"What hadst thou that could make so large amends For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?— Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. "From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze, From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, Men turned to thee and found-not blast and blaze, Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. "Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, Walter Savage Landor IN dealing with the six English poets who belong to the first half of the century, it has seemed best, for reasons already noted, to arrange them in the order provided by the dates of their respective deaths. Attention has already been called to the curious fact that each of the poets thus far considered enjoyed a span of life which overlapped at both ends that of the poet who precedes him in this discussion. Thus the death-dates of our poets have carried us forward into the nineteenth century from 1821, when Keats died, to 1850, when Wordsworth breathed his last, and the laurel passed "from the brows of him who uttered nothing base." On the other hand, the birthdates of the same poets have carried us backward into the eighteenth century from 1795, when Keats first saw the light, to 1770, the year which gave Wordsworth to the world. Turning now to Walter Savage Landor, the first break appears in the series, for, although he outlived Wordsworth by fourteen years, he was five years his junior by birth. There are several things to remark about the long term of Landor's life. Longer even than that of Tennyson, it made Landor in his old age the most venerable figure among our poets. And if his life was remark able for its length, it was even more remarkable for the number of years during which he retained his intellectual faculties unimpaired. "Gebir" was published in 1798, the year of the "Lyrical Ballads,” and it was not the poet's first venture, for he had published a small volume of verse two years earlier. Half a century later, when the flame of Wordsworth's genius was flickering out, Landor's "Hellenics" were given to the world. He had already exceeded the scriptural tale of years, and seemed to have just reached his intellectual prime. For nearly a score of years longer his pen remained active; great quantities of prose and verse continued to flow from it, and in the year before his death, at the age of eightyeight, the volume of his "Heroic Idylls" crowned the astonishing performance of his life. For seventy years he had been producing work that belongs to English literature, work that was almost as finished and satisfactory to the artistic sense at the beginning of his career as at any later period. The best passages of "Gebir" are equal to anything he did afterwards. As Mr. Stedman finely says: "He attained the summit early, and moved along an elevated plateau, forbearing as he grew older to descend the further side, and at death flung off somewhere into the æther still facing the daybreak and worshipped by many rising stars." Nothing is more striking about the work of Landor than this even excellence by which it is characterised throughout. With most poets we have periods to consider, and our interest in their work is largely the interest which we take in observing the gradual development of their powers. Little of this sort of interest attaches to the work of Landor; he sprang full-armed into the arena, and for seventy years held his own with substantially the same fighting equipment. Meanwhile, the great panorama of European society and politics was unrolling itself before him, and he was following the succession of scenes with close attention, keen in observation and alert in criticism to the very end, taking for his province almost the whole of contemporaneous thought and action. He grew to manhood during the years of the Revolution, felt the shock of that great convulsion in much the same manner as Wordsworth and Coleridge felt it, was aroused to an even fiercer indignation than any of his fellow-poets by the Napoleonic attack upon the liberties of Europe, and, like Byron at a later period, for a time actually cast his lot with a people struggling to be free. His unquenchable faith in the republican principle survived the reaction which carried Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey into the conservative camp, and made them lost leaders to the cause of liberty. When the year of Revolution returned to Europe in 1848, and his faith was again justified by passing events, he was the same eloquent and resolute champion of republicanism that he had been forty and fifty years earlier. And still he lived on, long enough to witness the liberation of the greater part of Italy from oppressors, domestic and foreign; long enough to see the dream of Italian patriotism almost accomplished, and the capital of the nearly united kingdom about to be established in the city which for many years had been his chosen home. Swinburne's beautiful verses, written in 1865, at once celebrate this event and mourn the death of the poet by whom it would have been acclaimed with so much enthusiasm. "Back to the flower-town, side by side, New-born, the bridegroom and the bride, "The sweet land laughs from sea to sea, All things come back to her, being free; The convention which made Florence the temporary capital of Italy had been signed just two days before Landor's death. Landor's politics were always impetuous and somewhat boyish. One of his earliest enthusiasms was for George Washington, and one of his first poems was an ode to the American general, written at the age of nineteen. Here are two of the stanzas: "Exulting on unwearied wings Above where incense clouds the court of kings, Beyond the confines of the Atlantic waves, O'er cities free from despots, free from slaves, |