Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/227

 Rh Nevertheless, it is not Landor's influence, by any means, which is felt in the random dialogues of to-day. He is an author more praised than loved, more talked about than read, and his unapproachable delicacy and distinction are far removed from all efforts of facile imitation. Our modern "imaginary conversations," whether openly satiric, or gravely instructive, are fashioned on other models. They have a faint flavor of Lucian, a subdued and decent reflection of the "Noctes;" but they never approach the classic incisiveness and simplicity of Landor. There is a delightfully witty dialogue of Mr. Barrie's called "Brought Back from Elysium," in which the ghosts of Scott, Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, and Thackeray are interviewed by five living novelists, who kindly undertake to point out to them the superiority of modern fiction. In this admirable little satire, every stroke tells, every phantom and every novelist speaks in character, and the author, with dexterous art, fits his shafts of ridicule into the easy play of a possible conversation. Nothing can be finer than the way in which Scott's native modesty, of which not even Elysium