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wine, brought up the single line-" Vidit et erubuit nympha pudica Deum?" So cheaply, sometimes, does genius purchase immortal fame. But, apart from those felicitous lines, and from his splendid "Count Julian," the "Conversations" form the main pillar of Landor's reputation. They are too often, it is true, destitute of vraisemblance and dramatic skill; too often resemble uneasy interlocutions between the various faculties and phases of one mind; are poisoned by political allusion; swarm with quaintnesses and crotchets; nor are the speeches always characteristic; nor do the speakers, in Boswell phrase, always "talk their best." The "Second Dialogue," published in "Blackwood," between Southey and Porson, is senselessly and malignantly minute. It is itself a proof-Coleridge to the contrary, notwithstanding-that malevolence may clothe itself in wealthy and redundant imagery, and remain malevolent still. We surrender it entire into the hands of the clever person who caricatured it in an after number. Not so Tasso and Cornelia, where, at length, the quicksilver of that strange mind is caught and fixed. It is worth many "Laments of Tasso." How delicately contrasted is the wayward irritability of the poet, and the more than motherly tenderness of the sister! It is love watching madness with unalterable mien." Glide where the wild river of his mind may, she accompanies it like a soft green bank, at once restraining and beautifying its course. In all those dialogues, we are compelled to admire the hoarded wisdom-the familiarity with the details of the most distant periods the original reflections-the infinite variety, and quaint felicity of illustration. And we reflect with keen regret on the fantastic and fragmentary form in which they present themselves to our notice. In these disjecta membra, he has scattered and shattered powers adequate to the most heroic tasks. He has sent forth a flight of November meteors, when he might have built up

a sun.

Such is, perhaps we should say such was, Walter Savage Landor, who deems himself a hero in an unheroic age-a giant in Lilliput -and who is a sleep-walker amid the passing crowd. Gifted, in the very prodigality of nature, with "energetic reason and a shaping mind" with penetration, fancy, eloquence, of a jagged brilliance, and an unrivalled power of reproducing and rekindling the cold ashes of the past, he has become little more than the echo-cliff, catching, concentrating, warping, repeating the varied voices of antiquity. A picturesque, towering station he thus holds. Like Mont Blanc reflecting the light of day after it has died to the valley, does he shower upon us the relict radiance of other ages. This is the high end he has in part fulfilled, and which in part covers his coldness and contempt for the "ignorant present time," his faults of taste, and acerbities of temper. Enough surely for one man, in a period when labour is so in

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tensely divided, when every corner of the literary vineyard is so fully occupied, to have reanimated the Athenian age in his "Pericles and Aspasia;" to have unrolled the shroud of Shakpere; "built up that pile of forehead, cleansed and kindled those sagacious eyes, and put into those rich revived lips words not unworthy of the myriad-minded, in the "Examination;" in his poetry to have illumined the intrenched obscurities of his unavoidable style by gleams of rare power and beauty; and in the Imaginary Conversations to have ranged over every ageshooting his soul into sages, and statesmen, and poets, and grammarians, and conquerors of every shape and degree-catching their spirit-dissecting their motives-thinking their thoughtsspeaking their words, yet casting into, and over all, the peculiarity and boldness of his own intellect. We take our leave of him in his own noble words. Like his own Julian

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Wakeful he sits, and lonely and unmoved,
Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men;
As oftentimes, an eagle, ere the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary, stands immoveable,
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,
In the cold light, above the dews of morn.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Ir is a fortunate thing for a poet to make a hit at starting. Once write a popular poem, or even song, and your name cleaves its native night, and obtains that floating notoriety which is rarely, if ever, lost, and which secures attention, if not fame, to whatever else you write. Not only are the booksellers for ever after your accommodating friends, but the public, when once familiarised with a name, after once relaxing its sage face into a smile of complacency, is loath to write itself down an ass, by recalling, however it may modify, its verdict. Otherwise with one whose struggles after renown, however vigorous, have altogether failed of introducing him into any circle of admirers, much wider than that which any talented man can command by the private exercise of his abilities. His name, if alluded to by any of his devoted friends, comes like a staggering blow to the ignorance of the portion of the pensive public which never heard of him or of his works before. Its mention, accordingly, is resented as an impertinence, and inch by inch must he continue to climb the sides,

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and probably die ere he reach the summit of the difficult hill. Fortunate, in truth, for a poet is the early culmination of his name; but only in a secular point of view, or when he happens to be a disinterested and enthusiastic devotee of his art. If he have no high religious purposes in its prosecution-if he be greedy of its immediate gains if he love the hasty garlands of reputation better than that slow, deep, rich flower of fame which God, "who hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration in which Alps and Andes come and go like rainbows," rears by a long, late process-his rapid and instant popularity is a curse, and not a blessing, to his genius. Not every one can, like a Schiller or a Goethe, dally a while with the meretricious mistress, reputation-drink from her hand the daintiest cup of her enchantments, and then, rejecting the wanton, bind himself up, by severe and solemn training, to gain the chary and chaste, but divine hand of fame—of that fame which is indeed": "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise" the last infirmity of noble minds." Too many besides Thomas Campbell tarry in the Calypso island till the sun be down, and Ithaca is still afar.

And yet we readily admit that this true poet began his career with a strong and pure love, if not the profoundest insight into the meaning and mystery of his art. Nowhere shall we find the poetical feeling more beautifully linked to the joyous rapture of youth than in the "Pleasures of Hope." It is the outburst of genuine enthusiasm; and even its glitter we love, as reminding us of the "shining morning face" of a schoolboy. But our objection to Campbell is, that this precipitate shine of fame upon his young head dazzled his eyes, satisfied his ambition, chilled his love of his art, and excites the suspicion, that his real object all along had been the dowry of the muse, and not herself. The "Pleasures of Hope" bears no more proportion to the powers of its author than does the "Robbers" to those of Schiller, or "Werter" to those of Goethe. But where is Campbell's "Wallenstein," or his "Faust?" We have instead only such glimpses -the more tantalising that they are beautiful-of a rare and real vein of original genius, as are furnished in the "Last Man,” "Hohenlinden," and "O'Connor's Child."

