and he poured out on the humblest objects of Nature an abundant tenderness that in a less vigorous temperament would have had the character of a morbid sentimentalism. The beautiful lines in which he deprecates the plucking of flowers will be found in the Faesulan Idyl, and the destruction of some sparrows elicited this solemn reprobation. Ah me! what rumour do I hear? On one more grateful and more wise. This is not the place to enlarge on Landor's command of the Latin language, which enabled him to use it for every purpose, and to adapt it to every theme, from the fables of Greek mythology to the incidents and characters of his own day. 'His style,' wrote Bishop Thirlwall, 'is not that either of the golden or the silver or of any earlier or later age of Latinity. It is the style of Landor, and it is marked with the stamp not only of his intellect, but of his personal idiosyncrasy. This is the cause of that obscurity which must be felt, even by scholars, to mar to some extent the enjoyment of his Latin poetry 1.' The composition of two delightful reviews on Catullus and Theocritus about 1842, accompanied by the necessity of translating certain passages into English, produced a revival of that peculiar alternation of classic and English expressions of poetic thought of which Gebir was the early illustration. 1 Landor's Latin poems belong to English literature, and thus two of his most perfect epigrams may be here appropriately inserted. 'Non ut ames-ut amere, peto, da, dulcis Ianthe; In Philological Museum, 1832. VISIS IMAGINIBUS ROMANORUM VETERUM. 'Vos nudo capite atque vos saluto, Dicar rusticus ad meos reversus.' Of these one of the first was the Hamadryad, a dramatic idyl of the time when to every man the shapes of Nature were but the reflections of his own, and in the Collection of all his writings during the next three years he not only added other similar pieces, such as the Cymodameia, but translated most of the Latin idyls already printed with a force and ingenuity that left no trace of their original form. These again were brought together in a volume under the title of Hellenics, and others later under that of Heroic Idyls, after he had returned to England in consequence of domestic discomforts and had established himself once more at Bath, the scene of his happiest youthful days. He returned once more to Italy, and died at Florence in his 90th year. The consummate grace of many of Landor's smaller pieces will ever recommend them to the general reader, but the bulk of his poetry can only be appreciated by those who possess cognate tastes and something of similar acquisitions. There remains however a just interest in this signal example of the enduring dominion of the old classic forms of thought not only over the young imagination but over the matured and most cultivated intelligence. To Keats they assimilated themselves almost without learning by a certain natural affinity; to the industrious and scholarly Landor they became the lifelong vital forces not only of poetic generation but of moral sustenance. They gave to his character the heroic influences which alone subdued the wilfulness of his temperament, and amid all the confusions of life kept his heart high and his fancy pure. But they did not limit the powers they controlled: in the Examination of Shakespeare he is the Englishman of the Elizabethan age, in the Pentameron the Italian of that of Petrarch and Boccaccio, as even when most Greek and most Latin he is ever Landor himself alone. HOUGHTON. [The peculiar orthography has been preserved in these extracts: it was adopted by Julius Hare, and by Connop Thirlwall in his earlier writings.] THE SHELL. [From Gebir, Book I.] I am not daunted, no; I will engage. And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. PRAYERS. [From Book V.] Ye men of Gades, armed with brazen shields, For Earth contains no nation where abounds Tho' different, glows with beauty; at the throne TAMAR AND THE NYMPH. [From Book VI.] 'Oh seek not destin'd evils to divine, Found out at last too soon! cease here the search, 'Tis vain, 'tis impious, 'tis no gift of mine; I will impart far better, will impart What makes, when Winter comes, the Sun to rest How whirlpools have absorb'd them, storms o'erwhelm'd, The sprightly nymph whom constant Zephyr woos, With here and there a flower his lofty brow Shaded with vines and mistleto and oak He rears, and mystic bards his fame resound. Will harbour us from ill.' While thus she spake, And breath'd ambrosial odours, o'er his cheek And strength and pleasure beam'd upon his brow. The sacred ile that shrines the queen of love. The cloudlike cliffs and thousand towers of Crete, Phoebus had rais'd and fixt them, to surround He saw the land of Pelops, host of Gods, That tread his banks but fear the thundering tide; And poplar-crown'd Spercheus, and reclined |