Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 330, April 1843

by Various

CALEB STUKELY.

PART XIII.

THE FUGITIVE.

The tongue has nothing to say when the soul hath spoken all! What need of words in the passionate and early intercourse of love! There is no oral language that can satisfy or meet the requisitions of the stricken heart. Speech, the worldling and the false—oftener the dark veil than the bright mirror of man's thoughts—is banished from the spot consecrated to purity, unselfishness, and truth. The lovely and beloved Ellen learnt, before a syllable escaped my lips, the secret which those lips would never have disclosed. Her innocent and conscious cheek acknowledged instantly her quick perception, and with maiden modesty she turned aside—not angrily, but timorous as a bird, upon whose leafy covert the heavy fowler's foot has trod too harshly and too suddenly. I thought of nothing then but the pain I had inflicted, and was sensible of no feeling but that of shame and sorrow for my fault. We walked on in silence. Our road brought us to the point in the village at which I had met Miss Fairman and her father, when, for the first time, we became companions in our evening walk. We retraced the path which then we took, and the hallowed spot grew lovelier as we followed it. I could not choose but tell how deeply and indelibly the scene of beauty had become imprinted on my heart.

"To you, Miss Fairman," I began, "and to others who were born and nurtured in this valley, this is a common sight. To me it is a land of enchantment, and the impression that it brings must affect my future being. I am sure, whatever may be my lot, that I shall be a happier man for what I now behold."

"It is well," said my companion, "that you did not make the acquaintance of our hills during the bleak winter, when their charms were hidden in the snow, and they had nothing better to offer their worshipper than rain and sleet and nipping winds. They would have lost your praise then."

"Do you think so? Imprisoned as I have been, and kept a stranger to the noblest works of Providence, my enjoyment is excessive, and I dare scarcely trust myself to feel it as I would. I could gaze on yonder sweet hillock, with its wild-flowers and its own blue patch of sky, until I wept."

"Yes, this is a lovely scene in truth!" exclaimed Miss Fairman pensively.

"Do you remember, Miss Fairman, our first spring walk? For an hour we went on, and that little green clump, as it appears from here, was not for a moment out of my sight. My eyes were riveted upon it, and I watched the clouds shifting across it, changing its hue, now darkening, now lighting it up, until it became fixed in my remembrance, never to depart from it. We have many fair visions around us, but that is to me the fairest. It is connected with our evening walk. Neither can be forgotten whilst I live."

It was well that we reached the parsonage gate before another word was spoken. In spite of the firmest of resolutions, the smallest self-indulgence brought me to the very verge of transgression.

In the evening I sat alone, and began a letter to the minister. I wrote a few lines expressive of my gratitude and deep sense of obligation. They did not read well, and I destroyed them. I recommenced. I reproached myself for presumption and temerity, and confessed that I had taken advantage of his confidence by attempting to gain the affections of his only child. I regretted the fault, and desired to be dismissed. The terms which I employed, on reperusal, looked too harsh, and did not certainly do justice to the motives by which throughout I had been actuated; for, however violent had been my passion, principle had still protected and restrained me. I had not coldly and deliberately betrayed myself. The second writing, not more satisfactory than the first, was, in its turn, expunged. I attempted a third epistle, and failed. Then I put down the pen and considered. I pondered until I concluded that I had ever been too hasty and too violent. Miss Fairman would certainly take no notice of what had happened, and if I were guarded—silent—and determined for the future, all would still be well. It was madness to indulge a passion which could only lead to my expulsion from the parsonage, and end in misery. Had I found it so easy to obtain a home and quiet, that both were to be so recklessly and shamefully abandoned? Surely it was time to dwell soberly and seriously upon the affairs of life. I had numbered years and undergone trial sufficient to be acquainted with true policy and the line of duty. Both bade me instantly reject the new solicitation, and pursue, with singleness of purpose, the occupation which fortune had mercifully vouchsafed to me. All this was specious and most just, and sounded well to the understanding that was not less able to look temperately and calmly upon the argument in consequence of the previous overflow of feeling. Reason is never so plausible and prevailing as when it takes the place of gratified passion. Never are we so firmly resolved upon good, as in the moment that follows instantly the doing of evil. Never is conscience louder in her complaints than when she rises from a temporary overthrow. I had discovered every thing to Miss Fairman. I had fatally committed myself. There was no doubt of this; and nothing was left for present consolation but sapient resolutions for the future. Virtuous and fixed they looked in my silent chamber and in the silent hour of night. Morning had yet to dawn, and they had yet to contend with the thousand incitements which our desires are ever setting up to battle with our better judgment. I did not write to Mr. Fairman, but I rose from my seat much comforted, and softened my midnight pillow with the best intentions.

Fancy might have suggested to me, on the following morning, that the eyes of Miss Fairnan had been visited but little by sleep, and that her face was far more pallid than usual, if her parent had not remarked, with much anxiety, when she took her place amongst us, that she was looking most weary and unwell. Like the sudden emanation that crimsons all the east, the beautiful and earliest blush of morning, came the driven blood into the maiden's cheek, telling of discovery and shame. Nothing she said in answer, but diligently pursued her occupation. I could perceive that the fair hand trembled, and that the gentle bosom was disquieted. I could tell why downwards bent the head, and with what new emotions the artless spirit had become acquainted. Instantly I saw the mischief which my rashness had occasioned, and felt how deeply had fallen the first accents of love into the poor heart of the secluded one. What had I done by the short, indistinct, most inconsiderate avowal, and how was it possible now to avert its consequences? Every tender and uneasy glance that Mr. Fairman cast upon his cherished daughter, passed like a sting to me, and roused the bitterest self-reproach. I could have calmed his groundless fears, had I been bold enough to risk his righteous indignation. The frankness and cordiality which had ever marked my intercourse with Miss Fairman, were from this hour suspended. Could it be otherwise with one so innocent, so truthful, and so meek! Anger she had none, but apprehension and conceptions strange, such as disturb the awakened soul of woman, ere the storm of passion comes to overcharge it.

I slunk from the apartment and the first meal of the day, like a man guilty of a heinous fault. I pleaded illness, and did not rejoin my friends. I knew not what to do, and I passed a day in long and feverish doubt. Evening arrived. My pupils were dismissed, and once more I sat in my own silent room lost in anxious meditation. Suddenly an unusual knock at the door roused me, and brought me to my feet. I requested the visitor to enter, and Mr. Fairman himself walked slowly in. He was pale and care-worn and he looked, as I imagined, sternly upon me. "All is known!" was my first thought, and my throat swelled with agitation. I presented a chair to the incumbent; and when he sat down and turned his wan face upon me, I felt that my own cheek was no less blanched than his. I awaited his rebuke in breathless suspense.

"You are indeed ill, Stukely," commenced Mr. Fairman, gazing earnestly. "I was not aware of this, or I would have seen you before. You have overworked yourself with the boys. You shall be relieved to-morrow. I will take charge of them myself. You should not have persevered when you found your strength unequal to the task. A little repose will, I trust, restore you."

With every animating syllable, the affrighted blood returned again, and I gained confidence. His tones assured me that he was still in ignorance. A load was taken from me.

"I shall be better in the morning, sir," I answered. "Do not think seriously of the slightest indisposition. I am better now."

"I am rejoiced to hear it," answered the incumbent. "I am full of alarm and wretchedness to-day. Did you observe my daughter this morning, Stukely?"

"Yes, sir," I faltered.

"You did at breakfast, but you have not seen her since. I wish you had. I am sick at heart."

"Is she unwell, sir?"

"Do you know what consumption is? Have you ever watched its fearful progress?"

"Never."

"I thought you might have done so. It is a fearful disease, and leaves hardly a family untouched. Did she not look ill?—you can tell me that, at least."

"Not quite so well, perhaps, as I have seen her, sir; but I should hope"—

"Eh—what, not very ill, then? Well, that is strange, for I was frightened by her. What can it be? I wish that Mayhew had called in. Every ailment fills me with terror. I always think of her dear mother. Three months before her death, she sat with me, as we do here together, well and strong, and thanking Providence for health and strength. She withered, as it might be from that hour, and, as I tell you, three short months of havoc brought her to the grave."

"Was she young, sir?"

"A few years older than my child—but that is nothing. Did you say you did not think her looks this morning indicated any symptoms? Oh—no! I recollect. You never saw the malady at work. Well, certainly she does not cough as her poor mother did. Did it look like languor, think you?"

"The loss of rest might"—

"Yes, it might, and perhaps it is nothing worse. I know Mayhew thinks lightly of these temporary shadows; but I do not believe he has ever seen her so thoroughly feeble and depressed as she appears to-day. She is very pale, but I was glad to find her face free from all flush whatever. That is comforting. Let us hope the best. How do the boys advance? What opinion have you formed of the lad Charlton?"

"He is a dull, good-hearted boy, sir. Willing to learn, with little ability to help him on. Most difficult of treatment. His tears lie near the surface. At times it seems that the simplest terms are beyond his understanding, and then the gentlest reproof opens the flood-gate, and submerges his faculties for the day."

"Be tender and cautious, Stukely, with that child. He is a sapling that will not bear the rough wind. Let him learn what he will—rest assured, it is all he can. His eagerness to learn will never fall short of your's to teach. He must be kindly encouraged, not frowned upon in his reverses; for who fights so hard against them, or deplores them more deeply than himself? Poor, weak child, he is his own chastiser."

"I will take care, sir."

"Have you seen this coming on, Stukely?"

"With Charlton, sir?"

"No. Miss Fairman's indisposition. For many weeks she has certainly improved in health. I have remarked it, and I was taken by surprise this morning. I should be easier had Mayhew seen her."

"Let me fetch him in the morning, sir. His presence will relieve you.
I will start early—and bring him with me."

"Well, if you are better, but certainly not otherwise. I confess I should be pleased to talk with him. But do not rise too early. Get your breakfast first. I will take the boys until you come back."

This had been the object of the anxious father's visit. As soon as I had undertaken to meet his wish, he became more tranquil. My mission was to be kept a secret. The reason why a servant had not been employed, was the fear of causing alarm in the beloved patient. Before Mr. Fairman left me, I was more than half persuaded that I myself had mistaken the cause of his daughter's suffering; so agreeable is it, even against conviction, to discharge ourselves of blame.

The residence of Dr. Mayhew was about four miles distant from our village. It was a fine brick house, as old as the oaks which stood before it, conferring upon a few acres of grass land the right to be regarded as a park. The interior of the house was as substantial as the outside; both were as solid as the good doctor himself. He was a man of independent property, a member of the University of Oxford, and a great stickler for old observances. He received a fee from every man who was able to pay him for his services; and the poor might always receive at his door, at the cost of application only, medical advice and physic, and a few commodities much more acceptable than either. He kept a good establishment, in the most interesting portion of which dwelt three decaying creatures, the youngest fourscore years of age and more. They were an entail from his grandfather, and had faithfully served that ancestor for many years as coachman, housekeeper, and butler. The father of Dr. Mayhew had availed himself of their integrity and experience until Time robbed them of the latter, and rendered the former a useless ornament; and dying, he bequeathed them, with the house and lands, to their present friend and patron. There they sat in their own hall, royal servants every one, hanging to life by one small thread, which when it breaks for one must break for all. They had little interest in the present world, to which the daily visit of the doctor, and that alone, connected them. He never failed to pay it. Unconscious of all else, they never failed to look for it.

The village clock struck eleven as I walked up the avenue that conducted to the house. The day was intensely hot, and at that early hour the fierce fire of the sun had rendered the atmosphere sweltry and oppressive. I knocked many times before I could obtain admittance, and, at last, the door was opened by a ragged urchin about twelve years of age, looking more like the son of a thief or a gypsy than a juvenile member of the decent household.

"Is Dr. Mayhew at home?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know!" he answered surlily; "you had better come and see;" and therewith he turned upon his heel, and tramped heavily down the kitchen stairs. For a few seconds I remained where I was. At length, hearing no voices in the house, and finding that no one was likely to come to me, I followed him. At the bottom of the stairs was a long passage leading to the offices. It was very dark, or it was rendered so to me who had just left the glare of noonday. At the end of it, however, a small lamp glimmered, and under its feeble help I advanced. Arriving at its extremity, I was stopped by the hum of many voices that proceeded from a chamber on the right. Here I knocked immediately. The voice of Dr. Mayhew desired me to enter. The door was opened the moment afterwards, and then I beheld the doctor himself and every servant of the house assembled in a crowd. The little boy who had given me admission was in the group; and in the very centre of all, sitting upright in a chair, was the strangest apparition of a man that I have ever gazed upon, before or since. The object that attracted, and at the same time repelled, my notice, was a creature whose age no living man could possibly determine. He was at least six feet high, with raven hair, and a complexion sallow as the sear leaf. Look at his figure, then mark the absence of a single wrinkle, and you judge him for a youth. Observe again: look at the emaciated face; note the jet-black eye, deeply-sunken, and void of all fire and life; the crushed, the vacant, and forlorn expression; the aquiline nose, prominent as an eagle's, from which the parchment skin is drawn as rigidly as though it were a dead man's skin, bloodless and inert. The wear and tear, the buffeting and misery of seventy years are there. Seventy!—yea, twice seventy years of mortal agony and suffering could hardly leave a deeper impress. He is strangely clad. He is in rags. The remnants of fine clothes are dropping from his shrunken body. His hand is white and small. Upon the largest finger he wears a ring—once, no doubt, before his hand had shrivelled up—the property and ornament of the smallest. It is a sparkling diamond, and it glistens as his own black eye should, if it be true that he is old only in mental misery and pain. There is no sign of thought or feeling in his look. His eye falls on no one, but seems to pass beyond the lookers-on, and to rest on space. The company are far more agitated. A few minutes before my arrival the strange object had been found, with the boy whom I had first seen, wandering in the garden. He was apprehended for a thief, brought into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot. Commiseration then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business was. He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had been unsatisfactory and vague. When I entered the room, the doctor gave me a slight recognition, and proceeded at once to a further examination of the stripling.

"Where did you pick him up, Sir?" enquired the Doctor.

"Mother sent me out a-begging with him," answered the gypsy boy.

"Who is your mother?"

"Mabel."

"Mabel what?"

"Mabel nothing."

"Where does she live, then?"

"She doesn't live nowhere. She's a tramper."

"Where is she now?"

"How can I tell? We shall pick up somewhere. Let me go, and take
Silly Billy with me. I shall get such a licking if I don't."

"Is his name Billy?"

"No, Silly Billy, all then chaps as is fools are called Silly Billy. You know that, don't you? Oh, I say, do let's go now, there's good fellows!"

"Wait a moment, boy—not so fast. How long have you been acquainted with this unfortunate?"

"What, Silly Billy? Oh, we ain't very old friends! I only see'd him yesterday. He came up quite unawares to our camp whilst we were grubbing. He seemed very hungry, so mother gave him summut, and made him up a bed—and she means to have him. So she sent me out this morning a-begging with him, and told me she'd break every gallows bone I'd got, if I did not bring him back safe. I say, now I have told all, let us go—there's a good gentleman! I'm quite glad he is going to live with us. It's so lucky to have a Silly Billy."

"How is it, you young rascal, you didn't tell me all this before?
What do you mean by it?

"Why, it isn't no business of your'n. Let us go, will you?"

"Strange," said Doctor Mayhew, turning to his butler—"Strange, that they should leave that ring upon his finger—valuable as it looks."

"Oh, you try it on, that's all! Catch mother leaving that there, if she could get it off. She tried hard enough, I can tell you and I thought he'd just have bitten her hand off. Wasn't he savage neither, oh cry! She won't try at it again in a hurry. She says it serves her right, for no luck comes of robbing a Silly Billy."

The servants, who betrayed a few minutes before great anxiety and apprehension, were perfectly overcome by this humorous sally, and burst, with on accord, into the loudest laughter. The generally jocose doctor, however, looked particularly serious, and kept his eye upon the poor idiot with an expression of deep pity. "Will he not speak?" he asked, still marking his unhappy countenance bereft of every sign of sensibility.

"He won't say not nuffin," said the boy, in a tone which he hoped would settle the business; "You have no right to keep us. Let us go."

"Leave me with these persons," said the Doctor, turning to the servants. "We will see if the tongue of this wretched be really tied. Go, all of you."

In an instant the room was left to Doctor Mayhew and myself—the idiot and his keeper.

"What is your name, my man?" enquired the physician in a soothing tone. "Do not be frightened. Nobody will hurt you here. We are all your very good friends. Tell me now, what is your name?"

The questioner took the poor fellow at the same time by the hand, and pressed it kindly. The latter then looked round the room with a vacant stare, and sighed profoundly.

