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XXVIII.—The Story of Gebir
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Walter Savage Landor's professions, found everywhere in his letters, that he is writing for the few, and his rather studied contempt of the aura popularis are best illustrated by his epic poem, Gebir, first published in 1798. For this extraordinary poem the guests are, indeed, few and select. Southey's admiration for the epic was unbounded; Lamb refers to its creator as “Gebir Landor” ; and Shelley read and re-read the poem. Yet so unknown was Gebir to the general reader that De Quincey remarked that Gebir had “the sublime distinction, for some time, of having enjoyed only two readers, Southey and myself.” And Miss Seward wrote Todd, the editor of Spenser and Milton, that Gebir was “the most unintelligible fustian that ever bore the name of an epic poem.”
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References
1 Besides Landor's lines, On His Seventy-fifth Birthday, and frequent allusions to his own unpopularity, another passage has interest: “He who is within two paces of his ninetieth year may sit down and make no excuses; he must be unpopular; he never tried to be much otherwise; he never contended with a contemporary, but walked alone on the far eastern uplands, meditating and remembering.” See Heroic Idylls with Additional Poems, Preface.
2 The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, viii, 924.
3 Thomas Hogg, An Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 64.
4 The Works of Thomas De Quincey, viii, 289.
5 The Letters of Anna Seward, vi, 29. Miss Seward to the Rev. J. H. Todd, June 11, 1802.
6 Forster says that the name, Gibralter, was derived from the word, Gebir. See John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, p. 49.
7 xviii, 683.
8 La Grande Encyclopedie, xviii, 682.
9 Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, The History of Joseph, Book vi, p. 47.
10 Numbers, xxxiii, 35, 36.
11 I Kings, ix, 26.
12 Ibid., xxii, 48.
13 II Chronicles, viii, 17.
14 I Kings, iv, 13.
15 The Encyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, iii, 760.
16 See The Egyptian History of the Pyramids, The Inundation of the Nile, etc. Faithfully done into English by J. Davies of Kidwelly, 1672; and see Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, Preface, pp. xiii-xiv; and Poems, Dialogues in Verse, and Epigrams by Walter Savage Landor, edited by Charles G. Crump, ii, 369-70.
17 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, Preface, p. xiv. Mr. Crump doubts the fidelity of M. Vattier as a translator of this manuscript. See Poems, Dialogues in Verse, and Epigrams by Walter Savage Landor, ii, 370,.
18 See Davies and Egypt.
19 One of the several episodes found in Davies but omitted by Miss Reeve is the following:
“Know, great Prince, that the Land of Egypt is a Land of Enchanters, and that the Sea there is full of Spirits and Demons, which assist them to carry on their affairs, and that they are those who take away your Buildings. But what means is there to prevent it? said the King. To do that (said she) you shall make great Vessels of Transparent glass, with covers thereto, which may keep the water from entering in; and you shall put into them Men skill'd in Painting, and with them Meat and Drink, for a week and Cloths and Pencils, and whatever is necessary for Painting. Then you shall stop the Vessels well, after you have fastened them at the top with strong Cords, and ty'd them to the Ships, and then you shall let them go into the Sea like anchors, and you shall put at the top of the cords little Bells, which the Painters shall ring; and then I will tell you what it is requisite that you should do.” In the story Gebir obeys directions. The painters ring the bells, and are taken out the water with the “Draughts” they have made. Then comes the extraordinary climax: Statues are made like the “draughts”, and the beasts of the sea, imagining that these are other demons, flee! See John Davies, The Egyptian History of the Pyramids, etc., pp. 126-128.
20 Miss Reeve was acquainted with the passage on Gebir in Mrs. Rowe's History of Joseph, quoting it in her Preface, p. xv. This passage runs in part:
“When Totis by his death, the sole command
Of Misraim left to fair Charoba's hand;
The rich Gebirus from Chaldea came
With foreign pomp to seek the royal dame.
Chemis adorn'd his train, whose beauteous face
Allur'd a goddess of the watery race;
On Nilus' banks the young Chaldean stood,
When lo Marina rising from the flood,—“
21 John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, p. 47.
22 The Monthly Review, February, 1800.
23 P. 77.
24 Ibid., p. 78.
25 Totis is the legend's name for Pharaoh.
26 In Miss Reeve's tale the name is always Gebirus.
27 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, p. 122.
28 Gebir, 1. 6.
29 Clara Eeeve, The Progress of Romance, p. 115.
30 Gebir, 1. 13.
31 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, p. 116.
32 Gebir, lls. 15-17.
33 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, p. 117.
34 This passage, like others in Gebir, was first composed in Latin. It read:
At mihi caeruleae sinuosa conchae
Obvolvunt, lucemque intus de sole biberunt,
Nam crevere locis ubi porticus ipsa palati
Et qua purpurea medius stat currus in unda,
Tu quate, somnus abit.“
Wordsworth imitated the passage on the shell in The Excursion:
“… I have seen
A curious child, applying to his ear,
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon
Brighten'd with joy; for murmuring from within
Were heard sonorous cadences.
See Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV.
35 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, p. 126.
36 Ibid., p. 127.
37 Gebir, Book ii, lls. 219-224.
38 In printing Gebir Landor condensed the poem by reducing it nearly one-half. In the last edition about one hundred and fifty lines were eliminated from Books iii and vi, most of these allusive to contemporary events. The line in the original, describing Napoleon as “a mortal man above all mortal praise,” was qualified by a note.
39 Landor stated that he took these lines from a passage in the pages of the traveler, Bruce. It is very possible that the precise origin was the chapter on Cerastes, or Horned Viper. See James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, vii, 292ff.
40 Much of the lofty mood of Gebir is traceable to Landor's reading during the year 1797. He was under the spell of Pindar. “When I began to write Gebir,” he wrote Forster in 1850, “I had just read Pindar a second time and understood him. What I admired was what nobody else had noticed,—his proud complacency and scornful strength. If I could resemble him in nothing else, I was resolved to be as compendious and exclusive.” See John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, p. 46.
41 Ibid., p. 49.
42 In April, 1808, Southey wrote a friend of Landor: “I have often said before we met that I would walk forty miles to see him; and, having seen him, I would gladly walk four-score to see him again.” It was Southey's praise in the Critical Review for September, 1798, which first drew thoughtful attention to Gebir. Lamb, too, who, tipsy or sober, was always quoting Rose Aylmer, praises Gebir, admiring especially the passage describing the ocean in Book V. Sir Walter Scott thought highly of Gebir. See John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, p. 50, note.
43 Coleridge found Gebir like a piece of dark ground filled with bright eminences.
44 The history of the manuscript is related by Landor in a short poem written about the epic, Gebir. See Lines on Gebir.
45 John Forster, Walter Savage Landor, p. 66.
46 Ibid., p. 66.
47 Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 64. Shelley's favourite passages were the description of the ocean and that of Meorthyr preparing her charms, both in Book V.