appointment and trouble. Sisyphus was nothing to a self-torturer who might at any time of his own accord have taken his hand from the stone.

II. A PUBLISHER FOUND.

Mawman declined the book as Longman had declined it. It was next taken to a publisher named Martin, and by him also refused. Then it was taken to Valpy, who proposed terms that could not be acceded to. In these negotiations nearly six months passed; and it was March 1823 when Landor again wrote to Southey, soon after he had instructed Julius Hare to carry the manuscript for another chance to Ridgway. Busied in all the interval with additions and improvements, interested more than at first in the variety of subjects he has opened, adding and inventing daily from unsuspected riches of resource, and with every fresh demand upon his power finding its energy and productiveness unfailing, Landor was by this time so satisfied with his progress, so confident in the value of his amendments, and so occupied in the task of transmitting them to Hare, that he had happily not over-tormented himself with the succession of unsympathising publishers who have churlishly refused his book, and was even ready himself to pay for a printer if no one else would do it. But he was in some trouble as to Wordsworth and the way in which he was likely to take the abandonment of his intention to dedicate the book to him.

'Among my new conversations are Bacon and Hooker, Marcus Cicero and his brother Quinctus; and to you I need not express the difficulty of my task. The dialogue between the latter two takes place on the eve of Cicero's death, at his Formian villa. Mr. Hare tells me you have assisted him in his attempts to obtain me a printer. I desire no profits, if any should arise from the publication; and I would take upon myself half the loss, provided that only three hundred and fifty copies were printed in octavo. There will be about twenty-two sheets. It appears to me that all important questions should be fairly and fully discussed. I invite criticism and defy power. It will vex me if I am at last obliged to employ a printer who publishes only pamphlets for the mob, conscious as I am that in two thousand years there have not been five volumes of prose equal in their contents to this. By volumes I mean the entire works of one author. I have wearied my excellent friend Mr. Hare to death with perpetual corrections and insertions. He never even saw me. He does not complain of his trouble, occupied as he is in other literary labours;

but reproves my attacks on Catholicism, to which he appears more than moderately inclined. There is no religion or party to which he would not be an ornament and a support. . . . It is not improbable that I forgot to tell you I had another son born five months ago. I gave him my names, Walter Savage.'

Another month was hardly gone when the publisher was found at last. Landor's suggestion of the printer who publishes only pamphlets for the mob' having ended like the rest by Mr. Ridgway's politely declining, Julius Hare was left to his own judgment. He had now quitted the Temple for a classical tutorship in Cambridge, upon the joint persuasion of Whewell and Wordsworth's brother, then Master of Trinity; but, having contributed to the London Magazine in his Temple days, he had a favourable knowledge of its proprietor, John Taylor, and to him he made application.

I considered him the most honourable man in the trade; and after no small difficulties, arising however altogether from conscientious scruples and in no degree from considerations of profit, we came to an agreement; or I ought rather to say, I was so weary of soliciting publisher after publisher, and so anxious to put the work into the hands of a respectable man, that I forced Taylor to undertake it.'

Landor's instructions as to terms had been that the publisher was to receive all the profits, and he would himself engage, provided the impression were limited to 500 copies, to make up any loss at the end of one or two years. Making sure however of a larger sale than this, Hare proposed as a compromise between Landor's offer and the usual half-profits plan, that both the loss and the gain should be shared. And it was so settled. But the difficulties were not over. The printing had hardly begun when Taylor's 'conscientious scruples' broke out strongly at some passages which he held to be objectionable. He required a too plain-spoken word put in Cromwell's mouth to be removed, and Hare, having heard from Southey that Landor would cer tainly not give way on the point, resisted. Upon this Taylor said its retention would make the difference between his printing a thousand copies or two hundred and fifty less; and Hare replying that he had no alternative, the word held its place* and the impression was limited to seven hundred and fifty.

It appeared in both first and second editions, but in the Collected Edition of 1846 was expunged by himself. He had then learnt to be more sparing of flowers from the deanery-garden.

More serious discussion then arose upon a passage in the conversation between Middleton and Magliabechi, the result of which was a reference by Hare to Southey to ask if either he or Wordsworth would consent to look over the proofs, Taylor undertaking to be bound by the decision if either of them approved what he condemned. Whereupon Southey wrote this to Landor (8th May 1823); and after declaring his belief that Taylor was a man very superior to most of his trade, and that he had demurred really on grounds of principle, said he had himself at once replied that he would most willingly, Wordsworth having gone to the Netherlands, take upon himself the responsibility suggested, and act for his friend in the matter as his friend would by him, taking care that wherever there was an omission the place should be marked. He added that the specimen Landor had sent him of the dialogue of the Ciceros was delightful, and that Julius Hare spoke of the whole just in such terms as he should expect it to deserve.

