Reeve's telling of the Egyptian story was part of an orientalizing trend at the time, with Arabian stories in vogue and seen as both exotic and moralistic in the romantic vein at one and the same time. Charoba was a character representing the exotic world of Arabia and also depicting a strong woman besieged by an invading army under King Gebirus.

In the Landor version of the tale, some of the same elements may have served to appeal to his readers and to suggest a more romantic structure than the poem actually has. The poetry is seen by many critics as relatively severe, though they also see it as a masterpiece. Landor explained his approach in a postscript when he wrote, have avoided high-sounding words. I have attempted to throw back the gross materials, and to bring the figures forward. I knew that people would cry out "your burden was so light, we could hardly hear you breathe, pray where is your merit." for, there are few who seem thoroughly acquainted with this plain and simple truth, that it is easier to elevate the empty than to support the full.

Landor was only twenty when he wrote Gebir,

The character or Gebir was king of Gibraltar, and he invades Egypt under Queen Charoba. She is convinced by one of her followers, nurse Dalica, to play up to the king, and while she is afraid at first, she changes when she falls in love with Gebir. She fails to tell her nurse of her change of heart, however, so Dalica poisons the king at the wedding ceremony. In the hands of Reeve, this basic story is a romance with a tragic ending. For Landor, it is that but also a political story about the folly and injustice associated with an invasion, with the tragedy following directly from the fact that Gebir has invaded Egypt and generated such anger and opposition that he is killed. As Landor writes,

Woe to the wiser few,...

The dead king is taken to somewhere deep in the earth where he sees other kings who went before him. The text is in part a warning to Napoleon not to make the mistakes earlier leaders had made. Gebir's brother Tamar flees with his love to Corsica, and she prophesies "From Tamar shall rise, 'tis Fate's decree, / a mortal man above all mortal praise." This likely refers to Napoleon, and Landor saw Napoleon as a leader of the people more than as one whom imposed himself upon the people, as other rulers often did. In this version, Charoba defeats Tamar in battle and then watches her as she withdraws:
Restless then ran I to the highest ground

To watch her: she was gone; gone down the tide;

And the long moon-beam on the hard wet sand

Lay like a jaspar column half uprear'd.

Gebir had at its heart the theme of Oriental despotism, linking it to other works of the time with a similar theme. The theme that Landor featured, that of the futility of oppression and the need to establish human justice and freedom, was also mirrored in other works with this sort of setting. Again, this theme was not central to Clara Reeve's version of the story but was made central by Landor. He clearly took the outline of what Reeve had written and expanded it into something more complex and more meaningful to the time.

Works Cited

Landor, Walter Savage. Gebir. Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1993.

Reeve, Clara. "The Progress of Romance." In Bluestocking Feminism: The Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738-1785, Volume 6, Sarah Scott and Clara Reeve (eds.)..London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999.