Walter Savage Landor.

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ford in consequence of his defiance of the constituted authorities. At the same time he did not neglect scholarship, showing in his Rugby days, as afterwards, a wonderful taste and power for making Latin verses, and imbuing himself deeply in the spirit of the classical writers. After his rustication from Oxford he was put upon a yearly allowance, with liberty to travel where he pleased. His first important work was a poem, "Gebir" (1797), much admired by Shelley (who, it is related, "would read it aloud to others or to himself with a tiresome pertinacity "), and by the author himself, but which, like the rest of Landor's works, proved "caviare to the general." Left wealthy by the death of his father in 1805, Landor lived a rather "fast" and very extravagant life at Bath and Clifton for two or three years, after which in 1808 he made a rash but generous raid into Spain to assist in the war of liberation, which deeply engaged his sympathies, he being then, as always, a zealous republican. Having quarrelled with some of his associates, he soon came home again, "heartily disgusted with the whole affair, having wasted time and money to no good whatsoever." In 1812 he published his tragedy of "Count Julian," which was written at Llanthony, a small estate, his purchase of which must be reckoned one of the most unfortunate events of his stormy career. Nothing prospered with him there. He got into endless disputes with his tenantry and his neighbours, and in 1814 he came to the resolution to quit it and England, never to return. Arriving in Italy, he spent twenty years there, writing his "Imaginary Conversations" (1824-29), and his "Pericles and Aspasia" (1836), and living more peacefully than at any other period of his life. In 1835 he was driven from Italy by a furious quarrel with his wife, and returning to England, a second time took up his residence at Bath. In 1847 he published his "Hellenics," and in 1853 "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," containing some imaginary conversations and other miscellanies. The story of his remaining years has been thus tersely summed up :"He fell into bad hands, got mixed up in a disgraceful scandal, published a libel for which he was cast in damages, and,

to avoid payment of the fine, left England for Florence in 1858, where he died miserably, September 17, 1864, æt. 89."

Landor was a man of fine physique and distinguished bearing, with a wide and full but retreating forehead, massive head, and large grey eyes-in every respect a very noticeable man. His vehement, reckless, passionate temper and his absence of self-control and moderation embittered his life; but he had in many respects a noble and generous nature, and succeeded in endearing to himself not a few distinguished friends who patiently put up with his many eccentricities and freaks of temper. It may be doubted whether he ranks highest as a poet or as a prose writer. Some of his poems are of such classic finish and grace as to be perfect gems of song, unique and unapproachable; and De Quincey ranked his character of Count Julian with the Satan of Milton and the Prometheus of Eschylus. His "Imaginary Conversations" are full of fine thoughts, expressed in a style so finished, so eloquent, so clearly bearing the impress of genius and cultivated taste, so felicitous in imagery and in diction, that one wonders why they are in general so little read. The reason probably is that their subjects have little interest to people in general, and that their tone of sentiment does not for the most part appeal to the ordinary sympathies and emotions of humanity. "No man," says an admirer, with pardonable exaggeration, "since Shakespeare's time, has written so much wisdom or so much beauty; in no other man's work is there such exquisite tenderness, so much subtlety of thought, such wealth of imagery, yet all chaste and nothing glaring, so much suggestiveness, yet such ample fulness. Not a page but contains the most deathless

beauty."

By far the most eminent divine and preacher of the time with which we are dealing was Dr. Thomas Chalmers (17801847), a name still never pronounced without reverence by many in Scotland, on the ecclesiastical history of which country he exercised great influence. Chalmers was born at Anstruther in Fifeshire, educated at St. Andrews, and licensed to preach in 1799- The more notable dates in his life are the

