
 
 " Defender and passionate lover of thy country! " 
 
 iccried Kleber, "thou art less unfortunate than thy 
 auguries. Enthusiastic Englishman! to which of 
 your conquests have ever been imparted the benefits 
 of your laws? Your governors have not even com- 
 municated their language to their vassals. Nelson 
 
 15 and Sidney are illustrious names: the vilest have 
 often been preferred to them, and severely have 
 they been punished for the importunity of their 
 valour. We Frenchmen have undergone much: but 
 throughout the whole territory of France, through- 
 
 20 out the range of all her new dominions, not a single 
 man of abilities has been neglected. Remember 
 this, ye who triumph in our excesses. Ye who 
 dread our example, speak plainly: is not this among 
 the examples ye are the least inclined to follow? 
 
 25 " Call my staff and a file of soldiers. 
 
 " Gentlemen, he who lies under the pyramid 
 seems to have possessed a vacant mind and full 
 heart, qualities unfit for a spy: indeed he was not 
 one. He was the friend and companion of that 
 
 30 Sidney Smith who did all the mischief at Toulon, 
 when Elliot fled from the city; and who lately, you 
 must well remember, broke some of our pipes before
 
 13 GENERAL KLEBER. 
 
 Acre a ceremony which gave us to understand, 
 without the formalities of diplomacy, that the Grand 
 Signer declined the honour of our company to take 
 our coffee with him at Constantinople." 
 
 Then turning to the file of soldiers, "A body lies 5 
 under the Great Pyramid: go, bury it six feet deep. 
 If there is any man among you capable of writing a 
 good epitaph, and such as the brave owe to the 
 brave, he shall have my authority to carve it upon 
 the Great Pyramid; and his name may be brought 10 
 back to me." 
 
 " Allow me the honour," said a lieutenant; " I fly 
 to obey." 
 
 " Perhaps," replied the commander-in-chief, " it 
 may not be amiss to know the character, the adven- 15 
 tures, or at least the name 
 
 " No matter, no matter, my general." 
 
 "Take them, however," said Kleber, holding a 
 copy, "and try your wits." 
 
 "General," said Mcnou, smiling, "you never 20 
 gave a command more certain to be executed. 
 What a blockhead was that king, whoever he was, 
 who built so enormous a monument for a wandering 
 Knglishman! "
 
 3Blucber anO San&t. 
 
 Blucher. Pardon an intrusion ere sunrise. Do 
 not move for me. 
 
 Sandt. Sir, I was not seated, nor inclined to be. 
 
 Sitting is the posture in which a prisoner has a 
 
 5 deeper sense of solitude and helplessness. In 
 
 walking there is the semblance of being free; and 
 
 in standing there is a preparation for walking. But 
 
 perhaps these are only the vague ideas of my situ- 
 
 ation. Many things are true which we do not 
 
 10 believe to be true; but more are false which we do 
 
 not suspect of falsehood. 
 
 Blucher. So early a visit, or indeed any, may be 
 unwelcome on such a day. 
 
 Sandt. To one unprepared it might be. But we 
 
 15 are scarcely so early as you think we are. The 
 
 walls indeed do not yet bear upon them the pleasant 
 
 pink hue of sunrise; a rich decoration which, I am 
 
 sorry to think it, some other cells are perhaps 
 
 deprived of; but within a few minutes you will 
 
 2 discover the only thing in the apartment not yet 
 
 visible. Presently you shall see the spider's web, 
 
 in the angle there, whiten and wave about. Look! 
 
 I told you so. Does the sun's ray shake it by 
 
 striking it? Or does the poor laborious weaver of 
 
 25 the tissue, by quitting it abruptly? 
 
 BJ.ucher. I never thought about the matter.
 
 I3 2 BLUCHER AXD SANDT. 
 
 Sandt. You have not had much leisure then? 
 You never have been idle against your will? 
 
 Blucher. No, indeed; not until lately. But why 
 have they walled up your chimney? Could not 
 they have contracted it, if they feared your escape? 5 
 
 Sandt. Ah! how we puzzle one another with our 
 questions! Do not inquire why they have done it: 
 thank them rather, if you are my friend, thank 
 them with me for sparing to take down the mantel- 
 piece. 1C 
 
 Blucher. A narrow slip of lime-washed stone. 
 
 Sandt. Wide enough for a cider-glass with a 
 flower in it. I should be unwilling to have a bird 
 so near me just at present; but a flower I love to 
 have a flower. It leads me back, with its soft, cool 15 
 touch into the fields and into the garden; it was 
 nurtured by the heavens; it has looked at them in 
 its joyousness; and it leaves all for me! Thou hast 
 been out upon the dew, my little one! thou hast 
 seen everything as I saw it last; thou comest to 20 
 show me the colours of the dawn, the carelessness 
 of boyhood, the quiet veins and balmy breath of 
 innocence, the brief seclusion and the sound sleep 
 of Sandt. 
 
 Are you going? 25 
 
 JUucher. No. 
 
 Sandt. You turned away from me. I grew 
 tedious. 
 
 Jiluehtr. I have not yet given you time, nor you 
 me. What are you looking at on the naked wall? 30 
 
 SanJt. 1 was looking at the reflection of the 
 window-bars against it.
 
 BLUCHER AND SANDT. 133 
 
 Blucher. And yet you appeared to look at them 
 with pleasure and satisfaction. 
 
 Sandt. Did I? Perhaps I did. Their milder 
 apparitions have been my daily visitors. Unob- 
 5 trusive, calm, consolatory, they teach me by their 
 transiency and evanescence that imprisonment is 
 merely a shadow, as they are; that life is equally 
 so; that the one cannot long detain us; that we 
 cannot long detain the other; and that our enlarge- 
 10 ment and departure are appointed from above. See 
 how indistinct and how wide-open they are become 
 already. I fell into talking about myself; and, 
 what is worse, I now begin to moralise. An invi- 
 tation to sit down with one condemned might be 
 15 offensive. 
 
 Blucher. Assure me that I do not offend, and let 
 me assure you I will not be offended. Suspect me, 
 doubt me, interrogate me, and, if you find reason 
 for it, reproach me. 
 20 Sandt. I have no right nor will. 
 
 Blucher. Then let us sit together at the foot of 
 
 the pallet. I would not assume the post of honour, 
 
 to which I have no right, by taking the three-legged 
 
 stool. And now we are side by side, may I look at 
 
 25 you? 
 
 Sandt. As you will. 
 
 Blucher. I have seen many brave men ; I cannot 
 see too many. 
 
 Sandt. The brave are confined in the fortresses 
 30111 places less healthy than this. Somebody has 
 misled you. 
 
 Blucher. Confined in the fortresses in places
 
 134 B LUC HER AND SAXDT. 
 
 less healthy than prisons! the landwehr! the re- 
 storers Have you slept well? I hope you have; 
 I do think you have; you look composed. 
 
 Sandt. Many thanks! I have indeed. 
 
 Blucher. Soundly as usual? 5 
 
 Sandt. My sleep was like spring; if inconstant 
 and fitful, yet kindly and refreshing; such as 
 becomes the forerunner of a season more settled 
 and more permanent. It has invigorated me for 
 the journey I am to take; I wait in readiness. 10 
 
 Blucher. Blessings upon you! blessings and glory! 
 
 Sandt. Leave me blessings; glory lies within 
 them: where they are not, she is not. 
 
