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 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 By JOHI^r FOESTEE. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 1775-1821. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 
 
 1869.
 
 p« BcavEHsn . ifornm: 
 
 n <? -1 2> glAJNXA itAiiiiAilA 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 1775-1797. ^T. 1-22. 
 
 WAEWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, AND SWANSEA. 
 
 I. Introductory, p. 1-3. II. The Landors and the Savages, 4-8. III. Birth 
 and Childish Days, 9-14. iv. At Rugby School, 14-32. V. At Ash- 
 bourne, 32-40. VI. At Trinity CoUege, Oxford, 40-52. vii. Before 
 and after Rustication, 52-58. viil. First published Book, 58-62. 
 IX. A Fair Intercessor, 62-68. X. A Moral Epistle, 68-71. xi. Re- 
 treat to Wales, 72-80. 
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 1797-1805. MT. 22-30. 
 
 AUTHORSHIP OF GEBIR, AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 I. Gebir, p. 81-105. 11. Some Opinions of Gebir, 105-115. ill. Doctor 
 Parr, 115-126. IV. Attack of the Montlily Review, 126-140. V. Ser- 
 jeant Rough, 140-152. VI. Corresponding with Parr and Adair, 153- 
 169. VII. At Paris in 1802, 169-177. viii. Poetry by the Author of 
 Gebir, 177-185. ix. Walter Birch, and Succession to Family Estates, 
 185-198.
 
 vi CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 BOOK THIRD. 
 
 1805-14. ^T. 30-39. 
 
 AT BATH AND CLIFTON, IN SPAIN, AND AT LLANTHONY. 
 
 I. Life at Bath, p. 199-206. 11. Robert Southey, 206-215, iii. First Let- 
 ters to Southey, 215-221. iv. In Spain, 222-235. v. Letters to Southey 
 on Spain and Spaniards, 235-247. vi. Letters on Kehama and Eode- 
 rick, 247-70. vii. The Tragedy of Count Julian, 270-306. vm. In 
 Possession of the Abbey, 306-323. ix. Marriage and Life at Llan- 
 thony, 323-351. x. Public Affairs, 351-382. xi. Private Disputes, 
 382-406. XII, Departure from England, 406-418. 
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 1815-182I. ^T. 40-46. 
 
 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. 
 
 I. From Tours to Milan, p. 419-427. II. At Como, 427-443. in. At Pisa, 
 443-449. IV. At Pistoia, 449-456. v. Again at Pisa, 456-474. vi. On 
 the way to Florence, 475-485. viI. Retrospect and Prospect : a new 
 Literary Undertaking, 485-512. 
 
 An Index to the work will be found at the end of this First Volume. 
 
 Note. All the letters quoted in this book are from original sources, and, with a few 
 exceptions specially stated, have not before been printed.
 
 CORRIGENDA. 
 
 Vol. I. Certain references that occur in this volume might be misleading ■without 
 a mention of the fact that the commencement of it was written in the winter 
 of 1865, and that the entire volume was j^rinted off in the summer of 1867. 
 The completion of the book has been necessarily delayed imtil now (1869). 
 
 p. 34 note, 1. 4 from bottom, " AreUa" should bo "Avella." 
 
 62, in the mention of Studley-castle, "a mUe and a half" should be "fourteen 
 
 miles." 
 81, title of § IX. should be " Walter Birch, and Succession to Family Estates." 
 84, 1. 3 from bottom, "were" should be " was." 
 100, 1. 12 fi-om bottom, " her" should be "his." 
 110, 1. 7 from bottom, " Warwickshire" should be " Staffordshire." 
 114, last line, insert comma after " another." 
 115, 1. 7 of second par. " learning and" should be " learning or" 
 153, 1. 6 from top, " from" should be " for." 
 169, 1. 4 of second par. " CambacSres" should be " Cambaceres." 
 171, 1. 7 from bottom, " himself" should be " itself." 
 196, 1. 13, " he" should be " we." 
 
 239, text and note, " Requelme" should be " Riguelme." So also at p. 353. 
 258 note, 1. 1, " reached him" should be " was received." 
 269, 1. 8 from bottom, " stages" should be " steps." 
 293-, I. 6 from top, " thi'ough" should be " thorough." 
 376, transpose asterisk fi-om " gnats" in 1. 2 to " replies" in 1. 3. 
 497, U. 7 and 8 from bottom. Tlie allusion to the poem quoted should be altered 
 to " first pi-inted in its present form some years after this date." 
 
 Vol. n. p. 232, here, and in some other places, " Crabb" should be " Crabbe ;" and 
 I have somewhat post-dated Lander's introduction to Mr. Robinson. They 
 knew each other earlier. 
 307, here, and occasionally elsewhere, " Carey" should be " Cary."
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOE, 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 I775-I797. ^T. 1-22. 
 
 AVAEWICK, EUGBY, OXFOED, AND SWilNSEA. 
 
 1. Introductory. II. The Landors and the Savarjcs. ill. Birth and 
 Childish Days. i\. At liiigby School, v. At Ashbourne. 
 VI. At Trinity College, Oxford, vii. Before and after Rusti- 
 cation. VIII. First published Book. ix. A fair Intercessor. 
 X. A Moral Epistle, xi. Retreat to Wales. 
 
 I. Inteoductoey. 
 
 I AM not insensible to what is generally taken to be 
 expressed, in matters of literature as in many other 
 things, by great popularity. The writer whom crowds 
 of readers wait upon has deserved his following, be it 
 for good or ill ; and the desire to read without the 
 trouble of thinking, which railways have largely en- 
 couraged and to which many modern reputations are 
 due, has not prevented the growth of other reputations 
 that will outliA'c the contemporaries who conferred 
 them. 
 
 But with this popular literature which in some 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 form always exists, changing its form viith the age, 
 there has existed at all times a literature less imme- 
 diately attractive but safer from caprice or vicissitude ; 
 and finding its audiences, fit however few, the same 
 through many ages. England has been very fortunate 
 in it. Its principal masters have been the men who 
 from time to time have pnrified, enlarged, and refixed 
 the language ; Avho have gathered to it new posses- 
 sions, extending its power and variety ; but whose re- 
 lation for the most part to theu' reading contemporaries, 
 far from that of the petted or popular favourite, has 
 been rather that of the thoughtful to the little thinking 
 or the learned to the little knowing. They have been 
 too wise for the foolish, and too difficult for the idle. 
 They have left unsatisfied the eager vvish for the sen- 
 sational or merely pleasurable on whose gratification 
 popularity so much depends ; and they have never had 
 for then- audiences those mviltitudes of readers who can- 
 not wait to consider and enjoy. Taking rank with this 
 rare class is the Avi-iter, Walter Savage Laxdoe, of 
 whom I am about to give some account. 
 
 It is not my intention to speak otherwise than 
 frankly of his character and of his books. Though I 
 place him in the first rank as a "vva'iter of English 
 prose; though he was also a genuine poet; and there 
 is no exaggeration in the sa^ang of one of his American 
 admirers,* that, excepting Shakespeare, no other ■s^a'iter 
 has furnished us with so many or so delicate aphorisms 
 of human nature ; his faults lie more upon the surface 
 than is usual with Avriters of this high order. It was 
 unfortunate for him in his early years that self-control 
 was not necessarily forced upon a temperament which 
 had peculiar need of it ; and its absence in later time 
 * Mr. J. Russell Lowell of Boston.
 
 ^T. 1-22. j INTKODUCTORY. S 
 
 affected both his books and his life disastrously. Even 
 the ordinaiy influences and restraints of a professional 
 writer were not known to him. Literature was to liim 
 neither a spiritual calling, as Wordsworth regarded it ; 
 nor the lucrative employment for wdiich Scott valued it. 
 Landor wrote mthout any other aim than to please him- 
 self, or satisfy the impulse as it rose. Writing was in 
 that sense an indulgence to which no limits were put, 
 and wherein no laws of government were admitted. If 
 merely a thing pleased him, it was preeminent and ex- 
 cellent above all things ; what for the moment most gra- 
 tified his will or pleasure he was eager to avouch wisest 
 and best, as in the thing that satisfied neither he could 
 find suddenly all opposite qualities ; and though a cer- 
 tain counterpoise to this was in his own nature, his 
 opinions generally being wise and true, and his sym- 
 pathies almost always generous and noble, it led him 
 frequently into contradictions and extravagance that 
 have deprived him of a portion of his fame. 
 
 There is one person who better than myself could 
 have done what I am about to attempt. The younger 
 of Landor's two surviving brothers, the Eev. Robert 
 Eyres Landor, would on every account have been the 
 best biographer of one to whom he is not more closely 
 aldn by birth than by a cxirious similarity in his genius. 
 But while tliis yet was possible the occasion had not 
 arisen ; and what Landor himself desired I should do, is 
 now undertaken at the further request of both those 
 brothers, who have given to it all necessary help. Of 
 what kind this has been, the reader will have ample 
 means of judging ; and if the early portion of the bio- 
 graphy should awaken any interest in him, he will find 
 it to have been chiefly derived from the characteristic 
 and pleasing letters of jVIr. Robert Landor.
 
 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA, [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 II. The Landors and the Savages. 
 
 Landor's father was a physician. " It was, I believe, 
 " not unusual," his brother writes to me, spealdng of 
 inety or a hundred years ago, "for even the eldest 
 sons of private gentlemen to engage in some pro- 
 fession during their father's lifetime, if their fathers 
 were not old. The regular army could afford but 
 little room for them. Perhaps the greatest number 
 were educated in your profession, as best qualifying 
 them to manage the business of after-life. But some 
 preferred medicine. Our father took his degree at 
 Worcester-college, Oxford, and succeeded Sir Charles 
 Shuckborough, an old Warwickshire baronet. A still 
 older baronet many years after, who lived in the 
 adjoining parish to Ipsley-court, was first Doctor 
 and then Sir Charles Throckmorton. The different 
 branches of the medical profession were kept much 
 more distinct a hundi'ed years ago than at present. 
 After the death of his father and his own succession 
 to the two Wanvickshire estates, our father resigned 
 his practice, and lived part of the year at Ipsley- 
 court and part at Warwick." 
 At Warwick was born Doctor Walter Landor's most 
 famous son, the first issue of his second marriage. Of 
 the six children born to his first marriage, with the 
 daughter and heiress of Mr. Wright of Warwick, all but 
 one died in childhood ; and this daughter, on whom had 
 been settled the bulk of her mother's fortune, married 
 a Staffordshire cousin, Humphrey Arden of Longcroft. 
 Doctor Landor's second wife was Elizabeth Savage, 
 eldest daughter and co-heiress with her three sisters of 
 Charles Savage, the head of an old Warwickshire family
 
 ^T. 1-22.] THE LANDORS AND THE SAVAGES. 5 
 
 the bulk of whose property had been transferred to a 
 younger branch who bore the name of Norris. The 
 paternal fortune, not very large even before it was di- 
 A'ided, the eldest daughter shared with her three sisters ; 
 but after her marriage to Doctor Landor, two estates 
 in Warwickshire, Ipsley-coui't* and Tachbrooke (clear- 
 brook), were bequeathed to her by the representatives of 
 the Norris branch of her family, two great-uncles, very 
 wealthy London merchants ; and so much of the ori- 
 ninal land of the Savages of Tachbrooke was thus re- 
 stored. Tlie condition of strict entail to the eldest son 
 accompanied the bequest, as if the object were to revive 
 so far the consideration and condition of the old family ; 
 and. Doctor Landor's paternal estates in Staffordshire 
 being in like manner entailed, there remained for the 
 younger childi'cn that might be born to his second mar- 
 riage, apart from any ])ossible bequests from other re- 
 latives or prudent savings by their mother, only the 
 succession to a smaller estate in Buckinghamshire left 
 
 * In a letter to me of August 1852 Landor described Ipsley-court, 
 which with his Lanthony estate has descended to his eldest son, as 
 having been purchased by Mr. Samuel Savage early in the last cen- 
 tury, with some farms and a pai'k. " He never resided there ; and his 
 " steward, the rector of the j^arish, took down the noble old house, 
 " leaving only the two wings, one of which my father inhabited, 
 " adding a dining-room of thirty feet or more. The whole length 
 " exceeds ninetj\ The opposite wing contains offices, stables, coach- 
 " houses, &c. These wings were added in the time of Charles II. 
 " Nothing can be less architectural. The views are extensive, rich, 
 " and beautiful. My father cut down several thousand pounds 
 " worth of oaks ; my mother as many. It is about forty years since 
 " I saw the place ; but there are still, I hear, oaks of nearly a cen- 
 " tury's growth." I must in candour add, that his earlier allusions 
 are less complimentary. In a letter to his sister Elizabeth from 
 Florence in 1830, he asks about the new tenant of Ipsle)^, and hopes 
 he has taken it for many years. " Never was any habitation more 
 " thoroughly odious — red soil, mince-pie woods, and black and greasy 
 " needlemakers !"
 
 G WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 equally to her and lier three sisters by the same Mr. 
 Norris, after expiiy of the life-interest in it of another 
 descendant from the same family, the Countess of Co- 
 nyngham. This estate "was called Hughenden-manor, 
 and is now the property of Mr. Disraeli. 
 
 Well-horn as Walter SaA'age Landor thus was, on 
 the side of both parents, no title can yet be established 
 for such claim to high consideration or remote anti- 
 quity on the part of either, as from time to time has 
 been put forth in biogra2:)hical notices of him, and even 
 in his own -vNTitings. For here the reflection has to be 
 made, — strange in its application to such a man, — that, 
 possessing few equals in those intellectual qualities 
 which he was also not indisposed to estimate highly 
 enough, he was not less eager to claim a position 
 where many thousands of his contemporaries equalled, 
 and many hundreds surpassed him. I had on one occa- 
 sion the gi'eatest difficulty in restraining him from send- 
 ing a challenge to Lord John Kussell for some fancied 
 slight to the memory of Sir Arnold Savage, Speaker of 
 Henry the Seventh's first House of Commons; yet any 
 connection beyond the name could not with safety have 
 been assumed. When he says in one of his Imaginary 
 Conversations that his estates were sufficient for the leo;al 
 qualification of three Roman knights, he is probably not 
 far from the truth ; but it is much more doubtful whe- 
 ther any one of his forefathers of either family possessed 
 in land an income equal to his own before it was squan- 
 dered by him. Between the two classes of the untitled 
 gentry of England his family by both father and mo- 
 ther held a place of which any man might have been 
 proud ; but it was not exactly all he claimed for it. To 
 the rank of those powerful commoners of a former age 
 who were not less than the noblest either in name or
 
 ^T. 1-22.] THE LANDOES AND THE SAVAGES. 7 
 
 influence, it did not belong; but it ranked with the 
 highest and oldest among that class of private gentle- 
 men who stood between these and the yeomanry, — men 
 of small but independent fortunes, equally respectable, 
 and educated not less well ; and, during several genera- 
 tions, the property of both Landors and Savages had 
 thus been held and handed down by their eldest chil- 
 (h*en. There is pleasant allusion to these matters, and 
 to his brother's occasional weakness respectmg them, in 
 one of ^Ir. Eobert Landor s letters. 
 
 " It seems that the family was seven hundred years 
 ^' old, and several notices of my brother's death repeat 
 " the same tale. We may go back about halfway,* but 
 " no farther. Some of us enjoyed proAdncial honours 
 " and offices; and Walter believed that a certain Ai'nold 
 ^' Savage was the Speaker of the House of Commons of 
 " that name. One of my chmxhwardens had a sister 
 " with whom I searched the parish registers for certain 
 " ancestors of hers. Finding only parish officers, not 
 
 * The reference here is to the Savages : the Landors, as will be 
 seen towards the close of the letter, being more certainly of older date. 
 Family-deeds in Mr. Henry Landor's possession, witnessed by Eobert 
 de la Lande and Peter de Bracebridge, must have dated before the sta- 
 tute of Quia Emptores (1268) ; and Mr. W. H. Bracebridge, writing 
 to Mr. Henry Landor seven years ago, throws some light on the claim 
 to a more remote antiquity. " In Dansey's ' Lives of the Crusaders' 
 " (p. 00) I find our names again together, viz. that of ' Eobert de la 
 " ' Lande, of that family which held manors in Warwickshire,' and 
 " of ' Peter de Bracebridge, (who) took upon him the sign of the 
 " ' cross — of a family of this name of consideration in Warwickshire.' 
 " This was in 1191. It is also stated by Dansey that at the siege 
 " of Acre (when an assault was made on that town), the English 
 " and Germans attached ladders to the walls ; whereupon the Pagans 
 *' tied cords to them, and tried to drag them over the walls; whereon 
 " Ealpli Telli, Humphrey de Pell, and lioTjcrt de la Lande and Iloger 
 " Glanvillc mounted the ladder and put out the Greek fire which had 
 " been thrown on it, but Telli mounting higher cut the ropes with 
 " his sword" (p. 122).
 
 8 WAEWICK, RUGBr, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " one of Avliom rose higher than a yeoman, the lady, 
 
 " who was indeed very handsome, assured me that they 
 
 *' were descended from Jnhns Csesar quite directly; and 
 
 " was much pleased on learning from me that this Ju- 
 
 " lius was descended from lulus, the son of vl^^neas, the 
 
 " son of Venus : and tluis I could account for beauty in 
 
 " herself, both divine and imperishable. She was forty; 
 
 " and 1 gained the character, soon lost again, of ex- 
 
 " treme politeness. I related this anecdote to my bro- 
 
 " ther, who could not apply it. In a translation of 
 
 " Rabelais published about fourteen years ago, I found 
 
 " the word Landor* applied to such fools as were supreme 
 
 " among all other fools ; and a long note was required 
 
 " to enumerate their varieties. Till then I did not be- 
 
 " lieve that any language could contain so many oppro- 
 
 " brious terms, so whimsical and contemptuous. The 
 
 " last time that my brother was at Birlingham I tried 
 
 " to read the long list of them, but was interrupted by 
 
 " such loud screams as must sometimes have shaken 
 
 " both your library and mine. There was not only 
 
 " astonishment but delio-ht in his laughter. When I 
 
 " suggested that probably om* ancestor Avas the greatest 
 
 " fool among all those wlio accompanied the Conqueror, 
 
 " and thus acquired the highest place and name, he ac- 
 
 " cepted the priority. But then he might have reserved 
 
 " for himself the power to escape. For it appears that 
 
 " oiu' name originally was Del-a-La'nd (De la Laundes) ; 
 
 " and my brother Henry has in his keeping some old 
 
 " writings conveying an estate signed and sealed in 
 
 " that name. When it was that so many Norman 
 
 " names gained English terminations, as must ha-\'e 
 
 " been the case, the heralds know best." 
 
 * The word ' landorc,' the reader need hardly be told, is not a 
 fantastic name, hut the old French word for a heavy fellow.
 
 MT. 1-22.] BIRTH AND CHILDISH DAYS. 
 
 III. Birth and Childish Days. 
 
 The family iclentily of fools and Landors does not 
 seem long to liave sm-vived the laughter of Rabelais. 
 Some of the name did good service in the civil Avars 
 of Charles and Cromwell; and Staffordshire had a stout 
 whig Landor for its high-sheriff in the reign of Wil- 
 liam the Deliverer, whose grandson, falling off from 
 that allegiance, stood up as stoutly for the Jacobites, 
 and whose great-grandson was the leading physician 
 in Wan\dck, when, on the 30th January 1775, in 
 the best house of the town, facing to the street but 
 overshadowed at the back by old chestnuts and elms, 
 the eldest child of himself and Ehzabeth Savage of 
 Taclibrooke, christened Walter and Savage, was born. 
 The other children of the marriage may at once be 
 named. They were Charles, Henry, and Robert; Eli- 
 zabeth, Mary Anne, and Ellen : born respectively in 
 1777, 1780, and 1781 ; in 1776, 1778, and 1783. The 
 three daughters died unmarried; Charles and Robert 
 entered the Chm'ch, after taking their degi'ees at Ox- 
 ford ; and Henry, who had been at Rugby mth Walter 
 and Charles and desired to have gone like them to 
 Oxford, had, upon his brother Robert obtaining a 
 scholarship to that university from Bromsgrove-school, 
 to yield to his father's doubt whether his income could 
 properly support all three sons at college, and himself 
 to enter the office of a London conveyancer. 
 
 It was the elder brother's misfortune in his youthful 
 days that he alone should have wanted the health- 
 ful restraints which the others underwent of necessity. 
 No care with a view to a profession had any need to 
 find a place in his thoughts. He stood first in the
 
 10 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 entail of the family estates ; and if he conld confine 
 
 his desires within such limit, and live meanwhile on his 
 
 father's allowance, he had simply to qualify himself for 
 
 improving or wasting them. This he too well knew ; 
 
 and though his father, as he observed in Walter the 
 
 development of unusual intellectual promise, would 
 
 eagerly have imposed upon him corresponding duties 
 
 and obligations, the attemj^t only led to disagreements, 
 
 and the unsettled wayward habit was never afterwards 
 
 reclaimed. 
 
 Landor once proposed to send me reminiscences 
 of his life. He had been reading the delightful frag- 
 ment of the days of Southey's boyhood, and the fancy 
 struck him to write from time to time some such recol- 
 lections of his OAvn. But he went no further than his 
 sixth year, finding the difficulties beyond that date to 
 be insuperable; and unfortunately his letters were so 
 carefully, for better preservation, slipped into some book 
 at the time, that they are not now to be discovered. It 
 was in vain I lu-ged him to continue what he had been 
 eager to begin. He had satisfied himself of the pro- 
 priety of abstaining. He had found that though in boy- 
 hood we stand alone we are afterwards double in more 
 and better than the Platonic sense, and that no instru- 
 ment is fine enough for the amputation. I pressed him 
 no farther. 
 
 There remains no remembrance of Landor's infancy 
 or childhood, therefore, be^^ond such expressions as he 
 now and then himself let drop in old age. Writing 
 in 1853 from the house in which he was born, and which 
 his sister Elizabeth occupied till her death in the fol- 
 lowing year, when the last witness of his childish days 
 passed away, he mentions having picked up from the 
 gravel-walk the first two mulbemes that had fallen ; a
 
 iET. 1-22.] BIRTH AND CHILDISH DAYS II 
 
 tiling he remembered to have done just seventy-five 
 years before. Tachbrooke alternated with Warwick in 
 these child-memories. From his seventh year he had 
 associations with the Tachbrooke garden; and when near 
 his eightieth year he directed the now owner of the 
 house, his brother Henry, to the exact spot where he 
 would find the particular apple-tree of one of then' bojdsh 
 adventures, "close upon the nut-walk, and just of the 
 " same size and appearance as it was seventy years ago." 
 To this old place he was indeed especially attached, and 
 his allusions to it were incessant. It was the scene of 
 his earliest games and sports, where his " heedless child- 
 " hood played, a stranger then to pain;" where his boy- 
 hood too soon had run through its few happy days ; and 
 where often he wished that he might find his final rest. 
 These are the expressions continually applied to it in 
 letters to members of his family, while his memory 
 still could go back even beyond his seventh year. To 
 his brother Henry in 1852 he exclaimed : " Dear old 
 " Tachbrooke ! It is the only locality for which I feel 
 " any affection. Well do I remember it from my third 
 " or fourth year ; and the red filberts at the toj) of the 
 " garden, and the apricots from the barn-wall, and aunt 
 " Nancy cracking the stones for me. If I should ever 
 " eat apricots with you again, I shall not now cry for 
 " the kernel." 
 
 As soon as he could quit the nursery he had been 
 sent to a school at Knowle, ten miles from Warwick; 
 and even of this time, when he had reached the age of 
 about foru' years and a half, his letters have a recollec- 
 tion which is worth preserving. Writing to his sister 
 Ellen from Florence at the close of 1831, he says : 
 " I remember when I went to Knowle an old woman 
 " coming from Balsal-Templc to little Treherne for a
 
 12 AVARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " guinea, which he paid her yearly. She was 102 
 
 " when I was four and a half; so that it is in the range 
 
 " of possibility that she might have seen people who 
 
 " had seen not only Milton, but Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 
 " Spenser, and Raleigh. I myself have conversed with 
 
 " a man, not remarkably old, who had conversed with 
 
 " Pope, Warburton, and Fielding."* 
 
 * Otiier portions of this letter are so curious that the reader will 
 thank me for preser\'ing them. Adverting to an old Warwick friend's 
 death he continues : " She must have died extremely old : she was 
 old forty years ago. I have an acquaintance here, an American 
 by birth, formerly a painter, who remembers the election of Pope 
 Ganganelli. He was in America when General Wolfe was killed — 
 ' hut a mere child, as you may snj?jjose,^ says he. He is now a 
 hundred and thirteen or fourteen, and will not own that he is 
 above eighty-nine, until reminded of Wolfe and Ganganelli. On 
 this occasion, some years ago, he said, ' Yes, sir, I am eighty-nine ; 
 ' I Avas eighty-nine at the time you mention ; and eighty-nine I 
 ' will stick at, to the last.' He painted the picture of the late Lord 
 Middleton and his family about sixty j'ears ago, at Middleton ; 
 soon after which he declined the profession because he fomid him- 
 self growing old. Fifty-five years ago he walked with a stick — 
 since that time he has left it oS. He keeps late hours, and is not 
 very abstemious in food or wine, A little while ago, somebody had 
 read in the papers of a man in Russia who was a hundred and 
 thirty-two years old. When this was told him, he said, ' I daresay 
 ' that he is more, but won't own it : people when they are getting a 
 ' little in years don't like to say any thing about it.' His hearing 
 is perfect. I asked him one day in joke, How he liked William 
 Penn. He did not perceive that I was quizzing him, although he is 
 very suspicious, but answered gravely, ' Penn, I ieliere, was dead 
 ' before my time — at all events his estate was a good way from 
 ' Philadelphia.' ' Then you never even saw him.' ' No, no — not I.' " 
 Continuing what is said in the text of the man who had conversed 
 with Pope, and who will shortly again be mentioned. Landor adds : 
 " This was Dr. Harrington of Bath, who at the time I mention was 
 " not above seventy-two j'ears old. He told me that he dined with 
 " old Allen at Prior Park when he was about ten or eleven 3-ears old, 
 " and saw there Pope and Warburton ; and several years afterwards 
 " (five or six) Fielding. Pope died the year afterwards, that is, in 
 " 1745. But old James Smith, my American, might have had gray 
 " hairs in his head at Pope's death." I do not know what Lord
 
 ^T. I-Z2.] BIRTH AND CHILDISH DAYS. 13 
 
 Another incident of a year and a half's hiter date he 
 recalled when writing to South ey in 1811 of his Lan- 
 thonv estate in the Vale of Ewias, and its infinite variety 
 of flo^A'ers — those " beautiful and peaceful tribes" he so 
 often wished that he knew more about. " They always 
 " meet one in the same place, at the same season ; and 
 " years have no more effect on their placid countenances 
 " than on so many of the most favoured gods. I re- 
 " member a little privet which I planted when I Avas 
 " about six years old, and which I considered the next 
 " of kin to me after my mother and elder sister. When- 
 " ever I returned from school or college, for the attach- 
 " ment was not stifled in that sink, I felt something like 
 " uneasiness till I had seen and measured it. There is 
 " no small delight in having a friend in the world to 
 " Avhom one dare repeat such folly." With a delight 
 that may perhaps be measured by the surpassing beauty 
 of the lines in which it is expressed, he repeated the folly 
 in later years to a wider audience. 
 
 " And 'tis and ever was my wish and way 
 To let all flowers lire freeh% and all die, 
 Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart, 
 Among their kindred in their native place. 
 I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head 
 Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank 
 And not reproacht me ; the ever-sacred cup 
 Of the pure lily hath between my hands 
 Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold." 
 
 Varied at the same time with these enjoyments of 
 youth were its other commoner occurrences, Avhich bring 
 to most of us a foretaste of the later troubles. All the 
 trials he ever underwent, he declared repeatedly, Avere as 
 
 Macaulay would have said to all this ; but b.c might probably, and 
 rightly, ha\'e demurred at the outset — that the evidence did not 
 satisfy him. It is curious, however.
 
 li AVAraVICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 nothing to his sufferings over grammar and arithmetic, 
 of the last of which he remained ignorant all his life " ac- 
 " cording to the process in use." And a still worse cala- 
 mity, a deep lower than the lowest, was dancing : so that 
 when he came to have a son of his own present age, he 
 had gloomily to prophesy that he bid fair to be a worse 
 dancer than he had himself been, for quite vainly had 
 he striven to impress upon him the dreadful truth that 
 all other miseries and misfortunes of life put together 
 were nothinc; to this. 
 
 IV. At Eugby School. 
 
 From Knowle, when about ten }'ears old, Landor 
 was transferred to Rugby ; at that time mider Doctor 
 James, a scholar of fair repute who chd somethmg to 
 redeem the school from the eifects of the long and dull 
 mastership that preceded his. Many stories are told of 
 Landor here, and some that in his old age obtained 
 sanction from himself, which must nevertheless be pro- 
 nounced apocryphal. 
 
 He is said to have been without a rival in boxing, in 
 leaping, and in all sports allowed or forbidden ; to have 
 been the boldest rider and most adventin'ous despiser 
 of school-bounds of whom the Rugbgeans of that day 
 boasted; and to have astonished equally the townspeople, 
 the schoolboys, and the masters by a reckless defiance 
 of authority. That he defied authority, here as in most 
 other places, is certain enough; but the methods and 
 modes described are not those he is likely to have used. 
 The pictiu'e of him on horseback out of bounds galloping 
 beyond the reach of pedestrian authority, bears small 
 resemblance to the studious wilful bo}^, at once shy 
 and impetuous, — not indeed backward in the ordinary
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT EUGBY. 15 
 
 sports of the school, but m boxing not more than the 
 equal of any of his three brothers, of whom none were 
 in a remarkable degree pugnacious or skilful, and in 
 riding certainly inferior to them all. Charles more 
 especially, the brother next to himself, was his admitted 
 superior in athletic exercises ; and Rugby recollections 
 have doubtless given to Walter many of the exploits of 
 this younger brother, always more active and fonder of 
 country sports, and to wdiom the language quoted would 
 be more applicable though still extravagant. Charles 
 had a larger and finer presence, both as boy and man, 
 and to the last was an admirable horseman. Walter 
 was of strong build, but never in early or later life 
 rode well ; and though he took part in cricket,* foot- 
 ball, and other games, and was even famous for the 
 skill with which he threw the cast-net in fishing, he was 
 at all times disposed rather to walk by the river-side 
 with a book than to engage in such trials of strength 
 and activity. In one of his letters he remarks both of 
 school and college days that he oftener stuck in the 
 middle of a Greek verse than of a brake ; and he T\Tites 
 on one occasion to Southey much in the style of an 
 inexpert horseman : " I w^as very fond of riding when I 
 
 * Other allusions to Rugby may be worth giving from one of his 
 letters to his sister Elizabeth from Florence in January 1831. Men- 
 tioning the fact of the publication of Dr. Buckland's book on Geology, 
 he describes having dined with the Doctor three years before at Lord 
 Dillon's, and adds : " He told me I little suspected, when I was playing 
 " at cricket at Eugby, that I was running over some hundreds of 
 " hyenas. Several parishes in that neighbourhood are resting en- 
 " tirelj^ on immense droves of these brutes. He says they must 
 " have occujiied the world before men did, yet the marks of their 
 " teeth are still visible on the thigh-bones one of another. — I have 
 " been reading a book which I was laughed at for reading when 
 " at Rugby, and which I believe I then threw aside, Sanclford and 
 " Merton. I find it one of the most sensible books that ever was 
 " written for the education of children."
 
 16 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " was young, but I found tliat it produces a rapidity in 
 " the creation of tliouo-lit which makes x\s forget what 
 " we are doing." His brother Robert tells me that he 
 never followed the hounds at Rugby or any Avhere else, 
 and that when he kept three horses he never mounted 
 one of them ; they were only for his carriage. Average- 
 sized as he was, he was the least, though not the weakest, 
 of the four brothers ; well-shaped, but not in youth so 
 good-looking as those who knew him only in after-days 
 would imagine. 
 