Campbell's great power was enthusiasm-subdued. His tempest moves on gracefully, and as to the sound of music. You see him arranging the dishevelled and streaming hair, smoothing the furrowed forehead, compressing the full and thrilling lips of inspiration. He arrests the fury of his turbulent vein by stretching forth the calm hand of taste, as an escaped lunatic is abated in a moment by the whisper of his keeper, or by his more terrible tap of quiet, imperious command. There is a perpetual alternation going on in his mind. He is this moment possessed by his imagination; the next, he masters and tames it, to walk

meekly in the harness of his purpose; or, to use his own fine image, while his genius is flaming above, his taste below, "like the dial's silent power,"

Measures inspiration's hour,

And tells its height in heaven.

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He is inferior thus to the very first class of poets, whose taste and art are unconscious. His are at once conscious to himself and visible to others. Their works, like Nature's, arrange themselves into elegance and order, amid their impetuous and ecstatic motion; their apparent extravagancies obey a law of their own, and create a taste for their appreciation; their hair, shed on the whirlwind, falls abroad, through its own divine instinct, in lines of waving beauty; their flashing eye enriches the day; their wild, uncontrollable step "brings from the dust the sound of liberty.' But, if Campbell be too measured, and timid, and self-watchful, to appertain to those Demi-urgi of poetry, he is far less to be classed with the imitative and the cold-the schools of Boileau and Pope. He not only belongs to no school; but, in short, deep gushes of genuine genius-in single thoughts, where you do not know whether more to admire the felicity of the conception, or the delicate and tremulous finish of the expression-in drops of spiritstirring or melting song-and in a general manliness and chastity of manner, Campbell was perhaps the finest ARTIST of his day. His mind had the refinement of the female intellect, added to the energy of the classic man. His taste was not of the Gothic order, neither was it of the Roman; it was that of a Greek, neither grotesque nor finically fastidious. His imagery was select not abundant; out of a multitude of figures which throng on his mind, he had the resolution to choose only the one which, by pre-established harmony, seemed destined to enshrine the idea. His sentiment was sweet, without being mawkish, and recherché, without being affected. Here, indeed, is Campbell's fine distinction. He never becomes metaphysical in discriminating the various shades, nor morbid in painting the darker moods of sentiment. He preserves continually the line of demarcation between sentiment and passion. With the latter, in its turbulence -its selfish engrossment-the unvaried, but gorgeous colouring which it flings across all objects the flames of speech which break out from its lips, he rarely meddles. But of that quieter and nobler feeling, which may be called, from its stillness, its subdued tone, its whispered accents, its shade of pensiveness, the moonshine of the mind, he is pre-eminently the poet. His lines on "Revisiting a Scene in Argyleshire," and those on "Leaving a Scene in Bavaria," are the perfection of this species of poetry. They are meditations, imbued at once with all the tenderness of moonlight, and all the strength of sunshine. Manly is his melan

choly, and even his sigh proclaims the breadth and depth of the chest from which it is upheaved.

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To bear is to conquer our fate," is the motto of this brave philosophy, which contrasts well with the wayward kicking of Byron against the pricks with the whimper of poor Keats-with the unearthly shriek by which you track Shelley through his wildest wanderings in the mist-and with the sad propensity of the Lakers to analyse their tears ere they permit them to fall to the ground; to refine away their robust emotions into shadow; and to cover from their eyes the real calamities of existence by a veil of dream.

Campbell is par excellence the poet of the fair sex. There are no works which are more relished by cultivated females. His flight rises precisely to that pitch where they are able fully and gracefully to follow. The manly elegance, moreover, of his mental costume; the unaffected and becoming purity of his speech, so distinct from finical purism; the homage done to the private affections and gentle domestic ties these being the qualities which please them in a man, are sure to fascinate them in a poet. "Gertrude of Wyoming" has brought this enviable kind of popularity to a point. It strives to embody all the quiet, without the insipidity of domestic life; and by the picturesque accompaniments of American woods, flageolets echoing from romantic towns, war-drums heard in the distance, tomahawks flashing in the sunset, Indians bursting across the stage, it does, to some extent, relieve that tedium and commonplace, through which too often " glides the calm current of domestic joy." It is not, however, on the whole, an artistically finished work. It has no story; at least the tale it tells has little interest or novelty, and is somewhat wire-drawn. The characters are rather insipid. Gertrude's father is a volcano burnt out. Gertrude herself is a pretty, romantic Miss of Pall Mall, dropt down by the side of the Susquehannah, where, undismayed by the sight of the dim aboriginal woods, she pulls out her illustrated copy of Shakspere, and, with rapt look, and hand elegantly lost in the tangles of her hair, proceeds to study the character of Imogen, or Lady Macbeth, or Mrs Ann Page. Her lover is a curled darling," who has gone the grand tour-has seen the world, and returned, like a goodmannered youth, from the saloons of London, and the carnivals of Venice, in search of this beauty of the woods. Of Brandt, something might have been made, but nothing is. The poet thinks him hardly company for Master Henry the picturesque, and Miss Gertrude the romantic. Even Outalissi, ere qualified for intercourse with these paragons, must have his whiskers clipped, his nails pared, and become a sentimental savage, who shall go off with a fine nasal twang (talking in his pathetic deathsong, by the way, of a clock that had found out the perpetual

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