VII. ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER. Come hither, all sweet maidens soberly, VIII. KEATS'S LAST SONNET. Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art- THE BARD SPEAKS. [From the Epistle to my Brother George.] What though I leave this dull and earthly mould, That maids will sing them on their bridal-night When they have tired their gentle limbs with play, And placed in midst of all that lovely lass Be lulled with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu! WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. [WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR was born at Warwick, Jan. 30. 1775; died at Florence, Dec. 17, 1864. He resided in Italy almost continuously from 1815 to 1835, and afterwards 21 years in Bath. His writings, the dates of which range from 1795 to almost the year of his death, were first collected by himself in two large volumes (1846), and afterwards (1876), with his Life, by Mr. John Forster, in eight vols. 8vo.] There is always some difficulty in discussing the characteristics and merits of the poetry of an eminent writer in prose. There are indeed exceptions, in which the one production has no more to do with the other than the misletoe with the old oak to which it is attached, but in most cases there is sufficient analogy to compel comparison, and sufficient difference to disturb the clear comprehension of the literary character. But the prose and poetry of Landor are especially homogeneous, not only in the sense of the dominant imaginativeness that constitutes what is ordinarily called poetical power, but in the melody and determinateness of poetry that pervades so much of his simplest writing. If this selection had included dramatic pieces, many of the Imaginary Conversations might have taken their place in it as becomingly as if written in poetical rhythm, and there would be no difficulty in culling passages from them and in other works which recur to the memory of the reader rather as screeds of song than as passages of eloquence, beauty, or wisdom. In the limited sketch of the poet which is here attempted it will be seen that there is an unity of intellectual faculty and moral purpose which made this similarity of production almost a necessity. He lived in a past world of heroic thought, unaltered by the events of common life, commencing from his school and college days and enduring for some ninety years. He passed nearly through the most eventful century of the world without learning from experience and almost without adding to his ideas, and thus the conceit of his difference from, and superiority to, others never translated itself into fact, and, aided by his imperious temper, kept him aloof at once from the intrusion and sympathy of his contemporaries. The elder son of a physician of large practice in the town of Warwick, young Landor had all the advantages of good birth and of the best education of his time. Besides his father's property in Staffordshire, he inherited through his mother the ancient estates of the Savages of Ipsley Court and Tachbrooke. At Rugby, and at Trinity College, Oxford, the classical culture which at that period was all the gentleman's education, however artificial and enforced, seemed to find in him a natural affinity that in any other youth would have been the delight of his teachers and the gratification of a just ambition. But to his wayward temperament all competition was not only distasteful but repugnant, and the very sense of superiority was distorted into a contempt for success. He thus left both school and college not only without the ordinary distinctions of scholarship, but prematurely as an offender against ordinary discipline. At about twenty years of age he settled himself at Tenby in South Wales, and between that secluded sea-place and Swansea, with an occasional visit to Warwick, he passed three years in continuous and lonely study. It was a thrifty and almost pastoral existence, and the sandy dells and dingles covered with moss-roses and golden snap-dragons were always associated in his mind with the production of Gebir. 'Play-day for Landor's Latin verses' is a remembrance of one of his Rugby contemporaries, and his first steps in English poetry had been translations and adaptations from the classics; but a small volume published in 1795, suppressed and forgotten, contains original verse far above the juvenile standard, and distinguished by a satiric gaiety, with no trace of immaturity about it. To this is appended Poematum Latinorum Libellus et Latine scribendi Defensio, and there is extant a letter from one of the objects of his satire praising its ease and continuity, and curiously speaking of the Hendecasyllabi, many of which were reprinted in the Pisan edition of 1820, as worthy of Catullus, his lifelong model of the perfection of literary grace. It was during the studious solitude in South Wales that he happened to light on a collection of tales by Clara Reeve, a now forgotten novelist, one of which, an Arabian romance, attracted |