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What next solicits notice is in the nature of a digression: it is a kind of parenthesis on Wordsworth.

‘Landor.–When it was a matter of wonder how Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written his “Hyperion,” Shelley, whom envy never touched, gave as a reason–“because he was a Greek.” Wordsworth, being asked his opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, “a pretty piece of paganism;” yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote–and beautiful ones they are–reverts to the powerful influence of the “pagan creed.”‘

Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. Now, nine tailors are ranked, by great masters of algebra, as = one man; such is the received equation; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an old English drama, by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors–‘Come, hang it! I’ll fight you both.’ But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of tailors to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not always equal to the delivery of one accurate truth, or to a successful conflict with three or four signal errors. Firstly–Shelley’s reason, if it ever was assigned, is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been intended. It could not have been meant to ask–Why was the ‘Hyperion’ so Grecian in its spirit? for it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it falsely to call it so; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology of Greece was incapable of breeding anything so deep as the mysterious portents that, in the ‘Hyperion,’ run before and accompany the passing away of divine immemorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive than the picture of Saturn in his palsy of affliction, and of the mighty goddess his grand-daughter, or than the secret signs of coming woe in the palace of Hyperion. These things grew from darker creeds than Greece had ever known since the elder traditions of Prometheus–creeds that sent down their sounding plummets into far deeper wells within the human spirit. What had been meant, by the question proposed to Shelley, was no doubt– How so young a man as Keats, not having had the advantage of a regular classical education, could have been so much at home in the details of the elder mythology? Tooke’s ‘Pantheon’ might have been obtained by favor of any English schoolboy, and Dumoustier’s ‘Lettres a Emile sur la Mythologie‘ by favor of very many young ladies; but these, according to my recollection of them, would hardly have sufficed. Spence’s ‘Polymetis,’ however, might have been had by favor of any good library; and the ‘Bibliotheca‘ of Apollodorus, who is the cock of the walk on this subject, might have been read by favor of a Latin translation, supposing Keats really unequal to the easy Greek text. There is no wonder in the case; nor, if there had been, would Shelley’s kind remark have solved it. The treatment of the facts must, in any case, have been due to Keats’s genius, so as to be the same whether he had studied Greek or not: the facts, apart from the treatment, must in any case have been had from a book. Secondly–Let Mr. Landor rely upon it –that Wordsworth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any formal judgment, or what Scottish law would call deliverance, upon the ‘Hyperion.’ As to what he might have said incidentally and collaterally; the meaning of words is so entirely affected by their position in a conversation–what followed, what went before–that five words dislocated from their context never would be received as evidence in the Queen’s Bench. The court which, of all others, least strictly weighs its rules of evidence, is the female tea-table; yet even that tribunal would require the deponent to strengthen his evidence, if he had only five detached words to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man as he has good reason to be; and perhaps it was I myself, who once said in print of him–that it is not the correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworth is as proud as Lucifer; but, inversely, to say of Lucifer that some people have conceived him to be as proud as Wordsworth. But, if proud, Wordsworth is not haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for display, is not arrogant, and, least of all, is he capable of descending to envy. Who or what is it that he should be envious of? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth would be jealous of Archimedes if he now walked upon earth, or Michael Angelo, or Milton? Nature does not repeat herself. Be assured she will never make a second Wordsworth. Any of us would be jealous of his own duplicate; and, if I had a doppelganger, who went about personating me, copying me, and pirating me, philosopher as I am, I might (if the Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction against him) be so far carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass; and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for me to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? for murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, still that great man will not be much like Wordsworth–the great man will not be Wordsworth’s doppelganger. If not impar (as you say) he will be dispar; and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealous of him, unless he is jealous of the sun, and of Abd el Kader, and of Mr. Waghorn–all of whom carry off a great deal of any spare admiration which Europe has to dispose of. But suddenly it strikes me that we are all proud, every man of us; and I daresay with some reason for it, ‘be the same more or less.’ For I never came to know any man in my whole life intimately, who could not do something or other better than anybody else. The only man amongst us that is thoroughly free from pride, that you may at all seasons rely on as a pattern of humility, is the pickpocket. That man is so admirable in his temper, and so used to pocketing anything whatever which Providence sends in his way, that he will even pocket a kicking, or anything in that line of favors which you are pleased to bestow. The smallest donations are by him thankfully received, provided only that you, whilst half-blind with anger in kicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterous skater, will but allow him (which is no more than fair) to have a second ‘shy’ at your pretty Indian pocket-handkerchief, so as to convince you, on cooler reflection, that he does not always miss. Thirdly–Mr. Landor leaves it doubtful what verses those are of Wordsworth’s which celebrate the power ‘of the Pagan creed;’ whether that sonnet in which Wordsworth wishes to exchange for glimpses of human life, then and in those circumstances, ‘forlorn,’ the sight