LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.*

We are not among those who look upon the present race of authors as a set of ill-used gentlemen; on the contrary, we are of opinion, that at no other period of our literary annals have they, generally speaking, met with so nearly the just measure of their deserts, at the hands both of the critics and the public. We do not believe that a single striking instance can be pointed out, among living writers, of a reputation built up without foundation, or of a solid foundation remaining long without an answerable superstructure above it. We do not mean that false pretensions are not frequently puffed into a momentary popularity; for in this, as in all other cases, money and favour will have their way, and perhaps ought to have it. If there were not a great deal of falsehood put forth to the world in connexion with matters of this nature, there would be a proportionate lack of truth. And on the other hand, nothing is so easy as to keep down a reputation for a time, where those who take upon themselves to state the case, and examine the evidence, happen to "have the ear of the court,” and are at the same time gifted with much malice and a little wit, joined to and set in motion by envy or personal pique. But these results, however skilfully brought about, are in both cases equally brief. In fact, a grossly mistaken notion of literary merit cannot long and generally prevail in the present day. Time was with us, when it required a hundred or so of years to make known to English readers the merits of "Paradise Lost." Now, as many days would suffice to spread the fame of such a work over the civilized world. And though the "Triumphs of Temper" might, even in our own day, have been passed off as the Triumphs of Poetry, for a week or a month, the next would have found them just where they are.

We have been led into these observations by the peculiar circumstances under which we find the work, the title of which stands at the head of our paper. The two first volumes of it have now been before the world for three or four years; and we will venture to assert that during that period, no one other work has come forward, presenting more deep, serious, and interesting claims upon public attention.

It is our intention, in the present article, to do our poor endeavour towards extending the reputation of a work, in the composition of which, the author, relying on his own talent and originality, seems to have rejected the elements of popularity which other writers have employed.

The title of the work bespeaks its form. It consists of conversations, for the most part between the illustrious dead of former ages; among others, between Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney, Queen Elizabeth and Cecil, Milton and Andrew Marvel, Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker, Washington and Franklin, David Hume and John Home, Johnson and Horne Tooke, &c.; and, among those of antiquity, Eschines and Phocion, Demosthenes and Eubulides, Pericles and Sophocles, Aristoteles and Calisthenes, Cicero and his brother Quinctus, &c. &c. With respect to those particular conversations just enumerated, perhaps the most explanatory notion we can convey of them is, that they are such as the very persons in whose mouths they are put may be supposed to have held in their actual intercourse with one another; such, no less in point of thought and sentiment than of style and manner. In a word, it is no extravagant praise of them to state a belief, that the illustrious persons whose names are borrowed for the occasions respectively, never expressed themselves in a manner and to an effect more worthy of their exalted fame; we mean, so far as each discussion goes. With respect to the subjects discussed, they are of great variety, and include most of the great moral and political questions which have from time to time agitated the highest intellects of the world, and on which the strength and happiness of nations and society, and consequently of every individual form

Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, by W. S. Landor, Esq. 3 vols. 8vo.

ing these, depends. There is not a human being, from the highest to the lowest in the scale of existing society, that is not more or less interested in the views sought to be developed in most of these admirable conversations; and there is not one conversation, among those of the kind to which we are now referring, that does not include either some new moral or political truths, or some new light thrown upon those which were before recognized, or some new mode of setting forth, or enforcing, or illustrating them. But besides these calm discussions of high moral and political questions, there are conversations having for their subjects various other matters, more or less grave, or light, or even humorous; and finally, several which seek to develope character and passion merely, and which should rather have been called dramatic scenes than conversations. Some of the most beautiful and effective portions of the volumes will be found among these latter.

Mr. Landor has shown by this work that he possesses much intellectual acuteness; great clearness and vigour of understanding; a high proporti ›n of that only true wisdom which consists in the ability to judge justly, and to choose, according to that judgment, on general questions of right and wrong; and withal, a very considerable knowledge of the natural springs and movements of the human heart. But blended with, and occasionally rising above and triumphing over all these except the last, are the poetical qualities of his mind-the sensibilities, the sympathies, and the imagination: and from these it is that spring, together with some of the highest beauties, what will be looked upon as the errors and blemishes of the work before us.

