afterwards, either to read himself, or to lend it to a friend, sullied and disfigured as it is? But the truth we fear is, that the public, besides their participation in the same prejudices, are timid, indolent, and easily influenced by a little swaggering and an air of authority. They like to amuse their leisure with reading a new work; and if they have more leisure, have no objection to fill it up with listening to an abuse of the writer. If they approve of candour and equity in the abstract, they do not disapprove of a little scandal and tittle-tattle by the by. They take in a disgusting publication, because it is amusing and clever'—that is, full of incredible assertions which make them stare, and of opprobrious epithets applied to high characters, which, by their smartness and incongruity, operate as a lively stimulus to their ordinary state of ennui. This happens on the Sunday morning; and the rest of the week passes in unravelling the imposture, and expressing a very edifying mixture of wonder and indignation at it. Such a paper was detected, not long ago, in the fabrication of a low falsehood against a most respectable gentleman, who was said to have proposed a dinner and rump and dozen, in triumph over the death of Lord Castlereagh. This was said to have taken place in a public room, so that the exposure of the falsehood was immediate and complete. Not long before, it put a leading question to a popular member for the city, as if some ill-conduct of his had caused his father's death: it was shown that this gentleman's father had died before he was born! Is it to be supposed that the writer knew the facts? We should rather think not. He probably neither knew nor cared any thing about them. It was his vocation to hazard the dark insinuation, and to trust to chance and the malice of mankind for its success. The blow was well meant, though it failed. But was it not a blow to the paper itself? Alas, no; it still blunders on; and the public gape after it, half in fear half in indignation. It slanders a virtuous lady; it insults the misfortunes of a Noble House; it rakes up the infirmities of the dead; it taints (for whatever it touches it contaminates) the unborn. No matter. They or their family had sinned in being Whigs-and there are still men in England, it would appear, who think that this is the way by which differences of opinion should be revenged or prevented.

It used to be the boast of English gentlemen, that their political contentions were conducted in a spirit, not merely of perfect fairness, but of mutual courtesy and urbanity; and that, even among the lower orders, quarrels were governed by a law of honour and chivalry, which proscribed all base advantages, and united all the spectators against him by whom a foul blow was given or attempted. We trust that this spirit is not yet extinguished among us; and that it will

speedily assert itself, by trampling under foot that base system of mean and malignant defamation, by which our Periodical Press has recently been polluted and disgraced. We would avoid naming works that desire nothing so much as notoriety; but it is but too well known, that the work of intimidation and deceit, of cruel personality and audacious fabrication, has been carried on, for several years, in various periodical publications, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, that it has been urged with unrelenting eagerness in the metropolis, in spite of the public discountenance of the leaders of the party which it disgraces by its pretended support; and then propagated into various parts of the country, for purposes of local annoyance. It is equally well known and understood too, that this savage system of bullying and assassination is no longer pursued from the impulse of angry passions or furious prejudices, but on a coldblooded mercenary calculation of the profits which idle curiosity, and the vulgar appetite for slander, may enable its authors to derive from it. Where this is to stop, we do not presume to conjecture,—unless the excess leads to the remedy, and the distempered appetite of the public be surfeited, and so die. This is by no means an unlikely, and, we hope, may be a speedy consummation. In the mean time, the extent and extravagance of the abuse has already had the effect, not only of making individual attacks less painful or alarming, but even, in many cases, of pointing out to the judicious the proper objects of their gratitude and respect. For ourselves, at least, we do not hesitate to acknowledge, that, when we find an author savagely and perseveringly attacked by this gang of literary retainers, we immediately feel assured, not only that he is a good writer, but an honest man; and if a statesman is once selected as the butt of outrageous abuse in the same quarter, we consider it as a satisfactory proof that he has lately rendered some signal service to his country, or aimed a deadly blow at corruption.

We have put ourselves out of breath with this long lecture on the great opprobrium of our periodical literature, and dare not now go on to the ticklish chapter of Reviews. We do not, however, by any means renounce the design; and hope one day to be enabled to resume it, and to astonish our readers with a full and ingenuous account of our own merits and demerits, and those of our rivals.

LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

VOL. XL.] [March 1824. THIS work is as remarkable an instance as we have lately met with of the strength and weakness of the human intellect. It displays considerable originality, learning, acuteness, terseness of style, and force of invective—but it is spoiled and rendered abortive throughout by an utter want of temper, of self-knowledge, and decorum. Mr. Landor's mind is far from barren in feeling or in resources; but over the natural, and (what might be) the useful growth of these, there every where springs up a luxuriant crop of caprice, dogmatism, extravagance, intolerance, quaintness, and most ludicrous arrogance,-like the red and blue flowers in corn, that, however they may dazzle the passenger's eye, choke up the harvest, and mock the hopes of the husbandman. We are not ignorant of the school to which our author belongs; and could name other writers who, in the course of a laborious life, and in productions numerous and multiform-some recent and suited to the times, some long and luckily forgotten,-in odes, inscriptions, madrigals, epics,—in essays, histories and reviews, -have run into as many absurdities, and as many extremes: But never did we see, bound up in the same volume, close-packed, and pointed with all the significance of style, the same number of contradictions, staring one another in the face, and quarrelling for the precedence. Mr. Landor's book is a perfect institute and digest' of inconsistency: it is made up of mere antipathies in nature and in reasoning. It is a chef-d'œuvre of self-opinion and self-will, strangling whatever is otherwise sound and excellent in principle, defacing whatever is beautiful in style and matter.

