‘Elizabeth. I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona, which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would not, from the fountain of Honour, give lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in ‘cold obstruction’ the lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and prepensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God has commanded them to stand up on high for an ensample. We call him parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey, its most faithful propagator and most firm support? The parent gives us few days and sorrowful; the poet many and glorious: the one (supposing him discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best remunerates our virtues. A page of poesy is a little matter—be it so—but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble—it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one, that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board—but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they and their sovran dwell together, next year they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable. The keeper of my privy seal is an earl—what then? The keeper of my poultry-yard is a Cæsar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own, falls off and comes to nothing. I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them, as to incapacitate them for the sword and for the council-chamber. If Alexander was the Great, what was Aristoteles who made him so? who taught him every art and science he knew, except three, those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his bosom-friends. Come along: I will bring thee back again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund, if perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for the mortification they must suffer at seeing their inferiors set before them. Edmund is grave and gentle,—he complains of Fortune, not of Elizabeth,—of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved, so help me God, he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto him these twelve silver-spoons, with the apostols on them, gloriously gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces, sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom;—besides which, set open before him with due reverence this bible, wherein he may read the mercies of God towards those who waited in patience for his blessing; and this pair of cremisin silken hosen, which thou knowest I have worne only thirteen months, taking heed that the heelpiece be put into good and sufficient restauration at my sole charges, by the Italian woman at Charing-Cross.’ I. 91.
We think that this is very pleasant and brave ‘fooling,’ and that our author has hit off the familiar pedantic tone of the Maiden Queen well. The sentiment with which Elizabeth seems in the foregoing Dialogue, to regard the Muses as among her Maids of Honour, and the patronage she is ready to extend to poets as the most agreeable and permanent class of court-chroniclers, must be considered as characteristic of the person and the age, and not attributed to the author. His literary fierté is quite in the tone of the present age, nor can he be suspected of representing poets as destined to nothing higher than to be danglers upon the great. He has put his opinion on this subject beyond a doubt. In a very different style, he makes Salomon, the Florentine Jew, thus address Alfieri, the tragic poet.
‘Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or beating their bosoms at your Bruto Primo. Consider, to make one step further, that kings and emperours should, in your estimation, be but as grasshoppers and beetles,—let them consume a few blades of your clover, without molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you. The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great, as between men of genius and those higher Intelligences who act in immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without flattery and without fear, the Angels are not higher above mortals, than you are above the proudest that trample on them.’
We think Mr. Landor’s friend, the poet-laureate, cannot do better than turn this passage into hexameter verse, and present it as his next Birth-day Ode. The author’s dislike of the French has here inspired him with a contempt for emperors and kings, and with an admiration for men of genius. He sets out with a fit of the spleen, rises to the sublime, and ends in the mock-heroic. We do not soar so high. Without pretending to settle the precedence between poets and any higher order of Intelligences, we certainly think they have something better to do than to varnish over state-puppets, and hold them up to the gaze of posterity. Yet this menial use of their talents seems to have been the highest which even persons like Elizabeth formerly contemplated in their patronage of them. If Spenser had merely distinguished himself by his flattering and fanciful portraits of his royal mistress, we should think no more of him now than of ‘the lady that tied on her garter.’ He has entitled himself to our gratitude, by introducing us into the presence of his mistress, Fancy, the true Faery Queen, ‘the fairest princess under sky;’ and showing us the purple lights of Love and Beauty reflected in his tremulous page, like evening skies in pure and still waters. What is it that the poets of elder times have indeed done for us, besides paying awkward compliments and writing fulsome dedications to their patrons? They spread out a brighter heaven above our heads, a softer and a greener earth beneath our feet. They do in truth ‘paint the lily,’ they ‘throw a perfume on the violet, and add another hue unto the rainbow.’ From them the murmuring stream borrows its thoughtful music; they steep the mountain’s head in azure, and the nodding grove waves in visionary grandeur in their page. Solitude becomes more solitary, silence eloquent, joy extatic; they lend wings to Hope, and put a heart into all things. Poetry hangs its lamp on high, shedding sweet influence; and not an object in nature is seen, unaccompanied by the sound of ‘famous poets’ verse.’ They add another spring to man’s life, breathe the balm of immortality into the soul, and by their aid, a dream and a glory is ever around us. Queen Elizabeth ordered Shakespear to continue Falstaff. He has indeed been continued; for he has come down to us, and is living to this day! Otway would have thought it a great thing to have had Venice Preserved patronised, and a box taken by a dutchess on the night of its first appearance. But is this ‘the spur that the clear spirit doth raise?’ Is it for this that we envy him, or that so many would have wished like him to live, even though doomed as the consequence, like him to die? No, but for the sake of those thousand hearts that have melted with Belvidera’s sorrows, for those tears that have streamed from bright eyes, and that young and old have shed so many thousand times over her fate! This is the spur to Fame, this is the boast of letters, that they are the medium through which whatever we feel and think (that we take most pride and interest in) is imparted and lives in the brain, and throbs in the bosoms of a countless multitude. We breathe the thoughts of others as they breathe ours, like common air, in spite of the distance of place, and the lapse of time. Mind converses everywhere with mind, and we drink of knowledge as of a river. We ourselves (Mr. Landor will excuse the egotism of the transition) once took shelter from a shower of rain in a ruined hovel in the Highlands, where we found an old shepherd apparently regardless of the storm and of his flock, reading a number of the Edinburgh Review! Need we own that this little incident inspired us with a feeling of almost poetical vanity? From that time the blue and yellow covers seemed to take a tinge from the humid arch, that spanned the solitude before us, and our thoughts were commingled with the elements!
The Conversation between Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble on the beheading of Charles I., displays a good deal of the blunt knavery of old Nol, and a mixture of honour and honesty in the old Roundhead. We here also find some touches that illustrate Mr. Landor’s political views. Thus Cromwell is made to say, ‘I abominate and detest kingship;’—to which Noble answers—‘I abominate and detest hangmanship; but in certain stages of society, both are necessary. Let them go together, we want neither now.’ The same dramatic appreciation of the intellect of the speakers, and of the literary tone of the age, appears in the Eighth Conversation, between King James I. and Isaac Casaubon; and in many of the others, whether relating to ancient or modern times. The verisimilitude does not arise from a studied use of peculiar phrases, or an exaggeration of peculiar opinions, but the writer seems to be well versed in the productions and characters of the individuals he brings upon the stage, and the adaptation takes place unconsciously and without any apparent effort. A remarkable instance of this occurs in the dialogue between Ann Boleyn and Henry VIII., into which the rough, boisterous, voluptuous, cruel and yet gamesome character of that monarch, whose gross and pampered selfishness has but one parallel in the British annals, is transfused with all the truth and spirit of history—or of the Author of Waverley! In the Fourth Dialogue ‘between Professor Porson and Mr. Southey,’ we meet with an assertion which we think Mr. Landor would hardly have hazarded in the lifetime of the former, and to which we cannot assent, even to show our candour. ‘Take up,’ says the Laureate, ‘a poem of Wordsworth’s, and read it; I would rather say, read them all; and knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our country, since Shakespear, has exerted a greater variety of powers, with less strain and less ostentation.’ Some persons (we do not know whether the poet himself is of the number) have, we understand, compared Mr. Wordsworth to Milton; but we did not expect ever to see a resemblance suggested between him and Shakespeare. If ever two men were the antipodes of each other, they are so; and even this we think is paying compliment enough to Mr. Wordsworth. We are also of opinion, in the very teeth of the dictum of the brother bard, that let his other merits be what they may, no English writer of any genius has shown less variety of powers, with more effort and more significance of pretension. Mr. Southey, in the Imaginary Conversation, goes on to lay before the Professor ‘an unpublished and incomplete poem’ of the same author, the Laodamia, and recites it, but only in imagination; after which some ingenious verbal criticisms are made on one or two particular passages. This poem has since been published; and we have no hesitation in saying, that it is a poem the greater part of which might be read aloud in Elysium, and that the spirits of departed heroes and sages might gather round and listen to it! It is sweet and solemn; and, though there is some poorness in the diction, and some indistinctness in the images, it breathes of purity and tenderness, in very genuine and lofty measures. We have great pleasure in saying this—but we must be permitted to add, that we are firmly persuaded Mr. Wordsworth would never have written this classical and manly composition, but for those remarks on his former style, for which we have the misfortune to fall under the lash of Mr. Landor’s pen.
