These lapses into the inflated are of course exceptional with Landor.
There can be no question of the fineness of his perception in all
matters of literary form. To say that his standard of style is classical
is to repeat a commonplace too obvious for repetition, except to add a
doubt whether he is not often too ostentatious and self-conscious in his
classicism. He loves and often exhibits a masculine simplicity, and
speaks with enthusiasm of Locke and Swift in their own departments.
Locke is to be 'revered;' he is 'too simply grand for admiration;' and
no one, he thinks, ever had such a power as Swift of saying forcibly and
completely whatever he meant to say. But for his own purposes he
generally prefers a different model. The qualities which he specially
claims seem to be summed up in the conversation upon Bacon's Essays
between Newton and Barrow. Cicero and Bacon, says Barrow, have more
wisdom between them than all the philosophers of antiquity. Newton's
review of the Essays, he adds, 'hath brought back to my recollection so
much of shrewd judgment, so much of rich imagery, such a profusion of
truths so plain as (without his manner of exhibiting them) to appear
almost unimportant, that in various high qualities of the human mind I
must acknowledge not only Cicero, but every prose writer among the
Greeks, to stand far below him. Cicero is least valued for his highest
merits, his fulness, and his perspicuity. Bad judges (and how few are
not so!) desire in composition the concise and obscure; not knowing that
the one most frequently arises from paucity of materials, and the other
from inability to manage and dispose them.' Landor aims, like Bacon, at
rich imagery, at giving to thoughts which appear plain more value by
fineness of expression, and at compressing shrewd judgments into weighty
aphorisms. He would equally rival Cicero in fulness and perspicuity;
whilst a severe rejection of everything slovenly or superfluous would
save him from ever deviating into the merely florid. So far as style can
be really separated from thought, we may admit unreservedly that he has
succeeded in his aim, and has attained a rare harmony of tone and
colouring.

There may, indeed, be some doubt as to his perspicuity. Southey said
that Landor was obscure, whilst adding that he could not explain the
cause of the obscurity. Causes enough may be suggested. Besides his
incoherency, his love of figures which sometimes become half detached
f