"Tell me your name," continued the Doctor, encouraged by the movement. The lips of the afflicted man unclosed. His brick-red tongue attempted to moisten them. Fixing his expressionless eyes upon the doctor, he answered, in a hollow voice, "Belton."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed the boy. "Them Silly Billies is the deceitfulest chaps as is. He made out to mother that he couldn't speak a word."

"Take care what you are about, boy," said Doctor Mayhew sternly.
"I tell you that I suspect you." Turning to the idiot, he proceeded.
"And where do you come from?"

The lips opened again, and the same hollow voice again answered, "Belton."

"Yes, I understand—that is your name—but whither do you wish to go?"

"Belton," said the man.

"Strange!" ejaculated the Doctor. "How old are you?"

"Belton," repeated the simple creature, more earnestly than ever.

"I am puzzled," exclaimed Mr. Mayhew, releasing the hand of the idiot, and standing for a few seconds in suspense. "However," he continued, "upon one thing I am resolved. The man shall be left here, and in my care. I will be responsible for his safety until something is done for him. We shall certainly get intelligence. He has escaped from an asylum—I have not the slightest doubt of it—and we shall be able, after a few days, to restore him. As for you, sir," he added, addressing the young gypsy, "make the best of your way to your mother, and be thankful that you have come so well off—fly."

The boy began to remonstrate, upon which the doctor began to talk of the cage and the horsepond. The former then evinced his good sense by listening to reason, and by selecting, as many a wiser man has done before him—the smaller of two necessary evils. He departed, not expressing himself in the most elegant terms that might have been applied to a leave-taking.

The benevolent physician soon made arrangements for the comfort of his charge. He was immediately placed in a bath, supplied with food, and dressed in decent clothing. He submitted at once to his treatment, and permitted his attendant to do what he would with him, taking, all the while, especial care to feel the diamond ring safe and secure under the palm of his own hand. A room was given to him and Robin, the gardener's son, who was forthwith installed his guardian, with strict directions not to leave the patient for an instant by himself. When Dr. Mayhew had seen every thing that could be done properly executed, he turned cheerfully to me, and bade me follow him to his library.

"His clothes have been good," muttered the doctor to himself, as he sat down. "Diamond ring! He is a gentleman, or has been one. Curious business! Well, we shall have him advertised all round the country in a day or two. Meanwhile here he is, and will be safe. That trouble is over. Now, Stukely, what brings you so early? Any thing wrong at home? Fairman in the dumps again; fidgety and restless, eh?"

I told my errand.

"Ah, I thought so! There's nothing the matter there, sir. She is well enough now, and will continue so, if her father doesn't frighten her into sickness, which he may do. I tell you what, I must get little puss a husband, and take her from him. That will save her. I have my eye upon a handsome fellow—Hollo, sir, what's the matter with you! Just look at your face in that glass. It is as red as fire."

"The weather, sir, is"—

"Oh, is it? You mean to say, then, that you are acquainted with the influences of the weather. That is just the thing, for you can help me to a few facts for the little treatise on climate which I have got now in hand. Well, go on, my friend. You were saying that the weather is—is what?"

"It is very hot, sir," I answered, dreadfully annoyed.

"Well, so it is; that's very true but not original. I have heard the same remark at least six times this morning. I say, Master Stukely, you haven't been casting sheep's-eyes in that sweet quarter, have you? Haven't, perhaps, been giving the young lady instruction as well as the boys—eh?"

"I do not understand, sir," I struggled to say with coolness.

"Oh, very well!" answered Dr. Mayhew dryly. "That's very unfortunate too, for," continued he, taking out his watch, "I haven't time to explain myself just now. I have an appointment four miles away in half an hour's time. I am late as it is. Williams will get you some lunch. Tell Fairman I shall see him before night. Make yourself perfectly at home, and don't hurry. But excuse me; this affair has made me quite behindhand."

The Doctor took a few papers and a book from the table, and before I had time to reply, vanished, much to my relief and satisfaction. My journey homeward was not a happy one. I felt alarm and agitation, and the beautiful scenery failed to remove or temper them. My heart's dear secret had been once more discovered. Rumour could not omit to convey it speedily to the minister himself. In two directions the flame had now power to advance and spread; and if the old villager remained faithful, what reason had I to hope that Dr. Mayhew would not immediately expose me—yes, must not regard it as his business and duty so to do? Yet one thing was certain. The secret, such as it had become, might, for all practical purposes, be known to the whole world, for unquestionably the shallowest observer was at present able to detect it. The old woman in the village, aged and ignorant as she was, had been skilful enough to discover it when I spoke. The doctor had gathered it from my looks even before I uttered a syllable. What was to hinder the incumbent from reading the tale on my forehead the moment that I again stood in his presence?

Reaching the parsonage, I proceeded at once to the drawing-room, where I expected to see the minister. No one was in the room, but a chair was drawn to the table, and the implements of drawing were before it. Could I not guess who had been the recent tenant of that happy chair—who had been busy there? Forgetful of every thing but her, I stood for a time in silent adoration of the absent one; then I ventured to approach and gaze upon her handiwork. I shook with joy, with ravishment, and ecstasy, when I beheld it. What was not made known to me in that one hasty look! What golden dreams did not engage, what blissful triumph did not elevate, what passionate delight did not overflow my aching heart! Oh, it was true—and the blessed intelligence came to me with a power and a reality that no language could contain—SHE LOVED ME! she, the beloved, the good, the innocent, and pure! Before me was the scene—the dearest to me in life—through which we had so recently walked together, and upon which she knew I doated, for the sake of her whose presence had given it light and hallowed it. Why had she brought it on the paper? Why this particular scene, and that fair hillock, but for the sake of him who worshipped them—but that the mysterious and communicable fire had touched her soul, and melted it? I trembled with my happiness. There was a spot upon the paper—a tear—one sacred drop from the immaculate fount. Why had it been shed? In joy or pain—for whom—and wherefore? The paper was still moist—the tear still warm. Happiest and most unfortunate of my race, I pressed it to my lips, and kissed it passionately.

Miss Fairman entered at that moment.

She looked pale and ill. This was not a season for consideration. Before I could speak, I saw her tottering, and about to fall. I rushed to her and held her in my arms. She strove for recovery, and set herself at liberty; but she wept aloud as she did so, and covered her face with her hands. I fell upon my knees, and implored her to forgive me.

"I have been rash and cruel, Miss Fairman, but extend to me your pardon, and I will go for ever, and disturb your peace no more. Do not despise me, or believe that I have deliberately interfered with your happiness, and destroyed my own for ever. Do not hate me when I shall see you no more."

"Leave me, Mr. Stukely, I entreat," sobbed Miss Fairman, weeping amain. Her hand fell. I was inflamed with passion, and I became indifferent to the claims of duty, which were drowned in the louder clamours of love. I seized that hand and held it firm. It needed not, for the lady sought not to withdraw it.

"I am not indifferent to you, dearest Miss Fairman," I exclaimed; "you do not hate me—you do not despise me—I am sure you do not. That drawing has revealed to me all that I wish or care to know. I would rather die this moment possessed of that knowledge, than live a monarch without it."

"Leave me, leave me, I implore you," faltered Miss Fairman.

"Yes, dearest lady, I must—I shall leave you. I can stay no longer here. Life is valueless now. I have permitted a raging fire to consume me. I have indulged, madly and fearfully indulged, in error. I have struggled against the temptation. Heaven has willed that I should not escape it. I have learnt that you love me—come what may, I am content."

"If you regard me, Mr. Stukely, pity me, and go, now. I beg, I entreat you to leave me."

I raised the quivering hand, and kissed it ardently. I resigned it, and departed.

My whole youth was a succession of inconsiderate yieldings to passion, and of hasty visitings of remorse. It is not a matter of surprise that I hated myself for every word that I had spoken as soon as I was again master of my conduct. It was my nature to fall into error against conviction and my cool reason, and to experience speedily the reaction that succeeds the commission of exorbitant crimes. In proportion to the facility with which I erred, was the extravagance and exaggeration with which I viewed my faults. During the predominance of a passion, death, surrounded by its terrors, would not have frighted me or driven me back—would not have received my passing notice; whilst it lasted it prevailed. So, afterwards, when all was calm and over, a crushing sense of wrong and guilt magnified the smallest offence, until it grew into a bugbear to scare me night and day. Leaving Miss Fairman, I rushed into the garden, preparatory to running away from the parsonage altogether. This, in the height of remorseful excitement, presented itself to my mind forcibly as the necessary and only available step to adopt; but this soon came to be regarded as open to numerous and powerful objections.

It seemed impossible that the incumbent could be kept any longer in ignorance of the affair; and it was better—oh! how much better—for comfort and peace of mind that he should not be. In a few hours Dr. Mayhew would arrive, and his shrewd eye would immediately penetrate to the very seat of his patient's disquietude. The discovery would be communicated to her father—and what would he think of me?—what would become of me? I grew as agitated as though the doctor were at that moment seated with the minister—and revealing to his astounded listener the history of my deceit and black ingratitude. The feeling was not to be borne; and in order to cast it off, I determined myself to be the messenger of the tale, and to stand the brunt of his first surprise and indignation. With the earliest conception of the idea, I ran to put it into execution. Nor did I stop until I reached the door of his study, when the difficulty of introducing at once so delicate a business, and the importance of a little quiet preparation, suggested themselves, and made me hesitate. It was however, but for a moment for self-possession. I would argue with myself no longer. The few hours that intervened before the arrival of the doctor were my own and if I permitted them to pass away, my opportunity was gone for ever, and every claim upon the kindness and forgiveness of my patron lost. I would confess my affection, and offer him the only reparation in my power—to quit his roof, and carry the passion with me for my punishment and torment.

Mr. Fairman was alone. The pupils were playing on the lawn upon which the window of the study opened. There they ran, and leaped, and shouted, all feeling and enjoyment, without an atom of the leaden care of life to press upon the light elastic soul; and there stood I, young enough to be a playmate brother, separated from them and their hearts' joyousness by the deep broad line which, once traversed, may never be recovered, ground to the earth by suffering, trial, and disappointment; darkness and discouragement without; misery and self-upbraiding robbing me of peace within. My eyes caught but a glimpse of the laughing boys before they settled on the minister, and summoned me to my ungracious task—and it was a glimpse of a bright and beautiful world, with which I had nothing in common, of which I had known something, it might be ages since—but whose glory had departed even from the memory.

"Is he here?" enquired the incumbent.

"Doctor Mahew could not accompany me, sir," I answered, "but he will shortly come."

"Thank you, Stukely, thank you. I have good news for you. I can afford you time to recruit and be yourself again. The lads return home on Monday next; you shall have a month's holiday, and you shall spend it as you will—with us, or elsewhere. If your health will be improved by travelling, I shall be happy to provide you with the means. I cannot afford to lose your services. You must not get ill."

"You are very kind, sir," I replied—"kinder than I deserve."

"That is a matter of opinion, Stukely. I do not think so. You have served me faithfully and well. I consult my own interest in rewarding you and taking care of yours."

"Yes, sir—but"—

"Well, never mind now. We will not argue on whose side the obligation lies. It is perhaps well that we should both of us think as we do. It is likely that we shall both perform our duty more strictly if we strike the balance against ourselves. Go and refresh yourself. You look tired and worn. Get a glass of wine, and cheer up. Have you seen Miss Fairman?"

"It is concerning her, sir," I answered, trembling in every joint, "that I desire particularly to speak to you."

"Good heaven!" exclaimed the incumbent, starting from his chair, "what do you mean? What is the matter? What has happened? Why do you tremble, Stukely, and look so ghastly pale? What has happened since the morning? What ails her? Go on. Speak. Tell me at once. My poor child—what of her?"

"Calm yourself, I implore you, sir. Miss Fairman is quite well. Nothing has happened. Do not distress yourself. I have done very wrong to speak so indiscreetly. Pardon me, sir. I should have known better. She is well."

Mr. Fairman paced the room in perturbation, and held his hand upon his heart to allay its heavy throbs.

"This is very wrong," he said—"very impious. I have thought of nothing else this day—and this is the consequence. I have dwelt upon the probability of calamity, until I have persuaded myself of its actual presence—looked for woe, until I have created it. This is not the patience and resignation which I teach; for shame, for shame!—go to thy closet, worm—repent and pray."

Mr. Fairman resumed his seat, and hid his face for a time in his hands. At length he spoke again.

"Proceed, Stukely. I am calm now. The thoughts and fears in which it was most sinfull to indulge, and which accumulated in this most anxious breast, are dissipated. What would you say? I can listen as I ought."

"I am glad, sir, that the boys revisit their homes on Monday, and that a month, at least, will elapse before their return to you. In that interval, you will have an opportunity of providing them with a teacher worthier your regard and confidence; and, if I leave you at once, you will not be put to inconvenience."

"I do not understand you."

"I must resign my office, sir," I said with trepidation.

"Resign? Wherefore? What have I said or done?"

"Let me beg your attention, sir, whilst I attempt to explain my motives, and to do justice to myself and you. I mentioned the name of Miss Fairman."

"You did. Ha! Go on, sir."

"You cannot blame me, Mr. Fairman, if I tell you that, in common with every one whose happiness it is to be acquainted with that lady, I have not been insensible to the qualities which render her so worthy of your love, so deserving the esteem"—I stopped.

"I am listening, sir—proceed."

"I know not how to tell you, sir, in what language to express the growth of an attachment which has taken root in this poor heart, increased and strengthened against every effort which I have made to crush it."

"Sir!" uttered the incumbent in great amazement.

"Do not be angry, Mr. Fairman, until you have heard all. I confess that I have been imprudent and rash, that I have foolishly permitted a passion to take possession of my heart, instead of manfully resisting its inroads; but if I have been weak, do not believe that I have been wicked."

"Speak plainly, Stukely. What am I to understand by this?"

"That I have dared, sir, to indulge a fond, a hopeless love, inspired by the gentlest and most innocent of her sex—that I have striven, and striven, to forget and flee from it—that I have failed—that I come to confess the fault, to ask your pardon, and depart."

"Tell me one thing," asked the incumbent quickly. "Have you communicated your sentiments to Miss Fairman?"

"I have, sir."

"Is her illness connected with that declaration?—You do not answer. Stukely, I am deceived in you. I mistrust and doubt you. You have murdered my poor child."

"Mr. Fairman, do not, I entreat"—

"Heaven have mercy upon me for my wild uncrucified temper. I will use no harsh terms. I retract that expression, young man. I am sorry that I used it. Let me know what more you have to say."

The tears came to my eyes, and blinded them. I did not answer.

"Be seated, Stukely," continued the minister, in a kinder tone; "compose yourself. I am to blame for using such a term. Forgive me for it—I did not mean all that it conveyed. But you know how fragile and how delicate a plant is that. You should have thought of her and me before you gratified a passion as wild as it is idle. Now, tell me every thing. Conceal and disguise nothing. I will listen to your calmly, and I will be indulgent. The past is not to be recalled. Aid me in the future, if you are generous and just."

I related all that had passed between Miss Fairman and myself—all that had taken place in my own turbulent soul—the battlings of the will and judgment, the determination to overcome temptation, and the sudden and violent yielding to it. Faithful to his command, I concealed nothing, and, at the close of all, I signified my readiness, my wish, and my intention to depart.

"Forgive me, sir, at parting," said I, "and you shall hear no more of the disturber of your peace."

"I do not wish that, Stukely. I am indebted to you for the candour with which you have spoken, and the proper view which you take of your position. I wish to hear of you, and to serve you—and I will do it. I agree with you, that you must leave us now—yes, and at once; and, as you say, without another interview. But I will not turn you into the world, lad, without some provision for the present, and good hopes for the future. I owe you much. Yes—very much. When I consider how differently you might behave, how very seriously you might interfere with my happiness"—as Mr. Fairman spoke, he opened the drawer of a table, and drew a checque-book from it—"I feel that you ought not to be a loser by your honesty. I do not offer you this as a reward for that honesty—far from it—I would only indemnify you—and this is my duty."

Mr. Fairman placed a draft for a hundred pounds in my hand.

"Pardon me, sir," said I, replacing it on his table. "I can take no money. Millions could not indemnify me for all that I resign. Judge charitably, and think kindly of me, sir—and I am paid. Honour is priceless."

"Well, but when you get to London?"—

"I am not altogether friendless. My salary is yet untouched, and will supply my wants until I find employment."

"Which you shall not be long without, believe me, Stukely, if I have power to get it you—and I think I have. You will tell me where I may address my letters. I will not desert you. You shall not repent this."

"I do not, sir; and I believe I never shall. I propose to leave the parsonage to-night, sir."

"No, to-morrow, we must have some talk. You need not see her. I could not let you go to-night. You shall depart to-morrow, and I rely upon your good sense and honourable feelings to avoid another meeting. It could only increase the mischief that has already taken place, and answer no good purpose. You must be aware of this."