The Ninth Conversation (‘Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor‘) contains scandal against the English Government—Conversation X. (‘General Kleber and some French Officers‘) scandal against the French—Conversation XI. (‘Buonaparte and the President of the Senate’) scandal against good taste and common decency. Let Mr. Landor cancel it—let his publishers strike their asterisks through it. It is short, and not sweet. These fabulous stories about the expedition into Egypt, these low-minded and scurrilous aspersions on Buonaparte, which the Tories palmed upon the credulity of their gulls, the Jacobin poets, have been long discarded by the inventors, and linger only in the pages, rankle only in the hearts of their converts. We would recommend to Mr. Landor, before he writes on this subject again, to read over the allegory of his friend Spenser, describing Occasion and Furor, and not to be refreshing his groundless and mischievous resentments every moment with a ‘Cymocles, oh! I burn!’ It is by no means a sufficient reason to believe a thing that it provokes our anger, or excites our disgust; nor is it wise or decorous to bay the moon, and then quarrel with the echo of our own voice. Mr. Landor keeps up a clamour raised by the worst men to answer the worst purposes, only to persuade himself, if possible, that he has not been its dupe. This is the worst of our author’s style—it continually explodes and detonates—one cannot read him in security, for fear of springing a mine, if any of his prejudices are touched, or passions roused. He is made of combustible materials—sits hatching treason, like the Guy Faux of letters, and is equally ready to blow up a Legitimate Despot, or pounce upon an usurper! Let us turn to Humphrey Hardcastle and Bishop Burnet,—in which the garrulous, credulous, acute, vulgar, and yet graphic style of the latter, is very pleasingly caricatured.
‘Hardcastle. The pleasure I have taken in the narration of your Lordship is for the greater part independent of what concerns my family. I never knew that my uncle was a poet, and could hardly have imagined that he approached near enough to Mr. Cowley for jealousy or competition.
‘Bishop Burnet. Indeed, they who discoursed on such matters were of the same opinion, excepting some few, who see nothing before them, and every thing behind. These declared that Hum would overtop Abraham, if he could only drink rather less, think rather more, and feel rather rightlier; that he had great spunk and spirit, and that not a fan was left on a lap when any one sang his airs. Poets, like ministers of state, have their parties; and it is difficult to get at truth upon questions not capable of demonstration, nor founded on matter of fact. To take any trouble about them, is an unwise thing: it is like mounting a wall covered with broken glass: you cut your fingers before you reach the top, and you only discover at last that it is within a span or two of equal height on both sides. Who would have imagined that the youth who was carried to his long home the other day, I mean my Lord Rochester’s reputed child, Mr. George Nelly, was for several seasons a great poet? Yet I remember the time when he was so famous an one that he ran after Mr. Milton up Snow Hill, as the old gentleman was leaning on his daughter’s arm, from the Poultry, and treading down the heel of his shoe, called him a rogue and a liar, while another poet sprang out from a grocer’s shop, clapping his hands, and crying, “Bravely done! by Belzebub! the young cock spurs the blind buzzard gallantly.” On some neighbour representing to Mr. George the respectable character of Mr. Milton, and the probability that at some future time he might be considered as among our geniuses, and such as would reflect a certain portion of credit on his ward, and asking him withal why he appeared to him a rogue and a liar, he replied, “I have proofs known to few: I possess a sort of drama by him, entitled Comus, which was composed for the entertainment of Lord Pembroke, who held an appointment under the King; and this very John has since changed sides, and written in defence of the Commonwealth.”