Walter Landor
Savage Landor. By Malcolm Elwin. (Macmillan. as.)
THE problem set in writing the life of a man of letters is not easy one to solve. To write the story of anyone's life is to tell tale of action ; and the actions of a writer are his writings, wh are the outcome of his thought. You must trace how his thou recorded the impress of his time and its events, how it develop expanded, was distorted perhaps, or achieved a triumphant vict in its own sphere. It is not enough to describe his character, display him revolving as a social being, praise or lament domestic life. In short, it involves philosophic criticism, and ind literary criticism as well, an assessment of his matter and of artistry. If you omit this you go near to missing his charac altogether, for le style c'est l'homme mime. It is in these respe that Mr. Elwin fails us. He has done an honest piece of work ; has brought together much material hitherto unused ; his resea has been painstaking and his labour unsparing: but he has giv us the materials for a biography rather than the biography itself.
Mr. Elwin does not seem to have made up his mind as to w Landor was really like ; he is confused between Boythorn and monster—as the irritating title he gives the book would imply. researches, though they add considerable detail to the outward st do not much alter the picture we already had from Forster Colvin, rounded off by Mr. Stephen Wheeler, except that he m out the young Landor to .be more unpleasant than we are accusto to think him. If he was once so brutal and so careless—though was always actuated by a reckless generosity of temper—what it that made him become so considerate in his later years? A do questions of this sort interpose themselves as one reads ; the o solution would be a careful analysis of his Conversations. Of th we get barely a glimpse—no analysis, no individual judgem There is no criticism of style, and it is precisely here, in the s that the problems might be cleared up. It is a miraculous st melodious, flexible, lucid, and both strong and tender, as he himself. From his admirable criticism, too, we might get enlight ment ; but Mr. Elwin assures us that " he had no critical faculty, he utterly lacked the instinct of appraising men, women or This of Landor, whose Southey-Porson and Southey-Landor versations contain some of the acutest criticism in the language. have we any hint of Landor's political intuitions—which you or may not think happy—nor do we get any view of the poll circumstances which are the background to his political writings• short, for all its wealth of accumulated detail, this is a superfi biography, because it takes very little notice of the medium in %v Landor moved.
The first half of the book is written with a heavy affectatio literary manner, in a style one might describe as one of loa flocculence, full of confused imagery and pompous generalisa " The environment of childhood can so mould a nature sent and impressionable as to establish the lights and shades of a time's personality ": " . . . the egregious gullibility of human sh (I confess that phrase baffles me—if egregious means anything). does one " compete in fields of the first flight "? Or, again,
he could have had small chance in a rural constituency when a big centre of trade depression like Liverpool rejected Brougham, not only for Canning, but for a military nonentity, as second member, who had no better credentials than being a supporter of the policy which had implemented the town's unemployment." What can one make of " a remark which Landor soon had reason to recognise as pregnant of foresight "? Or take this as a description of young Milnes " Consumed with ambitious youth's egotistical appetite for appraisal of only those phenomena immediately useful to his ends . . ." This muddled style is the reflection of confused thought. We are, for instance, given two explanations of Landor's attitude towards his marriage: we are told both that Landor will be appre- ciated late, and that he will never be appreciated at all. And so on. Moreover, events are sometimes chronologically bandied about, so that one does not quite know where one is.
In fairness it must be said that Mr. Elwin's book contains all the external facts that anyone can possibly need to know about Landor, and that the second part of the book is far better written, more swiftly, naturally and sensibly. Mr. Elwin says some good things as well as some trite ones, and his picture of the old, completely unworldly Landor is vivid and attractive. One can only wish that he had given as much time to the writing of the book as he did to the collection of his material ; for if anyone really deserves a well- written biography it is that castigator of words, Walter Savage
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