 For a moment I recall the well-remembered figure 
 and face, as they first became known to me nearly thirty 
 years ago. Landor was then upwards of sixty, and 
 looked that age to the full. He was not above the 
 middle stature, but had a stout stalwart presence, walked 
 without a stoop, and in his general aspect, particularly 
 the set and carriage of his head, was decidedly of Avhat 
 is called a distinguished bearing. His hair was already 
 silvered gray, and had retired far upward from his fore- 
 head, which, wide and full but retreating, could never 
 in the earlier time have been seen to such advantage. 
 Wliat at first was noticeable, however, in the broad white 
 massive head, were the full yet strangely-lifted eyebrows ; 
 and they were not immediately attractive. They might 
 have meant only pride or self-will in its most arrogant 
 form but for what was visible in the rest of the face. 
 In the large gray eyes there was a depth of composed 
 expression that even startled by its contrast to the eager 
 restlessness looldng out from the surface of them ; and 
 in the same variety and quickness of transition the 
 mouth was extremely striking. The lips that seemed 
 compressed with unalterable will Avould in a moment 
 relax to a softness more than feminine ; and a SAveeter 
 smile it was impossible to conceive. What was best in
 
 iET. I-Z2.] AT SCHOOL AT RUGBY, 17 
 
 liis character, whether for strength or gentleness, had 
 left its traces here. It was altogether a face on which 
 power was \asibly impressed, bu.t without the resolution 
 and purpose that generally accompany it ; and one could 
 well imagine that while yet in extreme youth, and before 
 life had Avritten its ineffaceable record, the individual 
 features might have had as little promise as they seem to 
 bear in a portrait* of him now before me belonging to 
 his brother Henry, and taken in his thirtieth year. The 
 eye is fine ; but black hair covers all the forehead, and 
 you recognise the face of the later time quite without 
 its fulness, power, and animation. The stubbornness is 
 there, without the softness ; the self-will untamed by any 
 experience ; plenty of energy, but a want of emotion. 
 The nose was never particularly good ; and the lifted 
 brow, flatness of cheek and jaw, wide upper lip, re- 
 treating mouth and chin, and heavy neck, peculiarities 
 necessarily prominent in youth, in age contributed only 
 to a certain lion-look he liked to be reminded of, and 
 would confirm with a loud long laugh hardly less than 
 
 * An engraving of this portrait of him in his thirtieth year, and 
 another of a painting of him by Boxall on the eve of his seventy- 
 eiglith birtliday, illustrate these volumes. With Boxall's work he was 
 greatly pleased, and wished it to appear in any posthumous edition 
 of his writings. •' I care little," he wrote to me in December 1852, 
 " how many folks look at me when it is clear and evident that I 
 " do not step out to be looked at. If I have any vanity or atfccta- 
 " tion, let me at least have the merit of concealing it. No author, 
 " living or dead, ever kept himself so deeply in the shade throughout 
 " every season of life. Perhaps when I am in the grave, curiosity 
 " may be excited to know what Idnd of countenance that creature 
 " had who imitated nobody, and whom nobody imitated : the man 
 " who walked thro' the crowd of poets and prose-men and never 
 " was toucht by any one's skirts : who walked up to the ancients 
 " and talked with them familiarly, but never took a sup of wine or a 
 '' crust of bread in their houses. If this should happen, and it pro- 
 " bably will within your lifetime, then let the good people see the 
 " old man's head by Boxall." 
 
 VOL. I, C
 
 18 \VAEWIGK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 177S-37- 
 
 leonine. Higher and higher went peal after peal, in 
 continuous and increasing volleys, until regions of 
 sound were reached verv far beyond ordinary human 
 lungs.* 
 
 With this accompaniment I have heard him relate 
 one Rugby anecdote that is certainly authentic. Throw- 
 ino; his net one mornino; in a stream to which access on 
 some previous occasion had been refused to him, the 
 farmer who o^vned the land came down upon him sud- 
 denly ; very angry words were exchanged ; and Landor, 
 complying quite unexpectedly with a peremptory de- 
 mand for his fishing apparatus, flung the net over the 
 farmer s head with such faultless precision as completely 
 to entangle in its meshes his enraged adversary, and 
 reduce him to easy submission. Nor did he less riot- 
 ously laugh at the relation of one of his many differences 
 with the head-master in his later years at the school, 
 when he would entangle him as suddenly in questions 
 of longs and shorts ; and the doctor, going afterwards 
 good-naturedly to visit him in his private room, would 
 knock vainly for admission at the bolted study-door 
 from within which Landor, affecting to discredit the 
 reality of the visit or the voice, and claiming there his 
 
 * There is so good a description of tliis laugh in a clever article 
 of the London Quarterly Beview shortly after Landor's death, that 
 the reader will thank me for quoting it. The ^vi-iter is speaking 
 of his morning calls in Bath, with his small Pomeranian dog, as 
 events to the fi'iends he visited. " He used to enounce the most otitre 
 " opinions ; and when some sentiment more extravagant than the 
 " rest had excited the laughter of his audience, he would sit silent 
 " until the}' had finished laughing, then he would begin to shake, 
 " then to laugh aloud, inano at first but with creRCcnclo steadily 
 " advancing to the loudest fortissimo ; whereupon Pomero would 
 *' si:)ring out from his lair, leap into his master's lap, add his bark 
 " to Landor's roar, until the mingled volume of sounds would swell 
 " fi'om the room into the sleepy streets, and astonish if not scanda- 
 " lise the somewhat torpid Bathoniaus who might be passing by."
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT EUGBY. 19 
 
 right to protest against all intrusion of the profane, 
 would devoutly ejaculate Avaunt Satan I 
 
 Among his schoolfellows was Butler, afterwards 
 head-master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield; 
 but Landor had the reputation in the school of being 
 the best classic. The excellence of his Latin verses 
 was a tradition at Rugby for half-a-century after he 
 left ; and one of the fags of his time, a peer's son, has 
 desciibed the respectful awe with which he read one 
 day on the slate, in the handwriting of Doctor James 
 himself, "Play-day for Lander's Latin verses." His 
 familiarity mth Greek was less conspicuous, that lan- 
 guage having become his more especial study only in 
 late]' years ; and there is doubtless some truth in the 
 j^layful allusion of one of his letters written when he 
 was eighty -fom'. " I ha^'e forgotten my Greek, of 
 " which I had formerly as much as boys of fifteen have 
 " now. Butler, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, and 
 " myself were the first at Rugby or I believe any 
 " other school who attempted a Greek Averse. Latin 
 " I still possess a small store of."* But what would 
 seem most to have marked itself out as peculiar in 
 his mastery of both Greek and Latin, even so early 
 as his Rugb}' days, was less what masters could teach 
 him than what natiu'e herself had given him. This 
 was a character and habit of mind resembhng closely 
 that of the ancient writers ; ways of seeing and think- 
 ing nearly akin to theirs ; the power, sudden as thought 
 itself, of giving visual shape to objects of thought; 
 and with all this, intense energy of feeling, and a 
 restless activity of imagination, eager to reproduce 
 themselves in similar forms of vivid and picturesque 
 expression. It was this that gave originality to his 
 * Letter to Ladj- Sawle, 8 Feb. 1S58.
 
 20 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 style, even while he most appeared to be modelling him- 
 self upon antiquity. He had the Greek love of the clear, 
 serene, and graceful, of the orderly and symmetrical ; 
 he had the Greek preference for impulsive rather than 
 reflective forms of imagination ; and he had the sense 
 of material grandeur, and the eager sympathy w-ith 
 domestic as well as public life, peculiar to the Latin 
 genius. In this way to the last he Avas more himself 
 of the antique Roman or Greek than of a critical 
 student of either tongue ; although the marvellous 
 facility with which he had been writing Latin verse 
 from his youth gave him always a povv-er over that 
 language which might well supply the place of more 
 severe requirements of scholarshij). Very largely also 
 during all his life had the power contributed to his 
 own enjoyment ; and it is in this "s-iew, rather than in 
 the light of tasks or lessons, we have to speak of his 
 classical attainments even so far back as his boyhood. 
 Such acquaintance with parsing, syntax, and prosody 
 as the Rugby exercises at that time called for, cost him 
 of course no eifort ; and long before he had formally 
 qualified for the rank he was practically the first La- 
 tinist in the school. His tutor was Doctor Sleath, the 
 late prebend of St. Paul's ;* but though this good man 
 had some influence over him, it was exerted in vain to 
 induce him to compete for a prize poem. " I never 
 " would contend at school," he AATote in one of his last 
 letters to Southey, " with any one for any thing. I 
 " formed the same resolution when I went to college, 
 
 * Among his papers I found interesting proof that age had not 
 obscured his recollection of kindnesses received at Rugbj', in the copy 
 of a note he had sent with his Collected Works in 18-tG to his old 
 tutor. " My dear Dr. Sleath, Do not fatigue your eyes with reading 
 '• the small print I send you ; but accept it graciously from your 
 *' ever obliged and affectionate W. Lajsdob,"
 
 iET. i-22."| AT SCHOOL AT EUGBY. 21 
 
 " and I have kept it." With something of the shyness 
 tliat avoided competition, there was more of the pride 
 that would acknowledge no competitor; and he was 
 in truth never well disposed to any thing systematised 
 either in pursuits or studies. What he did best and 
 worst, he did in his earliest as his latest life for the 
 satisftiction of his own will or pleasure. 
 
 The subject thus adverted to will frequently recur, 
 and frank confession of my want of qualification to 
 speak of it critically must accompany all remarks of 
 my ov»'n. I will yet ventui'e to say of his Latin verse, 
 which he wrote as abundantly as English and of which 
 he had himself the higher opinion, that I believe more of 
 the pleasure of original poetry to be derivable from it 
 than from any other modern Latinity; and though here 
 and there it seems to me to be somewhat difficult in con- 
 struction, it has never any thing of the schoolmaster's 
 expletives or phrases, but in that as in othei' respects 
 may be read as if a Roman himself had written it. Nor 
 is it less certainly to be said of his Greek, that though 
 he more rarely composed in that language, he had the 
 sense inseparable from a poet and scholar of the vast 
 superiority of its literature, and derived from it an 
 influence that in his own orio-inal writincj became 
 strikingly visible. lie is one of the dozen men in a 
 generation who can be said to have read Plato throuoh 
 in his own tongue ; and when he had passed his eighty- 
 fifth year he read in the original Greek the whole of 
 the Odyasey. I will add a remark from one of his bro- 
 ther's letters. " At school and college he had gained 
 " superiority over his companions, and, seventy years 
 " ago, very little Greek was sufficient for such dis- 
 " tinction. There are better scholars passing from our 
 " public schools now than were then the fellows of my
 
 22 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " college who had taken their master's degree. But 
 " Walter increased his Latin all his life long, because he 
 " had pleasure in it. He had also a fondness for the 
 " derivation of "svords : reading the Port-Eoyal Gram- 
 " mar twice through, and Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary 
 " once.* But it was not till after he had left England, 
 " and was preparing to qualify himself for the Imacjinary 
 " Conversations and Pericles and Aspasia, that he applied 
 " his thoughts thoroughly to Greek literature: and even 
 " then his reading was very confined. His friends must 
 " regret his estimate of Plato especially. But there was 
 " no deception, no false pretence, in his criticisms. He 
 " did not affect more scholarship than he possessed : 
 " but because his contemporaries had once been in- 
 " ferior to him, he believed that they must ever remain 
 " at the same distance from him ; that they must be 
 " inferior still : and hence the appearance of too much 
 '' pretension. Compared with such scholars as the 
 " Universities are producing now, he was a very idle 
 " student, idle indeed. You will accept these opinions 
 " of mine as worth hardly a moment's consideration, 
 " unless they are confirmed by yovu' own ; for I am 
 " now, and ever have been, as ill-qualified to estimate 
 " Walter as he was to estimate Plato. Parr once de- 
 " scribed him to me as a most excellent Latin scholar 
 " with some creditable knowledge of Greek ; and I be- 
 " lieve that not much more could be said fifty years 
 " later. Nor did he pretend to more." 
 
 Of any taste as yet developed in him for particular 
 branches of English reading or study, there is no trace ; 
 but one of his letters to Southey in 1811 tells us of his 
 
 * " Of the Greek Grammar," he tells Southey in one of his let- 
 ters, " I knew so little at seventeen that I read over the Port-Royal 
 " yearly for more than twenty years."
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT KUGBl'. 23 
 
 first literary purchase. " The two first books I ever 
 " bought were at the stall of an old woman at Rugby. 
 " They happened to be Baker's Chronicle and Drayton's 
 " Polyolhlon. I was very fi^nd of both, because they 
 " were bought by me. They were my own; and if I did 
 " not read them attentively my money would have been 
 " thrown away, and I must have thought and confessed 
 " myself injudicious. I have read neither since, and I 
 " never shall possess either again. It is melancholy to 
 " think with how much more fondness and pride the 
 " writers of those days contemplated v/hatever was be- 
 " longing to Old England. People now, in praising 
 " any scene or event, snarl all the while, and attack 
 " their neighbours for not praising. They feel a con- 
 " sciousness that the foundations of our greatness are 
 " impaired, and have occasioned a thousand little cracks 
 " and crevices to let in the cold air upon our comforts. 
 " Ah, Nassau and Oliver! — Quis vobis tertius hceresf" 
 Certainly neither Sidmouth nor Castlereagh, Southey 
 would himself have answered ; and the mere tone of the 
 question is some proof that the purchase from the old 
 woman's stall was indeed a good one, and that to have 
 read " attentively" at this time of life two such hearty 
 old lovers of their country as Baker and Dra^^ton had 
 left a wholesome impression on this Rugby boy. 
 
 On the same form with him and Butler, all four 
 having entered at about the same time, were Henry 
 Gary and Walter Birch, both of them also Landor's 
 contemporaries at Oxford. Writing from Florence at 
 nearly the close of his eighty-fifth year,* he says: "Do 
 " not despise Gary's Dante. It is wonderful how he 
 " could have turned the rhymes of Dante into uu- 
 " rhymed verse with any harmony : he has done it. 
 * Oct. 23, 18G0 : the letter is addressed to Mr. Hubert Lytton.
 
 24 ■ WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 " Poor Gary! I remember him at Rvigby and Oxford. 
 " He was the friend of my friend Walter Birch, whom 
 " I fought at Rugby and who thrashed me welh He 
 " was a year okler, and a Ijetter boxer : we were inti- 
 " mate ever afterwards, till his death."* Many letters 
 remain to attest this intimacy, which, a few years after 
 Landor's brief residence at Oxford, his brother Robert 
 closely shared on coming into residence at Worcester- 
 college ; Birch having by that time obtained a fellowship 
 at Magdalen, and deservedly high repute among the 
 most distinguished men in the other colleges. His elder 
 brother was second master at Rugby ;t andLandor often 
 generously spoke of Walter Birch himself as having been 
 the best Rugby scholar, as well as the boy with whom he 
 had formed his closest and indeed his only I'eal friend- 
 ship. " I see this morning," he wrote to me in 1854, 
 " that Routh, the. President of Magdalen, is dead. He 
 " w^as made president just before I entered the uni- 
 " versity. The first scholar admitted to his college 
 " after the election was my friend Walter Bu'ch, the 
 " best scholar at Rugby not excepting Bvitler. We 
 " used to walk together in Addison's walk along the 
 " Cherwell. From Rugby we had often gone to Bilton, 
 " one mile off, a small estate bought by Addison, where 
 
 * " Gary," the letter goes on in characteristic fashion, " had some 
 " subordinate place in the British Museum. He was a learned and 
 " virtuous man. Our ministers of state were ncA^er more consistent 
 " than in their neglect of him. One would imagine that they were 
 " all poets, only that thej^ did not snarl or scowl at him." 
 
 f To this brother of his friend, Landor sent a copy of his Collected 
 Works in 1848 with the subjoined note : " My dear Dr. Birch, My 
 " old friendship with your brother Walter, my only one at Rugby, 
 " gives me a right of sending to you what it is the will of Providence 
 " that I cannot send to him. Accept it as a mark of my esteem for 
 " your manly character and graceful erudition; and believe me, my 
 " dear Dr. Birch, yours sincerely, W. S. Landoe."
 
 iET. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT EUGBT. 25 
 
 " liis only daughter, an old fat woman of weak intellect, 
 " was tlien living, and lived a good while after — three 
 " or fom* years. Surely I must have assisted in another 
 " life!" 
 
 Beyond such glimpses as these, there is little more 
 to relate of his Rugby days. Though he had not many 
 intimacies in the school he w^as generally popular and 
 respected, and used his influence often to save the 
 younger boys from undue harshness or violence. This 
 is mentioned in some recent recollections by one who 
 was with him at Rugby ; and an illustration may be 
 added from a letter of his brother Henry's, when both 
 had passed their seventieth year. " Do you think I ever 
 " forgot your kindness to me at Rugby, in threatening 
 " another boy who ill-used me if he again persisted in 
 " similar conduct ? Or your gift of money to me at 
 " that time, when I verily beheve you had not another 
 " shilling left for your own indulgences f * A like 
 interference on behalf of another schoolfellow of his own 
 standing, with whom otherwise he had little in common, 
 led to an intimacy that should be mentioned here ; not 
 for any thing it adds to our knowledge of his scliool- 
 days,f but because it brought pleasant associations to 
 
 * Henry to "Walter Landor : Tachbrooke, 2 Jan. 1847. 
 
 f I shall be forgiven for quoting a letter to myself of August 1851 , 
 as well for its incidental mention of Rugby and its other amusing 
 references, as for its closing allusion to Walter Birch and Cople- 
 stone. Mentioning a writer "who likes to be fine" as having been 
 " scornful at ladies (by possibility) eating with their knives," ha 
 goes on: "He means using them as we generally use forks. Every 
 " body did it before silver-pronged forks were common. When I 
 " was at Rugby we had only steel forks of three prongs. Verily do 
 " I believe, on recollection, that they were only of two until the age 
 " grew delicate. It is probable that our Sardanapalus George the 
 " Fourth had no silver fork at eight or nine years of age. Coryat 
 " in his Crudities is horrified at the luxury of the Venetians, among 
 " whom he first saw such a portent. I once observed a French lady
 
 2G WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 liis later life. Between liim and Fleetwood Parkliurst, 
 son of an old Worcestersliii'e sqiiii'e descended from the 
 Fleetwoods and Dormers, there was a discordance of 
 taste and temper in most things : yet then* connection 
 survived the Kugbv time; they met frequently after 
 their school -days; they visited each other's families; 
 Parldiiu'st was the only Kughy boy who went with him 
 to the same college at Oxford; and they travelled on 
 occasions together until quite thrown asunder by a 
 quarrel,* which nevertheless in no respect abated the 
 affection already conceived for his son's friend by the 
 elder ]Mi\ Parlduu'st, and continued through the old 
 squu-e's life. At Ripple-com't on the banks of the Se- 
 vern, the family house, there was for years no happier 
 guest ; and when nearly half a century had passed, 
 and Fleetw^ood's youngest sister had wedded a public 
 man of chstinction to be named later in this narrative. 
 
 of high rank, no less a personage than a duchess, not only use her 
 knife as a baker uses his shovel, but pick her teeth with it, resting 
 her elbow on the table. In France the Graces seem to leave the 
 room when the ladies sit down to dinner. They are certainly more 
 free and easy at such times than ours are. Nine in ten of ours 
 would think it indecorous to cut their turbot, but would rather 
 tear it in pieces and besmear their plates with it. The more fools 
 they — as well as the more inelegant. Turbot, by the fork alone, is 
 almost as indomitable as venison. If I were anybody of conse- 
 quence, I should like to shock Squire 's ultra-Chesterfieldism 
 
 by a display of my manipulation on a turbot four inches thick. 
 He should see the i^recision of my quadratures. — I am glad you 
 think highly of Coplestone. He was the friend of my fi-iend 
 Walter Bux'h, who had only a single unworthy one, Walter 
 " La^v^doe." 
 
 * I find in one of Landor's letters of 1814 a reference to the 
 close of the life of this companion of his youth. He had fallen 
 dead in the streets of Bristol. " Little as poor Pai-khurst is to be 
 " respected, I am shocked and grieved at his death. A happier one, 
 '■ however, there could not be. I shall often think of our early 
 " friendship and our happier days."
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT RUGBY. 27 
 
 Laiidor reminded her of days still gratefully remem- 
 bered. 
 
 " Where Malvern's verdant ridges gleam 
 
 Beneath the morning ray, 
 Look eastward : see Sabrina's stream 
 
 Eoll rapidly away 
 
 The Lord of these domains was one 
 Who loved me like an only son."* 
 
 Remaining at Rugby till he was past his fifteenth 
 year, he had meanwhile been joined there by his 
 younger brothers Charles and Henry; and in a letter 
 to the latter written in 1847 we get our first glimpse of 
 their father, Doctor Landor, at this early time. Nam- 
 iiiff some communication received from the head of the 
 Lawley family, he says Lord Wenlock had reminded 
 him that their families had been intimate for sixty years, 
 but that his own memory carries him farther back. 
 " It is sixty-five years since Sir Robert Lawley stood 
 " godfather to our brother Robert. I was at Oanwell 
 
 * The poem from which these lines are taken was sent to Mrs. 
 Rosenhageu in May 1839 with a letter in which he tells her : " I 
 " am not quite so young as I was, nor quite so free from cares and 
 " infirmities as you remember me at Ripple. Believe me, I very 
 " often think of the very kind friends who received me there with 
 " such cordiality. Your father was as fond of me as if I had been 
 " his son ; and never did I shed so many tears for the loss of any 
 " man." In one of his letters of 1830 from Florence he prays his 
 sister Elizabeth not to omit to tell her that he often thinks of the 
 many happy days he spent at Eipiile. " I believe I should shed 
 " tears if I saw the place again. No person in my early days was 
 " so partial to me as her father was." Finally let me give from 
 another of his letters a dialogue (not altogether imaginary) illus- 
 trative of this friend of his youth. " My excellent old friend Mr. 
 " Parkhurst was appointed by Lord North to be one of the comniis- 
 " saries to the armies in North America. On his return he met Lord 
 " North in the Park. ' What, Parkhurst ! you a commissary ! and 
 " ' in your old family coach ?' ' Yes, my lord ! thank God ! and 
 " ' without a shilling more in my pocket than when I set out.' 'A 
 " ' pretty thing to thank God for !' rejoined my lord."
 
 28 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 " (so was Charles) with my father when I was about 
 " eleven years old. ^^Ve went coiu'sing, for we rode our 
 '' ponies. One morning we went into the stable, and 
 '•' Sir Robert said to my ftither, stopping in a certain 
 " spot, ' Landor, how many bottles of port have we 
 " 'drank together just about here?' 'Better talk of 
 " ' dozens, Sir Robert,' said my father. He and his 
 " father must have known my grandfather, for he 
 " quoted as a saying of his father's that my grandfather 
 " was an honest clog for a Jacobite, and screamed with 
 " laughter as he said it." It was but a year after this 
 incident that younij Walter had a Adsitor who might 
 have seemed not Avholly unconnected with those dozens 
 of port, and to have brought him unsought and prema- 
 ture instalment of his entailed estates of inheritance. 
 The alarm was a false one, this particular legacy going 
 to his younger brothers ; but the reader will aj^preciate 
 the quiet humour with which one of them, who received 
 from his father no better portion, tells the tale. 
 
 "Though followed," writes Mr. Robert Landor, 
 " by two younger brothers as soon as they could be 
 " received at Rugby, there remains nothing worth re- 
 "■ cording till he was twelve years old — Avhen a violent 
 " fit of the gout, gout which might have qualified him 
 " for an alderman, restored him to his mother's care at 
 " Warwick. Never was there a more impatient suf- 
 " f erer ; and his imprecations, divided equally between 
 " the gout and his nurses, were heard afar. It is also 
 " strange that there never was any return of this dis- 
 " order. Our father suffered from it, and all three of 
 " the younger brothers ; but though Walter's appetite 
 '^ much surpassed the best of ours (or the worst), he 
 " escaped it during more than seventy years. However 
 " active at dinner, he was always temperate after it;
 
 .i:t. 1-22.] AT SCHOOL AT RUGBY. 29 
 
 " and I never saw the smallest sio;n of excess, thoucrli 
 " he greatly enjoyed three or foui" glasses of light wine. 
 " He remained at Rugby till fifteen or sixteen, and 
 " gained the character of more tlian common scholar- 
 " ship by his Latin verses especially. However violent 
 " his temper might have been, I think that he was 
 " liked as well as respected by his schoolfellows ; for 
 " some of them, whom I knew many years later, always 
 " remembered him with pleasure." 
 
 But before finally quitting Rugby, an event of im- 
 portance in a poet's life is to be recorded. While still in 
 the school and not more than fourteen, he had written 
 his first original verses; with a certain sobriety of tone 
 as well as absence of commonplace in the metre not 
 usual in so young a beginner, and probably derived from 
 exercises previously made in translations of which we can 
 premise a word or two on his own authority. " The only 
 " Latin metre I ever tried in English," he told Southey 
 when thanking him for his J'lsion of Judgment in 1824, 
 " is the Sapphic. This is extremely easy. When I was 
 " at Rugby I wTote a vast number, and some few at 
 " Oxford. My earliest attempt was the translation of 
 " Sappho's odes : of which I remember only a part of 
 " the first stanza — no very good specimen. First I had 
 " written ' O Venus, goddess' — afterwards ' Venus ! 
 " ' O goddess both of earth and heaven.' The next I 
 " forget. The third was, 
 
 " ' From the sublime throne variously tinged 
 
 Hear my petition !' " 
 
 This sort of practice was no bad preparation for his first 
 original attempt, made upon a cousin's marriage at 
 her own request, and on the whole not worse or better 
 than such things commonly are. But more interesting
 
 30 WAEWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 than the verses themselves is the letter I find vnih 
 them in his papers, endorsed by himself " !Miss Norris," 
 addressed to "Mr. Landor, at Rugby," and "v^Titten 
 from his father's house in WanAnck. The writer, who 
 was of the family from whom his mother derived the 
 estates of I]3sley and Tachbrooke, had obtained some 
 influence over him, and here uses it to confirm what 
 was best in his tastes and temper, with correction of 
 what was worst in both. She thanks him for his poetry, 
 thinks it exceedingly pretty, and wonders he should 
 hesitate a moment to present it to the lady who re- 
 quested he would write it for her. He is to recollect 
 that at his age people are not to expect a Milton or 
 a Pope ; and that should any inacciu'acies occur, which 
 she assures him she has not been able to discover, they 
 will be attributed to youth and inexperience. She sajs 
 that Mrs. Landor desires her love to him, and hopes he 
 received her letter and some pigeons she had sent for 
 him and his brothers. She sends Doctor Landor's re- 
 spects ; and says he has not been able to find for her an 
 earlier poetical piece containing Walter's thoughts on 
 public and private education, which he had washed that 
 she should read. " I cannot help," she contmues, " ad- 
 " miring your way of employing your time. Youth is 
 " doubtless the season for study and improvement ; and 
 " though we may not at all times find it agreeable, yet 
 " when we consider how despicable a figiu'e the ignorant 
 " and uninformed make, it excites ns to persevere witli 
 " unceasing industry. I think you are much in the 
 " right to make the most learned your friends and 
 " companions ; but permit me to say, that though I 
 " think a proper spirit commendable and even neces- 
 " sary at times, yet in my opinion it is better to sulnnit 
 " sometimes to those under whose authority we are, even
 
 iET. 1-22.1 AT SCHOOL AT RUGBY. 31 
 
 " wlien ^ye tliink tliey are in fiiult, than to run the risk 
 " of being esteemed arrogant and self-sufficient." The 
 date of the letter is the 23d of September 1790, little 
 more than a year after the fall of the Bastille ; and 
 the revolt against authority it rebukes with such wise 
 tenderness, has relation to one of the many differences 
 between the scholar and his master which had occiu-red 
 at this time. Landor was afterwards so willing to forget 
 these encounters, and to recal nothing of the old doctor 
 not kindly and grateful, that the allusion to them now 
 shall be brief. 
 
 He seems to have thought, when in the school, that 
 Doctor James either would not or could not appreciate 
 what he did in Latin verse, and that when he was 
 driven to take special notice of it, he took the worst 
 and not the best for the purpose. Thus, when told 
 very graciously on one occasion to copy out fairly in 
 the Play-book verses by himself of which he thought 
 indifferently, Landor in making the copy put private 
 additions to it of several lines, -vNdth a coarse allusion 
 beginning, " Hsec sunt malorum pessima carminum 
 " quae Landor unquam scripsit," &c. This offence 
 was forgiven ; but it was followed by another of which 
 the circumstances were such as to render it impossible 
 that he should continue longer in the school. The right 
 at first was on Landor's side, for Doctor James had 
 strongly insisted on, and the other as firmly had de- 
 clined, the coiTection of an alleged false quantity found 
 really not to exist. But, apart from the right or wrong 
 of the dispute, an ex]n'ession in the course of it rudely 
 used by the pupil, and not necessary to be repeated here, 
 was very sharply resented by the master ; and when 
 the matter came to be talked about, only one result 
 was possible. " When between fifteen and sixteen,"
 
 32 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 writes ISIr. Robert Landor, " he was not expelled from 
 " Rugbv, but removed as the less discreditable punish- 
 " ment, at the head-master's suggestion. There was 
 " nothing unusual or disgraceful in the particular trans- 
 " gression ; but a fierce defiance of all authority, and a 
 " refusal to ask forgiveness." 
 
 Yet not so should we part from his Rugby days. 
 He has himself given a picture of one of the latest of 
 them appealing to kindlier remembrance. Sitting by 
 the square pool not long before he left, he had written a 
 little poem on Godiva ; and, in a note to his Imaginary 
 Conversation on the charming old Warwickshire story, 
 he not only relates how the schoolfellow to whom he 
 showed his earlier effort laughed at him, and how ear- 
 nestly he had to entreat and implore him not to " tell 
 " the other lads," but he repeats the verses. With 
 which, as he transcribes them in his A'illa at Fiesole, 
 there comes back to him the very air of the schoolboy 
 spot in Avhich first they Avere written, and fervently he 
 mshes that the peppermint may still be growing on the 
 bank by the Rugby pool. It is a pretty picture, and- the 
 lines themselves are of a kind to haunt the memory. 
 
 " In every hour, in every mood, 
 lady, it is sweet and good 
 
 To bathe the soul in prayer ; 
 And, at the close of such a day, 
 When we have ceased to bless and pray, 
 
 To dream on thy long hair." 
 
 V. At Ashbouene. 
 
 Rugby had nevertheless given pretty nearly all in 
 the way of scholarship she had to give to Landor, when 
 he was thus, though still too young for the university, 
 compelled to bid her adieu. An intermediate place be-
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT ASHBOUr.XE. 33 
 
 tween school and college it was necessary to provide; 
 and, Avrites ISIi'. Robert Landor, " at sixteen he was con- 
 " signed to the tuition of a clergyman living in Derby- 
 " shire who had no other pupil, and wdio seemed well 
 " qualified for the office by patience and gentleness. 
 " Walter always spoke of him with respect ; but though 
 " by no means ignorant, the tutor had very little more 
 " scholarship than the pupil, and his Latin verses were 
 " hardly so good as Walter's." This was ]Mr. Langley, 
 Vicar of Ashbourne, — the charming country Adllage. Lan- 
 dor has so prettily described in his delightful conversation 
 of Walton, Cotton, and Oldways, where he takes occasion 
 also to render tribute to his worthy old tutor, and makes 
 Walton say of such masters and their scholars that they 
 live like princes, converse like friends, and part like 
 lovers. '' He would take only one private pupil," he 
 says in a note to that conversation, " and never had 
 " but me. The kindness of him and his wife to me was 
 " parental. They died nearly together, about five-and- 
 " twenty years ago. Never was a youth blessed w^itli 
 " three such indulgent and affectionate private tutors as 
 " I was; before by the elegant and generous Doctor 
 '• John Sleath at Kugby, and after by the saintly Ben- 
 " well at Oxford." In a letter to mj'self ^vi'itten hardly 
 eleven years ago, he makes anotlier allusion to these 
 days passed in Derbyshire between sixty and seventy 
 years before which may be worth preserving.* "My 
 " old tutor at Ashbourne, poor dear Langley, had seen 
 " Pope when he came to visit Oxford from Lord Ilar- 
 " court's at Nuncham. Doctor Harrington of Oceana s 
 
 * Other similar allusions were frequent ; as in a letter to me of 
 LS51. "It is exactly sixty years since I saw Chatsworth. I was at 
 " that time under a priviite tutor at Ashbourne, having just left 
 " Rugby, and being a little too young for Oxford." 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 WAEWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " family dined at Allen's, where lie did not meet Pope 
 
 " but did meet Fielding. Pope, I believe, was then 
 
 ^' dead. Harrington was almost a boy, fom'teen or fif- 
 
 " teen years old. He sat at dinner by his father, and 
 
 " Fielding on the other side. Warbnrton was there, 
 
 " and with great pomposity made a speech eulogistic 
 
 " of Allen, who had said a few words modest and un- 
 
 " important. ' Gentlemen,' said Warburton, ^ many of 
 
 " *us have enjoyed the benefits of a university education, 
 
 " ' bvit which among us can speak so msely and judi- 
 
 " ' ciously V Fielding turned his face round to Har- 
 
 " rington and said pretty loudly, ' Hark to that syco- 
 
 " ' phantic son of a of a parson !' I doubt whether 
 
 " the double genitive case was ever so justly (however 
 
 " inelegantly) employed."* When recollections such as 
 
 these came back to Landor, he might be pardoned the 
 
 exclamation we have lately heard from him, that sm'ely 
 
 he must have assisted in another life ! Born in the year 
 
 when the English colonies in America rebelled; living 
 
 tlu-ough all the revolutions in France, and the astonish- 
 
 * I permit myself to add, as every way very characteristic of the 
 writer, then on the eve of liis eightieth year, the closing lines of this 
 letter of my old friend. He was waiting at the time the \'isit I gene- 
 rally paid him on his birthday. " Li the twentieth year of the British 
 " Republic some old man may recount tales of you and me. He 
 " will not be a very old man, if public affairs are managed another 
 " year as they have been this last. 
 