 Blucher. If I tell you that I am one of the same 
 society with yourself, one of the same heart in its 15 
 kind, though smaller and harder, you may doubt 
 me: you may imagine me some privy councillor in 
 his gentleness come to untwine and wheedle your 
 secrets out of you; or some literator, in his zeal 
 for truth, in his affection for science, in his spirit 20 
 of confraternity, come to catch your words and oil 
 his salad with them. 
 
 Sandt. If you are that (but surely you cannot be) 
 and poor also, I will answer you enough to produce 
 you, in this moment of public curiosity, a small 25 
 pittance for your family. 
 
 Blucher. You see 1 am old, and wear an old coat. 
 
 Sandt. (Jo on. I have given my promise, and 
 would yet give it, had I not. We have no time to 
 spare. Let me direct you by the straightest road 30 
 to your business. 1 had no accomplice, no instiga- 
 tor, no adviser in letting fall the acid dr<ip which
 
 BLUC11ER AMD SANDT. 135 
 
 removed one stain from Germany. Here is enough 
 for your three volumes, three hundred pages each. 
 Yes, I see the holes; and you may put the hand 
 into that rent. 
 
 5 Blucher. It is a coat which many a ball has hissed 
 at, and many a courtier whom I cared as little for. 
 
 Sandt. May I serve one man more ere I depart! 
 and may he have been, or live to be, an honest one! 
 
 Blucher. Is Blucher? 
 
 10 Sandt. The Kosciusko of Germany, the Washing- 
 ton of Europe. 
 
 Blucher. In wishes only. 
 
 Sandt. What news about him? Be explicit and 
 expeditious. 
 
 15 Blucher. He passes yet one hour with thee, O 
 saint without arrogance! O patriot without im- 
 posture! 
 
 Sandt. Where am I? 
 
 Blucher. Not yet in heaven, although thy looks 
 20 express it. 
 
 Sandt. But, what is next to heaven, on earth as 
 I yearned to see it, where the desire of good and 
 the thrusting aside of evil find their full reward. 
 
 Blucher. Reward! What! death? 
 25 Sandt. After the embrace of Blucher, are myriads 
 of wrong thoughts worth a single just, or myriads 
 of cruel worth a single kind, one? If men were 
 what we could wish them to be, we need not die for 
 them: if they loved us, we might be too contented, 
 30 and less disposed to set them right. I dare not 
 attempt to penetrate or to question what is inscrut- 
 able in the designs of Providence; but without evil,
 
 I3 6 BLUCIIER A\"D SAKDT. 
 
 and much of it, and spread widely, the highest part 
 of God's creation would sink lower, by contracting 
 its capacity of reflection, and abating its intensity 
 of exertion. 
 
 O general, may it be unsafe for any one to pour 5 
 bad counsel into the ear of princes! Let them 
 slumber, heavy and satiated, in their sunny 
 orchards, without the instillation of that fatal 
 poison! May I not perish, may you not live, in 
 vain! 10
 
 Selected passages. 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 Demosthenes. Leave to us the country and fresh 
 air, and, what itself is the least tranquil thing in 
 Nature, but is the most potent tranquilliser of an 
 5 excited soul, the sea. 
 
 Landor. Ah, Don Pepino! old trees in their living 
 state are the only things that money cannot com- 
 mand. Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, 
 and traverse mountains for it; obelisks and arches, 
 10 palaces and temples, amphitheatres and pyramids, 
 rise up like exhalations at its bidding; even the 
 free spirit of Man, the only thing great on earth, 
 crouches and cowers in its presence. It passes 
 away and vanishes before venerable trees. 
 
 15 POETRY. 
 
 V Landor. In poetry, there is a greater difference 
 
 between the good and the excellent than there is 
 
 between the bad and the good. Poetry has no 
 golden mean. 
 
 20 Landor. There are some who in a few years can 
 learn all the harmony of Milton; there are others 
 who must go into another state of existence for this 
 felicity.
 
 138 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 Nonnanbv. Critics talk most about the visible in 
 sublimity the Jupiter, the Neptune. Magnitude 
 and power are sublime but in the second degree, 
 managed as they may be. Where the heart is not 
 shaken, the gods thunder and stride in vain. True 5 
 sublimity is the perfection of the pathetic, which 
 has other sources' than pity; generosity, for in- 
 stance, ami self-devotion. When the generous and 
 self-devoted man sutlers, there comes pity: the 
 basis of the sublime is then above the water, and 10 
 the poet, with or without the gods, can elevate it 
 above the skies. Terror is but the relic of a child- 
 ish feeling: pity is not given to children. 
 
 FAME. 
 
 In another house, after several glasses were 15 
 drunk with great cheerfulness, the whole company 
 rose up to a mysterious toast, in silence and sad- 
 ness. He sipped the wine in doubt, and found that 
 it was the same as he had been drinking from the 
 first, and excellent ISordeaux. He could not con- 20 
 ceive what had saddened at a single moment so 
 many vacant and rosy faces. The next morning he 
 heard that two of them had been shot by their 
 antagonists in a quarrel arising from this toast, 
 the " Immortal memory " of some one they had 25 
 never seen or thought about. He imagined that 
 silence and sorrow would have come better after; 
 that wine should make men joyous, and duels 
 serious. On reflection he feared to be "com- 
 promised," and suspected that the "immortal 30
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. 139 
 
 memory" so religiously observed, and with such 
 awe and taciturnity, might be the memory of Bon- 
 aparte. To relieve his suspicions, he joked about 
 it with two of the youngest, whom he found at 
 5 billiards the succeeding day. They laughed aloud 
 at his mistake. " It was King William," said one. 
 " It was William Pitt," said the other. " It was no 
 more Pitt than it was my pointer," rejoined the 
 first. In fact the " immortal memory " in eighteen 
 10 hours had as much obscurity and as many thorns 
 about it as the tomb of Archimedes. From Duke 
 de Richelieu, Sir Firebrace Cotes, Lady Glcngrin, and 
 Mr. Normanby. 
 
 Barrow. Very wise men, and very wary and in- 
 
 isquisitive, walk over the earth, and are ignorant not 
 only what minerals lie beneath, but what herbs and 
 foliage they are treading. Some time afterward, 
 and probably some distant time, a specimen of ore 
 is extracted and exhibited; then another; lastly the 
 
 20 bearing and diameter of the vein are observed and 
 measured. Thus it is with writers who are to have 
 a currency through ages. In the beginning they 
 are confounded with most others; soon they fall 
 into some secondary class; next, into one rather 
 
 25 less obscure and humble; by degrees they are 
 liberated from the dross and lumber that hamper 
 them; and, being once above the heads of contem- 
 poraries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly 
 and erectly, then rapidly and majestically, till the 
 
 30 vision strains and aches as it pursues them in their 
 ethereal elevation,
 
 14 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 Leontion. The voice comes deepest from the 
 sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the 
 dead body. 
 
 Barrow. My dear Newton! the best thing is to 
 stand above the world; the next is to stand apart 5 
 from it on any side. 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Penn. Where the lawyers flourish, there is a 
 certain sign that the laws do not. 
 
 Barrow. There are popes in all creeds, in all 10 
 countries, in all ages. 
 
 Odysseus. Believe me, that country will become 
 the most powerful which does the most extensive 
 good. Nations live and remember, when princes 
 have fallen asleep by the side of their fathers, and 15 
 dynasties have passed away. No princely house 
 was ever grateful long together; a people has a 
 capacious heart, a full one, a sound one, and one 
 that may beat for ages. Oh! who would empoison 
 and paralyse, who would contract and harden, who 20 
 would estrange and alienate it? 
 
