"O Milton! couldst thou rise again, and see The land thou lovedst in an earlier day! See, springing from her tomb, fair Italy (Fairer than ever) cast her shroud away,-- That tightly-fastened, triply-folded shroud! Around her, shameful sight! crowd upon crowd, Nations in agony lie speechless down, And Europe trembles at a despot's frown." The despot is, of course, Louis Napoleon, for Landor would never allow that the French Emperor comprehended his epoch, and that Italian regeneration was in any way due to the co-operation of France. In his allegorical poem of "The gardener and the Mole," the gardener at the conclusion of the argument chops off the mole's head, such being the fate to which the poet destined Napoleon. No reference, however, is made to "that rascal" in the lines to Milton inserted in the "Heroic Idyls," and as the printed version was, doubtless, Landor's own preference, it is but just to insert it here:-- "O Milton! couldst thou rise again and see The land thou lovedst in _thy_ earlier day See springing from her tomb fair Italy (Fairer than ever) cast her shroud away, That tightly-fastened, triply-folded shroud, _Torn by her children off their mother's face!_ _O couldst thou see her now, more justly proud_ _Than of an earlier and a stronger race!"_ There certainly is more unity of idea in the printed copy, but so faulty is it in punctuation--or at least for the want of it--that one is warranted in believing the substitution of _thy_ for _an_, in the second line, to be an _erratum_. Though Milton visited Italy in his youth, there is no evidence to prove that he did not love it in old age. In its present form the line loses in sense. Nothing annoyed Landor more than to have his manuscript "corrected," and no one's temper was ever more tried than his in this respect; for, having an orthography peculiar to himself, which he maintained was according to the genius of the language, and which printers would persist in translating into the vulgate, Landor grew to be morbidly sensitive concerning revision. It was the more intolerable to him, because of his extreme care in the preparation of his manuscript. Few celebrated authors have written so clear and clean a hand; none ever sent his work to the press in a more highly finished state. Fastidious beyond expression, the labor of correction was unending. Even "Gebir" was subjected to revision, and at one time I was intrusted with quite a long introduction, which, the day after, Landor altered and sent to me the following note. "Again the old creature comes to bother you. The enclosed is to take the place of what I wrote yesterday, and to cancel, as you will see, what a tolerably good critic" (Southey) "thought _too good to be thrown away_, &c., &c. I do not think so, but certainly the beginning of 'Gebir' is better with 'Kings! ye athirst for conquest,' etc. _You_ are not _athirst_ for it but _take it coolly_."