 ' FORSTEE ! come hither, I pray, to the Fast of our Anglican Martyr. 
 
 Turbot our Church has allow'd, and perhaps (not without dispensa- 
 tion) 
 
 Pheasant ; then strawberry cream, green-gages, and apricot-jelly, 
 
 Oranges housewives call jwf, and red-rinded nuts of Arella, 
 
 Filberts we name them at home — happy they who have teeth for the 
 crackers ! 
 
 Blest, but in lower degree, whose steel-arm'd right-hand overcomes 
 them ! 
 
 I, with more envy than spite, look on and sip sadly my claret.' "
 
 ^T. 1-22."! AT ASHBOURNE. 35 
 
 ing career of the great Napoleon ; a sympathiser with 
 the defeated PaoU and the victorious Garibaldi ; con- 
 temporary with Cowper and Burns, yet the survivor of 
 Keats, Wordsworth, and Byron, of Shelley, Scott, and 
 Southey ; living while Gibbon's first volume and Mac- 
 aulay's last were published; to whom Pitt and Fox and 
 even Burke had been familiar, as were Peel and Rus- 
 sell; wdio might have heard Mirabeau attempting to 
 save the French Monarchy, and Mr. Gladstone predict- 
 ing the disruption of the American Republic ; it would 
 seem strange that a single life should be large enough 
 for such experiences, if their very number and variety 
 did not suggest the exaggeration of importance that each 
 in its turn is too apt to receive from us all, and impress 
 us rather with the wisdom of the saying of the greatest 
 of poets, that 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of : and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 When the tw^o years at Ashbourne were passed, they 
 had left some profitable as well as pleasant remem- 
 brances. He dated from this time his better acquaint- 
 ance with some of the Greek waiters, especially Sophocles 
 and Pindar ; he turned several things of Cowley into 
 Latin Sapphics and Alcaics; he wrote a few English 
 pieces ; and he translated into verse the Jeplitlialt of 
 Buchanan, a poem afterwards destroyed, but of which 
 he had himself so high an opinion that he said he could 
 not have improved it even after he wrote Gehlr. I 
 should strongly have doubted this, upon examination 
 of several poems of the present date ])reserved in the 
 volume collected and printed four years later, for he 
 was still within the trammels of Pope's versification, and 
 though in conception often original, in execution was
 
 36 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book L 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 still almost always imitative; but tliat other indisput- 
 able evidence is before me of the higher character given 
 gradually to his own style by the mere effort of trans- 
 lating. There was indeed but one stride to be taken 
 to Gehir, which appeared within three years after the 
 volume referred to ; and the reader ^^'ill probably admit, 
 at that portion of my narrative, that a more remark- 
 able advance in power ^^'as never made, and rarely such 
 an achievement in literatui'e by a man so young. Let 
 me show meanwhile, by example of a poem v^i'itten at 
 Ashbourne,* in what diflPerent ways the same subject 
 was treated now and in the days that were so soon to 
 follow of his greater maturity of mind. It is the differ- 
 ence between a Pope translation and a Greek original. 
 
 Medea at Corinth (1791). 
 
 " So, when Medea, on her native strand. 
 Beheld the Argo lessen from the land : 
 The tender pledges of her love she bore, 
 Frantic, and rais'd them high above the shore. 
 ' Thus, thus may Jason, faithless as he flies, 
 Faithless, and heedless of Medea's cries. 
 Behold his babes, oppose the adverse gales, 
 And turn to Colchis those retiring sails.' 
 She spake : in vain : then madden'd with despair 
 Tore her jiale cheeks and undulating hair. 
 Then, 0, unmindful of all former joys, 
 Threw from her breast her inoffensive boys ; 
 Their tender limbs and writhing iibres tore, 
 And whirl'd around the coast the inexpiable gore !" 
 
 The same Subject (a fen- years late?-). 
 " ' Stay ! spare him ! save the last ! . . . 
 I will invoke the Eumenides no more — 
 
 * In a note to one of its lines on the misfortunes of the King of 
 France he remarks, that "When this was written Louis had only 
 " returned to Paris after his flight," which was in 1791 : and to the 
 fate which afterwards befel the king he applies a passage from the 
 Electra of Sophocles.
 
 .ET. 1-22 ] AT ASHBOUKXE. 37 
 
 I will forgive thee — bless thee — bend to thee 
 
 In all thy wishes ! do but thou, Medea, 
 
 Tell me, one lives !' ' And shall I, too, deceive ?' 
 
 Cries from the fiery car an angry voice ; 
 
 And swifter than two falling stars descend 
 
 Two breathless bodies — warm, soft, motionless 
 
 As flowers in stillest noon before the sun, 
 
 They lie three paces from him. Such they lie, 
 
 As when he left them sleeping side by side, 
 
 A mother's arm round each, a mother's cheeks 
 
 Between them, flusht with happiness and love. 
 
 He was more changed than they were — doomed to show 
 
 Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarred 
 
 Grief hunts us down the precipice of j^ears !" 
 
 Even in the earliest poein here quoted, howe"\'ei', 
 
 which contains also a paraphrase from Cowley, there is 
 
 greater merit than the Medea passage would indicate. 
 
 In single verses occasionally there is a happy delicacy 
 
 of touch, as in the picture of Eve : 
 
 '• And her locks of gold 
 Gales, airy-finger'd, negligently hold." 
 
 From time to time, too, a personal trait is given mth 
 extraordinary force: as where he states his preference 
 for nature and enjoyment over studies and self-morti- 
 fication. 
 
 " Thus, throughout nature every part affords 
 More sound instruction than from ' winged words.' 
 By me more felt, more studied, than the rules 
 Of pedants strutting in sophistic schools ; 
 Who, ai'gumentative, with endless strife, 
 In search of living lose the ends of life ; 
 Or, willing exiles from fair pleasure's train, 
 Howl at the happy from the dens of pain." 
 
 Of those same " winged words" that could offer instruc- 
 tion higher than the schools, he speaks also not unwor- 
 thily. 
 
 " Had verse not led in adamantine chains 
 The victims sacrificed pn Ilion's plains, 
 Who would have heard of Hector ? who have known 
 The rage of Peleus's immortal son ?"
 
 38 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book L 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 Nor Avill space be grudged for a few couplets more; from 
 a poem not now obtainable, and Avhicli shows Landor's 
 mastery in writing when he had hardly entered his 
 seventeenth year. He describes the origin of pipe and 
 pastoral. 
 
 " By bounteous rivers, 'mid his flocks reclin'd 
 He heard the reed that rustled in the wind. 
 Then, leaning onward, negligently tore 
 The slender stem from oif the fringed shore. 
 With mimic breath the whisper soft assay'd — 
 When, lo ! the yielding reed his mimic breath obey'd. 
 'Twas hence, ere long, the pleasing power he found 
 Of noted numbers and of certain sound. 
 Each morn and eve their fine effect he tried. 
 Each morn and eve he blest the river's reedy side !" 
 
 Poets of the highest originality take their point of 
 departure from an imitative stage, and Landor in these 
 verses shows no exemption from the rule. But from 
 the first the influence of his classical studies and tem- 
 perament is more than ordinarily manifest, and the com- 
 pleteness and rapidity with which it formed his original 
 style is worthy of remark. I have hinted at this in 
 allusion to his Jeplitliah translation. A marked instance 
 has been gi^en in the second version of the Medea 
 just quoted; and another more extraordinary jjresents 
 itself in a translation of one of the most famous episodes 
 in Virgil, which I have found in scraps of his hand- 
 writing of the date of 1794, and with which I shall 
 close this section.* 
 
 " The shell assuaged his sorrow : thee he sang, 
 Sweet wife ! thee with him on the shore alone, 
 At rising dawn, at i^arting day, sang thee. 
 
 * Since this was Avritten, I find that these very lines, with ex- 
 tremely trivial alteration, were printed by him in the Examiner thirty 
 years ago as having been " written at college." He subsequently 
 reproduced them without that prefatory remark, but with an interest- 
 ing note, in his Bnj Sticks,
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT ASHBOUENE, 39 
 
 The mouth of TaBiiarus, the gates of Dis, 
 Groves dark with dread, he enter'd ; he approacht 
 The Manes and their awful king, and hearts 
 That knew not pity yet for human prayer. 
 Eous'd at his song, the Shades of Erebus 
 Eose from their lowest, most remote, abodes, 
 Faint Shades, and Spirits semblances of life ; 
 Numberless as o'er woodland wilds the birds 
 That wintery evening drives or mountain storm ; 
 Mothers and husbands, unsubstantial crests 
 Of high-soul'd heroes, boys, unmarried maids, 
 And youths on biers before their parents' eyes. 
 The deep black ooze and rough unsightly reed 
 Of slow Cocytus's unyielding pool 
 And Styx confines them, flowing nine-fold round. 
 The halls and inmost Tartarus of Death, 
 And (the blue adders twisting in their hair) 
 The Furies, were astounded. 
 
 On he stei>t. 
 And Cerberus held agape his triple jaws : 
 On stept the Bard . . . Txion's wheel stood still. 
 
 Now, past all peril, free was his return, 
 And now was following into upper air 
 Eurj'dice, when sudden madness seiz'd 
 The incautious lover : pardonable fault, 
 If those below could pardon : on the verge 
 Of light he stood, and on Eurydice, 
 Mindless of fate, alas, and soul-subdued, 
 Lookt back . . . 
 
 There, Orpheus ! Orpheus ! there was all 
 Thy labour shed, there burst the dynast's bond, 
 And thrice arose that rumour from the lake. 
 
 ' Ah, what,' she cried, ' what madness hath undone 
 Me, and (ah, wi-etched !) thee, my Orpheus, too 1 
 For, lo ! the cruel Fates recall me now. 
 Chill slumbers press my swimming eyes . . . farewell ! 
 Night rolls intense around me as I spread 
 My helpless arms . . . thine, thine no more ... to thee.' 
 
 She spake, and (like a vapor) into air 
 Flew, nor beheld him as he claspt the void 
 And sought to speak ; in A-ain : the ferry -guard 
 Now would not row him o'er the lake again : 
 His wife twice lost, what could he ? whither go ? 
 What chaunt, what wailing, move the powers of Hell ? 
 Cold in the Stygian bark and lone was she ! 
 
 Beneath a rock o'er Strvmon's flood on high
 
 40 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFOED, SWANSEA. [Ecok I. 
 
 1/75-97. 
 Seven month?, seven long-continued months, 'ti;; said, 
 He breath'd his sorrows in a desart cave, 
 And sooth'd the tiger, moved the oak, with song. 
 So Philomela mid the poplar shade 
 Bemoans her captive brood : the cruel hind 
 Saw them unplumed and took them : but all night 
 Grieves she, and sitting on the bough, runs o'er 
 Her wretched tale, and fills the woods with woe." 
 
 Few ancient pieces liave been chosen oftener by 
 translators as a ground of competition ; yet, from Dry- 
 den to Wordsworth, there is no one who has excelled, if 
 any has equalled, this translation by a yonth of nine- 
 teen. Its minute fidelity to tlie spirit of the original I 
 will indicate by a touch which all the others have 
 missed. They make the nightingale sitting on ''''a'''' 
 bough, but Landor restores " the " bough ; the fatal 
 bough from which the spoiler had taken her brood. 
 But to me the lines are interesting, and are here spe- 
 cially given, for their illustration of the growth of his 
 own genius. If I had met with them any where, not 
 knowing the lines of Virgil, I should have supposed 
 them to be an original poem of the writer's later life. 
 He has nevertheless not passed the imitative stage. His 
 own thoughts have not yet found their style. Their 
 Aratten character is still to come. 
 
 VI. At Teixity-college, Oxfoed. 
 At eighteen years of age Landor entered as a com- 
 moner in Trinity-college, Oxford. It was the memor- 
 able year of 1793, which had opened at Paris wdth the 
 execution of Louis Seize. Of the excitement that pre- 
 vailed; of the conflicting passions that were raging every 
 where, grief on the one hand at the downfall of ancient 
 institutions, exultation on the other at supposed triumphs 
 of justice and reason; it is needless to speak. To the
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT TKINITY-COLLEGE, OXFOED. 41 
 
 youno-* it ^yas iiatui'al to believe tliat a new "world was 
 opening ; and the glorious visions that attended it de- 
 scended largely, it may well be imagined, on the students 
 at both Universities. As Wordsworth says for himself, 
 society became his glittering bridcj and airy hopes his 
 children. I cannot find, however, that Landor was at 
 any time much excited in this way. The American 
 rebellion was oftener in his thoughts than the French 
 revolution. He vras a Jacobin, but so would have been 
 if Robespierre and Danton had not been. He reasoned 
 little, but his instincts were all against authority, or 
 what took to him the form of its abuse. With exulting 
 satisfaction he saw the resistance and conquests of de- 
 mocracy; but pantisocracy, and golden days to come on 
 earth, were not in his hopes or expectation. He rather re- 
 joiced in the prospect of a fierce continued struggle ; his 
 present ideal was that of an armed republic,! changing 
 the face of the world; and as the outbreak of the revolu- 
 tion had not made him republican, neither did its excesses 
 cure him of that malady. He gloried to the last in 
 avomng his preference for a republic ; though he woidd 
 also date his hatred of the French, which he maintained 
 with almost equal consistency, from the day Avhen they 
 slew their Queen. Mr. Shandy might have connected all 
 this with his birth on the anniversary of Chai'les the 
 First's execution. 
 
 * " Bliss Avas it in the dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was veiy Heaven !" 
 
 W'orclmwrth iit, Coleridge's Ode: 
 the same wordri, with change of " the" for '' that" in the lirst line, 
 reajipeared in his own Prelude. 
 
 f Sjieaking to Southcy of Napoleon's career in 1811, he says: 
 " This revives in my mind a toast I was accused of giving at Oxford : 
 '• May there be only two classes of people, the republican and the 
 " paralytic !"
 
 42 WAKWiCK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. LBook I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 He remained at Oxford little more than a year and 
 a half, between 1793 and 1794, and used to call the 
 hoiu's passed with Walter Birch in the Magdalen walk 
 by the half-hidden Oherwell (the road of which Addison 
 was so fond) the pleasantest he could remember, as well 
 as the most profitable. Of his studies there is little to be 
 said. For a portion of the time he certainly read hardj 
 but the results he ke]3t to himself ; for here, as at Rugby, 
 he declined every thing in the shajae of competition. 
 " Though I >vrote better Latin verses than any under- 
 " graduate or graduate in the University," he wrote to 
 Dr. Davy in 1857, "I could never be persuaded, by my 
 " tutor or friends, to contend for any prize whatever. I 
 " showed my compositions to Birch of Magdalen, my old 
 " friend at Rugby; and to Gary, translator of Dante; 
 " to none else." It is at the same time unquestionable 
 that his extraordinary talents, and skill in both the an- 
 cient languages, had impressed greatly his tutor Benwell, 
 and the president and fellows of Trinity ; and I have 
 heard him say frequently that Benwell (" dear good Ben- 
 "well") shed tears when his favourite pupil was obliged 
 to quit the college. But the Universities then, with 
 far less inducement to study than now, had even fewer 
 restraints than at present exist for youths unable to 
 restrain themselves; the license generally allowed left 
 a man quite equally free to use, abuse, or waste his 
 powers ; and we have only to wonder how so many lads 
 of fortune, so let loose at that critical time, could manage 
 to get on in after-life with any kind of credit. I hardly 
 remember an allusion by Landor to the examination- 
 halls or lecture-rooms, except that in the latter, one day, 
 Justin was gi^'en them to construe, and that though 
 indignant at the choice of such an author, he was recon- 
 ciled on finding there the story of the Phocseans, which
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT TRINITY-COLLEGE, OXFORD. 43 
 
 lie straightway began to tui'n into English blank verse, 
 a measure he had not before attempted. 
 
 One other subject that interested him, however, finds 
 mention in his letters. There is allusion in one of them 
 to a small disquisition sent at this time to Doctor Parr, 
 mth whom an acquaintance, already formed at Warwick, 
 was soon to ripen into intimacy. The object of the essay 
 was to give opinion as to the origin of the religion of 
 the Druids ; and its argument may be very briefly stated. 
 It appeared to Landor that Pythagoras, who settled in 
 Italy and had many followers in the Greek colony of 
 the Phocseans at Marseilles, had ingrafted on a bar- 
 barous and bloodthirsty religion the human doctrine of 
 the metempsychosis ; for that, finding it was vain to say, 
 ' Do not mui'der,' as none ever minded that doctrine, he 
 frightened the savages by saying, ' If you are cruel even 
 to beasts and insects, the cruelty will fall upon your- 
 selves ; you will be the same.' He explained also the 
 " beans" of the old philosopher in the exact way that 
 Coleridge took credit for afterwards originating ; though 
 in this both moderns had been anticipated by sundry 
 other discoverers, beginning with Plutarch himself.* 
 
 * See De Quincey's AutoMograjjMc Sketches, pp. 146-7 and note. 
 I subjoin what Landor wrote to me in a letter of the 23d Oct. 1854. 
 " To-day, having had a tooth drawn and a jaw in danger of a di- 
 " vorce, I have been reading Mr. De Quincey's Selections. I was 
 " amused at finding attributed to the sagacity of Coleridge a remark 
 " on Pythagoras and his beans. I made the same remark in a letter 
 " to Parr, which Dr. John Johnstone wished to publish with all my 
 " others. It may be also found in the letters ot Pericles and Aspasia, 
 " I believe. Mine to Parr was written in 1794 or thereabouts, and 
 " when the name of Coleridge had never reached me. These are 
 " estrays and waifs not worth claiming by the lord of the manor. 
 " Coleridge and Wordsworth are heartily welcome to a day's sport 
 " over any of my woodlands and heaths. I have no preserves." 
 Since writing this note I have found among Landor's papers Parr's 
 acknowledgment of the letter referred to. " Dear Walter," wrote
 
 44 AVARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 But not always so philosophical or remote were his 
 labours out of the lecture-room. Much nearer lay Lon- 
 don than either Justin or Pythagoras ; the summer of 
 1794, when Landor's Oxford residence was about to 
 draw to its close, wiis a time of unexampled excitement ; 
 and some notice must be taken of the other than clas- 
 sical subjects in v/hich his ardent temper engaged him. 
 The Scotch judges had transported Muir and Palmer 
 and Gerrard as felons, for desiring parliamentary re- 
 form ; the English judges were expected to hang Hol- 
 croft and Home Tooke as traitors for " corresponchng" 
 ■with the same desire ; and by all this Landor was stung 
 into writing a satire, making himself interlocutor with a 
 clerical friend. He listens to the other's warning : 
 
 " Hus]i ! why complain ? of treason have a care ; 
 You hear of Holcroft and of Tooke — be\Yare !" 
 
 and indignantly rejoins : 
 
 " Before a tyrant Juvenal display'd 
 Truth's hated form and Satire's flaming blade ; 
 With hand unshaken bore her mirror-shield : 
 Vice gazed and trembled — shriek'd and left the field. 
 Shall I dissemble, then :'" 
 
 following up his question by -sagorous denunciation of 
 
 the war with France, and impassioned ajopeal to Poland 
 
 then just rising again : 
 
 " 0, bear no longer ! longer canst thou bear 
 Three royal ruffians thus thy rights to tear ? 
 Eights that thy guardian countryman has sign'd, 
 Freedom's pure page, the lesson of mankind." 
 
 the kindly old scholar, " I thank you for your very acute and 
 " masterly reasoning about Pythagoras, but I am no convert to his 
 " being in Gaul ; for the doctrine of transmigration is much older, 
 " and prevailed among the Celts and Scythians long before Pytha- 
 " goras. It is believed, even now, in the north of Europe, and would 
 " naturally suggest itself to any reflecting barbarian. However, you 
 " have done very well in j'our hypotliesis. — T am, Avith great regard 
 *' and respect, dear Walter, your smcere friend, S. Paer."
 
 iET. 1-22.] AT TRINITY-COLLEGE, OXFOED. 45 
 
 The friend again interposes : 
 
 " ]ilistaken yoixtli ! the milder plan pursue, 
 To love what statesmen and what mouarchs do. 
 Hence no political, no civil strife. 
 Thy death will hasten, or torment thy life. 
 In the same steps the greatest men have trod, 
 Far our superiors." 
 
 To wliicli Lander : 
 
 " / believe in God. 
 This only reason, coiirtly priest ! I give. 
 Go, cease to moralise : learn first to live." 
 
 From three other poems of this date, none of them 
 
 being elsewhere now accessible, brief extracts may also 
 
 be permitted. The first illustrates the war against liberty 
 
 by picturing a French village into which it had brought 
 
 desolation, repaired again, and peace restored, by the 
 
 arms of the Republic ; and both in the thought and in 
 
 the form of the verse (which, as far as I am aware, he 
 
 never again used), there is considerable beauty. The 
 
 " arms unbound" is a touch of the happiest kind — in its 
 
 careless yet conscious keeping with the spirit of the 
 
 poem. 
 
 " 'Twas evening calm, when village maids 
 With Gallia's tuneful sons advance 
 To frolic in the jovial dance, 
 Mid purple vines and olive-shades. 
 
 Their ancient sires that round them sit, 
 Renew in thought their youthful days ; 
 Some try the tottering step, or praise 
 
 Their former fame for gallant wit. . . . 
 
 But, 0, the rulers of mankind 
 
 Ruthless their fellow-creatures seize. 
 Nor radiant eyes nor suppliant knees 
 
 Of Beauty can their fury bind . . . 
 
 Smoke fills the air, and dims the day : 
 
 No more the vine of matted green 
 
 Or thin-leaved olive now are seen, 
 Or bird upon the trembling spray . . .
 
 46 WAEWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 But o'er yon slope, a willing band 
 
 With smiles unfeign'd, and arms unbound, 
 March to the pipe's enchanting sound 
 
 From fierce Oppression's proud command. 
 
 ' Foes once, by force ; now happy friends ! 
 Be welcome to the sprightly dance, 
 To peace, to liberty, to France, 
 Where pride's accursed emj^ire ends.' " 
 
 The second, of wliicli the opening stanzas show tlie 
 sweet modulation of genuine verse, paints a Sunday 
 morning in ^lay. 
 
 " 0, peaceful da)' of pious leisure ! 
 
 0, what will mark you as you run ! 
 Will Melancholy, or will Pleasure, 
 Will gloomy clouds, or golden sun ? 
 
 O, shine serenely : let me wander 
 
 Along the willow-fringed way, 
 Where, lingering in each meander, 
 
 Charm'd Isis wins a short delay." 
 
 The third is an " Ode to General Washington," in 
 whicli are lines that not many boys of nineteen have 
 before or since excelled in strength of expression or dig- 
 nity of sentiment. 
 
 " Exulting on unwearied wings 
 Above where incense clouds the court of kings, 
 
 Arise, immortal Muse ! arise ! 
 Beyond the confines of the Atlantic waves. 
 O'er cities free from despots, free from slaves, 
 Go, seek the tepid calm of purer skies. 
 * c- * s 
 
 But, hail thou hero ! born to prove 
 Thy country's glory and thy country's love, 
 
 To break her regal iron rod : 
 Of justice certain, fearless of success. 
 Her rights to vindicate, her wi-ongs redress, 
 Her sceptre to transfer from tyrants to her God. 
 
 And even tlioii to Nature's law 
 
 Wilt bend, with reverence and majestic awe.
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT TEINITY-COLLEGB, OXFORD. 47 
 
 As now to thee thy Countiy bends : 
 Yet, my Washington ! the fatal hour 
 Deprives thee only of an active j^ower, 
 Nor with thy victories thy triumph ends. 
 
 The days of playful youth engage 
 The pleasing memory of age : 
 
 Thus, when we fly from toil and pain 
 
 Thither, where the Just remain, 
 No clouds that float beneath can screen 
 
 Our fonner country from our wistful sight ! 
 Man ! how happy to review the scene 
 
 Thyself hast blest ! how godlike a delight !" 
 
 If the rumours tliat went abroad througli Oxford of 
 Landor's fierce and uncompromising opinions had rested 
 only on pieces such as these, he might fairly have chal- 
 lenged the truth of epithets thro^vn against him by 
 assailants ; but unhappily his tongue was under less in- 
 stinctive control than his pen, and, there being students 
 of his OAvn college who held opinions in the other extreme 
 with as little disposition to \vithhold expression of them, 
 the result was not favourable to peace in the halls of 
 Trmity. Even among those of Landor's own way of 
 thinking in the university, there Avere many who seem 
 purposely to have kept aloof from him ; not because he 
 was a Jacobin, but because he was a " mad" Jacobin ; 
 though it is not at all clear that the epithet might not 
 have been accepted to mean a more sensible sort of 
 Jacobinism than was popular in the particular cpiarters 
 from which it proceeded. " At Oxford," said Landor, 
 recalling this time in his old age, " I was about the first 
 " student who wore his hair without powder. Take 
 " care, said my tutor ; they will stone you for a repub- 
 " lican. The Whigs (not the Wigs) were then unpo- 
 " pular ; but I stuck to my plain hair and queue tied 
 " with black ribbon." Hardly for this eccentricity,
 
 4S WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 however, was the epithet apphcable in their mouths 
 wlio apphed it. His inspiration doubtless had been the 
 minister Roland's refusal to go to court in either knee- 
 buckles or shoe-buckles ; and, under influence of the 
 same example, a youth six months older than Landor 
 was then also wao;in<2; at Balliol so fierce a war against 
 old ceremonies and usage that he too had resisted every 
 attempt of the college barber to di'ess or powTler him, 
 and had gone into hall in flowing locks; yet the re- 
 mark upon the madness of Landor's Jacobinism was 
 given by this very student of Balliol, a few years later, 
 as his only reason for not having now sought Lan- 
 dor's acquaintance. Gehir had then appeared and been 
 placed in the first rank of English poetry by the same 
 youth, who in the interval had himself published Joan 
 of Arc ; when, upon the name of the writer of Gehiv 
 becoming known to him one day, all the Oxford recol- 
 lection flashed back upon him. " I now remember," 
 Robert Southey wTote to his friend Humphrey Davy 
 at Biistol, "wdio the author of the Gchir is. He was 
 " a contemporary of mine at Oxford, of Trinity, and 
 " notoi'ious as a mad Jacobin. His Jacobinism would 
 " have made me seek his acquaintance, but for his mad- 
 " ness. He was obliged to leave the University for 
 " shooting at one of the Fellows through the window. 
 " All this I imm.ediately recollected on getting at his 
 *' name." The latter recollection was not quite accu- 
 rate, but the substance of it unfortunately was true ;* 
 
 * The letter of Southey quoted in the text having been found 
 in 1857 among Sir Humphrey Da%'^''s letters by his brother Doctor 
 Da'V'y, the latter sent a copy of it to Landor, asking him if it was 
 true (which he could "hardly believe, except under extraordinary 
 " provocation"). Landor replied at once ; and the reader may be 
 interested to see his brief statement of the occurrence, written after 
 a lapse of more than sixty-three years, and to compare it with the
 
 ^T. 1-22.1 ^T TRINITY-COLLEGE, OXFORD. 49 
 
 and it is now necessaiy to relate the incident wliicli 
 closed Lander's career at Oxford. 
 
 I again avail myself of one of ^Ii\ Robert Lander's 
 letters. "At eighteen he entered as a commoner in 
 " Trinity -college, Oxford, and was rusticated after a 
 " year's residence. Again, as at Rugby, there was no 
 " gi'eater offence than might have been overlooked if 
 " the general character had been less ungovernable. 
 " He had fired his fowling-piece into the window of 
 " some one whom he hated for his toryism. Refusing 
 " to make any concession, he was rusticated dui'ing one 
 " year; but he was almost requested to retiu'n at the 
 " year's end, for his abihties were justly estimated." 
 These words have full confirmation in a more detailed 
 account written a few months later by Landor himself to 
 his most intimate friend at the University, which by a 
 singular accident has survived until now. But a few 
 prefatory words are needed to explain what it will also 
 
 detailed account to be shortly given as written at the time, the same 
 number of years before. This later description shows no failure of 
 memory, and no wish to exaggerate or extenuate. Substantially both 
 are the same. " My usual fire of laughter," he writes, " burst forth 
 " on reading your letter. The fire across the quadrangle was hardly 
 " louder or .hardly more inoffensive. The fact is this : In the mom- 
 " ing I had been rabbit-shooting ; in the evening I had an after- 
 " dinner party. My gun was lying in the bedroom ; one of my 
 " guests proposed to fire it at a closed window-shutter opposite — the 
 " room was a man's with whom I had never had a quarrel or spoken 
 " a word. Fleetwood Parkhurst was the only one in my college with 
 " whom I had any intimacy ; the rest of the company was mostly of 
 " Christ Church. I should not have been rusticated for two terms 
 " imless the action had been during i)rayers. Kett who afterwards 
 " hanged himself, and thereby proved for the first time his honesty 
 " and justice, told the president Chapman that he was too lenient. 
 "... Southey did not find me quite so mad as he expected when 
 " he visited me at Clifton, the first or second year (I think) of this 
 " centuiy." It was four or five years later than that. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, S^VANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 necessarily communicate of Lanclor s present relations 
 with his father, from which unhappily all that embit- 
 tered the incident arose; and the reader will understand 
 why I make as brief as possible this unavoidable allu- 
 sion. 
 
 All who knew Doctor Landor adopt the same tone 
 in speaking of him. Wliat is remembered of him by his 
 sons is identical with what I have been able to gather 
 from other sources. The slightest sjTnptom of arro- 
 gance or vanity none can recollect in him. He dis- 
 puted no one's pretensions, and was always silent about 
 his own. With much more than the average amount of 
 sense and learning common to country gentlemen of 
 that time, he made no compai'isons, but took his place 
 among them unconscious of any difference that might 
 have placed him f;ir above them. Social and hospitable, 
 he never thought of rivalry. Landor himself used to 
 say of him, that no other person ever equalled the 
 simple pleasantry with which his anecdotes were re- 
 lated; and these had such a charm that his sons were 
 accustomed to provoke their repetition by little artifices, 
 though they could anticipate almost every word. Men- 
 tioning this in one of his letters, Mr. Robert Landor 
 continues : " As a magistrate he had a large acquaintance 
 " among the senior barristers, and I have often met at 
 " his table Mr. Romilly (Sir Samuel), with other men 
 " of both parties, for he was very liberal in opinion. 
 " But I do not think that my brother Walter was ever 
 " present. He hated law and lawyers then, almost as 
 " much as he despised the church and its ministers at 
 " all times ; and the gentlemanly manners by which he 
 " was distinguished thirty years later, had then no exist- 
 " ence." This indicates sufficiently a source of cHs- 
 agreement between father and son, in which their only
 
 ^T. 1-22.] AT TRINITY-COLLEGE, OXFOED. 51 
 
 point of agreement, an excessive warmth of temper 
 common to both, had frequent occasion of exercise. 
 With whom tlie wTong must have hiin in such quar- 
 rels would hardly admit of doubt, even if no memory 
 had survived to acquit Doctor Landor not only of the 
 faintest trace of arrogance to his childi-en, but of all 
 contemptuous depreciation of other people, and indeed 
 of any thing like pride. On this therefore nothing 
 farther will be said beyond such statement as the facts 
 render necessary. 
 
 But, delicate as the ground is on which I find myself 
 thus early, it would be a wrong to the excellent person 
 from whom I have derived so many interesting recollec- 
 tions, not to say at once that if he had less frankly com- 
 plied with my urgent and reiterated request for the actual 
 truth of his brother's earlier history, the memoir could not 
 have been undertaken at all. My personal knowledge 
 extended only to Landor's later life; and recollections 
 derived exclusively from himself I found to be too often 
 incompatible with the statements of others to be used 
 with perfect safety. Not that Landor would at any 
 time consciously have practised deception. The absence 
 of it in his nature in regard to such learning as he pos- 
 sessed, noticed already by his brother, extended to every 
 part of his life. Never was any man so little of a 
 hypocrite ; for it was not until he had grossly deceived 
 himself, that any one was in danger of being deceived 
 by him upon any subject whatever. But, with an ima- 
 gination to the very last incessantly and actively busy, 
 it was not difficult that by himself he should be so 
 misled ; that he should not at all times be able to dis- 
 tinguish between the amusement of his fancy and the 
 certainty of his recollection ; and that, without charging 
 him with even carelessness as to truth, his facts should
 
 52 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. LBook I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 occasionally prove to have been hardly less imaginary 
 than his conversations. As to all else, the most just as 
 well as ultimately the kindest account will he that, which, 
 in remembering these things, is careful to keep equally in 
 mind his temper and temperament, distinguishing what 
 came by permission, and what was inherited from nature. 
 Most characters are too narrow for much variety ; but 
 in him there was room enough for all the changes of 
 feeling, however unlike. ISIy own predominant impres- 
 sion from our years of intercourse, during all of which 
 he was living alone, was that of a man genial, joyous, 
 Idnd, and of a nature large and generous to excess ; but 
 of a temper so uncontrollably impetuous, and so prone 
 to act from undisciplined impulse, that I have been less 
 startled upon a closer knowledge to find it said by others, 
 unfaltering both in admiration and tried affection for 
 him, that during hardly any part of his life between 
 nine years and almost ninety could he live with other 
 people in peace for any length of time ; for that, though 
 always glad, happy, and good-humoured for a while, 
 he was apt gradually to become tyrannical where he had 
 power, and rebellious where he had not : and I here 
 therefore candidly state so much, to be always kept 
 steadily in view, that hereafter there may be less danger 
 of doing unconsciously some injustice to others in the 
 desire to be in all things just to so remarkable a man. 
 
