PROFESSOR COLVIN ON LANDOR.* 31a. SIDNEY COL% IN, in his
prefatory note, gives a list of the published works he has consulted in the preparation of this monograph, and states that he has also had access to some un- published material ; but in the way of fact, he has comparatively little to give us that cannot be found in the book which, of course, heads his list,—the admirable and exhaustive biography by Mr. John Forster. Mr. Forster was not, as Professor Dowden has pointed out, a biographer of genius ; but his work was characterised by thorough knowledge, great discrimination, and perfect tact, and in telling over again a story which has been told so well, the later writer is compelled to choose whether he will sacrifice originality, or some other quality even more important and valuable. We believe that, on the whole, Mr. Colvin has chosen wisely, and should it be urged as an objection against the biographical part of his book that it is simply a condensation of Mr. Forster's two bulky volumes, the obvious reply to such a criticism is that it could hardly be anything else, unless it were something worse. Condensation is, however, not the easy task that it might seem, to one who has never attempted it. In reducing the scale, clearness may easily be diminished, or perspective may go wrong ; and in a work which, howsoever scholarly in execution, is intended for the partially-informed reader, it is essential that the main outlines should be given with sufficient distinctness to be apprehended at once,—that in the smaller canvas the breadth of the larger one should, if possible, be not only preserved, but intensified. We are inclined to think that Mr. Colvin gives rather too much detail, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he does not sufficiently distinguish between detail which is more, and that which is less, characteristic. Then, too, the periods into which Landor's life was divided are not defined with sufficient sharpness ; the main landmarks do not catch the eye ; and the result of these deficiencies is a confused impression on the mind of any but the most careful reader. Even what seem unpleasant breaks in a narrative, may be pre- ferable to an unbroken continuity which presents no salient points on which the mind can rest.
It would, however, be unfair to criticise according to bio- graphical canons a book which is evidently intended to be less of a biography than of an apologia ; an attempt to popularise a writer who is, for various reasons, less popular than any Eng- lish man of letters of equal rank. We can hardly think that the attempt will be successful, for we believe that, in spite of Mr. Colvin, Gebir and the Imaginary Conversations will con- tinue to be " caviare to the general ;" but though the verdict of the mass of readers seems too decisive to be easily set aside, it must be said that this little volume contains a very cogent, and at the same time temperate, appeal for a new trial of Landor in the court of public opinion. With some ,dread of the charge of Philistinism being brought against us, we must frankly state our opinion that Landor has been as much over-estimated by a little coterie of admirers as he has certainly been unduly,neglected by the world at large. Books it should never be forgotten, are written that they may be read; and the writer who utterly fails to gain the attention not • English Men of Letters : Lander. By Sidney Colvin. London: Macmillan and Co.
merely of the crowd, but of the great majority of fairly culti- vated men and women, can hardly thus fail in virtue of his good qualities alone. There must be some alloy in the gold, which prevents it from obtaining general currency ; and the mistake of Landor-worshippers is that, instead of allowing this fact, they endeavour to convince themselves and us that the excep- tional purity of the metal is really the cause of the indif- ference with which it is regarded. Of course, there is something to be said even for reasoning which at the first blush sounds so thoroughly absurd. Certain artistic qualities which are undoubtedly good qualities may be less fashionable at one time than at another, and what is ap- preciated by one generation may be more or less neglected by the next ; but much more is meant by these critics than that Landor's literary virtues were not those that specially appealed to the popular taste of his age. They hold that these virtues are of a kind which cannot appeal to the popular taste of any age,—that their perfection and the charm which belongs to it are necessarily inappreciable by all but the highly cultured few ; and it is clear that their delight in Landor is intensified by the fact that it is altogether unshared by the majority of the sub- scribers to Mudie's and the Grosvenor.
Mr. Colvin is candid, and he is not extravagant ; but even be hardly seems to discern the true secret of Landor's weakness, though once or twice he is clearly on the track of it. So early as the second page of the volume we come across the following passage, which could not well be more truthfully felt or better expressed :-
" So strong, indeed, was this instinct of originality in Landor, that he declines to fall in with the thoughts or to repeat the words of others, even when to do so would be most natural. Though an in- satiable and retentive reader, in his own writing he does not choose to deal in the friendly and commodious currency of quotation, allu- sion, and reminiscence. Everything be says must be his own, and
nothing but his own Again, although in saying what he chooses to say, Landor is one of the clearest and most direct of writers, it is his pleasure to leave much unsaid of that which makes ordinary writing easy and effective. He is so anxious to avoid say- ing what is superfluous, that he does not always say what is neces- sary. As soon has be has given adequate expression to any idea, he leaves it, and passes on to the next, forgetting sometimes to make clear to the reader the connection of his ideas with one another."
