IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. Opinions may differ as to the relative position of Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations' among the major classics of English prose, but the right of the book to be numbered among them can scarcely be called in question. The 'Con versations> have never been popular in the broad sense of the term, nor did Landor intend them to be so. It was always his endeavor, in the phrase of Bacon, ((to single and adopt his To read the (Conversations' with pleasure requires not only a considerable back ground of learning, especially in history, but also a respect for and sensibility to refined literary style. In the 'Conversations' Landor attempted to restore to life, as far as the imagination can do so, illustrious or at least interesting characters of the remote and the near past, to set them in a situation congenial to their self-expression, and then permit them to reveal in dialogue what to Landor seemed their significant phases of mind and personality. The incidents of the action which Landor em ployed are not usually recorded events of his tory, but constructions of his own imagina tion fashioned to harmonize plausibly with his characters. This imaginative revivification of personality was not merely pictorial; not merely objectively dramatic in intent. Landor's effort was to do more than tell a story, it was to picture the souls of his personages, to show how they may have felt and thought. This was obviously the most difficult task he could have set himself, calling as it does both for the scientific accuracy of the historian and the creative exuberance of the poet. The 'Con versations' cover, moreover, an extraordinary range of subjects, including statesmen, philoso phers, scholars, writers, soldiers and what for lack of a better term, we may call gentlemen and ladies, from almost every civilized people of the world. They differ considerably in length, in method of treatment, and also in interest. Occasionally we have the feeling that the dialogue is not really conversation, that speeCh succeeds speech without much relation to the character of the speakers, so that the names of the characters being removed, we seem to have an uninterrupted flow of comment on an idea. This happens when the characters have not been found with a really vital situation. Not a few inaccuracies in matters of detail have been pointed out in the and occasionally the dialogues seem longer than the importance of their thought justifies.
But all qualifications having been made, the still remain distinguished for their learning, their wisdom, and above all for their sympathy with the intellectual passions of mankind.
Various attempts have been made to classify the 'Conversations,' sometimes as to subject matter, sometimes as to the difference of man ner or spirit in which they were written. Lan dor, however, seems to have had no system in mind when he composed them. They were writ ten at different times, in the end reaching a total of about 150, over a wide stretch of years, but they were not produced according to a program, and consequently cannot well he re duced to one. Individual moments of life in terested Landor most, not general states of society or complicated sequences of events, and therefore one would not look for a high de gree of organization in the relation of the dialogues to each other.
Perhaps the least contestable merit of the 'Conversations' is their possession of the virtue of style. It is customary to speak of Landor's style as classic, and so it is in its restraint and evenness, in its unfailing sense for dignity and beauty of form. It is not, however, the monu mental and oratorical style of Roman prose that one thinks of in reading Landor, but rather Greek prose style, with its nice balance between colloquial ease and literary formalism. Landor passes lightly from familiar conversation or exposition to the language of poetry, often of restrained eloquence. Perhaps his most charm ing passages are the short idyllic and lyric amplifications which are to be found in every 'Conversation> the subject of which permits such graceful embroidery. More serious pas sages are cast in severe but never elaborately artificial form. Indeed Landor's prose is al ways easy, though never realistically familiar, always consciously artistic, though never pain fully labored. It has neither the rapidity, nor the curtness, nor the concealed ingenuity not in frequently found in later English prose. It is distinctly a 19th century prose style, but about it there still lingers some of the serene dignity of the literary ideals of the preceding century. In this sense also Landor's prose may be desig nated as classical.