Straightforward way to make a multicolumn line legend?

Question

I have a plot showing 8 curves, and I'm able to define a line legend styled in either a column or a row version. I have the following code:

PlotLegends -> Placed[LineLegend[{Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "*"], 
 FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "*"], FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "*"], FontSize -> 23], 
Style["\[Tau]", FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "miss"], FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "miss"], FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "miss"], FontSize -> 23], 
Style[Subsuperscript[P, "E", "**"], FontSize -> 23]}, LegendFunction -> (Framed[#, RoundingRadius -> 2, 
   FrameStyle -> LightGray] &), BaseStyle -> 21], {0.1, Top}]

Neither the row nor the column version is useful to me, since it usually intersects the curves in the figure. How can I make the legend display with 4 rows and 2 columns?

Is there any easy way to arrange this in Mathematica, i.e. just to set the number of rows and columns and then type the legends and Mathematica plots it?

Answer 1

There is an undocumented form of LegendLayout that is useful here:

LegendLayout -> {"Column", noOfColumns}

similarly for "Row" and their reversed cousins. So, in your case I would use

LegendLayout -> {"Column", 2}

giving

Obviously, you do not have to include the color list when you pass it to PlotLegends.