BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 3Henrg W. Sage 1S91 A./X.Z3/J Cornell University Library PR 4871.C59 1898 Selections from the writings of Walter S 1924 013 495 407 Cornell University IJJa Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013495407 THE ATHEN/£UM PRESS SERIES G. L. KITTREDGE and C. T. WINCHESTER GENERAL EDITORS tTbe Htberueum press Series. This series is intended to furnish a library of the best English literature from Chaucer to the present time in a form adapted to the needs of both the student and the general reader. The works selected are carefully edited, with biographical and critical introductions, full explanatory notes, and other, neces- sary apparatus. W. S. LANDOR. Htbenajum press Series SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Edited with Introduction and Notes W. B. SHUBRICK CLYMER BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS ST&e atficnsctim J3rees 1898 Copyright, 1898, by W. B. SHUBRICK CLYMER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE. The first edition of John Forster's Life of Landor was published by Chapman and Hall, in two volumes, in 1869; in 1876, abridged, it formed the first volume of Forster's eight-volume edition of The Works and Life of Walter Sav- age Landor ; in 1895 the second edition was reprinted. In this biography is stored almost all the information of any consequence relating to Landor; and Forster's is the stand- ard text of the collected writings. The ample material in the biography is not especially well put together, nor is the appraisal always closely accurate. To a special student of the subject, however, the book is invaluable. Mr. Sidney Colvin's Landor {English Men of Letters') gives as full an account as any one but a special student cares for. In his volume of Selections {Golden Treasury Series) he attains, by rare skill in choice and arrangement, and by means of a really luminous preface and notes, that high point of critical merit which entitles him to the commendation bestowed by Landor on one who praises an author " becomingly." Mr. Charles G. Crump's comparatively recent variorum edition of the writings, with instructive critical notes, is based on Forster. In 1897 appeared Letters and Other Unpublished Writings of Walter Savage Landor, edited by Mr. Stephen Wheeler. The new material is not particularly important ; but the edi- tor's work is done with such good taste and judgment that the book cannot fail to interest an admirer of Landor. It has a well-made bibliography. The Scott Library contains, VI PREFACE. in convenient form, a good assortment of Imaginary Conver- sations, the Pentameron, and Pericles and Aspasia. The fullest American reprint of the prose is that published by Roberts Brothers. Mr. Swinburne's article on Landor in the Encyclopadia Brita?mica, so strangely stimulating a blend of dithyramb and discernment as no other mortal could ever have pro- duced, is to be read with mental reservations and qualifica- tions. His Songfor the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor is an encomium, in detail, of pretty much everything Landor wrote. In sharp contrast to Mr. Swinburne's apotheosis is Mr. Leslie Stephen's searching, and in some degree destruc- tive, analysis {Hours in a Library). Irritating though the sarcastically depreciatory manner of the essay may be to youthful enthusiasm, yet the estimate is in the main so sound that mature and dispassionate reflection overlooks the lack of sympathy. It is by odds the cleverest thing in print on Landor. The article in the Dictionary of National Biography, also by Mr. Leslie Stephen, states the facts con- cisely, and concludes with an admirably just summing up of Landor as man and writer. Among occasional contributions to the subject are Mrs. Browning's (then Miss Barrett) essay in Home's New Spirit of the Age (1844); Miss Kate Field's three articles in the Atlatitic Monthly (1866) ; Mrs. Linton's article in Eraser's Magazine (July, 1870); Lord Houghton's Mo?iograph (1873); Mr. Horace E. Scudder's characterisation (Men and Letters) ; Professor Dowden's essay (Studies in Literature) ; Professor G. E. Woodberry's (Studies in Letters and Life) ; Mr. Aubrey de Vere's (Essays, chiefly on Poetry) ; M. Gabriel Sarra- zin's (Poetes modernes de l'Angleterre) ; and two articles by J. R. Lowell (Massachusetts Quarterly, 1848 ; Century Maga- zine, 1888). Mr. E. W. Evans's academic Study of Landor is systematic and thorough. Landor is treated at some PREFACE. Vll length in Mrs. Oliphant's Victorian Age of English Litera- ture and in Mr. Stedman's Victorian Poets ; and a few pages are given to him in Professor Saintsbury's book on the English literature of this century. This small volume of selections, differing in plan both from Mr. Hillard's and from Mr. Colvin's, contains some of the dramatic and some of the discursive Conversations, a considerable part of the last Day of the Petitameron, a small