Chapter 1

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS: A SELECTION

By WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

CONTENTS

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

Marcellus and Hannibal

Queen Elizabeth and Cecil

Epictetus and Seneca

Peter the Great and Alexis

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne

Boccaccio and Petrarca

Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges

John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent

Leofric and Godiva

Essex and Spenser

Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker

Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble

Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney

Southey and Porson

The Abbé Delille and Walter Landor

Diogenes and Plato

Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew

Rousseau and Malesherbes

Lucullus and Caesar

Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa

Dante and Beatrice

Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth

Tasso and Cornelia

La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault

Lucian and Timotheus

Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin

Southey and Landor

The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti

Louis XVIII and Talleyrand

Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell

The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida

THE PENTAMERON

First Day's Interview

Third Day's Interview

Fourth Day's Interview

Fifth Day's Interview

POEMS

I. She I love (alas in vain!)

II. Pleasure! why thus desert the heart

III. Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives

IV. Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!

V. The gates of fame and of the grave

VI. Twenty years hence my eyes may grow

VII. Here, ever since you went abroad

VIII. Tell me not things past all belief

IX. Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak

X. Fiesole Idyl

XI. Ah what avails the sceptred race

XII. With rosy hand a little girl prest down

VIII. Ternissa! you are fled!

XIV. Various the roads of life; in one

XV. Yes; I write verses now and then

XVI. On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia

XVII. Once, and once only, have I seen thy face

XVIII. To Wordsworth

XIX. To Charles Dickens

XX. To Barry Cornwall

XXI. To Robert Browning

XXII. Age

XXIII. Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower

XXIV. Well I remember how you smiled

XXV. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife

XXVI. Death stands above me, whispering low

XXVII. A Pastoral

XXVIII. The Lover

XXIX. The Poet who Sleeps

XXX. Daniel Defoe

XXXI. Idle Words

XXXII. To the River Avon

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL

_Hannibal._ Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! oh! Marcellus! He moves not--he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers? Stand wide, soldiers--wide, forty paces; give him air; bring water; halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the brushwood; unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first--his breast rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me--they have rolled back again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too, sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the impure----

_Hannibal._ We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome, and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is. The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and cannot. How awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs! They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood--few other enter there. And what plain armour!

_Gaulish Chieftain._ My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew him myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory of Gaul requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.

_Hannibal._ My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple, he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The shield he battered down, the breast-plate he pierced with his sword--these he showed to the people and to the gods; hardly his wife and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ Hear me; O Hannibal!

_Hannibal._ What! when Marcellus lies before me? when his life may perhaps be recalled? when I may lead him in triumph to Carthage? when Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me? Content thee! I will give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ For myself?

_Hannibal._ For thyself.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ And these rubies and emeralds, and that scarlet----?

_Hannibal._ Yes, yes.

_Gaulish Chieftain._ O glorious Hannibal! unconquerable hero! O my happy country! to have such an ally and defender. I swear eternal gratitude--yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity.

_Hannibal._ In all treaties we fix the time: I could hardly ask a longer. Go back to thy station. I would see what the surgeon is about, and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus! the triumph of Hannibal! what else has the world in it? Only Rome and Carthage: these follow.

_Marcellus._ I must die then? The gods be praised! The commander of a Roman army is no captive.

_Hannibal._ [_To the Surgeon._] Could not he bear a sea voyage? Extract the arrow.

_Surgeon._ He expires that moment.

_Marcellus._ It pains me: extract it.

_Hannibal._ Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your countenance, and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemy in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no captive.

[_To the Surgeon._] Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is there nothing to alleviate and allay it?

_Marcellus._ Hannibal, give me thy hand--thou hast found it and brought it me, compassion.

[_To the Surgeon._] Go, friend; others want thy aid; several fell around me.

_Hannibal._ Recommend to your country, O Marcellus, while time permits it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing the Senate of my superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet is ready: let me take off this ring--try to write, to sign it, at least. Oh, what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and even to smile!

_Marcellus._ Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would Minos say to me, 'Marcellus, is this thy writing?'

Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, and she still hath many left.

_Hannibal._ Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I confess in shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately, too, the nearer posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Numidians are so in revenge: the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other, learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the common good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of their country, after so long an absence.

_Marcellus._ Hannibal, thou art not dying.

_Hannibal._ What then? What mean you?

_Marcellus._ That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet to apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to me: mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole fault, less plenary than thy adversary's?

I have spoken too much: let me rest; this mantle oppresses me.

_Hannibal._ I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under, and then replace the ring.