 Anaxagoras. In most cities, after a time, there 
 are enough of bad citizens to subvert good laws. 
 Immoral life in one leader of the people is more 
 pernicious than a whole street full of impurities in 25
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. 141 
 
 the lower quarters of the community, seeing that 
 streams, foul or fair, cannot flow upward. 
 
 TRUTH AND MORALITY. 
 
 Peterborough. Penn, I was once a great admirer 
 5 of Rochefoucauld, and fancied his Maxims were 
 oracles. It happened that, quoting them one day 
 at dinner, my adversary told me I had reversed the 
 sentiment; I found I had. Upon this, I began to 
 reverse, for curiosity's sake, almost every third 
 
 10 sentence of my shrewd and smart philosopher; and 
 discovered that, like superfine cloth, they look as 
 comely the wrong side outward as the right, wher- 
 ever I could give as easy and quick a turn as that 
 of the original. This persuaded me that we receive 
 
 15 for the wisest things the gracefullest and the 
 boldest, and that what are called speculative truths 
 are in general not only unimportant, but no truths 
 at all. 
 
 King of Ava. Lovest thou not truth, O Flang- 
 
 20 Sarabang-Quang? 
 
 Flang. Steel- piercing- questioner- of -prostrate- 
 souls! I am aged. When I was a youth I loved 
 that thing and some others, and found they did me 
 little good. Truth, both in seasons of quiet and 
 
 25 of disturbance, raiseth men's anger. One speaks 
 truth to another, and both grow hot; even the 
 silent, whose lungs have not laboured. The rajah 
 or king heareth of it, and he groweth hotter still. 
 They two boil on two sides, he in the centre; but
 
 I4 2 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 all boil and foam and bubble, and fume away the 
 good that is in them. Now, though I have heard 
 lies these sixty-five years, 1 have always found 
 them productive of complacency. Some of them 
 were malignant; yet the malignancy was for the 5 
 absent; and, supposing he heard of it afterward, 
 only one could be annoyed where fifty were grati- 
 fied. If there is a man in the Celestial Empire who 
 will lay his hand upon his breast, and declare in the 
 presence of our gods that he hath derived more 10 
 pleasure from truth than from lies, then let Rao- 
 Gong Fao be thrown on his belly, and let his back 
 be channelled for a bamboo-bed. 
 
 Cromwell. Men, like nails, lose their usefulness 
 when they lose their direction and begin to bend. 15 
 
 Dante. Greatness is to goodness what gravel is to 
 porphyry; the one is a movable accumulation, 
 swept along the surface of the earth; the other 
 stands fixed and solid and alone, above the violence 
 of war and of the tempest, above all that is residu- 20 
 ous of a wasted world. Little men build up great 
 ones; but the snow colossus soon melts. The 
 good stand under the eye of God; and therefore 
 stand. 
 
 Jeanne Dare. One hour of self-denial, one hour 25 
 of stern exertion against the assaults of passion, 
 outvalues a life of prayer.
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. 143 
 
 THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Leontion. Never let us think that the time can 
 come when we shall lose our friends. Glory, litera- 
 ture, philosophy have this advantage over friend- 
 5 ship: remove one object from them, and others fill 
 the void; remove one from friendship, one only, and 
 not the earth, nor the universality of worlds, no, 
 nor the intellect that soars above and comprehends 
 them, can replace it! 
 
 10 Princess Mary. Malice! The baneful word hath 
 shot up from hell in many places, but never be- 
 tween child and parent. In the space of that one 
 span, on that single sod from Paradise, the serpent 
 never trailed. Husband and wife were severed by 
 
 15 him, then again clashed together; brother slew 
 brother; but parent and child stand where their 
 Creator first placed them, and drink at the only 
 source of pure, untroubled love. 
 
 Filippo Lippi. He inquired of me whether I often 
 20 thought of those I loved in Italy, and whether I 
 could bring them before my eyes at will. To re- 
 move all suspicion from him, I declared I always 
 could, and that one beautiful object occupied all the 
 cells of my brain by night and day. He paused 
 25 and pondered, and then said, "Thou dost not love 
 deeply." I thought I had given the true signs. 
 "No, Lippi! we who love ardently, we, with all our 
 wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring be-
 
 144 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 fore us the features which, while they were present, 
 we thought it impossible we ever could forget. 
 Alas! when we most love the absent, when we most 
 desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image 
 back to us. The troubled heart shakes and con- 
 founds it, even as ruffled waters do with shadows. 
 Hateful things are more hateful when they haunt 
 our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into 
 less lovely." 
 
 Cleon<:. O Aspasia! it is hard to love, and not 10 
 to be loved again. I felt it early; I still feel it. 
 There is a barb beyond the reach of dittany; but 
 years, as they roll by us, benumb in some degree 
 our sense of suffering. Season comes after season, 
 and covers as it were with soil and herbage the 15 
 flints that have cut us so cruelly in our course. 
 
 Mtssala. From the mysteries of religion the veil 
 is seldom to be drawn, from the mysteries of love 
 never. For this offence, the gods take away from 
 us our freshness of heart and our susceptibility of 20 
 pure delight. The well loses the spring that fed 
 it, and what is exposed in the shallow basin soon 
 evaporates. 
 
 SORROW, OLD AGE, AND DEATH. 
 
 Epicurus. Pleasures are soon absorbed; they soon 25 
 evaporate in the heat of youth, and leave no traces 
 behind them; but sorrows lay waste what they over-
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. MS 
 
 flow, and we have neither time nor art to remove 
 the obstruction and counteract the sterility. 
 
 Lucian. The farther we descend into the vale of 
 
 years, the fewer illusions accompany us: we have 
 
 5 little inclination, little time for jocularity and 
 
 laughter. Light things are easily detached from us, 
 
 and we shake off heavier as we can. Instead of 
 
 levity, we are liable to moroseness: for always near 
 
 the grave there are more briars than flowers, unless 
 
 10 we plant them ourselves, or our friends supply them. 
 
 Jeanne Dare. Lady, I am grieved at your sorrow, 
 although it will hereafter be a source of joy unto 
 you. The purest water runs from the hardest rock. 
 Neither worth nor wisdom comes without an effort; 
 15 and patience and piety and salutary knowledge 
 spring up and ripen from under the harrow of afflic- 
 tion. Before there is wine or there is oil, the grape 
 must be trodden and the olive must be pressed. 
 
 Bossuet. You think it possible that I, aged as I 
 20 am, may preach a sermon on your funeral. Alas, it 
 / is so! such things have been. There is, however, 
 no funeral so sad to follow as the funeral of our own 
 youth, which we have been pampering with fond de- 
 sires, ambitious hopes, and all the bright berries 
 25 that hang in poisonous clusters over the path of 
 life.
 
 146 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 Ternissa. Oh, what a thing is age! 
 
 Leontion. Death without death's quiet. But we 
 will converse upon it when we know it better. 
 
