'Conversations' would have been had they been perfect. To say that they
are very far from perfect is only to say that they were the compositions
of a man; but Landor was also a man to whom his best friends would
hardly attribute a remarkable immunity from fault. The dialogue, it need
hardly be remarked, is one of the most difficult of all forms of
composition. One rule, however, would be generally admitted. Landor
defends his digressions on the ground that they always occur in real
conversations. If we 'adhere to one point,' he says (in Southey's
person), 'it is a disquisition, not a conversation.' And he adds, with
one of his wilful back-handed blows at Plato, that most writers of
dialogue plunge into abstruse questions, and 'collect a heap of
arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiff of some rhetorical
charlatan tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons for the occasion.'
Possibly! but for all that, the perfect dialogue ought not, we should
say, to be really incoherent. It should include digressions, but the
digressions ought to return upon the main subject. The art consists in
preserving real unity in the midst of the superficial deviations
rendered easy by this form of composition. The facility of digression is
really a temptation, not a privilege. Anybody can write blank verse of a
kind, because it so easily slips into prose; and that is why good blank
verse is so rare. And so anybody can write a decent dialogue if you
allow him to ramble as we all do in actual talk. The finest
philosophical dialogues are those in which a complete logical framework
underlies the dramatic structure. They are a perfect fusion of logic and
imagination. Instead of harsh divisions and cross-divisions of the
subject, and a balance of abstract arguments, we have vivid portraits of
human beings, each embodying a different line of thought. But the logic
is still seen, though the more carefully hidden the more exquisite the
skill of the artist. And the purely artistic dialogue which describes
passion or the emotions arising from a given situation should in the
same way set forth a single idea, and preserve a dramatic unity of
conception at least as rigidly as a full-grown play. So far as Landor
used his facilities as an excuse for rambling, instead of so skilfully
subordinating them to the main purpose as to reproduce new variations on
the central theme, he is clearly in error, or is at least aiming at a
lower kind of excellence. And this, it may be said at once, seems to be
the most radical defect in point of composition of Landor's
'Conversations.' They have the fault which his real talk is said to have
exemplified. We are told that his temperament 'disqualified him for
anything like sustained reasoning, and he instinctively backed away from
discussion or argument.' Many of the written dialogues are a prolonged
series of explosions; when one expects a continuous development of a
theme, they are monotonous thunder-growls. Landor undoubtedly had a
sufficient share of dramatic power to write short dialogues expressing a
single situation with most admirable power, delicacy, and firmness of
touch. Nor, again, does the criticism just made refer to those longer
dialogues which are in reality a mere string of notes upon poems or
proposals for reforms in spelling. The slight dramatic form binds
together his pencillings from the margins of 'Paradise Lost' or
Wordsworth's poems very pleasantly, and enables him to give additional
effect to vivacious outbursts of praise or censure. But the more
elaborate dialogues suffer grievously from this absence of a true unity.
There is not that skilful evolution of a central idea without the rigid
formality of scientific discussion which we admire in the real
masterpieces of the art. We have a conglomerate, not an organic growth;
a series of observations set forth with never-failing elegance of style,
and often with singular keenness of perception; but they do not take us
beyond the starting-point. When Robinson Crusoe crossed the Pyrenees,
his guide led him by such dexterous windings and gradual ascents that he
found himself across the mountains before he knew where he was. With
Landor it is just the opposite. After many digressions and ramblings we
find ourselves back on the same side of the original question. We are
marking time with admirable gracefulness, but somehow we are not
advancing. Naturally flesh and blood grow weary when there is no
apparent end to a discussion, except that the author must in time be
wearied of performing variations upon a single theme.
