Because he always wrote prose like an artist Walter Savage Landor is worthy to be read at all times and in all moods.
"And through the trumpet of a child of Rome
Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece."
We all know what Swinburne thought about him: the trouble has been that so few people have taken any pains to go further and rediscover this great, imaginative artist for themselves. He is one of those unfortunates whose work we agree to take as read. If we only had a half his feeling for the value and weight of words the English tongue would be ten times richer than it is to-day, richer in harmony, richer in preciseness, richer in simplicity. He had a very definite sense of a writer's duty: "I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty and moroseness those that fit the thing." Surely when we find a man with so wide a range of thought, so filled with imagination, so much in love with heroism, beauty and freedom, with a prose style that is, of its kind, unrivalled, it is incumbent upon us to sink our prejudice against the classical and do the little extra work which is essential to a true appreciation of that salutary, clear-cut, highly disciplined art. His appeal is to the few who can enjoy the best literature for itself, but there is no reason why this circle should not be far wider than it is.
In his determination not to say anything superfluous he did at times fall into obscurity, but we forgive that in Browning: it is certainly not an all-obtrusive fault in Landor, especially in that later work of his, the Imaginary Conversations, on which his reputation now rests. Whether in those short and stirring scenes of emotion and action, or in the long and quiet ones of discussion and reflection, he shows an admirable insight into character, a fine dignity and urbanity, a mastery over delicate aphorisms on human nature, and a range of interest running from the earliest times to his own era. Take a few of the titles at random if you wish to gauge his range: "Peleus and Thetis," "Leofric and Godiva," "Mahomet and Sergius," "Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius IV.," "Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn," "Peter the Great and Alexis," "The Dream of Boccaccio," "The Dream of Petrarca."
Who is there among the narrators of old-time legends capable of charming us so much as the man who makes the slave-girl Rhodopè begin her life story thus:
"Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the corn-chest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and, finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking, however, about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair...."
Godiva's one poignant cry to herself, "I hope they will not crowd about me so to-morrow," strikes a more effective note than the whole of Tennyson's poem on the same subject. Filippo Lippi's peerless description of his adventures in Barbary in the service of the corsair Abdul, where he met Almeida of the hazel eyes, Almeida, "cool, smooth and firm as a nectarine gathered before sunrise," is too well known to be quoted here, but is one of the first to be read by those who would see Landor in his natural element of beauty. "The clematis overtopped the lemon and orange trees ... white pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day ..."—this passage in particular is a masterpiece of descriptive writing. Not easily does one forget the pathetic figure of the discarded Anne Boleyn confronted in prison by her drunken husband. "Love your Elizabeth, my honoured Lord, and God bless you! She will soon forget to call me; do not chide her; think how young she is. Could I, could I kiss her, but once again! It would comfort my heart—or break it."
His sense of the dramatic is nowhere better shown than in that dialogue, though Spenser's announcement of his terrible loss to Essex goes near to equal it in pathos as does the appearance of Fiammetta to Boccaccio in his dream.
But to prove how absolutely the classical spirit can bring perfection to our native language what need is there of quoting more than this:
"Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past, and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè, that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last."