Getting personal ...

... What is the history of English poetry?

This personalization of literary history leaves little room for figures below the first rank unless they happen to be women (Hemans and Landon) or provide sturdy support for a star performer (Moore and Hunt). So Walter Savage Landor, who qualifies on none of these counts, thereby loses his place in the history of English poetry. Yet Landor was a brilliant epigrammatist, perhaps the finest of the nineteenth century ...