GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS
or bracelet, or other thing of beauty, for the queen or mistress of the monarch who protected him and honored his unrivalled art.
The legend of Walter Savage Landor justly might have been Fineness and Strength, since, while distinguished by his epic and dramatic powers, and at home in the domain of philosophic thought, he had also that delicate quality which enriches the smallest detail, and changes at will from its grander creations to those of subtile and ethereal perfection. He had the strongest touch and the lightest; his vision was of the broadest and the most minute. Leigh Hunt characterized him by saying that he had never known any one of such a vehement nature with so great delicacy of imagination, and that he was "like a stormy mountain-pine that should produce lilies." In this there is something of the universal genius of "men entirely great."
Landor's minor poems, therefore, bear a relation to his more extended work similar to that borne by Shakespeare's songs and sonnets to his immortal plays. Yet they are not songs, because not jubilant with that skylark gush of melody which made so musical the sunrise of English rhythm. They address themselves no less to the eye than to the ear; are the daintiest of lyrical idyls,—things to be seen as well as to be heard; compact of fortunate imagery, of statuesque conceptions marvellously cut in verse. Are we not right in designating them as Cameos? And from what other modern author could a selection of relievos be made, so flawless in outline and perfect in classical
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