Like most of this group, he was poet and prose-writer both, his first works in poetry proving too subtle in meaning for the ordinary reader. He took up prose-writing in a style which, though still remote from common understandings, found much more appreciation than his poetry. But his works have always found warm admirers among poets and scholars. Shelley, Lamb, Hazlitt, all read his first poem, Gebir, with delight; Southey hailed him as a great poet, and showed for him an admiration which Landor returned with interest; and in an essay on Poetry that Poets Love, Miss Mitford places Landor's poetry at the head of the list. Landor's admirers stretch down through the century into our own times. Dickens loved him with enthusiasm, and has given some touches of his character in Lawrence Boythorn, in the novel of Bleak House; while Ralph Waldo Emerson, who has recorded a visit to Landor's home in Italy, in the English Traits, says: "Year after year the scholar must go back to him for a multitude of elegant sentences; for a wisdom, wit and indignation which are unforgetable." The best part of Landor's writing, indeed, is found in detached sentences in his prose, or short passages from his poetry. I think there are few writers in English whose works would furnish sentences for so large a book of aphorisms, as his.

He was very much in sympathy with the Greeks and Romans in his thought. A good deal of his poetry is written in Latin; and many of his characters, in prose especially, are Greeks, drawn to the life. Of all his works, the general reader would be most interested in the Imaginary Conversations, which embrace several series of conversations between the historic characters of the past: between Queen Elizabeth and Burleigh; Lady Jane Grey and Roger Ascham; Philip Sidney and Lord Brooke; Milton and Marvell. One of the most beautiful among all of these, is the Pericles and Aspasia, in which appear the wonderfully lifelike characters of Pericles, Aspasia, Anaxagoras, Alcibiades, and other noble Greeks of that time.

Leigh Hunt was a friend of Hazlitt and Lamb, as well as Born 1784. of Byron and Shelley. He was a writer of poems. Died 1859. plays, stories, essays; his pen was tried in every kind of writing. He began early to edit a newspaper, The Examiner, and made a brilliant paper, but for a libel against the prince-regent, which it printed, he was imprisoned for two years. He made his room in the jail a bower of taste, painting the ceiling like the sky-cloud-covered; papering the walls in patterns of flowers; and with books, piano, statuary, and all sorts of bric-a-brac, made the visitors who came to see him feel as if they had entered a fairy-land. Here all the principal men of the time visited him-Byron, Moore, Hazlitt, Lamb, William Godwin, Shelley, and many others, till his cell seems like the meeting ground of the wits of that day. His works are too great in number even to mention the titles. Some of his shorter poems are very pretty; among them I am sure you will know the little fable of Abou Ben Adhem. One of his longest poems, Rimini, is on an Italian subject. He was very fond of Italy and her poets, and his translations from them, and tales derived from Ariosto, Tasso, and the other great poets, are among his best works. He was, like Hazlitt, a good critic of the drama and literature. He is a graceful writer, with so much enthusiasm for that which he likes in his favorite writers, that he makes his reader share his own pleasure in reading them.

His prose works, such as A Book for a Corner, Imagination and Fancy, and Tales from the Italian Poets, will outlive his reputation as a poet; and it is as prose-writer and journalist that we shall best remember him.

Walter Savage Landor, who was the friend of WordsBorn 1775. worth, Lamb, Coleridge, the life-long and intiDied 1864. mate friend of Southey, was a man who outlived his associates and companions by almost a generation of time. He was born in 1775, and lived to be almost ninety.

Like most of this group, he was poet and prose-writer both, his first works in poetry proving too subtle in meaning for the ordinary reader. He took up prose-writing in a style which, though still remote from common understandings, found much more appreciation than his poetry. But his works have always found warm admirers among poets and scholars. Shelley, Lamb, Hazlitt, all read his first poem, Gebir, with delight; Southey hailed him as a great poet, and showed for him an admiration which Landor returned with interest; and in an essay on Poetry that Poets Love, Miss Mitford places Landor's poetry at the head of the list.

