LANDOR’S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
Hazlitt here reviews the first two volumes of Walter Savage Landor’s (1775–1864) Imaginary Conversations, published in 1824. A second edition, ‘corrected and enlarged,’ appeared in 1826, and vol. III. completing the ‘first series,’ in 1828. Vols. IV. and V. constituting the ‘second series,’ were published in 1829. For an account of Hazlitt’s visit to Landor at Florence in 1825 see Forster’s Walter Savage Landor, a Biography, II. 201–211, where a subsequent letter from Hazlitt to Landor is quoted, in which he says: ‘I am much gratified that you are pleased with the Spirit of the Age. Somebody ought to like it, for I am sure there will be plenty to cry out against it. I hope you did not find any sad blunders in the second volume; but you can hardly suppose the depression of body and mind under which I wrote some of those articles.’ This review of the Imaginary Conversations seems to have been cut about a good deal by Jeffrey.
PAGE [231]. ‘Great wits,’ etc. Absalom and Achitophel, I. 163. [233]. ‘It travels in a road’ [strait], etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3. [235]. Dashed and brewed. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 114. ‘To every good word,’ etc. Epistle to Titus, I. 16. [238]. ‘All in conscience,’ etc. Chaucer, Prologue, 150. Note. Tâtar. Cf., e.g.,
‘Persian and Copt and Tatar, in one bond
Of erring faith conjoin’d.’
Roderick, the Last of the Goths, I. 18–19.