his sentences when deciphered. He has twelve words where one would do, and as many seventhlies and lastlies for every division of a subject as one of the old Puritan preachers. In vehemence as well as abundance of language, too, his example was a bad one for Landor; whose own self-sufficient way of judging both men and things, if at this time happily restrained rather than encouraged by any one whose judgment he respected, might not have grown into the unfortunate habit which tyrannized over him in later years. Certainly no lessons were to be drawn from Parr, either of prudence in forming opinions or moderation in expressing them.

Upon the first news of Pitt's resignation he wrote to Landor to expose what he called the deep and mischievous craft of the impostor. He wanted it laid open to the public in parliamentary speeches, in newspaper paragraphs, in general conversation, and in political pamphlets; and with a view to each and all, Landor was to do what he could. Again and again the alarm was to be sounded in every quarter; and in every quarter were to be proclaimed the aggravations of his misbehavior to the king and the Irish. He had betrayed the king and insulted the Irish, he had betrayed the Irish and insulted the king. But it should all be ripped up in the House of Commons. Why did he pledge himself to the Irish without consulting the king? Why did he not consult the king before pledging himself to the Irish? If he did consult the king, who was to blame? If he did not consult the king, what was the reason? If he expected assent, then had he most wantonly brought the king into a scrape. If, at the moment of consultation, he expected dissent, then, at the moment of action, he must have intended to compel assent. And so, to give but a few faint echoes of a letter that would take as many pages to print as are here compressed in lines, and as many weeks completely to decipher, the excited old Whig seesaws through a bill of indictment against the retiring minister, to which he wishes Landor to give all the "attractiveness of his style, all the power of his eloquence, and all the bitterness of his sarcasm."

Landor nevertheless had some difficulty, which it was the object of a second letter to remove; and from this I am able to extract, with sufficient compendiousness, ten several heads of accusation, which, after due time for reflection, Parr submitted as the objects Pitt must have had in view, and the advantages he had proposed to himself, in resigning. The shrewdness of the matter and pomposity of the manner are Parr all over.

"I will enumerate the advantages he hopes to derive. 1. Public attention is turned from the perils of war to the change of administration. 2. Pitt will rise by comparison with the weakness of his successors; and, while action is suspended, his power to act will be forced upon men's memories, sifted in their conversations, and enlarged in their imaginations, by contrast with notorious incapacity; and thus he escapes from their anger, he diverts that anger to other objects, and he recalls to our minds the brighter parts

of his character at a crisis when every man feels that ministerial talents are necessary for national safety. 3. He has carried off his whole strength in a mass, and in a mass he will preserve it, that it may be brought again into action in a mass. 4. He has gone out in defence of a popular measure, and the circumstance will secure a stout party in Ireland, and will not be unwelcome to the sectaries of England. 5. He has thrown the whole responsibility upon the junto and the king; so as to induce a suspicion that he neither has been nor wILL be governed by that secret and mischievous Cabal, which controlled his father, which excludes Mr. Fox, and to which, as their primary source, all the disasters of the reign are usually traced up. 6. His descending orb is surrounded with that glory which accompanied its meridian height, for it is he who with magnanimity conducts the loan, and it is he upon whose wisdom the money-holders rely. 7. He has contrived to show the inflexibility of the king's mind towards the Whigs, when in preference to them even the weakest persons are called into office, at a most dangerous juncture. And this consideration will have its due weight with the selfish and corrupt Parliament. 8. By his organ Lord Grenville he has instructed his followers what part they are to take in supporting the same principles under the guidance of other men, and consequently he forbids them to prepare for acting according to other principles with the members of opposition. 9. He will assume an air of moderation; he will affect not to clog the wheels of government; he will claim the merit of assisting measures which he no longer guides; he will find in them opportunities sometimes for vindicating his own, when they were similar, and sometimes for praising his own, when they were better; and thus he will encourage the superficial to believe, and the cunning to maintain, that his ambition and his resentment are quelled by his disinterested loyalty and unfeigned patriotism. Finally, he knows that between himself and his sovereign there is only one strong point of difference; but that between his rivals and the crown there is not only the same point of difference with greater provocations, but other points of even superior magnitude from which Mr. Fox will never swerve, and to which the king will never accede. He therefore has quitted his power at a time when it was most difficult to retain it, and when he could take the best preparatory measures for resuming it; and, at the moment of resuming it, he will convert the odium of beginning and misconducting the war into popularity by making the peace."