On the 31st of the same month Landor replied. He felt so much pleasure on receiving Southey's letter, he said, that it hardly could be increased by reading it, although the information it gave him satisfied all his wishes. By way of solving the difficulty bis friend was in, he suggested that a note from the author should be inserted, wherever the objectionable passages appeared, requesting the editor to mark them with a special reprobation. This characteristic proposal, it is needless to say, would only have given greater force to Taylor's objections by giving greater prominence to the questionable passages. Southey preferred therefore to act on the powers of omission also given him, and some few sentences were condemned accordingly. But as to the passage in the Middleton, in which that not very orthodox divine was represented as disputing the efficacy and even the propriety of prayer, Southey was unable to see the force of Taylor's objection, and the point had again to be referred to Florence. Hare would have let the thing pass, and Southey thought it admissible, but Taylor stuck to his objection; and it was while Landor's decision was still waited for that Hare took upon himself to cut the knot. It is difficult to reconcile Taylor's obstinacy with his own offer to be bound by Southey's decision; but, incompatible as such a view appears with any sug

gestion of a compromise, Hare thought that Taylor had never barred his right of electing to decline the whole matter, and so expressed himself afterwards.

'I had agreed to print what Southey sanctioned; but of course this was only binding to a certain extent, and could not oblige Taylor to print what he thought morally wrong, and hurtful to Christianity. He may have been mistaken: I thought he was. I thought the argument against prayer, as an argument, good for nothing. I may have been equally mistaken; but at all events I cannot blame Taylor for acting conscientiously according to his judgment.'

It should be added that Taylor repeatedly desired Hare to find another publisher, and recommended him one (Mr. Simpkin) who would feel no such scruples as he had himself; but Hare disliked the thought of changing. Taylor had shown so much interest in the book, and had taken such pains to have it handsomely and correctly printed, that Hare was more anxious than ever to continue with him; and rather than break, even ventured at last to make the alterations in the Middleton. This was hardly judicious. It got rid of a difficulty for the time; but Landor had a ground of complaint on discovering it, and some excuse afterwards (a thing that did not often happen to him) for quarrelling with a very worthy man.

It was during the Middleton discussions and delays that Hare gave Taylor permission to print in the London Magazine the dialogue between Southey and Porson containing the comment on Wordsworth's poetry. This was done to please Wordsworth, Landor willingly consenting; and in the July number of 1823 it appeared. Sharp as were some of Porson's sayings in it, the poet had reason to be proud of the tone and matter of the dialogue; and it was of no common import, at this turninghour of his fame, that a champion of such appearance and prowess should declare upon his side. Southey spoke of him to Porson as in those latter times the glory of their country; and, when reminded that a rabble had persecuted him and a Jeffrey made him his prey, retorted with a couple of allegories, that an elephant was born to be consumed by ants in the midst of his unapproachable solitudes, and that in the creation God had left his noblest creature at the mercy of a serpent. Even Porson's severity was so tempered as not to exclude the highest claims.

He condemned the habit of pursuing thoughts too far, of showing them entirely rather than advantageously, of accumulating instead of selecting them, in language that the poet might in earlier days have read with inexpressible advantage; and his bitterest censure of the line about the witness' and second 'birth,' which then disfigured the stanza of Laodamia descriptive of the Elysian fields, hardly detracted from its accompanying magnificent eulogy that the poem was one which Sophocles might have exulted to own, and that the former part of the stanza might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions it describes. Altogether the dialogue excited considerable interest, and much curiosity was raised for the appearance of the book which the same magazine had promised would be immediate; but for several more months the promise was not kept, and Wordsworth meanwhile wrote to Landor.

He began by saying he was both tired and ashamed of waiting any longer, and he therefore wrote to thank Landor now, even before his completed book had appeared. He had been at Keswick in the summer, when Southey had read to him part of the dialogue in which he was introduced as a speaker with Porson (it had appeared, something I must say to my regret, ' in a magazine'), and he had since read the remainder himself.

'You have condescended to minute criticism upon the Laodamia. I concur with you in the first stanza, and had several times attempted to alter it upon your grounds. I cannot however accede to your objection to "the second birth," in the latter stanza merely because the expression has been degraded by conventiclers. I certainly meant nothing more by it than the eadem cura and the largior æther, &c. of Virgil's sixth Eneid. All religions owe their origin or acceptation to the wish of the human heart to supply in another state of existence the deficiencies of this, and to carry still nearer to perfection what we admire in our present condition; so that there must be many modes of expression, arising out of this coincidence or rather identity of feeling, common to all mythologies; and under this observation I should shelter the phrase from your censure. But I may be wrong in the particular case, though certainly not in the general principle.' (At the close of his letter he wishes very much to have Landor's opinion of Dante.) It has become lately, owing a good deal I believe to the example of Schlegel, the fashion to extol him above measure. I have not read him for many years. His style I used to think admirable for conciseness and vigour without abruptness; but I own that his fictions often struck me as offensively grotesque and fantastic, and I felt the poem tedious from various causes.... Farewell. Be so kind as write soon; and believe me ever sincerely and affectionately yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.'