 VII. Before and After Rustication. 
 
 To the youth who has just left Oxford, and who is 
 still short of his twentieth year, the tone just used may 
 seem to be applied prematurely. But already his cha- 
 racter is formed ; even as his handwriting, in this letter 
 written seventy years ago and now lying before me, is
 
 ^T. 1-22.] BEFORE AND AFTER RUSTICATION. 53 
 
 absolutely identical in form, freedom, and decisiveness of 
 ontline with that which he wrote nearly seventy years 
 later. And just as in the later time when any thing 
 painful had occurred to him, he would fling it aside and 
 foi'get it in the writing of a chalogue or poem of which 
 he would set aside the (imaginary) profits for the benefit 
 of somebody or something in distress, he has already, 
 in the interval of five months between his rustication 
 and this letter to Walter Birch, with the same happy 
 power of forgetting what it was not pleasant to remem- 
 ber, gone from his father's house to London, brought 
 out in a volume The Poems of Walter Savage Landor* 
 devoting all its profits to the benefit of a " distressed 
 " clergyman," and, together with his statement to Birch 
 of the circumstances wdiich had driven him from Trinity- 
 college, is now sending him this volume of his poems ! 
 
 " Dear Birch," he begins,t " You will be surprised 
 " to receive a letter from me, but more so to see my 
 " verses in their present form. I confess the truth to 
 " you, that the letter does not attend them, but they 
 " the letter : for I thought I could not have a better 
 " opportunity of addressing myself to you than in their 
 " company." He had ardently desired to explain to 
 his friend the affair which made him leave Oxford, for 
 he knew very well that enemies on the one side and 
 friends on the other would make the circumstance ap- 
 pear in various and deceitful lights. Birch was not to 
 think, however, that he was going to apologise for him- 
 self: no such thing. His folly appeared more hateful 
 to him than it could to any other person, and he would 
 show it to his friend undisguised. 
 
 * " Printed for T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies (successors to John 
 Cadell) in the Strand. 1795." 
 
 f The letter is dated from 38 Beaumont-street, Portland-j^lace, 12 
 April 1795.
 
 54 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 " In the morning I had been a-shooting ; in the evening I 
 invited a party to wine. In the room opposite there lived a 
 man* universally laughed at and despised ; but I must tell you 
 why he was so — for we are naturally sorry for such people, and 
 are careful not to increase their misfortunes. With a figure 
 extremely disgusting, he was more so in his behaviour. Plenus 
 ruris et wficetiarum^ he was continually intruding himself where 
 his company was not wanted ; ajid, hearing others talk of hunting 
 and other diversions, always joined the conversation, and often 
 mistook a laugh for an applause. For the very jokes that were 
 passed on him gratified him highly, and puffed him up with an 
 idea of his own consequence. This was the aim of the college : 
 laughed at first for his amusement, and afterwards for our own. 
 We called him 'Duke of Leeds. Well, it unfortunately hap- 
 pened that he lived opposite to me, and that he had a party on 
 the same day consisting of servitors and other raffs of every 
 description. The weather was warm and the windows were 
 open : the consequence was that those who were in my room 
 began rowing those in his, who very soon retorted. All the time 
 I was only a spectator ; for I should have blushed to have had 
 any conversation with them, particularly out of a window. But 
 my gun was lying on another table in the room, and I had in 
 my back closet some little shot. I proposed, as they had closed 
 the casements and as the shutters were on the outside, to fii'e a 
 volley. It was thought a good trick, and accordingly I went 
 into my bedroom and fired. Soon the president sent up a ser- 
 vant to inform me that Mr. Leeds had complained of a gun 
 being fired from the room in which I entertained my company, 
 but he could not tell by whom ; so that he insisted on knowing 
 fi'om me, and making me liable to the punishment." 
 
 And now arises an illustration of chai'acter. In the 
 circumstances stated there was manifestly no escape with 
 honour except by frank confession ; but knowing the 
 consequence that must follow, its possible effect upon 
 his father flashed suddenly on Landor, and, v^dth the 
 sv^aft transition to extremes which was a part of his 
 nature, he thought it on the instant worth any sacrifice 
 
 * It will be observed that to Birch he says nothing of the man's 
 tory opinions. Birch himself having a leaning that way.
 
 ^T. 1-22.] BEFORE AND AFTER RUSTICATION. 55 
 
 not to embitter past hope those home-disagreements of 
 which ordinarily he was careless enough. His eager 
 desu'c of the moment shut out every thing but the one 
 opportunity of evasion, which he hurriedly seized. He 
 assiu'ed the president that no gun was fired from the 
 rooms in which his company were (he had fired it from 
 the bedroom) ; and as his qtjestioner could not identify 
 any person, he did not recognise it as his own duty to 
 rej^ly to a yague charge. The president inquired whe- 
 ther any person had come up the same stairs ? Very 
 l^ossibly there might, said Landor. Whether he himself 
 possessed a gun ? He did. If the president might see 
 it ? Certainly. Had it not been lately fired ? Yes. — 
 The president then immediately sent for the men who 
 had been in Landor's room. They, knowing he was not 
 likely himself to make any concession, gave discrepant 
 answers ; for they were each examined separatelj-, and 
 very minutely. Upon this Doctor Chapman sent for 
 Landor again ; told him he had received such contra- 
 dictory evidence that he was determined to persevere 
 till he found out the truth ; and suggested that Lan- 
 dor should enable him to deal leniently in the case by 
 himself stating frankly what had occmTed. This was 
 extremely generous, Landor admits, and adds that he 
 was foolish in the last degree to refuse it : but he called 
 to mind his own prevarication and that of his friends, 
 and hastily resolved not to throw any light on the sub- 
 ject. He thought himself under no obligation to reply 
 to a charge that could not be proved, although it was 
 just ; and he required Doctor Chapman to try him as 
 he would a criminal. He reminded him of the privi- 
 leges of a person accused; and that even if a place 
 were improperly specified in an indictment, that alone 
 would discharge the prisoner. But the Doctor did not
 
 56 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 compreliend this (a wonder if he had); "he chose to 
 " examine all the grounds ; and if any one of them was 
 " sound, it should be enough for him." He proceeded 
 therefore ; and the various contradictions being com- 
 pared, the guilt was proved. 
 
 Very characteristically Landor continues : 
 
 " I was extremely chagrined. I wrote to tlie president, and 
 informed him that I only was responsible for the plan I had 
 pursued. I even vastly magnified my fault, and painted my dis- 
 simulation in the most odious colours. For, being what I never 
 was guilty of before, it struck me with the greatest hori'or. You 
 will very likely wonder at the course I took. But the reason 
 why I refused to confess was not on my own account. I ima- 
 gined that I should certainly be rusticated at all events, for firing 
 ofE a gun in the quadrangle in the time of prayers. I therefore 
 balanced the sorrow I should feel in deceiving the president, 
 with that of irritating a father with whom I was already on the 
 most indifferent terms. I hardly doubted a moment. For tho' 
 my father had really shown me as much unkindness as was in 
 his power, I was resolved if possible not to give him any farther 
 cause of complaint. I appeal to Heaven for the purity of my 
 motives, and that they arose not from personal fear. At the 
 same time I confess to you, my dear Birch, that I have com- 
 mitted an action (the prevarication) which I never can forgive. 
 The president knew very well the circumstances in which I 
 stood ; and I really think that he would not have rusticated me, 
 if he had not thought that by going home I should be reconciled 
 the more soon to my father. He wrote a letter for this purpose ; 
 and expressed his wishes to me on parting that I should return 
 again to college, and assured me that the whole affair should be 
 forgotten." 
 
 Such indeed had been the anxiety of this good Doc- 
 tor Chapman to treat Landor with excess of lenity, 
 that one of the fellows openly expressed dissatisfac- 
 tion. The letter to Birch does not at all exaggerate the 
 favom'ablo turn given to the sentence itself, in coujjling 
 it, as the dissentient fellow remai'ked, with "an unex- 
 " ampled formula." "Mr. Landor," said the president,
 
 ^T. 1-22.] BEFOEE AND AFTER RUSTICATION. 57 
 
 " it is the opinion of the fellows that you be rusticated 
 " for two terms, at tlie expiration of which I invite you 
 " to return." And it was upon Lan dor's nevertheless 
 earnestly entreating that his punishment might be of 
 any other kind, however much severer, in order to save 
 pain to his family not himself, that Doctor Chapman 
 wrote to his father. But the return home failed to 
 bring about the proper understanding ; the Birch letter 
 itself too abundantly explaining why this could not be 
 expected. The sacrifice which the son imagined he 
 had made was to the father very naturally an aggra- 
 vation of offence ; and it is impossible not to smile at 
 the huffed and haughty tone taken uj) where entire 
 and sorrowful submission might have seemed but small 
 atonement. The extraordinary ease also with which at 
 last the whole subject is carelessly dismissed, will not 
 fail to be observed. 
 
 " But my father and I are more different than any other 
 two men. I have endeavoured to make the greatest sacrifices 
 to his happiness ; but if I cannot make him happy, I certainly 
 will not make him miserable. Because I sent to Oxford to give 
 up my rooms, he imagined that I had no intention of returning. 
 On this he used the most violent expressions, and the event is 
 that I have left him for ever. I have been in London about a 
 quarter of a year, constantly employed in studying French and 
 Italian. The former I could read before, but not speak. The 
 latter is extremely easy both to read and speak, and I under- 
 stand it as well as French, which I have been in the habit of 
 reading four or five years. In about another month I think of 
 going into Italy, — but if the French should take me prisoner, 
 I will enter their harbours singing fa inc. I have excellent 
 lodgings here, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than 
 to see you." 
 
 lie was not however to sing ga ira as yet, or to 
 embark upon any such exciting adventure as he hints 
 at. He remained a few weeks longer in London, hav-
 
 58 WARWICK, EUGBT, OXFOED, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 ing nothincv afterwards to remember more noticeable 
 than an accidental meeting with the son of Egalite ;* 
 and while kind friends had been doing then- best to heal 
 the difference with his father, he had himself been 
 chiefly and unconcernedly busy about his volume of 
 Poems. 
 
 YIll, First Published Book. 
 
 ^Ir. Robert Landor thus adverts to his brother's 
 first published book in one of his letters to me. " The 
 " first of Walter's publications must have appeared al- 
 " most seventy years ago. A small volume of poems, 
 " which were withdrawn or suppressed without any 
 " reason as far as I can remember,t excepting that he 
 " hoped to write better soon. There was nothing 
 
 * Speaking, in a letter to his sister Elizabeth, of the strong party- 
 feeling in Florence after the Three Days' Revolution in France, he de- 
 scribes a dinner at which he had met the Due de Laval -Montmorency 
 and Talleyi'and's nephew the Due de Dino, who with infinite care 
 avoided speaking to each other, and adds : " Their new king will, 
 *' however, reconcile all that are worth reconciliation. He is the 
 " best and almost the wisest man in his kingdom. I once saw him 
 " in London in the year 1795. He was knocking at a door in York- 
 " place where I also had a call to make. He was extremely haud- 
 " some and thin, which he is no longer, and spoke two or three words 
 " in English jierfectly well. I did not know who he was until I 
 " entered the house, and then I congratulated myself that I had 
 " insisted on his entering first — for I learned that he was so sensible 
 " and independent a man that he rather gained his bread by teaching 
 " French in two or three distinguished families than accept the two 
 " hundred a-year which the King of Sardinia offered him. It was a 
 " lucky house — for the Abbe on whom I called was made Bishop 
 " of Agen by Bouaijarte, though a Christian and a Royalist. I won- 
 " dered as much at this as he once wondered at me for eating a 
 " red herring without vaiistard and vinegar, faute de salade." The 
 kind word for Louis Philippe may fairly stand against many harsh 
 ones uttered in later years. 
 
 f See post, p. 133.
 
 .ET. 1-22."! FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK. 59 
 
 " among tliem, I tliink, discreditable in any way to 
 " a man barely twenty years old. But he seems to 
 " have ■v\ashed that they should be forgotten, even 
 " before the publication of Gebir .two or three years 
 " later." The wish was a natural one, and it will be 
 found very shortly that Landor himself gives good rea- 
 sons for it : but a book is as hard to withdi'aw as to 
 circulate, and there is no rule so common as the rule of 
 contrary in such things. It may be shrewdly suspected 
 that the Poems went farther than Gebir for the very 
 reason that suggested the desire to suppress them. A 
 letter is before me written to Landor from Oxford early 
 in 1795, by one who was already a fellow of his own 
 college of Trinity, in which this remark is made : " For 
 " myself, what can I do ? You know nescit vox inissa 
 u y.gygj.^j\ But these little things promote the sale of 
 " the copies of yom- volmne in the University, so that 
 " the booksellers here are at present out of a supply." 
 
 The grave good-natured Avriter, older than Landor 
 by many years and to whom a living had just fallen 
 from his college, can thus without anger refer to some 
 lines addressed to Doctor Warton, containing a personal 
 attack on himself which seems to have been altogether 
 wilful and unprovoked. 
 
 " Deign from thy brother's works to cull us 
 "What bold Lucretius, sharp Catullus, 
 Divinely elegant Tibullus, 
 And all the grand Aonian quire 
 Would envy, or at least admire. 
 Then Oxford shall no more regret 
 The twofold night 'twixt C — and K — ." 
 
 — the offence of Clarke and Kett being explained in a 
 note to have been, that the last had published Juvenile 
 Poems at the age of forty, and the first an CEdqnis in 
 prose. " Ouvrez, Messieurs ! c'est mon CEdipe en prose."
 
 60 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 The note however does not say alL The person with 
 whom Chirke is coupled had done worse than pubHsh 
 Juveniha at forty, having in fact been the sohtary 
 dissentient among the fellows of Trinity from Doctor 
 Chapman's good-humoured invitation that Landor should 
 retm^n ; and to the close of Rett's unhappy life Landor 
 resented this ill word. On the other hand there was 
 no sufficient reason for putting Clarke into the pillory 
 erected in the volume for Kett ; and Landor seems him- 
 self to have regretted it, when from the letter just quoted 
 he saw how good-naturedly it was taken. 
 
 There is no trace of anger in Clarke (for the letter 
 is his) ; he thinks more of expressing his delight at the 
 poetry and scholarship of the book than of taking of- 
 fence at its personalities;* and what he says of various 
 parts of the volume, and in especial of its fifty pages 
 of Poematum Latinorum Lihellus et Latine scrihendi De- 
 fensio, testifies strongly now the impression made then 
 upon the Oxford graduates and masters by the powers 
 of this unruly lad of twenty. He thinks that Catullus 
 himself might have been proud of the " Hendecasyllabi ;" 
 wishes that com'ts and courtiers could but be reformed 
 by the political pieces ; declares that Persius never ex- 
 
 * " You arc somewhat severe," he says, " on my contemporary 
 " and fellow-collegian Mr. Kett, whom you have also made collinear 
 " with myself, rather to the diversion of all our friends." He can- 
 not help adding an epigram which had just come out as a reply to 
 Landor : 
 
 " K — not a poet ! who dare say so ? 
 Though not an Ovid, yet a Naso." 
 
 This shows that Kett was not strong in friends, even among men 
 of his own standing. He must have had some merit (he was one 
 year chosen Bampton Lecturer), but nothing he did seems to have 
 been done successfully ; and what is said to have induced him finally 
 to commit suicide (not b}^ hanging, as Landor supjiosed, but drown- 
 ing) was some formal censure passed upon him in the University.
 
 JET. 1-22.] FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK. Gl 
 
 celled the ease and concinnity of his Invocation;* says 
 of a couplet for a quaker's tankard, 
 
 "Ye lie, friend Pindar ! and friend Thales ! 
 Nothing so good as water ? Ale is!" 
 
 that he had seen one of the dons laughing over it heartily ; 
 and of another at the hundred and thirty-third page, on 
 Tucker's treatise concerning civil government in oppo- 
 sition to Locke, 
 
 " Thee, meek Episcopy ! shall kings imfrock 
 Ere Tucker triumph over sense and Locke !" 
 
 avers that he " saw Tucker himself overlooking page 
 " 133." This forgiving fellow of Trinity, in short, has 
 only one regret in connection with his assailant — that 
 he had, owing to some misunderstanding about the 
 letting of his rooms to him at his first entering the 
 
 * This Invocation is noticeable still for the treasonable bitterness 
 of its last couplet, and for its terse summary of the so-called poets 
 whom the general dulness had thrown into prominence since the 
 deaths of Goldsmith and Gray. As yet the voice of Cowper had but 
 faintly been heard ; Burns had still to be naturalised to England : 
 while Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southcy were only trying 
 and sounding their instruments in small publications at Bristol. 
 
 " Tho', Helicon ! I seldom dream 
 Beside thy lovely limpid stream, 
 Nor glory that to me belong 
 Or elegance, or nerve of song. 
 Or Hayley's easy-ambling horse, 
 Or Peter Pindar's comic force. 
 Or Mason's fine majestic flow. 
 Or aught that pleases one in Crowe : 
 Yet thus, a savcy suppliant bard, 
 I court the Muse's kind regard — 
 ' whether. Muse 1 thou please to give 
 My humble verses long to live ; 
 Or tell me the decrees of Fate 
 Have ordered them a shorter date — 
 I bow. Yet 0, may every word 
 Survive, however, George the Third 1' "
 
 62 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 college, lost the honour of having Landor for a tenant : 
 " especially as but for that you might now have been 
 " a resident amongst us ; and with the pipe of anti- 
 " quity on which you so sweetly play, directed upwards, 
 " you might have charmed any uncouth inhabitant of 
 " your zenith, instead of having alarmed the horizon 
 " by an instrument placed at right angles with your 
 " shoulder." 
 
 IX. A Fair Intercessor. 
 
 At Warwick meanwhile, as I have said, kind friends 
 were interceding to clear the horizon from any further 
 ill consequence of the alarm to the " uncouth inhabi- 
 " tant" of Trinity; and now that we are all dead, as 
 Sydney Smith says, the name of one of the intercessors 
 m.ay be singled out. 
 
 This was Dorothea Lyttelton, the chosen and par- 
 ticular friend of Landor's eldest sister Elizabeth; who 
 lived with her two rich bachelor uncles at Studley- 
 castle, a mile and a half from Warwick and adjoining 
 Ipsley-court ; who was known to be not only heiress 
 to both uncles, but already to possess in her beauty a 
 more enviable dowry ; whom everybody for miles about 
 naturally was in love with ; and who had not yet smiled 
 on any of those countless suitors, though youths of all 
 but the highest rank were said to be among them. The 
 whole of the brothers Landor she of course led captive ; 
 and a tale is told of the youngest, that when two or 
 three years hence she had relented and was a bride,* 
 
 * Almost as I write these words the papers announce the death of 
 this lady's son. " We regret to announce the decease of Sir Francis 
 " Goodricke, Bart., at Malvern. Born in November 1797, he was 
 " the eldest son of Francis Holyoake, Esq. of Tettenhall in Staf-
 
 ^T. 1-22.] A FAIR INTERCESSOR. 63 
 
 and he, a lad of fifteen, had gone into her presence 
 bent upon shiying her bridegroom in single combat with 
 spears or bows and arrows, she suddenly to his ex- 
 treme mortification displaced those desperate thoughts 
 by taking him in her arms and kissing him. We may 
 gather at least from the story what the family intimacy 
 with Miss Lyttelton was ; and we have proof that an 
 elder brother had been more presuming. " I ought to 
 " remember well that name, and little notes to my sister 
 " subscribed D. Lyttelton," wrote Landor to me in his 
 eightieth year, correcting Leigh Hunt's spelling of the 
 name in his book about Kensington. " The estate of 
 " Studley-castle joined Ipsley-coiu't, and, there, dwelt 
 " one wdiom Lady Hertford, the best judge of beauty 
 " in the world, called the most lovely and gi'aceful 
 " creature she had ever known. Every day of the 
 " vacations I went over there. It soon was Walter and 
 " Dorothea; her uncles, too, called me Walter, and 
 " liked me heartily; and if I had then been indepen- 
 " dent, I should have married this lovely girl." Tales 
 told by hope are often too flattering, but we have 
 better means than usual of judging whether it was so 
 here. Among his papers I found a packet of her letters 
 carefully kept and endorsed by him, addressed to him at 
 his London lodgings in Beaumont-street in those early 
 months of 1795 ; and there Avdll be now no breach of 
 confidence in admitting the reader to some glimpses of 
 them. 
 
 The first shoAvs her very anxious about his sister 
 
 " fordshire, and Studley-castle, Warwickshire, by Dorothy Eliza- 
 " beth, niece and heiress of Philip Lyttelton, Esq. of Studley-castle. 
 " He was member for Stafford in 1835 ; was afterwards returned 
 " for South Staffordshire ; in 1834 filled the office of high sheriff 
 " of Warwickshire ; and in 1835 was created a baronet."
 
 Gi WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97- 
 
 Elizabeth, with wliom she has been passing some clays, 
 when " she talked of you to me, and distresses herself 
 " more than you can imagine." Pie had been their 
 constant theme. To talk about him was the only con- 
 solation for his absence, which had diminished the hap- 
 piness of her own ^isit to Warwick. Never, she prays 
 him, is he to be so cruel to her " nice little fi-iend Eliza- 
 " betli" as not to correspond with her. The omission 
 was promptly repaired ; and in her next letter she tells 
 him how he had charmed his sister by writing to her, 
 " and me by the compliment of attending to my re- 
 " quest ! She wrote to me in ecstasies." 
 
 Then there is a question as to some promise about 
 a hit of ribbon he has charged her Avith having broken ; 
 but she will not regret an apparent forgetfulness that 
 has proved his remembrance of her, and gratified her 
 vanity by convincing her that the insignificance of a bit 
 of ribbon may derive worth from he)' presenting it to 
 him. At once, upon having his letter, she had sent to 
 her " friend citoyenne Johnstone, who is now at that 
 " metropolis of dissension and aristocracy, Birmingham," 
 to procure her the colom's; and — would he believe it! — 
 the citoyenne has sent a light blue instead of a dark 
 purple ! But really it is the ignorance that has angered 
 her more than the delay ; for, " to say the truth, I can- 
 " not think you mean in earnest I should pack off two 
 " or three bits of ribbon those number of miles ! If I 
 " am mistaken, it rests with you to rectify it ; and, upon 
 " demand, here will be the real colours to tie up for 
 " your watch-chain." This demand of course came, 
 and the bits of ribbon went. 
 
 There is next the arrival of the Poems; which she 
 sits up reading till one o'clock in the morning, and then 
 cannot " compose herself to sleep" till she has told him
 
 ^T. 1-22.] A FAIR INTERCESSOE. 65 
 
 Avliat " exquisite delight" tliej had given her : and not 
 the printed book onlj, but verses in manuscript ! and 
 hues addressed to herself ! How is she to find words to 
 thank him; and ought she indeed to thank him for 
 making her inordinately vain ! But what a talent it is ! 
 and, when existing with a disposition equally happy, 
 how great the power it gives its possessor to oblige all 
 whom he may honour with the name of friend ! " These 
 " verses ! how I could talk of them ! What I have, I 
 " can repeat as fluently as the author himself, and am 
 " longing for my memory to be further charged." She 
 had only to continue to long until the next post ; which 
 conveyed to her the proof of what her following letter 
 expressed in thanking him, that her wish was become a 
 command. 
 
 If additional evidence were wanting, however, to 
 show in all that has thus been quoted but the friendly 
 familiarity of a good-humoured girl for the brother of 
 her friend, a year or two younger than herself, whose 
 cleverness she admired and whose attentions pleased her, 
 the other contents of that last-named letter would su^^ply 
 it. She had been told of his intention, already named to 
 Walter Birch, to betake himself to Italy; and not content 
 with a vehement disapproval of this plan, she bestirs her- 
 self on the instant with much zeal to j)revent it. 
 
 She begins by thanking him for having taken so 
 much trouble to explain his situation, for to talk of him- 
 self is more interesting to her than any other subject. 
 They had already heard at Studley of the unfortunate 
 misunderstanding between him and his father, and hoped 
 it might be reconciled. But now she must tell him that 
 she is in a humour to preach a little to him. Is he dis- 
 posed to profit by a lecture ? He will say she is deter- 
 mined to disapprove of all his schemes ; but against this
 
 66 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I, 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 journey to Italy she must loudly exclaim, as she would 
 
 also against any other as distant. There she is decided. 
 
 " I would have people with superior worth and abilities 
 
 " stay and distinguish themselves where example, in 
 
 " most wise and good things, is so much wanting. I 
 
 " really do not see," she continued, proceeding to lay 
 
 all the blame on the French Revolution, though as wise 
 
 and gentle a monitor might to the very close of his life 
 
 have applied the words she is using now at its beginning : 
 
 " I do not see why you should be so disgusted with 
 
 " people in general of your own country, when to my 
 
 " certain knowledge you have more than your share 
 
 " of friends. But this vile party political work which 
 
 " now rages through the whole world, destroys all hap- 
 
 " piness both domestic and public — and I think we must 
 
 " all soon be of one opinion as to that." 
 
 In any case, however, he mvist not go to Italy. In 
 
 a previous letter she had named her uncles to him as 
 
 very much on his side, and as having desired her to 
 
 mention them to him as his sincere friends ; and now 
 
 that this project has been told to them, they are quite 
 
 as eager as herself to prevent it. Hence, what she will 
 
 now propose; and see with what a delightful energy 
 
 she does it — being nothing less than determined that it 
 
 shall he ! 
 
 " I have a thousand things to say to you from my uncles. 
 They talk of you much, and are ready to be mediators between 
 you and your father. Let me then beg of you to consider on 
 what terms and with what inducements you can be tempted to 
 give up this voyage. Propose them to me, and I will commit 
 them to my uncles ; one of whom will make such proposals to 
 your father as coming from themselves. I assure you they are 
 bent upon restoring peace and content to you ; and if they can 
 serve you, do gratify their wish ! Recollect in the course of 
 nine months you will be of age. You will then have it in your 
 power to increase your income if you do but ajiprove of those
 
 ^T. 1-22.] A FAIR INTERCESSOR. 67 
 
 only means to do it. Till then, suppose my uncle was to pro- 
 pose your going to Cambridge? And would you agree to 
 giving a security to make amends to the younger part of the 
 family if your father would allow you enough to support you 
 in studying the law at the Temple ? or living independent any 
 where else in England? For I find the truth is he cannot allow 
 you sufficient to study the law without injuring his younger 
 children. Three hundred a-year my uncles talk of. Now this 
 is really coming to the point. Not merely saying don't go, but 
 thinking of what you are to do if you stay. Let me entreat 
 you, then, to tell me the terms on which you will give up this 
 melancholy scheme. Do lay them down to me, and I will ac- 
 quaint my uncles of them. Nay, write to one of them your- 
 self ! Or, will you come down and stay a little while with 
 them, and talk over schemes and projects to restore your hap- 
 piness in England ? I do hope sincerely you will take time to 
 try if you do not find it sufferahle to stay. Give it up till 
 you are of age merely, and then determine ! What can you do 
 in Italy ? / quite depend upon your making me your confidant, 
 and that I shall hear from you immediately. I will attend at 
 all times to any thing that will serve you." 
 
 There is something extremely touching in all this 
 pretty, persistent, feminine earnestness for the youth so 
 wayward and self-willed, who had yet the qualities to 
 inspire such sistei'ly attachment and interest as are 
 manifest in every line she writes. Nothing more of the 
 correspondence is preserved ; but immediately after the 
 last letter reached Landor, he quitted London for Tenby 
 in South Wales, and his having accepted the proposed 
 mediation is to be inferred from the fact that it shortly 
 afterwards took place, and the arrangement ultimately 
 made for his living away from Warwick was fomided 
 upon it. 
 
 The notion as to Cambridge, and the plan for read- 
 ing law at the Temple, were rejected; but a fixed yearly 
 sum, about half of what his eager advocate suggested, 
 was set apart for his use, with the understanding that 
 his father's house was at all times open to him in aid of
 
 68 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA, [Book T. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 this allowance, for as much of tlie year as he chose to 
 live in it. And so for that time there was a surrender 
 of the flight to Italy, which had carried dismay to at 
 least another female heart, humhler though perhaps not 
 less true tlian Dorothea Lyttelton's. " Hon''*^'^ Sir," wrote 
 the servant who had nursed him in his infancy, " May 
 " Health and Happiness attend you, and may I Live to 
 " see you at the Head of that Family who, next to a 
 " Husband, as my Best Affections. I hope the provi- 
 " dencc of God will direct you in Every thing, but, O 
 " Sir, I hope you will Never go a Broad. My hart 
 " shuders at the thout of your Leaving England Least 
 '' I shud see you no more." The letter, addressed to him 
 at Tenby in the August of 1795, I found among Lan- 
 dor's papers at his death with his endorsement, "Mari/ 
 " Bird — my nui'seP She had married shortly before,* a 
 present he then sent her now forming her apology for 
 writing to him ; and this small niche in his story may 
 be fairly given to so old a friend of his ftimily, whose 
 return of the affection she bore them has record in a 
 tablet placed to her memory in Warwick -cluu'ch by 
 Henry Landor. 
 
 X. A Moral Epistle. 
 
 Wliile he had thus been waiting to decide upon his 
 future career, however, his letters to his interesting 
 
 * " Molly Perry" was the maideu name of this old family ser- 
 vant ; and was the name by which very recently in the crisis of a 
 dangerous illness, Mr. Robert Landor, unconscious for the moment 
 of more than eighty intervening years, called to her, supposing her 
 still to be watching at his bed as in his infancy. Occasionally also, 
 in letters between him and Walter, the mention of her occurs ; and 
 in some amusing comments on the disagreeablencss of English hexa- 
 meters, Robert makes exception for " Sternhold's 104th P^alm as 
 " recited by Molly Bird." (August 1856.)
 
 ^T. 1-22.] A MORAL EPISTLE. 69 
 
 correspondent had not filled up all his time. Some 
 weeks before he quitted London there came forth from 
 the printing-press of Messrs. Cadell and Davies, with no 
 other name on the title-page, a tract of twenty pages in 
 verse, A Moral Epistle to Earl Stanhope, of which, from 
 letters addressed to him at Tenby, I lately discovered 
 him to have been the writer. One of its lines indeed 
 avows the authorship. I may not long detain the 
 reader with it ; but one or two characteristic points 
 should not be omitted. 
 
 The satire, as its title implies, is in the manner of 
 PojDe, whose workmanship in some respects it cleverly 
 reproduces. It is an attack upon Pitt ; the republican 
 earl being put in contrast vrith the tory minister; and 
 its lines best worth recalling are those that denounce 
 the shabby public vices encouraged by Chatham's son, 
 as in him coexisting with private weaknesses, that, for 
 such association in the elder time, nay even in his 
 father's time, would have been too genei'ous. 
 
 " Ah, Bacclius, Bacchus ! round whose thyrsus twined 
 Tendrils and ivy playing unconfined. 
 How art thou alter 'd !" 
 
 Not the less now, for the bottle in each hand, did avarice 
 and disingenuousness flourish; not the less did spies 
 abound; and not safer was the confidence because given 
 at the festive hour. One can hardly imagine the lines 
 that follow written by a lad of twenty. 
 
 " Yet the pleasures I when mid none hut friends 
 The trusty secret where it rises ends : 
 At which no hireling politician storms, 
 No snoring rector catches, and informs ! 
 Now, even Friendship bursts her golden hand, 
 Kens one with caution ere she shakes one's hand ; 
 No longer gives she that accustom'd zest 
 Which made luxurious e'en the frugal feast ;
 
 70 WARWICK, KUGBT, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 Nor hold we converse, in these fearful days, 
 More than the horses in your lordship's chaise. 
 Yet AVine was once almighty ! silent Care 
 Fill'd high the bowl, and laugh'd at poor Despair ; 
 'Wine threw the guinea from the miser's hand. 
 Wine bade his wond'ring heart with alien warmth expand. 
 But — honest minister or sound divine — 
 He lies who tells us now there's truth in wine. 
 For George's premier, never known to reel, 
 Drinlvs his two bottles, Bacchus ! at a meal." 
 
 There is another passage, in which the shoulcler- 
 oi-mutton of lionest jSIarvel is hashed once more for 
 downright Shippen, whom Walpole has visited in the 
 hope of corrupting : 
 
 " ' Boy,' quoth Shippen, ' pray 
 What will thy^ master dine upon to-day?' 
 ' Sir ? Mutton, sir I' ' Speak boldly ; why abasht ? 
 Drest in what manner ?' ' Please your honour, hasht.' " 
 
 — all of which is excellent, though only these lines may 
 be given. But an extract from a note to them is also 
 worth giving, to show the readiness with which he used 
 his learning; how intimately it was a part of himself 
 even at this boyish time ; and how early had begmi 
 those applications of it which habit, making more and 
 more easy to him, made finally a second nature. The 
 note tells us something, too, of his opinions of the people's 
 representatives in those days, and as to the need that 
 existed for reform. 
 