—Mr. George began with satirizing his father’s friends, and confounding the better part of them with all the hirelings and nuisances of the age, with all the scavengers of lust and all the linkboys of literature; with Newgate solicitors, the patrons of adulterers and forgers, who, in the long vocation, turn a penny by puffing a ballad, and are promised a shilling in silver, for their own benefit, on crying down a religious tract. He soon became reconciled to the latter, and they raised him upon their shoulders above the heads of the wittiest and the wisest. This served a whole winter. Afterwards, whenever he wrote a bad poem, he supported his sinking fame by some signal act of profligacy—an elegy by a seduction, an heroic by an adultery, a tragedy by a divorce. On the remark of a learned man, that irregularity is no indication of genius, he began to lose ground rapidly, when on a sudden he cried out at the Haymarket, There is no God! It was then surmised more generally and more gravely that there was something in him, and he stood upon his legs almost to the last. Say what you will, once whispered a friend of mine, there are things in him strong as poison, and original as sin. Doubts, however, were entertained by some, on more mature reflection, whether he earned all his reputation by that witticism: for soon afterwards he declared at the cockpit, that he had purchased a large assortment of cutlasses and pistols, and that, as he was practising the use of them from morning to night, it would be imprudent in persons who were without them either to laugh or boggle at the Dutch vocabulary with which he had enriched our language.... Having had some concern in bringing his reputed father to a sense of penitence for his offences, I waited on the youth likewise in a former illness, not without hope of leading him ultimately to a better way of thinking. I had hesitated too long: I found him far advanced in his convalescence. My arguments are not worth repeating. He replied thus: “I change my mistresses as Tom Southern his shirt, from economy. I cannot afford to keep few: and I am determined not to be forgotten till I am vastly richer. But I assure you, Dr. Burnet, for your comfort, that if you imagine I am led astray by lasciviousness, as you call it, and lust, you are quite as much mistaken as if you called a book of arithmetic a bawdy book. I calculate on every kiss I give, modest or immodest, on lip or paper. I ask myself one question only—what will it bring me?” On my marvelling, and raising up my hands, “You churchmen,” he added, with a laugh, “are too hot in all your quarters for the calm and steddy contemplation of this high mystery.” He spake thus loosely, Mr. Hardcastle, and I confess, I was disconcerted and took my leave of him. If I gave him any offence at all, it could only be when he said, “I should be sorry to die before I have written my life,” and I replied, “Rather say before you have mended it.”—“But, doctor,” continued he, “the work I propose may bring me a hundred pounds;” whereunto I rejoined, “that which I, young gentleman, suggest in preference will be worth much more to you.” At last he is removed from among the living: let us hope the best: to wit, that the mercies which have begun with man’s forgetfulness will be crowned with God’s forgiveness.’ I. 164.
In the Conversation between Peter Leopold and the President du Paty, there is a good deal of curious local information and sensible remark; but there is too constant a balance kept up between the arguments in favour of reform, and the difficulties attending it. Our author is one of those cats-cradle reasoners who never see a decided advantage in any thing but indecision, one of those adepts in political Platonics, who are always in love with the theory of what is right, till it comes to be put in practice. On the subject of this dialogue, we have but one remark to repeat, which is, that in such matters to be nominally humane is to be practically so—that where there is a disposition in governments to lessen the sum of human misery, there is the power,—and that the spirit of humanity is the great thing wanting to society!
We own we like Mr. Landor best when he introduces the great men of antiquity upon the carpet. He seems then to throw aside his narrow and captious prejudices, expands his view with the distance of the objects he contemplates, and infuses a strength, a severity, a fervour and sweetness into his style, not unworthy of the admirable models whom he would be supposed to imitate. Such in great part is the tone of the observations that pass between Demosthenes and Eubulides.