Later, this introduction passed out of my hands. Previously Landor had written on a slip of paper now before me:-- "'Gebir' should begin thus:-- 'Hear ye the fate of Gebir!' _Not_ 'I sing the _fates_ of Gebir,'"-- which is a correction suggested to future publishers of this poem. It would be a hopeful sign were our young American writers inoculated with somewhat of Landor's reverence for literature, as it was no less than reverence that made him treat ideas with respect, and array them in the most dignified language, thus making of every sentence a study. And it is well that these writers should know what intense labor is required to produce anything great or lasting. "Execution is the chariot of genius," William Blake, the great poet-artist, has said; and it is just this execution which is unattainable without immense application and fastidiousness. If patience be genius,--"La patience cherche et le genie trouve,"--and if execution be its chariot, what possible fame can there be for the slipshod writers of to-day, who spawn columns and volumes at so much a minute, regardless of the good name of their mother tongue, devoid of ideas, which are the product only of brains that have been ploughed up and sown with fruitful seed? An author's severest critic should be himself. To be carried away by the popular current is easy and pleasant, but some fine morning the popular man wakes up to find himself stranded and deserted,--Nature playing queer pranks with currents changing their beds as best suits her fancy;--for even popular taste follows laws of progression, and grows out of one error into a less. Pope wisely maintains that "no man ever rose to any degree of perfection in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against the stream of mankind." Unless he mount the chariot of execution, his ideas, however good, will never put a girdle round the earth. They will halt and limp as do his own weary feet. * * * * * Landor's enthusiasm for Shakespeare grew young as he grew old, and it was his desire to bid farewell to earth with his eyes resting upon the Shakespeare that so constantly lay open before him. Nothing excited his indignation more than to hear little people of great pretension carpingly criticise the man of whom he makes Southey, in a discussion with Porson, declare, that "all the faults that ever were committed in poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one single thought or image such as almost every scene exhibits in every drama of this unrivalled genius." In three fine lines Landor has said even more:-- "In poetry there is but one supreme, Though there are many angels round his throne, Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid."