, were Platonic dialogues between a
great variety of historical characters; between, for example, Dante and
Beatrice, Washington {243} and Franklin, Queen Elisabeth and Cecil,
Xenophon and Cyrus the Younger, Bonaparte and the President of the
Senate. Landor's writings have never been popular; they address an
aristocracy of scholars; and Byron--whom Landor disliked and considered
vulgar--sneered at the latter as a writer who "cultivated much private
renown in the shape of Latin verses." He said of himself that he "never
contended with a contemporary, but walked alone on the far eastern
uplands, meditating and remembering."

A schoolmate of Coleridge, at Christ's Hospital, and his friend and
correspondent through life, was Charles Lamb, one of the most charming of
English essayists. He was an old bachelor, who lived alone with his
sister Mary a lovable and intellectual woman, but subject to recurring
attacks of madness. Lamb was "a notched and cropped scrivener, a votary
of the desk," a clerk, that is, in the employ of the East India Company.
He was of antiquarian tastes, an ardent play-goer, a lover of whist and
of the London streets; and these tastes are reflected in his _Essays of
Elia_, contributed to the _London Magazine_ and reprinted in book form in
1823. From his mousing among the Elisabethan dramatists and such old
humorists as Burton and Fuller, his own style imbibed a peculiar
quaintness and pungency. His _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_,
1808, is admirable for its critical insight. In 1802 he paid a visit to
Coleridge at Keswick, in the Lake Country; but he felt or {244} affected
a whimsical horror of the mountains, and said, "Fleet Street and the
Strand are better places to live in." Among the best of his essays are
_Dream Children_, _Poor Relations_, _The Artificial Comedy of the Last
Century_, _Old China_, _Roast Pig_, _A Defense of Chimney-sweeps_, _A
Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis_, and _The Old
Benchers of the Inner Temple_.

The romantic movement, preluded by Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson,
and others, culminated in Walter Scott (1771-1832). His passion for the
medieval was first excited by reading Percy's _Reliques_, when he was a
boy; and in one of his school themes he maintained that Ariosto was a
greater poet than Homer. He began early to collect manuscript ballads,
suits of armor, pieces of old plate, border-horns, and similar relics.
He learned Italian i