number of letters from Pericles and Aspasia, and a few of the best short poems. It has been difficult to find among the dramatic Conversations good ones not already included ^, by Mr. Colvin ; among the non-dramatic it has been easy, for he usually makes but short extracts from them. Only one of these last is here given entire ; from others are made excerpts long enough to serve as samples of the trend and manner of the discussion. The letters taken from Pericles and Aspasia, as well as the poems which follow them, though totally inadequate to give an idea of the full value of the classes of work they represent, are, at all events, character- istic. The order in which the selections are placed is determined by considerations of congruity and contrast, not chronology. The slight biographical outline follows Mr. Colvin, my indebtedness to whom at every turn in the preparation of this book is obvious. The omission to mention in it Lan- dor's idiosyncrasies of spelling is because they are matter rather of curiosity than of serious literary interest. They are discussed in full, along with various linguistic matters, in Conversations between Johnson and Home Tooke and between Landor and Archdeacon Hare. The notes, furnishing little of the information supplied by dictionaries of biography and mythology, not minutely analysing, touching only incidentally on technical details of style, chiefly strive, by cursory suggestion of matters more Vlll PREFACE. or less pertinent, to invite the reader to meet in a friendly spirit this somewhat uncompromising writer, whose acquaint- ance is so well worth making. I take pleasure in thanking several friends for valuable aid, and the editor of Scribner's Magazine for his courtesy in consenting to the repetition, in the Introduction, of a few paragraphs from a previous article of my own. W. B. S. C. May, 1898. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction . xiii Dates ... xxxix IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. I. Achilles and Helena . 3 II. ^'fcESOP AND RHODOPE ... 9 III. Tiberius and Vipsania . 19 IV. Metellus and Marius . 23 V., Marcellus and Hannibal . 28 VI. -MIenry VIII. and Anne Boleyn . -33 VII. Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey 41 VIII. Princess Mary and Princess Elizabeth . 44 IX. Essex and Spenser ... 54 X. \Leofric and Godiva . 59 XI. The Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt 65 XII. The Empress Catharine and Princess Dashkof 69 XIII. John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent . 77 XIV. Tancredi and Constantia .... 82 XV. SThe Maid of Orleans and Agnes Sorel 87 r XVI. ^BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES 96 XVII. Dante and Beatrice 104 XVIII. Beniowski and Aphanasia . 113 XIX. Leonora di Este and Father Panigarola . 118 . x CONTENTS. PAGE XX. Admiral Blake and Humphrey Blake 120 XXI. Rhadamistus and Zknobia . 124 XXII. Epicurus, JLeontion, and Ternissa . 129 XXIII. Walton, Cotton, and Oldways 138 XXIV. William Penn and Lord Peterborough 155 XXV. El'ICTETUS AND SENECA . 167 XXVI. \,LUCULLUS AND CAESAR . 172 XXVII. The Apologue of Critobulus . 180 THE PENTAMERON. XXVIII. Fifth Day's Interview . 183 PERICLES AND ASPASIA. XXIX. Selected Letters 200 POEMS. Hellenics. XXX. The Hamadryad . .215 XXXI. Acon and Rhodope ; or, Inconstancy 224 XXXII. The Death of Artemidora . 228 Miscellaneous. XXXIII. The Wrestling Match (from Gebir). 229 XXXIV. To Ianthe " 1 "It often comes into my head 232 " " ! 2. Ianthe you are call'd . 232 3. "Your pleasures spring" 233 4. "Well I remember" . 233 XXXV. Rose Aylmer 233 XXXVI. A Fiesolan Idyl . 234 XXXVII. Upon a Sweet-Briar . 236 " CONTENTS. XI PAGE XXXVIII. The Maid's Lament . 237 XXXIX. To Robert Browning ... 238 *- XL. To the Sister of Elia . 238 XLI. On Dirce . 239 ! XLII. " I will not love . 239 Old Age and Death. xliii. "how many voices" . ... 239 " XLIV. " The place where soon 240 XLV. To Age . 240 XLVI. On his Seventy-fifth Birthday 241 XLVII. On his Eightieth Birthday 241 XLVIII. "Death stands above me" 241 Notes . ... 243 INTRODUCTION. Walter Savage Landor was born at Warwick, on Jan- uary 30, 1775. His father, Dr. Landor, a practising physi- cian at Warwick, reputed to have been a "polished, sociable, agreeable, somewhat choleric gentleman, more accomplished and better educated, as his profession required, than most of those with whom he associated, but otherwise dining, coursing, telling his story and drinking his bottle without particular distinction among the rest," had married two heiresses. Of the seven children by the second wife, Eliza- beth Savage, a member of a Warwickshire family, Walter was the eldest. By entail he became heir, at birth, to two estates belonging to his mother's family — Ipsley Court and Tachbrook in Warwickshire ; to a share in the reversionary interest in a third — Hughenden Manor in Buckingham- shire; 1 and to the family property of his father in Stafford- shire.