ties are set above the most admirable compositions. in a manner already familiar; just as an uncouth carving or piece of foreign lacquer-work is more prized than an exquisite specimen of domestic art, because it is strange and breathes some unknown, spicy fragrance of a new-found clime. The transition period, doubtThe future. less, will be prolonged by the ceaseless progress of the scientific revolution, occupying men's imaginations and constantly readjusting the basis of language and illustration. Erelong some new Lucretius may come to reinterpret the nature of things, confirming many of the ancient prophecies, and substituting for the wonder of the remainder the still more wondrous testimony of the lens, the laboratory, and the millennial rocks. The old men of the Jewish captivity wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundations of the new temple, because its glory in their eyes, in comparison with that builded by Solomon, was as nothing; but the prophet assured them that the Desire of all nations should come, and that the glory of the latter house should be greater than of the former. But I do not endeavor to anticipate the future of English song. It may be lowlier or loftier than now, but certainly it will show a change, and my faith in the reality of progress is broad enough to include the field of poetic art. L CHAPTER II. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. I. the recent ISTENING to the concert of modern song, a| Landor a critical ear detects the notes of one voice which pioneer of possesses a distinct quality and is always at its owner's school. command. Landor was never mastered by his period, though still in harmony with it; in short, he was not a discordant, but an independent, singer. He was the pioneer of the late English school; and among recent poets, though far from being the greatest in achievement, was the most self-reliant, the most versatile, and one of the most imaginative. In the enjoyment of his varied writings, we are chiefly impressed by their constant exhibition of mental prowess, and everywhere confronted with an eager and incomparable intellect. Last of all to captivate the judgment of the laity, and A poet for somewhat lacking, it may be, in sympathetic quality of tone, Landor is, first of all, a poet for poets, of clear vision and assured utterance throughout the Victorian Year. His station resembles that of a bulkhead defending the sea-wall of some lasting structure, mole or pier, built out from tuneful, grove-shaded Arcadian shores. He stretches far into the channel Intellectual and selfalong which the tides of literary fashion have ebbed and flowed. Other poets, leading or following the changeful current, often appear to leave him behind; a poets. reliant. Born in His prolonged career. but erelong find him again abreast of them, unchanged and dauntless, wearing a lighted beacon at his head. Why, among Victorian poets, do I first mention this one, who was born under George. III.; who bandied epithets with Byron, was the life-long friend of Southey, the contemporary, likewise, in their prime, of Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge; in whose maturity occurred the swift and shining transits of Keats and Shelley, like the flights of shooting-stars; whose most imposing poem was given to the world at a date earlier than the first consulate of Napoleon ; who lived, from the times of Warton and Pye, to see three successive laureates renew the freshness of England's faded coronal, while he sang aloof and took no care? Because, more truly than another declared of himself, he stood among these, but not of them; greater or less, but different, and with the difference of a time then yet to follow. His style, thought, and His method versatility were Victorian rather than Georgian; they are now seen to belong to that school of which Tennyson is by eminence the representative. So far as his manner was anything save his own, it was that of recent years; let us say, instead, that the popular method constantly approached Landor's until the epoch of his death, and he died but even now, when it is on the point of yielding to something, we know not what. He not only lived to see the reflection and naturalism of Wordsworth produce fatigue, but to the borders of a reaction from that finesse and technical perfection which succeeded. His influence scarcely yet has grown to reputation, by communication from the select few to the receptive many, though he has always stood, unwittingly, at the head of a normal school, teaching the teachers. Passages are easily Victorian. PROLONGED AND EMINENT CAREER. 35 traceable where his art, at least, has been followed by poets who themselves have each a host of imitators. He may not have been the cause of certain phenomena; they may have sprung from the tendency of the age, if so, he was the first to catch the tendency. Despite his appreciation of the antique, his genius found daily excitants in new discovery, action, and thought; he never reached that senility to which earlier modes and generations seem the better, but was first to welcome progress, and thoroughly up with the times. The larger portion of his work saw print long after Tennyson began to compose, and his epic, tragedies, and miscellaneous poems were not brought together, in a single volume, until 1837,- a date within five years of the laureate's first collective edition. Hence, while it is hard to confine him to a single period, he is a tall and reverend landmark of the one under review; and the day has come for measuring him as a poet of that time, whatever he may have been in any other. Nor is he to be observed as an eccentric and curious spectacle, but as a distinguished figure among the best. As an artist he was, like a maple, swift of development, but strong to hold it as an elm or oak; while many poets have done their best work under thirty, and ten years after have been old or dead, the very noontide of Landor's faculties Landor's was later than his fiftieth year. We could not regard creative retention of him as a tyro, had he died, like Keats, at twenty-five, power. nor as a jaded old man, dying, as he did, at ninety; for he was as conservative in youth as he ever grew to be, and as fiery and forward-looking in age as in youth. He attained the summit early, and moved along an elevated plateau, forbearing as he grew older to descend the further side, and at death flung off Sustained equality. Intellectual range. Universality. somewhere into the ether, still facing the daybreak and worshipped by many rising stars. Were it not for this poet's sustained equality with himself, we should be unable here to write of his career of seventy years, filled with literary recreations, each the companion of its predecessor, and all his own. Otherwise, in considering his works, we should have to review the history of that period, as one who writes, for example, the life of Voltaire, must write the history of the eighteenth century. Landor's volumes not only touch upon the whole procession of those seventy years, with keen intuitive treatment of their important events, but go further, and almost cover the range of human action and thought. In this respect I find no such man of our time. A writer of dialogues, he subjects affairs to the scrutiny of a modern journalist; but his newspaper has every age for its date of issue, and the history of the world supplies it with local incident. What is there in the air of Warwickshire to breed such men? For he was born by Shakespeare's stream, and verily inhaled something of the master's spirit at his birth. Once, in the flush of conscious power, he sang of himself, "I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught, That roused within the feverish thirst of song." Lowell has said of him, that, "excepting Shakespeare, no other writer has furnished us with so many delicate aphorisms of human nature"; and we may add that he is also noticeable for universality of contemplation and the objective treatment of stately themes. In literature, his range is unequalled by that of Coleridge, who was so opulent and suggestive; in |