"I am, sir. You shall have no reason to complain."

"I am sure of it, Stukely. You had better see about your preparations. John will help you in any way you wish. Make use of him. There must be many little things to do. There can be no impropriety, Stukely, in your accepting the whole of your year's salary. You are entitled to that. I am sorry to lose you—very—but there's no help for it. I will come to your room this evening, and have some further conversation. Leave me now." The incumbent was evidently much excited. Love for his child, and apprehension for her safety, were feelings that were, perhaps, too prominent and apparent in the good and faithful minister of heaven; they betrayed him at times into a self-forgetfulness, and a warmth of expression, of which he repented heartily as soon as they occurred. Originally of a violent and wayward disposition, it had cost the continual exercise and the prayers of a life, to acquire evenness of temper and gentleness of deportment, neither of which, in truth, was easily, if ever disturbed, if not by the amiable infirmity above alluded to. He was the best of men; but to the best, immunity from the natural weakness of mortality is not to be vouchsafed.

Mr. Fairman was the last person whom I saw that night. He remained with me until I retired to rest. He was the first person whom I saw on the following morning. I do not believe that he did not rely upon the word which I had pledged to him. I did not suppose that he suspected my resolution, but I an convinced that he was most restless and unhappy, from the moment that I revealed my passion to him, until that which saw me safely deposited at the foot of the hill, on my way to the village. So long as I remained in his house, he could only see danger for his daughter; and with my disappearance he counted upon her recovery and peace.

The incumbent was himself my companion from the parsonage. The servant had already carried my trunk to the inn. At the bottom of the hill, Mr. Fairman stopped and extended his hand.

"Fare-you-well, Stukely," said he, with emotion. "Once more, I am obliged to you. I will never forget your conduct; you shall hear from me."

Since the conversation of the preceding day, the incumbent had not mentioned the name of his daughter. I had not spoken of her. I felt it impossible to part without a word.

"What did Doctor Mayhew say?" I asked.

"She is a little better, and will be soon quite well, we trust."

"That is good news. Is she composed?"

"Yes—she is better."

"One question more, sir. Does she know of my departure?"

"She does not—but she will, of course."

"Do not speak unkindly of me to her, sir. I should be sorry if she thought ill"—

"She will respect you, Stukely, for the part which you have acted.
She must do so. You will respect yourself."

I had nothing more to say, I returned his warm pressure, and bade him farewell.

"God bless you, lad, and prosper you! We may meet again in a happier season; but if we do not, receive a father's thanks and gratitude. You have behaved nobly. I feel it—believe me."

Manly and generous tears rushed to the eyes of my venerable friend, and he could not speak. Once more he grasped my hand fervently, and in the saddest silence that I have ever known we separated.

There was gloom around my heart, which the bright sun in heaven, that gladdened all the land, could not penetrate or disperse; but it gave way before a touch of true affection, which came to me as a last memorial of the beloved scene on which I lingered.

I had hardly parted from the minister, before I perceived walking before me, at the distance of a few yards, the youngest of the lads who had been my pupils. At the request of the minister, I had neither taken leave of them nor informed any one of my departure. The lad whom I now saw was a fine spirited boy, who had strongly attached himself to me, and shown great aptitude, as well as deep desire, for knowledge. He knew very little when I came to him, but great pains had enabled him to advance rapidly. The interest which he manifested, called forth in me a corresponding disposition to assist him; and the grateful boy, altogether overlooking his own exertions, had over and over again expressed himself in the warmest terms of thankfulness for my instruction, to which he insisted he owed all that he had acquired. He was in his eleventh year, and his heart was as kind and generous as his intellect was vigorous and clear. I came up to him, and found him plucking the wild-flowers from the grass as he wandered slowly along. I looked at him as I passed, and found him weeping.

"Alfred!" I exclaimed, "What do you here so early?"

The boy burst into a fresh flow of tears, and threw himself passionately into my arms. He sobbed piteously, and at length said—

"Do not go, sir—do not leave me! You have been so kind to me. Pray, stop."

"What is the matter Alfred?"

"John has told me you are going, sir. He has just taken your box down. Oh, Mr. Stukely, stay for my sake! I won't give you so much trouble as I used to do. I'll learn my lessons better—but don't go, pray, sir."

"You will have another teacher, Alfred, who will become as good a friend as I am. I cannot stay. Return to the parsonage—there's a dear boy."

"Oh, if you must go, let me walk with you a little, sir! Let me take your hand. I shall be back in time for breakfast—pray, don't refuse me that, sir?"

I complied with his request. He grasped my palm in both his hands, and held it there, as though he would not part with it again. He gave me the flowers which he had gathered, and begged me to keep them for his sake. He repeated every kind thing which I had done for him, not one of which he would forget, and all the names and dates which he had got by heart, to please his tutor. He told me that it would make him wretched, "to get up to-morrow, and remember that I was gone;" and that he loved me better than any body, for no one had been so indulgent, and had taken such pains to make him a good boy. Before we reached the village, his volubility had changed the tears to smiles. As we reached it, John appeared on his return homeward. I gave the boy into his charge, and the cloud lowered again, and the shower fell heavier than ever. I turned at the point at which the hills became shut out, and there stood the boy fastened to the spot at which I had left him.

At the door of the inn, I was surprised to find my luggage in the custody of Dr. Mayhew's gardener. As soon as he perceived me, he advanced a few steps with the box, and placed note in my hand. It was addressed to me at the parsonage, and politely requested me to wait upon the physician at my earliest convenience. No mention was made of the object of my visit, or of the doctor's knowledge of my altered state. The document was as short as it might be, and as courteous. Having read it, I turned to the gardener, or to where he had stood a moment before, with the view of questioning that gentleman; but to my great astonishment, I perceived him about a hundred yards before me, walking as fast as his load permitted him towards his master's residence. I called loudly after him, but my voice only acted as a spur, and increased his pace. My natural impulse was to follow him, and I obeyed it.

Dr. Mayhew received me with a very cunning smile and a facetious observation.

"Well, Master Stukely, this hot weather has been playing the deuce with us all. Only think of little puss being attacked with your complaint, the very day you were here suffering so much from it, and my getting a touch myself."

I smiled.

"Yes, sir, it is very easy to laugh at the troubles of other men, but I can tell you this is a very disagreeable epidemic. Severe times these for maids and bachelors. I shall settle in life now, sooner than I intended. I have fallen in love with puss my self."

I did not smile.

"To be sure, I am old enough to be her father, but so much the better for her. No man should marry till fifty. Your young fellows of twenty don't know their own mind—don't understand what love means—all blaze and flash, blue fire and sky-rocket—out in a minute. Eh, what do you say, Stukely?"

"Are you aware, sir, that I have left the parsonage?"

"To be sure I am; and a pretty kettle of fish you have made of it. Instead of treating love as a quiet and respectable undertaking, as I mean to treat it—instead of simmering your love down to a gentlemanly respect and esteem, as I mean to simmer it—and waiting patiently for the natural consequences of things, as I mean to wait—you must, like a boy as you are, have it all out in a minute, set the whole house by the ears, and throw yourself out of it without rhyme or reason, or profit to any body. Now, sit down, and tell me what you mean to do with yourself?"

"I intend to go to London, sir."

"Does your father live there?"

"I have no father, sir."

"Well—your mother?"

"She is dead, too. I have one friend there—I shall go to him until
I find occupation."

"You naughty boy! How I should like to whip you! What right had you to give away so good a chance as you have had? You have committed a sin, sir—yes, you may look—you have, and a very grievous one. I speak as I think. You have been flying in the face of Providence, and doing worse than hiding the talent which was bestowed upon you for improvement. Do you think I should have behaved so at your age? Do you think any man in the last generation out of a madhouse would have done it? Here's your march of education!"

I bowed to Doctor Mayhew, and wished him good-morning.

"No, thank you, sir," answered the physician, "if I didn't mean to say a little more to you, I shouldn't have spoken so much already. We must talk these matters over quietly. You may as well stay a few days with your friend in the country as run off directly to the gentleman in London. Besides, now I have made my mind up so suddenly to get married, I don't know soon I may be called upon to undergo the operation—I beg the lady's pardon—the awful ceremony. I shall want a bride's-man, and you wouldn't make a bad one by any means."

The physician rang the bell, and Williams the butler—a personage in black, short and stout, and exceedingly well fed, as his sleek face showed—entered the apartment.

"Will you see, Williams, that Mr. Stukely's portmanteau is taken to his room—bed quite aired—sheets all right, eh?"

"Both baked, sir," replied Williams with a deferential but expressive smile, which became his face remarkably well.

"Then let us have lunch, Williams, and a bottle of the sherry?"

A look accompanied the request, which was not lost upon the butler. He made a profound obeisance, and retired. At lunch the doctor continued his theme, and represented my conduct as most blameable and improper. He insisted that I ought to be severely punished, and made to feel that a boy is not to indulge every foolish feeling that rises, just as he thinks proper, but, like an inconsistent judge, he concluded the whole of a very powerful and angry summing up, by pronouncing upon me the verdict of an acquittal—inasmuch as he told me to make myself as comfortable as I could in his house, and to enjoy myself thoroughly in it for the next fortnight to come, at the very least. It may have been that, in considering my faults as those of the degenerate age in which I lived—which age, however, be it known, lived afterwards to recover its character, and to be held up as a model of propriety and virtue to the succeeding generation—the merciful doctor was willing to merge my chastisement in that which he bestowed daily upon the unfortunate object of his contempt and pity, or possibly he desired to inflict no punishment at all, but simply to perform a duty incumbent upon his years and station. Be this as it may, certain it is that with the luncheon ended all upbraiding and rebuke, and commenced an unreservedness of intercourse—the basis of a generous friendship, which increased and strengthened day by day, and ended only with the noble-hearted doctor's life—nor then in its effects upon my character and fortune.

It was on the night of the day on which I had arrived, that Doctor Mayhew and I were sitting in his sanctum; composedly and happily as men sit whom care has given over for a moment to the profound and stilly influences of the home and hearth. One topic of conversation had given place easily to another, and there seemed at length little to be said on any subject whatever, when the case of the idiot, which my own troubles had temporarily dismissed from my mind, suddenly occurred to me, and afforded us motive for the prolongation of a discourse, which neither seemed desirous to bring to a close.

"What have you done with the poor fellow?" I enquired.

"Nothing," replied the physician. "We have fed him well, and his food has done him good. He is a hundred per cent better than when he came; but he is still surly and tongue-tied. He says nothing. He is not known in the neighbourhood. I have directed hand-bills to be circulated, and placards to be posted in the villages. If he is not owned within a week, he must be given to the parish-officers. I can't help thinking that he is a runaway lunatic, and a gentleman by birth. Did you notice his delicate white hand, that diamond ring, and the picture they found tied round his neck?"

"What picture, sir?"

"Did I not tell you of it? The portrait of a lovely female—an old attachment, I suppose, that turned his brain, although I fancy sometimes that it is his mother or sister, for there is certainly a resemblance to himself in it. The picture is set in gold. When Robin first discovered it, the agony of the stricken wretch was most deplorable. He was afraid that the man would remove it, and he screamed and implored like a true maniac. When he found that he might keep it, he evinced the maddest pleasure, and beckoned his keeper to notice and admire it. He pointed to the eyes, and then groaned and wept himself; until Robin was frightened out of his wits, and was on the point of throwing up his office altogether."

"Do you think the man may recover his reason?"

"I have no hope of it. It is a case of confirmed fatuity I believe. If you like to see him again, you shall accompany me to-morrow when I visit him. What a strange life is this, Stukely! What a strange history may be that of this poor fellow whom Providence has cast at our door! Well, poor wretch, we'll do the best we can for him. If we cannot reach his mind, we may improve his body, and he will be then perhaps quite as happy as the wisest of us."

The clock struck twelve as Doctor Mayhew spoke. It startled and surprised us both. In a few minutes we separated and retired to our several beds.

When I saw the idiot on the following day, I could perceive a marked improvement in his appearance. The deadly pallor of his countenance had departed; and although no healthy colour had taken its place, the living blood seemed again in motion, restoring expression to those wan and withered features. His coal-black eye had recovered the faintest power of speculation, and the presence of a stranger was now sufficient to call it into action. He was clean and properly attired, and he sat—apart from his keeper—conscious of existence. There was good ground, in the absence of all positive proof, for the supposition of the doctor. A common observer would have pronounced him well-born at a glance. Smitten as he was, and unhinged by his sad affliction, there remained still sufficient of the external forms to conduct to such an inference. Gracefulness still hovered about the human ruin, discernible in the most aimless of imbecility's weak movements, and the limbs were not those of one accustomed to the drudgery of life. A melancholy creature truly did he look, as I gazed upon him for a second time. He had carried his chair to a corner of the room, and there he sat, his face half-hidden, resting upon his breast, his knee drawn up and pressed tightly by his clasped hands—those very hands, small and marble-white, forming a ghastful contrast to the raven hair that fell thickly on his back. He had not spoken since he rose. Indeed, since his first appearance, he had said nothing but the unintelligible word which he had uttered four times in my presence, and which Dr. Mayhew now believed to be the name of the lady whose portrait he wore. That he could speak was certain, and his silence was therefore the effect of obstinacy or of absolute weakness of intellect, which forbade the smallest mental effort. I approached him, and addressed him in accents of kindness. He raised his head slowly, and looked piteously upon me, but in a moment again he resumed his original position.

For the space of a week I visited the afflicted man dally, remaining with him perhaps a couple of hours at each interview. No clue had been discovered to his history, and the worthy physician had fixed upon one day after another as that upon which he would relieve himself of his trust; but the day arrived only to find him unwilling to keep his word. The poor object himself had improved rapidly in personal appearance, and, as far as could be ascertained from his gestures and indistinct expressions, was sensible of his protector's charity, and thankful for it. He now attempted to give to his keeper the feeble aid he could afford him; he partook of his food with less avidity, he seemed aware of what was taking place around him. On one occasion I brought his dinner to him, and sat by whilst it was served to him. He stared at me as though he had immediate perception of something unusual. It was on the same day that, whilst trifling with a piece of broken glass, he cut his hand. I closed the wound with an adhesive plaster, and bound it up. It was the remembrance of this act that gained for me the affection of the creature, in whom all actions seemed dried up and dead. When, on the day that succeeded to this incident, Robin, as was his custom, placed before the idiot his substantial meal, the latter turned away from it offended, and would not taste it. I was sent for. The eyes of the imbecile glistened when I entered the apartment, and he beckoned me to him. I sat at his side, as I had done on the day before, and he then, with a smile of triumph, took his food on his knees, and soon devoured it. When he had finished, and Robin had retired with the tray and implements, the poor fellow made me draw my chair still nearer to his own. He placed his hand upon my knee in great delight, patted it, and then the wound which I had dressed. There was perfect folly in the mode in which he fondled this, and yet a reasonableness which the heart could not fail to detect and contemplate with emotion. First, he gently stroked it, then placed his head upon it in utmost tenderness, then hugged it in his arm and rocked it as a child, then kissed it often with short quick kisses that could scarce be heard; courting my observation with every change of action, making it apparent how much he loved, what care he could bestow, upon the hand which had won the notice and regard of his new friend and benefactor. This over, he pointed to his breast, dallied for a time, and then drew from it the picture which he so jealously carried there. He pressed it between his hands, sighed heavily from his care-crazed heart, and strove to tell his meaning in words which would not flow, in which he knew not how to breathe the bubble-thought that danced about his brain. Closer than ever he approached me, and, with an air which he intended for one of confidence and great regard, he invited me to look upon his treasure. I did so, and, to my astonishment and terror—gazed upon the portrait of the unhappy EMMA HARRINGTON. Gracious God! what thoughts came rushing into my mind! It was impossible to err. I, who had passionately dwelt upon those lineaments in all the fondness of a devoted love, until the form became my heart's companion by day and night—I, who had watched the teardrops falling from those eyes, in which the limner had not failed to fix the natural sorrow that was a part of them—watched and hung upon them in distress and agony—I, surely I, could not mistake the faithful likeness. Who, then, was he that wore it? Who was this, now standing at my side, to turn to whom again became immediately—sickness—horror! Who could it be but him, the miserable parricide—the outcast—the unhappy brother—the desperately wicked son! There was no other in the world to whom the departed penitent could be dear; and he—oh, was it difficult to suppose that merciful Heaven, merciful to the guiltiest, had placed between his conscience and his horrible offence a cloud that made all dim—had rendered his understanding powerless to comprehend a crime which reason must have punished and aggravated endlessly My judgment was prostrated by what I learned so suddenly and fearfully. The discovery had been miraculous. What should I do? How proceed? How had the youth got here? What had been his history since his flight? Whither was he wandering? Did he know the fate of his poor sister? How had he lived? These questions, and others, crowded into my mind one after another, and I trembled with the violent rapidity of thought. The figure of the unhappy girl presented itself—her words vibrated on my ears—her last dying accents; and I felt that to me was consigned the wretched object of her solicitude and love—that to me Providence had directed the miserable man; yes, if only that he who had shared in the family guilt, might behold and profit by the living witness of the household wreck. Half forgetful of the presence of the brother, and remembering nothing well but her and her most pitiable tale, oppressed by a hundred recollections, I pronounced her name.

