Kings, monarchs, potentates, sacred majesties, have I given you all your supreme names? We, mere men, require some rain for our crops or even some dew; make some dew, send to the earth a drop of water! A certain inequality in the destinies of men, which maintains order and obedience, is the work of God. It suggests a divine law. If the reader does not care for these "characters," it will surprise me; if he does care for them, it will also surprise me. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Imaginary Conversations Walter Savage Landor, writer, scholar, poet, and, it might almost be said, quarreller, said of his own fame, "I shall dine late, but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." A powerful, turbulent spirit, he attracted great men. Emerson, Browning, Dickens, and Swinburne travelled to sit at his feet, and he knew Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Lamb, and Southey. Born at Warwick, on January 30, 1775, he was dismissed from Rugby School at the age of fifteen, and from Oxford at the age of nineteen; was estranged from his father; several times left the wife whom he had married for her golden hair, and spent the last years of his life, lonely but lionised, at Florence. To the last--which came on September 17, 1864--he wrote both prose and verse. Landor appears, to the average appreciator of English literature, an interesting personality rather than a great writer, though his epic, "Gebir" (1798), and his tragedy, "Count Julian" (1812), like some of his minor verse, contain passages of great beauty. But it was in the "Imaginary Conversations," written between 1821 and 1829, and first sampled by the public in review form in 1823, that he endowed the English language with his most permanent achievement. Nearly 150 of these "Conversations" were written in all, and we epitomise here five of the best-known. _I.--Peter the Great and Alexis_ PETER: And so, after flying from thy father's house, thou hast returned again from Vienna. After this affront in the face of Europe, thou darest to appear before me? ALEXIS: My emperor and father! I am brought before your majesty not at my own desire. PETER: I believe it well. What hope hast thou, rebel, in thy flight to Vienna? ALEXIS: The hope of peace and privacy; the hope of security, and, above all things, of never more offending you. PETER: Didst thou take money? ALEXIS: A few gold pieces. Hitherto your liberality, my father, hath supplied my wants of every kind.