It is undeniable that _Gebir_, in spite of all its passionate republicanism, is a stilted, valueless composition, which bears evident traces of having been, by a characteristic whim of its author, first written in Latin verse. There was, throughout, a Latin quality in Landor's verse. Even Gosse, who admires it, feels obliged to confess that its character, like the taste of olives, is peculiar enough to acquit any person who does not like it of the charge of affectation. It is in his prose alone that his strength lies. But a writer whose poetry is lacking in charm of expression and lyric soul, whose dramas were neither played nor read, and who found his true province in lengthy prose dialogue, spoken in all parts of the world and at all periods of history, but unconnected with any play--such a writer could not, however noble his principles and unmistakable his Radicalism, be the man to bring about a general European revulsion to liberal opinions. He repelled by his whimsicalities and crotchets, of which such instances may be given as his defence of the burning of Rome by Nero as a hygienic measure, his characterisation of Pitt as a mediocrity, and Fox as a charlatan, or, greatest absurdity of all, his advice to the Greeks, during their struggle with the Turks, to give up the use of firearms and resort to their old weapon, the bow. He was too peculiar and too much of the solitary to have admirers and imitators; he was too incomprehensible by the ordinary mind to exercise any influence upon the general public; his virtues contributed as much as his faults--his wild manliness as much as his excessive self-sufficiency--to render him unapproachable. And if he was incapable of compromising like Moore, that is to say, of ever becoming a Whig poet, he was equally incapable of ever imparting to his Radicalism a poetic form that would entrance and captivate a whole reading public. His partial understanding of the great modern movements in religion, government, and society, entitles him to be grouped with two younger and greater men, Shelley and Byron. He fought for his ideals like a brave and proud republican soldier; but he was neither fitted to be a general nor to submit to rule; and he had not the power of inspiring a multitude of other minds.[4] The eldest of the three freedom-loving exiles, he outlived the other two--lived so long, indeed, that he became the contemporary of an entirely different generation of English poets. Browning was his friend; Swinburne's cordial admiration sweetened the last years of his life; the dedication of _Atalanta_ shows the young man's feelings towards the old. Landor's great shade, extending one hand to Wordsworth, the other to Swinburne, seems to hover over the whole poetic development of England during a period of not less than eighty years.