o the
swift current. So also the pursuer, who, with one long, loud
exclamation of triumph, still with his treasure in his grasp,
springs vehemently forward, and sinks, once and for ever. And the
betrayer beats his way onward, aimless and exhausted, but still he
nears the shore. Shall he reach it? Never!

* * * * *

IMAGINARY CONVERSATION, BETWEEN MR. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR AND THE
EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

To Christopher North, Esq.

SIR,--Mr. Walter Savage Landor has become a contributor to _Blackwood's
Magazine_! I stared at the announcement, and it will presently be
seen why. There is nothing extraordinary in the apparition of another
and another of this garrulous sexagenarian's "Imaginary Conversations."
They come like shadows, so depart.

"The thing, we know, is neither new nor rare,
But wonder how the devil it got there."

Many of your readers, ignorant or forgetful, may have asked,
"Who is Mr. Landor? We have never heard of any remarkable person of
that name, or bearing a similar one, except the two brothers Lander,
the explorers of the Niger." Mr. Walter Savage would answer,
"Not to know me argues yourself unknown." He was very angry with
Lord Byron for designating him as _a_ Mr. Landor. He thought it
should have been _the_. You ought to have forewarned such readers
that _the_ Mr. Landor, now _your_ Walter Savage, is the learned
author of an epic poem called _Gebir_, composed originally in
Egyptian hieroglyphics, then translated by him into Latin, and
thence done into English blank verse by the same hand. It is a work
of rare occurrence even in the English character, and is said to be
deeply abstruse. Some extracts from it have been buried in, or have
helped to bury, critical reviews. A copy of the Anglo-Gebir is,
however, extant in the British Museum, and is said to have so
puzzled the few philologists who have examined it, that they have
declared none but a sphinx, and that an Egyptian one, could unriddle
it. I would suggest that some Maga of the gypsies should be called
in to interpret. Our vagrant fortune-tellers are reputed to be of
Egyptian origin, and to hold converse among themselves in a very
strange and curious oriental tongue called _Gibberish_, which word,
no doubt, is a derivative from Gebir. Of the existence of the
mysterious epic, the public were made aware many years ago by the
first publication of Mr. Leigh Hunt's _Feast of the Poets_, wh