_Marcellus._ Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation of the most helpless! Let that ring and the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy prosperity (Heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other country!) it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then the most conscious that it may befall us.

There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either.

_Hannibal._ What?

_Marcellus._ This body.

_Hannibal._ Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready.

_Marcellus._ I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other senses are in confusion. I would have said--this body, when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice than of mine; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety of my family.

_Hannibal._ You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not visible till now.

_Marcellus._ Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes.

_Hannibal._ Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the conquered fly together.

_Marcellus._ Hast thou any prisoners from my escort?

_Hannibal._ A few dying lie about--and let them lie--they are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among them--he appeared a Roman--a youth who turned back, though wounded. They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with lordly ease.

Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your thoughts?

_Marcellus._ I have suppressed it long enough. My son--my beloved son!

_Hannibal._ Where is he? Can it be? Was he with you?

_Marcellus._ He would have shared my fate--and has not. Gods of my country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpassingly beneficent: I render you, for the last time, thanks.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL

_Elizabeth._ I advise thee again, churlish Cecil, how that our Edmund Spenser, whom thou callest most uncourteously a whining whelp, hath good and solid reason for his complaint. God's blood! shall the lady that tieth my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest in the future?

_Cecil._ Your Highness must remember he carouseth fully for such deserts: fifty pounds a year of unclipped moneys, and a butt of canary wine; not to mention three thousand acres in Ireland, worth fairly another fifty and another butt, in seasonable and quiet years.

_Elizabeth._ The moneys are not enough to sustain a pair of grooms and a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken in my presence at a feast. The moneys are given to such men, that they may not incline nor be obligated to any vile or lowly occupation; and the canary, that they may entertain such promising wits as court their company and converse; and that in such manner there may be alway in our land a succession of these heirs unto fame. He hath written, not indeed with his wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language, but in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved me, and haply the more inasmuch as they demonstrate to me that his genius hath been dampened by his adversities. Read them.

_Cecil._

How much is lost when neither heart nor eye Rosewinged Desire or fabling Hope deceives; When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;

When, rising from the turf where youth reposed, We find but deserts in the far-sought shore; When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed, And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.

_Elizabeth._ The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the weaver at Arras, John Blanquieres, on my account, a description for some of his cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine own self, indeed, as far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth by him with figures and fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian--no matter--he might perhaps have fared the better for it; but poets' wits--God help them!--when did they ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly and meanly.

_Cecil._

Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves And solid blossoms, many floating isles, What heavenly radiance swift descending cleaves The darksome wave! Unwonted beauty smiles

On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower, On every nymph, and twenty sate around, Lo! 'twas Diana--from the sultry hour Hither she fled, nor fear'd she sight or sound.

Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly! Three faithful dogs before him rais'd their heads, And watched and wonder'd at that fixèd eye.

Forth sprang his favourite--with her arrow-hand Too late the goddess hid what hand may hide, Of every nymph and every reed complain'd, And dashed upon the bank the waters wide.

On the prone head and sandal'd feet they flew-- Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear! The last marr'd voice not e'en the favourite knew, But bay'd and fasten'd on the upbraiding deer.

Far be, chaste goddess, far from me and mine The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon! Alas, that vengeance dwells with charms divine----

_Elizabeth._ Pshaw! give me the paper: I forewarned thee how it ended--pitifully, pitifully.

_Cecil._ I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker of the aforecited poesy hath chosen your Highness; for I have seen painted--I know not where, but I think no farther off than Putney--the identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs, as he calls them, and more dogs. So small a matter as a page of poesy shall never stir my choler nor twitch my purse-string.

_Elizabeth._ I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona, which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would not from the fountain of honour give lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and propensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God hath commanded them to stand on high for an example. We call him parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey its most faithful propagator and most firm support? Mark me, I do not speak of that existence which the proudest must close in a ditch--the narrowest, too, of ditches and the soonest filled and fouled, and whereunto a pinch of ratsbane or a poppy-head may bend him; but of that which reposes on our own good deeds, carefully picked up, skilfully put together, and decorously laid out for us by another's kind understanding: I speak of an existence such as no father is author of, or provides for. The parent gives us few days and sorrowful; the poet, many and glorious: the one (supposing him discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best remunerates our virtues.

A page of poesy is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they and their sovereign dwell together; next year, they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable. The keeper of my privy seal is an earl: what then? the keeper of my poultry-yard is a Caesar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing.

