Nor will the reader object that I should add the closing verse of the yet nobler ode to Southey, in which, referring to the old dedication of the Curse of Kehama, there is the grand exaggeration of thanks and praise which, from Raleigh and Spenser downward, poets have exercised the right to give to brother poets, without exception or challenge:

Not, were that submarine

Gem-lighted city mine,

Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand,
Above the royal gleam of blazonry shall stand;
Not, were all Syracuse

Pour'd forth before my Muse,

With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's lyre
Brightening the path with more than solar fire,
Could I as would beseem requite the praise

Shower'd upon my low head from thy most lofty lays.'

As soon as I read your ode to Southey,' wrote Kenyon to Landor (16th January 1833), I resolved to print it. I sounded S. on the subject, and then sent it to the Athenæum, the Editor of which deferred it for a week, that it might give éclat to the first paper of the year. Southey said something about omit⚫ting the last stanza, as beyond the occasion; but this I did not ' attend to.' Crabb Robinson wrote to him a few months later that Wordsworth was extremely grateful, though he thought Southey's ode the best, and wished that, in his own, Dryden had been praised less and Spenser more.

V. AGAIN IN ITALY: OLD PICTURES AND NEW FRIENDS.

Landor had by this time become known, not wisely but too well, among the Italian picture-dealers, who passed through his hands as many rare old masters as would have set up the fortunes of half the galleries in Europe. In this as in too many other things he had no judgment but his will; and a cheerful self-imposture enabled him in perfect good faith to carry on the imposture honestly with all, even with the rascals who made it their commodity. He would so prepare you by a letter for his Rubens or his Raffaelle, or in its presence would do it homage with such perfect good faith, that your own eyes were as ready as

his to be made fools to the other senses. Your picture found its 'way to Alton,' wrote Augustus Hare to him in the summer of 1833, and we thought it almost worthy of the letter which an'nounced its coming. More perfect than that letter it could not 'have been, if Raffaelle had painted the whole of it.' Often have enjoyments in this way been mine which the presence of the real masters could not have made addition to; and never had I reason to question his own belief that the canvas did actually contain the glories that were but reflected on it from imagination and desire. It was incident to such treasures of course that they should rapidly accumulate; here and there even a real master crept in; and what with the splendour of the frames, the show upon his walls became magnificent. But the principle of the collection admitted hardly of a limit, and the treasures overflowed. He had taken several with him to England. Ablett had a Carlo Dolce; his sisters some Claudes and Canalettis; and his brother Henry, with special injunction that he should place them at Tachbrooke, which in part he had lately repurchased, some masters as old as Perugino. He now tells his sisters (8th January 1834) that he has a great many more pictures going to them, only delayed by the rogues in the custom-house wanting more money. As to his brother's or their offering to pay for them, that was quite out of the question. He had more than he has room for, as his windows are low, not reaching to the middle height of the apartments: and they were to tell Henry that his batch would follow. They would be very old ones, Cimabues and Giottos, and were getting ready from suppressed convents and monasteries at Prato and Pistoia. In later years I partook myself of this munificence; and I well remember, when I then met Julius Hare with Landor at Kenyon's dinner-table, with what a grave smile, lighting up the deepmarked lines of his thoughtful face, Julius spoke of his drawingroom at Hurstmonceaux as perhaps the only one in England that had seven virgins in it each of them almost three hundred years old.

The notices that follow are from Landor's letters to his sisters in 1834, the last that were to be written to them from his home in Italy.

AUGUST 27, 1834.

'We have heard that Coleridge is dead. He had recovered his health when I saw him, and told me that he had not been better for many years. Poor man! He put on a bran-new suit of black to come down and see me, and made me as many fine speeches as he ever could have done to a pretty girl. My heart aches at the thought that almost the greatest genius in the world, and one so friendly to me, is gone from it. Southey too is likely to suffer the most severe affliction, not merely in the death of his old friend, but his wife (he says) has been long declining in health, and he fears to lose her. She too, when I saw her, was florid and strong, and had not begun to bear the appearance of age in any respect whatever. I hear wonderful things of a new poem by Mr. Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde.'

SAME DATE: A NEW BOOK.

'Before a month is over, you or Harry (it comes to the same thing) will receive a very curious book, "The Examination of William Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy touching Deer-Stealing." Of course it will interest Henry more than you, being law. It is not impossible that I may be very soon in England, for I have told Lord Mulgrave that I would accept the Archbishopric of Canterbury, if he would obtain a commendam from the king for me to hold the Popedom at the same time. But perhaps the popular outcry against pluralities may raise some difficulty. I begin to sicken of Italy; for five entire months we have not had rain enough to wash a pocket-handkerchief, and no dew. Even the big leaves are falling off; my pear-trees and peaches are withered. I shall lose nearly sixty. The apricots stand it for the present.'

