ful regulations. But at Independence, head of navigation, all packing had to be done. As wagons loaded and pulled out of Independence, it was felt by those involved that the great adventure had begun: "At last all are launched upon the broad prairie-the miseries of preparation are over-the thousand anxieties occasioned by wearisome consultations and delays are felt no more. The charioteer, as he smacks his whip, feels a bounding elasticity of soul within him, which he finds it impossible to restrain; even the mules prick up their ears with a peculiarly conceited air, as if in anticipation of that change of scene which will presently follow. Harmony and good feeling prevail everywhere. The hilarious song, the bon mot and the witty repartee go round in quick succession; and before people have had leisure to take cognizance of the fact, the lovely village of Independence, with its multitude of associations is already lost to the eye.'

We need not follow Dr. Gregg all the way to Santa Fé and new Spain, along through the rattlesnakes and the scudding Apaches, past the dreadful Cimarron, and the rapacious customs officers. Nor need we go with him on his most interesting journey of 1839, when (the French blockading Vera Cruz and enhancing the price of goods up country) he took his own caravan to Santa Fé and Chihuahua by a new road up the Arkansas from Van Buren. Dr. Gregg, on this journey, and the Santa Fé trade generally were, of course, showing the way to the Union and the Union Pacific. The Doctor's book is accessible and should be read for its history and its information. As for literature, John Bigelow said that he had prepared the book for the press; that Dr. Gregg had come to him in New York and placed the manuscript into his hands for working up. However it is, the book suffers a little by comparison with John Hughes's Southwestern Tour, which work had but one author. But Gregg was an author. In the early forties he wrote a number of letters on the Santa Fé trade for the Galveston Advertiser and the Arkansas Intelligencer. The novelist, Captain Mar

ryat, it seems, plagiarized verbatim from these letters in his hoax, Monsieur Violet's California Travels. It would be worth while comparing those letters with the text of Dr. Gregg's book. During the Mexican War Dr. Gregg was correspondent with the Army for American papers, among them pretty certainly the New Orleans Picayune. There is more American literature stored away in our old newspapers than we have in book form: Gregg's letters might be fished out to some advantage. And then at San Francisco, shortly before his sudden death on Trinity River, Dr. Gregg left with a chance acquaintance a manuscript entitled Rovings Abroad. This has been lost, and very probably was the best work he had done in the writing way.

ECHOES OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

BY STANLEY T. WILLIAMS

Mr. Sidney Colvin says that Landorians may be counted on the fingers of two hands. It is true. Most of us read the Imaginary Conversations with a feeling of suffocation, even though we are amazed by their author's learning. Here is a world where the guests are indeed few. No school boy learning will help us; and those not more at home among the ancients than among their friends of this world need not enter this other. The heroes of these endless dialogues come straight from the dead, where Southey boasted that he passed his days; they are as dusty as the mummies of the first dynasty. But-alas!-more talkative: they bicker, denounce, and harangue; they are the apotheosis of boring discussion; they are veritable ghosts on stilts. Although Miss Repplier implies, by denial, that modern dialogues owe something to the Imaginary Conversations, the fact remains that they are not read. Who in this century has performed the feat of reading them, every word? Let him speak out boldly.

As for Landor's lyrics, they are the icicles of nineteenth century literature, as those monstrous epics, Gebir and Count Julian, are the icebergs. To read Landor's poetry after Byron's or Shelley's is like leaping into the Arctic current. It seems impossible to believe that this artificial verse was written when the Romantic Movement in poetry was at its height. Yet such was the case. We of the twentieth century who are nurtured on a hundred varieties of Romanticism can hardly care much for this "marmoreal" verse. In its memory Swinburne and William Watson may write odes; nevertheless it will not be read.

Meanwhile Landor is frequently mentioned, and seriously, as a reputable poet. It is even insinuated that he is one of the nineteenth century hierarchy with a position as secure as

those of the poets he seldom noticed,-Byron and Shelley. The implication is that Landor's writings have perished but his personality survives. People are fond of alluding to "the exiled Landor at Fiesole," or they refer knowingly to his temper. Only yesterday a friend muttered soemthing to me about "that poet, Landor, who, in a passion, pitched his cook through the window into the flower-bed." (He omitted the essence of the jest: Landor's exclamation, "Oh, my God, the violets!"). Something is known too, of the old Roman's hauteur; of his litigations; of his resemblance to Lawrence Boythorn in Bleak House.

So they speak, the literary by-standers, but these remarks are merely echoes. Landor's personality will not save him. He dies hard, but dying he is, together with all his writings. Landor is not to be one of those immortals, whose books pass, but whose souls live on. He can never be compared, in respect to personality, as some would have us think, with Dr. Johnson. For this sort of immortality more is needed than a temper, a hearty laugh, and classical learning. No groups will be formed for the study of "Landor and His Circle". This condition may be party because Landor spoke to "the few," but it is chiefly due to the fact that he communicated intellectual ideas whose significance today is precious little. It is possible that Dr. Johnson will be calling Boswell a fool, and will be stamping his foot at Dr. Parr to the delight of readers in unborn centuries, but it is certain that nobody will then care tuppence about Landor's throwing his undercooked pheasant into the fire. Why should they? Landor's personality is being forgotten.

Landor was not great",

To answer this by: "Of course. is an admission. Such a speaker does not know Landor, and does not understand the unforgettable impression he made upon all who knew him. So great, in fact, that one leader in nineteenth century poetry vouchsafed that he owed more to Landor than to any living writer! Rather, Landor's personality was great; great in a variety of ways. It is fading

because of its strange quality and consequent unimportance to "modern literature." One fatal flaw this tragic hero had his writings and sayings do not reach the hearts of men. Wise he is, wise with deep learning; brilliant as the cold sparkle on a sunny field of snow; morally lofty, also. But human he is not, and we'll have none of him today. To approach Landor, as Dr. Johnson is approached, through con. versations and letters, is a chilling experience.

Landor was like the oracle which prefaced its remarks by a blast of cold air. His manner of pronouncement is like Jove's on Olympus. Inexorable. Moreover, these edicts are likely to be concerned with such popular topics as "Lycophron as a Poet", or the Greek word for violet. These are handicaps to an appreciation of Landor, but the greatest is that already mentioned. We are always forgiving assurance -and even learning-in writers. But out of their dead ages they must speak to us directly. They must entice our spirits, allure our souls. Cor ad cor loquitur, though the ages pass. But Landor never speaks to us; he addresses us, and talks down to us. His notions on life may be true, but we receive them without enthusiasm. His ideas seem to echo faintly in our own experience, but somewhere en route to us the emotion has been frozen. To recognize one's own feelings done in plaster of paris, read some of Landor's apothegms.

William Hazlitt is neither an exuberant nor a popular writer, but passages from his very human essay "On the Fear of Death" are glowing when compared with his typical excerpt from the Pentameron:

Death can only take away the sorrowful from our affections; the flower expands; the colorless film that enveloped it falls off and perishes. .. Would we break a precious vase because it is as capable of containing the bitter as the sweet? No: the very things which touch us the most sensibly are those which we should be most reluctant to forget. The noble mansion is most distinguished by the beautiful images it retains of being past away; and so is the noble mind. The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall: and thus insensibly