1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



671 



ing he was superior to any one of them in sound 

 ahd correct judgment, formed upon a comprehen- 

 .sive and dispassionate consideration of all the 

 points involved in a great question, I should cer- 

 tainly conclude him to have been so. Finn as 

 Luther, without his impetuosity, he avoided all 

 the embarrassments which arose from the scrupu- 

 lous anxiety of Melancthon. Inferior to none, 

 superior to most of them, in sagacity and pene- 

 tration, he was more a man of system and order 

 in all things, whether relating to doctrine, to dis- 

 cipline, or to his compositions as an author, than 

 any of their number. The first among them, we 

 may pronounce, in sheer intellect, he fell short of 

 more than one of them in the powers of imagina- 

 and of all of them in warmth of heart. Hence, 

 while he commands our veneration, Le does not 

 equally attract our affection. 



Poems, by Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

 Would Mr. Lander could be convinced 

 he has not found out how to write poetry 

 which any body can read. Whatever may 

 be his conceptions, he has no flow, no 

 ready command of appropriate language, 

 and makes up the deficiency which 

 nothing, however, ever could or can sup- 

 ply by an eternal elaboration that 

 wraps all he sings in clouds of obscurity, 

 as dense and deep as a delphic oracle. 

 One half of his luckless lines require 

 reading a second or a third time not in 

 admiration, or the better to impress and 

 feel their beauties but simply to take 

 their meaning; and, too often, that 

 meaning proves to be as old as the hills, 

 and either not worth the repetition, or 

 far too trite and worn to make the pe- 

 rusal bearable. With all Mr. Lander's 

 ardour for poetry, and his untiring de- 

 votion from his boyhood, he has never 

 shewn any fertility or fervour of imagi- 

 nation ; he can observe, and so occasion- 

 ally, in details, introduces matters un- 

 marked before, but then they are often 

 scarcely worth remarking, and if they 

 be, the effect is for ever blighted by the 

 pedantry of his taste, which leads him 

 for the most part to the grandiloquent ; 

 and in his efforts at the simple, sinks 

 him into puerility or meanness. No 

 modern writer of Mr. Lander's calibre 

 has taken so wrong an estimate of his 

 own powers he aspires beyond his 

 executive talents ; and in his poetry, is 

 always more intent upon the manner 

 than the matter, and that manner too 

 exclusively partakes ot older writers, as 

 if that of none of his cotemporaries could 

 be worth regarding. But Mr. Lander 

 will evidently listen to no admonitions 

 he is a scorner of periodical criticism 

 he will guide the public taste, and of 

 course is much too magnificent to allow 

 the world to know and feel what it likes 

 best. 



The volume before us an amount of 

 a good ten thousand lines all he chooses 

 to father contains a whole tragedy, of 

 the legitimate dimensions, Count Julian 



of Spain scenes or scraps of two other 

 dramas a narrative poem, beginning, 

 " I sing the fates of Gebir" an Ice- 

 landic adventure, and sundry morceaux 

 of an amatory and elegiac cast the 

 whole collected and published by him- 

 self, expressly to guard against the 

 " avarice of venal editors and bankrupt 

 publishers," when he is gone. Bless the 

 good man. " It is only the wretchedest 

 of poets," adds he, witfr the complacency 

 of a saint, " that wish all they ever wrote 

 to be remembered some of the best 

 would be willing to lose the most." 



Without sketching the subject of Ge- 

 bir, we will just cast a glance at a page 

 of it, with no insidious selection it is 

 a fair specimen. Gebir gives orders to 

 build a new town from the ruins of an 

 old one at some distance 



The Gadite men the royal charge obey. 

 Now fragments weighed up from th' uneven streets 

 Leave the ground black beneath. 



A fact observed by himself, probably 

 upon some occasion when the pavement 

 was turned up, as is often the case, in 

 Piccadilly. 



Again the sun 

 Shines into what were porches, 



That is, the old porches were set up 

 afresh in the new town. 



And on steps 



Once warm with frequentation clients, friends, 

 All morning, satcheled idlers all mid-day, 

 Lying half up and languid though at games. 



We have pondered upon these lines 

 some time, and are not sure, after all, 

 we grasp the meaning. Apparently 

 heaven forbid we should be peremp- 

 tory upon so equivocal a matter clients 

 and friends are what grammarians call 

 in apposition with frequentation, and in- 

 tended to deyelope the objects of that 

 very expressive abstraction. Will the 

 poet then mean the sun shines, in their 

 new position, on steps which once, . e. 

 in their old position, were much fre- 

 quented by clients and friends all the 

 morning, and with satcheled idlers all 

 the mid-day and both parties only get- 

 ting halfway up, fatigued with the great 

 elevation or the said steps, and then 

 stretching themselves at their length, 

 fit for nothing but to play at backgam- 

 mon or hazard, and hardly that ? All 

 morning the writer has lived too long 

 in Italy to know is mere patois. What 

 the idlers have got in their satchels we 

 have no means of discovering, and must 

 appeal to the author. But let us pro- 

 ceeed a few lines 



Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels 

 Draw slow its luminous length 



This, apparently, means a long piece 

 of the painted pavement probably tes- 

 selated* 