 Remarking that Walpole's coui't was infamous to a 
 proverb, he says that though comparisons would be 
 odious, a time had very certainly at last arrived among 
 themseh'es when nearly the whole of their worthy re- 
 presentatives might join the chorus in Sophocles : 
 
 o5' icTTlv 7}fiuv vavKparup b ■ndis' oa' Uv 
 ovros X4yrj aoi, ravTO, coi XVH-^^^ (pafxev. 
 
 They might sing, in other words, " This youth here is 
 " our pilot, and whatever he tells you we also say:" a
 
 ^T. 1-22.1 A MORAL EPISTLE. 71 
 
 song unlike that later one in which " the pilot" Pitt ap- 
 jieared, but in an odd kind of way, of which Landor is 
 wholly unconscious, seeming to j)refigure it. He goes 
 on to say that Sophocles often is a satirist ; that if he 
 had lived in England he would most svu'ely have had his 
 mndows broken for freedom of speech ; and that it is a 
 great pity, in so immense a web of scholia as that which 
 is entangled round him, not to be able to distinguish 
 the characters he seems to have attacked. 
 
 " The critics never observed that Sophocles joined politics to 
 poetry ; otherwise they certainly would have taken the pains to 
 illustrate, as they went, the most striking characters of a most 
 eventful age. This reflection led me to another — which is, that 
 nothing would be more proper than that to every town which 
 had representatives there should every month be sent an account 
 how they act. This account should be reposited in some place 
 of safety, where the constituents might refer to it whenever 
 they please. They could then be no longer deceived ; and if 
 there existed any undue influence it would be their own fault. 
 Even this however would be nugatory, unless the bill passes 
 for a more general reform." 
 
 So sweeping a reformer indeed was the ardent young 
 poet, that, not content with adch'essing his Epistle to 
 Lord Stanhope, and with declaring repeatedly that he 
 despises the title as much as he admu'es the virtue of so 
 distinguished a patriot, he thinks it necessary also to 
 prefix a prose dedication in which he is " bold enough 
 " to assert" that when Fortune placed on the brow of 
 Lord Stanhope the tinsel coronet for the civic wreath, 
 she must have been either more blind or more insulting 
 than usual. For himself, she had nothing to give, be- 
 cause there was nothing he would ask. He would 
 rather have an executioner than a patron. 
 
 The remark no doubt expresses very exactly the 
 feeling with which Landor awaited at Tenby the result 
 of the intercession with his father.
 
 AVARWICK, EUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. LBook I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 XI. Ketreat to Wales. 
 
 In the later memory of Landor the various matters 
 consequent on his departm-e from Oxford continued to 
 live only confusedly ; and at the time of his letter to me 
 in 1855 he had the belief that Dorothea Lyttelton's in- 
 tercession had obtained for him a separate allowance 
 of four hundred a year, though his own non-compliance 
 with certain conditions compelled him to surrender it. 
 Her letters will not only have shown how such errors 
 may have found place in his mind, but will account for 
 sundry statements natu.rally repeated since his death 
 because pvit forth with his authority while he lived ; 
 and in order to explain the interesting comment which 
 these have received from Mr. Robert Landor, of whom I 
 had inquired respecting them before Miss Lyttelton's 
 letters were found, their substance shall here be briefly 
 stated. 
 
 They are to this effect : That Landor, after he left 
 Oxford, was looldng out for a profession. Tliat his 
 o-odfather General Powell, with whom upon lea\dng 
 Oxford he lived in London, promised that he would 
 obtain for his godson a commission in the army if the 
 young republican would keep his opinions to himself. 
 That Landor replied he would suppress his ojoinions 
 for no man, and declined the offer. That his father 
 then promised him four hundred a year if he would 
 study for the law, and only a hundred and fifty a year 
 if he w^ould not. But that, the law being less to Lan- 
 der's taste than the army, after a brief residence in 
 London he put the Severn sea between him and his 
 friends, and retired into "Wales. 
 
 As for Landor looking out for a j^rofession, this was
 
 JET. 1-22.1 RETEEAT TO WALES, 78 
 
 certainly never at any time the case. The earlier home- 
 disagreements and objections turned chiefly upon this, 
 that he as decidedly refused as his father eagerly de- 
 su'ed to give such a direction to his studies as might 
 also give pm'pose to his life and steadiness to his habits, 
 — " settle him down to something," as the saying is. But, 
 even by the time of the Oxford rustication. Doctor Lan- 
 dor had come to see pretty clearly that his eldest son 
 was just as likely to qualify himself for a cui*acy or rec- 
 tory as for a lawyer's wig, for a bishop as for a judge, 
 or for a quaker as for either. " General Powell," Mr. 
 Robert Landor tells me, " my brother's godfather, never 
 " did live in London, nor did my brother ever live with 
 " him any where else. The general's hovise and con- 
 " stant residence w^as at Warwick, till, a great many 
 " years later, he became lieutenant-governor of Gibral- 
 " tar. There were five or six old officers at that time 
 " resident in Warwick, but none so familiar with my 
 " father as General Powell. He had served in Canada 
 " dm-ing the American War ; and, enjoying an ample 
 " fortune, at the peace returned to War^^'ick, his ua- 
 " five towai, as an unmarried sportsman. When not 
 " otherwise engaged, he spent his evenings with us ; a 
 " cheerful, good-humoured old soldier, Avith very gentle- 
 
 " manly manners which never changed While 
 
 " Walter was a boy, the old general laughed at such 
 " extravagance as his wish that the French would invade 
 " England and assist us in hanging George the Third 
 " between two such thieves as the Archbishops of Can- 
 " terbury and York.* But at a later age military men 
 
 * The memory of my correspondent goes so far back as even to 
 recall the occasion when he and his brothers and sisters, sitting in 
 their mother's room, not only heard this pious wish, but saw Mrs. 
 Landor rise immediately from her seat, and box Walter's cars from 
 behind. They were all terrilied at Walter, wondering what he might
 
 74 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 " could not be so tolerant ; and therefore, rather than 
 " quarrel, the general hardlj ever spent his evenings 
 " in my father's house when Walter was there. Accord- 
 " ing to the accounts you send me, General Powell had 
 " offered a commission in his regiment to Walter, which 
 " was declined. The general would have thought him 
 " as well qualified for the chaplaincy. Such an offer was 
 " made to my brother Charles ; but at that time Walter 
 " never entered the general's house, though so near, 
 " and the general very seldom entered our father's. 
 " More than twenty years later I prevailed on AYalter 
 " to call on General Powell, then very old and almost 
 " d}ing, at Clifton. Every trace of ill-feeling was for- 
 " gotten on both sides; but I doubt whether, during 
 " those twenty years, they had seen each other. There 
 " was however another military proposal of which my 
 " brother never heard one word. The Warwickshire 
 " Militia, assembled at Warwick, had for its colonel the 
 " Marquis of Hertford, and for its lieutenant-colonel a 
 " Colonel Packwood, also one of my father's friends. 
 " On one occasion, when I think that I was present, 
 " Colonel Packwood related to my father the resigna- 
 " tion of some young officer through ill-health. IMy 
 " father may have hoped that the unsettled and restless 
 " habits of his son would perhaps be corrected, if em- 
 " ployment could be found for him among many older 
 " persons from the best coimty families. He asked 
 " Colonel Packwood whether he thought that Lord 
 " Hertford would give Walter the vacant appointment? 
 
 do ; -when they heard their mother's high-heeled shoes clattering 
 quickly over the margin of the uncarpeted oak near the door, and 
 saw her neat little figure suddenly disappear. " I'd advise you, 
 " mother," shouted Walter after her, " not to try that sort of thing 
 " again !"
 
 ^T. I-Z2.] EETREAT TO WALES. 75 
 
 " Colonel Packwood. promised to report my father's 
 " wishes to the marquis. A few days after, when they 
 " met again, my father asked whether the application 
 " had been made : to which the colonel said that it had 
 " not been made by him ; for that at the mess after 
 " dinner, when talking about the vacancy, he had men- 
 " tioned my father's wish and his own belief that the 
 " marquis would readily comply with it ; whereupon 
 " one of the officers present immediately objected to 
 " my brother's Adolent and extreme opinions, exclaim- 
 " ing, ' If young Walter Landor gets a commission, I 
 " 'will resign mine;' and this resolution being confirmed 
 " for similar reasons by every" one present, nothing more 
 " could be done. I do not believe that Walter ever 
 " heard of it, or the contempt which he always so loudly 
 '• expressed for the Warwickshire gentry might be ac- 
 " counted for." 
 
 This last anecdote dates of course a little later than 
 the time now engaging us : and is inserted, as it was 
 written, to illustrate those exaggerated peculiarities of 
 temperament which unexplained would make inexph- 
 cablc Landor's whole career; which gave his opinions a 
 tone of oflPence that not all the eloquent ability he main- 
 tained them with could allay; which put him in the 
 wrong when the right was most upon his side; and, 
 involving him in unmeaning quarrels, left hmi both in 
 youth and age to the loneliness and isolation of which 
 he at once boasted and complained. A lively lady who 
 both liked and admired him said to me in his later life 
 that the great enjoyment of walking out with him had 
 only one drawback, that he was always knocking some- 
 body down. She meant this mostly by way of meta- 
 phor ; but her objection was the same as that of his 
 soldier-contemporaries, except that there was less of the
 
 76 WARWICK, EUGBY, OXFOED, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 metaphor in it then. The yonng officers of the War- 
 wickshire ISIihtia were infinitely his inferiors doubtless, 
 and in every thing might have learned from him, as 
 they would also gladly have been taught, with a little 
 help from better manners. How often has the truth to 
 be repeated which Bnrke urged on Barry, that it is the 
 interest of all of us to be at peace A^ith our fellow-crea- 
 tures far less for then* sakes than for oiu' OAvn, and that 
 the only qualities to carry us safely through life are 
 moderation and gentleness, not a little indulgence to 
 others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves. 
 
 As to the allowance finally agreed to be given UFitil 
 the family estates should descend to him, Mi'. Robert 
 Landor remarks that, besides the kind welcome at his 
 father's house when the moderate income was expended, 
 the 1501. finally agreed to "had many small additions 
 " as our mother could spare them through her own 
 " self-denial in all ways. The three yomiger sons were 
 " maintained on three hundreds a year, as they could 
 " live also, as Walter did, with their father when then' 
 " money was spent, in other words for about half the 
 " year; and our father had three daughters at that 
 " time utterly dependent on an entailed income really, 
 " thouo-h not nominallv, less than 1800Z. a vear." Nor 
 can I consent to withhold any part of what is said on 
 this subject by JMr. Landor in another letter. "With 
 " six younger children for four of whom there was rio 
 " provision" (Charles being promised the rectory of 
 Colton of which the patronage belonged to his father, 
 and Henry having the bequest of a small estate at Whit- 
 nash), " our mother's cares were confined to her family 
 " during many years. And when she afterwards had 
 " less need of economy, the same early prudence was 
 " become habitual, and there w^as the appearance of too
 
 ^T. r-22.] RETREAT TO WALES. 77 
 
 " much parsimony. But it -was never for herself. Under 
 " the guidance of my brother Henry who managed her 
 " affairs, she would give as much to any of her children 
 " as was consistent with justice to the rest. Parting all 
 " she had among them, it was sometimes easier to get 
 '" from her a hundred pounds than ten shillings. An 
 " anxious rather than a fond parent, she was scrupu- 
 " lously just. Though secretly pleased by any com- 
 " mendations bestowed upon her eldest son, she cared 
 " less about his literary reputation than about the holes 
 " in his shoes and stockings — a very constant grievance 
 " for which she thought herself in some degi'ee respon- 
 " sible. If you feel tired of such silly trash, remember 
 " that it is intended by me to mark the distinction be- 
 " tween tvv'o characters so nearly related and yet so 
 " extremely unlike. This brother Henry, who was tlie 
 " family adviser and manager, would never accept any 
 " share in the common property, or any bequest from 
 " his mother or sisters, but alwavs transferred his rights 
 " to nephews and nieces. Here is another contrast of 
 " which I "v\ill say no more." 
 
 When absent from Warwick dmnng the next three 
 years, Laudor seems to have been almost wholly at 
 Tenby or Swansea. That this intei^val could not in any 
 prudent or worldly sense have been very profitable to 
 him, what has been said will sufficiently have shown ; 
 and a part of it, including a love-adventure that began 
 at the former place, was probably also painful. It is not 
 necessary however that this should be dw^elt upo)i ; and 
 Landor himself, with the same resolute will that could 
 turn aside from pain as well as pleasure where either 
 might have overwhelmed another man, was able very 
 speedily to forget it. One thing ncA'crtheless is to be 
 said of these three years, that in the course of them his
 
 78 WARWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book 1. 
 
 1775-97. 
 
 mind had passed throiigli a discipline which from its 
 previous studies or emotions it had failed to acquire; 
 that dm'ing them he appears to have read more steadily 
 and persistently than at any former time ; and that he 
 printed at the close of them, when he had scarcely 
 passed his twenty- second year, a poem which has only 
 hitherto wonderfully attracted the few as it has deci- 
 sively repelled the many, but which in my judgment is 
 yet sure of taking admitted rank, if not in this in some 
 other generation, with those few productions of the 
 highest class, Avhich, however wanting in completeness 
 of structure or finish m all their parts, contain writing 
 that will perish only with the language. 
 
 " When I began to ^I'ite Gehir" he ^vrote to me 
 in 1850, "I had just read Pindar a second time and 
 " understood him. What I admired was what nobody 
 " else had ever noticed — his proud complacency and 
 " scornful strength. If I could resemble him in no- 
 " thing else, I was resolved to be as compendious and 
 " exclusive." But besides Pindar he read again in 
 these years Homer and the Tragechans; and what for 
 the purpose in hand was far more important, he had 
 finally laid Pope aside and betaken himself to Milton. 
 He has described the time in one of his Conversations. 
 " My prejudices in favovu' of ancient literatiu'e began 
 " to wear away on Paradise Lost, and even the great 
 " hexameter sounded to me tinkling when I had re- 
 " cited aloud, in my solitary walks on the seashore, 
 " the haughty appeal of Satan and the repentance of 
 " Eve."* In such walks for the most part, and under 
 such influences, Gehir was composed; and it was pro- 
 bably no mere illusion of his fancy which led him to say 
 repeated!}^ in after-life that he was never happier than 
 * Imag, Conv. Landor and the Abbe De Lille.
 
 ^T. 1-22.] RETREAT TO WALES. 79 
 
 when thus writmg it, and not exchanging twelve sen- 
 tences with men. Copper-works had not, as yet, quite 
 filled the woods around Swansea among which he lived ; 
 and he might take his daily walks, as he has himself 
 described them, over sandy sea-coast deserts covered 
 with low roses only and thousands of nameless flowers 
 and plants, and with nothing save occasional prints of 
 the naked feet of the Welsh peasantry to give token 
 of the neighbourhood of any human creatures. Hardly 
 human indeed, in their savagery in those days, were the 
 lower orders of the Welsh. The Eno;Hsh visitor miffht 
 have some excuse for regarding them as only something 
 a very little higher than the animals. They were as 
 much mere adjuncts to his landscape as its stranded 
 boats or masses of weed. 
 
 This then will be the time, without stopping to 
 speak of the visits Landor meanwhile made to his 
 father's house at Warwick, to offer such detailed ac- 
 count of what he thus achieved as may be necessary to 
 explain the language applied to it ; and justify an appeal 
 to readers, wdio have probably never heard its name, to 
 redress at last the indifference of more than seventy 
 years, and place Gehir in the rank of English poetry to 
 which of right it belongs. 
 
 The accident which led him to the subject selected 
 I have often heard him relate. He was on friendly 
 terms with some of the ' family of Lord Aylmer, who 
 M^ere staying in his neighbourhood, and one of the 
 young ladies lent him a book, by a now-forgotten wri- 
 ter of romances, from the Swansea circulating librarj'. 
 Clara Reeve was the author ; but Landor, confusing in 
 his recollection a bad romance-writer with a worse of 
 the same sex, thought it was that sister of Mrs. Siddons 
 and John Kemble who lived in the small Welsh town.
 
 80 WAEWICK, RUGBY, OXFORD, SWANSEA. [Book I. 
 
 and wrote under the name of Anne of Swansea. Few 
 of my readers will have heard her name, and I may 
 warn them all against her hooks, which are mere non- 
 sensical imitations of Mrs. Radcliffe ; but Clara Reeve 
 had really some merit, though not discoverable in the 
 particular book lent to Landor. He found it to be a 
 history of romance having no kind of interest for him 
 until he came at its close to the description of an Ai'a- 
 bian tale. This arrested his fancy, and yielded him the 
 germ of Gehir. ^lore than sixty years later he Avi-ote to 
 me from Bath (30th Nov. 1857), that he had just dis- 
 covered and sent to a lady living near him, also of that 
 Aylmer family, a little poem called St. Clair, written all 
 those years ago for her who thus lent him the book. 
 
 One of his critics afterNvards charged him with 
 ha\dng stolen his story, and merely imitated ISIilton in 
 telling it. On both points light will be thrown by 
 what I am about to say. He was now to quit the levels, 
 and rise to the heiohts, of Eno-lish verse ; and to this 
 extent he had profited by his recent study of Milton. 
 But that was the whole of his present debt to the in- 
 comparable master ; and whether to anybody his Muse 
 owed anything whatever for the story in which she was 
 to find herself involved, the reader very shortly will be 
 able to determine.
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 1797-1805. ^T. 22-30. 
 
 AUTHORSHIP OF GEBIR, AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 I. Gcbir. u. Some Opinions of Gehir. lu. Doctor Parr. iv. At- 
 tack of the Monthly Review, v. Serjeant Rough, vi. Corre- 
 sponding with Parr and Adair. Vll. At Paris in 1802. 
 VIII. Poetry by the Author of Gehir. IX. blaster of Ipsley 
 Court ami Tachhrooke. * 
 
 I. Gebir. 
 
 It is easier to laugh at a tiling than to take the trouble 
 to comprehend it ; and when the Quai'terhj Revieiu said, 
 a good many years ago, that Gebi?' was a poem it did 
 any man credit to have understood, there was more in 
 the saying than its author meant. He was not himself 
 entitled to the credit, though he might have won it with 
 a little pains. 
 
 The intention of the poem is, by means of the story 
 of Gebir and his brother Tamar, to rebuke the ambi- 
 tion of conquest, however excusable- its origin, and to 
 reward the contests of peace, however at first unsuc- 
 cessful. Gebir is an Iberian prince, sovereign of Bsetic 
 Spain,* whose conquest of Egypt, undertaken to avenge 
 
 * From GeVir we are to supjiosc Gibraltar to be derived, after the 
 fashion of the Teucro-Latin names in Virgil. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 the wrongs and assert tlie claims of his ancestors, is 
 suspended througli his love for its young queen Cha- 
 roba, by the treachery of whose nurse he is neverthe- 
 less slain amid the rejoicings of his marriage feast. 
 Tamar is a shepherd youth, the keeper of his brother's 
 herds and flocks, by whom nothing is so eagerly desired 
 as to conquer to his love one of the sea-nymphs whom 
 at first he vainly contends with, but who, made subject 
 to mortal control by the superior power of his brother, 
 yields to the passion ah'eady inspired in her, and carries 
 Tamar to dwell with her for ever beyond the reach of 
 human ambitions. 
 
 Fanciful and wild in its progress as the Arabian tale 
 that suggested it, there is yet thus miich pru'pose in the 
 outline of Gehir ; but its merit lies apart from intention 
 or construction, and will be found in the passion and 
 intellect pervading it every where, in its richness of 
 detail and descriptive power. Style and treatment 
 constitute the charm of it. The vividness with which 
 every thing in it is presented to sight as well as thought, 
 the wealth of its imagery, its marvels of language, — 
 these are characteristics preeminent in Gehir. In the 
 treatment, never abruptly contrasted, natural and super- 
 natiu^al agencies are employed with excellent art ; and 
 every where as real to the eye as to the mind are its 
 painted pictures, its sculptured forms, and the profusion 
 of its varied but always thoughtful emotion. 
 
 These qualities I shall exhibit in describing the 
 seven books, containing nearly two thousand lines, 
 that tell the story; and my extracts will also show 
 the sweetness of the verse, which, though with occa- 
 sional want of variety in modulation, is to a remark- 
 able degree both energetic and harmonious. I shall 
 quote from it at unusual length ; not only because
 
 iET. 22-30.] GEBIR. 83 
 
 it is unknown to the present reading generation, but 
 because no description without such assistance could 
 account for the effect produced by it upon a few ex- 
 traordinaiy men. The mark it made in Landor's Kfe 
 Avill constantly recur ; and of the manner in wdiich his 
 genius affected his contemporaries, not by influencing 
 the many but by exercising mastery over the few wdio 
 ultimately rule the many, no completer illustration 
 could be given. 
 
 The love inspired in the brothers respectively finds 
 expression in the First Book, which opens mth the in- 
 vasion of Egypt by Gebir in redemption of an oath 
 sworn to his father, to satisfy his dead ancestors and 
 revenge primeval wrongs. In the fourth line is one 
 of those touches which are frequent in the poem, and 
 proof of high imagination ; where a single epithet con- 
 veys to the mind the full impression which the sense 
 w^ould receive from detailed presentment of the objects 
 sought to be depicted. The "dark helm" covers the 
 crowd of invading warriors. 
 
 " He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose 
 Whole nations ; here, ten thousand of most might 
 He call'd aloud ; and soon Charoba saw 
 His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile." 
 
 The young queen in her terror seeks Dalica her nurse, 
 who reassures her, tells her the invader shall be destroyed, 
 and instructs her, instead of flying from him, to go to his 
 tents and use persuasion to induce him, in honour of 
 his ancestors, to rebuikl the city which had once been 
 theirs. 
 
 " But Gebir, when he heard of her approach, 
 Laid by his orbed shield ; his vizor-helm, 
 His buckler, and his corslet he laid by, 
 And bade that none attend him : at his side 
 Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course,
 
 84 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805, 
 
 Shaggy, deep-chested, croucht ; the crocodile. 
 Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears 
 And push their heads within their master's hand.* 
 There was a brightening paleness in his face, 
 Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks 
 Shower'd on the lonely Latmian ; on his brow 
 Sorrovv^ there was, yet nought was there severe. 
 But when the royal damsel first he saw, 
 Faint, hanging on her handmaid, and her knees 
 Tottering, as from the motion of the car. 
 His eyes lookt earnest on her, and those eyes 
 Show'd if they had not that they might have lov'd, 
 For there was pity in them at that hour." 
 
 After tlie intervieAV the prince seeks Tamar, intend- 
 ing to speak of the passion that has taken possession of 
 him, when he is surprised by a confidence which antici- 
 pates his own, and has to listen first to Tamar's confes- 
 sion. The shepherd youth's description of the sea-nymph 
 — a powerful, impulsive, yet submissive creature of the 
 elements, with large supernatural strength taming itself 
 to little natural human ways — is perfect in every detail 
 to the old Greek fancy. In the picture of her dress are 
 two lines, 
 
 " Her mantle show'd the yellow samphire-pod, 
 Her girdle the dove-colour'd Avave serene," 
 
 which I quote that I may connect with them a cha- 
 racteristic trait of the writer, who told me once that 
 he had never hesitated more about a verse than in 
 determining whether the mantle or the girdle were to 
 be dove-coloured : his doubts having arisen, after he had 
 written the lines, on recollecting from the o-reat Lucre- 
 
 * Among Landor's papers I found a list, prepared by himself, of 
 resemblances to passages of his own writing to be found in Scott's 
 Tales of the Crusaders. There were several from Gchir, and among 
 them that of Coeur de Lion's hound " thrusting his long rough coun- 
 " tenance into the hand of his master." The poem had made a gi'eat 
 impression on Scott, who read it at Southey's suggestion.
 
 JET. 22-30.1 GEBIK. 85 
 
 tius tliat the Eoman ladies wore a vest of the same 
 description — teriturque thalassina vestis Assidue, &c. 
 
 A prize to be contended for had been proposed be- 
 tween Tamar and the nymph. She has nothing of 
 eqtial worth to one of his sheep to offer ; but — she tells 
 him, in a passage which has become one of the glories of 
 om- language,* and which it is impossible even to tran- 
 
 * I quote from one of Laiidor's letters to me. " It was mj^ prac- 
 " tice, as j-ou know from Gehir, to try my hand at both Latin and 
 " Enghsh where I had been contented with any passage in one. In 
 " Gebir there are a few which were written first in Latin. The Shell 
 " Avas one of these. Poor Shell ! that Wordsworth so pounded and 
 " flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, 
 " but of a hospital." Not without reason he had been irritated by 
 a critic who rebuked Lord Byron for naming Gehir as the source 
 from which he had drawn a passage in his Island ; this unlucky 
 critic, after informing the noble poet that his original v/as not in 
 Landor but in an " exquisite passage" by Mr. Wordsworth, having 
 jn'oceedcd to quote the lines from the Excm-sioii in which, like 
 Byron, Wordsworth had copied Landor, but, unlike Byron, without 
 confessing it, 
 
 " I have seen 
 A curious child, who dvrelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intenselj'', and his countenance soon 
 Brightened with joy ; for murmuring from within 
 Were heard sonorous cadences ! whereby, 
 To his belief, the monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea." 
 
 I will add the passage of the nobler original as it appears in the 
 Latin Gehlrits. It may indeed be doubted whether the English or 
 the Latin is most perfect. 
 
 "At mihi ca>rult';e sinuosa foramina concha'' 
 Obvolvunt, lucemque intus de sole biberunt, 
 Nam crevere locis ubi porticus ipsa palati 
 Et quil purpurea medius stat currus in unda, 
 Tu quale, somnus abit : tu hx-via tange labella 
 Auribus attentis, veteres reminiscitur a>des, 
 Oceauusque suus quo murmure murmurat ilia.'
 
 86 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 scribe "witliout something of tlie pleasure that must have 
 attended its conception : 
 
 " But I liave sinuous shells of pearly hue 
 Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
 In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked 
 His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : 
 Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
 Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there." 
 
 The conflict or wrestling-match that follows is intensely 
 
 Greek in the manner of the narration, and simple even 
 
 to rudeness ; but they who would tiu'n it into ridicule 
 
 will find more abounding opportunity for the same kind 
 
 of mirth in the idyls of Theocritus and the descriptions 
 
 of the Odyssey. In the contest the njonph is ^-ictor, 
 
 and leaves Tamar ; but 
 
 " more of pleasure than disdain 
 Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip, 
 And eyes that languisht, lengthening, just like love. ... 
 Restless then ran I to the highest ground 
 To watch her ; she was gone ; gone down the tide ; 
 And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand 
 Lay like a jasper column half uprear'd." 
 
 As the brothers take their way to the camp, Gebir 
 confesses in turn his love for Charoba, and his resolve 
 for her to forego his native country and resuscitate in 
 Egjq^t the city of his ancestors. The Second Book 
 shows this laboiu' in progress. 
 
 " The Gadite men the royal charge obey. 
 Now fragments weigh'd up from the uneven sti'eets 
 Leave the ground black beneath ; again the sun 
 Shines into what were porches, and on steps 
 Once warm with frequentation ; clients, friends, 
 All morning ; satchel'd idlers all mid-day ; 
 Lying half-up and languid tho at games." 
 
 Slowly the buried city emerges : its masses of stone
 
 ^T. 22-30.] GEBIR. 87 
 
 and marble green with the growth of centuries ; and 
 its pavements painted witli flowers and figures, which, as 
 M=ater is flung 0:1 them, start fresh to \aew. 
 
 " Here arches are discover'd ; there huge beams 
 Eesist the hatchet, but in fresher air 
 Soon drop away : there sj^reads a marble squared 
 And smoothen'd ; some high pillar for its base 
 Chose it, which now lies ruin'd in the dust. 
 Clearing the soil at bottom, they espy 
 A crevice ; and, intent on treasure, strive 
 Strenuous, and groan, to move it :'one exclaims, 
 ' I hear the rusty metal grate ; it moves !' 
 Now, overturning it, backward they stai't, 
 And stop again, and see a serpent pant, 
 See his throat thicken and the crisped scales 
 Else ruffled, while upon the middle fold 
 He keeps his wary head and blinking eye. 
 Curling more close and crouching ere he strike. 
 Go, mighty men, invade far cities, go. 
 And be such treasure portions to your heirs." 
 
 Portents of a more terrible kind succeed. Six 
 days' labour had seemed to bring the end within 
 reach, when, on the seventh day, what was done is 
 found undone, and every thing restored to what it 
 had been. Gcbir is pierced with sorrow, for he sees 
 that other than mortal hands are raised against him ; 
 and calling together his followers, he bids them suppli- 
 cate the Gods. Southey thought no English poetry 
 presented any thing so Homeric as the passage that 
 succeeds. It would be tUtficult certainly to imagine a 
 finer image than its closing personification of prayers. 
 
 " Swifter than light are they, and every face, 
 Tho' different, glows with beauty ; at the throne 
 Of Mercy, when clouds shut it from mankind, 
 They fall bare-bosom'd, and indignant Jove 
 Drops at the soothing sweetness of their voice 
 The thunder from his hand." 
 
 But here prayers are vain ; and GebLi', beheving it now
 
 88 GEBIR ; AXD EARLIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 to be some secret power tliat opposes liim other than 
 that of the Gods, liopes that by subduing to his will the 
 sea-ii}'m})h l)eloved by Tamar, he may obtain the secret 
 from her. He seeks her, dressed as his brother, passing 
 through the woodland to the sea : 
 
 " And as he passes on, the little hmds 
 That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough, 
 Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied : 
 Pleas'd more if chestnut, out of prickly husk 
 Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade." 
 
 Upon the sea-nymph, meanwhile, waiting for Tamar, 
 desire has come ; and the wings of love, which she held 
 at her will in the former conflict, she has languidly let 
 loose : the prince is victor ; and as, after discovery that 
 Gebir has been her antagonist, she cries for Tamar, 
 now eager to declare and enjoy her passion as a human 
 n^Tiiph would be timidly to conceal it, he promises 
 again and again to restore to her his brother, if she will 
 but say whose work the ruin is that comes each night 
 upon the city, and from Avhence are the horrid yells of 
 rapture heard amid its falling walls. Then she : 
 
 " Neither the Gods afflict j'ou, nor the Nymphs. 
 Return me him who won my heart, return 
 Him whom my bosom pants for, as the steeds 
 In the sun's chariot for the western wave. . . . 
 Promise me this : indeed I think thou hast, 
 But 'tis so pleasing, promise it once more." 
 
 He complies ; and she tells him then of the demons 
 and incantations that prevail in Egypt, and by what 
 sacrifices he is to appease them. The lines descriptive 
 of the latter have a weird and startling picturesqueness. 
 Upon the site of the ancient city he performs all that 
 is required ; and as her last bidding is done, the earth 
 gapes before him, he descends, passes through the dark- 
 ness, and sees around him the souls of those amonjj his
 
 ^T. 22-30.] GEBIE. 89 
 
 ancestors who had rejoiced in war and conquest, expia- 
 ting by pains of more or less intensity their varying 
 kists of power. This purgatory of conquerors occupies 
 the Third Book, which Landor opens with an aspi- 
 ration of homage to the greatest of all poets, who like 
 himself had been bred in the country of the Avon. 
 
 " for the spirit of that matchless man 
 Whom Nature led throughout her whole domain, 
 While he, embodied, breath'd ethereal air ! 
 Tho' panting in the play-hour of my youth 
 I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught. 
 That rous'd within the feverish thirst of song. 
 Yet never may I trespass o'er the stream 
 Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend 
 The silent and unsearchable abodes 
 Of Erebus and Night, nor imchastiscd 
 Lead up long-absent heroes into daj'." 
 
 The supernatural region is at first trod by Gebir 
 fearfully; but when the brave doubt no longer they 
 fear no longer, his name twice called reassures him, and 
 striding on undaunted he is about to speak, when one 
 of the shades, Aroar, who had fought under his fore- 
 fathers, addresses him : 
 
 " Thou knowest not that here thy fathers lie, 
 The race of Sidad ; theirs was loud acclaim 
 When living, but their pleasure was in war ; 
 Triumphs and hatred followed : I myself 
 Bore, men imagin'd, no inglorious part ; 
 The Gods thought otherwise,* by whose decree 
 Depriv'd of life, and more, of death depriv'd, 
 I still hear shrieking thro' the moonless night 
 Their discontented and deserted shades." 
 
 * To the words " The Gods thought otherwise," a note was 
 appended in the first edition of Gehir (1798), which though after- 
 wards withdrawn is sufficiently characteristic to justify its present 
 reproduction. It anticipates by seventy years a sentiment of which 
 the public avowal the other day, in a controversy on the limits of 
 religious thought, excited much warmth of admiration and anim-
 
 90 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book IL 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 He describes the various degrees of torment through 
 which their souls can alone hope to rise again purified. 
 