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following: From 1802 to 1815 he was minister of Kilmany in Fifeshire. In the latter year he was called to the Tron Church in Glasgow, and from this period dates his great vogue as a preacher. In 1823 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in St. Andrews, and in 1828 Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh. Always a prominent figure in church courts, he was one of the prime movers in the conflict which terminated in the disruption of the Scottish Church in 1843, and from that time till his death was the presiding spirit of the new Free Church, being appointed moderator of its first Assembly, and principal of its college in Edinburgh. The description of Chalmers in Carlyle's questionable "Reminiscences" is a very admirable piece of character-painting: "He was a man of much natural dignity, ingenuity, honesty, and kind affection, as well as sound intellect and imagination. A very eminent vivacity lay in him, which could rise to complete impetuosity (growing conviction, passionate eloquence, fiery play of heart and head), all in a kind of rustic type, one might say, though wonderfully true and tender. He had a burst of genuine fun too, I have heard, of the same honest, but most plebeian, broadly natural character; his laugh was a hearty loud guffaw; and his tones in preaching would rise to the piercingly pathetic. No preacher ever went so into one's heart. He was a man essentially of little culture, of narrow sphere all his life; such an intellect professing to be edu cated and yet so ill-real, so ignorant in all that lay beyond the horizon in place or in time, I have almost nowhere met with. A man capable of much soaking indolence, lazy brooding, and do-nothingism, as the first stage of his life well indicated; a man thought to be timid almost to the verge of cowardice, yet capable of impetuous activity and blazing audacity, as his latter years showed. I suppose there will never again be such a preacher in any Christian church." If Chalmers was constitutionally indolent, he certainly managed to overcome his indolence to an unprecedented extent, for few have passed more active lives than he. A man of much force of character, he was formed by nature to take a

leading part in all public movements in which he took an interest. Few have excelled him in his genius for organisation, and his skill in the management of men. He was an earnest social reformer, took a keen interest in political economy and kindred subjects, and was indefatigable in forming plans for the relief of the poor. A born orator, wherever he preached he was attended by admiring crowds, who hung eagerly upon every word that fell from his lips. In spite of his constant exertions in other fields, he found time to write a great deal, his works extending to over thirty volumes, of which a considerable proportion consists of lectures, sermons, &c. His literary aptitude was unquestionably great, though he was not free from the common vice of preachers— a tendency to diffuseness and repetition. He has few superiors as a master of luminous exposition, and not unfrequently we find in his writings bursts of splendid eloquence which enable us to comprehend the wonderful influence which he exerted over his hearers. His "Astronomical Discourses" may be mentioned as a favourable specimen of his style. Altogether he was the most notable Scotchman of his time (Scott, who died before his fame was at its height, alone excepted), a wonderful example of the union of literary genius, oratorical powers, and practical ability.

X.

OUR OWN times.

Dickens, Thackeray, Lytton, Charlotte Brontë; George Eliot, Lever, Charles Kingsley, Lord Beaconsfield, Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Blackmore, Hardy, Black; Tennyson, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti, Morris, Swinburne; Macaulay, Carlyle, Grote, Froude, Freeman, Lecky; Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Sir Arthur Helps, John Morley, W. H. Pater; Theology, Philosophy, Science.

ANY difficulties beset any one attempting to deal, however briefly, with the literature of one's own time. As distance is required to judge properly

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of the comparative height of mountains, which, when we are beside them, seem of about the same size, so before an author can be justly estimated, sufficient time must have elapsed to allow the din of contemporary applause or censure to subside, and to enable us to clear our eyes from the mists of prejudice and personal predilection which always more or less prevent us from forming perfectly impartial judgments on the men of our own era. It requires no very extensive acquaintance with literary history to know that many reputations which once blazed high have in a few short years sunk into nothing and been heard of no more; that writers of the greatest popularity with their own generation have been pronounced worthless and unreadable in the generations that came after. How, then, we may ask ourselves, as we call to mind some great literary celebrity of the present day, can we be sure that the case will prove otherwise with him? have we any solid ground for thinking that his fame too, great as it now appears, is not founded upon some shifting rock of popular caprice or bad taste which the remorseless tide of time will wash away?

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