 Epicurus. My beloved! we will converse upon it 
 at the present hour, while the harshness of its fea- 5 
 tures is indiscernible not only to you, but even to me, 
 who am much nearer to it. Disagreeable things, 
 like disagreeable men, are never to be spoken of 
 when they are present. Do we think, as we may do 
 in such a morning as this, that the air awakens the 10 
 leaves around us only to fade and perish? Do we, 
 what is certain, think that every note of music we 
 ever heard, every voice that ever breathed into our 
 bosoms and played upon its instrument, the heart, 
 only wafted us on a little nearer to the tomb? Let 15 
 the idea not sadden, but compose us. Let us yield 
 to it, just as season yields to season, hour to hour; 
 and with a bright serenity, such as Evening is in- 
 vested with by the departing Sun. 
 
 sEsop. Breathe, Rhodope! breathe again those 20 
 painless sighs: they belong to thy vernal season. 
 May thy summer of life be calm, thy autumn 
 calmer, and thy winter never come.- 
 
 Rhodop^. I must die then earlier. 
 
 /Esop. Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the be- 25 
 loved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose 
 in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than 
 to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling 
 tinder us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We 
 may enjoy the present while we are insensible of in- 30
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. 1 47 
 
 firmity and decay: but the present, like a note in 
 music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past 
 and what is to come. There are no fields of ama- 
 ranth on this side of the grave; there are no voices, 
 5 O Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however tune- 
 ful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of 
 passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not 
 faint at last. 
 
 Rhodop^. O /Esop! let me rest my head on yours; 
 10 it throbs and pains me. 
 
 ssop. What are these ideas to thee? 
 
 Rhodope. Sad, sorrowful. 
 
 ^sop. Harrows that break the soil, preparing it 
 for wisdom. Many flowers must perish ere a grain 
 15 of corn be ripened.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 MSOP AND R HO DOPE (1846). 
 
 This is the second of two conversations between the same 
 characters. All these conversations, it must be remembered, are 
 imaginary, even the story of the famine in the present one being 
 a pure invention of Landor's. It is therefore frequently idle to 
 search in history or legend for scenes and dates. The assumed 
 scene of this conversation, as may be learned from its predecessor 
 and from at least one local touch in itself, is Egypt. Rhoddpis 
 (" Rosy-cheek " Landor employs a musical variant, Rhod'opl, 
 also a Thracian name) was the appellative of a Thracian slave 
 girl whose real name was probably Doricha ; see Herodotus, ii. 
 1 34. !35 ; Strabo, xvii. 33. Herodotus says that she and yEsop 
 were fellow-slaves of ladmon of Samos, whence she was afterward 
 taken by Xanthes (Xanthus) to Egypt. Landor makes them meet 
 first in Egypt, though there is no evidence that /Esop ever visited 
 that country, either as slave or as freedman. This is of course the 
 /Esop who lived about 570 B. c. and to whom is attributed, on 
 very uncertain grounds, a body of familiar Greek fables. The 
 relative ages of the two can be gathered from the conversation, 
 ami upon the age of Khodope might well turn some criticism of 
 dramatic consistency. It is needful to know that Landor accepts 
 both the tradition of Rhodope's great beauty, which passed into a 
 proverb, and the unwarrantable and unreasonable tradition of 
 /Esop's physical ugliness. 
 
 I : 22. For I have looked into nothing else of Lite. Readers of 
 Landor must early acquaint themselves with his implicit style. 
 This clause might seem to mean that /Esup has been pondering 
 deeply upon the possibility of Rhodope's doing wrong. But such 
 an interpretation would be fatally prosaic. The moment we dis- 
 
 M9
 
 ISO NOTES. 
 
 cover the exact allusion in " nothing else," we discover the full 
 significance of Aesop's clelicnte implication. 
 
 2 : 6. Curiosity. In the first conversation /Esop had teasingly 
 convicted Rhodope of this " feminine appurtenance." 
 
 2 : II. Cover thy face. See Introduction, p. xxvii. There are 
 several other such disguised indications of the action. 
 
 3 : 23. Could any other? Supply the noun. Is it the father's 
 insensibility or the daughter's worth that is uppermost in ^isop's 
 mind ? And what is the reference below in " intolerable 
 wretchedness" ? 
 
 4 : 3. Is it, etc. Note where the sentence-stress falls. 
 
 4 : 32. Beanfield. Whether Landor is thinking of the Pytha- 
 gorean bean {Nelumbo) and confounding it with the Homeric 
 lotos is of small consequence /Ksop's little parable is not hard 
 to interpret. Indeed, readers who like to analyse the sources of 
 their pleasure will find that this paragraph subserves at least three 
 highly artistic ends. 
 
 7 : 27. Every one had bought. Does Rhodope state this as 
 simple fact ? 
 
 11 : 4. Midas, type of avarice ; Lycaon, of inhumanity. 
 
 12 : 8. Khtrsus. I'roperly Rhesus. Selected here, because a 
 Thracian hero. 
 
 12: 17. Pardon vie. Why this deprecation? Recall the 
 origin of the Trojan war. 
 
 12 : 24. The Fates also have sung. Prophetic of the event in 
 the life of Rhodopis which is told by Strabo and by /K Han, and 
 which suggests the story of Cinderella. While she was bathing, 
 an eagle caught up one of her sandals and bearing it to Memphis 
 dropped it in the lap of the king, Psammetichus, who was moved 
 by the strange occurrence and the beauty of the sandal to send 
 out messengers in search of the owner. " They, finding Rhodopis 
 at Naucratis, brought her to Kgypt, where the king wedded her ; 
 and after her death she was buried under the pyramid that goes 
 by her name." 
 
 Trace the successive impressions left upon the reader in regard 
 to Khodopc's father, and note the heightening of dramatic interest. 
 What turns out to be the final and supreme justification of his 
 act?
 
 NOTES. IS 1 
 
 What story runs through the whole conversation, or sometimes 
 like an undercurrent, beneath it ? May not the closing paragraph 
 be regarded as the conclusion, or a revised conclusion, of the 
 broken speech of ^Esop toward the beginning ? 
 
 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL (1828). 
 
 The characters here are Marcus Claudius Marcellus, five times 
 Roman consul, and conqueror of Syracuse ; and Hannibal, the 
 great Carthaginian general. The death of the former in the 
 defeat near Venusia 208 B. c. , second Punic war is recorded 
 history. Recorded too are the stories of the ring and the funeral. 
 " When Hannibal came up to the body," says Appian (ffannib., 
 50), "and saw the wounds all in the breast, he praised him as a 
 soldier but accounted him a bad general ; and after securing his 
 seal-ring he gave the body an honourable funeral and sent the 
 ashes to the dead man's son in the Roman camp." Compare 
 Plutarch, Marcellus, 30. But the conversation is no less imaginary 
 than the preceding, since it does not appear from history that 
 Marcellus survived until the arrival of his conqueror. The concep- 
 tion, however, is a happy one, and the execution so perfect that 
 we rise with the development of the situation to the level of the 
 heroism portrayed. 
 
 15: i. No faster. What does Hannibal mean? 
 
 15: II- The Romans, too. The whole story of the Cartha- 
 ginian campaign lies behind this word too. There is authentic 
 history also behind the speech that follows. 
 
 17 : 12. It pains me. Follow carefully the motives that prompt 
 these speeches. 
 
 17 : 29. This ring. Probably suggesting massiveness ? Livy 
 (xxvii. 28) tells that Hannibal, by the use of a letter sealed with 
 this ring, secured the admission of six hundred of his men into the 
 town of Salapia, Apulia. But the Salopians had been apprised of 
 the trick and ambushed the men. 
 
 18 : 7. /confess. This sentence seems to have no direct con- 
 nection with the preceding, which looks backward while this looks 
 forward. Such sudden shifting of thought is characteristic of 
 Landor's dramatic style. The shift in this case, however, turns
 
 152 NOTES. 
 
 out to be merely a resumption. Tlie conversation had for a 
 moment diverged. 
 