 " Yet rather all these torments most endure 
 Than solitary pain, and sad remorse, 
 And towering thoughts on their own breast o'ertumed 
 And piercing to the heart — " 
 
 for then they have bitter knowledge of the sufferings 
 they had inflicted on earth, and of the worthlessuess 
 of the trophies, tributes, and colonies obtained in ex- 
 change for them, as they lie listening to the river that 
 rolls past their place of expiation. 
 
 " Not rapid, that would rouse the wretched souls ; 
 Not calml)', that might lull them to repose ; 
 But with dull weary lapses it upheaved 
 Billows of bale, heai'd low, yet heard afar." 
 
 Beyond this river still move Gebir and his guide, tiU 
 
 they come where perpetual twilight broods, "lull'd by 
 
 " no nightingale, nor waken'd by the shrill lark dewy- 
 
 " wing'd;" having nevertheless glimpses beyond of those 
 
 brighter au's 
 
 " that scatter freshness thro' the groves 
 And meadows of the fortunate, and lill 
 With liquid light the marble bowl of Earth." 
 
 And here are revealed by Aroar the laws that govern 
 
 adversion. "Let not this be considered," writes Landor, "as an 
 " imitation of the verse Diis alitcr visum. There is no great merit 
 " in quoting old quotations, however apposite, and I am of opi- 
 " nion that this singular passage has generally been misunderstood. 
 " Among all the fooleries which men have combined in their ideas 
 " of a deity, can there be a greater than that Gods and mortals 
 " have a separate sense of right and ^vrong? Were it really the 
 " case, religious men would become daily less zealous, and the life 
 " of the wicked be but a game of chance. For the virtues of the 
 " one party might not stand for virtues ; nor the vices of the other 
 " be marked for vices. There never was a doctrine more calculated 
 " to make the generality of men despond, and to keep them depen- 
 " dent on the Soyfj.aTovp'/oi.''''
 
 ^T. 22-30.1 GEBIE. 91 
 
 these regions, and the separation effected in them be- 
 tween the A\acked and the good, or in other words the 
 ambitious and the peaceful, by means of a flaming arch 
 wdiich once in every hunch-ed years starts back, and, 
 discovering to each state its opposite, shows that the 
 eternal fires which seem intended only to punish the 
 vicious, are giving also verdure and pleasantness to 
 the groves of the blest. Calm pleasures neighbour 
 the majestic pains, as in Wordsworth's later but as 
 noble fancy. 
 
 Figiu'es and faces have meanwhile crowded past; 
 the Stuarts, father and son, we may discover among 
 them, and even William the deliverer ; but there is one 
 whom Gebir challenges : and with what strong resent- 
 ment the young poet viewed the obstinate war that 
 George the Thu'd had waged with the revolted colonies 
 of America, may be read in this passage. It needs not 
 to say to whom the " eyebrows white and slanting brow " 
 belonged ; but I may point out, what was better under- 
 stood at the date of the poem than it has been since, 
 that the two lines immediately following were intended 
 to turn aside the treasonable reference by raising a con- 
 fusion in the reader's mind between George the Thu*d 
 and Louis Seize, who so recently had j)erislied by the 
 guillotine : 
 
 " ' "^Tiat wretch that nearest us? what wretch 
 Is that with eyebrows white and slanting brow ? 
 Listen ! him yonder, who, bound down supine, 
 Shrinlis yelling from that sword there engine-hung ; 
 He too among my ancestors ?' ' King ! 
 IlDeria bore him, but the breed accurst 
 Inclement winds blew lightning from north-east.' 
 ' He was a warrior then, nor fear'd the Gods ?' 
 ' Gebir 1 he fear'd the Demons, not the Gods, 
 Tho them indeed his daily face adored. 
 And was no warrior ; yet the thousand lives 
 Squander'd as stones to exercise a sling,
 
 92 GEEIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 And the tame cruelty and cold caprice — 
 
 madness of mankind ! addrest, adored ! 
 
 O Gebir ! what are men ? or where are Gods ?" " 
 
 But the time lias come to reascciicl to eartli ; and 
 witli groans and tears Gebir has called bitterly to his 
 tortured ancestors as he turns to retrace his way, when 
 suddenly flames environ him, and he " stands breathless 
 " in a ghost's embrace." It is his father ; who, for 
 binding him to the vow that had made him invader and 
 exile, was now expiating that guilt. 
 
 " ' Eackt on the fiery centre of the sun, 
 
 Twelve years I saw the ruin'd world roll round. 
 
 Shudder not ; I have borne it ; I deserved 
 
 My wretched fate ; be better thine ; farewell.' " 
 
 Saddened with the misery he has witnessed, remorseful 
 for the past and doubtful of the future, but with pre- 
 sent power over the Eg}qDtians increased by the expe- 
 rience he has undergone, Gebir follows upward his be- 
 wildered way till again he finds himself Avithin the tents 
 of his people. They have resumed their labours success- 
 fully ; but in the court of the young queen there is 
 jealousy and discontent, and in her own breast, as she is 
 told of each new development of the invader's power, 
 fear contends with love. 
 
 " Charoba, tho' indeed she never drank 
 The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown,* 
 Or, when she wanted cool and calm repose. 
 Dreamt of the crawling asp and grated tomb, 
 AVas wretched up to roj'alty !" 
 
 This is the subject of the Fourth Book. Her 
 WTetchedness is embittered by the cry raised from the 
 
 * An allusion to Cleopatra's shaking poison into Antony's cup 
 from the crown of flowers in her hair, to cure him of his useless pre- 
 cautions against the fear of poison.
 
 JET. 22-30.] CtEBIK. 93 
 
 coui't ao-ainst the followers of Gebir, wliicli the wiser 
 feAv, who dare to suggest that invaders may be bringers 
 even of good rather than evil, are at first powerless to 
 resist. The rejoinder to these wiser hopes had an ap- 
 plication of wide significance seventy years ago, made to 
 such proposals abundantly in later time. 
 
 " ' Build they not fairer cities than our own, 
 Extravagant enormous apertures 
 For light, and portals larger, open courts 
 Where all ascending all are unconfin'd, 
 And wider streets in purer air than ours ? 
 Temples quite jilain with equal architraves 
 They build, nor hearing gods like ours imhost. 
 O profanation ! our ancestors !' " 
 
 Foremost among the discontented is the queen's 
 nui'se Dalica, to whom she cannot bring herself frankly 
 to confess her love, even while she pleads with herself 
 for kindlier consideration to him. But apart from the 
 intriguers in the coiu't, the mass of the people outside 
 have raised a clamorous shout for peace, making common 
 cause with Gebir's followers ; and they who Avould have 
 resisted the invader are overborne. On all sides the 
 demand goes up for an embassy to the tents proposing 
 terms of friendship, and cries of eager joy are heard 
 uniting with the name of Gebir that of their young 
 queen. 
 
 " Then went the victims forward crown'd with llowers, 
 Crowni'd were tame crocodiles, and boys white-robed 
 Guided their creaking crests across the stream. 
 In gilded barges Avent the female train, . . . 
 Sweet airs of music ruled the rowing palms, 
 Now rose they glistening and aslant reclined, 
 Now they descended and with one consent 
 Plunging, seem'd swift each other to pursue. 
 And now to tremble wearied o'er the wave." 
 
 A picture follows of the grave invading warriors, iu
 
 94 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 welcome of whom tlie riotous festivities had broken 
 forth. 
 
 " Thro' all the plains below the Gadite men 
 Were resting from their labour : some surveyed 
 The s^^acious site ere yet obstructed ; walls 
 Already, soon will roofs have interposed ; 
 Some ate their frugal viands on the steps 
 Contented ; some, remembering home, prefer 
 The cot's bare rafters o'er the gilded dome, 
 And sing (for often sighs too end in song), 
 ' In smiling meads how sweet the brook's repose 
 To the rough ocean and red restless sands !' 
 But others trip along with hasty step 
 Whistling, and fix too soon on their abodes ; 
 Haply and one among them with his spear 
 Measures the lintel, if so great its highth 
 As will receive him with his helm unlower'd." 
 
 The embassy from Charoba to Gebir, with its mess- 
 age and gifts of peace, next comes upon the scene. 
 
 " Meantime, with pomp august and solemn, borne 
 On four white camels tinkling plates of gold, 
 Heralds before and Ethiop slaves behind . . . 
 The four ambassadors of peace proceed. 
 Rich carpets bear they, corn and generous wine, 
 The Syrian olive's cheerful gift they bear, 
 With stubborn goats that eye the mountain-top 
 Askance, and riot with reluctant horn. . . . 
 The king, who sat before his tent, descried 
 The dust rise redden'd from the setting siin." 
 
 But Avhile friendhest words, and a bidding to the 
 banquet that is to proclaim to the reconciled nations 
 the union of their two monarchs, are laid at Gebir's 
 feet, the nurse Dalica, who had seemed to favour 
 most the projected festivity, has already begun her 
 treacherous enterprise. This is the subject of the 
 Fifth Book. It is not wholly the desire to retain 
 power over her mistress that animates her. She really 
 loves Charoba, and cannot understand the change that
 
 ^T, 22-30. J GEBIE. 95 
 
 tlie presence of Gebir has wrought in her. The hnes 
 following, the reader may be pleased to know, were 
 specially singled out for admiration by Shelley, Hum- 
 phrey Davy, Scott, and many remarkable men. 
 
 " ' Past are three summers since she first beheld 
 The ocean ; all around the child await 
 Some exclamation of amazement here : 
 She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased, 
 Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? 
 That wondrous soul Charoba once jDossest, 
 Capacious then as earth or heaven could hold, 
 Soul discontented with capacity, 
 Is gone (I fear) for ever. Need I say 
 She was enchanted by the wicked spells 
 Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed 
 The western winds have landed on our coast ? 
 I since have watcht her in her lone retreat, 
 Have heard her sigh and soften out the name . . .' " 
 
 Gebir, too, has been watched by Dalica ; spies set on 
 by her have followed him, and have reported his solitary 
 wanderings and self-communings, even his strange loud 
 laughter and his ghastly smile : mitil finally his death 
 is resolved on. And for this dread purpose she makes 
 her way to the lonely and deserted ruins of the city of 
 Masar, in which her sister Merthyr, a sorceress and 
 enchantress, practises her foul spells. This was ano- 
 ther of the passages which Shelley was never tired of 
 reciting; and certainly in the modulation of the verse, 
 the beauty of the flow and pause in the rhythm, there 
 is what might have satisfied the ear of Milton him- 
 self. 
 
 " Once a fair city, courted then by kings. 
 Mistress of nations, throng'd by palaces, 
 Eaising her head o'er destiny, her face 
 Glowing with pleasure and with palms refresht. 
 Now pointed at by Wisdom or by Wealth, 
 Bereft of beauty, bare of ornament.
 
 OG GEBIR ; AND ExiRLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 Stood, in tlie wilderness of woe, Masae. 
 Ere far advancing, all appeared a plain ; 
 Treacherous and fearful mountains, far advanced ; 
 Her glory so gone down, at human stejj 
 The fierce hyena frighted from the walls 
 Bristled his rising back, his teeth unsheath'd, 
 Drew the long growl and with slow foot retired." 
 
 A recognition takes place between the sisters, and 
 the witch beheves that Dahca, tired of the Lamps and 
 jewels of a court, has come to close her life in vigils of 
 the moon ; until she confesses that the purpose of her 
 visit is to obtain a poisoned robe which she may fling 
 over Gebir at the coming festival, ofliering homage and 
 giving death. Merthyr eagerly consents; and even 
 Dalica is appalled as she watches her grim enjoyment 
 through each successive stage of horrible preparation, 
 gathering the herbs, mutilating venomous creatures for 
 their poison, and weaving on her sj)indle the dread 
 dark purple v/oof. 
 
 " Her thus entranced the sister's voice recall'd : 
 ' Behold it here ! dyed once again, 'tis done.' 
 Then Merthyr seiz'd with bare bold-sinew 'd ai'm 
 The grey cerastes, writhing from her grasp,* 
 And twisted off his horn, nor fear'd to squeeze 
 
 The viscous poison from his glowing gums 
 
 Together those her scient hand combined . . . 
 Which done, with words most potent, thrice she dipt 
 The reeking garb ; thrice waved it through the air. 
 She ceast ; and suddenly the creeping wool 
 Shrank up with crisped dryness in her hands : 
 ' Take this,' she cried, ' and Gebir is no more.' " 
 
 The Sixth and Seventh Books remain, of which the 
 purpose is to exhibit, in vivid contrast, the happy issue 
 
 * I possess a copy of Gchir in which at these picturesque linos 
 Landor mentions that in this and other matters he had drawn infor- 
 mation from the pages (not then appreciated as they ought to have 
 been) of the great traveller Bruce.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] GEBIR, 97 
 
 of tlie love of Tamar and tlie disastrous close of that of 
 GeLir. To Gebir warnings are abroad — 
 
 " "With horrid chorus, Pain, Diseases, Death, 
 Stamp on the slippery iiavement of the proud, 
 And ring their sounding emptiness through earth" 
 
 — even while the sea-nymph offers to his brother "the 
 " ocean, her, himself, and peace." On the morning 
 that is to unite them, the very Avaves over which she is 
 to lead him to her home prefigure the coming happiness. 
 
 " The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves 
 Glancing with wanton coyness tow'rd their queen, 
 Heav'd softly ; thus the damsel's bosom heaves 
 ■\\lien from her sleeping lover's downy cheek. 
 To which so warily her own she brings 
 Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth 
 Of coming kisses fann'd bj^ playful Dreams." 
 
 His countrymen are watching from the beach (this is 
 very Greek) : 
 
 " But nothing see they, save a purple mist 
 Roll from the distant mountain down the shore : 
 It rolls, it sails, it settles, it dissolves : 
 Then shines the Nymiih to human eye reveal'd. 
 And leads her Tamar timorous o'er the waves. 
 Immortals crowding round congratulate 
 The shepherd . . ." 
 
 But even in these hours of supreme joy the evil brood- 
 ing over his brother shakes the heart of the shep- 
 herd prince; and, "leaning o'er the boy beloved," the 
 morning after their espousals, " in Ocean's grot, where 
 " Ocean was unheard," the sea-nymph has to kiss his 
 fears away. His grief dispersed, pleas lu'e and strength 
 return ; and, as she touches his eyes, the wonders of the 
 watery realm are successively revealed to them : 
 
 " First arose 
 To his astonisht and delighted view 
 The sacred isle that shrines the queen of love. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 It stood so near him, so acute each sense, 
 
 That not the symphony of lutes alone 
 
 Or coo serene or billing strife of doves, 
 
 But murmurs, whispers, nay the very sighs 
 
 Which he himself had utter'd once, he heard. 
 
 Next, but long after and far off, appear 
 
 The cloud-like cliffs and thousand towers of Crete, 
 
 And further to the right the Cyclades . . . 
 
 He saw the land of Pelops, host of Gods, 
 
 Saw the steep ridge where Corinth after stood 
 
 Beckoning the lonians with the smiling Arts 
 
 Into her sunbright bay 
 
 And now the chariot of the Sun descends, 
 The waves rush hurried from his foaming steeds, 
 Smoke issues fi'om their nostrils at the gate. 
 Which, when they enter, with huge golden bar 
 Atlas and Calp^ close across the sea." 
 
 The Seventh and last Book tells its story in a series 
 
 of pictures. The first shows the warriors at their games^ 
 
 while — 
 
 " others push forth the prows of their compeers. 
 And the wave, parted by the pouncing beak, 
 Swells up the sides and closes far astern : 
 The silent oars now dip their level wings, 
 And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave. 
 Others, afraid of tardiness, return : 
 Now, entering the still harbour, every surge 
 Runs with a louder murmur up their keel, 
 And the slack cordage rattles round the mast." 
 
 Gebir is then presented to us : 
 
 " Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears 
 Had Gebir risen ere the break of da^vn, 
 And o'er the plains appointed for the feast 
 Hurried with ardent step : the swains admired 
 What so transversely could have swept the dew !" 
 
 Charoba next; a masterpiece of exquisite description: 
 
 " Not thus Charoba : she despair'd the day ; 
 The day was present ; true ; j^et she despair'd. 
 In the too tender and once-tortured heart 
 Doubts gather strength from habit, like disease ; 
 Fears, like the needle verging to the pole, 
 Tremble and tremble into certainty. . . .
 
 ^T. 22-30.] GEBIE, 99 
 
 Next to her chamber, closed by cedar doors, 
 
 A bath of purest marble, purest wave, 
 
 On its fair surface bore its pavement high : 
 
 Arabian gold enchased the crj'stal roof, 
 
 With fluttering boys adoni'd and girls unrobed ; 
 
 These, when you touch the quiet water, start 
 
 From their aerial sunny arch, and jJant 
 
 Entangled mid each other's flowery wreaths. 
 
 And each pursuing is in turn pursued. 
 
 Here came at last, as ever went at morn, 
 
 Charoba : long she lingered at the brink, 
 
 Often she sigh'd, and, naked as she was, 
 
 Sate down, and leaning on the couch's edge. 
 
 On the soft inward pillow of her arm 
 
 Eested her burning cheek : she moved her eyes ; 
 
 She blusht ; and blushing plunged into the wave." 
 
 Gebir lias made no declaration yet, but the day "svlien 
 he is to meet the queen is that which all expect to be 
 tlieu' nuptial-day; and this meeting of the monarchs, 
 amid the frantic exultation of the peoples, is the scene 
 next presented to us : from which, onward to the end, 
 an accumulating wealth of imageiy, and of descriptions 
 outvying each other in picturesqueness, is poured out 
 \Ndth marvellous and apparently unconscious ease. As 
 Hazlitt so finely said when Shakespeare's scene w^as also 
 laid in Egypt, there is a richness hke the overflowing 
 of the Nile. I can spare however but small space 
 for it. 
 
 " Now brazen chariots thunder through each street. 
 And neighing steeds paw proudly from delaj^ 
 While o'er the palace breathes the dulcimer, 
 Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed, — 
 Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the throng 
 And urge the high-shoulder'd vulgar . . , 
 Now murmurs, like the sea or like the storm 
 Or like the flames on forests, move and mount 
 From rank to rank, and loud and louder roll. 
 Till all the people is one vast applause. 
 Yes, 'tis herself, Charoba 1 Now the strife 
 To see again a form so often seen. . . .
 
 100 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1 797-1 805. 
 
 She goes, the king awaits her from the camp : 
 
 Him she descried, and trembled ei-e he reacht 
 
 Her car ; but shuddered paler at his voice. 
 
 So the pale silver at the festive board 
 
 Grows paler fill'd afresh and dew'd with wine ; 
 
 So seems the tenderest herbage of the spring 
 
 To whiten, bending from a balmy gale. 
 
 The beauteous queen alighting he received, 
 
 And sigh'd to loose her from his arms ; she hung 
 
 A little longer on them through her fears." 
 
 That is very delicate and truthful ; and the same 
 gentleness of touch is repeated where, as Gebir's face 
 changes under the influence of the poisoned robe, Cha- 
 roba in her tenderness misinterprets it, and expects the 
 declaration of his love. The lofty thrones had been 
 erected for their meetinfi^ on the shore, commandino- 
 land and sea; and as queen and monarch take their 
 seats — 
 
 " The brazen clarion hoarsens : many leagues 
 Above them, many to the south, the heron 
 Rising with hurried croak and throat outstretcht, 
 Ploughs up the silvering surface of her plain. 
 Tottering with age's zeal and mischief's haste 
 Then was discover'd Dalica ; she reacht 
 The throne, she leant against the pedestal, 
 And now ascending stood before the king. 
 Prayers for his health and safety she preferr'd, 
 And o'er his head and o'er his feet she threw 
 Myrrh, nard, and cassia, from three golden lu'us ; 
 His robe of native woof she next removed, 
 And round her shoulders drew the garb accurst, 
 And bow'd her head, departing. Soon the queen 
 Saw the blood mantling in his manly cheeks. 
 And fear'd, and faltering sought her lost replies, 
 And blest the silence that she wished were broke. 
 Alas, unconscious maiden ! . . . . 
 Scarcely, with pace uneven, knees unnerv'd, 
 Reacht he the waters : in his ti'oubled ear, 
 They sounded murmuring drearily ; they rose 
 "Wild, in strange colours, to his parching eyes ; 
 They seem'd to rush around him, seem'd to lift 
 From the receding earth his helpless feet.
 
 .ET. 22-30.] GEBIR. 101 
 
 He fell : Charoba shriekt aloud ; she ran 
 Frantic with fears and fondness, mazed with woe, 
 Nothing but Gebii- dying she beheld. 
 The turban that betray'd its golden charge 
 Within, the veil that down her shoulder hung, 
 All fallen at her feet ! the furthest wave 
 Creeping with silent progress up the sand, 
 Glided through all, and rais'd their hollow folds." 
 
 She appeals to Dalica ; she acquits her of any com- 
 plicity with what she thinks the demons of her land 
 have done ; she invokes the pity and protection of her 
 dead mother ; she upbraids the Gods ; she pom.'s out 
 unrestrained the whole wild passion of her love for 
 Gebu'. 
 
 " Thus raved Charoba : horror, grief, amaze, 
 Pervaded all the host ; all eyes were fixt ; 
 All stricken motionless and mute : the feast 
 Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword 
 Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrain'd, 
 And the hilt rattled in his marble hand.* 
 She heard not, saw not, every sense was gone ; 
 One passion banisht all ; dominion, praise, 
 The world itself, was nothing. Senseless man ! 
 What would thy fancy figure now from worlds ? 
 There is no world to those that grieve and love." 
 
 The dying chiefs last thought, meanwhile, is not of 
 grandem' or of glory, or even of the desire for life, but 
 of his happiness in carrying with him to the unknoAvai 
 realm, "more precious than the jewels that surround 
 " the necks of kings entomb'd," the pity and the tears of 
 Charoba. The peoples are ch'iven asunder once again ; 
 and there falls upon the separating hosts all the darkness 
 of which there was foreboding even while the morning 
 broke in happiness — that night would close, and love 
 
 * The intense dramatic force and suddenness of this allusion 
 will especially strike the reader who remembers the story, as told 
 by Ovid, of Phineus changed to marble by the Gorgon shield of 
 Perseus.
 
 102 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 ancFso^Tanty and life dissolve, and Eg}"pt be " one de- 
 " sert di'encht in blood." 
 
 It may now be a matter of some interest to the 
 reader to know that every passage thus quoted appeared 
 in the poem as originally published in 1798, and that 
 not a line in any of them underwent alteration in the 
 three subsequent reprints. The first, published early in 
 the present centuiy at Oxford, and to which fui'ther 
 allusion will shortly be made, was a careful reproduc- 
 tion of the original, with some Hues added and none 
 omitted, but with correction of its multitude of mis- 
 prints, and with explanatory notes and argmnents. This 
 earliest reprint appeared mider the editorship of ]\Ii*. 
 Robert Landor, who from his youth has had the ad- 
 miration of a thinker and poet for this extraordinary 
 poem ; and the third, or latest, which appeared in the 
 Collected Works of 1846, was as careful a reproduction 
 of the copy which Landor had before included in his 
 volume of Poems published in 1831, where again his 
 additions were but very few, though his omissions were 
 too full of meaning not to have mention here. 
 
 In the year when Gcbir was written the world was 
 ringing "svith the victories of Bonaparte ; and a part of 
 the vision of his descendants revealed to Tamar on his 
 nuptial voyage, while they passed the islands of Sardinia 
 and Corsica, had prefigm-ed as arising amid the latter 
 " A mortal man above all mortal praise," 
 
 and had depicted, under colom' of the triumph of the 
 race of Tamar, a victorious march of the French Re- 
 public from the Garonne to the Rhine : 
 
 " How grand a prospect opens ! Alps o'er Alps 
 Tower, to survey the triumjihs that proceed. 
 There, while Garumna dances in the gloom
 
 ^T. 22-30.] GEBIK. 103 
 
 Of larches, mid her naiads, or reclined 
 
 Leans on a broom-clad bank to watch the sports 
 
 Of some far-distant chamois silken-hair'd, 
 
 The chaste Pyrene, drying up her tears, 
 
 Finds, with your children, refuge : yonder, Ehine 
 
 Lays his imperial sceptre at their feet." 
 
 Nay, even Time itself, and the Seasons, were now to 
 acknowledge their masters ; for had not the months and 
 weeks and days themselves taken new names ! 
 
 " What hoary form so vigorous vast bends there ? 
 Time, — Time himself throws ofE his motley garb 
 Figur'd with monstrous men and monstrous Gods, 
 And in pure vesture enters their pure fanes, 
 A proud i^artaker of their festivals. 
 Captivity led captive, War o'erthrown. 
 They shall o'er Europe, shall o'er Earth extend 
 Empire that seas alone and skies confine, 
 And glory that shall strike the crystal stars." 
 
 But now that these hopes had broken down, and 
 the glorious expectation was over, the lines, with sunchy 
 others in similar strain, were swept entirely away ; Lan- 
 dor merely remarking in one of his letters to Southey 
 that he had cut out the political allusions. With one 
 exception,* all the passages thus omitted were taken 
 fi'om the Third and Sixth Books, and consisted of some- 
 thing over 150 lines. The adchtions, on the other hand, 
 did not exceed fifty lines, and were intended to make 
 more intelligible those passages of the tale in which the 
 pruning-knife had before been used too freely. Speak- 
 
 * Of this exception I will preserve in a note, for their beauty of 
 cadence and expression, and because they were especially liked by 
 Southey, the few lines that opened the poem : 
 
 " When old Silenus called the Satyrs home, 
 Satyrs then tcnder-hooft and ruddy-horn'd, 
 With Bacchus and the Nymphs, he sometimes rose 
 Amidst the talc or pastoral, and show'd 
 The light of purest wisdom ; and the God 
 Scattered with wholesome fruit the pleasant plains."
 
 104 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 ino; of this himself in his Preface to the 1831 edition of 
 the Poems, — after telHng us that Gehir was written in his 
 twentieth year ; that many parts were first composed in 
 Latin, and he doubted in which hmguage to complete 
 it ; and that he had lost the manuscript, but found it 
 afterwards in a box of letters, — he adds, that before 
 printing it he reduced it nearly to half. In substance 
 this was the account he always gave, though the cir- 
 cumstances varied a little in his memory.* Writing 
 to me in 1857 oi Aurora Leigh,^ he exclaims, "What 
 '■ loads I carted off from Gehir, in order to give it pro- 
 
 * For example, adverting in a poem of his later life to these 
 early days in Wales and his adventures with his pony Fidler, he 
 gives a different version of Gebir's loss and recovery : 
 
 " Sixty the years since Fidler hore 
 My grouse-ljag up the Bala Moor ; 
 Above the lake, along the lea, 
 Where gleams the darkly yellow Dee ; 
 Thro' crags, o'er cliffs, I carried there 
 My verses with paternal care. 
 But left them, and went home again 
 To wing the birds upon the i^lain. 
 With heavier luggage half forgot. 
 For many months they followed not. 
 When over Tawey's sands they came 
 Brighter flew up my winter flame. . . . 
 Gebir ! men shook their heads in doubt 
 If we were sane : few made us out 
 Beside one stranger . . ." 
 
 f "lam reading a poem," he says, "full of thought and fasci- 
 " nating with fancy — Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh. In many 
 " pages, and particularly 126 and 127, there is the wild imagi- 
 " nation of Shakespeare. I have not yet read much farther. I 
 " had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much 
 " poetry. I am half -drunk with it. Never did I thinlc I should 
 " have a good hearty draught of poetry again : the distemper had 
 " got into the vineyard that i>roduced it. Here are indeed, even 
 " here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon 
 " what is sweet and strong. I know not yet what the story is. Few 
 " possess the power of construction."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SOME OPINIONS OF GEBIK. 105 
 
 " portion, yet nearly all would have liked it better with 
 " incorrectness ;" and in a letter to Sonthey, forty years 
 earher, he had written : " As to GeUr, I am certain that 
 " I rejected what almost every man would call the best 
 " part. I am afraid that I have boiled away too much, 
 " and that something of a native flavour has been lost 
 " in jn'ocui'ing a stronger and more austere one." 
 
 But though it is probable that some stop was thus 
 jjut to the popularity of a poem where, as Coleridge said 
 of it, the eminences were so excessively bright and the 
 ground so dark around and between them, Landor is in 
 a greater measure to be accounted fortunate, that thus 
 early he could exercise the power invaluable to a poet, 
 and which even to the best arrives often too late, of 
 selection and compression. Among its advantages in 
 the present case is undoubtedly this, that what the poem 
 Avas at its first publication, it remains still ; it has not 
 been improved into something altogether different ; and 
 the reader's certainty that the passages of it now laid be- 
 fore him are unaltered since the boyish years when they 
 were A\Titten, will increase his interest in the further 
 development of so extraordinary a mind. 
 
 n. Some Opinions of Gebir. 
 
 The publication is thus described by Mr. Eobert 
 Landor : " Of Gehir he had the highest expectations, 
 " and yet it was intrusted to a very small bookseller at 
 " Warwick, without any one to correct the press, in the 
 " form of a sixpenny pamphlet. Excepting to some 
 " personal friends it remained quite unlaiown till an 
 " article appeared, written by Southey, in the Critical 
 " Review, full of generous commendation. This was 
 " the beginning of their .friendship. A few literary
 
 106 GEBIK ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1 797-1 805. 
 
 " men only — Shelley, Reginald Heber, and I think 
 " Coleridge — read the poem even then ; and hardly a 
 " hundred copies were sold, till a much better edition, 
 " with a Latin translation, was published at Oxford 
 " under my superintendence. I discharged the office 
 " of editor quite unassisted by the author, who always 
 " seems to have felt a nervous bashfulness which 
 '' transferred his works to the care of other people. 
 " Bashfulness doubtful of theii' success, not of their 
 " merits." 
 
 This remark explains the brief preface to the poem 
 in which was thrown down so characteristically the 
 measure of its author's expectations. After describing 
 it as principally written in Wales, and the fruit of idle- 
 ness and ignorance, for " had he been a botanist or 
 "mineralogist it never had been written," he mentions 
 the Arabian tale he had taken the hint of its story from, 
 speaks of the few English Amters who had succeeded in 
 blank verse, cHstinguishing above all " the poet of our 
 " republic ;" and closes by sa}njig : " I am aware how 
 " much I myself stand in need of favoiu*. I demand 
 " some little from Justice : I entreat much more from 
 ^' Candour. If there are now in England ten men of 
 ^' taste and genius who ^vill applaud my poem, I de- 
 " clare myself fully content. I will call for a division ; 
 " I shall count a majority." 
 
 The late ]\Ir. De Quincey grudged him even the 
 ten. He protested there were only two, and that he 
 had for some time vainly " conceited" himself to be the 
 sole pui-chaser and reader. Landor remarked uj^on this 
 A\ith amusing warmth in one of his letters to me in 
 1853: "It must have been under the influence of his 
 " favourite drug that he fancied Southey telhng him 
 " he believed they were the only two who had read
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SOME OPINIONS OF GEBIE. 107 
 
 " Gebir. ]Mr. De Quincey was not acquainted witli 
 " Soutliey until veiy many years after he had written 
 " a noble panegyric on the poem inserted in the Critical 
 " Review in 1798. He did not know me until lono- 
 " after : but he had in that year recommended the 
 " poem to Charles Wynne, who told me so ; and to the 
 " two Hebers ; and to Coleridge, who praised it highly 
 " until he was present when Southey read or repeated 
 ^' parts of it before a large company, after which, if 
 " ever he mentioned it at all, it was slightingly. ]Mr. 
 '■'■ De Quincey appears to have had another dream, too, 
 " of a conversation with Southey in which they agreed 
 " that I imitated Valerius Flaccus, whose poem I never 
 " had opened, but have looked into lately, and find in- 
 '• tolerable to get through beyond 200 lines.* These 
 " dreams and the records of them will pass away ; but 
 '" ' exoriare aliqviis nostris ex ossihus ultor.' I think I 
 " know who this will be, and I expect no earlier \dn- 
 " dication." 
 
 Not in the year of its publication, but in the Sej)- 
 tember of the year following, Southey's notice appeared 
 in the Critical Review. This I shall remark upon here, 
 because of its writer ; though my mention of the only 
 other published review, which dates several months later, 
 and was conceived in a very different spirit, must be re- 
 served to another section. Southey's criticism was thin 
 and colom'less, but his tone was sufficiently laudatory. 
 An outline of the story was given ; such passages as 
 " the Shell" were quoted, with the remark that the 
 reader who did not instantly perceive their beauty must 
 
 * That this was not altogether a dream, however, is i^resumable 
 from the fact that Southey, in a notice in the Annual Review of 
 Landor's Poetry by the Author of Geblr, to be presently mentioned, 
 used this very comparison ; and probably De Quincey derived his 
 impression, not from the conversation, but from the review.
 
 108 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 have a soul blind to the world of poetry; other pass- 
 ages were characterised as more Homeric than any 
 thing in modern poetical writing ; and while, of the 
 faults of the poem, those of an ill-chosen story and of 
 a frequent absence of perspicuity in the language were 
 pointed out as the most conspicuous, it was said of its 
 beauties that they were of the first order, and that every 
 circumstance was displayed with a force and accuracy 
 which 2:)ainting could not exceed. " It is not our busi- 
 " ness," Southey said in conclusion, after quoting the 
 challenge from the author's 2:)reface given above, " to 
 " examine whether he has understated the num|)er of 
 " men of taste and genius in England, but we have 
 " read his poem repeatedly with more than common 
 " attention, and with far more than common delight." 
 
