Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/109

LANDOR You are not moved to tears, as by the passion of Mrs. Browning, the devotion and aspiration of Whittier, the pathos of Thomas Hood. Many of them are, as we have entitled them, just precious little works of art; to be prized, studied, marvelled over,—like the carved and mounted treasures of a virtuoso's collection,—for beauty, pure and simple, and the perfection of their rhythmical execution.

Yet even in Tibullus there is nothing sweeter, and little more touching and tender in the anthology of our own tongue, than the stanzas composed by Landor when his personal feelings really were claiming utterance. As he laid bare his heart, whether in fiery youth, or old and lonely as the oak that has outlived its forest companions, he never gave voice to an unmanly or pitiful complaint. Yet, lion and eagle as he was, he was not ashamed of the softest natural emotion; it spontaneously broke out in his numbers; the glitter of a tear is in many a line; there is a wandering echo in many a stanza which haunts the mind long after. Such is the charm of "Rose Aylmer," of which it may be said that,—although it has happened often that some minor lyric has entered the common heart, and gained for an author that popular regard which greater works have failed to procure him,—there hardly is another instance in recent literature where eight simple lines have so fascinated poetic and sensitive natures. Crabb Robinson recounts of Charles Lamb, that, "both tipsy and sober, he is ever muttering 'Rose Aylmer'"; and Lamb said, in his own letter to Landor, "'Tis for 'Rose Aylmer,' which has [95]