We are more easily reconciled to some other faults which are rather due
to expectations raised by his critics than to positive errors. No one,
for example, would care to notice an anachronism, if Landor did not
occasionally put in a claim for accuracy. I have no objection whatever
to allow Hooker to console Bacon for his loss of the chancellorship, in
calm disregard of the fact that Hooker died some twenty years before
Bacon rose to that high office. The fault can be amended by substituting
any other name for Hooker's. Nor do I at all wish to find in Landor
that kind of archæological accuracy which is sought by some composers of
historical romances. Were it not that critics have asserted the
opposite, it would be hardly worth while to say that Landor's style
seldom condescends to adapt itself to the mouth of the speaker, and that
from Demosthenes to Porson every interlocutor has palpably the true
Landorian trick of speech. Here and there, it is true, the effect is
rather unpleasant. Pericles and Aspasia are apt to indulge in criticism
of English customs, and no weak regard for time and place prevents
Eubulides from denouncing Canning to Demosthenes. The classical dress
becomes so thin on such occasions, that even the small degree of
illusion which one may fairly desiderate is too rudely interrupted. The
actor does not disguise his voice enough for theatrical purposes. It is
perhaps a more serious fault that the dialogue constantly lapses into
monologue. We might often remove the names of the talkers as useless
interruptions. Some conversations might as well be headed, in legal
phraseology, Landor _v._ Landor, or at most Landor _v._ Landor and
another--the other being some wretched man of straw or Guy Faux effigy
dragged in to be belaboured with weighty aphorisms and talk obtrusive
nonsense. Hence sometimes we resent a little the taking in vain of the
name of some old friend. It is rather too hard upon Sam Johnson to be
made a mere 'passive bucket' into which Horne Tooke may pump his
philological notions, with scarcely a feeble sputter or two to represent
his smashing retorts.
There is yet another criticism or two to be added. The extreme
scrupulosity with which Landor polishes his style and removes
superfluities from poetical narrative, smoothing them at times till we
can hardly grasp them, might have been applied to some of the wanton
digressions in which the dialogues abound. We should have been glad if
he had ruthlessly cut out two-thirds of the conversation between
Richelieu and others, in which some charming English pastorals are mixed
up with a quantity of unmistakable rubbish. But, for the most part, we
can console ourselves by a smile. When Landor lowers his head and
charges bull-like at the phantom of some king or priest, we are prepared
for, and amused by, his impetuosity. Malesherbes discourses with great
point and vigour upon French literature, and may fairly diverge into a
little politics; but it is certainly comic when he suddenly remembers
one of Landor's pet grievances, and the unlucky Rousseau has to discuss
a question for which few people could be more ludicrously unfit--the
details of a plan for reforming the institution of English justices of
the peace. The grave dignity with which the subject is introduced gives
additional piquancy to the absurdity. An occasional laugh at Landor is
the more valuable because, to say the truth, one is not very likely to
laugh with him. Nothing is more difficult for an author--as Landor
himself observes in reference to Milton--than to decide upon his own
merits as a wit or humorist. I am not quite sure that this is true; for
I have certainly found authors distinctly fallible in judging of their
own merits as poets and philosophers. But it is undeniable that many a
man laughs at his own wit who has to laugh alone. I will not take upon
myself to say that Landor was without humour; he has certainly a
delicate gracefulness which may be classed with the finer kinds of
humour; but if anybody (to take one instance) will read the story which
Chaucer tells to Boccaccio and Petrarch and pronounce it to be amusing,
I can only say that his notions of humour differ materially from mine.
Some of his wrathful satire against kings and priests has a vigour which
is amusing; but the tact which enables him to avoid errors of taste of a
different kind often fails him when he tries the facetious.
Blemishes such as these go some way, perhaps, to account for Landor's
unpopularity. But they are such as might be amply redeemed by his
vigour, his fulness, and unflagging energy of style. There is no equally
voluminous author of great power who does not fall short of his own
highest achievements in a large part of his work, and who is not open to
the remark that his achievements are not all that we could have wished.
It is doubtless best to take what we can get, and not to repine if we do
not get something better, the possibility of which is suggested by the
actual accomplishment. If Landor had united to his own powers those of
Scott or Shakespeare, he would have been improved. Landor, repenting a
little for some censures of Milton, says to Southey, 'Are we not
somewhat like two little beggar-boys who, forgetting that they are in
tatters, sit noticing a few stains and rents in their father's raiment?'
'But they love him,' replies Southey, and we feel the apology to be
sufficient.
Can we make it in the case of Landor? Is he a man whom we can take to
our hearts, treating his vagaries and ill-humours as we do the testiness
of a valued friend? Or do we feel that he is one whom it is better to
have for an acquaintance than for an intimate? The problem seems to have
exercised those who knew him best in life. Many, like Southey or Napier,
thought him a man of true nobility and tenderness of character, and
looked upon his defects as mere superficial blemishes. If some who came
closer seem to have had a rather different opinion, we must allow that
a man's personal defects are often unimportant in his literary capacity.