We will proceed to point out those conversations in the two first volumes which strike us as most worthy of attention, and then present the reader with an extract or two from the third volume, which is scarcely yet in the hands of the public. Indeed, a rapid glance at the contents of the whole work may perhaps not be thrown away; since it will show that all classes of readers-not excepting the merely idle and desultory, who seek momentary excitement alone-will find something here to suit their various tastes and habits.

The first volume of the Imaginary Conversations opens with one between Richard Cœur de Lion and the Abbot of Boxley. It is short, and written in parts, with force and spirit; but partakes more of the nature of a scene from a drama than a formal conversation, and is far from being satisfactory or complete.

The second conversation is entirely to our tastes. It is between Sir Philip Sidney and his friend Lord Brooke,-he who caused himself to be described on his tomb as "the friend of Sir Philip Sidney.' It is full, to overflowing, of beauty-of that highest and rarest class of beauty which results from the willing union of poetry with philosophy. The friends sit together beneath a spreading oak in the Park at Penshurst, and talk in strains of calm, pure, and unaffected wisdom, worthy of themselves and of the place. Their talk is desultory,—as such talk, uttered in the presence of such scenes, must and should be. But it touches on no subject idly; and leaves none that it touches till it has brightened and beautified it with thoughts and images, no less new than just. We are strongly tempted to give some passages-one in particular, on the nature and causes of happiness, beginning at p. 23. But we must refrain. One paragraph, however, we must give the concluding one (spoken by Sidney) on this subject—because it is applicable in a very beautiful manner, and might be offered as a sort of motto, to all the finer portions of Mr. Landor's labours.

"O my friend! is it nothing to think that this hand of mine, over which an insect is creeping, and upon which another more loathsome one ere long will pasture, may hold forth to my fellow men, by resolution of heart in me and perseverance, those things which shall outlive the least perishable in the whole dominions of mortality? Creatures, of whom the best and weightiest part are the feathers in their caps, and of whom the lightest are their words and actions, curl their whiskers and their lips in scorn upon similar meditations. Let us indulge in them : they are not weak,-suckled by Wisdom, taught to walk by Virtue.” (i. 35.)

The third dialogue is between Henry IV. of England and Sir Árnold Savage, an ancestor of the author, who was twice Speaker of the Commons

in that day, and who distinguished himself by that famous speech to the King, in which, in the name of the people, he refused the supplies" till every cause of public grievance was removed." The dialogue is very short, and is conducted on both sides with a cool and temperate dignity that is very characteristic. It is founded on the speech alluded to, and concludes with the following very kingly proposition, and the noble replication to it, either of which, uttered openly in our own more refined day, would throw a whole court into consternation.

"Henry. Faith! I could find it in my heart, Sir Arnold, to clip thine eagle's claws, and perch thee somewhere in the peerage.

"Savage. Measureless is the distance between my liege and me; but I Occupy the second rank among men now living, forasmuch as, under the guidance of Almighty God, the most discreet and courageous have appointed me, unworthy as I am, to be the great comprehensive symbol of the English people."

The fourth conversation is between Southey and Porson; somewhat long, but characteristic. It is almost entirely critical, with the exception of an amusing story (and no doubt a true one) which Porson relates, how he was one evening inveigled, by a young after-dinner acquaintance, into a fashionable rout, thinking he was going to enjoy a comfortable supper of oysters and porter, at the cyder cellar!

The fifth conversation, between Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble, is excellent. Nothing can be better than the way in which the character of Cromwell is hit off-cold, cruel, sarcastic, and (as Noble is made to say very finely) witty over blood, as other men are over wine. The dialogue consists of a remonstrance by Noble against the proposed death of Charles, and a defence of it by Cromwell.

