and though between a darkness of this kind and the mud that thickens shallow streams there is a difference, and obscurity will often be really occasioned by depth, a poem is the worst form one can find it in. On its surface, nevertheless, as in the Sardian vase, there will be beauties telling with all the more dazzling prominence for that defect; and there are in Landor's little tract that contained the Phocæans things more masterly than in any other poetical writing of that day. His prevailing characteristic continued to be a vivid picturesqueness; and I quote a few lines to show the frequent reflective beauty that set this off:

-Those who living filled the smallest space,

In death have often left the greatest void.
When from his dazzling sphere the mighty falls,
Men, proud of showing interest in his fate,
Run to each other, and with oaths protest
How wretched and how desolate they are.

The good departs, and silent are the good.'

Of smaller pieces in the same tract, the finest was Chrysaor, of which the treatment is as Titanic as the subject. Something of this may be shown by the wonderful beauty of the image of the sail at the close of the description of the giant rebel's overthrow. ... the Sacrilege

Rais'd up his head astounded, and accurst

The stars, the destinies, the gods..

But answer heard he none. The men of might

Who gather'd round him formerly, the men
Whom, frozen at a frown, a smile revived,

Were far: enormous mountains interposed,
Nor ever had the veil-hung pine outspread

O'er Tethys then her wandering leafless shade.'

Another, which was a great favourite with Wordsworth, is

very pretty and striking:

'In his own image the Creator made,

His own pure sunbeam quickened thee, O man!
Thou breathing dial! Since thy day began

The present hour was ever markt with shade !'

Whatever else may be alleged of Landor's style, there is nothing weak or pompous about it; flaccid or turgid lines, the certain sign of inferior handling, do not occur; and there are no gaspings for breath. His word answers always to his thought; and the movement of his verse, sustained at the level of his fancy

and language, takes its music from both. Passages in themselves quite perfect stand out in this way from his compositions, even when otherwise least successful. It is indeed his defect too often to treat particular things with an excess of vividness, by which the general level of his work is placed at disadvantage. Impetuosity, want of patience, is as bad in literature as in life; and it was his very power of putting rapidly and visibly on his page what he saw himself with astonishing vividness, that, for want of certain links of connection, dropped in his eagerness as of no account, but very necessary to the enjoyment of his readers, gave occasional obscurity to a style in itself transparently clear. This remark is made in connection with the poems under notice, because, in reviewing them, the stanch and as yet almost solitary friend of Gebir justified on this ground a little wavering from the allegiance he so generously and loyally had proffered to its writer, the young poet still even by name unknown to him.

Southey's article appeared in what was called the Annual Review,* a 'history of literature' just set up by Doctor Aikin, which, happily for Southey, had not a very long life; the wage for which he was labouring at it being so low, that he must have struck work if it had not starved out itself by starving its authors. At this time it happened that William Taylor of Norwich had great influence over Southey, and had been doing his best to laugh him out of his idolatry of Gebir. Great at the derivation of words, he declared it to have been aptly so named, 'quasi gibberish;' and Southey, though by no means abandoning his own opinion, was uneasy at the adverse opinion of his friend. Reviewing the new poem, he admits that the story of its predecessor had been related in language so involved and difficult that few could penetrate its meaning; and that they who did might perhaps have overrated its merits in proportion to the difficulty they had overcome in discovering them. Still he protested its merits to be of most uncommon excellence, and that, though the mine was dark and the ore deep, there was ore of priceless value. But he did not find the second effort equal to the first, or that the five intervening years had matured the taste of the author, whoever he might be. Somebody, he added, had said of Gebir that its thoughts * Published by Longman and Rees, 1802: see vol. i. p. 663.

were connected by flea-skips of association; but Gebir was lucid compared with the Phocæans. At the same time Southey defined the obscurity, not quite truly but not unfairly, as arising from a passion for compression; pointing out that this might be carried so far as to become a mere short-hand, reminding a writer of his own conceptions, but never explaining them to others. In short, with much complimentary admission as to the few passages which he had found to be intelligible, Southey's verdict was adverse to Poetry by the Author of Gebir.

Fortunately Landor never knew this, or that his earliest critical friend had ever momentarily faltered in allegiance to him; but the remarks on Gebir's obscurity, supposed to have been Doc. tor Aikin's, were not without their influence. The author had lately taken lodgings at Oxford to be near his brother Robert, who was in residence at Worcester-college; and the fruit of their deliberations was the publication, after not many months, of an edition of Gebir now rarely to be met with, accompanied not only by a Latin version of it, the Gebirus, but by prose arguments to each book in both languages, with notes of explanation to the passages supposed to be most obscure. I must add, however, that even this concession provoked no kindly return; that in his handsome coat Gebir fared no better than in his homely one; and that the brothers, impatient of the refusal of the critics to take farther notice of their labours, went soon after on their own account into the critical line.