It has been laid down as a general rule that poets cannot get on with
their wives; and yet they are poets in virtue of being lovable at the
core. Landor's domestic troubles need not indicate an incapacity for
meeting our sympathies any more than the domestic troubles of
Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Burns, Byron, Shelley, or many others. In
his poetry a man should show his best self; and defects, important in
the daily life which is made up of trifles, may cease to trouble us when
admitted to the inmost recesses of his nature.
Landor, undoubtedly, may be loved; but I fancy that he can be loved
unreservedly only by a very narrow circle. For when we pass from the
form to the substance--from the manner in which his message is delivered
to the message itself--we find that the superficial defects rise from
very deep roots. Whenever we penetrate to the underlying character, we
find something harsh and uncongenial mixed with very high qualities. He
has pronounced himself upon a wide range of subjects; there is much
criticism, some of it of a very rare and admirable order; much
theological and political disquisition; and much exposition, in various
forms, of the practical philosophy which every man imbibes according to
his faculties in his passage through the world. It would be undesirable
to discuss seriously his political or religious notions. To say the
truth, they are not really worth discussing, for they are little more
than vehement explosions of unreasoning prejudice. I do not know whether
Landor would have approved the famous aspiration about strangling the
last of kings with the entrails of the last priest, but some such
sentiment seems to sum up all that he really has to say. His doctrine
so far coincides with that of Diderot and other revolutionists, though
he has no sympathy with their social aspirations. His utterances,
however, remind us too much--in substance, though not in form--of the
rhetoric of debating societies. They are as factitious as the
old-fashioned appeals to the memory of Brutus. They would doubtless make
a sensation at the Union. Diogenes tells us that 'all nations, all
cities, all communities, should combine in one great hunt, like that of
the Scythians at the approach of winter, and follow it' (the kingly
power, to wit) 'up, unrelentingly to its perdition. The diadem should
designate the victim; all who wear it, all who offer it, all who bow to
it, should perish.' Demosthenes, in less direct language, announces the
same plan to Eubulides as the one truth, far more important than any
other, and 'more conducive to whatever is desirable to the well-educated
and free.' We laugh, not because the phrase is overstrained, or intended
to have a merely dramatic truth, for Landor puts similar sentiments into
the mouths of all his favourite speakers, but simply because we feel it
to be a mere form of swearing. The language would have been less
elegant, but the meaning just the same, if he had rapped out a good
mouth-filling oath whenever he heard the name of king. When, in
reference to some such utterances, Carlyle said that 'Landor's principle
is mere rebellion,' Landor was much nettled, and declared himself to be
in favour of authority. He despised American republicanism and regarded
Venice as the pattern State. He sympathised in this, as in much else,
with the theorists of Milton's time, and would have been approved by
Harrington or Algernon Sidney; but, for all that, Carlyle seems pretty
well to have hit the mark. Such republicanism is in reality nothing
more than the political expression of intense pride, or, if you prefer
the word, self-respect. It is the sentiment of personal dignity, which
could not bear the thought that he, Landor, should have to bow the knee
to a fool like George III.; or that Milton should have been regarded as
the inferior of such a sneak as Charles I. But the same feeling would
have been just as much shocked by the claim of a demagogue to override
high-spirited gentlemen. Mobs were every whit as vile as kings. He might
have stood for Shakespeare's Coriolanus, if Coriolanus had not an
unfortunate want of taste in his language. Landor, indeed, being never
much troubled as to consistency, is fond of dilating on the absurdity of
any kind of hereditary rank; but he sympathises, to his last fibre, with
the spirit fostered by the existence of an aristocratic caste, and
producible, so far as our experience has gone, in no other way. He is
generous enough to hate all oppression in every form, and therefore to
hate the oppression exercised by a noble as heartily as oppression
exercised by a king. He is a big boy ready to fight anyone who bullies
his fag; but with no doubts as to the merits of fagging. But then he
never chooses to look at the awkward consequences of his opinion. When
talking of politics, an aristocracy full of virtue and talent, ruling on
generous principles a people sufficiently educated to obey its natural
leaders, is the ideal which is vaguely before his mind. To ask how it is
to be produced without hereditary rank, or to be prevented from
degenerating into a tyrannical oligarchy, or to be reconciled at all
with modern principles, is simply to be impertinent. He answers all such
questions by putting himself in imagination into the attitude of a
Pericles or Demosthenes or Milton, fulminating against tyrants and
keeping the mob in its place by the ascendency of genius. To recommend
Venice as a model is simply to say that you have nothing but contempt
for all politics. It is as if a lad should be asked whether he preferred
to join a cavalry or an infantry regiment, and should reply that he
would only serve under Leonidas.
