brothers in England, and arrangements were at once made to supply him with a sufficient income for his remaining years. In the society of the Brownings, and of the American sculptor-poet, Story, he was considerate, gentle, easily satisfied; and to them the elaborate old-world courtesy of his manners, and the occasional bursts of his energetic and brilliant conversation, were an unalloyed delight. Five years of uninterrupted quiet were thus passed; his chief amusements being novel-reading, writing a poem or two in Latin or English, and petting, or playfully quoting the sage opinions of his dog 'Giallo.' But at eighty-eight the old force had not entirely deserted him, as was proved by some new dramatic scenes, which might well have been the productions of a man in the prime of his powers. A few lines from the preface to his Heroic Idyls, published in 1863, might almost serve him for an epitaph.

'He who is within two paces of his ninetieth year may sit down and make no excuses; he must be unpopular, he never tried to be much otherwise; he never contended with a contemporary, but walked alone on the far eastern uplands, meditating and remembering.'

Landor was endowed with a grand and singularly imposing personality. He was, as Mr. Carlyle called him, 'a grand old Pagan'; his talk was Olympian— thunder and lightning as of gods; his temper elemental, eruptive, volcanic. Wealth, position, great attain

ments, noble thoughts, a splendid genius, all were his; and all were blurred and disfigured, and the fabric of his life shattered, by the demon of discord.

To the general reader, Landor is most accessible in Mr. Sidney Colvin's excellent monograph, and the volume of selections from his writings in Messrs. Macmillan's 'Golden Treasury Series.' His life and writings, in Mr. Forster's collected edition, published in 1876, fill eight bulky volumes. The subjects treated of are almost as various as the phases of human life; and, although he is occasionally crotchety, and sometimes even laboured and dull, there are few matters of interest to the student of literature that his genius has not in some way illuminated.

For weighty aphorisms, apposite illustrations, brilliant metaphors, or biting sarcasms, Landor's writings are a mine of wealth to him who is willing to dig for these things; while his sedate, forceful, and almost faultless style place him in the front rank of the masters of English prose.

The reader who wishes to make a first acquaintance with Landor may be recommended to commence with the dialogues between Leofric and Godiva, Essex and Spenser, and Esop and Rhodopè; if he fails to appreciate the beauty of these, let him pray without ceasing for a purer taste, and a deeper insight into the more delicate feelings and higher aspirations of the human heart.

A PRINCE OF CRITICS

It is not altogether easy to see why the writings of William Hazlitt have had such a limited degree of popularity. A large proportion of his work consists of vigorous criticism of English literature and of the makers thereof; and the general public, as a rule, much prefers reading a book about any of its great writers to studying the author's works at first-hand. Moreover, Hazlitt's performances in this direction are amongst the best things of their kind; and, at any rate since his death, have been ungrudgingly praised by brother experts. Thackeray said of him that he had a wit so keen, a sensibility so exquisite, an appreciation of humour or pathos, or even of the greatest art, so lively, quick, and cultivated, that it was always good to know what were the impressions made by books, or men, or pictures, on such a mind.' And he added that, as there were probably not a dozen men in England with powers so varied, all the rest of the world should rejoice to listen to the opinions of so accomplished a critic. Professor Saintsbury calls him 'the greatest critic that England has yet produced' and Dr. Garnett, after describing his literary