Landor's Biography, edited by James Forster, and lately published
here, well repays perusal. Landor seems to have been the victim of his
temperament all his life long. I know not when I have read a commentary
so appalling on the fate that breaks a noble mind on the wheel of
its passions, precipitating it into the dungeons but to brighten its
lights. Of impetuous wing, his genius was yet sure of its boldest
flights, and to him, if any modern, may be applied Coleridge's epithet
of "myriad mindedness," so salient, varied, so daring the sweep of his
thought. More than any he reminds of Shakespeare in dramatic power; of
Plato, in his mastery of dialogue; in epic force, of Æschylus. He seems
to have been one of the demigods, cast down, out of place, out of his
time, restless ever, and indignant at his destiny,--
"Heaven's exile straying from the orb of light."
His stormful, wayward career exemplifies in a remarkable manner the
recoiling Fate pervading human affairs.
"A sharp dogmatic man," says Emerson, who met him when abroad, "with
a great deal of knowledge, a great deal of worth and a great deal of
pride, with a profound contempt for all that he does not understand,
a master of elegant learning and capable of the utmost delicacy of
sentiment, and yet prone to indulge a sort of ostentation of coarse
imagery and language. He has capital enough to have furnished the
brain of fifty stock authors, yet has written no good book. In these
busy days of avarice and ambition, when there is so little disposition
to profound thought, or to any but the most superficial intellectual
entertainments, a faithful scholar, receiving from past ages the
treasures of wit, and enlarging them by his own lore, is a friend and
consoler of mankind. Whoever writes for the love of mirth and beauty,
and not with ulterior ends, belongs to this sacred class, and among
these, few men of the present age have a better claim to be numbered
than Mr. Landor. Wherever genius and taste have existed, wherever
freedom and justice are threatened (which he values as the element in
which genius may work), his interest is here to be commanded. Nay,
when we remember his rich and ample page, wherein we are always sure
to find free and sustained thought, a keen and precise understanding,
an affluent and ready memory familiar with all chosen books, an
industrious observation in every department of life, an experience to
which nothing has occurred in vain, honor for every just sentiment, and
a scourge like that of the Furies for every oppressor, whether public
or private, we feel how dignified is this perpetual censor in his
cerule chair, and we wish to thank a benefactor of the reading world."
No writer of our time in the difficult species of composition, the
dialogue, has attained a success upon so high a plane as Landor
in his Conversations, wherein he has treated almost every human
interest, brought his characters together, like Plato's interlocutors,
from different ages and of differing opinions, using these as
representatives of the world's best literature. And besides these his
masterpieces, his verses have the chaste and exquisite quality of the
best Greek poetry.
"His dialogues number," says his biographer, "not fewer than a hundred
and fifty. Different as these were in themselves, it was not the
less the distinguishing mark of their genius to be, both in their
conformation and in their mass, almost strangely alike; and it is
this unity in their astonishing variety, the fire of an inexpressible
genius running through the whole, that gives to his books containing
them their place among the books not likely to pass away; there is
scarcely a form or function of the human mind, sincere or sprightly,
cogitative or imaginative, historical, fanciful, or real, which has not
been exercised or brought into play in this extraordinary series of
writings. The world, past and present, is reproduced in them, with its
variety and uniformity, its continuity and change."
What Landor says of written dialogue, holds in still wider latitude,
even, in conversation.
"When a man writes a dialogue, he has it all to himself, the pro and
the con, the argument and the reply. Within the shortest given space
of time, he may indulge in every possible variety of mood. He may
contradict himself every minute. In the same page, without any sort of
violence, the most different shades of sentiment may find expression.
Extravagance of statement, which in other forms could not be admitted,
may be fully put forth. Dogmas of every description may be dealt in,
audaciously propounded, or passionately opposed, with a result all the
livelier in proportion to the mere vehemence expended on them. In no
other style of composition is a writer so free from ordinary restraints
upon opinion, or so absolved from self-control. Better far than any
other, it adapts itself to eagerness and impatience. Dispensing with
preliminaries, the jump _in medias res_ may at once be taken safely.
That one thing should be unexpectedly laid aside, and another as
capriciously taken up, is quite natural to it; the subjects being
few that may not permissively branch off into all the kindred topics
connected with them, when the formalities held ordinarily necessary in
the higher order of prose composition have disappeared in the freedom
of conversation."