Mr. Robert Landor's letters have informed me pleasantly as to these matters: Even the first edition of Gebir was followed 'speedily by little unbound publications, of which I cannot re'member correctly either the order or the titles. The Phocæans, 'the commencement of an epic poem, various Latin verses and English verses filling no more than a few pages, a little volume ' of Icelandic poems suggested by Mr. Herbert's success, but no'thing in prose that I can remember before the first two volumes ' of his Imaginary Conversations, except a few pages on Primitive 'Sacrifices. I often tried to dissuade him from such diminutive 'works, or rather scraps, as betraying too much impatience, and as excusing the public neglect. They were read by a few perIsonal friends only, and only one of them was noticed in a re

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'view. I am not unwilling that you should smile at my expense, knowing how tolerant you are. When there were no magazines 'excepting the Gentleman's, young aspirants to literature could try their pretensions nowhere else so safely as in the reviews. 'The Edinburgh and Quarterly, a little later, were accessible only 'to a few of higher pretensions and qualities better ascertained. For the rest it was not at all necessary that they should have 'any knowledge of the subjects about which they wrote. They 'placed themselves as doctors learned in literary law. They took their seats on the judge's bench before they had prepared them'selves by their studies for the bar. It was necessary to assume 'great dignity and authority; a compassionate or contemptuous 'treatment of the culprits trembling before them was necessary; 'but learning, wisdom, and experience were not necessary. Ex'cepting that my conscience acquits me of any wish to give pain, or of any malignant pleasure in tormenting my betters, such a ' critic was I!—a professional critic!-a reviewer! My first article was on Walter's Iceland tale of Gunlaug and Helga-very con'fident in its patronage indeed! Walter was delighted, and both 'of us laughed at the imposture. The Oxford Review broke down ' after the first three or four numbers; and my conscience is the more easy as I had contributed only two or three articles, con'ceited enough but not malignant. Up to this time there had, I think, been no notice of my brother's publications since that by Southey of Gebir. But Walter's impatience under such un' merited neglect was betrayed by repeated and very contemptuous challenges offered both to critics and authors, in little pub'lications which were never read by either. Then, as at a later age, he seemed equally enraged by the public neglect, and dis'dainful of its notice.'

The best of those little 'Icelandic' poems being accessible still in the printed works, nothing more need be said of it here, except that it appears to have been suggested to Landor by a letter from Birch, his favourite and friend at Rugby.

VII. SUCCESSION TO THE FAMILY ESTATES.

Several of Birch's letters had been kept by his schoolfellow,

and some of them bear date shortly before the latter, by Doctor Landor's death, became master of the Staffordshire estate; his mother continuing life-tenant of Ipsley-court and Tachbrooke. They are hardly of a kind to justify publication; but they show with what anxiety, at that particular time, this true friend was looking forward to the future which lay before the companion of his boyhood.

None of the figures of their distant past seems to recur with kindlier association to Mr. Robert Landor's memory. Before the latter went up to Oxford, Birch had a fellowship at Magdalen; and he had become tired of Oxford life and quitted it for a tutorship, before Mr. Robert Landor had obtained his own fellowship. But during the whole of his undergraduate career he had the advantage of companionship and counsel from this friend of his brother's, and in his letters he speaks of him with the utmost tenderness. Walter often visited me,' he says, 'when travelling 'between Warwick, London, Bristol, or South Wales; and he eagerly renewed his intercourse with Birch, whom I had not seen till then. Here was an instance of friendship which is so ⚫ often formed between men as unlike each other as possible in every other particular excepting a single pursuit. Birch was 'gentle, quiet, unassuming, very tolerant of other men's opinions though sufficiently consistent in the maintenance of his own, an earnest Christian, a sincere churchman, and-O Mr. Forster! -rather too much inclining to Toryism. Walter was a black 'Jacobin. I very soon acquired the title, in my own college, of Citizen Landor,-and even the Citizen, as being the only republican there. But Birch loved Walter and smiled at me. Walter ' used to speak of his friend's maiden modesty, which extended beyond his morals.* Perhaps this wide difference between * them kept both parties silent on graver subjects; both feeling unwilling to quarrel, and knowing how irreconcilable were their ' opinions. Yet Birch often checked Walter's extravagant lan'guage by his laughter; and once he asked me how it could have happened that my brother should have met accidentally so

'At school,' Landor writes in one of his letters to me, Birch was named Sancty, from the sobriety of his manners; how different from ⚫ mine!'