HIS DRAMATIC FACULTY.

and smallest work, the true Shakespearian range; and could make anything in poetry, from the posy of a ring to the chronicle of its most heroic wearer.

47

While Landor's art is thus varied and original, his Dramatic strongest hold the natural bent of his imagination faculty. -lay, as I have suggested, in the direction of the drama. This he himself felt and often expressed; yet his dramatic works are only enough to show what things he might have accomplished, under the favorable conditions of a sympathetic age. Few modern poets have done much more. Procter, Taylor, Beddoes, Browning, his dramatic compeers can almost be numbered on the fingers of one hand. I am not speaking of the playwrights. Had he written many dramas, doubtless they would have been of the Elizabethan style: objective rather than subjective; their personages distinct in manner, language, and action, though not brought under the close psychological analysis which is a feature of our modern school. We have substituted the novel for the drama, yet, were Shakespeare now alive, he might write novelsand he might not. Possibly, like Landor, he would be repelled by the mummery of the plot, which in the novel must be so much more minutely developed than in a succession of stage-scenes. Landor might have constructed a grand historical romance, or a respectable novel, but he never attempted either. Had the stage demanded and recompensed the labor of the best minds, he would have written plays, doing even the "business" well; for he had the intellect and faculty, and touched nothing without adorning it. As it was, the plot seemed, in his view, given up to charlatans and hacks; he had small patience with it, because, not writing in regular course for the theatre,

the framework of a drama did not come from him spontaneously. His tragedies already named, and various fragments, "Ippolito di Este," "Ines de Castro," "The Cenci," and "Cleopatra," are to be regarded as dramatic studies, and are replete with evidences of inspiration and tragic power. Sometimes a passage like this, from "Fra Rupert," has the strength and fire of Webster, in "The Duchess of Malfi":

tions.

Runs wild who did it, through the streets, and howls it,

Then imitates her voice, and softly sobs,

'Lay me in Santa Chiara."

We say that Landor was an independent singer, but once more the inevitable law obtains. He was

His restric- restricted by his period, which afforded him neither poetical themes most suited to his intellect, nor the method of expression in which he could attain a full development. He had little outside stimulus to frequent work. In his youth the serial market was limited to The Gentleman's Magazine and the pretentious quarterly reviews. His early poems did not sell: they were in advance of the contemporary demand. In poetry, let us confess that he fell short of his own standard, never so well defined as in "The Pentameron":"Amplitude of dimensions is requisite to constitute the greatness of a poet, besides his symmetry of form and his richness of decoration. . . . We may write little things well, and accumulate one

HIS PROSE WRITINGS.

theme.

upon another; but never will any justly be called a great poet, unless he has treated a great subject worthily. A throne is not built of bird's-nests, nor do a thousand reeds make a trumpet." The one great want of many a master-mind oppressed him, lack of theme. Better fitted to study things at a dis- Lack of tance, always an idealist and dreaming of some large achievement, Landor, with his imaginative force unmet by any commensurate task, wandered like "blind Orion, hungry for the morn." Or, like that other hapless giant, he groped right and left, but needed a guide to direct his strong arms to the pillars, that he might bow himself indeed and put forth all his powers.

49

a writer of

English

How great these were the world had never known, Greatness as were it not for that interlude of prose composition which occupied a portion of the years between his prose. early and later work. From youth his letters, often essays and reviews in themselves, to his selectest intellectual companions, exhibit him as a splendid artist in prose and a learned and accurate thinker. He had been drinking the wine of life, reading, reflecting, studying "cities of men . . . and climates, councils, governments," at Tours, Como, Pisa, Florence, Bath; and, at the age of forty-five or forty-six, with every faculty matured, he became suddenly aware of the fitness of written dialogue as the vehicle of his conceptions, and for the exercise of that dramatic tendency which had thus far found no practicable outlet. Forster has pointed out that this form of literature was suited alike to his strength, dogmatism, and variety of mood. The idea, once conceived, was realized with his usual impetuosity. It swelled

and swelled, drawing up the thought and observation

The "Imaginary Conversa

of a lifetime; in two years the first and second books of Imaginary Conversations were given to the world, and in four more, six volumes in all had been completed. For the first time the English people were dazzled and affected by this author's genius; the books were a success; and all citizens of the republic of letters discovered, what a few choice spirits had known before, that Landor was their peer and master. It is needless to eulogize the series of "Imaginary Conversations,” —to which the poet kept adding, as tions," 1824. the fancy seized him, until the year of his decease, within the memory of us all. They have passed into literature, and their influence and charm are undying. They are an encyclopædia, a panoramic museum, a perpetual drama, a changeful world of fancy, character, and action. Their learning covers languages, histories, inventions; their thought discerns and analyzes literature, art, poetry, philosophy, manners, life, government, religion, everything to which human faculties have applied themselves, which eye has seen, ear has heard, or the heart of man conceived. Their personages are as noble as those of Sophocles, as sage and famous as Plutarch's, as varied as those of Shakespeare himself: comprising poets, wits, orators, soldiers, statesmen, monarchs, fair women and brave men. Through them all, among them all, breathes the spirit of Landor, and above them waves his compelling wand. Where his subjectivity becomes apparent, it is in a serene and elevated mood; for he is traversing the realm of the ideal, his better angel rules the hour, and the man is transfigured in the magician and poet.

Paulo majora canamus. From the exhaustless resources of Landor's imagination, he was furthermore

A TRINITY OF PROSE-POEMS.

51

prose-poems.

Shake

enabled to construct a trinity of prose-poems, not frag- A trinity of mentary episodes or dialogues, but round and perfect compositions, each of them finished and artistic in the extreme degree. The Citation of Shakespeare, the Pentameron, and Pericles and Aspasia depict England, Italy, and Greece at their renowned and characteristic periods: the greenwood and castle-halls of England, the villas and cloisters of Italy, the sky and marbles of ancient Greece; the pedantry and poetry of the first, the mysticism of the second, the deathless grace and passion of Athens at her prime. Of "The "Citation of Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, speare," etc., etc., Touching Deer-Stealing," I can but repeat 1834. what Charles Lamb said, and all that need here be said of it, that only two men could have written it, he who wrote it, and the man it was written on. It can only be judged by reading, for there is nothing resembling it in any tongue. "The Pentameron" (of "The PenBoccaccio and Petrarca) was the last in date of these unique conceptions, and the favorite of Hunt, Crabb Robinson, Disraeli; a mediæval reproduction, the tone of which while always in keeping with itself is so different from that of the "Citation," that one would think it done by another hand, if any other hand were capable of doing it. Even to those who differ with its estimation of Dante, its learning, fidelity, and picturesqueness seem admirable beyond comparison. The highest luxury of a sensitive, cultured mind is the perusal of a work like this. Mrs. Browning found some of its pages too delicious to turn over. Yet this study had been preceded by the "Pericles and Aspasia," which, as an exhibition of intellectual beauty, may be termed the masterpiece of Landor's whole career.

tameron,

1837.