In the same letter he sends word of another consignment of pictures on the way to his sisters and to Henry. The previous one had been most successful. Thanks were profuse; and his sister Elizabeth had described amusingly Henry's enthusiasm, as he knelt before virgins and children, no less a picture than they. This last batch, his sister Elizabeth told him in acknowledgment, had become quite the rage' at Warwick, all sorts of people flocking to see them; but sisters and brother had not yet divided the spoil. Her previous letter (22d October), urgently pressing him to pay them another visit in the ensuing year, had given him melancholy news about Southey's wite; and to this he replied very sadly, telling her that he could not bring himself then to move from Florence, and enclosing her some verses sent as his reply to a similar invitation. The 'verses' were that fine ode to Joseph Ablett to be found in the collected works, which will preserve his friend's name as long as his own survives. I give a part of it here as written in this letter, because of the changes made in it as printed, where the couplet

on Coleridge's death is omitted altogether. Poetry can hardly boast of a line in which more is said, or set to a lovelier music, than that upon Wordsworth and Southey.

Together we have visited the men

Whose song Scotch outcries vainly would have drown'd;

Ah, shall we ever grasp the hand again

That gave the British harp its truest sound?

Coleridge hath heard the call, and bathes in bliss

Among the spirits that have power like his.

Live, Derwent's guest! and thou by Grasmere springs!
Serene creators of immortal things.

Thou knowest how, and why, are dear to me
My citron-groves of Fiesole.

Here can I sit or roam at will;
Few trouble me, few wish me ill,
Few come across me, few too near;

Here all my wishes make their stand;
Here ask I no one's voice or hand;
Scornful of favour, ignorant of fear.

Behold our Earth, most nigh the sun
Her zone least opens to the genial heat,

But farther off her veins more freely run:
'Tis thus with those who whirl about the great:
The nearest shrink and shiver; we remote
May open-breasted blow the pastoral oat.'

On the 26th of January 1835 he wrote again to his sisters, very anxious about Ellen's health, as to which ill report had reached him, and promising Henry at least twenty more pictures, most of them greatly better than the first, and quite as curious, excepting the Cimabues, which nobody else possesses, I mean no private man.' Its opening allusion is to some Warwick friends he had called upon.

'The next morning our minister, George Seymour, came to see me, and I desired him to present them at court, when she finds herself strong enough for giving parties. He will show them every possible attention. I never knew a man I liked better than Seymour, and his friendship for me is equal to my regard for him. And now I must tell you that that wicked book about Shakespeare has called forth the most eloquent piece of criticism in our language. You will find it in the Examiner. Let me recommend to you Leigh Hunt's London Journal, three halfpence a week. It contains neither politics nor scandal, but very delightful things in every department of graceful literature. It has copied, I hear, word for word, the splendid eulogy of the Examiner, in its 38th number of December 17.

I intend to send for this paper from its commencement. I am sorry to hear of Charles Lamb's death. If you have not read the Essays of Elia, pray send for them. I did hope to see once more both him and poor Coleridge. I have addressed some lines to his sister, whose affecting history I will tell you some day.

Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile!

Again shall Elia's smile

Refresh thy heart, where heart can ache no more.
What is it we deplore?

He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and years,
Far worthier things than tears:

The love of friends without a single foe;
Unequall'd lot below!...

Are not his footsteps follow'd by the eyes
Of all the good and wise?

Though the warm day is over, yet they seek
Upon the lofty peak

Of his pure mind the roseate light that glows
O'er death's perennial snows.

Behold him! from the region of the blest
He speaks: he bids thee rest.

And now I must transcribe for you some verses written on my Carlino by
Mr. Milnes.'

Being already in type, they may be omitted here. Addressed 'to a child with black eyes and golden hair,' they stand first in Mr. Milnes's Poems of many Years; and, with others to Landor's second son in the Memorials of a Residence on the Continent, under the date of 'Fiesole, 1833,' they commemorate the introduction to Landor in that year of one who held always afterwards a high place among his friends. The very last of Landor's letters from Italy to Southey was brought over in 1835 by Mr. Milnes, whom it introduced to the laureate; and one of the last received in Italy by Landor, also a letter of introduction for a young poet, was taken over to him by Mr. Algernon Swinburne from Lord Houghton after nearly thirty years. Their friendship during the interval had been uninterrupted; and has received grateful commemoration, since the first edition of this biography appeared, in a paper contributed by Lord Houghton to the Edinburgh Review.

To this date belongs also the personal knowledge of Emerson, valued by Landor as a compliment worthy to have been re