--the case of the foreign swindler,
who advertised that he would get into a quart bottle, filled Drury Lane,
pocketed the admission money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to
the spectators) that' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so many noble
islanders; but that on his next visit he would make full reparation by
getting into a vinegar cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over-
colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, when one examines this
case, the crime consisted by no means in doing it, but in _not_ doing it;
by no means in getting into the bottle, but in _not_ getting into it. The
foreign contractor would have been probably a very unhappy man, had he
fulfilled his contract by over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have
been decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have redeemed his pledge;
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.
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