Even

These were the texts he would have Landor write upon. yet the mischief might be stayed. In the matter of the old Tories Pitt had been reckoning without his host. They would be inflamed by all this. If proper measures were taken, never was a period more favorable for hunting him down; and never such a favorable period for his return to power, if such measures were not taken. Some misgiving, nevertheless, whether Landor was the man to take them, and whether he could be trusted for not straying too far afield, creeps into the letter. "I wish," says Parr, "you would expand the matter contained in this letter, and publish it in the Courier, and lay out upon it that vigorous eloquence with which you often charm my ears. It will have effect, if you will keep back some of your favorite and perhaps erroneous opinions." There were also other difficulties that made Landor not very manageable. From the earlier attempts to

get him into regular harness, and put him under proper leaders, he seems to have shied and bolted incessantly. "Why," asks Parr, in the same letter, 66 don't you go down to the House? I will give you letters of introduction to men you will like; and from the civility of being introduced by them into the House, why should you shrink?" These strenuous efforts are not without their effect, and we see him at the House at last under charge of Adair.

But before turning to the letters of that stanchest of Whigs, a few further notes may be given from those of Landor and Parr. Here is an acknowledgment from the young poet of the old scholar's suggestions and praise :

"I am rejoiced to find that you have not forgotten me, and I raise myself up from the bosom of indifference to the voice and the blandishments of praise. I never court the vulgar, and how immense a majority of every rank and description this happy word comprises! Perhaps about thirty in the universe may be excepted, and never more at a time. But I know how to value the commendation you bestow on me; for, though I have not deserved it, nor so largely, yet it will make me attempt to conquer my idleness, my disgust, and to reach it some time or other. You will find that I have taken courage to follow the path you pointed out, in pursuing the execrable [Pitt]. I subjoin my letter. At present I have not sent it to the printer, though it has been finished a fortnight. The reason is this: I wrote one a thousand times better than the present, in which I aimed my whole force at a worse man than [Pitt], — there are only two, and it was not Windham], and I sent it for insertion to the Courier. Now, such is my indifference, that, when once I have written a thing, I never inquire for it afterwards; and this was the case in respect to my letter. I have not seen the Courier since, but I have some suspicion that it was not inserted."

That is just the man as he was known to me forty and fifty years later fancying always that he could place himself "on a hill apart even from those with whom he was actually contending; and mistaking for indifference, both to opinions and to consequences, what was but exaggerated impatience of contradictory opinion and a running away from consequences.

What the tone of his letters to the Courier is likely to have been, we are not without hints of:

"Did Mr. Pitt expect, or did he not, the royal assent to his transaction with the Irish? I hardly know in which instance of the two his crime would be the greater. If he did not, how gross the deception; how deep and unpardonable the insult; how cruel and killing a mockery!"

To which Parr rejoins in a letter taking a less favorable view than before of Pitt's chances of success in his "diabolical" scheme. The peace had now been made by Addington, and that advantage lost to his expecting heir and successor : —

"Pitt has insulted the king by pledging his word; he has betrayed him by throwing responsibility upon him for the disappointment of the Irish. He means to compel the sovereign to recall his former ministers when the

inefficiency of their successors appears to the crown, the Parliament, and. the country; and when the alternative lies between Pitt, who contends only for one point, and Fox, who will insist upon many. But he cannot recover his popularity with the nation; he cannot regain all his strength in Parliament; he cannot efface our remembrance of the war, by seizing upon office to make the peace; and yet he may re-establish his influence over the mind of his sovereign. My friend, we have gained one point by these struggles between the ministry and the junto; and the people, if they are wise, will direct their suspicions, indignation, and resistance against both. I wish you would look into the second book of Xenophon's Envika for the character of Meno. Many but not all the circumstances have the very strongest resemblance. Pray consider this last passage, for it luminously describes the subserviency of arrogance to cunning in the bosom of this man. . . . . My printing goes on but slowly. You estimate rightly the great intellectual power of Mr. Wynne. Catherine [Parr's daughter] is at Mackintosh's, No. 14 Searle Street. She leaves town in a day or two, and you may send any message by her. Watch what is passing. Mrs. Parr joins me in best wishes and best thanks. I am, my dear Walter, ever your friend, S. Parr."

