And when at last the dark'ning sky CCCVIII. Of all the literary and social lions who helped to render 'Gore House' famous, Lady Blessington regarded Walter Savage Landor with the greatest respect and honour. As the author of the Imaginary Conversations' wrote chiefly to entertain himself, and had few competitors in the first rank of writers of English prose, it was scarcely necessary for the Countess to assure him (then in his sixtieth year), of his successes in literature. Mr. Landor was residing in Italy at this time. Lady Blessington to Walter Savage Landor. London, Seamore Place: March 16, 1835. The introduction to your 'Examination '1 is printed, and the 'Conference of Spenser and Lord Essex' follows the 'Examination,' and reads admirably in print. I have read all the proof sheets, and hope you will be satisfied with their correctness, and Messrs. Saunders and Otley have informed me that the book will be out in the course of this week. Of its success I entertain no doubt, though I have had many proofs that the excellence of literary productions cannot always command their success. So much depends on the state of the literary horizon when a work presents itself; the sky is at present much overclouded by the unsettled state of politics at home and abroad; but notwithstanding all this, I am very sanguine in my expectations about the success your book will have, and so are the publishers. The 'Conference' is peculiarly interesting, as bearing on the state of Ireland, which, alas! now, as in the reign of Elizabeth, remains unsettled, unsatisfied and unsatisfying; resisting hitherto 1 Examination on William Shakspeare,' by W. S. L. the various remedies that have been applied to her disease by severe surgeons or timid practitioners. I think very highly of the Examination; it is redolent with the joyous spirit of the immortal bard, with whom you have identified yourself; his frequent pleasantry wantons in the breast of song, while snatches of pathos break in continually in the prose. The Conference' is deeply interesting, and so dissimilar from the Examination' that it is difficult to imagine it the work of the same mind, if one did not know that true genius possesses the power of variety in style and thought. I wish you could be persuaded to write your memoirs; what a treasure they would prove to posterity.' Tracing the working of such a mind as yours, a mind that has never submitted to the ignoble fetters that a corrupt and artificial society would impose, could not fail to be highly interesting, as well as useful, by giving courage to the timid and strength to the weak, and teaching them to rely on their own intellectual resources instead of leaning on that feeble reed the world, which can wound but not support those who rely on it. Mr. E. Lytton Bulwer's new novel, The Last Days of Pompeii,' has been out a fortnight; it is an admirable work, and does him honour. He refers to you in one of the notes to it as 'his learned friend Mr. Landor,' so you see you are in a fair way of being praised (if not understood) by the dandies, as his book is in the hands of the whole tribe. The novel is dedicated to our friend Sir William Gell. There is no year in which your fame does not gain at all sides, and it is now so much the fashion to praise you, that you are quoted by many who are as incapable of appreciating as of equalling you. M. BLESSINGTON. 1 Writing to his friend John Forster a quarter of a century after this hope had been expressed, Landor said, 'You may live to superintend such edition or selection of my writings as may be called for after my death. I place them in your hands with the more pleasure, since you have thought them not unworthy of your notice, and even your study, among the labours of our greatest authors, our Patriots in the best times. The world is indebted to you for a knowledge of their characters and their works: I shall be contented to be as long forgotten, if I arise with the same advan tages at last.' Hence the well-known edition, completed in 1876. CCCIX. In the abundance of characteristic traits contained in the letters which Shelley wrote during his restless life in Italy, we are enabled to see in this 'eternal child' the union of the finest moral nature with poetic genius of exquisite sensibility. All the peculiar phases of his character are in these letters developed with sufficient distinctness to mark him as the strangest and most interesting of literary geniuses. In waging war against Christianity or the rights of marriage-against the rich and strong in favour of the poor and weak-against political corruption and social despotism, we see the young delicate enthusiast, with grand self-denial and earnestness, expending precious energy in an insatiable yearning to benefit his fellow-creatures. Percy Bysshe Shelley to Henry Reveley. It is a great thing Florence: November 17, 1819. My dear Henry,-I was exceedingly interested by your letter, and I cannot but thank you for overcoming the inaptitude of a long disuse at my request, for my pleasure. done, the successful casting of the cylinder. auspice for what is to follow! I hope, in a few posts, to remit the necessary money for the completion. Meanwhile, are not those portions of the work which can be done without expense, saving time in their progress? Do you think you lose much money or