His religious principles are in the same way little more than the
assertion that he will not be fettered in mind or body by any priest on
earth. The priest is to him what he was to the deists and materialists
of the eighteenth century--a juggling impostor who uses superstition as
an instrument for creeping into the confidence of women and cowards, and
burning brave men; but he has no dreams of the advent of a religion of
reason. He ridicules the notion that truth will prevail: it never has
and it never will. At bottom he prefers paganism to Christianity because
it was tolerant and encouraged art, and allowed philosophers to enjoy as
much privilege as they can ever really enjoy--that of living in peace
and knowing that their neighbours are harmless fools. After a fashion he
likes his own version of Christianity, which is superficially that of
many popular preachers: Be tolerant, kindly, and happy, and don't worry
your head about dogmas, or become a slave to priests. But then one also
feels that humility is generally regarded as an essential part of
Christianity, and that in Landor's version it is replaced by something
like its antithesis. You should do good, too, as you respect yourself
and would be respected by men; but the chief good is the philosophic
mind, which can wrap itself in its own consciousness of worth, and enjoy
the finest pleasures of life without superstitious asceticism. Let the
vulgar amuse themselves with the playthings of their creed, so long as
they do not take to playing with faggots. Stand apart and enjoy your
own superiority with good-natured contempt.
One of his longest and, in this sense, most characteristic dialogues, is
that between Penn and Peterborough. Peterborough is the ideal aristocrat
with a contempt for the actual aristocracy; and Penn represents the
religion of common-sense. 'Teach men to calculate rightly and thou wilt
have taught them to live religiously,' is Penn's sentiment, and perhaps
not too unfaithful to the original. No one could have a more thorough
contempt for the mystical element in Quakerism than Landor; but he loves
Quakers as sober, industrious, easy-going people, who regard good-humour
and comfort as the ultimate aim of religious life, and who manage to do
without lawyers or priests. Peterborough, meanwhile, represents his
other side--the haughty, energetic, cultivated aristocrat, who, on the
ground of their common aversions, can hold out a friendly hand to the
quiet Quaker. Landor, of course, is both at once. He is the noble who
rather enjoys giving a little scandal at times to his drab-suited
companion; but, on the whole, thinks that it would be an excellent world
if the common people would adopt this harmless form of religion, which
tolerates other opinions and does not give any leverage to kings,
insolvent aristocrats, or intriguing bishops.
Landor's critical utterances reveal the same tendencies. Much of the
criticism has of course an interest of its own. It is the judgment of a
real master of language upon many technical points of style, and the
judgment, moreover, of a poet who can look even upon classical poets as
one who breathes the same atmosphere at an equal elevation, and who
speaks out like a cultivated gentleman, not as a schoolmaster or a
specialist. But putting aside this and the crotchets about spelling,
which have been dignified with the name of philological theories, the
general direction of his sympathies is eminently characteristic. Landor
of course pays the inevitable homage to the great names of Plato, Dante,
and Shakespeare, and yet it would be scarcely unfair to say that he
hates Plato, that Dante gives him far more annoyance than pleasure, and
that he really cares little for Shakespeare. The last might be denied on
the ground of isolated expressions. 'A rib of Shakespeare,' he says,
'would have made a Milton: the same portion of Milton all poets born
ever since.' But he speaks of Shakespeare in conventional terms, and
seldom quotes or alludes to him. When he touches Milton his eyes
brighten and his voice takes a tone of reverent enthusiasm. His ear is
dissatisfied with everything for days and weeks after the harmony of
'Paradise Lost.' 'Leaving this magnificent temple, I am hardly to be
pacified by the fairly-built chambers, the rich cupboards of embossed
plate, and the omnigenous images of Shakespeare.' That is his genuine
impression. Some readers may appeal to that 'Examination of Shakespeare'
which (as we have seen) was held by Lamb to be beyond the powers of any
other writer except its hero. I confess that, in my opinion, Lamb could
have himself drawn a far more sympathetic portrait of Shakespeare, and
that Scott would have brought out the whole scene with incomparably
greater vividness. Call it a morning in an English country-house in the
sixteenth century, and it will be full of charming passages along with
some laborious failures. But when we are forced to think of Slender and
Shallow, and Sir Hugh Evans, and the Shakespearian method of
portraiture, the personages in Landor's talk seem half asleep and
terribly given to twaddle. His view of Dante is less equivocal. In the
whole 'Inferno,' Petrarca (evidently representing Landor) finds nothing
admirable but the famous descriptions of Francesca and Ugolino. They are
the 'greater and lesser oases' in a vast desert. And he would pare one
of these fine passages to the quick, whilst the other provokes the
remark ('we must whisper it') that Dante is 'the great master of the
disgusting.' He seems really to prefer Boccaccio and Ovid, to say
nothing of Homer and Virgil. Plato is denounced still more unsparingly.
