Landor's coarseness there is a certain air of defiance; and
the rude word seems sometimes to arise from a disgust at niceness and
over-refinement. Before a well-dressed company he plunges his
fingers in a sess-pool, as if to expose the whiteness of his hands
and the jewels of his ring. Afterward, he washes them in water, he
washes them in wine; but you are never secure from his freaks. A
sort of Earl Peterborough in literature, his eccentricity is too
decided not to have diminished his greatness. He has capital enough
to have furnished the brain of fifty stock authors, yet has written
no good book.
But we have spoken all our discontent. Possibly his writings
are open to harsher censure; but we love the man from sympathy, as
well as for reasons to be assigned; and have no wish, if we were
able, to put an argument in the mouth of his critics. Now for twenty
years we have still found the "Imaginary Conversations" a sure
resource in solitude, and it seems to us as original in its form as
in its matter. Nay, when we remember his rich and ample page,
wherein we are always sure to find free and sustained thought, a keen
and precise understanding, an affluent and ready memory familiar with
all chosen books, an industrious observation in every department of
life, an experience to which nothing has occurred in vain, honor for
every just and generous sentiment, and a scourge like that of the
Furies for every oppressor, whether public or private, we feel how
dignified is this perpetual Censor in his curule chair, and we wish
to thank a benefactor of the reading world.
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