"Poor, poor, much-tried Emma!" I ejaculated, gazing still upon her image. The idiot leaped from my side at the word, and clapped his hands, and laughed and shrieked. He ran to me again, and seized my palm, and pressed it to his lips. His excitement was unbounded. He could only point to the picture, endeavour to repeat the word which I had spoken, and direct his finger to my lips beseechingly, as though he prayed to hear the sound again. Alarmed already at what I had done, and dreading the consequences of a disclosure, because ignorant of the effect it would produce upon the idiot, I checked myself immediately, and spake no more. Robin returned. I contrived to subdue by degrees the sudden ebullition, and having succeeded, I restored the criminal to his keeper, and departed.

It was however, necessary that I should act in some way, possessed of the information which had so strangely come to me. I desired to be alone to collect myself, and to determine quietly. I retired to my bedroom, endeavoured to think composedly, and to mark out the line of duty. It was a fruitless undertaking. My mind would rest on nothing but the tragedy in which this miserable creature held so sad a part, and his unlooked-for resuscitation here—here, under the roof which sheltered his sister's paramour. Whether to keep the secret hidden in my bosom, or to communicate it to the physician, was my duty, I could not settle now. It had been a parting injunction of my friend Thompson to sleep upon all matters of difficulty, and to avoid rashness above all things. Alas! I had not profited by his counsel, nor, in my own case, recurred to it, even for a moment; but it was different now. The fate, perhaps the life, of another was involved in my decision; and not to act upon the good advice, not to be temperate and cautious, would be sinful in the extreme. What, had she been alive, would the sister have required—entreated at my hands? And now, if the freed spirit of the injured one looked down upon the world, what would it expect from him to whom had been committed the forlorn and stricken wanderer? What if not justice, charity, and mercy? "And he shall have it!" I exclaimed. "I will act on his behalf. I will be cool and calm. I will do nothing until tomorrow, when the excitement of this hour shall have passed away, and reason resumed its proper influence and rule."

I rose, contented with my conclusion, and walked to the window, which overlooked the pleasure-garden of the house. Robin and his patient were there; the former sitting on a garden chair, and reposing comfortably after his meal, heedless of the doings of his charge. The latter stood immediately below the window, gazing upwards, with the portrait as before pressed between his marble hands. He perceived me, and screamed in triumph and delight. The keeper started up; I vanished instantly. He surely could not have known the situation of my room—could not have waited there and watched for my appearance. It was impossible. Yes, I said so, and I attempted to console myself with the assurance; but my blood curdled with a new conviction that arose and clung to me, and would not be cast off—the certainty that, by the utterance of one word, I had, for good or ill, linked to my future destiny the reasonless and wretched being, who stood and shrieked beneath the casement long after I was gone.

I joined my friend, the doctor, as usual in the evening, and learnt from him the news of the day. He had visited his patient at the parsonage, and he spoke favourably of her case. Although she had been told of my absence, she was still not aware that I had quitted the house for ever. Her father thought she was less unquiet, and believed that in a few days all would be forgotten, and she would be herself again. Doctor Mayhew assured me that nothing could be kinder than the manner in which the incumbent spoke of me, and that it was impossible for any man to feel a favour more deeply than he appeared to appreciate the consideration which I had shown for him. The doctor had been silent as to my actual presence in the vicinity, which, he believed, to have mentioned, would have been to fill the anxious father's heart with alarms and fears, which, groundless as they were, might be productive of no little mischief. I acquiesced in the propriety of his silence, and thanked him for his prudence. Whilst my friend was speaking, I heard a quick and heavy footstep on the stairs, which, causing me to start upon the instant, and hurling sickness to my heart, clearly told, had doubt existed, how strongly apprehension had fixed itself upon me, and how certainly and inextricably I had become connected with the object of my dark and irresistible conceptions. I had no longer an ear for Doctor Mayhew, but the sense followed the footstep until it reached the topmost stair—passed along the passage—and stopped—suddenly at our door. Almost before it stopped, the door was knocked at violently—quickly—loudly. Before an answer could be given, the door itself was opened, and Robin rushed in—scared.

"What is the matter?" I exclaimed, jumping up, and dreading to hear him tell what I felt must come—another tale of horror—another crime—what less than self-destruction?

"He's gone, sir—he's gone!" roared the fellow, white as death, and shaking like an aspen.

"Gone—how—who?" enquired the doctor.

"The madman, sir," answered Robin, opening his mouth, and raising his eyebrows, to exhibit his own praiseworthy astonishment at the fact.

"Go on, man," said the doctor. "What have you to say further? How did it happen? Quick!"

"I don't know, sir. I eat something for dinner as disagreed. I have been as sleepy as an owl ever since. We was together in his room, and I just sot down for a minute to think what it could be as I had eaten, when I dozed off directly—and when I opened my eyes again, not quite a minute arterwards, I couldn't find him nowheres—and nobody can't neither, and we've been searching the house for the last half hour."

"Foolish fellow—how long was this ago?"

"About an hour, sir."

The doctor said not another word, but taking a candle from the table, quitted the room, and hurried down stairs. I followed him, and Robin, almost frightened out of his wits, trod upon my heel and rubbed against my coat, in his eagerness not to be left behind me. The establishment was, as it is said, at sixes and sevens. All was disorder and confusion, and hustling into the most remote corner of the common room. Mr. Williams especially was very much unsettled. He stood in the rear of every body else, and looked deathly white. It was he who ejaculated something upon the sudden entrance of his master, and was the cause of all the other ejaculations which followed quickly from every member of the household. Doctor Mayhew commanded order, and was not long in bringing it about. The house was searched immediately Wherever it was supposed that the idiot might hide himself, diligent enquiry was made; cupboards, holes, corners, and cellars. It was in vain. He certainly had escaped. The gardens and paddocks, and fields adjacent were scoured, and with like success. There was no doubt of it—the idiot was gone—who could tell whither? After two hours' unprofitable labour, Doctor Mayhew was again in his library, very much disturbed in mind, and reproaching himself bitterly for his procrastination. "Had I acted," said he, "upon my first determination, this would never have happened, and my part in the business would have been faithfully performed. As it is, if any mischief should come to that man, I shall never cease to blame myself, and to be considered the immediate cause of it." I made no reply. I could say nothing. His escape occurring so soon after my identification of the unfortunate creature, had bewildered and confounded me. I could not guess at the motive of his flight, nor conceive a purpose to which it was likely the roused maniac would aspire; but I was satisfied—yes, too satisfied, for to think of it was to chill and freeze the heart's warm blood—that the revelation of the day and his removal were in close connexion. Alas, I dared not speak, although my fears distracted me whilst I continued dumb! Arrangements were at last made for watching both within and without the house during the night—messengers were dispatched to the contiguous villages, and all that could be done for the recovery of the runaway was attempted. It was already past twelve o'clock when Dr. Mayhew insisted upon my retiring to rest. I did not oppose his wish. He was ill at ease, and angry with himself. Maintaining the silence which I had kept during the evening, I gave him my hand, and took my leave.

I thought I should have dropped dead in the room when, lost in a deep reverie, I opened my chamber-door, and discovered, sitting at the table, the very man himself. There the idiot sat, portrait in hand, encountering me with a look of unutterable sorrowfulness. He must have hid himself amongst the folds of the curtains, for this room, as well as the rest, was looked into, and its cupboards investigated. I recoiled with sudden terror, and retreated, but the wretch clasped his hands in agony, and implored me in gestures which could not be mistaken, to remain. I recovered, gained confidence, and forbore.

"What do you desire with me?" I asked quickly. "Can you speak? Do you understand me?" The unhappy man dropped on his knees, and took my hand—cried like a beaten child—sobbed and groaned. He raised the likeness of his sister to my eyes, and then I saw the fire sparkling in his own lustrous orb, and the supplication bursting from it, that was not to be resisted. He pointed to his mouth, compelled an inarticulate sound, and looked at me again, to assure me that he had spoken all his faculties permitted him. He waited for any answer.

Melted with pity for the bruised soul before me, I could no longer deny him the gratification he besought.

"Emma!" I ejaculated; "Emma Harrington!"

He wept aloud, and kissed my hand, and put my arm upon his breast, and caressed it with his own weak head. I permitted the affectionate creature to display his childish gratitude, and then, taking him by the wrist, I withdrew him from the room. An infant could not have been more docile with its nurse. In another moment he was again in custody.

It was in vain that I strove to fall asleep, and to forget the circumstances of the day—in vain that I endeavored to carry out the resolution which I had taken to my pillow. Gladly would I have expelled all thought of the idiot from my mind, and risen on the morrow, prepared by rest and sweet suspension of mental labour for profitable deliberation. Sound as was the advice of my friend, and anxious as I was to follow it, obedience rested not with me, and was impossible. Should I make known the history of the man? Should I discover his crime? This was the question that haunted my repose, and knocked at my ears until my labouring brain ached in its confusion. What might be the effect of a disclosure upon the future existence of the desolate creature, should he ever recover his reason? Must he not suffer the extreme penalty of the law? It was dreadful to think that his life should be forfeited through, and only through, my agency. There were reasons again equally weighty, why I should not conceal the facts which were in my possession. How I should have determined at length, I know not, if an argument—founded on selfishness had not stepped in and turned the balance in favour of the idiot. Alas, how easy is it to decide when self-interest interposes with its intelligence and aid! Neither Mr. Fairman nor Doctor Mayhew knew of my connexion with the unfortunate Emma Harrington. To expose the brother would be to commit myself. I was not yet prepared to acknowledge to the father of Miss Fairman, or to his friend, the relation that I had borne to that poor girl. And why not? If to divulge the secret were an act of justice, why should I hesitate to do it on account of the incumbent, with whom I had broken off all intercourse for ever? Ah, did I in truth believe that our separation had been final? Or did I harbour, perhaps against reason and conviction, a hope, a thought of future reconciliation, a shadowy yet not weak belief that all might yet end happily, and that fortune still might favour love! With such faint hope, and such belief, I must have bribed myself to silence, for I left my couch resolved to keep my secret close. Doctor Mayhew was deep in the contemplation of a map when I joined him at the breakfast-table. He did not take his eyes from it when I entered the apartment, and he continued his investigations some time after I had taken my seat. He raised his head at last, and looked hard at me, apparently without perceiving me, and then he resumed his occupation without having spoken a syllable: after a further study of five or ten minutes, he shook his head, and pressed his lips, and frowned, and stroked his chin, as though he was just arriving at the borders of a notable and great discovery. "It will be strange indeed!" he muttered to himself. "How can we find it out?"

I did not break the thread of cogitation.

"Well," continued Doctor Maybew, "he must leave this house, at all events. I will run the risk of losing him no longer. I will write this morning to the overseer. Yet I should like to know—really—it may be, after all, the case. Stukely, lad, look here. What county is this?" he continued, placing his finger on the map.

Somerset was written in the corner of it, and accordingly I answered.

"Very well," replied the doctor. "Now, look here. Read this. What do these letters spell?"

He pointed to some small characters, which formed evidently the name of a village that stood upon the banks of a river of some magnitude. I spelt them as he desired, and pronounced, certainly to my own surprise, the word—"Belton."

"Just so. Well, what do you say to that? I think I have hit it. That's the fellow's home. I never thought of that before, and I shouldn't now, if I hadn't had occasion for the road-book. It was the first thing that caught my eye. Now—how can we find it out?"

"It is difficult!" said I.

"It is likely enough, you see. What should bring him so far westward, if he hadn't some object? He was either wandering from or to his home, depend upon it, when the gypsies found him. If Belton be his home, his frequent repetition of the word was natural enough. Eh, don't you see it?"

"Certainly," said I.

"Very well; then, what's to be done?"

"I cannot tell," I answered.

The doctor rung the bell.

"Is Robin up yet?" he asked, when Williams came in to answer it.

"He is, sir."

"And the man?"

"Both, sir. They have just done breakfast."

"Very well, Williams, you may go. Now, follow me, Stukely," continued the physician, the moment that the butler had departed. "I'll do it now. I am a physiognomist, and I'll tell you in the twinkling of an eye if we are right, You mark him well, and so will I." The doctor seized his map and road book, and before I could speak was out of the room. When I overtook him, he had already reached the idiot, and dismissed Robin.

My friend commenced his operations by placing the map and book upon the table, and closely scanning the countenance of his patient, in order to detect and fix the smallest alteration of expression in the coming examination. He might have spared himself the trouble. The idiot had no eye for him. When I appeared he ran to me, and manifested the most extravagant delight. He grasped my hand, and drew me to his chair, and there detained me. He did not introduce his treasure, but I could not fail to perceive that he intended to repeat the scene of the previous day, as soon as we were again alone. I did not wish to afford him opportunity, and I gladly complied with the physician's request when he called upon me to interrogate the idiot, in the terms he should employ. He had already himself applied to the youth, but neither for himself nor his questions could he obtain the slightest notice. The eye, the heart, and, such as it was, the mind of the idiot, were upon his sister's friend.

"Ask him, Stukely," began the doctor, "if he has ever been in
Somerset?"

I did so, and, in truth, the word roused from their long slumber, or we believed they did, recollections that argued well for the physician's theory. The idiot raised his brow, and smiled.

The doctor referred to his map, and said, whispering as before,
"Mention the river Parret."

I could not doubt that the name had been familiar to the unhappy man. He strove to speak, and could not, but he nodded his head affirmatively and quickly, and the expression of his features corroborated the strong testimony.

"Now—Belton?" added the doctor.

I repeated the word, and then the agony of supplication which I had witnessed once before, was re-enacted, and the shrill and incoherent cries burst from his afflicted breast.

"I am satisfied!" exclaimed the doctor, shutting his book. "He shall leave my house for Belton this very afternoon."

And so he did, In an hour, arrangements were in progress for his departure, and I was his guardian and companion. Robin, as soon as Dr. Mayhew's intention was known, refused to have any thing more to say, either inside the house or out of it, to the devil incarnate, as he was pleased to call the miserable man. If his place depended upon his taking charge of him, he was ready to resign it. There was not another man whom the physician seemed disposed to trust, and in his difficulty he glanced at me. I understood his meaning. He proceeded to express his surprise and pleasure at finding an attachment so strong towards me on the part of the idiot. "It was remarkable," he said—"very! And what a pity it was that he hadn't cultivated the same regard for somebody else. A short journey then, to Somerset, would have been the easiest thing in the world. Nothing but to pop into the coach, to go to an inn on arriving in Belton, and to make enquiries, which, no doubt, would be satisfactorily answered in less than no time. Yes, really, it was a hundred pities!"

The doctor looked at me again, and then I had already determined to meet the request he was not bold to ask. I believed, equally with the physician, from the conduct and expressions of young Harrington, that the riddle of his present condition waited for explanation in the village, whose name seemed like a load upon his heart, and constituted the whole of his discourse since he had arrived amongst us. It was there he yearned to be. It was necessary only to mention the word to throw him into an agitation, which it took hours entirely to dissipate. Yes, for a reason well known to him and hidden from us all, his object, his only object as it appeared, was to be removed, and to be conducted thither. I had but one reason for rejecting the otherwise well sustained hypothesis of my friend. During my whole intercourse with Emma, I had never heard her speak of Somerset or Belton, and in her narrative no allusion was made either to the shire or village. In what way, then, could it be so intimately connected with her brother—whence was the origin of the hold which this one word had taken of his shattered brain? I could not guess. But, on the other hand, it was true that I was ignorant of his history subsequently to the fearful death of his most sinful father. How could I tell what new events had arisen, what fresh relations might have sprung up, to attach and bind him to one particular spot of ground? Urged by curiosity to discover all that yet remained to know of his career, and more by a natural and strong desire to serve the youth—not to desert him in the hour of his extremity—I resolved, with the first hint of the doctor, to become myself the fellow traveller of his protégé. I told him so, and the doctor shook me by the hand, and thanked me heartily.

