ows out of one error into a less.
Pope wisely maintains that "no man ever rose to any degree of perfection
in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against
the stream of mankind." Unless he mount the chariot of execution, his
ideas, however good, will never put a girdle round the earth. They will
halt and limp as do his own weary feet.

* * * * *

Landor's enthusiasm for Shakespeare grew young as he grew old, and it
was his desire to bid farewell to earth with his eyes resting upon the
Shakespeare that so constantly lay open before him. Nothing excited his
indignation more than to hear little people of great pretension
carpingly criticise the man of whom he makes Southey, in a discussion
with Porson, declare, that "all the faults that ever were committed in
poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one
single thought or image such as almost every scene exhibits in every
drama of this unrivalled genius." In three fine lines Landor has said
even more:--

"In poetry there is but one supreme,
Though there are many angels round his throne,
Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid."

To Landor's superior acumen, also, we owe two readings of Shakespeare
that have made intelligible what was previously "a contradictory
inconceivable." Did it ever occur to dealers in familiar quotations that
there was a deal of nonsense in the following lines as they are printed?

"_Vaulting_ ambition that o'erleaps _itself_
And falls on the _other side_."

"Other side of what?" exclaims Landor "It should be _its sell_. _Sell_
is _saddle_ in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian." Yet,
in spite of correction, every Macbeth on the stage still maintains in
stentorian tones that ambition o'erleaps _itself_, thereby demonstrating
how useless it is to look for Shakespearian scholarship in so-called
Shakespearian actors, who blindly and indolently accept theatrical
tradition.

Equally important is Landor's correction of the lines

"And the _delighted_ spirit
To bathe in fiery floods."

"Truly this would be a very odd species of delight. But Shakespeare
never wrote such nonsense; he wrote _belighted_ (whence our _blighted_),
struck by lightning; a fit preparation for such bathing."

The last stanza ever inscribed to Shakespeare by Landor was sent to me
with the following preface: "An old man sends the last verses he