song from birds less glorified; and the lark, having beaten with her wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. . . Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but it likewise is often sympathy.'

'Petrarca. Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike to others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.

'Boccaccio. The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's.'

To the many perfect pieces of poetry, idyls in the purest form, scattered through the book, were added, as I have said, five scenes in blank verse of which the speakers were, Essex and Bacon during their quarrel; Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus immediately before the king's death; the Parents of Luther shortly before his birth; and Electra and Orestes, from among the pieces sent to me from Heidelberg. Every one of these scenes has that vividness and force of reality which gave to all the forms of Landor's writing its mastery of dramatic expression; and there is one in particular, the Parents of Luther, quite unsurpassed for character and delicacy, from the first blushing avowal of the young mother to her dream about a coming boy that follows, the naming him Martin because that saint clothed the poor, and the guessing what her dream might portend of the lad's possible rise in life, from chorister to sacristan, sacristan to priest, and priest to abbot, till the father's irrepressible faith and boisterous confidence bursts out, 'Ring the 'bells! Martin is Pope, by Jove!' The scenes were dedicated to Southey in a few words, saying that only he and two others, Mr. James and myself, would care for them.

Nor did many more care for the book containing them, which, fascinating as it proved to the few, to the many fell still-born; and at the close of the year of its publication he wrote to me of the fine he had to pay for it. I have just this 'moment paid a fine of a hundred and forty pounds to Saun'ders and Otley for having a hand in printing, and probably of 'the eighty I still owe them I shall have to pay sixty next year.' 'I have a great love for Clifton, above all other places ' in England,' he had written to Southey from Torquay a month

or two before (18th September 1837), 'yet I cannot endure the sight of flowers or fields where I had ever spent pleasurable 'hours. So, instead of Clifton, I think I shall go to Bath in 'the middle of next month :' to the very place, that is, where he had spent all the most pleasurable hours of his early life. If the same wisdom had but guided him in all his contradictions! He really liked Bath; the choice was the happiest he could have made; and what led him to it was not the dislike but the love of pleasurable associations, hardly then to be obtruded on Southey. Some very old friends made it still their home, and it had become recently the home of others of later date. Colonel William Napier lived there, with whose brother Henry he had been intimate in Florence; and among its more recent residents were Mrs. Paynter and her children, members of that Aylmer family formerly so dear to him, who had themselves been the visitors last received at his villa before he quitted Italy, and among whom he was to find another Rose,* happier and not less fair than the first. Here then he pitched his tent; and the city which he said always reminded him most of Florence, became his last English home. I passed with him there his sixty-third birthday, and with hardly an intermission for the next twenty years we dined together on that memorable 30th of January. It was our Calves'-head-club day; though Landor had commonly in hand too fierce a quarrel with some living sovereign, to trouble himself much with one who had paid with his life the penalty of his misdoing.

The letter to which I have referred told me also of the recovery of his corrected copy of the published Conversations and of the manuscript of the new ones which he had placed in Mr. N. P. Willis's hands, which had crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, and at last, not even addressed to Landor, had found their way to Lady Blessington. He had not been sorry to recover them, he said; for though he should not have minded the loss of a volume that had never been published, he did not wish his corrections of himself to be ineffectual. The corrections in this particular copy, however, he found to have been so much interlined that they would only have wearied Rose Paynter, since and now Lady Sawle.

CO

out my patience; and he had therefore seriously set about a fresh copy in which many additional insertions had been made that it had required a good deal of attention, contrivance, and delicacy to engraft in the trunk and branches: but the wearisome work would shortly be completed, and thenceforward he proposed to place them, with whatever else he had written, or might write, at my disposal. 'I am resolved to hold no intercourse with publishers, to claim no notice from the public, ' and never even to announce what I have done, am doing, or 'may do.' I already knew his temper well enough to receive. this kind of statement at its worth; but at least it was clear that for the sort of intercourse with publishers of which I lately gave an illustration, or indeed for business of any kind requiring prudence and patience, he was dangerously unfit.

His reply to my half-jesting remonstrance was very characteristic. He admitted there was a future day, though probably a distant one, when his books would be rightly estimated, and that it was certainly in their favour not to have been too much extolled.

'Marmion was at first too much applauded; it is now too much underrated. Such trash of Byron's as the Giaour kept women from sleep and almost from scandal, and who reads it now? whereas such lines of his (I forget the title) as "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream," few people cared for, yet they live, and will live always. I have no reason to complain, and never did. I found my company in a hothouse warmed with steam, and conducted them to my dining-room through a cold corridor with nothing but a few old statues in it from one end to the other, and they could not read the Greek names on the plinth, which made them hate the features above it. This only amused me; for the guests in good truth had a better right to be displeased with the entertainer than he with them. God grant I may never be popular in any way, if I must the price of self-esteem for it. I do not know whether my writings are ever to emerge above those of my contemporaries, but if they do I am sure it will be after my lifetime; and some seem to think they will. Read the enclosed.'

ture.

pay

It was a letter from the author of the Curiosities of LiteraIt touched a chord of the very earliest years of his life, even the days of his friendship with Mocatta; and it was indeed an expression of opinion he might fairly be proud to receive. Dated from Bradenham-house, Wycombe, on the 29th September 1838, it had been written after reading the Penta

meron. Various circumstances, it is said, had prevented the writer doing this before.