 Before the review appeared Southey had been speak- 
 ing of the poem in the same strain to his private friends. 
 To Cottle he wrote : " There is a poem called Gehir, of 
 " which I laiow not whether my review of it in the 
 " Critical be yet printed ; but in that review you will 
 " find some of the most exquisite poetry in the lan- 
 " ffuacje ... I would p-o a hundred miles to see the 
 " (anonpnousj author." To Grosvenor Bedford in the 
 following month he vTote : " There is a poem called 
 " Gehir, -UTitten by God knows who, sold for a shilling : 
 " it has miraculous beauties." Of William Taylor of 
 Norwich, a few days later, he asked if he had seen 
 the poem ; called it the miraculous work of a madman ; 
 said it was like a pictui'e in whose obscure colouring 
 no plan was discoverable, but in whose every distinct 
 touch the master-hand was visible ; and compared its 
 intelligible passages to flashes of lightning at midnight. 
 After a few months he started for Lisbon to visit his 
 uncle Hill, and before going wrote to Coleridge : " I
 
 iET. 22-30.] SOME OPINIONS OF GEBIR. 109 
 
 " take mtli me for the voyage your poems, tlie Lyrics, 
 " the Lyrical BaHads, and Gehir — these make all my 
 " library. I like Gehir more and more ; if you ever 
 " meet its author, tell him I took it with me on a jour- 
 " ney." Detained on the j)oint of sailing by westerly 
 winds at Falmouth, he Avi'ote to his brother the sea- 
 captain that his time had been passed in walking on 
 the beach sighing for north-easters, admiring the sea 
 anemonies, and reading Gehir. On arrival at Lisbon he 
 wrote again to Coleridge, advising him once more to 
 read Gehir : " he grows upon me." He was now himself 
 writing Thalaha, and in the preface mentions the great 
 improvement to his own verse in vividness and strength 
 which he was sensible of having at this time derived 
 from the frequent perusal of Gehir. After his return, 
 in another letter to Coleridge, he alludes to the circum- 
 stance of their friend Humphrey Davy ha'sdng fallen 
 stark mad with a play called the Compiracy of Goicrie, 
 which was by Rough, and a mere copy of that wonder- 
 ful original, Gehir. This was in July 1801 ; at which 
 date also he was WTiting to Davy himself the letter 
 before quoted* which notices his first acquaintance with 
 Landor's name, and his recollection of him at Ox- 
 ford : " How could you compare this man's book with 
 " Rough's? The lucid passages of Gehir are all palp- 
 " able to the eye ; they are the master-touches of a 
 " painter — there is power in them, and passion, and 
 " thought, and knowledge." The other he reo;arded as 
 imitations merely, with a leading dash of Gehir through 
 the Avhole. 
 
 This was not substantially unjust, though harshly 
 expressed : but Rougli nevertheless was a clever and 
 noteworthy person, whose admiration Landor was glad 
 * Ante, p. 48.
 
 110 GEBIR ; AND EAELIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 to have for his o^^ai poem, and to repay in a generous 
 fashion by no niggard praise of the poem written in 
 imitation of it. They were for some time on veiy 
 friendly terms ; and some letters of Rough's between 
 the date of 1800 and 1802 are preserved among Lan- 
 der's papers. It will be time to advert to them when, 
 with other friends of this early date connected with 
 War-vvick and its neighbourhood, Eough will shortly re- 
 appear. I must not meanwhile omit to add that even 
 among those War"Rdckshire acquaintance Gehir was not 
 so fortunate as to find only friends. 
 
 At his father's house, in the two years between his 
 retreat to Wales and the publication of his poem, Lan- 
 dor had been a frequent visitor ; and during the seven 
 unsettled years that followed before Doctor Landor's 
 death, Avhen neither pursuit nor place nor indeed per- 
 sons attracted him for many months together, he was 
 made welcome whenever he returned to Warwick ; but 
 to his father's especial friends, there can be little doubt, 
 he was at all times less accommodating than he might 
 have been. One of them was !Miss Seward, a WarAvick- 
 shire bluestocking so celebrated in those days that no less 
 a person than Walter Scott became one of her editors ; 
 and her he flatly refused to meet only a few months be- 
 fore Gehir appeared. The lively lady remembered the 
 slight ; and took revenge characteristically in the remark 
 of one of her letters,* that nobody but the author of such 
 
 * The letter is dated in July 1800, and addressed to one of the 
 hangers-on of Parr, a clergjonan named Fellowes, who wrote a " Pic- 
 " ture of Christian Philosophy" and other volumes savouring more 
 of the sentimental than the orthodox ; but known in later j-ears more 
 favourably by active participation in some good works. " There is 
 " no longer any wonder that the Critical Eevicm should praise that 
 " obscure fustian epic, Gahor (sic), since I learn from you that the 
 " author and critic are one person. I have been told that he has consi- 
 " derable talents and learning. Gabor is no proof of the first, since to
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SOME OPINIONS OF GEBIR. Ill 
 
 a poem as Gehir could have T^Titten the re\'ieAv of it in 
 the Critical. Southey (whom she thought a greater 
 poet than Wordsworth or Coleridge, and was fond of 
 comparing to Milton) tried to propitiate Landor's wrath 
 and protect his fair friend's memory, when this unlucky 
 letter came to light ; but he was not successful. Landor 
 replied with a heat which, in its amazing disproportion 
 to both the offence and the offender, is too characteristic 
 to be lost. 
 
 "I shall not see any thing more than the backs of Miss 
 Seward's Letters. I attempted to read her Life of Darwin, but 
 was so disgusted by her impudence I threw it down. Some of 
 her poetry may be better. My father and my aunts were rather 
 intimate with her. I never saw her. She was so polite as to 
 say she should be very happy to see me, and added some high- 
 flown and idle compliment on verses, very indifferent, which I 
 wrote at seventeen. I am not surprised she liked them better 
 than Gehir. They were more like her own. In reply to her 
 courtesy I said what she never should have heard, ' that I pre- 
 ferred a pretty woman to a literary one.' From that time to 
 
 " think clearly is inseparable from great strength of intellect ; though 
 " we often see scholastic knowledge exist in a mind whei-e the lights 
 " of imagination, if they shine at all, shine but by glimpses, and 
 " where the judgment is wholly opake" (v. 295). A couple of years 
 later she wi'ote to Todd, the editor of Spenser and Milton, to console 
 him for some adverse notice in the Critical by telling him how 
 malicious she had always found " that tract" to be in noticing her- 
 self ; " though I think I can stand it unwoundcd, beneath the reflec- 
 " tion that I have seen that tract lavishing encomiums on the most 
 " unintelligible fustian that ever bore the name of an epic poem. 
 " It called itself Gebir." (She had got the right name at last.) 
 " Southey told a friend of mine lately that it was the finest poetic 
 " work which had appeared these fifty years. So Johnson stilted up 
 " Blackmore" (vi. 29). A few months later too, when Mr. Fellowes 
 had sent a fresh supply of ill-natured gossip about Landor, she tells 
 him how "charmed" she is with what he says of the author of Gehir, 
 " and his other projected epic" (vi. 77). One cannot but feel that 
 there is a relish of personal offence in all this, and that Landor's 
 way of accounting for it is probably the right one.
 
 112 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805, 
 
 the present, about thirteen years, I never heard any thing more 
 about her in which I was concerned. It vexes, 1 must own to 
 you it more than vexes, it afflicts and torments me, to have it 
 disseminated in circulating - libraries and country book-clubs 
 that I condescended to that last and vilest of all baseness, my 
 own praises in a review. I know not any accusation so hateful. 
 
 And this impudent seems well to have known my character 
 
 in selecting it for her rancour. I do not imagine that Mr. 
 Gifford himself said this. Other men have the privilege of 
 complaining which God and nature never permitted me. This 
 stigma may burn into me till it burns thro' me : meaner men 
 would bite and scratch it ofE." 
 
 This letter was written in 1811, before I was born ; and 
 a quarter of a century later, as I well remember, one 
 of the first of his letters adch'essed to myself contained 
 an entire battery of the epigrams which he had now 
 fired off against IViiss Seward and her friends, and had 
 thought worth preserving all those years. 
 
 One of the fiiends was the ^h\ Fellowes who seems 
 to have told her first of the supposed identity of the 
 poet and his critic, "very cavalierly" as Southey ^\Tote 
 to his friend. " This Fellowes," Landor replied, " is 
 " a person I often met at Parr's. I never knew that 
 " he spoke cavalierly except to his wife, whom he beat 
 " and separated from. I never exchanged a syllable 
 " with him.* At Parr's I converse only ^nth Parr." 
 Somewhat vmconsciously a charactei'istic trait is here let 
 
 * That remark would probably explain the sentence in one of 
 Mr. Fellowes's letters which quite enchanted Miss Seward when she 
 read it. " The author of Gehir, who lives in this neighbourhood, has 
 " lately made another attempt to convey the waters of Helicon by 
 " leaden pipes, and many dark subterranean ways, into the channel 
 " of the Avon. I have not seen these last effusions of his Muse ; but, 
 " having trod the dark profound of GcVir, I feel no inclination to 
 " begin another journey which promises so little pleasure, and pro- 
 " bably where only a few occasional flashes will enlighten the road." 
 The attempt thus charitably spoken of was a thin little volume of 
 Poetry hij the Author of Gellr to be presently again mentioned.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SOME OPINIONS OF GEBIR. 113 
 
 drop, of whicli there is an accurate illustration in one of 
 liis brother s letters. Referring to Avhat was certainly 
 true of Landor to the last, that, with noble bursts of 
 energy in his talk, his temperament disqualified him for 
 any thing like sustained reasoning, and he instinctively 
 tui'ned away from discussion or argument, his brother 
 had mentioned having seen him in his youth rush from 
 the table of one of his own political friends, provoked 
 by some slight contradiction that appeared disrespect- 
 ful, when in truth there was no disrespect but only a 
 slight difference threatening controversy. "It was from 
 " Doctor Parr's table," JVIi'. Robert Landor replied to my 
 further inquiry, " that he rushed so furiously ; but not 
 " in anger with the Doctor, whom he always liked and 
 " with whom he never quarrelled. His anger was pro- 
 " voked by a Warwick physician whom he met there — 
 " a Doctor Winthrop — who felt astonished at the offence 
 " he had given. A very feeble reasoner who could 
 " govern his temper, might be sure of victory over one, 
 " ten times his superior, who could not. Some slight in- 
 " terruption, even a smile, was provocation enough, if 
 " there were many witnesses present at the controversy, 
 " to decide it.'' His own assertion that at Parr's he 
 never conversed but with Parr is made quite intelligible 
 to us by this comment. Yet his intercourse with the 
 old liberty-loving scholar and divine was very much the 
 happiest, and far from the least profitable, of this period 
 of his life ; and it continued, without abatement of re- 
 gard on either side, for many years. 
 
 Before account is given of it, one more opinion of 
 Gehi7' shall be interposed. It anticipates my narrative 
 by a few years, but expresses with singular vividness the 
 fascination with which the poem seized from time to 
 time on minds of the highest order, the attention there- 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 lU GEBIR ; AND EAELIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 by directed to its author from men wliose notice consti- 
 tuted fome, and the degree of compensation so aiforded 
 by the few for the persistent neglect and dislike of the 
 many. 
 
 Four years before Gehir appeared Shelley was born, 
 and its influence over him at more than one period of 
 his life is recorded by his wife in her edition of his 
 Poems. TVlien he Avas at Oxford in 1811, we are told 
 by the friend and fellow-collegian who was most inti- 
 mate Avitli him theroj he would at times read nothing 
 else ; and ]\Ii'. Hogg relates that on the fi'equent occa- 
 sions when he found him so occupied, it was hopeless to 
 draw his attention away. There was something in the 
 poem which in a peculiar manner caught his fancy. 
 He would read it aloud to others, or to himself, with a 
 tiresome pertinacity. One morning his friend went into 
 his rooms to tell him something of importance, biit he 
 would attend to nothing but Gehir; whereupon Hogg 
 describes himself with a young impatience snatching the 
 book " out of the obstinate fellow's hand'" and thro^ring 
 it through the open window into the quadrangle; but 
 unavailingly — for as it fell upon the grass-plat, and was 
 brought presently back by the servant, again Shelley 
 became absorbed in it, and the something of importance 
 had to wait to another time. " I related this incident at 
 " Florence," adds Mr. Hogg, "some years afterwards, 
 " and after the death of my poor friend, to the highly- 
 " gifted author. He heard it with his hearty, cordial, 
 " genial laugh. ' Well, you must allow it is something 
 " ' to have produced what could please one fellow-crea- 
 " ' tm-e, and offend another so much.' "* 
 
 * Life of Shelley, i. 201. " I regret," Mr. Hogg concludes, "that 
 " these two intellectual persons were not acquainted with each other. 
 " If I could confer a real benefit upon a friend, I would procure for 
 " him, if it were possible, the friendship of Walter SaA-age Landor."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] DOCTOR PARR. 115 
 
 Nothing has been said of Gehir better than that; 
 and when correct adjustment has been made of the 
 relative values of praise and censui*e received by it, 
 from those it so greatly pleased and those it so much 
 offended, its place will at last be accurately ascertained. 
 
 III. Doctor P^vrr. 
 
 In the first article written by Sydney Smith in the 
 JEdinhurgh Review, he reproachfully called attention to 
 the fact that by far the most learned man of his day* 
 was languishing on a little paltr}^ curacy in Warwick- 
 shire. This was Doctor Parr, whose name at the be- 
 ginning of the century, little as it is noAv remembered 
 where learning and literature is in question, was held 
 in undeniable respect by the first scholars in Eui'ope. 
 PaiT never indeed stood higher in esteem than at the 
 time of the publication of Gehir, to the admiration of 
 whose ardent writer he presented a threefold claim. To 
 the skilled Latin student he w\as the author of the 
 Preface to BellendeMus ; to the eager politician he was 
 the friend of Fox and Grey; to the young adventurer 
 in literature he had the charm of association with a 
 greater Doctor Samuel, the chief of English men of 
 letters, who had lately passed away. " Sir," said 
 Johnson to Bennet Langton, in one of those con- 
 versations which Boswell's wonderful book had just 
 then given to the world, " Parr is a fair man. I 
 " do not know when I have had an occasion of such 
 " free controversy." They had talked upon the liberty 
 of the press ; and Johnson, stamping unconsciously in 
 
 * Porson was then dead, Wliile he lived Parr woidd saj^, "The 
 " first Greek scholar is Porson, and the third Elmsley : I won't say 
 '• who the second is,"
 
 IIG GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II, 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 the heat of the argument, had stopped suddenly on 
 seeing Parr give a great stamp. " Why did you stamp, 
 " Do'ctor Parr?" he asked. "Sir," repHed Parr, "be- 
 " cause you stamped ; and I was resolved not to give 
 " you the advantage even of a stamp in the argument." 
 This was good Johnsonian give-and-take, and would 
 certainly not lower his namesake in Johnson's opinion ; 
 but it must be added that the trick of stamping re- 
 mained too much with the lesser Samuel, who also 
 practised afterwards pompous oracular ways, and dealt 
 greatly in sonorous words, apparently derived from the 
 same source. But, notwithstanding much pretentious 
 and preposterous writing, what was most prominent in 
 Parr's character was neither assumed nor common- 
 place. Johnson said it was a pity that such a man 
 and such a scholar should be a whig ; and, consider- 
 ing that with the dispensers of church patronage in 
 those days the most moderate forms of Whiggism were 
 but other forms of Atheism, Deism, Socinianism, or any 
 of the rest of the Isms that to a clergyman meant infamy 
 and poverty, a more judicious choice of opinions might 
 undoubtedly have been made. But in his way Parr was 
 quite as sincere a man as Johnson, and ojiinions were as 
 little a matter of mere choosing to the one as to the 
 other. 
 
 Up to the time of the French Eevolution Doctor 
 Landor had himself been a whig, as all Warwickshire 
 had reason to know ; for it w^as he who brought forward 
 Sir Robert Lawley and Mr. Ladbroke at the election 
 which broke down Lord Warwick's predominance in 
 the county. But when the split in the party came, and 
 Burke carried over the deserters from Fox, Doctor Lan- 
 dor cast in his lot with them, and became also Pitt's 
 vehement suj^porter. His son Walter, on the other
 
 JCT. 32-30.1 DOCTOR PARE. 117 
 
 liand, went as far as lie could in the opposite extreme ; 
 and Avould doubtless have gone to the other side of 
 England for the pleasure of greeting a friend of Mr. 
 Fox so loud and uncompromising as Doctor Parr was 
 at this time. As it was, he had to do little more than 
 cross the threshold of his father's door. 
 
 At Hatton (Heath-town), a retired ^'illage on an 
 eminence near what was then a wide tract of heath two 
 or three miles from Warwick on the Birmingham road. 
 Parr had lived since 1783, when Lady Trafford pre- 
 sented him to its perpetual curacy. He was a poor 
 man when he went there; but when more prosperous 
 days came to him he was too fond of the place to leave 
 it, and there he died. At the small brick parsonage 
 he built out a good-sized library, which he filled with 
 books of which the printed catalogue is still consulted 
 with interest by scholars ; and this became at last his 
 dining-room also, where not seldom, at his frequent 
 festivities, neither books nor friends were visible for 
 the clouds of tobacco that rose and enveloped them 
 from his morning, afternoon, and evening pipes. Syd- 
 ney Smith says he had too much of his own way at 
 these social parties, and would have been better for 
 more knocking about among his equals ; but the same 
 sentence that laughs at him for his airs of self-import- 
 ance celebrates not the less his copious and varied 
 learning, the richness of his acquisitions, the vigour of 
 his understanding, and above all the genuine goodness 
 of his heart. Undue prominence was indeed given by 
 two circumstances to the weak points in Parr's charac- 
 ter : they were all upon the surface, and they were all 
 of the quizzible kind. He had a quantity of foolish per- 
 sonal vanity; a lisp made more absurd his pompous way 
 of speaking; and a corpvilcnt figm'e set off disadvanta-
 
 118 GEBIR ; AND EAELIEST FKIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 geously his vagaries of clress. ^AHien he lost the Master- 
 ship of Harrow it was said that he went far completely 
 to console himself by mounting that famous obumbrat- 
 ing vng, which, as Sydney said of it, swelled out behind 
 into boundless convexity of frizz. But there is some- 
 thing not difficult to forgive in absuixlities of this kind, 
 when accompanied by unworldliness of natm'e ; and it is 
 midoubtedly the case that Parr was at the bottom a very 
 kindly and a very simple man. He could stand by those 
 who had claims on his friendship, though all the rest of 
 the world should fall fi-om them ; and it is the remark 
 of a keen and imsparing judge of men, William Taylor 
 of Norwich, in a comparison he makes between Parr 
 and Mackintosh, that, whereas the latter inspired ad- 
 miration rather than attachment, there was a lovingness 
 about Parr and a susceptibility of affection that gave 
 him an immense superiority.* The time when Landor 
 first knew Parr was that of Mackintosh's greatest inti- 
 macy with him ; and of the characteristic traits of their 
 intercourse still remembered there are few better than 
 the remark made by Parr after a long argument. 
 " Jemmy, I cannot talk you down ; but I can think 
 " you down, Jemmy." It expresses at the same time 
 one of those weaknesses by which it so often came to 
 
 * Among Landor's papers I found the following : 
 " From the old brown portfolio. Presented to Parr as an Epi- 
 taph, Dec. 21, 1799. 
 
 " Here lies our honest friend Sam Parr : 
 A better man than most men are. 
 So learned, he could well dispense 
 Sometimes with merely common sense : 
 So voluble, so eloquent. 
 You little heeded what he meant : 
 So generous, he could spare a word 
 To throw at Warburton or Hurd : 
 So loving, every village maid 
 Sought his caresses, tho afraid."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] DOCTOR PAEE. 119 
 
 pass that Parr's company was inferior to himself, and 
 such as he could talk do^\ai only too easily. But, even 
 with Mackintosh, he had not seldom the upper hand. 
 " Fonnerly," ^\T.*ote Landor in one of his latest letters 
 to Southey,* "I used to meet Mackintosh rather fre- 
 " quently. I never knew that he was so stored and 
 " laden as you give me to believe. He was certainly 
 " very inaccm^ate, not only in Greek but in Latin. 
 " Once at breakfast with Parr in Gary-street, where 
 " I was and Hargrave and Jekyl, he used the word 
 " anabasis. Parr said, ' Very right, Jemmy ! very 
 " ' right ! it is anabasis with you, but anabasis with me 
 " ' and Walter Landor.' I was very much shocked 
 " and grieved ; indeed, to such a degTee, that I felt 
 " indisposed to take any part in the conversation after- 
 " wards ; only saying (which was not quite true) that I 
 " did not know it until then : which obtained me a 
 " pmich of the elbow under the rib, and the interjec- 
 " tion of lying dog /" 
 
 Some of the points I have thus thought it fair to 
 prefix to such mention of Landor's intercourse with 
 Parr as will appear in these pages from time to time, 
 receive also illustration, valuable because of personal 
 knowledge, from one of Mr. Robert Landor's letters. 
 He begins by speaking of a recent paper on Parr by Mr. 
 De Quincey, published in the sixth volume of his col- 
 lected works ; and it is proper to remark that he writes 
 with less sympathy for Parr's political opinions than for 
 those of his critic. " If !Mr. De Quincey had been de- 
 " sirous to show us how far it might be possible 'to 
 " convey the most false and injurious notions of a man 
 " in language which no one could contradict; whic]i 
 " said nothing but the truth ; he could liardly have suc- 
 * Ausust 1832.
 
 120 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " ceeded better. T\^iat lie has -SAi-itteii is very true and 
 " very false : but there are some old peojile, like my- 
 " self, who may Avish that the mixture had been less 
 " skilfully malicious, and a great deal more honest. 
 " There Avas some resemblance between the Doctor 
 " and my brother. Never could there be a vainer man 
 " than the one, or a prouder man than the other: the 
 " comic part of the same selfish passion, and the tragic. 
 " Both demanded admiration — the Doctor of his wig, 
 " his cassock, the silk frogs on his new coat; Walter 
 " of his very questionable jests recommended by a 
 " loud laugh. Both were very delightful when in good 
 " humour, and dangerously offensive when displeased. 
 " Mr. De Quincey represents the Doctor as talking 
 " gross nonsense ; and so he often did. But then, at 
 " other times, his conversation was the most eloquent 
 " and abundant in charming imagery that it has ever 
 " been my fortune to hear.* Both resented the slightest 
 " appearance of disrespect : but Parr was much the 
 " most placable and willing to be reconciled. Mr. De 
 " Quincey should have recorded his warm-hearted sin- 
 " cerity in friendshij:), which hardly failed when friend- 
 " ship had become not only dangerous but discreditable. 
 " Perhaps you would have thought that my brother 
 " excelled in genius, imagination, power, and variety, 
 " when at his best, as much as Parr exceeded him in 
 " all kinds of acquired knowledge. There was the same 
 ." resemblance in the warmth of their love and hatred; 
 " but Parr's love lasted the longest, and so did Wal- 
 " ter's hatred. It would be impossible to determine 
 " which of them hated one particular connection the 
 " most ; nor whether either had ever hated any one else 
 
 * This is entirely borne out by the account of William Taylor of 
 Norwich,
 
 ^T. 22-30.] DOCTOR PARK. 121 
 
 " SO much. Beside the great difference in the age of 
 " these competitors (Waker ^vas t^YentJ-three at the 
 " pubKcation of Gebir, and Parr fifty-one), and, at that 
 " time, of reputation, I think that they were kept from 
 " quarrels by mutual respect, by something like awe of 
 " each other's temper, and a knowledge that, if war 
 " besan at all, it must be to the knife. It would be 
 " great impertinence in me," Mr. Landor adds, " if any 
 " opinions were offered here on the Doctor's literary 
 " pretensions. But siu-ely the pretensions of a writer 
 " and reasoner ftimiliar, during many years, with Charles 
 " Fox, James Mackintosh, Bobus Smith, Richard Sharp, 
 " Samuel Rogers, and other distinguished people, coukl 
 " hardly have been so contemptible as it is now the 
 " fashion to suppose. I say this, though he once 
 " treated me more offensively than any one else ever 
 " did." 
 
 The correspondence of Parr and Landor, while the 
 latter was still at Oxford, has been mentioned in a pre- 
 ceding page ;* and such of Parr's later letters as I pos- 
 sess, with one or two of Landor' s, though of not much 
 moment in themselves and but a fragment of what 
 passed between them, will show well enough, as I quote 
 them from time to time in my memoir, the character of 
 their intercourse. Gebir, as soon as published, found its 
 way to Hatton, with a letter in which the writer told Parr 
 that, however proud and })resumptuous he might have 
 shown himself in the effort he had made, he rather thought 
 that during the time the Doctor was reading and examin- 
 ino; it he should himself be undero'oincv much the same 
 sensation as the unfortunate Polydorus, Avhile his tomb, 
 new-turfed and spruce and flourishing, was plucked for 
 a sacrifice to -ZEneas. But the Doctor's weak point was 
 
 * Ante, p. 43.
 
 122 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 poetry ; liis taste in that respect was " Bromwychian," 
 as Lanclor described it to Sonthey ; and the poem awa- 
 kened Httle interest in him till it appeared in its Latin 
 form. Yet was lie s\^aft to recognise a vigour and ani- 
 mation in his young friend's mode of writing, whether 
 verse or prose, which he knew to be out of the common 
 at that time; and mth amusing eagerness he did his 
 best to enlist him on Fox's side in the strife of politics 
 and papers then raging. 
 
 The share that Coleridge and Southey had in that 
 memorable strife is well known, and even Lloyd and 
 Lamb w^ere taking part with their puns and pleasantries. 
 They had, all of them, engagements on the Cornier or on 
 the Morning Post; Dan Stewart, Mackintosh's brother- 
 in-law, of whom Lamb has left a whimsical sketch, 
 being Magnus Apollo at the Post, and exercising at the 
 Coimer also not a little of the influence which he handed 
 over a few years later to Coleridge. But very different 
 was Lander's position from theirs. Those were days 
 when Southey would often walk the streets dinnerless 
 at dinner-time, without a shilling in his pocket for the 
 ordinar}^, or for bread-and-cheese at his lodgings ; when 
 he and Coleridge were content with Dan Stewart's 
 guinea a-week; and when he thought it "not amiss," 
 as he -tells his brother Tom, by eight months' contribut- 
 ing to monthly magazines and reviews, to make as 
 much as seven pounds and two pairs of breeches. Lan- 
 dor's bread-and-cheese and breeches were found for 
 him. He was not a hired soldier, but a volunteer ; and 
 seems never to have sought acquaintance with the re- 
 gular rank and file. His contributions, chiefly to the 
 Courier, were in the form of letters with or ^vithout his 
 name ; and though as fierce against Pitt and the war- 
 party as even Parr could desire, they had an awkward
 
 MT. 22-30.] DOCTOR PARR. 123 
 
 trick of bolting out of tlie Fox preserves and running 
 after game that was more to the writer's Kldng. For 
 a time, nevertheless, Parr appears to have kept him 
 within bounds, by the help mainly of Fox's fidus 
 Achates Robert Adair. 
 
 Several of Adair's letters to Landor are before me, 
 between the dates of 1800 and 1806. They show what 
 difficulty Parr had in bringing them together ; what a 
 shrewd opinion of Landor's possible value in the press 
 Adair formed at once ; how willing he was to overlook 
 even such anti-whig heresies as Landor's dislike of 
 William the deliverer; and what pains were taken to 
 put so clever a fellow in the proper way. He and Adair 
 wovild meet at Debrett's in Piccadilly, and go down 
 together to the House of Commons, " the most costly 
 " exhibition in Europe," as Landor amused Adair by 
 calling it ; and ultimately it was so arranged that access 
 to the reporters' gallery should generally be open to him. 
 They were present together, among other occasions, at the 
 stormy debate of that March night of 1801 when Lord 
 Castlereagh brought in his biU to prolong the act en- 
 abling the Lord-Lieutenant to put L'eland under mar- 
 tial law. Landor meanwhile was busy with his pen 
 against Pitt and the Ministrj'. He would send letters 
 for Adair's approval, seldom satisfied with them himself ; 
 whereas Adair only admitted his right to undervalue 
 such compositions on the ground that rich men might 
 be allowed to be prodigal, and to scatter about their libe- 
 ralities without too severely reckoning up the amount 
 of them. When Landor was absent from London, too, 
 I find Adair making it his business to examine back files 
 of the Courier to see if a particular letter of his had been 
 given ; wi'iting to him that he considers its omission to 
 be evidence of the degraded state of the English press ;
 
 124 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FKIENDSniPS. [Cook II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 excepting j\Ii\ Peny from this remark, as a man of in- 
 violable honour; and promising Landor better treat- 
 ment at the Morning Chronicle, if he will but consent to 
 contribute to that paper. 
 
 Adair had some cause for his bitterness about the 
 press, the Anti-Jacohin having singled him out for a suc- 
 cession of its most scurrilous jokes, and the ministerial 
 papers ever since keeping up the merciless battery. 
 He had in truth become a special mark for them by 
 exactly such ser\dce to the other party as he was now 
 trying to render in the instance of Landor ; his appear- 
 ance in the reporters' gallery among the press-micn, or 
 his introduction of some new pamphleteer to Ridgway 
 or Debrett, being frequent subjects of derision with Ellis, 
 Frere, and Canning. 
 
 " I whom, dear Fox, you condescend 
 To call your honourable friend, 
 
 Shall live for everlasting : 
 The Stygian gallery I'll quit. 
 Where printers crowd me as I sit 
 
 Half dead with rage and fasting. 
 Scotch, English, Irish whigs shall read 
 The pamphlets, letters, odes I breed, 
 
 Charm'd with each bright endeavour — 
 Alarmists tremble at my strain, 
 E'en Pitt, made candid by champagne. 
 
 Shall hail Adair the clever." 
 
 The same laugh at his pretensions and taste in letters is 
 in Canning's Counter- Einstle : 
 
 " Or art thou one, the party's flatter'd fool, 
 Train'd in Debrett's or Eidgway's civic school, 
 Who sees nor taste nor genius in these times 
 Save Parr's buzz prose — " 
 
 and in his Oriental letter from " Bauba-Dara-Adul- 
 " Phoola," the same unscrupulous wit, showing what
 
 ^T. 22-30.] DOCTOR PARK. ]25 
 
 scant accommodation might suffice for a brace of whif 
 bedfellows, again coupled Adair* and Parr. 
 
 " There -vvas great Dr. Parr, whom we style Bellendenus : 
 The Doctor and I have a hammock hetween us." 
 
 But this was the kind of thing that in those days all 
 had to expect who set themselves resolutely against the 
 " drunken democracy of Mr. William Pitt," as Landor 
 not inaptly christened the Anti-Gallican phrenzy. He 
 had soon to encounter it in his own person. " The 
 " Anti- Jacobin ""f he wrote to Parr, " has assailed me 
 " with much virulence — I am a coward and a profligate. 
 " On the latter expression, as I know not the meaning 
 " of it, I shall be silent. The former is a plain intel- 
 '' ligible word ; and if I discover the person who has 
 " made this application of it, I will give him some 
 " documents that shall enlighten his judgment at the 
 '' expense of his skin. Could you imagine it ? You 
 " also are mentioned with a proportionate share of in- 
 " solence. Let them pass. Who would stop a cloud 
 " that over-shadows his garden ? The cloud is transi- 
 " tory, the garden blooms. Thank God, I have a 
 " mind more alive to kindness than to contumely. The 
 " statue of Memnon is insensible to the sands that 
 " blow against it, but answers in a tender tone to 
 '*' the first touches of the sun. Come, come, let me 
 " descend from these clouds and this romance, at 
 " which you will laugh most heartily, and quote in my 
 " favour the example of ]\Ir. Lemuel Gulliver, who, 
 
 * '■ Bauha-Dara-Adul-Phoohi"' is of course '" Bol) Adah-, a dull 
 fool." 
 
 f This was not Canmng^s Anti-JacoJjiii and Wecldy Examiner, 
 but its successor, the Anti-Jacobin JRcview and Mar/azine : the same 
 that libelled Southey, Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, in the " toad and 
 " frog" caricature, and which is generally confounded with its hardly 
 more respectable parent and predecessor.
 
 12G GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " when the Liniputians chmbed and crept over him, 
 " forbore that contention which a more equal or a more 
 " formidable enemy would have aroused." We have 
 nevertheless now to show how weak was ]\ir. Gulliver's 
 deterring example, and how little formidable after all 
 was the enemy by whose censm-e the young j)oet could 
 be moved to resentment and reply. 
 