That very evening we were on our road, for our preparations were not extensive. My instructions were to carry him direct to Belton, to ascertain, if possible, from his movements the extent of his acquaintance with the village, and to present him at all places of resort, in the hope of having him identified. Two days were granted for our stay. If he should be unknown, we were then to return, and Doctor Mayhew would at once resign him to the parish. These were his words at parting. We had no opposition in the idiot. His happiness was perfect whilst I remained with him. He followed me eagerly whithersoever I went, and was willing to be led, so long as I continued guide. I took my seat in the coach, and he placed himself at my side, trembling with joyousness, and laughing convulsively. Once seated, he grasped my hand as usual, and did not, through the livelong night, relinquish it altogether. A hundred affectionate indications escaped him, and in the hour of darkness and of quiet, it would have been easy to suppose that an innocent child was nestling near me, homeward bound, and, in the fulness of its expectant bliss, lavish of its young heartfelt endearments. Yes, it would have been, but for other thoughts, blacker than the night itself—how much more fearful!—which rendered every sign of fondness a hollow, cold, and dismal mockery. Innocence! Alas, poor parricide!

In the morning the sun streamed into the coach, of which we were the only inside passengers. Dancing and playing came the light, now here, now there, skipping along the seat, and settling nowhere—cheerful visitant, and to the idiot something more, for he gazed upon it, and followed its fairy motion, lost in wonder and delight. He looked from the coach-window, and beheld the far-spreading fields of beauty with an eye awakened from long lethargy and inaction. He could not gaze enough. And the voice of nature made giddy the sense of hearing that drank intoxication from the notes of birds, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of a thousand leaves. His feeble powers, taken by surprise, were vanquished by the summer's loveliness. Once, when our coach stopped, a peasant girl approached us with a nosegay, which she entreated me to buy. My fellow-traveller was impatient to obtain it. I gave it to him, and, for an hour, all was neglected for the toy. He touched the flowers one by one, viewed them attentively and lovingly, as we do children whom we have known, and watched, and loved from infancy—now caressing this, now smiling upon that. What recollections did they summon in the mind of the destitute and almost mindless creature? What pictures rose there?—pictures that may never be excluded from the soul of man, however dim may burn the intellectual light. His had been no happy boyhood, yet, in the wilderness of his existence, there must have been vouchsafed to him in mercy the few green spots that serve to attach to earth the most afflicted and forlorn of her sad children. How natural for the glimpses to revisit the broken heart, thus employed, thus roused and animated by the light of heaven, rendering all things beautiful and glad!

As we approached the village, my companion ceased to regard his many-coloured friends with the same exclusive attention and unmixed delight. His spirits sank—his joy fled. Clouds gathered across his brow; he withdrew his hand from mine, and he sat for an hour, brooding. He held the neglected nosegay before him, and plucked the pretty leaves one by one—not conscious, I am sure, of what he did. In a short time, every flower was destroyed, and lay in its fragments before him. Then, as if stung by remorse for the cruel act, or shaken by the heavy thoughts that pressed upon his brain, he covered his pallid face, and groaned bitterly. What were those thoughts? How connected with the resting-place towards which we were hastening rapidly? My own anxiety became intense.

The village of Belton, situated near the mouth, and at the broadest part of the river Parret, consisted of one long narrow street, and a few houses scattered here and there on the small eminences which sheltered it. The adjacent country was of the same character as that which we had quitted—less luxuriant, perhaps, but still rich and striking. We arrived at mid-day. I determined to alight at the inn at which the coach put up, and to make my first enquiries there. From the moment that we rattled along the stones that formed the entrance to the village, an unfavourable alteration took place in my companion. He grew excited and impatient; and his lips quivered, and his eyes sparkled, as I had never seen them before. I was satisfied that we had reached the object of his long desire, and that in a few minutes the mysterious relation in which he stood to the place would be ascertained. "He MUST be known," I continued to repeat to myself; "the first eye that falls on him, will recognize him instantly." We reached the inn; we alighted. The landlord and the ostler came to the coach door, and received us with extreme civility, and the former assisted the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim acquaintance—and having completed the polite intention, he stood smiling and scraping. I looked at him, then at the idiot, and saw at once that they were strangers. A dozen idlers stood about the door. I waited for a recognition: none came.

Seated in the parlour of the inn, I asked to see the landlady. The sight of the idiot caused as little emotion in her, as it had produced in her husband. I ordered dinner for him. Whilst it was preparing, I engaged the landlord in conversation at the door. I did not wish to speak before young Harrington. I dared not leave him. I enquired, first, if the face of the idiot were familiar to him. I received for answer, that the man had never seen him in his life before, nor had his wife.

"Do you know the name of Harrington?" said I.

"No—never heard on it," was the reply.

"Fitzjones, perhaps?"

"Many Joneses hereabouts, sir," said the landlord, "but none of that there Christian name."

The excitement of the idiot did not abate. He would not touch his food nor sit quietly, but he walked swiftly up and down the room, breathing heavily, and trembling with increasing agitation. He urged me in his own peculiar way to leave the house and walk abroad. He pointed to the road and strove to speak. The attempt was fruitless, and he paced the room again, wringing his hands and sighing sorrowfully. At length I yielded to his request, and we were again in the village, I following whithersoever he led me. He ran through the street, like a madman as he was, bringing upon him the eyes of every one, and outstripping me speedily. He stopped for a moment to collect himself—looked round as though he had lost his way, and knew not whither to proceed; then bounded off again, the hunted deer not quicker in his flight, and instantly was out of sight. Without the smallest hope of seeing him again, I pursued the fugitive, and, as well as I could guess it, continued in his track. For half a mile I traced his steps, and then I lost them. His last footmark was at the closed gate of a good-sized dwelling house. The roof and highest windows only of the habitation were to be discerned from the path, and these denoted the residence of a wealthy man. He could have no business here—no object. "He must have passed," thought I, "upon the other side." I was about to cross the road, when I perceived, at the distance of a few yards, a man labouring in a field. I accosted him, and asked if he had seen the idiot.

No—he had not. He was sure that nobody had passed by him for hours.
He must have seen the man if he had come that way.

"Whose house is that?" I asked, not knowing why I asked the question.

"What? that?" said he, pointing to the gate. "Oh, that's Squire Temple's."

The name dropped like a knife upon my heart. I could not speak. I must have fallen to the earth, if the man, seeing me grow pale as death, had not started to his feet, and intercepted me. I trembled with a hundred apprehensions. My throat was dry with fright, and I thought I should have choked. What follows was like a hideous dream. The gate was opened suddenly. JAMES TEMPLE issued from it, and passed me like an arrow. He was appalled and terrorstricken. Behind him—within six feet—almost upon him, yelling fearfully, was the brother of the girl he had betrayed and ruined—his friend and schoolfellow, the miserable Frederick Harrington. I could perceive that he held aloft, high over his head, the portrait of his sister. It was all I saw and could distinguish. Both shot by me. I called to the labourer to follow; and fast as my feet could carry me, I went on. Temple fell. Harrington was down with him. I reached the spot. The hand of the idiot was on the chest of the seducer, and the picture was thrust in agony before his shuddering eyes. There was a struggle—the idiot was cast away—and Temple was once more dashing onward. "On, on!—after him!" shrieked the idiot. They reached the river's edge. "What now—what now?" I exclaimed, beholding them from afar, bewildered and amazed. The water does not restrain the scared spirit of the pursued. He rushes on, leaps in, and trusts to the swift current. So also the pursuer, who, with one long, loud exclamation of triumph, still with his treasure in his grasp, springs vehemently forward, and sinks, once and for ever. And the betrayer beats his way onward, aimless and exhausted, but still he nears the shore. Shall he reach it? Never!

* * * * *

IMAGINARY CONVERSATION, BETWEEN MR. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR AND THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

To Christopher North, Esq.

SIR,—Mr. Walter Savage Landor has become a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine! I stared at the announcement, and it will presently be seen why. There is nothing extraordinary in the apparition of another and another of this garrulous sexagenarian's "Imaginary Conversations." They come like shadows, so depart.

"The thing, we know, is neither new nor rare,
But wonder how the devil it got there."

Many of your readers, ignorant or forgetful, may have asked, "Who is Mr. Landor? We have never heard of any remarkable person of that name, or bearing a similar one, except the two brothers Lander, the explorers of the Niger." Mr. Walter Savage would answer, "Not to know me argues yourself unknown." He was very angry with Lord Byron for designating him as a Mr. Landor. He thought it should have been the. You ought to have forewarned such readers that the Mr. Landor, now your Walter Savage, is the learned author of an epic poem called Gebir, composed originally in Egyptian hieroglyphics, then translated by him into Latin, and thence done into English blank verse by the same hand. It is a work of rare occurrence even in the English character, and is said to be deeply abstruse. Some extracts from it have been buried in, or have helped to bury, critical reviews. A copy of the Anglo-Gebir is, however, extant in the British Museum, and is said to have so puzzled the few philologists who have examined it, that they have declared none but a sphinx, and that an Egyptian one, could unriddle it. I would suggest that some Maga of the gypsies should be called in to interpret. Our vagrant fortune-tellers are reputed to be of Egyptian origin, and to hold converse among themselves in a very strange and curious oriental tongue called Gibberish, which word, no doubt, is a derivative from Gebir. Of the existence of the mysterious epic, the public were made aware many years ago by the first publication of Mr. Leigh Hunt's Feast of the Poets, where it was mentioned in a note as a thing containing one good passage about a shell, while in the text the author of Gebir was called a gander, and Mr. Southey rallied by Apollo for his simplicity in proposing that the company should drink the gabbler's health. That pleasantry has disappeared from Mr. Hunt's poem, though Mr. Landor has by no means left off gabbling. Mr. Hunt is a kindly-natured man as well as a wit, and no doubt perceived that he had been more prophetic than he intended—Mr. Landor having, in addition to verses uncounted unless on his own fingers, favoured the world with five thick octavo volumes of dialogues. From the four first I have culled a few specimens; the fifth I have not read. It is rumoured that a sixth is in the press, with a dedication in the issimo style, to Lord John Russell, Mr. Landor's lantern having at last enabled him to detect one honest man in the Imperial Parliament. Lord John, it seems, in the House of Commons lately quoted something from him about a Chinese mandarin's opinion of the English; and Mr. Landor is so delighted that he intends to take the Russells under his protection for ever, and not only them, but every thing within the range of their interests. Not a cast horse, attached to a Woburn sand-cart, shall henceforth crawl towards Bedford and Tavistock Squares, but the grateful Walter shall swear he is a Bucephalus. You, Mr. North, have placed the cart before the horse, in allowing Mr. Landor's dialogue between Porson and Southey precedence of the following between Mr. Landor and yourself.

You may object that it is a feigned colloquy, in which an unauthorized use is made of your name. True; but all Mr. Landor's colloquies are likewise feigned; and none is more fictitious than one that has appeared in your pages, wherein Southey's name is used in a manner not only unauthorized, but at which he would have sickened.

You and I must differ more widely in our notions of fair play than I hope and believe we do, if you refuse to one whose purpose is neither unjust nor ungenerous, as much license in your columns as you have accorded to Mr. Landor, when it was his whim, without the smallest provocation, to throw obloquy on the venerated author of the Excursion.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
EDWARD QUILLINAN.

* * * * *

Landor.—Good-morning, Mr. North, I hope you are well.

North.—I thank you, sir.—Be seated.

Landor.—I have called to enquire whether you have considered my proposal, and are willing to accept my aid.

North.—I am almost afraid to trust you, sir. You treat the Muses like nine-pins. Neither gods nor men find favour in your sight. If Homer and Virgil crossed your path, you would throw stones at them.

Landor.—The poems attributed to Homer, were probably, in part at least, translations. He is a better poet than Hesiod, who has, indeed, but little merit![49] Virgil has no originality. His epic poem is a mere echo of the Iliad, softened down in tone for the polite ears of Augustus and his courtiers. Virgil is inferior to Tasso. Tasso's characters are more vivid and distinct than Virgil's, and greatly more interesting. Virgil wants genius. Mezentius is the most heroical and pious of all the characters in the Aeneid. The Aeneid, I affirm, is the most misshapen of epics, an epic of episodes.[50] There are a few good passages in it. I must repeat one for the sake of proposing an improvement.

"Quinetiam hyberno moliris sidere classem,
Et mediis properas aquilonibus ire per altum …
Crudelis! quod si non arva aliena domosque
Ignotas peteres, et Troja antiqua maneret,
Troja per undosum peteretur classibus aequor?"

If hybernum were substituted for undosum, how incomparably more beautiful would the sentence be for this energetic repetition? [51]

North.—I admire your modesty, Mr. Landor, in quoting Virgil only to improve him; but your alteration is not an improvement. Dido, having just complained of her lover for putting out to sea under a wintry star, would have uttered but a graceless iteration had she in the same breath added—if Troy yet stood, must even Troy be sought through a wintry sea? Undosum is the right epithet; it paints to the eye the danger of the voyage, and adds force to her complaint.

Landor. Pshaw! You Scotchmen are no scholars. Let me proceed. Virgil has no nature. And, by the way, his translator Dryden, too, is greatly overrated.

North..—Glorious John?

Landor.—Glorious fiddlestick! It is insufferable that a rhymer should be called glorious, whose only claim to notice is a clever drinking song.

North.—A drinking song?

Landor. Yes, the thing termed an Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.

North.—Hegh, sir, indeed! Well, let us go on with the Ancients, and dispatch them first. To revert to the Greeks, from whom Virgil's imitation of the Iliad drew us aside, favour me with your opinion of Plato.

[Footnote 48: See Mr. Landor's "Imaginary Conversations."—Vol. i. p. 44, and ii. p. 322, note.]

[Footnote 50: Vol. i p. 269, 270.]

[Footnote 51: Vol. i. p. 300.]

Landor.—Plato is disingenuous and malicious. I fancy I have detected him in more than one dark passage, a dagger in his hand and a bitter sneer on his countenance.[52] He stole (from the Eyptian priests and other sources) every idea his voluminous books convey. [53] Plato was a thief.

North.—"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief."

Landor.—Do you mean to insinuate that my dialogues are stolen from Plato's?

North.—Certainly not, Mr. Landor; there is not the remotest resemblance between them. Lucian and Christopher North are your models. What do you think of Aristotle?

Landor.—In Plato we find only arbours and grottoes, with moss and shell work all misplaced. Aristotle has built a solider edifice, but has built it across the road. We must throw it down again. [54]

North.—So much for philosophy. What have you to say to Xenophon as an historian?

Landor.—He is not inelegant, but he is unimpassioned and affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ages in his Cyropaedia.[56]

North.—The dunce! But what of the Anabasis?

Landor.—You may set Xenophon down as a writer of graceful mediocrity.[57]

North.—Herodotus?

Landor.—If I blame Herodotus, whom can I commend? His view of history was nevertheless like that of the Asiatics, and there can be little to instruct and please us in the actions and speeches of barbarians.[58]

North.—Which of the Greek tragedians do you patronise?

Landor.—Aeschylus is not altogether unworthy of his reputation; he is sometimes grand, but oftener flighty and obscure.[59]

North.—What say you of Sophocles?

Landor.—He is not so good as his master, though the Athenians thought otherwise. He is, however, occasionally sublime.

North.—What of Euripides? [60]

Landor.—He came further down into common life than Sophocles, and he further down than Aeschylus: one would have expected the reverse. Euripides has but little dramatic power. His dialogue is sometimes dull and heavy; the construction of his fable infirm and inartificial, and if in the chorus he assumes another form, and becomes a more elevated poet, he is still at a loss to make it serve the interests of the piece. He appears to have written principally for the purpose of inculcating political and moral axioms. The dogmas, like valets de place, serve any master, and run to any quarter. Even when new, they are nevertheless miserably flat and idle.

North.—Aristophanes ridiculed him.

Landor.—Yes, Aristophanes had, however, but little true wit. [61]

North.—That was lucky for Euripides.

Landor.-A more skilful archer would have pierced him through bone and marrow, and saved him from the dogs of Archelaus.

North.—That story is probably an allegory, signifying that Euripides was after all worried out of life by the curs of criticism in his old age.

Landor.—As our Keats was in his youth, eh, Mr. North? A worse fate than that of Aeschylus, who had his skull cracked by a tortoise dropt by an eagle that mistook his bald head for a stone.

North.—Another fable of his inventive countrymen. He died of brain-fever, followed by paralysis, the effect of drunkenness. He was a jolly old toper: I am sorry for him. You just now said that Aristophanes wanted wit. What foolish fellows then the Athenians must have been, in the very meridian of their literature, to be so delighted with what they mistook for wit as to decree him a crown of olive! He has been styled the Prince of Old Comedy too. How do you like Menander?

[Footnote 52: Vol. ii. p. 298.]

[Footnote 53: Vol. iii p. 514.]

[Footnote 54: Vol. iv. p 80.]

[Footnote 55: Vol. i. p. 233.]

[Footnote 56: Vol. ii. p. 331.]