'I have now just closed it, to be opened however hereafter. It has happened to me, from early years in my life, to have been acquainted both with your name and your writings. I have been your constant reader. I have never turned over a page of your works but with a pause of reflection. In the present imaginary conversations you have if possible excelled yourself; so perfectly have you personated the spirits of your two great actors, such novelty have you given to a searching and exquisite criticism on the three finest geniuses of modern literature. You have shown the caustic smile of Petrarch on Dante; and surely Boccaccio himself would have laughed heartily, as at least I did, at the lovely girl so kindly watchful over our corpulent sentimentalist girthing his mule. All that you have written has been masterly, and struck out by the force of an original mind. You have not condescended to write down to the mediocrity of the populace of readers. You will be read hereafter. I know not whether you have written a century too late or too early: too late, if the taste for literature has wholly left us; too early, if the public mind has not yet responded to your sympathies. Believe me with great regard faithfully yours, I. D'ISRAELI.'

III. WRITING PLAYS.

Thirteen days after the date of Mr. D'Israeli's letter, on the 12th October 1838, I received what follows:

'He who sprains an ankle breaks a resolution. I sprained my ankle a week ago by treading on a lump of mortar which a beast of a mason let drop out of his hod in Milsom-street. It twisted under my leg, and down I came. Nevertheless I resolved to walk home, after I was picked up, two gentlemen having run across the street and helped me for as to getting up by my own efforts, that was out of the question. With great difficulty I reached my lodgings. And now for the breach of resolution I have committed. I am a great admirer of Mrs. Jameson's writings. So I sent on Saturday night for her Female Sovereigns. On Sunday after tea I began a drama on Giovanna di Napoli (God defend us from the horrid sound, Joan of Naples!); and before I rose from my bed on Monday morning, I had written above a hundred and seventy verses as good as any I ever wrote in my life excepting my Death of Clytemnestra. Of course I slept little. In fact, I scarcely sleep at all by night while the people of my brain are talking. While others are drinking I dose and dream, and sometimes snore peradventure; at least those have told me so who know best. Now, not a word to any one about this drama, which I promise to send you before a month is over. Since the first day I have done nothing in the composition of it, so many people have been calling on me. However, nobody shall come in before two nor after three for the future. But I must return the calls as soon as I can get out, and these are grievous losses of time. It is odd enough that I had written a good

many scraps of two Imaginary Conversations in which Giovanna is a speaker; but I cannot remember a syllable of them, nor would they do. She and Vittoria Colonna are my favourites among the women of Italy, as Boccaccio and Petrarca among the men. But, to have clear perceptions of women, to elicit their thoughts and hear their voices to advantage, I must be in the open air, in the sun-alas, in Italy, were it possible. My sprained ankle will not let me take my long and rapid strides. I am an artificial man. I want all these helps for poetry. Quiet and silent nights are the next things needful. How happy is Southey, who can do all things better than any of us, and can do them all in the midst of noise and interruption! He is gone into Brittany. May he return in health and spirits! . . . God bless you. Do not think it necessary to condole with me on my sprain.'

Five days later came another letter. I had meanwhile, after expressing my delight that out of such a nettle as a sprain he was plucking the flower of a tragedy, endeavoured to point out to him that a drama, if it meant anything, should mean what could be acted; and that if he had not something to say which the theatre would enable him to say best, it was unwise to adopt a form that surrendered obvious advantages without corresponding return.

'My drama will never do for the stage. Besides, why should I make so many bad men worse? Is there any poet, beside Southey and perhaps our Paracelsus (Mr. Browning), who would not suffer from blue devils at any success of mine? The best of our living dramatic writers, Sheridan Knowles, gets grudgingly praised. I would not be mobbed, present or absent. Even Macready's genius and judgment can hardly bring together half a dinner-party to see living Shakespeare. Yet Shakespeare not only keeps poetry alive, but Christianity. When people see one inspired man, inspired to delight and elevate them, they may believe that there may be another inspired and sent to save them from the devil. My scenes fall in the natural order. What is plot but trick? However, my team is strong enough to carry my materials from one part of the field to the other, if need be. You must tell me about it. You shall not have any of it before you have the whole; and it shall not be a fortnight first.'

The promise was kept; all the scenes composing the tragedy known afterwards as Andrea of Hungary were in my hands on the 2d of November; and the subjoined characteristic letter accompanied them.

'Conceived, planned, and executed in thirteen days; transcribed (the worst of the business) in six. Any man, I am now convinced, may write a dozen such within the year. The worst of it is, in anything dramatic, such is the rapidity of passion the words escape before they can be taken down. If you lose one, you lose the tone of the person, and never can