If it be true (as has been said) that

'Great wits to madness nearly are allied,'

we know few writers that have higher or more unequivocal pretensions in this way than the author of the Imaginary Conversations.' Would it be believed, that, trampling manfully on all history and tradition, he speaks of Tiberius as a man of sentiment, who retired to Capri merely to indulge a tender melancholy on the death of a beloved wife and will have it that Nero was a most humane, amiable, and deservedly popular character-not arguing the points as doubtful or susceptible of question, but assuming them, en passant, as most absolute and peremptory conclusions-as if whatever was contrary to common sense and common feeling carried conviction on the face of it? In the same page he assures us, with the same oracular tran

quillity, that the conflagration of Rome, and the great fire of London, were both wise and voluntary measures, arising from the necessity of purifying the cities after sickness, and leaving no narrow streets in their centres! and on turning the leaf, it is revealed to us, that there is nothing in Rome, or in the world, equal to the circus in Bath!' He spells the words foreign and sovereign, foren' and 'sovran,' and would go to the stake, or send others there, to prove the genuineness of these orthographies, which he adopts on the authority of Milton; and yet he abuses Buonaparte for being the ape of Antiquity, and talking about Miltiades. He cries up Mr. Locke as the most elegant of English prose writers,' for no other reason (as we apprehend) than that he has often been considered as the least so; and compares Dr. Johnson's style to that article of dress which the French have lately made peace with' (a pair of pantaloons), 'divided into two parts, equal in length, breadth, and substance, with a protuberance before and behind.' He pronounces sentence upon the lost works of two ancient writers, Democritus and Menander, that the former would be worth all the philosophical remains of antiquity, and the latter not be worth having,-precisely because he can know nothing about the matter; the will to decide superseding the necessity of any positive ground of opinion, and the spirit of contradiction standing him in lieu of all other conviction. Boileau, according to our critic, had not a particle of sense, wit, or taste: Pope, to be sure, was of a different opinion-and we take it to be just possible that Boileau would have thought himself indemnified by the homage of the one for the scorn of the other! He speaks of Pitt as a poor creature, who did not see an inch before him, and of Fox as a charlatan; and says modestly in reference to some history he is writing, that he trusts Posterity will not confound him with the Coxes and the Foxes of the age.' It would be rather too much in his own manner perhaps to say, that no one who could write this sentence, will ever write a history-but we hazard the conjecture notwithstanding and leave it to time to decide. He announces that Alfieri was the greatest man in Europe, though his greatness has not yet been generally acknowledged. This, however, is exactly the reason that Mr. Landor vouches for it, because whether he was so or not, rests solely on his ipse dixit. It is a fine thing to be one of the oracles of Fame! With equal modesty and candour he declares literary men to be as much superior to lords and kings as these last are to the meanest of their vassals. In a dialogue between Prince Maurocordato and General Colocotroni, he wishes the Greeks to substitute the bow for the use of fire-arms; and to this experimental crotchet, we suspect, he would sacrifice the Greek cause, or any

other.

He has a hit at Lord Byron, and another at Mr. Thomas Moore, and a compliment to Lady Morgan. It is hard to say which he hates most-the English Government or the French peopleBuonaparte or the Bourbons. He considers Buonaparte as a miracle, only because no man with so little talent ever gained such an ascendancy; and certainly with the qualifications our author allows him, he must have dealt with the Devil to do what he did; and, as if determined to conciliate no party and have all the world against him, he takes care to inform the reader at the same time, that in the most remarkable English victory in the last fifty years, the prudence and skill of the commander (Wellington) were altogether wanting.' He brings it as a proof of Buonaparte's stupidity, that he knew nothing of judicial astrology, which hath certain laws assigned to it, and fancied he could unite it with atheism, as easily as the iron crown with the lilies.' He tells us, that he did his utmost in pursuing this tyrant to death, recommending and insisting on nothing less: but that now he is dead, he is sorry for it.' So hot, indeed, is he on this scent, that he is for bringing Louis xiv. to life, in order to have him carted to condign punishment in the Place de Grêve, or at Tyburn.' We cannot understand this coincidence in the proposed fate of two persons so different; nor how Mr. Landor should call 'the battle of Waterloo the most glorious to the victors since that of Leuctra,' while he recommends a resort to tyrannicide, and points out its objects, to get rid of the legitimate consequences of that battle; nor why he should strike his marble table with his palm,' or call his country names-degenerate Albion,'-' recreant slave,' &c. &c. for not aiding in the cause of freedom in Greece,' when she has his thanks and praise for putting down the principle, at one blow, all over the world! Kings and nations, however, do not change like whiffling politicians. The one are governed by their prejudices, the other by their interests;-Mr. Landor and his friends by the opinion of the moment, by a fit of the spleen, by the first object that stirs their vanity or their resentment.

The work before us is an edifying example of the spirit of Literary Jacobinism,-flying at all game, running a-muck at all opinions, and at continual cross-purposes with its own. To avoid misconstruction, however, we should add, that we mean by this term, that despotism of the mind, which only emancipates itself from authority and prejudice, to grow impatient of every thing like an appearance of opposition, and to domineer over and dictate its sudden, crude, violent, and varying opinions, to the rest of the world. This spirit admits neither of equal nor superior, follower nor precursor: 'it travels in a road so narrow where but one goes abreast.' It claims a monopoly