time by this delay? All that you say of the alteration in the form of the boat strikes me, though one of the multitude in this respect, as improvement. I long to get aboard her, and be an unworthy partaker in the glory of the astonishment of the Livornese, when she returns from her cruise round Melloria. When do you think she will be fit for sea? Your volcanic description of the birth of the cylinder is very characteristic of you and of it. One might imagine God, when he made the earth, and saw the granite mountains and flinty promontories flow into their craggy forms, and the splendour of their fusion filling millions of miles of the void space, like the tail of a comet, so looking, so delighting in his work. God sees his machine spinning round the sun, and delights in its success, and has taken out patents to supply all the suns in space with the same manufac ture. Your boat will be to the ocean of water, what this earth is to the ocean of ether-a prosperous and swift voyager. When shall we see you all? You not, I suppose, till your boat is ready to sail—and then, if not before, I must, of course, come to Livorno. Our plans for the winter are yet scarcely defined; they tend towards our spending February and March at Pisa, where our communications will not be so distant, nor so epistolary. C left us a week ago, not without many lamentations, as all true lovers pay on such occasions. He is to write me an account of the Trieste steam-boat, which I will transmit to you. Mrs. Shelley, and Miss C tions, with interest. return you their kindest saluta Most affectionately yours P. B. S. CCCX. During Shelley's visit to Byron at Ravenna in 1821, the latter suggested that Leigh Hunt should join them at Pisa in the autumn and share in the speculation explained in this letter. Shelley's modest refusal to participate in the business was doubtless sincere, although he at no time intended ever to be fettered in the expression of his opinions, nor would he compromise his friends by publishing such opinions in copartnership. Percy Bysshe Shelley to Leigh Hunt. Pisa: August 26, 1821. My dearest Friend,—Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of this visit was a determination, on his part, to come and live at Pisa; and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung' Arno for him. But the material part of my visit consists in a message which he desires me to give you, and which, I think, ought to add to your determination-for such a one I hope you have formed, of restoring your shattered health and spirits by a migration to these regions mild of calm and serene air.' He proposes that you should come and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here; in which each of the contracting parties should publish all their original compositions, and share the profits. He proposed it to Moore, but for some reason it was never brought to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits of any scheme in which you 6 and Lord Byron engage, must, from various, yet co-cperating reasons, be very great. As for myself, I am, for the present, only a sort of link between you and him, until you can know each other, and effectuate the arrangement; since (to entrust you with a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron) nothing would induce me to share in the profits, and still less, in the borrowed splendour of such a partnership. 6 You and he, in different manners, would be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but in the same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and success. Do not let my frankness with you, nor my belief that you deserve it more than Lord Byron, have the effect of deterring you from assuming a station in modern literature, which the universal voice of my contemporaries forbids me either to stoop or to aspire to. I am, and I desire to be, nothing. I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a remittance for your journey; because there are men, however excellent, from whom we would never receive an obligation, in the worldly sense of the word; and I am as jealous for my friend as for myself; but I suppose that I shall at last make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the many obligations he has conferred on me. I know I need only ask. I think I have never told you how very much I like your Amyntas; ' it almost reconciles me to translations. In another sense I still demur. You might have written another such poem as the 'Nymphs,' with no great access of efforts. I am full of thoughts and plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great things. Before this you will have seen 'Adonais.' Lord Byron, I suppose from modesty, on account of his being mentioned in it, did not say a word of Adonais,' though he was loud in his praise of 'Prometheus,' and, what you will not agree with him in, censure of' the Cenci.' Certainly, if 'Marino Faliero' is a drama, 'the Cenci' is not-but that between ourselves. Lord Byron is reformed, as far as gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and sentimental Italian Lady, who is as much attached to him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse with you, for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his conduct is. He has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker of aristocracy wants to be cut out. |