though the more carefully hidden the more exquisite the
skill of the artist. And the purely artistic dialogue which describes
passion or the emotions arising from a given situation should in the
same way set forth a single idea, and preserve a dramatic unity of
conception at least as rigidly as a full-grown play. So far as Landor
used his facilities as an excuse for rambling, instead of so skilfully
subordinating them to the main purpose as to reproduce new variations on
the central theme, he is clearly in error, or is at least aiming at a
lower kind of excellence. And this, it may be said at once, seems to be
the most radical defect in point of composition of Landor's
'Conversations.' They have the fault which his real talk is said to have
exemplified. We are told that his temperament 'disqualified him for
anything like sustained reasoning, and he instinctively backed away from
discussion or argument.' Many of the written dialogues are a prolonged
series of explosions; when one expects a continuous development of a
theme, they are monotonous thunder-growls. Landor undoubtedly had a
sufficient share of dramatic power to write short dialogues expressing a
single situation with most admirable power, delicacy, and firmness of
touch. Nor, again, does the criticism just made refer to those longer
dialogues which are in reality a mere string of notes upon poems or
proposals for reforms in spelling. The slight dramatic form binds
together his pencillings from the margins of 'Paradise Lost' or
Wordsworth's poems very pleasantly, and enables him to give additional
effect to vivacious outbursts of praise or censure. But the more
elaborate dialogues suffer grievously from this absence of a true unity.
There is not that skilful evolution of a central idea without the rigid
formality of scientific discussion which we admire in the real
masterpieces of the art. We have a conglomerate, not an organic growth;
a series of observations set forth with never-failing elegance of style,
and often with singular keenness of perception; but they do not take us
beyond the starting-point. When Robinson Crusoe crossed the Pyrenees,
his guide led him by such dexterous windings and gradual ascents that he
found himself across the mountains before he knew where he was. With
Landor it is just the opposite. After many digressions and ramblings we
find ourselves back on the same side of the original question. We are
marking time with admirable gracefulne