Forster that "judgment has been passed"--as it
should be--"with an equal desire to be only just on all the
qualities of his temperament which affected necessarily not his own
life only. But, now that the story is told, no one will have
difficulty in striking the balance between its good and ill; and
what was really imperishable in Landor's genius will not be
treasured less, or less understood, for the more perfect knowledge
of his character".
Mr. Forster's second volume gives a facsimile of Landor's writing at
seventy-five. It may be interesting to those who are curious in
calligraphy, to know that its resemblance to the recent handwriting
of that great genius, M. Victor Hugo, is singularly strong.
In a military burial-ground in India, the name of Walter Landor is
associated with the present writer's over the grave of a young
officer. No name could stand there, more inseparably associated in
the writer's mind with the dignity of generosity: with a noble
scorn of all littleness, all cruelty, oppression, fraud, and false
pretence.
ADDRESS WHICH APPEARED SHORTLY PREVIOUS TO THE COMPLETION OF THE
TWENTIETH VOLUME (1868), INTIMATING A NEW SERIES OF "ALL THE YEAR
ROUND"
I beg to announce to the readers of this Journal, that on the
completion of the Twentieth Volume on the Twenty-eighth of November,
in the present year, I shall commence an entirely New Series of All
the Year Round. The change is not only due to the convenience of
the public (with which a set of such books, extending beyond twenty
large volumes, would be quite incompatible), but is also resolved
upon for the purpose of effecting some desirable improvements in
respect of type, paper, and size of page, which could not otherwise
be made. To the Literature of the New Series it would not become me
to refer, beyond glancing at the pages of this Journal, and of its
predecessor, through a score of years; inasmuch as my regular
fellow-labourers and I will be at our old posts, in company with
those younger comrades, whom I have had the pleasure of enrolling
from time to time, and whose number it is always one of my
pleasantest editorial duties to enlarge.
As it is better that every kind of work honestly undertaken and
discharged, should speak for itself than be spoken for, I will only
remark further on one intended omission in the New Series. The
Extra Christmas Number has now been so extensively, and regularly,
and often imitated, that it is in very great danger of becoming
tiresome. I have therefore resolved (though I cannot add,
willingly) to abolish it, at the highest tide of its success.
CHARLES DICKENS.
