Imaginary Conversations - Third Volume

by Walter Savage Landor, Charles George Crump (Commentary)

From the Introduction to the first volume:
"During the time occupied in writing these works Landor's private life had been a restless one. He had quarrelled with his father, and lived a wandering life in London, at Tenby, and elsewhere. Part of the time was spent at his father's house in Warwick, where he made a friend whose influence upon his life seems to have been considerable. No new bent could have been given to his vigorous obstinacy of character by any human being, but in a near neighbour of his father's he must have found a similarity of thought likely to strengthen the set which his nature had taken for itself. Dr Parr was the curate of Hatton, a small village only a few miles off Warwick. He was a first rate classical scholar. "There are three great Grecians in England," he once said, "Porson is the first: Burney is the third: and who the second is I need not tell." But in addition to this he was a mighty whig, in the days when Pitt was all powerful, and when every true tory looked upon whigs as next door to Jacobins. Landor's love for classical learning was acquired at an early age. At Rugby his Latin verses had been famous, and at Oxford his classical knowledge had gained the respect of his tutors. That he gained no prize in the university he himself accounts for in a characteristic fashion. In a letter written in 1857, he says-"Though I wrote better Latin than any undergraduate or graduate in the university, I could never be persuaded by my tutor or my friends to contend for any prize whatever." But though he wrote no Latin verse in competition, he had written much for his own pleasure. In the volume of poems published by him at Oxford were fifty pages of Latin verse containing, among other things, Hendecasyllabics, of which, his tutor declared, Catullus might have been proud. As far as classical learning went, Dr Parr and he were sure to find a common ground...".

Excerpt from Imaginary Conversations, Vol. 3 of 6: With Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes by Charles G. Grump
Penn. Friend Mordaunt, thou hast been silent the whole course of our ride hither; and I should not even now interrupt thy cogitations, if the wood before us were not equally uncivil.
Charles Mordaunt, son of John Lord Mordaunt, was born in 1658, succeeded to the paternal honours in 1675, and to those of his uncle, the Earl of Peterborough, in 1697.
In Spence's Anecdotes [p. 128, Malone's edition], he says: "I took a trip once with Penn to his colony of Pennsylvania. The laws there are contained in a small volume, and are so extremely good that there has been no alteration wanted in any one of them. There are no lawyers; every one is to tell his own case, or some friend for him. There are four persons as judges on the bench; and, after the case has been fairly laid down on both sides, all the four draw lots, and he upon whom the lot falls decides the question." p. 155.
[ Landor is here more than usually wrong in his chronology. He speaks of Peterborough as a young unmarried man, whereas Mordaunt was not Earl of Peterborough till he was thirty-nine, and he married when he was twenty. If he went to America as Lord Peterborough the date of this visit must be in the year 1699. It is difficult, however, to understand how even Peterborough at that time could have managed to get to America and back. He was then taking an active part in Parliamentary life, and I am almost disposed to doubt if he could have found the time. The other possible date is 1682, but there are difficulties about that date also. It is possible that the whole story of his visit is apocryphal like a good many other facts in his life. The Conversation is one of Landor's best. The characters are well drawn. Peterborough's freakish delight in turning the conversation on to subjects likely to provoke Penn into enthusiastic indignation is as natural as Penn's piety. It is scarcely necessary to mention that Plato, Canning, and the Roman Catholic religion are discussed. The quotations from Penn's writings are taken from his select works, 1771. (Imag. Convers. v., 1829. Works i., 1846. Works iii., 1876.)]

458 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1828

About the author

Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist.

Landor's best known work is the multi-volume Imaginary Conversations, written during his years living in Italy. He died in Florence at age 89.

Throughout his life, Landor travelled widely and had a notable circle of friends including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Lamb, Countess Blessington, Robert Browning and Charles Dickens. Landor was the godfather of Dickens's son Walter Landor Dickens.

The writer, explorer, and adventurer Arnold Henry Savage Landor is his grandson.