Imaginary Conversations and Poems by Landor
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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 Abbe 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!)
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Imaginary Conversations and Poems by Landor
- 2: It was surely the horse of Marcellus
- 3: The glory of Marcellus did not require him to wear it
- 4: But Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army
- 5: QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL Elizabeth
- 6: A page of poesy is a little matter be it so
- 7: If thou foundest ingenuity in my writings
- 8: Thou canst not adorn simplicity
- 9: But cultivated with rude instruments and unskilful hands
- 10: PETER THE GREAT AND ALEXIS Peter
- 11: When the Polanders and Swedes fell before me
- 12: And hast talked about them Scythians
- 13: Were I malignant I must be an atheist
- 14: HENRY VIII AND ANNE BOLEYN Henry
- 15: Now thou talkest about miscarrying
- 16: It is so heavenly a thing Henry
- 17: They are no longer vile creatures
- 18: JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE Montaigne
- 19: For I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard
- 20: Have you ever studied the doctrine of predestination
- 21: BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA Boccaccio
- 22: Have yet produced an equal to Boccaccio
- 23: Who tenderly loved Amadeo degli Oricellari
- 24: 'I officiate together with good Father Fontesecco
- 25: Silvestrina Pioppi is about fifteen
- 26: Guiberto had taken leave of his friend
- 27: BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES Bossuet
- 28: Mademoiselle Marie Angelique de Scoraille de Rousille
- 29: That you have overcome quietism
- 30: And turn your heart toward Heaven Fontanges
- 31: 2 Bossuet was in his fifty fourth year
- 32: Why have you unlaced and laid aside your visor
- 33: 'Let Lancaster bring his sureties
- 34: Will be that he stood not against the rioters or among them
- 35: As they said they were Leofric
- 36: When thou ridest naked at noontide through the streets
- 37: His laughter was loud and immoderate
- 38: And thy mansion large and pleasant
- 39: Calamities there are around us
- 40: LORD BACON AND RICHARD HOOKER Bacon
- 41: And that of enabling us to help the needy
- 42: Grows that dittany which works such marvels
- 43: My exultation is then the exultation of humility
- 44: OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER NOBLE Cromwell
- 45: Speculations towards good are for ever speculations
- 46: In equity he could do no otherwise
- 47: For prosperity leads often to ambition
- 48: Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle
- 49: It belonged to the age of Sidney
- 50: Corinna was preferred to Pindar no fewer than five times
- 51: You censure it in Wordsworth believe me
- 52: But the Abbe Delille has merits of his own
- 53: Metastasio was both a better critic and a better poet
- 54: You may call together the best company
- 55: For thou wert going on quite consistently
- 56: By Juno the air in its quiescent
- 57: Careth as little for portent and omen as doth Diogenes
- 58: Or Diogenes through a dialogue
- 59: If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason
- 60: Hymen is truly no acquaintance of thine
- 61: 'Souls therefore exist after death in the infernal regions
- 62: ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE JEW Alfieri
- 63: There is none in Europe beside the Venetian
- 64: That the gravest nations have been the wittiest
- 65: Dante had not only to compose a poem
- 66: ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES Rousseau
- 67: To be the patron and remunerator of inhospitality
- 68: Truth is the object of philosophy
- 69: Than the apartments of Demosthenes
- 70: And order his valets to buffet me
- 71: As the special jurymen do now
- 72: The Celeno of these harpies Malesherbes
- 73: Consider the three great nations Rousseau
- 74: Caesar is hence the visitant of Lucullus
- 75: And covered them afterward with alum in powder
- 76: Irreligion is followed by fanaticism
- 77: I would have asked permission Lucullus
- 78: I misunderstood I fancied Lucullus
- 79: Excepting yourself and Marcus Tullius
- 80: But most willingly while I am reading
- 81: We neither can persuade nor command
- 82: Nor while Leontion was replying
- 83: They were brought hither this morning
- 84: Have been timid and delicate as Ternissa
- 85: If it is well to conquer a world
- 86: When you speak thus Leontion
- 87: Where will you place the statues
- 88: And you for ever be Leontion
- 89: Otherwise the gods would never have given him Leontion
- 90: I shall place the satyr toward the rock
- 91: Or weeds as Sosimenes calls them
- 92: Ternissa's golden cup is at home
- 93: It indicates every kind of forbearance
- 94: And to Venus the animation of Pallas
- 95: If Aristoteles thought more highly of him than his due
- 96: Theophrastus would persuade us that
- 97: You would no longer have been Ternissa
- 98: 'Leontion soon forgot her Epicurus
- 99: Alexander we know was intemperate
- 100: Leontion knows not then how sweet and sacred idleness is
- 101: Leontion walks the nimblest to day
- 102: It is sad to be an outcast at fifteen
- 103: In the purity of your soul shall Bice live
- 104: Delighted as I felt at that sweetest of odours
- 105: It should flow with equal purity
- 106: FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH Eugenius
- 107: The State is founded on follies
- 108: That the canonico thought they would sound better on water
- 109: The canonico sobbed and could not utter one word
- 110: I waited on monsignor at Macerata
- 111: ' The canonico fell on his knees
- 112: The canonico engulfed the whole
- 113: The canonico clapped his hands
- 114: As less docile than his messmates
- 115: The unbelievers they surely are found wanting
- 116: Or alighted on the shoulders of Abdul
- 117: I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden
- 118: Do not remind me of nectarines
- 119: Sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly
- 120: I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife
- 121: No other is crushed where I am
- 122: Her bosom had throbbed to yours
- 123: Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it
- 124: And am I the sister of Torquato
- 125: The boy shall sing to you those sweet verses
- 126: If he had not wherewithal to buy enough of zucca for a meal
- 127: ' LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT La Fontaine
- 128: All stock jobbers and church jobbers
- 129: See that Moliere is also profound
- 130: The black patch on the forehead
- 131: I have lately read a treatise written by an Englishman
- 132: To which Hobbes would reluctantly appeal
- 133: And no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight
- 134: I am accused of paradox and distortion
- 135: The possession of pleasant fields
- 136: The most modest people upon earth
- 137: More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity
- 138: LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS Timotheus
- 139: You have really been called an atheist
- 140: And then an amphora from the left
- 141: And snapped at one friend of Xenophanes
- 142: Perhaps the effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him
- 143: Caverns which at first look inviting
- 144: It hath pleased God to blind you
- 145: Nobody but an honest man has a right to scoff at anything
- 146: Everlasting punishments await them
- 147: The great warrior has usually his darker lines of character
- 148: These said priests of Isis have already been with me
- 149: His doctrines are too abstruse and too sublime for you
- 150: Measuring my discourse by the head of the eloquent Gorgias
- 151: You would let our babes and sucklings lie quiet
- 152: 'says Aristophanes in his favourite metre
- 153: When a slave could do without Diogenes
- 154: In regard to these allegories of Plato
- 155: However gracefully that other may walk
- 156: Aristoteles did not know that he himself was
- 157: And less trimly attired than Xenophon
- 158: That Melanops did honour to his relationship
- 159: Reverenced by the appellation of Gasteres
- 160: And then didst thou behold the Gasteres
- 161: If we lose our complement of lentils
- 162: Even the Gasteres themselves in some sort shuddered
- 163: Pushed his wedgy snout far within the straw subjacent
- 164: As soon as you disinherit the priests of Isis
- 165: Although a Christian like Aulus
- 166: Aulus is now occupied in strengthening his faith
- 167: The reply of Caecilius was favourable
- 168: Another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome
- 169: Who was in service by the side of Vespasian
- 170: Return to the pure spirit of the Essenes
- 171: If he had enjoyed that leisure
- 172: BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Shipley
- 173: Such are the optics of most kings and rulers
- 174: Wherever there is nothing of religion
- 175: And inviting her from bankruptcy to glory
- 176: May the next generation be wiser
- 177: Flogging here and flogging there
- 178: Nor indeed the graver and greater Pericles
- 179: But let those who have gone astray
- 180: No other English writer has equalled Raleigh
- 181: The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it
- 182: He appeared with two long scrolls
- 183: LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND Louis
- 184: Even to render them shriller and shriller
- 185: If this indemnity is paid to England
- 186: I do not mean about the pheasants
- 187: A succession of intelligent men rules Prussia
- 188: Toiling at the replenishment of their perforated vases
- 189: Et par droit de conquete et par droit de naissance
- 190: I wish your potters sought nothing costlier
- 191: They have proud stomachs they are recusants
- 192: I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings
- 193: There are great conjurors or chemists
- 194: When Wilhelm and I brought it to them
- 195: I am glad you are come back without your spurs
- 196: No Ludolph hath spoken falsely for once
- 197: Even when tears fall from my eyes
- 198: Could not Ludolph persuade you
- 199: Have you then been very unwell
- 200: Than either modern or ancient Italy
- 201: I dare not repeat all I recollect of Pepe Setan
- 202: Ugolino and Francesca di Rimini
- 203: La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante
- 204: You have reason to complain of Lisabetta and Gismonda
- 205: Simplizio called him bestiaccia
- 206: And told Simplizio to be sparing of the switch
- 207: Simplizio was twice fain to cry 'Ser Canonico
- 208: Bringing up the leveret to my bedside
- 209: 'The leveret was now served up
- 210: But confessors vary in their advances to the seat of truth
- 211: It can then be no other than Petrarca
- 212: Assunta is her name by baptism
- 213: Who lived in the service of our paroco
- 214: 'I repeated the words to Signor Padrone
- 215: ' after a pause began Ser Francesco 'about the sposina
- 216: I am ready to lay aside my Dante for the present
- 217: The Nun and Fra Biagio will be found
- 218: And nothing but our negligence
- 219: Alighieri is grand by his lights
- 220: For I would be a good Catholic
- 221: And more especially of Fra Biagio
- 222: They abstained from expressing it at the villetta
- 223: Frate Biagio now began to relent a little
- 224: Fra Biagio went forward and opened the bedchamber door
- 225: That canzone of Ser Giovanni has merit
- 226: Fra Biagio went back into the kitchen
- 227: Our white pigeons peacock tailed
- 228: When my Fiametta seemed to have led me into the meadow
- 229: Increasing my feebleness and confusion
- 230: ' cried I anxiously to Fiametta
- 231: I think you must remember Raffaellino degli Alfani
- 232: In cleanliness he is a very nun
- 233: And among the commonest of my occupations
- 234: I alighted from rapture on repose
- 235: He held neither flower nor arrow
- 236: Only two months since you stood here
- 237: The most mature Of blossoms
- 238: XVION SEEING A HAIR OF LUCRETIA BORGIA Borgia
- 239: We both have crost life's fervid line
- 240: XXTO BARRY CORNWALL Barry
- 241: XXXIITO THE RIVER AVON Avon