The facts are well stated here, but in stating them Mr. Colvin
seems hardly aware that he is really drawing an impeach- ment. If writing be not merely a fine art, but a vehicle of expression, all lapses from transparency of expression must be grave faults ; and this sacrifice of naturalness to a spurious originality, this refusal to deal in the most commodious literary currency, and this leaving out of the necessary in order to escape the superfluous, give to Landor's work an air of affecta- tion and unreality which repels the majority of readers, and prevents them from full appreciation of what is really admir- able in the books of one who is, after all, among the great writers of the century.
Even those who are unable to feel the peculiar charm of Lan- dor's work—a charm born of the alliance of masculine strength with feminine grace—can hardly fail to be conscious of an im- pression of weight, largeness, and supremacy. It is a testimony to his greatness that we seldom think of comparing him with any but the greatest. The critic of his Imaginary Conversations finds it impossible to refrain from mentioning the great name of Plato ; his work in verse has been again and again set side by side with that of Milton ; and in estimating his dramatic achievements we can think only of Shakespeare, and try to differentiate his treatment from that of the master of English drama. Writings which suggest such comparisons, or even such contrasts, must have an element of greatness ; and Mr. Colvin very justly indicates the most striking elements of this greatness, when he speaks of Landor's "haughty splendour and massive concentration." There are few writers of whom these impressive qualities can be predicated in combination. There is as much " haughty splendour" in some pages of . Burke as in any page of Landor, but the stream of gorgeous rhetoric is wont to burst its banks, and to lose force in diffu- sive expansion. Of " massive concentration " Bacon is, per- haps, the best example in English literature ; for specific gravity of thought, one or two of the essays are unrivalled ; but when Bacon becomes most massive, most concen- trated, he is always too thrifty and severe to be splendid. Landor had a finer feeling for the true economics of literature than either of these great writers,—an unerring sense of the fit- ness of an image, a word, or a cadence, resembling nothing so much as that exquisite sensibility which in social life differen- tiates a perfect manner, from one which just falls short of per- fection. The defect of this virtue, as manifested in Landor, is that the regulative force is a little too obvious ; even when he has most of freedom and ease, we feel that he lacks abandon,— that he is holding himself a little too well in hand. Much of his blank verse is almost mechanically uniform in its movement ; the intervals between the pauses are monotonously regular; but even where, as in the Hellenirs, they are most skilfully and delicately varied, the music is still too measured, too calculable, really to move us. We admire, we are charmed, we are im- pressed, but we are not carried out of ourselves as we are by the music of Paradise Lost, with its solemn thunders, its far-reach- ing vibrations of a sound like that of many waters.
The Imaginary Conversations will always be regarded as Landor's largest, most characteristic, and most delight-giving achievement. Thought luxuriates in these pages like vegetation in a Brazilian forest ; few books give us so unmistakable an impression of inexhaustibility, few afford an outlook upon an ampler horizon. The variety of matter and manner in these colloquies, the happy preservation in the best of them of high intellectual interest in union with sharp dramatic presentation, the sustained felicity of style, with its frequent gleam and constant grace, incline the sympathetic reader in some enthu- siastic moment to apply to Landor the extravagant eulogy passed by Coleridge upon Thomas Fuller. " Next to Shakespeare "- such were Coleridge's words—" I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvellous; the degree in which any given faculty, or combination of faculties, is possessed and manifested so far surpassing what-would have been thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the flavour and quality of wonder." And yet the reader who feels that these words express his occasional emotion with regard to Landor, will sorrowfully admit that he is bored almost as frequently as he is charmed. Even Mr. Colvin is compelled to declare that,—
"He [Landor] does what he was so keenly sensible of Words. worth's mistake in allowing himself to do,—he drones. It is a clas- sical and, from the point of view of style, an exemplary form of droning, but it is droning still. To the lover of fine thoughts, there is not one of these dialogues which it is not worth his while to read through and through for the sake of the jewels it contains. But there are not many which, like the dialogues of Diogenes and Plato, of the two Ciceros, of Marvele and Archbishop Parker, we can recommend to the ordinarily intelligent reader, in the confidence that he will not be fatigued before the end."
It is in this apparently contradictory manner that every critic who is at once competent and candid is compelled to speak of Landor. His strength and his weakness are so curiously intermingled that it is difficult to judge him with perfect justice, and at the same time with satisfying adequacy. Mr. Colvin is a genuine appreciator, without being a reckless eulogist ; and his book, in spite of some defects, which are per- haps unavoidable, is one which can hardly fail to be interesting to those who know Landor, and instructive to those to whom he is still a stranger.
Previous page
