Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/110

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS a charm I cannot explain. I lived upon it for weeks." The spell has been felt by many choice spirits, and continues to this day; a letter before us, from one of the most refined American essayists, says of Lamb's extravagance: "Living on it for weeks is a daring thing to say,—yet it is just what I did." The Roses of two later generations were dear to Landor for his first love's sake, and, as we have embraced in this collection other verses inspired by her beautiful memory, it will be seen how loyally and tenderly he clung to it throughout the dreams and ventures of a prolonged, impulsive lifetime.

"Agläe," "Aspasia to Cleone," "Pyrrha," and other antiques, are to be found, strung along at intervals, in Pericles and Aspasia,—that unequalled product of classical idealism, written in the most perfect English prose. Indeed, the conception of the present volume arose from the statement in a recent essay, that a book might be made of the lyrical gems with which Landor's prose writings, even, are interspersed. "The Maid's Lament" is a ditty put into the mouth of the youthful Shakespeare, in that remarkable Elizabethan study of the supposed Citation of the future dramatist before Sir Thomas Lucy upon a charge of deer-stealing. Some of the poet's lighter stanzas are winsome for their careless, troubadour spirit,—a mood not affected by him, but his sustainer to the last; and our readers will not quarrel with us for resetting "The One White Hair," "Sixteen," "Time to be Wise," familiar as these may be, on the pages of the volume before them. [96]