[Footnote 57: Vol. iii. p. 35.]

[Footnote 58: Vol. ii. p. 332.]

[Footnote 59: Vol. i. pp. 299, 298, 297.]

[Footnote 60: Vol. i. p. 298.]

[Footnote 61: Vol. ii. p. 12.]

Landor.—We have not much of him, unless in Terence. [62] The characters on which Menander raised his glory were trivial and contemptible.

[Footnote 62: Vol. ii. p. 5. At p. 6th, Mr. Landor produces some verses of his own "in the manner of Menander," fathers them on Andrew Marvel, and makes Milton praise them!]

North.—Now that you have demolished the Greeks, let us go back to Rome, and have another touch at the Latins. From Menander to Terence is an easy jump. How do you esteem Terence?

Landor.—Every one knows that he is rather an expert translator from the Greek than an original writer. There is more pith in Plautus.

North.—You like Plautus, then, and endure Terence?

Landor.—I tolerate both as men of some talents; but comedy is, at the best, only a low style of literature; and the production of such trifling stuff is work for the minor geniuses. I have never composed a comedy.

North.—I see: farewell to the sock, then. Is Horace worth his salt?

Landor.—There must be some salt in Horace, or he would not have kept so well. [63] He was a shrewd observer and an easy versifier; but, like all the pusillanimous, he was malignant.

[Footnote 63: Vol. ii. p. 249.]

North.—Seneca?

Landor.—He was, like our own Bacon, hard-hearted and hypocritical, [64] as to his literary merits, Caligula, the excellent emperor and critic, (who made sundry efforts to extirpate the writings of Homer and Virgil,) [65] spoke justly and admirably when he compared the sentences of Seneca to lime without sand.

[Footnote 64: Vol. iv. p. 31.]

[Footnote 65: Vol. i. p. 274.]

North.—Perhaps, after all, you prefer the moderns?

Landor.—I have not said that.

North.—You think well of Spenser?

Landor.—As I do of opium: he sends me to bed [66].

[Footnote 66:
Thee, gentle Spenser fondly led,
But me he mostly sent to bed.—LANDOR. ]

North.—You concede the greatness of Milton?

Landor.—Yes, when he is great; but his Satan is often a thing to be thrown out of the way among the rods and fools' caps of the nursery [67].

[Footnote 67: Vol. i. p. 301.]

He has sometimes written very contemptibly; his lines on Hobbes, the carrier, for example, and his versions of Psalms. [68] Milton was never so great a regicide as when he smote King David.

[Footnote 68: Blackwood.]

North.—You like, at least, his hatred of kings?

Landor.—That is somewhat after my own heart, I own; but he does not go far enough in his hatred of them.

North.—You do?

Landor.—I despise and abominate them. How many of them, do you think, could name their real fathers? [69]

[Footnote 69: Vol. i. p. 61.]

North.—But, surely, Charles was a martyr?

Landor.—If so, what were those who sold [70] him?

[Footnote 70: Vol. iv. p. 283.]

Ha, ha, ha! You a Scotchman, too! However, Charles was not a martyr. He was justly punished. To a consistent republican, the diadem should designate the victim: all who wear it, all who offer it, all who bow to it, should perish. Rewards should be offered for the heads of those monsters, as for the wolves, the kites, and the vipers. A true republican can hold no milder doctrine of polity, than that all nations, all cities, all communities, should enter into one great hunt, like that of the ancient Scythians at the approach of winter, and should follow up the kingly power unrelentingly to its perdition. [71] True republicans can see no reason why they should not send an executioner to release a king from the prison-house of his crimes, [72] with his family to attend him.

[Footnote 71: Vol. iv. 507.]

[Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 73.]

In my Dialogues, I have put such sentiments into the mouth of
Diogenes, that cynic of sterling stamp, and of Aeschines, that
incorruptible orator, as suitable to the maxims of their government. [73]
To my readers, I leave the application of them to nearer interests.

[Footnote 73: Mr. Landor, with whom the Cynic is a singular favourite, says, p. 461, vol. iii., that Diogenes was not expelled from Sinope for having counterfeited money; that he only marked false men. Aeschines was accused of having been bribed by Philip of Macedon.]

North.—But you would not yourself, in your individual character, and in deliberate earnestness, apply them to modern times and monarchies?

Landor.—Why not? Look at my Dialogue with De Lille. [74] What have I said of Louis the Fourteenth, the great exemplar of kingship, and of the treatment that he ought to have received from the English? Deprived of all he had acquired by his treachery and violence, unless the nation that brought him upon his knees had permitted two traitors, Harley and St. John, to second the views of a weak woman, and to obstruct those of policy and of England, he had been carted to condign punishment in the Place de Grêve or at Tyburn. Such examples are much wanted, and, as they can rarely be given, should never be omitted.[75]

[Footnote 74: Vol. i.]

[Footnote 75: Vol. i. p. 281.—Landor.]

North.—The Sans-culottes and Poissardes of the last French revolution but three, would have raised you by acclamation to the dignity of Decollator of the royal family of France for that brave sentiment. But you were not at Paris, I suppose, during the reign of the guillotine, Mr. Landor?

Landor.—I was not, Mr. North. But as to the king whose plethory was cured by that sharp remedy, he, Louis the Sixteenth, was only dragged to a fate which, if he had not experienced it, he would be acknowledged to have deserved. [76]

[Footnote 76: Vol. ii. p. 267. This truculent sentiment the Dialogist imputes to a Spanish liberal. He cannot fairly complain that it is here restored to its owner. It is exactly in accordance with the sentence quoted above in italics—a judgment pronounced by Mr. Landor in person. —Vol. i. p. 281. It also conforms to his philosophy of regicide, as expounded in various parts of his writings. In his preface to the first volume of his Imaginary Conversations, he claims exemption, though somewhat sarcastically, from responsibility for the notions expressed by his interlocutors. An author, in a style which has all the freedom of the dramatic form, without its restraints, should especially abstain from making his work the vehicle of crotchets, prejudices, and passions peculiar to himself, or unworthy of the characters speaking. "This form of composition," Mr. Landor says, "among other advantages, is recommended by the protection it gives from the hostility all novelty (unless it be vicious) excites." Prudent consideration, but indiscreet parenthesis.]

North.—I believe one Englishman, a martyr to liberty, has said something like that before.

Landor.—Who, pray?

North.—The butcher Ings.

Landor.—Ah, I was not aware of it! Ings was a fine fellow.

North.—Your republic will never do here, Mr. Landor.

Landor.—I shall believe that a king is better than a republic when I find that a single tooth in a head is better than a set. [77]

[Footnote 77: Vol. ii. p. 31.]

North.—It would be as good logic in a monarchy-man to say, "I shall believe that a republic is better than a king when I am convinced that six noses on a face would be better than one."

Landor.—In this age of the march of intellect, when a pillar of fire is guiding us out of the wilderness of error, you Tories lag behind, and are lost in darkness, Mr. North. Only the first person in the kingdom should be unenlightened and void, as only the first page in a book should be a blank one. It is when it is torn out that we come at once to the letters. [78]

[Footnote 78: Vol. iv. p. 405.]

North.—Well, now that you have torn out the first page of the Court Guide, we come to the Peers, I suppose.

Landor.—The peerage is the park-paling of despotism, arranged to keep in creatures tame and wild for luxury and diversion, and to keep out the people. Kings are to peerages what poles are to rope-dancers, enabling then to play their tricks with greater confidence and security above the heads of the people. The wisest and the most independent of the English Parliaments declared the thing useless. [79] Peers are usually persons of pride without dignity, of lofty pretensions with low propensities. They invariably bear towards one another a constrained familiarity or frigid courtesy, while to their huntsmen and their prickers, their chaplains and their cooks, (or indeed any other man's,) they display unequivocal signs of ingenuous cordiality.

[Footnote 79: Vol. iv. p. 400.]

How many do you imagine of our nobility are not bastards or sons of bastards? [80]

[Footnote 80: Vol. iv. p. 273.]

North.—You have now settled the Peers. The Baronets come next in order.

Landor.—Baronets are prouder than any thing we see on this side of the Dardanelles, excepting the proctors of universities, and the vergers of cathedrals; and their pride is kept in eternal agitation, both from what is above them and what is below. Gentlemen of any standing (like Walter Savage Landor, of Warwick Castle, and Lantony Abbey in Wales,) are apt to investigate their claims a little too minutely, and nobility has neither bench nor joint-stool for them in the vestibule. During the whole course of your life, have you ever seen one among this, our King James's breed of curs, that either did not curl himself up and lie snug and warm in the lowest company, [81] or slaver and whimper in fretful quest of the highest.

[Footnote 81: Vol. iv. p. 400.]

North.—But you allow the English people to be a great people.

Landor.—I allow them to be a nation of great fools. [82] In England, if you write dwarf on the back of a giant, he will go for a dwarf.

[Footnote 82: Vol. iii. p. 135.]

North.—I perceive; some wag has been chalking your back in that fashion. Why don't you label your breast with the word giant? Perhaps you would then pass for one.

Landor.—I have so labelled it, but in vain.

North.—Yet we have seen some great men, besides yourself, Mr. Landor, in our own day. Some great military commanders, for example; and, as a particular instance, Wellington.

Landor.—It cannot be dissembled that all the victories of the English, in the last fifty years, have been gained by the high courage and steady discipline of the soldier, [83] and the most remarkable where the prudence and skill of the commander were altogether wanting.

[Footnote 83: Vol. ii. p 214.]

North.—Ay, that was a terrible mistake at Waterloo. Yet you will allow Wellington to have been something of a general, if not in India, at least in Spain.

Landor.—Suppose him, or any distinguished general of the English, to have been placed where Murillo was placed in America, Mina in Spain; then inform me what would have been your hopes? [84] The illustrious Mina, [85] of all the generals who have appeared in our age, has displayed the greatest genius, and the greatest constancy. That exalted personage, the admiration of Europe, accomplished the most arduous and memorable work that any one mortal ever brought to its termination.

[Footnote 84: Vol. ii. p. 214.]

[Footnote 85: Vol. ii. p. 3. Ded. "to Mina."—Wilson.]

North.—We have had some distinguished statesmen at the helm in our time, Mr. Landor.

Landor.—Not one.

North.—Mr. Pitt.

Landor.—Your pilot that weathered the storm. Ha, ha! He was the most insidious republican that England ever produced.

North.—You should like him if he was a Republican.

Landor.—But he was a debaser of the people as well as of the peerage. By the most wasteful prodigality both in finance and war, he was enabled to distribute more wealth among his friends and partisans than has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French monarchs from the first Louis to the last. [86] Yet he was more short-sighted than the meanest insect that can see an inch before it. You should have added those equally enlightened and prudent leaders of our Parliament, Lord Castlereagh and his successors. Pitt, indeed! whose requisites for a successful minister were three—to speak like an honest man, to act like a scoundrel, and to be indifferent which he is called. But you have forgotten my dialogue between him and that wretched fellow Canning. [87] I have there given Pitt his quietus. As to Castlereagh and Canning, I have crushed them to powder, spit upon them, kneaded them into dough again; and pulverized them once more. Canning is the man who deserted his party, supplanted his patrons, and abandoned every principle he protested he would uphold. [88] Castlereagh is the statesman who was found richer one day, by a million of zecchins, than he was the day before, and this from having signed a treaty! The only life he ever personally aimed at was the vilest in existence, and none complains that he succeeded in his attempt. [89] I forgot: he aimed at another so like it, (you remember his duel with Canning,) that it is a pity it did not form a part of it.

[Footnote 86: Vol. ii. p. 240, 241, 242.]

[Footnote 87: Vol. iii. p. 66.]

[Footnote 88: Vol. iii. p. 134.]

[Footnote 89: Vol. iii. p. 172, and that there should be no mistake as to the person indicated, Lord Castlereagh is again accused by name at p. 187. The same charge occurs also in the dialogue between Aristotle and Calisthenes! p 334, 335, 336; where Prince Metternich, (Metanyctius,) the briber, is himself represented as a traitor to his country. Aristotle is the teller of this cock-and-bull story!]

North.—Horrible! most horrible!

Landor.—Hear Epicurus and Leontion and Ternissa discuss the merits of Castlereagh and Canning.

North.—Epicurus! What, the philosopher who flourished some centuries before the Christian era?

Landor.—The same. He flourishes still for my purposes.

North.—And who are Leontion and Ternissa?

Landor.—Two of his female pupils.

North.—Oh, two of his misses! And how come they and their master, who lived above 2000 years before the birth of Canning and Castlereagh, to know any thing about them?

Landor.—I do not stand at trifles of congruity. Canning is the very man who has taken especial care that no strong box among us shall be without a chink at the bottom; the very man who asked and received a gratuity (you remember the Lisbon job) [90] from the colleague he had betrayed, belied, and thrown a stone at, for having proved him in the great market-place a betrayer and a liar. Epicurus describes Canning as a fugitive slave, a writer of epigrams on walls, and of songs on the grease of platters, who attempted to cut the throat of a fellow in the same household, [91] who was soon afterward more successful in doing it himself.

[Footnote 90: Vol. iv. p. 194.]

[Footnote 91: Vol. iv. p. 194.]

North.—Horrible, most horrible mockery! But even that is not new. It is but Byron's brutal scoff repeated—"Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh."

Landor.—You Tories affect to be so squeamish. Epicurus goes on to show Canning's ignorance of English.

North.—Epicurus! Why not William Cobbett?

Landor.—The Athenian philosopher introduces the trial of George the Fourth's wife, and describes her as a drunken old woman, the companion of soldiers and sailors, and lower and viler men. One whose eyes, as much as can be seen of them, are streaky fat floating in semi-liquid rheum.

North.—And this is the language of Epicurus to his female pupils! He was ever such a beast.

Landor.—You are delicate. He goes on to allude to Canning's having called her the pride, the life, the ornament of society, (you know he did so call her in the House of Commons, according to the newspaper reports; it is true he was speaking of what she had been many years previously; before her departure from England.) [92] Epicurus says triumphantly that the words, if used at all, should have been placed thus—the ornament, pride, and life; for hardly a Boeotian bullock-driver would have wedged in life between pride and ornament.

[Footnote 92: Vol. iv. p. 194, 195.—Pericles and Sophocles also prattle about Queen Caroline! vol. 2, p. 106, 107.—In another place the judgment and style of Johnson being under sentence, the Doctor's judgment is "alike in all things," that is, "unsound and incorrect;" and as to style, "a sentence of Johnson is like a pair of breeches, an article of dress, divided into two parts, equal in length, breadth, and substance, with a protuberance before and behind." The contour of Mr. Landor's figure can hardly be so graceful as that of the Pythian Apollo, if his dress-breeches are made in this fashion, and "his Florentine tailor never fails to fit him."—See vol. i. p. 296, and p. 185, note.]

North.—What dignified and important criticism! and how appropriate from the lips of Epicurus! But why were you, Mr. Landor, so rancorous against that miserable Queen Caroline? You have half choked Sir Robert Wilson, one of her champions, and the marshal of her coffin's royal progress through London, with a reeking panegyric in your dedication to him [93] of a volume of your Talks.

[Footnote 93: Vol. iii.]

Landor.—I mistook Wilson for an uncompromising Radical. As to his and Canning's nobled Queen, I confess I owed her a grudge for disrespect to me at Como long before.

North.—How? Were you personally acquainted with her?

Landor.—Not at all: She was not aware that there was such a man as Walter Savage Landor upon earth, or she would have taken care that I should not be stopt by her porter at the lodge-gate, when I took a fancy to pry into the beauties of her pleasure-ground.

North.—Then her disrespect to you was not only by deputy, but even without her cognisance?

Landor.—Just so.

North.—And that was the offence for which you assailed her with such a violent invective after her death?

Landor.—Oh no! it might possibly have sharpened it a little; but I felt it my duty, as a censor of morals, to mark my reprobation of her having grown fat and wrinkled in her old age. It was necessary for me to correct the flattering picture drawn of her by that caitiff Canning. You know the contempt of Demosthenes for Canning.

North.—Demosthenes, too!

Landor.—Yes, in my dialogue between him and Eubulides, he delineates Canning as a clumsy and vulgar man.

North.—Every one knows that he was a man of remarkably fine person and pleasing manners.

Landor.—Never mind that—A vulgar and clumsy man, a market-place demagogue, lifted on a honey-barrel by grocers and slave-merchants, with a dense crowd around him, who listen in rapture because his jargon is unintelligible. [94] Demosthenes, you know, was a Liverpool electioneering agent, so he knew all about Canning and his tricks, and his abstraction of L.14,000 sterling from the public treasury to defray the expenses of his shameful flight to Lesbos, that is Lisbon.[95]

[Footnote 94: Vol. i. p. 245.]

