Schlegel, who
has recently discovered, at the end of two hundred and fifty years,
that Shakespeare is a poet? Well, perhaps if you live two hundred and
fifty years longer, you may discover that Niebuhr is an historian."
"Schlegel did not like it," added Landor when telling the story
himself--very much as who should say, "I knocked him down with an
unexpected blow of my fist, and he did not _like_ it!"
And now for my letters. Here is one dated "Florence, June, 1861,"
written to my wife when he was past eighty and within a year or two of
his death. The latter portion of the letter is especially interesting,
and will be none the less so to those who may be disposed to dispute
the correctness of the judgments expressed in it.
"Do not be alarmed," he writes, "at a letter which 'like a wounded
snake drags its slow length along.' Such, I suspect, mine will be,
though it ought to contain only thanks for the admirable ones you have
sent to me on the late affairs of Tuscany. Yesterday Mr. Trollope gave
them to me as your present. I then exprest a hope that he or you would
undertake a history of Italian affairs from the Treaty of Campo Formio
down to the present day. Indeed, I hope and trust that it may be
continued a year or two farther, until the recovery of Rome from the
most perfidious enemy she and Italy were ever opprest by.
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