and, if he had even died in the bottle, we should have honored him as a
'_vir bonus, cum mala fortuna compositus_;' as a man of honor matched in
single duel with calamity, and also as the best of conjurers. Over-
colonization, therefore, except in the one case of the stage-coach, is
apparently no crime; and the offence of King Gebir, in my eyes, remains a
mystery to this day.

What next solicits notice is in the nature of a digression: it is a kind
of parenthesis on Wordsworth.

'_Landor._--When it was a matter of wonder how Keats, who was ignorant of
Greek, could have written his "Hyperion," Shelley, whom envy never
touched, gave as a reason--"because he _was_ a Greek." Wordsworth, being
asked his opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, "a pretty piece
of paganism;" yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote--and
beautiful ones they are--reverts to the powerful influence of the "pagan
creed."'

Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. Now, nine tailors are
ranked, by great masters of algebra, as = one man; such is the received
equation; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an old English
drama, by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors--'Come, hang
it! I'll fight you _both_.' But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of
tailors to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not always equal
to the delivery of one accurate truth, or to a successful conflict with
three or four signal errors. Firstly--Shelley's reason, if it ever was
assigned, is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been
intended. It could not have been meant to ask--Why was the 'Hyperion' so
Grecian in its spirit? for it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it
falsely to call it so; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology of Greece