I have spared the reader, there, ten lines of Xenophon; though Greek is more legible than English in the writing of Parr, and a substantial scrap interlarded from the ancients is some help to his own puffs and pastry. But he carried the habit to excess, as he did most things; and Holofernes himself was not more ridiculous in chopping and changing for Latin or Greek the baldest phrases of his mother tongue than this genuine scholar often was. See how he acknowledges a gift from Landor:

"I have been eager to acknowledge the Babù xpéos under which you have laid Mrs. Parr and myself by the present of a very instructive book; and of maps the most accurate, the most splendid, and the most interesting that ever came into my possession."

See also how he talks, or perorates, about the peace:

"True it is that by the cessation of hostilities there will be less flutter of curiosity and less anxiety of expectation than we felt during the war. But, in a calmer and a more permanent and a more pleasing state of mind, we can now trace the progress of the victors and the retreat of the vanquished. There will be a mellowness in our satisfaction and a distinctness in our conceptions that will amply compensate for the want of those feelings which accompany perturbation, and therefore partake of hope and fear, and of rapture and agony. Glad shall I be when you sit down with us again, and chat on the virtues of Moreau, the talents of Buonaparte, the humors of Paul, and the perilous condition of this oppressed and insulted kingdom. As to late events, the ostensible is not the sole nor the chief cause of Mr. Pitt's plot,

ἔσται λέων ὅπη χρὴ, καὶ πίθηκος ἐν μέρει,”

[which I may translate to the effect that Pitt was to play the lion's part when necessary, and the monkey's in division of spoil]. "The wrangle

Addressed to "Walter Landor, Esq., at R. Bevan's, Esq., No. 10 Boswell Court, Carey Street." April, 1801.

about indulgence to Catholics, the resignation of the old ministry, the appointment of the new, the strength studiously abducted from them, the compliments bestowed upon them, the assistance solicited for them, and the principles imputed to them, are one and all mere cooaλà σopioμara. Rely upon it, sooner or later, Paul will have Malta, the French will have Egypt, and the Mamelukes will justify the proverb, dewoì tλéktew tol, &c., &c., &c." [I spare the reader more.]

Nor was Landor loath to pay him back the same liberal largess for kindnesses expected or received. The old scholar was just now publishing his Spital Sermon, and had promised Landor a copy; having given him a few months before a small Catullus, which more than half a century later I saw, still cherished, in his hands. Here is characteristic acknowledgment of both :

"It is a sign that I have conversed with hardly a human being, not to know that your Sermon was published! As you intend to make me a present of one, pray do not keep it for me, but send it me directly. I wish for all enjoyment at once. I wish, while I improve my judgment and my taste, to indulge my sentiment and affections in contemplating the present of my friend. I have a little Catullus,-I can repeat every word of it; yet again and again do I read my little Catullus. I never knew the author, and I should not have esteemed him if I had, unless as the most exquisite of poets. Do I not know the author of the sermon? Do I not esteem him far, infinitely, more than for being the most elegant and energetic of our writers? I hope this noble work, for I can speak of as much as I have seen, will be effectual in making Englishmen write English. Our language is bruised, as it were, and swollen by the Latin; but it is contaminated, enervated, and distorted by the French! If we are to borrow, let us borrow from the principal and not from the underlings; but with a little good management I think we are quite rich enough."

Catullus again and again recurs in the letters of both. Landor had questioned a word in that delightful writer: Parr promptly replies:

"I looked into my Catullus, and can relieve you from all doubts about 'tympanum.' In Mattaire's Corpus Poetarum it is printed 'typanum,' and that is the true reading. It is a Grecism, and furnishes an additional probability that some Greek word was in the mind of the Roman writer. Scaliger reads 'typanum,' and quotes from Homer,- the line is in his hymn to the Mater Deorum. Scaliger quotes also from Apollonius Rhodius."

The letter bristles with Greek and Latin, which I do not inflict upon the reader; passes into a disquisition on the metre of Catullus, with a sketch to show the rhythm and its variations; and closes thus:

"The cretic foot, whether in 'tympanum' or 'cymbelum,' is quite inadmissible in the beginning of the galliambic. It retards the progress. I will show you Jortin's remarks. He errs once or twice; but he reads 'typanum.'

As Landor went on writing he seems at times to have even bettered