From Aristotle and Diogenes down to Lord Chatham, assailants are set on
to worry him, and tear to pieces his gorgeous robes with just an
occasional perfunctory apology. Even Lady Jane Grey is deprived of her
favourite. She consents on Ascham's petition to lay aside books, but she
excepts Cicero, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Polybius: the 'others I do
resign;' they are good for the arbour and garden walk, but not for the
fireside or pillow. This is surely to wrong the poor soul; but Landor is
intolerant in his enthusiasm for his philosophical favourites. Epicurus
is the teacher whom he really delights to honour, and Cicero is forced
to confess in his last hours that he has nearly come over to the camp of
his old adversary.
It is easy to interpret the meaning of these prejudices. Landor hates
and despises the romantic and the mystic. He has not the least feeling
for the art which owes its powers to suggestions of the infinite, or to
symbols forced into grotesqueness by the effort to express that for
which no thought can be adequate. He refuses to bother himself with
allegory or dreamy speculation, and, unlike Sir T. Browne, hates to lose
himself in an 'O Altitudo!' He cares nothing for Dante's inner thoughts,
and sees only a hideous chamber of horrors in the 'Inferno.' Plato is a
mere compiler of idle sophistries, and contemptible to the common-sense
and worldly wisdom of Locke and Bacon. In the same spirit he despised
Wordsworth's philosophising as heartily as Jeffrey, and, though he tried
to be just, could really see nothing in him except the writer of good
rustic idylls, and of one good piece of paganism, the 'Laodamia.'[29]
From such a point of view he ranks him below Burns, Scott, and Cowper,
and makes poor Southey consent--Southey who ranked Wordsworth with
Milton!
These tendencies are generally summed up by speaking of Landor's
objectivity and Hellenism. I have no particular objection to those words
except that they seem rather vague and to leave our problem untouched. A
man may be as 'objective' as you please in a sense, and as thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of Greek art, and yet may manage to fall in with
the spirit of our own times. The truth is, I fancy, that a simpler name
may be given to Landor's tastes, and that we may find them exemplified
nearer home. There is many a good country gentleman who rides well to
hounds, and is most heartily 'objective' in the sense of hating
metaphysics and elaborate allegory and unintelligible art, and
preferring a glass of wine and a talk with a charming young lady to
mystic communings with the world-spirit; and as for Landor's Hellenism,
that surely ought not to be an uncommon phenomenon in the region of
English public schools. It is an odd circumstance that we should be so
much puzzled by the very man who seems to realise precisely that ideal
of culture upon which our most popular system of education is apparently
moulded. Here at last is a man who is really simple-minded enough to
take the habit of writing Latin verses seriously; making it a
consolation in trouble as well as an elegant amusement. He hopes to rest
his fame upon it, and even by a marvellous _tour de force_ writes a
great deal of English poetry which for all the world reads exactly like
a first-rate copy of modern Greek Iambics. For once we have produced
just what the system ought constantly to produce, and yet we cannot make
him out.
The reason for our not producing more Landors is indeed pretty simple.
Men of real poetic genius are exceedingly rare at all times, and it is
still rarer to find such a man who remains a schoolboy all his life.
Landor is precisely a glorified and sublime edition of the model
sixth-form lad, only with an unusually strong infusion of schoolboy
perversion. Perverse lads, indeed, generally kick over the traces at an
earlier point: and refuse to learn anything. Boys who take kindly to the
classical system are generally good--that is to say, docile. They
develop into prosaic tutors and professors; or, when the cares of life
begin to press, they start their cargo of classical lumber and fill the
void with law or politics. Landor's peculiar temperament led him to kick
against authority, whilst he yet imbibed the spirit of the teaching
fully, and in some respects rather too fully. He was a rebel against the
outward form, and yet more faithful in spirit than most of the obedient
subjects.