SAVAGE LANDOR
,—A reviewer may be as ungenerous in his judgements as he pleases ; may be derisively insulting, as Wilson was to Hazlitt, personally ,drnIous, as Lockhart to Leigh Hum—he may even make satirical sport a writer's name, as Gifford did with Keats's. But surely he should t be allowed, at least in a reputable periodical, to make deliberately se statements. "Nor have we my hint of Landor's political intui- ns," wrote Mr. Bonamy Dobree in his catalogue of what he could not d in my biography of Landor ; "nor do we get any view of the tical circumstances which are the background to his political writings." in Savage Landor I have repeatedly emphasised the wisdom of dor's political thought, an important feature of his writings depre- ed as mere eccentricity by his previous biographers, Forster and vin, and have stressed the consistency of his opinions throughout his , from his youth as a " mad Jacobin " to his old age as a supporter Kossuth and Garibaldi. As to political " background," few American irwers of Savage Landor failed to note, in the words of Mr. Herbert an in the New York Times, the " comparison with our own etic times and those when the first Napoleon was gobbling up most
Europe."—I am, Sir, yours very truly, MALCOLM ELWIN. Little Raveley, Woody Bay, N. Devon.
[Our reviewer writes: On again looking through Mi. Elwin's book, I myself regretfully unable to alter my opinion. Landor's political tions are not to be found in his outbursts, nor even in his early rous actions, but in the wisdom scattered about the Imaginary .ersations (e.g., that between Solon and Pisistratus), from which Elwin quotes so parsimoniously. As for the background, whatever Elwin's intentions may have been, I fear that no reader can get a rent idea of the political tides of the time, much less of the social ditions.]
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