 2O : i. Bubbles of air. Air, breath, life, and spirit were 
 represented in Latin by a single woid spiritus. Piety below 
 keeps also its older meaning. 
 
 20 : 28. He u'ould harf Force of would? 
 
 Is Hannibal here represented as noble and generous, or only 
 selfish and cunning ? 
 
 What principle, in this and other conversations, seems to govern 
 Landor in the use of the second personal pronoun, now in the 
 solemn form thou, and now in the common 
 
 P. SCIPIO >EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^TIUS (1833). 
 
 After a terrible siege in which her inhabitants were reduced 
 from seven hundred thousand to fifty thousand, in 146 B. C., the 
 chapter of history which the illustrious city of Carthage had been 
 writing for seven hundred years was brought to a sad close. The 
 third Punic war is perhaps the greatest blot on Roman history. 
 The senate decreed, and their instrument, Scipio Africanus the 
 Younger, could do no less than perform. The city was besieged 
 and razed with Roman rigour and Stoic fortitude, though not, if 
 Landor has read this character aright, without some human heart- 
 ache. Cicero raised a monument to the memory of Scipio by 
 making his friendship with L.elius the inspiration of the beautiful 
 dialogue Df Amicitia. Landor has added a scarcely less beauti- 
 ful tribute in this scene which brings Scipio himself before our 
 eyes in tender and intimate converse with his dreek friends, 
 Polybius the historian and P.m. i tins the Stoic philosopher. Only 
 the opening pages are given here of a conversation which runs to 
 considerable length, treating discursively of various things, chiefly 
 of luxury and the debt of Koine to dreece. The interest centres 
 in the vivid presentation of n complex character, the product of 
 Roman birth and military training humanised by (irock philosophy 
 and culture. 
 
 23: 14. R <iint- be what Carthage iciis. "And they say that 
 Scipio was heard mourning, '/'//, ,/,/] shall i<i>/tf whi'n sdi'reJ 
 I lion u'ill fall, and Priam, and llu- people of Priam. And when
 
 NOTES. 153 
 
 Polybius asked him of what he was thinking, he made answer as 
 one in abstraction, Rome." APPIAN, Lib. 132. 
 
 24: 32. His wife none. Asdrubal, says Appian (Lib. 131), 
 fled with his two boys to surrender to Scipio. But his wife 
 reproached him for a traitor, slew the children, and threw them 
 and herself into the fire. 
 
 METELLUS AND MARIUS (1829). 
 
 " Marius was young at the siege of Numantia, and, entering 
 the army with no advantage of connection, would have risen 
 slowly ; but Scipio had marked his regularity and good morals, 
 and desirous of showing the value he placed on discipline, when 
 he was asked who, in case of accident to him, should succeed to 
 the chief command, replied, Perhaps this man, touching the 
 shoulder of Marius." LANIJOR'S note, after Plutarch, Marius, 3. 
 
 From his obscurity Marius rose to be seven times consul, and 
 by his rivalry with Sulla brought on the civil war of 88 and the 
 consequent proscription and slaughter of the nobles. Caius 
 Ca:cilius Metellus was a comparatively unimportant personage. 
 The siege and capture, in 132 B. c., of the gallant Numantians, 
 hopelessly struggling with eight thousand men against the whole 
 power of Rome, was another disgraceful stage in the Roman 
 career of conquest at which Scipio found it his duty to assist. 
 Appian (Iber., 95-98) says that some of the Numantians preferred 
 surrender to death and were led in a Roman triumph. The 
 fundamental conception, therefore, in this dramatic scene, as well 
 as many details, is Landor's own, and is a pure triumph of the 
 creative imagination working upon a few suggestions from history. 
 
 26 : 20. / shotild slip else. The awful significance of Marius's 
 words will not escape the reader as it escapes Metellus. 
 
 27 : 6. Cereate. The rustic home of Marius's childhood, near 
 Arpmum. A good example of how Landor makes every touch 
 tell. For the simile compare page 125, line 14. 
 
 31 : i. Auguries are surer. "This saying of Scipio's [ee 
 Landor's note above], we are told, raised the hopes of Marius like 
 a divine oracle, and was the chief thing which animated him to 
 apuly himself to affairs of state." PLUTARCH.
 
 154 NOTES. 
 
 LUCULLUS AND C/ESAR (1829). 
 
 " It is difficult to gather from this conversation the date at 
 which it is supposed to take place; probably it is not possible to 
 do so. C;esar has come to visit l.ucnllus in secret, to ask him for 
 his help against Pompey. At no time would Civsar have been 
 likely to take such a step, least of all during the full tide of his 
 success in (laid, when his alliance with Pompey was still vigorous. 
 Hut ^he history is unimportant. For the splendours of the villa of 
 Lucullus, see Plutarch's Life of !.ncitllns, which has furnished 
 Landor with the materials for his picture." G. G. CRUMP. 
 
 An allusion, in a part of the conversation not here reprinted, 
 to the consuls fiabinius and 1'iso makes it clear that Landor had 
 in mind the d:ite, 58 i(. <:. This agrees with other allusions, to 
 the marriage of [ulia, to the affair of Vettius, to Cajsar's impend- 
 ing departure for (j.iul. Some minor matters, however, are not 
 quite reconcilable. The season is " the dog-days," when C;esar 
 must have been in (J.iul, whither he went early in the spring. 
 Perhaps we are to imagine him as having slipped back into Italy, 
 where as imperator he had no right to be, and as having made his 
 way to Lucullus's villa, " avoiding the cities." Hut Mr. Crump is 
 right in pointing out the improbability of Ca'sar's approaching 
 Lucullus at this early stage of the " first triumvirate." 
 
 The villa of Lucullus wa-. near Tuseulum, ten miles southeast 
 of Rome. Lucullus, after withdrawing from public affairs, vir- 
 tually forced out by the success of Pompey, his old rival, and 
 Caesar, devoted himself to a life of philosophic indolence and 
 luxury, made possible by the vast wealth amassed in his wars 
 against Mithridates, King of Pontus. He died about 57 if. <'. 
 Landor supposes him to have been slowly poisoned. 
 
 The notable features of the conversation are the craft and 
 diplomacy lurking beneath the veil of friendliness and hospitality, 
 the delicious sparring in which the honours are all on one side. 
 and the ultimate triumph of the magnanimity of Lucullus, in 
 whom it is impossible not to see a man much after Landor's own 
 heart. 
 
 33 : 18. That worthy. The probability is that this " worthy,"
 
 NOTES. 155 
 
 Vettius by name, was suborned by one of Caesar's own party to 
 make this false charge, that it might redound to the injury of 
 Cicero, Lucullus, and others. Such was Cicero's belief, shared 
 also, in Landor's view, by Lucullus, beneath the irony of whose 
 next speech here Cresar palpably winces. 
 
 34 : 12. Farmian wine. Readers of Horace will remember 
 that in one of his Odes (i. 20) he hints to his patron that he can- 
 not afford Falernian and Formian wines. 
 
 34 : 20. Pardons heavier faults. That the conqueror of 
 Gaul should endure calmly the infliction of such exquisite tor- 
 ture is almost beyond comprehension. But Landor's characters, 
 unless they be kings, are not to be expected to descend to violence. 
 
