Seldom has an Apollo expressed himself in a less sickly-sentimental manner on the subject of mediocrity in art. Landor's contempt for it was based on the severity of the artistic demands he made on himself. He is the severest stylist among English prose writers--not stylist in the sense of virtuoso in language, for no English is less flexible than his--but in this sense, that he represents all his characters, the most commonplace and the grandest, the ancient and the modern, in the same simple Attic style. To his marked preference for the heroic and the grand is due the majestic tranquillity which as a rule characterises his _Conversations_ (the branch of literature he specially cultivated); the dialogue is Grecian in its beautiful simplicity, Anglo-Roman in its proud decision. His style is pure, correct, concise; and its antique quality specially fits it for the representation of ancient Greek and Roman characters. The public assemblies in the market-place of Athens, the Senate and Forum of Rome, these live in his _Conversations_ with the life of their own day. Modern dialogue flowed much less easily and naturally from his pen; he was successful in the more modern _Conversations_ only when the situation was of such a nature as to be receptive of life and warmth from his own concealed indignation. To make acquaintance with Landor in his full vigour and brilliancy one must read his _Pericles and Aspasia_, a tale in epistolary form. It is a work of the same description as Wieland's _Aristippus_, but written in a very different spirit and style. Where Wieland is florid and coquettish, Landor is distinguished by manly grace; where Wieland is sentimental, Landor is noble and proud. This correspondence is chiselled rather than written; it represents Pericles as the republican type of noble humanity and political wisdom; and in it Aspasia is not the hetæra, but a personification of Hellenic beauty and delicacy of feeling, of pagan womanhood, and of the emancipated antique intellect and culture. There is consequently not a trace of anything resembling coquetry in the letters; everything that is small and undignified seems to lie beyond the horizon of the work and its author. But the old-fashioned epistolary form and the length of the letters make the book tedious, and the reader who has not enough patience for it will do well to turn from it to Landor's masterpiece, the Conversation between Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.