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Landor's "Iphigeneia"

E J. SYPHER

Salter Savage Landor's series of Imaginary Conversations
holds a secure rank among works of English literature,
and his elegiac lyric, "Rose Aylmer," deservedly
appears in virtually every anthology of English verse. But even
though Landor has always had admirers, his "fit audience" has
been "few"—he has never been a popular writer. There is, in
Landor's voluminous work, a conspicuous absence of action, inci¬
dent, outward drama, sensationalism, caricature, verbal acrobatics,
cleverness of conceit, emotional enthusiasm, novelty, mystification,
and other attention-getting characteristics. On the contrary, his
qualities are richness and ease of classical and historical allusion,
combined with Attic poise, precision, calm, clarity, balance,
extreme compression, and a lofty austerity of phrase and diction—
"by very much more handsorae than fine," as Haralet says of the
Vergilian play that "pleased not the million." If one were to seek
artistic parallels, one might suggest the sculpture of Canova or
Westmacott.

Landor neither adhered to nor founded a literary school; though
he seems in some ways to stand alone, he is also an important repre¬
sentative of the widespread classical influences that vigorously per¬
sisted through the political and cultural revolutions of the eigh¬
teenth and nineteenth centuries.

The classical qualities of Landor's poetry are exemplified in a
holograph manuscript recently acquired by the Rare Book and
Manuscript Library: a draft of his poem "Iphigeneia," contained in
a letter from Landor to his friend, the poet Theodosia Garrow
(1825-65), who in 1848 married Thomas Adolphus Troflope,
brother of Anthony. The slender, casually addressed missive,
inscribed "Via France/Miss Garrow/Florence/Italy," went from
England to Boulogne, to Genoa, and to Florence in a mere ten days,
inclusive of being dutifully handstamped at post offices along the
way. Both the cover and the enclosure, along with other manu-