 36:30. Cherries. " Blessings on Lucullus!" Horatius is 
 made to exclaim in another conversation, " the wisest and most 
 provident of conquerors. He brought from Armenia the apricot 
 and cherry, and the peach from the confines of Persia." Lake 
 Larius, now Como. 
 
 37 : 26. Fcesula:. The Italian Fiesole, which became Landor's 
 home the year in which this conversation was published. 
 
 38 : 9. Does it now appear. Several late editions read 
 " does not now appear " a reading which will also bear inter- 
 pretation. It is difficult to choose between them. 
 
 38 : 32. Contests in the Senate. Cato, leader of the aristoc- 
 racy, opposed Caesar and Pompey. 
 
 39 : 5. On the ceiling. It is to be remembered that the 
 Romans reclined at banquets. 
 
 40 : i. The subject. In his youth Caesar had once been cap- 
 tured by pirates. He was ransomed, but laughingly threatened 
 to crucify them. He afterward manned some vessels, captured 
 the pirates, and carried out the threat. Landor was much inter- 
 ested in pictures, of which he was a collector, though scarcely a 
 connoisseur. 
 
 43 : 2 - Virtues. Here follows Cresar's direct request of Lu- 
 cullus to unite with him against Pompey and Crassus. How the 
 request is met the remainder of the scene as here printed shows. 
 
 44: 21. \Vill tread down the sandal. A low estimate of 
 Cicero, who at this date was still alive; carrying out the idea 
 that no man is rightly estimated before his death.
 
 156 NOTES. 
 
 TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA (1828). 
 
 " Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa, was divorced from Tibe- 
 rius by Augustus and Livia, in order that he might marry Julia 
 and hold the empire by inheritance. He retained such an affec- 
 tion for her, and showed it so intensely when he once met her 
 afterwards, that every precaution was taken lest they should meet 
 again." LANUOR'S note, after Suetonius, Tiberius, vii. 
 
 Tiberius Claudius Nero, the second Emperor of Rome, born 
 H. c. 42, was the son of Li via Drtisilla, who afterward became 
 the wife of Augustus, first emperor of Rome. He was carefully 
 educated; was sent by Augustus in the year 20 on an expedition 
 into Armenia and visited the island of Rhodes on his return; was 
 divorced in II from Vipsania and married to Julia, the daughter of 
 Augustus; spent the years 6 H. c. to 2 A. I), in Rhodes; was 
 adopted by Augustus 4 A. i>; reigned 14-37 A. I). The mention 
 of the " Little Drusus " indicates that the time of this conversa- 
 tion is assumed to be before the second visit to Rhodes, therefore 
 between II and 6 H. c. The following table of genealogy will be 
 of assistance: 
 
 Agrippa Livia (3) = (2) Augustus 
 
 I I I 
 
 Vipsania (i) = Tiberius rr (2) Julia 
 
 I 
 I >rusus 
 
 Lander's conception of Tiberius is scarcely the historical one, 
 but in another conversation (Afarchese Pallavicini and Walter 
 Landor) he has this defence of it : " Tiberius, melancholy 
 at the loss of a young and beautiful wife borne away from 
 him by policy, sank into that dreadful malady which blighted 
 every branch of the Claudian family; and, instead of embellishing 
 the city with edifices and sculpture, darkened it with disquietudes 
 and suspicions, and retired into a solitude which his enemies have 
 peopled with monsters. Such atrocious lust, incredible even in 
 madness itself, was incompatible wiih the memory <>f his loss and 
 with the tenderness of his grief.' 1 The entire conversation is
 
 NOTES. 157 
 
 tense with passion and broken and elliptical, leaving much exer- 
 cise for the imagination in supplying the action of the speakers 
 and in following the vacillating, or rather oscillating, temper of 
 Tiberius. Mr. Swinburne praises it as an exhibition of Lander's 
 " subtle and sublime and terrible power to enter the dark vesti- 
 bule of distraction, to throw the whole force of his fancy, the 
 whole fire of his spirit, into the ' shadowing passion ' (as Shakes- 
 peare calls it) of gradually imminent insanity." But Mr. Swin- 
 burne is neither the first nor the last person to discover in it one 
 of the few supreme triumphs of the creative imagination working 
 in the field of dramatic art. 
 
 51 : 32. I cursed then audibly. " I cursed them audibly " is 
 a common, but manifestly erroneous, reading. 
 
 WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL (1828). 
 
 " Landenberg, who governed the country for Albert of Austria, 
 sent to drive away a yoke of oxen from Henry of Melctal. His 
 son Arnold, complaining of the violence, was told that peasants 
 might draw the plough themselves if they wanted bread, Arnold 
 struck him with his staff, broke two fingers, and fled to a friend 
 at Uri. On this, the father, in his extreme old age, saw his 
 cattle driven from his farm, his goods confiscated, his house 
 seized, and nothing else; for his eyes were burned out." 
 LANDOR'S note. 
 
 Arnold von Melchthal, of the Swiss canton of Unterwalden, 
 son of the Henry of this conversation, was one of three heroic 
 mountaineers who about 1307 conspired to deliver the Three 
 Forest Cantons from the yoke of Albert of Austria. Into the 
 probably real incident has become woven the legendary story of 
 "William Tell," and Arnold is a prominent character in Schil- 
 ler's drama, " Wilhelm Tell." Landor has put into this con- 
 versation his hatred of imperial power and his sympathy with 
 the human instinct for freedom. The portion omitted contains a 
 " seditious song" which the young Arnold is accused of having 
 composed and sung.
 
 I5 8 NOTES. 
 
 SOUTH EV AND LANDOR (1846). 
 
 The friendship between Lamlor and Southey began in 1808. 
 " I never saw any one," Southey wrote of the first meeting, 
 " more unlike myself in every prominent part of human charac- 
 ter, nor any one who so cordially and instinctively agreed with me 
 on so many of the most important subjects." The friendship was 
 broken only by Southey's death, thirty-five years afterward. It 
 was kept up chiefly by correspondence, yet such a conversation as 
 the present one may not have been even in small part imaginary; 
 in fact, this is represented as having taken place near Clifton, 
 where Southey visited Latulor in 1836 or 1837. For the character 
 and value of Landor's literary criticism, see Introduction, page 
 xlii. The present criticism is intentionally conducted, according 
 to the opening of the dialogue, "not incidentally, but turning 
 page after page"; for which Landor's quaint defence is: "It 
 would ill become us to treat Milton with generalities. Radishes 
 and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce reviewers ! Let us 
 hope to find somewhat more solid and of better taste." 
 
 63 : 4 Cose non dette. The line is inexactly quoted, no doubt 
 from memory. See Orlando Furioso, i, 2, 2. 
 
 ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER (1846). 
 
 " He [Parker] wrote a work entitled, as Hooker's was, Ecclesi- 
 astical Polity, in which are these words: ' It is better to submit to 
 the unreasonable impositions of Nero and Caligula than to hazard 
 the dissolution of the State. . . Princes may with less danger give 
 liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their consciences.' 
 Marvel answered him in his Rehearsal TransfrosfJ, in which he 
 says of Milton: ' I well remember that, being one day at his 
 house, I there first met you, and accidentally. Then it was that 
 you wandered up and down Moortields, astrologising upon ihe 
 duration of His Majesty's (Jovermnent. You frequented John 
 Milton incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What 
 discourses you there used he is too generous to remember, but, he
 
 NOTES. *59 
 
 never having in the least provoked you, it is inhumanely and in- 
 hospitably done to insult thus over his old age. I hope it will be 
 a warning to all others, as it is to me, to avoid, I will not say such 
 a Judas, but a man that creeps into all companies, to jeer, trepan, 
 and betray them.' " LANDOR'S note. 
 