[Footnote 95: Vol. i. p. 247. This charge against Canning is repeated at Vol. iii. p. 186, 187, and again at Vol. iv. p. 193.]

North.—Has England produced no honest men of eminence, Mr. Landor?

Landor.—Very few; I can, however, name two—Archbishop Boulter and Philip Savage. [96] I am not certain that I should ever have thought of recording their merits, if their connexion with my own family had not often reminded me of them; we do not always bear in mind very retentively what is due to others, unless there is something at home to stimulate the recollection. Boulter, Primate of Ireland, saved that kingdom from pestilence and famine in 1729 by supplying the poor with bread, medicines, attendance, and every possible comfort and accommodation. Again, in 1740 and 1741, no fewer than 250,000 persons were fed, twice a-day, principally at his expense. Boulter was certainly the most disinterested, the most humane, the most beneficent, and after this it is little to say, the most enlightened and learned man that ever guided the counsels of a kingdom.[97] Mr. Philip Savage, Chancellor of the Exchequer, married his wife's sister, of his own name, but very distantly related. This minister was so irreproachable, that even Swift could find no fault with him. [97] He kept a groom in livery, and two saddle-horses.

[Footnote 96: Also Vol. iii. p. 92.]

[Footnote 97: Vol. iii. p. 91, 92, note.]

North.—Is it possible? And these great men were of your family, Mr. Landor!

Landor.—I have told you so, sir—Philip was one of my Savage ancestors, [98] and he and Boulter married sisters, who were also Savages.

[Footnote 98: Vol. iii. p. 92, note.]

North.—You have lived a good while in Italy? You like the Italians, I believe?

Landor.—I despise and abominate the Italians; and I have taken some pains to show it in various ways. During my long residence at Florence I was the only Englishman there, I believe, who never went to court, leaving it to my hatter, who was a very honest man, and my breeches-maker, who never failed to fit me. [99] The Italians were always—far exceeding all other nations—parsimonious and avaricious, the Tuscans beyond all other Italians, the Florentines beyond all other Tuscans. [100]

[Footnote 99: Vol. i. p. 185.]

[Footnote 100: Vol. i. p. 219.]

North.—But even Saul was softened by music: surely that of Italy must have sometimes soothed you?

Landor.—Opera was, among the Romans, labour, as operae pretium, &c. It now signifies the most contemptible of performances, the vilest office of the feet and tongue. [101]

[Footnote 101: Vol. i. p. 212.]

North.—But the sculptors, the painters, the architects of Italy? You smile disdainfully, Mr. Landor!

Landor.—I do; their sculpture and painting have been employed on most ignoble objects—on scourgers and hangmen, on beggarly enthusiasts and base impostors. Look at the two masterpieces of the pencil; the Transfiguration of Raphael, and the St. Jerome of Correggio; [102] can any thing be more incongruous, any thing more contrary to truth and history?

[Footnote 102: Vol. i. p. 109, note.]

North.—There have been able Italian writers both in verse and prose?

Landor.—In verse not many, in prose hardly any.

North.—Boccaccio?

Landor.—He is entertaining.

North.—Machiavelli?

Landor.—A coarse comedian. [103]

[Footnote 103: Vol. ii. p. 252.]

North.—You honour Ariosto?

Landor.—I do not. Ariosto is a plagiary, the most so of all poets. [104] Ariosto is negligent; his plan inartificial, defective, bad.

[Footnote 104: Vol. i. p. 290.]

North.—You protect Tasso?

Landor.—I do, especially against his French detractors.

North.—But you esteem the French?

Landor.—I despise and abominate the French.

North.—And their literature!

Landor.—And their literature. As to their poets, bad as Ariosto is, divide the Orlando into three parts, and take the worst of them, and although it may contain a large portion of extremely vile poetry, it will contain more of good than the whole French language. [105]

[Footnote 105: Vol. i. p. 290.]

North.—Is Boileau so very contemptible?

Landor.—Beneath contempt. He is a grub. [106]

[Footnote 106: See Mr. Landor's Polite Conversation with De Lille,
Vol. i. and Note at the end, p. 309, 310.]

North.—Racine?

Landor.—Diffuse, feeble, and, like Boileau, meanly thievish. The most admired verse of Racine is stolen, [107] so is almost every other that is of any value.

[Footnote 107: Vol. i. p. 293, 294.]

North.—But Voltaire, Mr. Landor?

Landor.—Voltaire, sir, was a man of abilities, and author of many passable epigrams, besides those which are contained in his tragedies and heroics, [108] though, like Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest when out of place. I tell you I detest and abominate every thing French. [109]

[Footnote 108: Vol. i. p. 254.]

[Footnote 109: We, however, find Mr. Landor giving the French credit for their proceedings in one remarkable instance, and it is so seldom that we catch him in good-humour with any thing, that we will not miss an opportunity of exhibiting him in an amiable light. This champion of the liberties of the world, who has cracked his lungs in endeavouring, on the shores of Italy, to echo the lament of Byron over Greece, and who denounced the powers of Europe for suffering the Duke d'Angoulême to assist his cousin Ferdinand in retaking the Trocadero, yet approves of French proceedings in Spain on a previous occasion. Admiring reader! you shall hear Sir Oracle himself again:— "The laws and institutions introduced by the French into Spain were excellent, and the king" (Joseph Bonaparte!) "was liberal, affable, sensible, and humane." Poor Trelawney, the friend of Byron, is made to talk thus! Both Trelawney and Odysseus the noble Greek, to whom he addresses himself, were more likely to participate in the "indignation of a high-minded Spaniard," so vividly expressed by a high-minded Englishman in the following sonnet:—

"We can endure that he should waste our lands,
Despoil our temples, and, by sword and flame,
Return us to the dust from which we came;
Such food a tyrant's appetite demands:
And we can brook the thought, that by his hands
Spain may be overpower'd, and he possess,
For his delight, a solemn wilderness,
Where all the brave lie dead. But, when of bands
That he will break for us he dares to speak,
Of benefits, and of a future day
When our enlighten'd minds shall bless his sway—
Then the strain'd heart of fortitude proves weak;
Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare
That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear.">[

North.—Well, Mr. Landor, we have rambled over much ground; we have journeyed from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren. Let us return home.

Landor.—Before we do so, let me observe, that among several noted Italians whom you have not glanced at, there is one whom I revere—Alfieri. He was the greatest man of his time in Europe, though not acknowleged or known to be so; [110] and he well knew his station as a writer and as a man. Had he found in the world five equal to himself, he would have walked out of it not to be jostled. [111]

[Footnote 110: Vol. ii. p. 241.]

[Footnote 111: Vol. ii. p. 258.]

North.—He would have been sillier, then, than the flatulent frog in the fable. Yet Alfieri's was, indeed, no ordinary mind, and he would have been a greater poet than he was, had he been a better man. I admire his Bruto Primo as much as you do, and I am glad to hear you give your suffrage so heartily in favour of any one.

Landor.—Sir, I admire the man as much as I do the poet. It is not every one who can measure his height; I can.

North.—Pop! there you go! you have got out of the bottle again, and are swelling and vapouring up to the clouds. Do lower yourself to my humble stature, (I am six feet four in my slippers.) Alfieri reminds me of Byron. What of him?

Landor.—A sweeper of the Haram. [112] A sweeper of the Haram is equally in false costume whether assuming the wreath of Musaeus or wearing the bonnet of a captain of Suliotes. I ought to have been chosen a leader of the Greeks. I would have led them against the turbaned Turk to victory, armed not with muskets or swords but with bows and arrows, and mailed not in steel cuirasses or chain armour but in cork caps and cork shirts. Nothing is so cool to the head as cork, and by the use of cork armour the soldier who cannot swim has all the advantage of him who can. At the head of my swimming archers I would have astonished the admirers of Leander and Byron in the Dardanelles, and I would have proved myself a Duck worth two of the gallant English admiral who tried in vain to force that passage. The Sultan should have beheld us in Stamboul, and we would have fluttered his dovecote within the Capi—-

[Footnote 112: Vol. i. p. 301.—Vol. ii. p. 222, 223.]

North.—I will not tempt you further. Let us proceed to business. To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit, Mr. Landor?

Landor.—I sent you the manuscript of a new Imaginary Conversation between Porsou and Southey.

North.—A sort of abnegation of your former one. For what purpose did you send it to me?

Landor.—For your perusal. Have you read it?

North.—I have, and I do not find it altogether new.

Landor.—How?

North.—I have seen some part of it in print before.

Landor.—Where?

North.—In a production of your own.

Landor.—Impossible!

North.—In a rhymed lampoon printed in London in 1836. It is called "A Satire on Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors." Do you know such a thing?

Landor.—(Aside. Unlucky! some good-natured friend has sent him that suppressed pamphlet.) Yes, Mr. North; a poetical manifesto of mine with that title was printed but not published.

North.—No, only privately distributed among friends. It contained some reflections on Wordsworth.

Landor.—It did.

North.—Why did you suppress it?

Landor.—Because I was ashamed of it. Byron and others had anticipated me. I had produced nothing either new or true to damage Wordsworth.

North.—Yet you have now, in this article that you offer me, reproduced the same stale gibes.

Landor.—But I have kept them in salt for six years: they will now have more flavour. I have added some spice, too.

North.—Which you found wrapt up in old leaves of the Edinburgh Review.

Landor.—Not the whole of it; a part was given to me by acquaintances of the poet.

North.—Eavesdroppers about Rydal Mount and Trinity Lodge. It was hardly worth your acceptance.

Landor.—Then you refuse my article.

North.—It is a rare article, Mr. Landor—a brave caricature of many persons and things; but, before I consent to frame it in ebony, we must come to some understanding about other parts of the suppressed pamphlet. Here it is. I find that in this atrabilarious effusion you have treated ourselves very scurvily. At page 9 I see,

"Sooner shall Tuscan Vallambrosa lack wood,
Than Britain, Grub street, Billingsgate, and Blackwood."

Then there is a note at page 10: "Who can account for the eulogies of Blackwood on Sotheby's Homer as compared with Pope's and Cowper's? Eulogy is not reported to be the side he lies upon, in general." On the same page, and the next, you say of Us, high Churchmen and high Tories,

"Beneath the battlements of Holyrood
There never squatted a more sordid brood
Than that which now, across the clotted perch,
Crookens the claw and screams for Court and Church."

Then again at page 12,

"Look behind you, look!
There issues from the Treasury, dull and dry as
The leaves in winter, Gifford and Matthias.
Brighter and braver Peter Pindar started,
And ranged around him all the lighter-hearted,
When Peter Pindar sank into decline,
Up from his hole sprang Peter Porcupine"

All which is nothing to Us, but what does it lead to?

"Him W … son follow'd"—

Why those dots, Mr. Landor?

"Him W … son follow'd, of congenial quill,
As near the dirt and no less prone to ill.
Walcot, of English heart, had English pen,
Buffoon he might be, but for hire was none;
Nor plumed and mounted in Professor's chair
Offer'd to grin for wages at a fair."

The rest is too foul-mouthed for repetition. You are a man of nasty ideas, Mr. Landor. You append a note, in which, without any authority but common rumour, you exhibit the learned Professor as an important contributor to Blackwood, especially in those graces of delicate wit so attractive to his subcribers. You declare, too, that we fight under cover, and only for spite and pay; that honester and wiser satirists were brave, that—

"Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,
Mounted the engine and took aim from towers;"

But that

"From putrid ditches we more safely fight,
And push our zig-zag parallels by night."

Again, at page 19—

"The Gentleman's, the Lady's we have seen,
Now blusters forth the Blackguard's Magazine;
And (Heaven from joint-stock companies protect us!)
Dustman and nightman issue their prospectus."

Landor (who has sate listening, with a broad grin, while Mr. North was getting rather red in the face.)—Really, Mr. North, considering that you have followed the trade of a currier for the last thirty years, you are remarkably sensitive to any little experiment on your own skin. Put what has my unpublished satire to do with our present affair?

North.—The answer to that question I will borrow from the satire itself, as you choose to term your scurrilous lampoon. Our present affair, then, is to consider whether Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation writer, in rushlight emulation of the wax-candles that illumine our Noctes, shall be raised, as he aspires, to the dignity of Fellow of the Blackwood Society. In the note at page 13 of the said lampoon, you state that "Lord Byron declared that no gentleman could write in Blackwood;" and you ask, "Has this assertion been ever disproved by experiment?" Now, Mr. Landor, as you have thus adopted and often re-echoed Lord Byron's opinion, that no gentleman could write in Blackwood, and yet wish to enrol yourself among our writers, what is the inference?

Landor. That I confess myself no gentleman, you would infer. I make no such confession. I would disprove Byron's assertion, by making the experiment.

North. You do us too much honour. Yet reflect, Mr. Landor. After the character you have given us, would you verily seek to be of our fraternity? You who have denounced us so grandiloquently—you who claim credit for lofty and disinterested principles of action? Recollect that you have represented us as the worthy men who have turned into ridicule Lamb, Keats, Hazlitt, Coleridge—(diverse metals curiously graduated!)—all in short, who, recently dead, are now dividing among them the admiration of their country. Whatever could lessen their estimation; whatever could injure their fortune; whatever could make their poverty more bitter; whatever could tend to cast down their aspirations after fame; whatever had a tendency to drive them to the grave which now has opened to them, was incessantly brought into action against them by us zealots for religion and laws. A more deliberate, a more torturing murder, never was committed, than the murder of Keats. The chief perpetrator of his murder knew beforehand that he could not be hanged for it. These are your words, Mr. Landor.

Landor.—I do not deny them.

North.—And in regard to the taste of the common public for Blackwood's Cordials, you have said that, to those who are habituated to the gin-shop, the dram is sustenance, and they feel themselves both uncomfortable and empty without the hot excitement. Blackwood's is really a gin-palace. Landor.—All this I have both said and printed, and the last sentence you have just read from my satire is preceded by one that you have not read. An exposure of the impudence and falsehood of Blackwood's Magazine is not likely to injure its character, or diminish the number of its subscribers; and in this sentence you have the secret of my desire to become a contributor to Blackwood. I want a popular vehicle to convey my censures to the world, especially on Wordsworth. I do not pretend to have any love for you and your brotherhood, Mr. North. But I dislike you less than I do Wordsworth; and I frankly own to you, that the fame of that man is a perpetual blister to my self-love.

North.—Your habitual contemplation of his merits has confused you into a notion that they are your own, and you think him an usurper of the laurel crown that is yours by the divine right of genius. What an unhappy monomania! Still, your application for redress to us is unaccountable. You should know that we Black Foresters, lawless as you may suppose us, are Wordsworth's liegemen. He is our intellectual Chief. We call him the General! We are ever busy in promoting his fame.

Landor.—You are always blowing hot and cold on it, and have done so for years past. One month you place him among the stars, the next as low as the daisies.

North.—And rightly too; for both are the better for his presence.

Landor.—But you alternately worship and insult him, as some people do their wooden idols.

North.—If you must learn the truth, then, he has been to us, in one sense, nothing better than an unfeeling wooden idol. Some of us have been provoked by his indifference to our powers of annoyance, and his ingratitude in not repaying eulogy in kind. We have among ourselves a gander or two, (no offence, Mr. Landor,) that, forgetting they are webfooted, pretend to a perch on the tall bay-tree of Apollo, and, though heavy of wing, are angry with Wordsworth for not encouraging their awkward flights. They, like you, accuse him of jealousy, forsooth! That is the reason that they are now gabbling at his knees, now hissing at his heels. Moreover, our caprices are not unuseful to our interests. We alternately pique and soothe readers by them, and so keep our customers. As day is partitioned between light and darkness, so has the public taste as to Wordsworth been divided between his reverers and the followers of the Jeffrey heresy. After a lengthened winter, Wordsworth's glory is now in the long summer days; all good judgments that lay torpid have been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and sustained ascendancy of genius. We now put up a screen for the weak-sighted, now withdraw it from stronger eyes; thus we plague and please all parties.

Landor.—Except Wordsworth, whose eyelids are too tender to endure his own lustre reflected and doubled on the focus of your burnished brass. He dreads the fate of Milton, "blasted with excess of light."

North. Thank you, sir; that is an ingenious way of accounting for Wordsworth's neglect of our luminous pages. Yet it rather sounds like irony, coming from Mr. Walter Savage Landor to the editor of "The (Not Gentleman's) Magazine."

Landor.—Pshaw! still harping on my Satire.