Landor's admirers stretch down through the century into our own times. Dickens loved him with enthusiasm, and has given some touches of his character in Lawrence Boythorn, in the novel of Bleak House; while Ralph Waldo Emerson, who has recorded a visit to Landor's home in Italy, in the English Traits, says: "Year after year the scholar must go back to him for a multitude of elegant sentences; for a wisdom, wit and indignation which are unforgetable." The best part of Landor's writing, indeed, is found in detached sentences in his prose, or short passages from his poetry. I think there are few writers in English whose works would furnish sentences for so large a book of aphorisms, as his.

He was very much in sympathy with the Greeks and Romans in his thought. A good deal of his poetry is written in Latin; and many of his characters, in prose especially, are Greeks, drawn to the life. Of all his works, the general reader would be most interested in the Imaginary Conversations, which embrace several series of conversations between the historic characters of the past: between Queen Elizabeth and Burleigh; Lady Jane Grey and Roger Ascham; Philip Sidney and Lord Brooke; Milton and Marvell. One of the most beautiful among all of these, is the Pericles and Aspasia, in which appear the wonderfully lifelike characters of Pericles, Aspasia, Anaxagoras, Alcibiades, and other noble Greeks of that time.

Landor had undoubted genius. A want of self-discipline seems to have hindered both his character and his work from coming to full perfection. It is a great deal to say of him that he is a poet for poets; it would be still better to be able to say that he touched the deep heart of humanity. One feels of him that he just missed a height he might have gained. And yet there are few books I would so unwillingly leave unread as The Imaginary Conversation.

Thomas De Quincey, who is most famous for his ConBorn 1786, fessions of an English Opium Eater, belongs Died 1859. among these men of the Lake School. He lived for years among the lakes of Westmoreland, and after Wordsworth left his cottage at Grasmere to live at Rydal Mount, where the last of his life was passed, De Quincey took the Grasmere House, and lived there many years. In London his friends were, all of them, in the group of which I have just been speaking. Like Coleridge, he was many years an opium-eater, and his Confessions are tinged by the wonderful hues his fancy took on under the influence of this drug. There are passages from his prose which have few equals, in the language for eloquence and imagination. And, notwithstanding the diseased state of mind which his habit of opium-eating induced, he did a great amount of work, and left behind him many volumes.

This group of men of varied talents were contemporaries of the new school of poetry, and upheld its doctrines. They were all writers for the current periodical literature of the time, and the prose-writing of each has a distinct originality. But the master among prose-writers of this time, the magician who cast his spell over his age, and over future times, is Walter Scott, whose historical novels form by themselves an epoch in English literature.

John Lockhart, who was his son-in-law, and after Scott's death wrote his life, tells this story in the biography: "A party of young men, who lived in Scott's neighborhood at the time he was finishing Waverley, were having a jovial dinner together. They had adjourned to the library from the dining-room, and one of them who sat opposite a large window which looked out upon the windows of an adjoining house, was observed to change in manner, and his whole face to become clouded and melancholy.

"What is the matter?" said one of the party 'I fear you are not well?'

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No,' he said, 'I shall be well enough presently, if you will only change seats with me, for there is a confounded hand in sight of me, which has often bothered me before, and now won't let me fill my glass with a good will.'

I rose to change places, and he pointed out this hand, which, like the writing on Balshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity.

"Since we sat down ' he said, 'I've been watching it; it fascinates my eye; it never stops; page after page is finished and thrown on the heap of manuscript, and still it goes on; and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after. It is the same every night. I can't stand the sight of it when not at my books.'

"Some stupid clerk!' cried one of the party; No, said another, 'I know what hand it is-it is Walter Scott's!

This was the hand which wrote Waverley in the evenings of three weeks in summer.

The necessity of such constant work begun almost with Scott's literary career. Before he began his novels, he had entered into a secret partnership with his friend, James Ballantyne, the printer of all his books, and this firm was closely allied in interest to that of his publisher, Mr. Constable. The demands of these two firms for money seemed incredible, and they were finally the ruin of all concerned in them.

Scott himself had one pet extravagance-his beautiful estate of Abbotsford. To create and beautify this home was the dream of his life. He had begun by buying some land on which he intended to build a modest home, but by degrees more lands had been added, till the little estate grew into baronial acres, and the modest mansion became a castle. It