The sixth conversation is between Eschines and Phocion; and it takes us at once into the heart of antiquity, in a manner and with an effect that we scarcely believed any living writer to be capable of. This, after all, is the forte of Mr. Landor, who, in addition to his natural qualities for the task, is unquestionably one of the most accomplished classical scholars of his day. We do not mean that he could have capped Greek verses with his master, the late Dr. Parr: but we must venture to think that, in regard to all the true uses, and even the applications of scholarship, he is as much superior to that undoubtedly distinguished person, as Raphael, for example, was to his master, Pietro Peruzino;-and superior to him much in the same manner, namely, by the faculty and the habit of awakening into forms of life and beauty what the other left comparatively dry, spiritless, and dead. Of this fine dialogue, which treats of three or four topics, but chiefly of willmaking, and of eloquence, we shall only say that it is in all respects worthy of the speakers-in style, in sentiment, in argument, in matter, in effect. We must again say of this dialogue, and of several others of a similar kind, it is difficult to believe that the supposed speakers themselves ever uttered, within the same space, finer thoughts in better words.

The seventh conversation is between Queen Elizabeth and Cecil. It is on the subject of Spenser, and his complaint on the delay in the payment of his pension as Poet Laureate; and nothing can be more spirited and royal than the strain in which the Queen chides her counsellor for his narrowthoughted parsimony in that matter.

The eighth conversation is between James I. and Isaac Casaubon. It is full of acute remarks and strong reasoning, but is not one of those on which (we suspect) readers of any class will dwell with much pleasure, unless it be the violent anti-Catholics of our day and country-in whose sight it will perhaps, cover, like charity, some of the multitude of sins (as they will think them) which Mr. Landor has been guilty of in another sort. It is chiefly occupied in arguments against and vituperations of popery. The spirit of it may be judged of by the following passage :—

"So long as this pest exists on earth, religion will be a prostitute, civilization a starveling, and freedom a dishonoured outcast, a maimed beggar.”

The ninth conversation is between the author in his own person, and an

Italian nobleman, the Marchese Pallavicini. The painful nature of the chief subject is relieved by some very interesting remarks on the wretched taste of the modern Italians in scenery and domestic architecture.

The tenth conversation is a sort of war-scene, written with great spirit, pathos, and dramatic effect. It springs out of the death of a young English officer in Egypt, and offers a fine tribute to the character of Kleber, at the expense of the rest of his countrymen, for whom Mr. Landor never loses an occasion of expressing his ineffable contempt.

The eleventh conversation, between Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle, will succeed in puzzling most of its readers, before they discover its exact object and tendency; and we are not among those who can very clearly explain it to them. What seems pretty certain however is, that the concluding portion shadows forth under another name the author's notion of Lord Byron as a poet and a man: so at least we gather from a note, in which the author expresses his contrition at having painted the picture. He need not have been uneasy, provided he had not written the note in question. There are several of these allegorical representations of real and living persons scattered up and down throughout the work: but, such is our simplicity in these matters, the passages in question would have been merely unintelligible to us, had we not heard it whispered that, like the beef-eater in "The Critic," they represent" statesmen in disguise.”

The twelfth conversation is between the celebrated Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the President du Paty, who visited Italy during Leopold's government, and whose acquaintance was sought by him. It is, perhaps, upon the whole, the very finest of all these conversations, both as regards the reader and the writer; for it must be confessed that, after all, the noblest, because the most useful office a man can perform towards his fellow man, and the rarest that men do perform, is to search out, to disseminate, and to enforce wise and just views on the nature and effects of those laws and institutions by which societies are constituted, and in virtue (or in vice) of which we "live and move and have our (moral) being." This dialogue, which is of great length, is engaged chiefly in discussing various important points of law and of religion, as connected with the government of a state; and we really think it but poor praise to say of it, that we know not where else to turn, among the writings of our own day, for so much pure and true political wisdom, set forth in such clear, concise, and appropriate language. Mr. Landor himself will probably, before the date of these remarks, have discovered (if indeed he ever doubted it) that it is of little consequence his work not having yet found its way to the parlours and drawing-rooms of the million; since this dialogue alone will show him that it has evidently penetrated to the secret closets of the twenty who lead (or drive) that million, who have not dared quite to disregard it.