North.—In that Satire you have charged Wordsworth with having talked of Southey's poetry as not worth five shillings a ream. So long as you refrained from publishing this invidious imputation, even those few among Wordsworth's friends who knew that you had printed it, (Southey himself among the number,) might think it discreet to leave the calumny unregarded. But I observe that you have renewed it, in a somewhat aggravated form, in the Article that you now wish me to publish. You here allege that Wordsworth represented Southey as an author, all whose poetry was not worth five shillings. You and I both know that Wordsworth would not deign to notice such an accusation. Through good and evil report, the brave man persevered in his ascent to the mountain-top, without ever even turning round to look upon the rabble that was hooting him from its base; and he is not likely now to heed such a charge as this. But his friends may now ask, on what authority it is published? Was it to you, Mr. Walter Landor, whom Southey (in his strange affection for the name of Wat) had honoured with so much kindness—to you whose "matin chirpings" he had so generously encouraged, (as he did John Jones's "mellower song,")—was it to you that Wordsworth delivered so injurious a judgment on the works of your patron? If so, what was your reply? [113]

[Footnote 113:
"I lagg'd; he (Southey) call'd me; urgent to prolong
My matin chirpings into mellower song."—LANDON. ]

Landor.—Whether it was expressed to myself or not, is of little consequence; it has been studiously repeated, and even printed by others as well as by me.

North.—By whom?

Landor.—That, too, is of no importance to the fact.

North.—I am thoroughly convinced that it is no fact, and that Wordsworth never uttered any thing like such an opinion in the sense that you report it. He and Southey have been constant neighbours and intimate friends for forty years; there has never been the slightest interruption to their friendship. Every one that knows Wordsworth is aware of his frank and fearless openness in conversation. He has been beset for the last half century, not only by genuine admirers, but by the curious and idle of all ranks and of many nations, and sometimes by envious and designing listeners, who have misrepresented and distorted his casual expressions. Instances of negligent and infelicitous composition are numerous in Southey, as in most voluminous authors. Suppose some particular passage of this kind to have been under discussion, and Mr. Wordsworth to have exclaimed, "I would not give five shillings a ream for such poetry as that." Southey himself would only smile, (he had probably heard Wordsworth express himself to the same effect a hundred times); but some insidious hearer catches at the phrase, and reports it as Wordsworth's sweeping denunciation of all the poetry that his friend has ever written, in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary to be met with, not only in Wordsworth's every-day conversation, but in his published works. There is no man for whose genius Mr. Wordsworth has more steadily or consistently testified his admiration than for Southey's; there is none for whom, and for whose character, he has evinced more affection and respect. You and I, who have both read his works, and walked and talked with the Old Man of the Mountain, know that perfectly well. You have perhaps been under his roof, at Rydal Mount? I have; and over his dining-room fireplace I observed, as hundreds of his visitors must have done, five portraits—Chaucer's, Bacon's, Spenser's, Shakspeare's, and Milton's, in one line. On the same line is a bust on the right of these, and a portrait on the left; and there are no other ornaments on that wall of the apartment. That bust and that portrait are both of Southey, the man whom you pretend he has so undervalued! By the bye, no one has been more ardent in praise of Wordsworth than yourself.

Landor.—You allude to the first dialogue between Southey and Porson, in Vol. i. of my Imaginary Conversations.

North.—Not to that only, though in that dialogue there are sentiments much at variance with those which you would now give out as Porson's. For example, remember what Porson there says of the Laodamia.

Landor.—The most fervid expression in commendation of it is printed as Porson's improperly, as the whole context shows. It should have been Southey's.

North.—So, I perceive, you say in this new dialogue; and such a mode of attempting to turn your back on yourself, to borrow a phrase from your friend Lord Castlereagh's rhetoric, will be pronounced, even by those who do not care a bawbee about the debate, as not only ludicrous, but pitiably shabby. Keep your seat, Mr. Landor, and keep your temper for once in your life. Let us examine into this pretended mistake in your former dialogue about Laodamia. Well, as you are up, do me the favour, sir, to mount the ladder, and take down from yon top shelf the first volume of your Conversations. Up in the corner, on the left hand, next the ceiling. You see I have given you a high place.

Landor.—Here is the book, Mr. North; it is covered with dust and cobwebs.

North.—The fate of classics, Mr. Landor. They are above the reach of the housemaid, except when she brings the Turk's Head to bear upon them. Now, let us turn to the list of errata in this first volume. We are directed to turn to page 52, line 4, and for sugar-bakers, read sugar-bakers' wives. I turn to the page, and find the error corrected by yourself; as are all the press errors in these volumes, which were presented by you to a friend. I bought the whole set for an old song at a sale. You see that the omitted word wives is carefully supplied by yourself, in your own handwriting, Mr. Landor. On the same page, only five lines below this correction, is the identical passage that you would now transfer from Porson to Southey. Why did you not affix Porson's name to the passage then, when you were so vigilantly perfecting the very page? Why does no such correction appear even in the printed list of errata? Let us read the passage. "A current of rich and bright thoughts runs throughout the poem. [114] Pindar himself would not, on that subject, have braced one into more nerve and freshness, nor Euripides have inspired into it more tenderness and passion."

[Footnote 114: Vol. i. p. 52.]

Landor.—Mr. North, I repeat that that sentence should have been printed as Southey's, not Porson's.

North.—Yet it is quite consistent with a preceding sentence which you can by no ingenuity of after-thought withdraw from Porson; for the whole context forbids the possibility of its transition. What does Porson there testify of the Laodamia? That it is "a composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own!"—and a part of one of its stanzas "might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the Elysium the poet describes." [115]

[Footnote 115: Vol. i. p. 51. Few persons will think that Mr. Landor's drift, which is obvious enough, could be favoured if these passages could be all shuffled over to Mr. Southey. It would be unwise and inconsistent in Mr. Landor of all men to intimate that Southey's judgment in poetry was inferior to Porson's; for Southey has been so singular as to laud some of Mr. Landor's, and Mr. Landor has been so grateful as to proclaim Southey the sole critic of modern times who has shown "a delicate perception in poetry." It is rash, too, in him to insinuate that Southey's opinion could be influenced by his friendship; for he, the most amiable of men, was nevertheless a friend of Mr. Lander also. But the only object of this argument is to show how mal-adroitly Mr. Landor plays at thimblerig. He lets us see him shift the pea. As for the praise and censure contained in his dialogues, we have no doubt that any one concerned willingly makes him a present of both. It is but returning bad money to Diogenes. It is all Mr. Landor's; and, lest there should be any doubt about the matter, he has taken care to tell us that he has not inserted in his dialogues a single sentence written by, or recorded of, the persons who are supposed to hold them.—See Vol. i. p. 96, end of note.]

These expressions are at least as fervid as those which you would reclaim from Porson, now that, like a pettifogging practitioner, you want to retain him as counsel against the most illustrious of Southey's friends—the individual of whom in this same dialogue you cause Southey to ask, "What man ever existed who spent a more retired, a more inoffensive, a more virtuous life, than Wordsworth, or who has adorned it with nobler studies?"—and what does Porson answer? "I believe so; I have always heard it; and those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men of no morality and no reflection." [116] Thus you print Wordsworth's praise in rubric, and fix it on the walls, and then knock your head against them. You must have a hard skull, Mr. Landor.

[Footnote 116: Vol. i. p. 40.]

Landor.—Be civil, Mr. North, or I will brain you.

North.—Pooh, pooh, man! all your Welsh puddles, which you call pools, wouldn't hold my brains. To return to your proffered article, there is one very ingenious illustration in it. "Diamonds sparkle the most brilliantly on heads stricken by the palsy."

Landor.—Yes; I flatter myself that I have there struck out a new and beautiful, though somewhat melancholy thought.

North.—New! My good man, it isn't yours; you have purloined those diamonds.

Landor.—From whom?

North.—From the very poet you would disparage—Wordsworth.

"Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."

Those lines have been in print above twenty years.

Landor.—An untoward coincidence of idea between us.

North.—Both original, no doubt; only, as Puff says in the Critic, one of you thought of it the first, that's all. But how busy would Wordsworth be, and how we should laugh at him for his pains, if he were to set about reclaiming the thousands of ideas that have been pilfered from him, and have been made the staple of volumes of poems, sermons, and philosophical treatises without end! He makes no stir about such larcenies. And what a coil have you made about that eternal sea-shell, which you say he stole from you, and which, we know, is the true and trivial cause of your hostility towards him!

Landor.—Surely I am an ill-used man, Mr. North. My poetry, if not worth five shillings, nor thanks, nor acknowledgment, was yet worth borrowing and putting on. I, the author of Gebir, Mr. North, —do you mark me?

North.—Yes; the author of Gebir and Gebirus; think of that, St. Crispin and Crispanus!

"Sing me the fates of Gebir, and the Nymph
Who challenged Tamar to a wrestling match,
And on the issue pledged her precious shell.
Above her knees she drew the robe succinct;
Above her breast, and just below her arms.
'She, rushing at him, closed, and floor'd him flat.
And carried off the prize, a bleating sheep;
The sheep she carried easy as a cloak,
And left the loser blubbering from his fall,
And for his vanish'd mutton. Nymph divine!
I cannot wait describing how she came;
My glance first lighted on her nimble feet;
Her feet resembled those long shells explored
By him who, to befriend his steed's dim sight,
Would blow the pungent powder in his eye.'" [117]

Is that receipt for horse eye-powder to be found in White's Farriery,
Mr. Landor?

[Footnote 117: The lines within inverted commas, are Mr. Landor's, without alteration.]

Landor.—Perhaps not, Mr. North. Will you cease your fooling, and allow me to proceed? "I," the author of Gebir, "never lamented when I believed it lost." The MS. was mislaid at my grandmother's, and lay undiscovered for four years. "I saw it neglected; and never complained. Southey and Forster have since given it a place whence men of lower stature are in vain on tiptoe to take it down. It would have been honester and more decorous if the writer of certain verses had mentioned from what bar he took his wine." [118] Now keep your ears open, Mr. North; I will read my verses first, and then Wordsworth's. Here they are. I always carry a copy of them both in my pocket. Listen!

[Footnote 118: Mr. Landor's printed complaint, verbatim, from his
"Satire on Satirists.">[

North.—List, oh list! I am all attention, Mr. Landor.

Landor (reads.)—

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked,
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave."

"Shake one, and it awakens—then apply
Its polish'd lip to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

These are lines for you, sir! They are mine. What do you think of them?

North.—I think very well of them; they remind one of Coleridge's "Eolian Harp." They are very pretty lines, Mr. Landor. I have written some worse myself.

Landor—So has Wordsworth. Attend to the echo in the Excursion.

"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon
Brighten'd with joy; for, murmuring from within,
Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby,
To his belief, the monitor express'd
Mysterious union with its native sea."

North.—There is certainly much resemblance between the two passages; and, so far as you have recited Wordsworth's, his is not superior to yours; which very likely, too, suggested it; though that is by no means a sure deduction, for the thought itself is as common as the sea-shell you describe, and, in all probability, at least as old as the Deluge.

Landor.—"It is but justice to add, that this passage has been the most admired of any in Mr. Wordsworth's great poem." [119]

[Footnote 119: From Mr. Landor, verbatim.]

North.—Hout, tout, man! The author of the Excursion could afford to spare you a thousand finer passages, and he would seem none the poorer. As to the imputed plagiarism, Wordsworth would no doubt have avowed it had he been conscious that it was one, and that you could attach so much importance to the honour of having reminded him of a secret in conchology, known to every old nurse in the country, as well as to every boy or girl that ever found a shell on the shore, or was tall enough to reach one off a cottage parlour mantelpiece; but which he could apply to a sublime and reverent purpose, never dreamed of by them or you. It is in the application of the familiar image, that we recognise the master-hand of the poet. He does not stop when he has described the toy, and the effect of air within it. The lute in Hamlet's hands is not more philosophically dealt with. There is a pearl within Wordsworth's shell, which is not to be found in your's, Mr. Landor. He goes on:—

"Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it cloth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things—
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."

These are the lines of a poet, who not only stoops to pick up a shell now and then, as he saunters along the sea-shore, but who is accustomed to climb to the promontory above, and to look upon the ocean of things:—

"From those imaginative heights that yield
Far-stretching views into eternity."

Do not look so fierce again, Mr. Landor. You who are so censorious of self-complacency in others, and indeed of all other people's faults, real or imagined, should endure to have your vanity rebuked.

Landor.—I have no vanity. I am too proud to be vain.

North.—Proud of what?

Landor.—Of something beyond the comprehension of a Scotchman, Mr. North—proud of my genius.

North.—Are you so very great a genius, Mr. Landor?

Landor.—I am. Almighty Homer is twice far above Troy and her towers, Olympus and Jupiter. First, when Priam bends before Achilles, and a second time, when the shade of Agamemnon speaks among the dead. That awful spectre, called up by genius in after-time, shook the Athenian stage. That scene was ever before me; father and daughter were ever in my sight; I felt their looks, their words, and again I gave them form and utterance; and, with proud humility, I say it—

"I am tragedian in this scene alone.
Station the Greek and Briton side by side
And if derision be deserved—deride."

Surely there can be no fairer method of overturning an offensive reputation, from which the scaffolding is not yet taken down, than by placing against it the best passages, and most nearly parallel, in the subject, from Æschylus and Sophocles. To this labour the whole body of the Scotch critics and poets are invited, and, moreover, to add the ornaments of translation. [120]

[Footnote 120: This strange rhapsody is verily Mr. Landor's. It is extracted from his "Satire on the Satirists.">[

North.—So you are not only a match for Æschylus and Sophocles, but on a par with "almighty Homer when he is far above Olympus and Jove." Oh! ho! ho! As you have long since recorded that modest opinion of yourself in print, and not been lodged in Bedlam for it, I will not now take upon myself to send for a straight-waistcoat.

Landor.—Is this the treatment I receive fron the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, in return for my condescension in offering him my assistance? Give me back my manuscript, sir. I was indeed a fool to come hither. I see how it is. You Scotchmen are all alike. We consider no part of God's creation so cringing, so insatiable, so ungrateful as the Scotch: nevertheless, we see them hang together by the claws, like bats; and they bite and scratch you to the bone if you attempt to put an Englishman in the midst of them. [121] But you shall answer for this usage, Mr. North: you shall suffer for it. These two fingers have more power than all your malice, sir, even if you had the two Houses of Parliament to back you. A pen! You shall live for it. [122]

[Footnote 121: Imaginary Conversations, vol. iv, p. 283.]

[Footnote 122: Ibid. vol. i. p. 126.]

North.—Fair and softly, Mr. Landor; I have not rejected your article yet. I am going to be generous. Notwithstanding all your abuse of Blackwood and his countrymen, I consent to exhibit you to the world as a Contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and, in the teeth of all your recorded admiration of Wordsworth, I will allow you to prove yourself towards him a more formidable critic than Wakley, and a candidate for immortality with Lauder. Do you rue?

Landor.—Not at all. I have past the Rubicon.

North.—Is that a pun? It is worthy of Plato. Mr. Landor, you have been a friend of Wordsworth. But, as he says—

"What is friendship? Do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."

Landor.—I have never professed friendship for him.

North.—You have professed something more, then. Let me read a short poem to you, or at least a portion of it. It is an "Ode to Wordsworth."

"O WORDSWORTH!
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of poesy,
Pleases me better than the toil
Of smoothing, under harden'd hand,
With attic emery and oil,
The shining point for wisdom's wand,
Like those THOU temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.
He who would build his fame up high,
The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say—I'll do what I have plann'd,
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polish'd pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device
THOU raisest every edifice:
Whether in shelter'd vale it stand,
Or overlook the Dardan strand,
Amid those cypresses that mourn
Laodamia's love forlorn."

Four of the brightest intellects that ever adorned any age or country. are then named, and a fifth who, though not equal to the least of them, is not unworthy of their company; and what follows?

"I wish them every joy above
That highly blessèd spirits prove,
Save one, and that too shall be theirs,
But after many rolling years,
WHEN 'MID THEIR LIGHT THY LIGHT APPEARS."

Here are Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Dryden too, all in bliss above, yet not to be perfectly blest till the arrival of Wordsworth among them! Who wrote that, Mr. Landor? [123]

[Footnote 123: Whom Mr. L., who is the most capricious as well as the most arrogant of censors, sometimes takes into favour.]

Landor.—I did, Mr. North.

North.—Sir, I accept your article. It shall be published in Blackwood's Magazine. Good-morning, sir.

Landor.—Good-day, sir. Let me request your particular attention to the correction of the press. (Landor retires.)

North.—He is gone! Incomparable Savage! I cannot more effectually retaliate upon him for all his invectives against us than by admitting his gossiping trash into the Magazine. No part of the dialogue will be mistaken for Southey's; nor even for Porson's inspirations from the brandy-bottle.

All the honour due to the author will be exclusively Mr. Walter Savage Landor's; and, as it is certainly "not worth five shillings," no one will think it "worth borrowing or putting on."

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