"And let me nap on," wrote the august critic, who had no desire to meet Coleridge, even as a celestial being.
Now and then there is a dash of the pencil across some final verse, with the remark, "Better without these." Twice or thrice Landor finds fault with a word. He objects to the expression, "eyes so fair," saying fair is a bad word for eyes.
The subject of Latin being one day mentioned, Landor very eagerly proposed that I should study this language with him.
The thought was awful, and I expostulated. "But, Mr. Landor, you who are so noble a Latinist can never have the patience to instruct such a stumbling scholar."
"I insist upon it. You shall be my first pupil," he said, laughing at the idea of beginning to teach in his extreme old age. "It will give the old man something to do."
"But you will get very tired of me, Mr. Landor."
"Well, well, I'll tell you when I am tired. You say you have a grammar; then I'll bring along with me to-morrow something to read."
True to his promise, the "old pedagogue," for so he was wont to call himself, made his appearance with a time-worn Virgil under his arm,—a Virgil that in 1809 was the property, according to much pen and ink scribbling, of one "John Prince, ætat. 12. College School, Hereford."
"Now, then, for our lesson," Landor exclaimed, in a cheery voice. "Giallo knows all about it, and quite approves of the arrangement. Don't you, Giallo?" And the wise dog wagged his sympathetic tail, jumped up on his master's knees, and put his fore paws around Landor's neck. "There, you see, he gives consent; for this is the way Giallo expresses approbation."