ble associations. I felt relieved that
it so happened the manuscripts were not again left with me, yet I should
have been a saint had I not occasionally experienced a secret regret at
not having been forced to retain them in spite of entreaty and
propriety.

The greater part of these manuscripts have since appeared, under the
title of "Heroic Idyls, with Additional Poems," published late in 1863
by T. Cantley Newby, London.[C] This very last fruit off an old tree can
in no way add to Landor's reputation; it is interesting, however, for
having been written "within two paces of his ninetieth year," and as
showing the course of the mind's empire. Landor would have been more
heroic than these Idyls had he withheld them from publication, for it is
not cheering to see Thor cracking nuts with his most ponderous hammer.
And Landor realized as much when he wrote the following apology:--

"You ask how I, who could converse
With Pericles, can stoop to worse:
How I, who once had higher aims,
Can trifle so with epigrams.
I would not lose the wise from view,
But would amuse the children too:
Besides, my breath is short and weak,
And few must be the words I speak."

Ah! but it is a question whether the children are amused. Occasionally
there is a line with the old ring to it, a couplet seasoned with Attic
salt, but for the rest there is the body without the spirit,--there is
the well of English undefiled, but it is pumped dry! Probably the desire
to publish was never so great as during Landor's last years, when the
interests of his life had narrowed down to reading and writing, and he
had become a purely introverted man. It was then he wrote:--

"The heaviest curse that can on mortal fall
Is, 'Who has friends may he outlive them all!'
This malediction has awaited me,
Who had so many.... I could once count three."

Cursed thus, he turned to the public for the only consolation left him
on this side of the grave. It was not sufficient to write, for it is he
as the Homer of his Idyls that confesses

"A pardonable fault: we wish for listeners
Whether we speak or sing: the young and old
Alike are weak in this, unwise and wise
Cheerful and sorrowful."

Twenty years before, Landor wrote to Lady Blessington: "Once beyond
seventy, I will never write a line in verse or prose for publication. I
will be my own Gil Blas. The wisest of us are unconscious when our
faculties