The thirteenth conversation, between Demosthenes and Eubulides, is a very excellent one. Its chief subjects are oratory and style; but it contains also many fine remarks and illustrations on other matters; and also two or three bitter, but we cannot think very successful attacks upon some celebrated moderns, after a fashion that may be best illustrated by a paragraph. Professing to speak of the projects of despotism that were contemplated in his day, Demosthenes says,

"What an eulogy on the human understanding! to assert that it is dangerous to choose a succession of administrators from the wisest of mankind, and advisable to derive it from the weakest! There have been free Greeks within our memory, who would have entered into an holy alliance with the most iniquitous and most insolent of usurpers, Alexander of Pheræ, a territory in which Thebe, who murdered her husband, is praised above all others of both sexes. O Juno! may such marriages be frequent in such countries!"

The fourteenth conversation consists of a mock interview between Bonaparte and the President of the Senate who comes to deliver him an address. It seems introduced merely for the purpose of hanging a note upon it, which is intended to be an estimate of the late Emperor of the French, but will by most be looked upon as a tirade against him.

The fifteenth conversation is between the Abbé Delille and Mr. Landor, and is almost wholly critical. As might be expected, the Englishman has much the best of it. Indeed, the half-pastoral, half-Parisian Abbé is pretty nearly demolished by the attacks of his friend on all his hitherto immaculate models. The air of ineffable superiority which the unknown Englishman assumes over the idol of the Parisian salons, and the equally ineffable air of simplicity with which the latter, as in duty bound, bears it, are very amusing; and they are no less characteristic of each of the parties. This conversation, which in all probability actually took place (or something very like it), must have sent the good Abbé home in a most amiable state of mystification as to the pretensions of all the French poets extant,-himself alone excepted,whom Mr. Landor, of course, does not meddle with.

The sixteenth conversation is between the late Emperor Alexander and Capo d'Istria. It is a very clever and acute exposé of the views and policy of the European Courts respectively, in relation (chiefly) to the Greek question. It will, however, strike the reader of this dialogue that the author has "'oer-informed one at least of the speakers-as indeed he himself has suggested, in a very characteristic note, in which he candidly complains of his inability to write down to many of his speakers.

"

The seventeenth conversation is a very short, but very beautiful and interesting one, between Kosciusko and Poniatowski.

The eighteenth and last conversation in this volume, is between Middleton and Magliabechi, and touches on various points of religious faith, but chiefly on the duty and efficacy of prayer, which Middleton is known to have doubted, or rather disbelieved. We do not find any thing positively to except against in this dialogue; and there is also some very acute reasoning in it, on the part of Middleton; and two or three most edifying stories from the worthy Italian. But, nevertheless, it is one of about five or six in the whole three volumes, that we could without much intreaty have been induced to spare.

We find that our limits put it out of the question for us to give even a glance at the contents of the second volume.

We now turn (too late, we fear) to the new volume which is scarcely yet in the hands of the public. We shall wave every thing in the shape of formal criticism on it; partly as being in a great measure anticipated by what we have already said, but chiefly that we may give all the rest of our space to an extract or two: not that these can be made to prove or illustrate more than portions of what we have said of this excellent work; for, such is the variety of its contents, no one dialogue that we could give would do more than speak for itself. The book, to be appreciated, must be read.

As an example of what may be looked upon as the political portions of this work, we may refer to the dedication of this third volume, which is addressed "To Bolivar the Liberator." The reader will find it written in a strain of pure, fervid, and fearless eloquence, of which he has hitherto met with few specimens in the day in which he lives-a day than which none ever stood in greater need of such eloquence. We will now give (as much on account of its brevity as its beauty) a dialogue illustrative of what may be called the dramatic portion of these volumes:—

TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA.*

"Tiberius. Vipsania, my Vipsania, whither art thou walking?

Vipsania. Whom do I see? my Tiberius?

Tiberius. Ah! no no no! but thou seest the father of the little Drusus. Press him to thy heart the more closely for this meeting, and give him....

Vipsania. Tiberius, the altars, the gods, the destinies, are between us.... I will take it from this hand of thine, and thus shall he receive it.

"Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa, was divorced from Tiberius by Augustus and Livia, in order that he might marry Julia, and hold the empire by inheritance. He retained such an affection for her, and showed it so intensely when he once met her afterwards, that every precaution was taken lest the meeting should recur."