dge;
because they fill up what they fall on to the brim at once;
and people run to them with acclamations at the splash.
Wisdom is reserved and noiseless, contented with hard
earnings, and daily letting go some early acquisition to
make room for better specimens. But great is the exultation
of a worthless man when he receives for the chips and
raspings of his Bridewell logwood a richer reward than the
best and wisest for extensive tracts of well-cleared truths!
Even he who has sold his country--

'Forbear, good Mr. Marvell,' says Bishop Parker; and one is inclined to
sympathise with the poor man drowned under this cascade of tropes. It is
certainly imposing, but I should be glad to know the meaning of the
metaphor about 'luck and dexterity.' Passages occur, again, in which we
are tempted to think that Landor is falling into an imitation of an
obsolete model. Take, for example, the following:--

A narrow mind cannot be enlarged, nor can a capacious one be
contracted. Are we angry with a phial for not being a flask;
or do we wonder that the skin of an elephant sits uneasily
on a squirrel?

Or this, in reference to Wordsworth:--

Pastiness and flatness are the qualities of a pancake, and
thus far he attained his aim: but if he means it for me, let
him place the accessories on the table, lest what is insipid
and clammy ... grow into duller accretion and moister
viscidity the more I masticate it.

Or a remark given to Newton:--

Wherever there is vacuity of mind, there must either be
flaccidity or craving; and this vacuity must necessarily be
found in the greater part of princes, from the defects of
their education, from the fear of offending them in its
progress by interrogations and admonitions, from the habit
of rendering all things valueless by the facility with which
they are obtained, and transitory by the negligence with
which they are received and holden.

Should we not remove the names of Porson and Newton from these
sentences, and substitute Sam Johnson? The last passage reads very like
a quotation from the 'Rambler.' Johnson was, in my opinion and in
Landor's, a great writer in spite of his mannerism; but the mannerism is
always rather awkward, and in such places we seem to see--certainly not
a squirrel--but, say, a thoroughbred horse invested with the skin of an
elephant.