Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/112

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS. There is something Quixotic in the regard of most poets for women, and having once determined that Dulcinea should be a princess, Landor persuaded himself that she was nothing less. Indeed, like Burns, he went to the extreme of chivalry with every woman he admired, and for the time was sincere in all the honors paid to her. How closely these two men,—one born in a cottage, the other inheriting an ancient name and estate,—were akin in their manly health, their free poetic vigor, their courtliness to women, their tenderness to children and animals, their sturdy and portentous defiance of bigots, charlatans, and snobs!

Landor's wit, especially in the sprightly rhymes of which his later years were prolific, occasionally was tinctured with the freedom of his Latin satirists; but rather in playful imitation of them than from any grossness in his own nature. It was a fault to write, and a still greater one to print, such verses; but it was the fault of that time of life when the faculty outstays the judgment. Of course, such indecorous trifles drew the attention and merciless censure of numberless Philistines, who chose to ignore, or were unconscious of the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of his serious literary achievements. In actual life he was a man without a vice, and whose every error might be traced to the infirmity of a most proud and obstreperous temper. Correct, temperate, and pure, he found a zest in outdoor communion with Nature, which maintained his inherent vitality to a grand old age. If his foibles subjected him to the charge of Paganism, his strength broke out in love of liberty, sympathy with the [98]