I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them as to incapacitate them for the sword and for the council chamber. If Alexander was the Great, what was Aristoteles who made him so, and taught him every art and science he knew, except three--those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his bosom friends? Come along: I will bring thee back again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund, if perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for the mortification they must suffer at seeing their inferiors set before them. Edmund is grave and gentle: he complains of fortune, not of Elizabeth; of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved--so help me, God!--he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto him those twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them, gloriously gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces, sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom. Beside which, set open before him with due reverence this Bible, wherein he may read the mercies of God toward those who waited in patience for His blessing; and this pair of crimson silk hose, which thou knowest I have worn only thirteen months, taking heed that the heel-piece be put into good and sufficient restoration, at my sole charges, by the Italian woman nigh the pollard elm at Charing Cross.

EPICTETUS AND SENECA

_Seneca._ Epictetus, I desired your master, Epaphroditus, to send you hither, having been much pleased with his report of your conduct, and much surprised at the ingenuity of your writings.

_Epictetus._ Then I am afraid, my friend----

_Seneca._ _My friend!_ are these the expressions--Well, let it pass. Philosophers must bear bravely. The people expect it.

_Epictetus._ Are philosophers, then, only philosophers for the people; and, instead of instructing them, must they play tricks before them? Give me rather the gravity of dancing dogs. Their motions are for the rabble; their reverential eyes and pendant paws are under the pressure of awe at a master; but they are dogs, and not below their destinies.

_Seneca._ Epictetus! I will give you three talents to let me take that sentiment for my own.

_Epictetus._ I would give thee twenty, if I had them, to make it thine.

_Seneca._ You mean, by lending it the graces of my language?

_Epictetus._ I mean, by lending it to thy conduct. And now let me console and comfort thee, under the calamity I brought on thee by calling thee _my friend_. If thou art not my friend, why send for me? Enemy I can have none: being a slave, Fortune has now done with me.

_Seneca._ Continue, then, your former observations. What were you saying?

_Epictetus._ That which thou interruptedst.

_Seneca._ What was it?

_Epictetus._ I should have remarked that, if thou foundest ingenuity in my writings, thou must have discovered in them some deviation from the plain, homely truths of Zeno and Cleanthes.

_Seneca._ We all swerve a little from them.

_Epictetus._ In practice too?

_Seneca._ Yes, even in practice, I am afraid.

_Epictetus._ Often?

_Seneca._ Too often.

_Epictetus._ Strange! I have been attentive, and yet have remarked but one difference among you great personages at Rome.

_Seneca._ What difference fell under your observation?

_Epictetus._ Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us that our desires were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city, their acute and inventive scholars take us aside, and show us that there is not only one way, but two.

_Seneca._ Two ways?

_Epictetus._ They whisper in our ear, 'These two ways are philosophy and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding it, the alternative.' Thou reddenest.

_Seneca._ Monstrous degeneracy.

_Epictetus._ What magnificent rings! I did not notice them until thou liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of such effeminacy and impudence.

_Seneca._ The rings are not amiss; my rank rivets them upon my fingers: I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me one, Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay them aside a single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those whom they love the most worthily.

_Epictetus._ Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers, like the arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross.

_Seneca._ Oh, horrible! Find some other resemblance.

_Epictetus._ The extremities of a fig-leaf.

_Seneca._ Ignoble!

_Epictetus._ The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned.

_Seneca._ You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in eloquence and rhetoric: you want topics, and tropes, and figures.

_Epictetus._ I have no room for them. They make such a buzz in the house, a man's own wife cannot understand what he says to her.

_Seneca._ Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you right, and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat rustic education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest.

_Epictetus._ Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked or defective is susceptible of decoration: what is decorated is simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in exchange for it; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst preserve it inviolate. It is no wonder that we mortals, little able as we are to see truth, should be less able to express it.

_Seneca._ You have formed at present no idea of style.

_Epictetus._ I never think about it. First, I consider whether what I am about to say is true; then, whether I can say it with brevity, in such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly as I do in the light of truth; for, if they survey it as an ingenuity, my desire is ungratified, my duty unfulfilled. I go not with those who dance round the image of Truth, less out of honour to her than to display their agility and address.

_Seneca._ We must attract the attention of readers by novelty, and force, and grandeur of expression.

_Epictetus._ We must. Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing so forcible, nothing so novel.

_Seneca._ Sonorous sentences are wanted to awaken the lethargy of indolence.

_Epictetus._ Awaken it to what? Here lies the question; and a weighty one it is. If thou awakenest men where they can see nothing and do no work, it is better to let them rest: but will not they, thinkest thou, look up at a rainbow, unless they are called to it by a clap of thunder?

_Seneca._ Your early youth, Epictetus, has been, I will not say neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and unskilful hands.