 Andrew Marvel, or rather Marvell, the poet, found a friend 
 and helper in the greater poet Milton, and became Assistant Latin 
 Secretary with him in the last years of Cromwell's Protectorate. 
 He was a staunch Puritan, continuing after the Restoration 
 to be fearlessly outspoken against abuses in Church and State. 
 Landor has introduced him as interlocutor in four other conversa- 
 tions, in three of them with Milton. Landor admired both char- 
 acters for their intrepid patriotism and their hatred of popery and 
 prelaty, and the spectacle here presented of Marvell so eloquently 
 defending his aged and fallen patron must move the most un- 
 sympathetic of readers. As for Samuel Parker, he was " one of 
 the worst specimens of the highest of high churchmen of the reign 
 of Charles II." 
 
 The conversation must be assumed to have taken place some 
 time after the Restoration and after the publication of Milton's 
 Paradise Lost (1667). Marvell's commendatory verses, alluded to 
 in the beginning, are found prefixed only to the second edition of 
 Paradise Lost (1674), so that if Landor were particular about ac- 
 curacy we should have to fix the date in the very last year of Mil- 
 ton's life. Moreover, 1672 is the date of the beginning of the 
 controversy between Marvell and Parker. The entire conversa- 
 tion, less than one-fourth of which is here reprinted, is pitched in 
 a lofty key. That Parker was not made bishop till after Marvell's 
 death, that a conversation in this strain is improbable, that full 
 justice is not done to all sides of Marvell's lively wit, count for 
 little or nothing; the imaginative achievement remains. It may 
 well be doubted whether English prose of the nineteenth century 
 can show anything to equal, for exalted dignity and sustained 
 power, the utterances that Landor has put into Marvell's mouth 
 the utterances of a profound nature profoundly stirred, in which 
 truth is irradiated by terrible beauty, and wrath, justified by the 
 righteousness of its cause, lifts satire itself to the level of the 
 sublime.
 
 160 NOTES. 
 
 73 : 2. Power . . . glory. Which of these words I.andor 
 means to be understood in a derogatory sense may not be at once 
 clear. But in another conversation he makes Marvell console 
 Henry Marten in his imprisonment because the privilege of a 
 "memory, justly proud," is still his; "Hast thou not sat con- 
 vivlally with Oliver Cromwell? Hast thou not conversed famil- 
 iarly with the only man greater than he, John Milton? One was 
 ambitious of perishable power, the other of imperishable glory; 
 both have attained their aim." 
 
 75 : 24. Etna. See Empedocles, Classical Dictionary; or 
 Matthew Arnold's poem, Kmpedocles on Etna. Grotto del Cane. 
 In this "grotto of the dog," near Naples, carbonic-acid gas col- 
 lects near the floor in sufficient quantity to kill an animal. 
 
 80 : I. liri Jewell logwood. The general meaning is clear: 
 Men of meaner, though perhaps showier, talent have been pre- 
 ferred to Milton. But the specific allusion, if there be one, is 
 obscure. Logwood, used both in dyeing, and in medicine as an 
 astringent, is prepared for the trade, probably by prison labour, in 
 the form of chips and raspings. The allusion, then, may be to 
 the style of meaner writers. In another conversation, Southey is 
 made to say: " As some men conceive that, if their name is en- 
 graven inflothic letters with several superfluous, it denotes an- 
 tiquity of family, so do others that a congestion of words swept 
 together out of a corner, and dry chopped sentences which turn 
 the mouth awry in reading, make them look like original 
 thinkers. Milton is none of these; and his language is never a 
 patchwork." 
 
 The rhythm and cadence of Landor's sentences can be better 
 studied, perhaps, in this selection than in any other. The flood 
 of Marvell's eloquence is not without its eddies, rapids, and falls, 
 but in general the torrent sweeps steadily on, and every boulder 
 the bishop can throw into it is swallowed up without diminishing 
 its force or materially deflecting its current. 
 
 ESS FA AND SI'KNSKR (1834). 
 
 Spenser went to Ireland as secretary to Lord (rey, the Lurd- 
 Dcputy, where he was finally given a grant of land, the manor
 
 NOTES. i<i 
 
 and castle of Kilcolman, near the Awbeg (the " aldered Mulla " 
 of his poems) in the county of Cork. Late in 1598, during the 
 rebellion of Tyrone, fire was set to the castle, and Spenser had to 
 flee with his wife Elizabeth and their little children to England. 
 That a child perished in the flames is regarded now as pure myth, 
 resting only on a statement ascribed to Ben Jonson by Drummond 
 of Hawthornden. Spenser died at London in January, 1599, 
 possibly in poverty, though Essex, the queen's favourite, just then 
 appointed to the disastrous lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, may well 
 have befriended him. 
 
 90 : 27. Acorns from Penshurst. Penshurst, in Kent, was 
 the home of Sir Philip Sidney, whose friendship for Spenser, like 
 his uncle Leicester's and Sir Walter Raleigh's, both does credit to 
 himself and lends lustre to the life of the poet. Sidney was 
 killed at the battle of Zutphen, in the Netherlands, 1586; Essex 
 married his widow in 1590. " Sidney's Oak, a gnarled and 
 broken monarch, planted at his birth," may still be seen in the park 
 at Penshurst Place. 
 
 92 : 1 8. None to save thee ? 
 
 Was there no star that could be sent, 
 No watcher in the firmament, 
 No angel from the countless host 
 That loiters round the crystal coast, 
 Could stoop to heal that only child? 
 
 EMERSON: Threnody. 
 
 94 : 20. Even like one not powerful. " Now for the first time 
 I learn that any great power hath been exerted for any great 
 good." LANOOR: Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Fetrarca. 
 
 95 : 6. Guardian angels. See the two beautiful stanzas at the 
 beginning of the eighth canto of the second book of the Faerie 
 Queene. 
 
 THE LADY LISLE AND ELIZABETH GAUNT (1826). 
 
 Burnet relates from William Penn, who was present, that 
 Elizabeth Gaunt placed the fagots round her body with her own
 
 1 62 NOTES. 
 
 hands. Lady Lisle was not burned alive, though sentenced to it; 
 but hanged and beheaded." LAN DOR'S note. 
 
 The time is 1685, shortly after the accession of James II., 
 when so many of the sympathisers with Monmouth's rising were 
 tried and executed during the famous " Bloody Circuit " of Lord 
 Jeffreys, Chief Justice. Alice, widow of the regicide John Lisle 
 (their title came only from Cromwell), harboured in her house John 
 Hickes, a Nonconformist divine, and another man, chiefly out 
 of kindness, as she had before befriended cavaliers. Elizabeth 
 Gaunt was convicted on the testimony of the very man, one James 
 Burton, whom she hid shielded at the time of the Rye Mouse 
 Plot. See Macaulay's History, vol. i. The two women could 
 not have met, as they were executed at different times and in dif- 
 ferent places. 
 
 97 : 3 1 - Forbidden it. The first edition adds, " We must bend 
 to the authority of both; but first to the earlier, and most willingly 
 to the better." This is only one of many examples of Landor's 
 constant effort for conciseness, and shows well how lie sacrificed 
 popularity to the ideals of his art. For it is clear in this place 
 that lie did not wish, in expunging the sentence, to expunge the 
 thought. But the thought is in the nature of argument, and in 
 dramatic and poetic composition argument is better implied than 
 expressed. Landor prefers, therefore, to take his chances with 
 the reader. And for the reader who is alert and sympathetic 
 enough to supply the ellipsis, the gain is very great, but it is 
 doubtful whether many would supply it without the knowledge of 
 what was originally written. 
 
 THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCESS 
 DASHKOF (1829). 
 
 Catharine was not present at the murder of her husband, if he 
 was murdered; "nor is it easy to believe that Clytemnestra was 
 at the murder of hers," wrote Landor; "our business is charac- 
 ter." Even this business, it is well to remember, involves much 
 imagination and employs great license; few will believe that Lan- 
 dor has not overdrawn his character of Catharine. Peter III.
 
 NOTES. 163 
 
 died at Ropsha, fifteen miles from Peterhof, in 1762. It is prob- 
 able that he was strangled by one of the brothers Orloff, favour- 
 ites of Catharine, and that she abetted the design, which placed 
 her upon the throne. Ivan the Sixth, a weakling who had 
 reigned a short time in his infancy, some twenty years before, 
 was now kept imprisoned, and after two years slain, ostensibly 
 to prevent his deliverance by one Mirovitch, lieutenant of the 
 guards. Mirovitch's life was also forfeited. See Rambaud, 
 Hist, of Russia, vol. ii. The Princess Dashkof left memoirs of 
 the time. Voltaire celebrated Catharine as the Semiramis of the 
 North. A good companion-piece to this conversation is Peter 
 the Great and Alexis, in which, however, Landor's portraiture of 
 Peter the Great becomes almost travesty. 
 
 IO2 : 14. A whale. The vast extent of the Russian empire 
 and the conglomerate character of her people, from Poles and 
 Finns to Cossacks and Tartars, had evidently made a deep im- 
 pression upon Landor's imagination. Elsewhere he likens her to 
 " a great lobster or crab, strong both in the body and claws; but 
 between the body and claws there is a part easy to be severed and 
 broken." Again, " Her empire will split and splinter into the in- 
 finitesimals of which its vast shapeless body is composed. The 
 south breathes against it, and it dissolves." 
 
 105 : 24. Pantaloons and facings. " The reforms that he intro- 
 duced into the dress and drill, so as to assimilate them to those of 
 Prussia, irritated the army." RAMBAUD. 
 
 106 : 22. Frederick's. Voltaire went to live in Prussia at the 
 request of Frederick the Great, but after several years they parted 
 enemies. Voltaire's poem, La Pucelle, mentioned in the next 
 line, is a coarse, burlesque performance. 
 
 108 : 17. Men in general. Compare the following sentiment, 
 from the dialogue between Louis Bonaparte and Count Mole : 
 " Louis Bonaparte. But honour is left at the bottom of the 
 heart. Count Mole. If not there, yet under it, on the same 
 side. The scabbard holds it." 
 
 108 : 32. Paphos or Tobolsk. That is, they must choose be- 
 tween the shrine of love and exile.
 
 1 64 NOTES. 
 
 LEOFRIC AND GODIVA (1829). 
 
 This legend of Coventry, where the festival of Godiva is stiH 
 celebrated, belongs to the middle of the eleventh century. Leofric 
 was an earl of Mercia, whose earldom included the present 
 county of Warwick, Landor's native shire. The beauty of the 
 conversation has been universally praised. It must rank among 
 the very best of Landor's short, less impassioned dialogues, as the 
 Epicurus, Lcontion, and Ternissa, his own especial favourite, 
 must rank among the longer ones. 
 
 114:22. Unsparingly. First edition reads "abundantly." 
 Evidently the change was made to avoid any suspicion of euphu- 
 istic balance. See Introduction, page xlvii. So, a few lines 
 below, "sustenance" has replaced the original word "food," 
 doubtless to eliminate a rhyme. 
 
 VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO 
 BUONARROTI (1846). 
 
 Vittoria Colonna, widow of the Italian general Marchese di 
 Pescara, was through the last ten years of her life a prominent 
 figure in a celebrated circle of Roman artists, poets, and religious 
 reformers. She composed some beautiful sonnets to the memory 
 of her husband. Michel-Angelo's friendship with her began 
 when he was about sixty years of age, and some of his later son- 
 nets were inspired by and addressed to her. A conversation 
 between them was recorded by Francesco D'Ollanda. See 
 Grimm's Life of Michel- Angela, chapter xiv. 
 
 GENERAL KLEBER AND FRENCH OFFICERS (1824). 
 
 Napoleon, including the East in his schemes of conquest, won 
 the battle of the Pyramids over the Mamelukes in 1798, though 
 his fleet was destroyed by Nelson in the battle of the Nile. At- 
 tempting next the subjugation of Syria, he was met by the armies 
 of the Turkish Sultan, and at Acre he was forced to retreat, partly 
 through the gallant action of Sir Sidney Smith, an English cap-
 
 NOTES. 165 
 
 tain who had been with Hood at Toulon in 1793, and who now 
 rushed to the relief of the Turks. Returning to Egypt, he won 
 a victory over fifteen thousand Turks at Abukir in 1799, and then 
 sailed for France, transferring the Egyptian command to General 
 Kleber. Kleber was an able commander and a worthy man, but 
 lie was assassinated the next year, and the command devolved 
 upon the incompetent Menou, under whom the French armies 
 speedily met disaster. 
 
 " I have been told," wrote Julius Hare in 1827, " that among 
 Landor's Conversations the most general favourite is that between 
 General Kleber and some French officers." This was before the 
 strongest dramatic scenes had been published. Landor often in- 
 troduced narrative into his dialogues; here we have dialogue set 
 in narrative. The effect is at least so good that we could wish he 
 had tried it more frequently. In reading this, some allowance 
 must be made for his hatred of the French and of Napoleon in 
 particular. 
 
 BLUCHER AND SANDT (1846). 
 
 The famous Prussian field-marshal, Blilcher, needs no charac- 
 terisation. Karl Ludwig Sand, or Sandt, was a German student 
 and liberal who, inflamed by the endeavours of the ruling princes 
 to suppress all revolutionary sentiments, sought out and stabbed 
 at Mannheim August von Kotzebue, the German dramatist, then 
 in the secret service of the Russian Czar. Landor has constructed 
 one of his dialogues, Sandt and Kotzebue, with this assassination 
 as a climax. The present dialogue, it seems clear from some por- 
 tions here omitted, is assumed to have taken place before the final 
 downfall of Napoleon. It therefore involves an anachronism, for 
 Sanclt's crime, imprisonment, and execution belong to the years 
 1819-20. The diction of the dialogue is in one or two places not 
 quite up to Landor's standard of purity. 
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES. 
 
 These detached passages have been included both for their own 
 value and to show what selections of separate excellence may be
 
 166 NOTES. 
 
 made from almost any of the Conversations, so often in their en- 
 tirety laborious to read. A few only have been admitted, and 
 these, even after Mr. Colvin's example, with much hesitation, for 
 the common aversion to extracts is grounded in reason. Still, 
 there are writers of whom we can fairly make an exception. There 
 are those whose writings have been chiefly in the nature of incon- 
 secutive thoughts, like Marcus Aurelius and Emerson; and there 
 are those whose best utterances have such completeness, such 
 breadth of application, and such individual perfection of form 
 that their value is not seriously impaired by detachment from the 
 context among whom we can have no hesitation in ranking 
 Landor.
 
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