 IV. Attack of the Monthly Ee^tew. 
 
 At the 206th page of the 31st volume of the Monthly 
 Eevieiv, published in 1800, will be found the following : 
 
 " Gehir. 
 " An unpractised author has attempted, in this poem, the 
 difficult task of relating a romantic story in blank verse. His 
 performance betrays all the incorrectness and abruptness of in- 
 experience, but it manifests occasionally some talent for descrip- 
 tion. He has fallen into the common error of those who aspire 
 to the composition of blank verse, by borrowing too many 
 phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We must 
 further observe that the story is told very obscurely, and should 
 have been assisted by an Argument in prose. Young writers are 
 often astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to 
 their own heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers. 
 The author of the poem before us may produce something worthy 
 of more approbation, if he will labour hard, and delay for a few 
 years the publication of his next performance." 
 
 Exactly so. An ordinary reviewer cannot help this 
 sort of thing when an original book falls in his way; 
 and Landor, who had professed his readiness to be con- 
 tent with less than a dozen admirers if they were but of 
 the worthiest, might very well have smiled at this harm- 
 less review. Not small, indeed, was his amusement in 
 later years at precisely such critical effusions ; when he 
 would picture himself watching the appearance of a
 
 iET. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY EEYIEW. 127 
 
 first-rate book as the rarest of all occurrences, and 
 lauc'h at ordinary people's ways in slowly rising up to 
 the unaccustomed visitor. They were hke nothing so 
 much, he said, as carp in a pond when food is thrown 
 in : some snatcliing suddenly at a morsel and swallow- 
 in o- it ; others with their barb o;ently touchino; it and 
 passing it by ; others more disdainfully -vNTiggiing and 
 rubbing against it ; and others, in sober truth, such as 
 our friend here of the Monthly, in a genuine and puzzled 
 ignorance what to make of it, " swimming round and 
 " romid it, eyeing it on the sunny side, eyeing it on 
 " the shady, approaching it, questioning it, shouldering 
 " it, flapping it with the tail, tm'ning it over, looking 
 " askance at it, taking a pea-shell or a worm instead 
 " of it, and plunging again their heads into the com- 
 '' fortable mud." 
 
 In his own comfortable mud, however, the reviewer 
 was not to be left on this particular occasion. Landor 
 resolved to drag him forth and punish him, and with this 
 view planned a Prose Postscript to Gehir. This was a 
 wonderful production of its Idnd : impressed with cha- 
 racter, impetuous, scornful, eloquent, confident; spark- 
 ling vAih. turns of wit and with bright fancies ; critical 
 in Greek and Latin, and replete with other scholarship, 
 particularly of good old English : but withal so personal, 
 and so vehemently as well as (if it must be said) coarsely 
 ^\Tong in many ways, that for Landor it must be esteemed 
 a fortunate occm'rence that before the final step was 
 taken with it a friendly judgment should have inter- 
 posed. It was suppressed; but, finding it among his 
 papers, I shall not hesitate to give such portions of it 
 here as may now with propriety be preserved. Some 
 touches in it personal to liimself arc full of value; and it 
 is remarkable for the complete promise it gives thus
 
 128 GEBIR ; AXD EARLIEST FEIENDSHirS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 early of what was ultimately to place him in so high a 
 rank among Avi'iters of English prose. 
 
 He preaches from a peaceful text, as men bent upon 
 war are apt to do, prefixing a sentence from one of 
 the letters of Linnneus to Grono^^ns : " Ego potius tran- 
 '' quille Advere desiclero qnam ab adversariis ^-ictorias et 
 " tropnsa reportare :" the adversaries from whom, after 
 this self-den}-ing ordinance, he straightway proceeds to 
 ])luck their trophies and victories, being it should be 
 premised not alone the Monthly Re^aewers, and 2:)ro- 
 minently among them a certain Mr. Pybus who had 
 dabbled in verse and was supposed to have Avritten the 
 offending notice, but also the Anti-Jacobins and their 
 allies, including Mr. Isaac Disraeli who was just then 
 coming up, Mr. jSIathias of sm*prisingly absurd reputa- 
 tion, and some others. 
 
 The Anti- Jacobins and the general character of 
 their literature were well sketched at the opening. 
 " Gehir in different quarters," he says, " has been dif- 
 " ferently received. I allude not to those loyal critics, 
 " Avho, recently mounted on their city war-horse, having 
 " borroAved the portly boots and refurbished the full- 
 " bottomed perukes of the ancient French chevaliers, 
 *•• are foremost to oppose the return of that traitor, whom 
 " while he was amono;st them Englishmen called Free- 
 " dom, but now they have expelled him, Anarchy: since 
 " the very fu'st Reviews of this association were insti- 
 '• tuted, not merely for parade, but for hostility; not 
 " for exercise, correctness, and precision, but, so adven- 
 " turous and impetuous were the conscripts, for actual 
 " and immediate battle." 
 
 To the Critical and Monthly, as being of the old esta- 
 blishment, he passes next, and refers gratefully to the 
 notice by Southey, ignorant still of his name. " In re-
 
 ^T. Z2-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY KEYIEW. 129 
 
 " spect to Gehir the one is perliaps conducted by a par- 
 " tial, but certainly by a masterly hand. It objects, and 
 " indeed with reason, to a temporary and local obscm-ity, 
 " which I have not been able, or I have not been ^^-illing, 
 " or I have not been bold enough to remove : but never 
 " on the wdiole, since its first institution, has a poem been 
 " more warmly praised." Turning then to the MontJdi/, 
 he describes it as consisting of two misstatements: "that 
 " the poem was nothing more than the version of an 
 " Arabic tale ; and that the author, not content vnth. 
 " borrowing the expressions, had made the most awk- 
 " ward attempts to imitate the phraseology of Milton." 
 To which he replies, that there is not a single sentence 
 in the poem nor a single sentiment in common with 
 the Arabian tale. Some characters were drawn more 
 at large, some were brought out more prominently, and 
 several were added. He had not changed the scene, 
 which would have distorted the piece; but every line 
 of appropriate description, and every shade of peculiar 
 manners, were originally and entirely his own. Thus, 
 whether " this gentleman" had read the poem or not, 
 and whether he had read the romance or pot, his ac- 
 count equally was false and malicious. " For the ro- 
 " mance is in English, therefore he could have read it ; 
 " the poem is in English, and therefore he could have 
 " compared it. There is no disgrace in omitting to read 
 " them : the disgi'ace is, either in pretending to have 
 " done what he had not done, or in assuming a part 
 " which he was incompetent to support." 
 
 And there was a further and worse disgrace, which 
 Landor ingeniously fixes on his reviewer as an inference 
 from the charge against himself of having borrowed 
 IMilton's epithets and phrases. " There is a disgrace in 
 " omitting to read Milton ; there is a disgrace in forget- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FEIEXDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " ting liim." Thus early had taken root In his mind that 
 
 profound veneration for the most majestic of English 
 
 poets which steadily attended him A^'ithout abatement to 
 
 the close of life, and which, as it rises or falls in England, 
 
 may be taken as no indifferent or inexact measm'e-of- 
 
 value as well in poetry as in the taste for it. How could 
 
 this critic possibly have read or remembered ISIilton, 
 
 says Landor, when he accuses me of borrowing his 
 
 expressions ? "I challenge him to produce them. If 
 
 " indeed I had borrowed them, so little should I have 
 
 " realised by the dangerous and wild speculation, that I 
 
 " might have composed a better poem and not have 
 
 ^' been a better poet. But I feared to break open, for 
 
 " the supply of my games or for the maintenance of 
 
 " my veteran heroes, the sacred treasmy of the great 
 
 " repubhcan." Well, but if you had, some one still 
 
 might ask, where would have been the crime or the 
 
 harm; and why assail this critic, who may be paj'ing 
 
 you a comphment after all? Yes, rejoins Landor, if 
 
 my vanity could stoop so low and live on so little ; but 
 
 I have to add, " for the infonnation of my yomig a[3po- 
 
 " nent, what a more careful man would conceal, and 
 
 " what in his present distress will relieve him greatly, 
 
 " that this, which anion f]j the ATilo;ar and thouiihtless 
 
 " might currently pass for praise, is really none at all. 
 
 " For the languao-e of Paradise Lost ouo-ht not to be 
 
 " the language of Gehir. There should be the softened 
 
 " air of remote antiquity, not the severe air of unap- 
 
 " proachable sanctit}'. I devoutly offer up my incense 
 
 " at the shrine of jSIilton. Woe betide the intruder that 
 
 " would steal its jewels ! It requires no miracle to 
 
 " detect the sacrilege. The crime will be fomid its pun- 
 
 '• ishment. The venerable saints, and still more holy 
 
 " personages, of Eaphael or JNlichael Aiigelo, might
 
 ^T. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY EEVIEW. 131 
 
 " as consistently be placed among the Bacchanals and 
 " Sat}i's, bestriding the goats and bearing the vases of 
 ^' Poussin, as the resemblance of that poem, or any of 
 " its component parts, conld be introduced in mine." 
 Nothing coidd be better said than that. 
 
 Full of character, too, are the sentences that follow, 
 showing the •s\Titer at the outset of his life just as he 
 was to its close. With an amusing self-consciousness 
 and confidence which he would be a poor observer who 
 should describe as vanity, he calmly tells his reviewer 
 liow it was that such review-A^'iters as he is cannot help 
 the dull mistakes they make, and winds up his lesson 
 with an offer exactly prefiguring that with which he 
 startled the reviewing Avorld twenty-five years later, 
 when he promised a hot penny-roll and a pint of stout 
 for breakfast to any critic who could shoAV himself 
 capable of writing a dialogue ecpial to the worst of his 
 Imaginary Conversations. * 
 
 " I have avoided high- sounding words. I have attempted to 
 throw back the gross materials, and to bring the figures forward. 
 I knew beforehand the blame that I should incur. 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 sup- 
 port the full. I also knew the LocIt/ of my wine, and that years 
 must pass over it before it would reach its relish. Some will 
 think me intoxicated, and most will misconstrue my good- nature, 
 if I invite the Reviewer, or any other friend that he will intro- 
 
 * Even when writing his hoj'ish " Moral Epistle" there was the 
 same amusing self-confidence; some capital couplets at the, close of 
 that satire, in which the patriots Parham and Shippen are celolirated, 
 closing with a promise to them that each should be immortal ; but 
 that if any accident should prevent it, tliey were nevertheless to lie 
 tranquil in their tombs and say — 
 
 " — Ye Powers 
 Of Darkness ! it is Landor's fault, not ours I"
 
 132 GEBIE ; AND EARLIEST FEIEXDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 duce — but himself the most earnestly, as I suspect from his 
 manner that he iwetlses — to an amicable trial of skill. I will 
 subject myself to any penalty, either of Avriting or of ceasing to 
 write, if the author, who criticises with the flightiness of a poet, 
 will assume that character at once, and, taking in series my 
 twenty worst verses, write better an equal number in the period 
 of twenty years. I shall be rejoiced if he will open to me any 
 poems of my contemporaries, of my English contemporaries I 
 mean, and point out three pages more spirited, I will venture to 
 add more classical, than the three least happy and least accurate 
 in Gebirr 
 
 "Well : shall we be angiy at this % There is a re- 
 mark of Dr. Johnson's on the most affecting of Shake- 
 speare's plays, — where he says the characters of that 
 poet, however distressed, have always a conceit left them 
 in their misery, " a miserable conceit," — which has pro- 
 bably suggested to many a hnmane reader that if a con- 
 ceit should be all that is left to poor misery, it might 
 be hard at least to grudfTe it tliat. One would in like 
 manner say, that if a poet distressed by want of readers 
 should comfort his loneliness with a trifle of self- 
 praise, it can be hardly worth while to punish him for 
 it. Vanity in the vulgar sense, bred of abundance of 
 worshippers and of the fumes of perpetual incense, it 
 undoubtedly is not; and \A\k\. a somewhat touching sense 
 of what it really is, Landor follows up the remark just 
 quoted : pleading with simplicity the precedent of con- 
 tenders for a prize in old Greek days, and saying that 
 if others would have spoken for him, he should himself 
 have been silent. He describes the circumstances and 
 way in which Geblv was ^^•ritten, and refers to the earlier 
 poems published by him on leaving Oxford. The pass- 
 age has the interest of autobiography, and all of it is 
 worth preservation. 
 
 " Many will think that I should have suppressed what I have 
 said ; but let them recollect that among those ancient poets
 
 ^T. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY EEVIE^V. 133 
 
 who contended for the public prize, each must not only have 
 formed the same determination (for defects are not usually com- 
 pared with defects, but are generally contrasted with beauties), 
 but have actually engaged, and that too more openly and per- 
 sonally, in a still more strenuous competition. If my rights had 
 not been refused me, I should not have asserted my claims. Ram- 
 bling by the side of the sea, or resting on the top of a mountain, 
 and interlining with verses the letters of my friends, I sometimes 
 thought how a Grecian would have written, but never what 
 methods he would take to compass popularity. The nearer I 
 approached him, though distant still, the more I was delighted. 
 I may add, 
 
 ' belle agli occlij miei tende latine ! 
 Aura spira da vol che mi ricrea, 
 E mi couforta pur che m'avvicine.' 
 
 Tasso, Gcrus. L'lberata. 
 
 Several of these sketches were obliterated, still more laid aside 
 and lost ; various ideas I permitted to pass away, unwilling to 
 disturb, by the slightest action, the dreams of reposing fancy. 
 So little was I anxious to publish my rhapsodies, that I never 
 sate down in the house, an hour at once, for the purpose of com- 
 position. Instead of malring, or inviting, courtship, I declared 
 Avith how little I should rest contented. Far from soliciting the 
 attention of those who are passing by, Gebir is confined, I be- 
 lieve, to the shop of one bookseller, and I never heard that he 
 had even made his appearance at the window. I understand not 
 the management of those matters, but I find that the ^\Titulg of 
 a book is the least that an author has to do. My experience has 
 not been great ; and the caution which it has taught me lies 
 entirely on the other side of publication. Before I v»'as twenty 
 years of age I had imprudently sent into the world a volume,* 
 of which I was soon ashamed. It every where met with as 
 much commendation as was proper, and generally more. For, 
 though the structure was feeble, the lines were fluent ; the 
 rhymes showed habitual ease, and the personifications fashion- 
 able taste. I suffered any of my heroes, the greater part of 
 whom vrere of a gentle kind, to look on one side through the 
 eye of Pity, on the other through that of Love ; and it was with 
 great delight, for I could not foresee the consequences, that I 
 heard them speak or sing with the lips of soft Persuasion. So 
 
 * Sec ante, p. 58.
 
 134 GEBIE ; AND EARLIEST FEIEXDSHIPS. [Book IL 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 early in life I had not discovered the error into -which we were 
 drawn by the Wartoxs. I was then in raptures with what I 
 now despise. I am far from the expectation, or the hope, that 
 these deciduous shoots will be supported by the i\y of my ma- 
 turer years." 
 
 Then succeed passages not less calling for suppression 
 now than when originally written ; but connected with 
 others in which the style of re^dewing then preyalent, 
 and not excused by any special capacity in the review- 
 ers, is condemned too characteristically not to be worth 
 j)reservation. For, though wit and invective are here 
 also used unsparingly, what is said to the critic on the 
 author's behalf is a thing not too often remembered, 
 and yery often much needed to be said. Certainly the 
 best critic will be least disposed to object to it. The 
 remarks are introduced by an apology for the haste and 
 incorrectness with which Gehb' had been printed. 
 
 " StiU there was nothing to authorise the impertinence with 
 ■which the publication was treated by the 2Iont]thj reviewer. These 
 are not the faults which he complains of ; though these might, 
 without his consciousness, have first occasioned his iU-humour. 
 I pity his want of abilities, and I pardon his excess of insolence. 
 The merit is by no means small of a critic who speaks with 
 modesty. For, his time being chiefly occupied, at first, in Avorks 
 fundamentally critical, at least if we suppose him desirous to 
 learn before he is ambitious to teach, he thinks, Avhen he has 
 attained their expressions and brevity, he has attained their 
 solidity and profoundness. He must surely be above what he 
 measures, else how can he measure with exactness ? He must be 
 greater ex officio than the person he brings before him ; else how 
 can he stigmatise with censure, or even dismiss with praise ?" 
 
 But how if he should not be all this, nor have learned 
 any thing before he began to teach every thing ? How 
 if it should suffice him, insect-like, to enclose in his 
 flimsy web what he would be hopeless of reaching in its 
 flight? How if his production, too, should be only after
 
 ^T. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY EETIEW. 1S5 
 
 the kind of the miserable insect, a month in generating, 
 a moment in existence ? 
 
 " Miserable do I call them ? Alas for tlie wise and virtuous ; 
 alas for human nature ! Though Justice, in descending on the 
 ■world again, has given it a partial revolution, so that some vv^ho 
 ■were in sunshine are in shade — some of the highest and most 
 prominent — yet, Avhen I cast my eyes immediately around me, 
 and can discern -what passes both in public and in piivate, I find 
 too often that those are the least miserable -who occasion the 
 most misery. For, when any one has done an injury, the power 
 that enabled him to do it comes back upon the mind, and fills it 
 ■with such a complacency as smooths away all the contrition that 
 the action of this injury Avould have left. And little power is 
 requisite to work much mischief." 
 
 Some personal applications follo^.v, rounded off by a 
 passage where the wit and eloquence are at least as con- 
 spicuous as the bitterness. 
 
 " Flies and reviewers fill their belHes while they irritate. 
 Both of them are easily crushed, but neither of them easily 
 caught. They lead pleasant lives in their season. The authors 
 who can come into a share of a monthly publication are happy 
 as play--wrights who manage a theatre, or as debtors who pur- 
 chase a seat in our excellent House of Commons. 
 
 ' They in ^vhat shape they choose, 
 Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 
 Can execute their aa-y purposes, 
 And vv-orks of love or enmity fulfil.' 
 
 They hunt over domains more extensive than their own ; trample 
 down fences which they cannot clear ; strip o2 the buds and tear 
 away the branches of all the most promising 3'oung trees that 
 happen to grow in their road ; plough up the lawns ; muddy the 
 watei's ; and when they return benighted home again, carouse 
 on reciprocal flattery. Men of genius, on the contrary, may be 
 compared to those druidical monuments, stately and solitary, 
 reared amidst barrenness, exposed to all weather, unimpaired, 
 unaltered, which a child perhaps may move, but which not a 
 giant can take down." 
 
 The manuscript closes with a comment on the re-
 
 136 GEBIR ; AND EAr.LIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 I 797-1 805, 
 
 viewer's charge of " borrowing," interesting for its evi- 
 dence of Lanclor's literary reading thus early. Parti- 
 cularly should evidence and instances be adduced, he 
 remarks, where accusations of plagiarism are preferred ; 
 for the general charge can be almost always made ex- 
 cuse for ignorance and malice. " Plagiarism, imitation, 
 " and allusion, three shades that soften from blackness 
 " into beauty, are by the glai'ing eye of the malevolent 
 " blended into one." Yet how different they are, he 
 has as little difficulty in showing as in demonstrating 
 the Spartan character of even the blackest of the three. 
 You are punished not because you steal but because 
 you are detected, through want of spirit and address in 
 carrying off your booty. Some of his illustrations are 
 excellent, and were new to me. 
 
 In connection with the passage from Montaigne, for 
 example, which represents the goose arguing after his 
 fashion : " All the parts of the universe I have an in- 
 *' terest in : I have adA'antage by the winds, and con- 
 " venience by the waters : the earth serves me to walk 
 " upon, the sun to light me, the sky to cover me : I am 
 " the darling of nature ; and is it not man that treats, 
 " lodges, and serves me?"* — he places tvfo couplets by 
 Pope, taken from the first and the third epistle of the 
 Essay on Man : the art of the plagiarism consisting in 
 the different application made of the several parts of the 
 original. 
 
 " Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise, 
 My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." 
 
 " While man exclaims, ' See all things for my use ;' 
 ' See man for mine,' replies a pampered goose." 
 
 * The passage is in the 12th chapter of the 2d book of the Essays, 
 and will be found in Cotton, ii. 348.
 
 2ET. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE MONTHLY REVIEW. 137 
 
 Beside the famous lines on Addison, too, 
 
 " Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
 And, -^vithout sneering, teach the rest to sneer," 
 
 lie places this capital passage out of a personifica- 
 tion of Envy, from "a poet seldom read though of a 
 " vigorous mind and lively imagination," as he justly 
 characterises Phineas Fletcher : 
 
 " \^Tien needs he must, yet faintly then he praises, 
 Somewhat the deed, but more the means, he raises ; 
 So marreth what he makes, and praising most dispraises ;" 
 
 drawing from it the remark that if Pope had scrupled 
 to apply to his OA^'n use the colours thus prepared by 
 Fletcher, he might have failed in the exquisite perfection 
 of liis satire ; and appending this further reflection, that 
 the Knes which had done nothing for Fletcher's fame had 
 thus very materially helped the later poet to his happiest 
 piece, " in a department of writing where he adds the 
 " observation of Donne to the vivacity of Ariosto, and 
 " gives to the sword of Juvenal the point of Boileau." 
 
 In a spirit not less fair or discriminating he proceeds 
 to say of Adchson, in his double character of essayist 
 and poet, that even in the former, where indeed he is 
 ])erfectly at home, there is often more to commend in 
 the cleanliness of his dishes than in the flavour of his 
 meat. " His success, like that of most men, is the result 
 " of keeping within the scope of his abilities. He had 
 " wit, yet he never could have been a Moliere ; and he 
 " was penetrating in inquiry and skilful in argument, 
 " yet he never could have been a Beccaria. He is cool 
 " and dispassionate; he is therefore a good observer 
 " and a bad poet : but there is something, it must be 
 " acknowledged, inexpressibly charming in the manner 
 " of his narration. There is the slyness of Cupid and
 
 138 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 ^' the sweetness of the Graces." Tunes there were also, 
 Landor seems to have thought, Avhen there was the 
 signless without the attractiveness. He takes Pope's 
 side in their quarrel ; and expresses sui-prise that while 
 Boileau was attacking, in Quinavilt and others, men of 
 more lively- fancy than his own. Pope should so often 
 have been content to place himself lower than Addison. 
 But this reminds him again of his o-\^-n ]Monthl;y' and 
 Anti-Jacobin assailants, and that the fashion of Pope's 
 day had mightily altered since. 
 
 " The Fi-ench and vre still change ; but, here's the curse, 
 They change for better, and we change for worse." 
 
 Abroad, continues Landor, poets and men of letters 
 support even each other's imbecility by mutual em- 
 braces, while we waste our little strength in personal 
 animosities. These remarks are excellent : 
 
 " In France and Germany men of talents are received Avith 
 cordiality by their brethren. In England, if their brethren look 
 upon them, it is with a grudging eye ; as upon those no other- 
 wise connected with them than to share their fortune. There, 
 it is thought that genius and wit enhance the national glory. 
 In England, it is the acquisition of sugar and slaves. . . . Yet in 
 England too, if we look a century back, we shall find that poetry 
 in particular, while it was current, rose marvellously above its 
 level. In contemporary authors we still read the praises of 
 Parnell, of Mallet, of Ambrose Phillips, and of many others in- 
 ferior even to those ; and Johnson has written the Lives of 
 several whose productions would hardly gain admittance in the 
 corner of a provincial newspaper. Even the biographer him- 
 self, who, whatever may have been his taste, is too weighty to 
 be easily reprehended, seems often to rest with the greatest 
 complacency on poets the most inelegant and feeble ; and one 
 might think that, in his estimation, Collins and Gray are no 
 higher than Addison and Pomfret." 
 
 In all this the just feeling is not more apparent than 
 the coiTect taste.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] ATTACK OF THE 3I0XTHLY EEYIEW. 139 
 
 But tliere is little more to praise. I will take only 
 anotlier sentence occurring towards the close, and Avliieli 
 probably led to the suppression of what had been 
 w^ritten with so much A\-ise pains and foolish anger. 
 After attacking ]\Ir. Mathias and (with no very e\ident 
 reason) Mr. D'Israeli, he speaks of the latter as claim- 
 ing to be descended from an Italian family, and adds : 
 " He is one of the children of Israel neyertheless, as is 
 " also announced by the name.* I mark this circum- 
 " stance not by way of reproach, for in the number of 
 '• my acquaintance there is none more yaluable, there is^ 
 ''' not one more liyely, more inquiring, more regular; 
 " there is not one more yirtuous, more beneficent, more 
 '■' liberal, more tender in heart or more true in friend- 
 '• ship, than my friend Mocatta — he also is a Jew."' 
 It was on this being shown to jSIi*. islocatta that he 
 desired to read the whole, and the result was his suc- 
 cessful appeal to Landor that it should be entu'ely sup- 
 pressed. In such passages as I have now quoted it first 
 sees the light. 
 
 A letter of Mr. Isaac IMocatta's may be added, Avhich, 
 besides its allusion to these matters, shows that already 
 Landor was meditating a tragedy for the stage, and 
 his friend had the sense to warn him, that even if he 
 
 * The writings of Mr. D'Israeli seem to me always deserving of 
 respect ; and he valued, as well as did what he could to raise, the 
 literary character. But some of his critical opinions had amazed 
 Landor, who reprehends him also amusingly for his too great fami- 
 liarity with learned men, as where he calls the great Frcucli printer 
 Henry StejjJiens. " Here let me infomi this gentleman that though 
 " Scholars have sometimes taken this liberty, it is not allowed to 
 " other folks. He might as Avell call Cicero Vetch, and Fabius 
 " Maximus Broad Bean. Either Henri Etienne, which was his 
 " name, or Henricus Stcjihanus, as he wrote it in Latin, is the proper 
 " term. We cannot suppose that, coming over to England, he would 
 *' have called himself Henry Stephens."
 
 140 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 got so far as tlie tlieatre-door, tlie Chamberlain would 
 be sure to turn his key upon him. He dates from 
 St. Thomas's -square, Hackney, on the 5th Decem- 
 ber 1800. 
 
 "Dear Landor, I cannot a moment delay (notwithstand- 
 ing I feel much indisposed) to express how kindly I take your 
 resolution of suppressing the Postscript to Gehir which gave me 
 so much pain. In so doing you have paid me a compliment 
 which I know how to value. Since my last, I have given 
 your work a perusal which I do not intend shall be the last ; 
 for, like a scientific piece of music, it will probably gain by 
 repetition. It appears to me, however, more likely to please 
 highly some few than to be generally tasted. The typographic 
 errors are at least as numerous as you mention ; but I did not 
 include in them whcrefor^ which, if you recollect, I stated as a 
 peculiarity. Though I had never thought on the subject before, 
 it immediately struck me as proper, ' wherefor' being only by 
 elision ' where is the reason or motive for.' Most undoubtedly 
 a tragedy replete with sentiments such as you could not help to 
 infuse, would not be received by the manager or sanctioned by 
 the Lord Chamberlain ; so that I much wish you could hit on 
 some other plan more lucid and better brought out than you 
 have hitherto produced. For I honestly think your talents 
 equal to the greatest undertaking ; but I dread that impetu- 
 osity which disdains those minor niceties of language which are 
 yet necessary to show where the narrative stands and what is 
 going on. Are you not too profound and classical for most 
 readers? I think I discover that your imagination has been 
 warmed in more than one instance by Painting. By the bye, 
 do not construe my approbation to extend to your encomiums 
 on pride and revenge. Adieu. Yours, Is. Mocatta." 
 
 V. Serje.vnt Rough. 
 
 Unhappily Landor soon lost the advantage of so wise 
 a friend as Isaac Mocatta, his illness proving fatal in the 
 following year ; luit an extract from one of his earlier 
 letters may be added, as it touches another subject of
 
 JET. 22-30.1 SEEJEANT ROUGH. 141 
 
 difference between tliem. " I thank yon," Mocatta had 
 written in July 1800, " for sj^aring me the triumph of 
 " Buonaparte's lam-els. Had the event been as deci- 
 " sively the other way, I am afraid I could not have re- 
 " frained from teasing you a little. The Corsican boy 
 " has certainly proved himself a man. May he cro-\ATi 
 " his victories by dictating a moderate Peace ! I assure 
 " you, if I feel for the disappointment of the country I 
 " do not for that of lh\ Pitt. I was reading lately Plut- 
 " arch's essay on the character of Alexander, arguing 
 " that fortune was his enemy instead of friend, and 
 " that his successes were but equal to his merit. Some 
 " of his reasoning I felt as a silent reproof of my own 
 " condemnation of Buonaparte." The time was never- 
 theless approaching when the occasion for reproof was 
 reversed, and it was Landor who condemned the ambi- 
 tion and execrated the successes of Napoleon. 
 
 In July 1801 IVIr. Jacob Mocatta announced his 
 brother's death to Landor, to whom had been be- 
 queathed some books from his library (among them a 
 rare Sopliocles) and a Prometheus in ancient sculj^ture, 
 which, with his usual vehement appreciation for a 
 friend's gift, Landor declared to be by Phichas, and 
 which is now the property of his brother Henry. " I 
 " never knew a better or wiser man, or one more 
 " friendly," is his endorsement on the letter that told 
 him of the death and the bequest. Mocatta had just 
 lived lone enough to see the Peace which he had 
 hoped might be a temperate one, and which proved to 
 be the one of which every body was glad and nobody 
 proud. 
 
 Landor received ]\Ir. Jacob Mocatta's letter when 
 lodffino; at Oxford, where his brother Robert was now 
 in residence ; and the greater part of this year was
 
 142 GEBIK ; AXD EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 passed Ijetween Oxford and liOndon, where the peace 
 
 and Addiiigton's ministry fiu'nislied occupation for every 
 
 hody. One other affair, however, Landor had found 
 
 also time to take in hand, and there is allusion to it 
 
 in a letter of the following year to his brother Henry. 
 
 " This time year, too, I was to have been mamed"' (he 
 
 is referring to the recent marriage of Rough*). "But, 
 
 " after committing a piece of foolery in which I was 
 
 '' the puppet, the farce concluded. But wdiat can it 
 
 " signify? I can onl}' be sixty thousand pounds the 
 
 " jDoorer" — the peculiarity of such expressions in his 
 
 case being, that they import nothing which in conduct 
 
 lie is careful to contradict, but may in general be taken 
 
 not unfairly as the measure of what he did as well as 
 
 said. No man whom I have ever known of intellect 
 
 approaching to his, could so recklessly rush into the 
 
 gravest enterprises, or so carelessly make escape from 
 
 them. 
 
 With Rough he was noAv veiy intimate, and some- 
 thing must be said of their friendship, ^^len Landor 
 first knew him he had just left college, and in a fit of 
 admiration for Gehir had wi'itten in the manner of it a 
 tragedv on the Conspiracy of Gowrie which was about 
 as like Landor as ]Mi\ Rowe's imitation was like Shake- 
 speare. '\^^len I first heard his name, his poem Avas 
 extinct ; but its author was remembered as one of three 
 notorious radicals of the ]Midland circuit, Copley and 
 Denman being the other two, of whom it was proposed 
 by old Clarke, also of the Midland, that the whole three 
 should be hung up as republicans to the sign-post of 
 then' circuit inn mtli Copley in the centre as the greatest 
 malefactor of the three. Both literature and politics, 
 therefore, recommended Rough to Landor. 
 
 Copley was a little his junior ; but they had been at
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SEEJEAXT KOUGH. 143 
 
 Cambrid'Te too'etlier, were members of the same inn of 
 court, chose the same circuit, and for some time were 
 inseparable. But Hough's ambition, more hmited in 
 one direction tlian his friend's, took in a greater vai'ietj 
 of objects, and had a more generous though a weaker 
 side. T\"hat so many inferior people discover in the 
 desire to attach themselves to the wealthy and noble, 
 this young laA^Ter displayed in his eagerness to become 
 acquainted with men distinguished by their literature ; 
 and though his life had many failures, his persistent 
 love of men of learning and letters is not to be accounted 
 one of them. " He became familiar," says Mr. Robert 
 Landor, " with the lake poets, especially with Southey ; 
 " and with many of the younger people before the age 
 " of Scott, Byron, and Shelley. He vras an intense 
 " admirer of Walter's Gehir, and I think that Walter 
 " and Southey became iTltimately acquainted through 
 '•' him. Before then he had published a tragedy called 
 " TJie Conspiracy of Goicrie. My brother repaid his 
 " admiration ; for in such duties he was never ungi'ate- 
 " ful. Hence their very ardent friendship ; but Rough 
 '' Avas still more familiar with my brother Henry, who 
 " was then resident in L/ondon, ^Vhen called to the 
 " bar, INIr. Rough selected the ^Midland c;u-cuit ; and 
 ^' about the same time Henry was established at War- 
 " wick as a conveyancer, which profession he exchanged 
 " for that of a land-agent to some very large estates." 
 
 Of the few of Rough's letters that Landor kept, the 
 first is of the date of 1801, and explains a delay in re- 
 plying to one of Landor's by showing that the answer 
 had gone to Oxford, missed him there, and come back 
 to London. With anxious care he explains these crosses, 
 and very eagerly prays his fnend to believe that veiy 
 few thino;s would vex him more than the loss of the
 
 144 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805, 
 
 friendship Landor had once encouraged him to hope 
 
 "would be extended to him. 
 
 " From letters and the pursuits of imagination I have, since 
 I saw you, been widely sundered. A few law-books have been 
 my sole companions : and naturally not endowed with much 
 animation, I from long habit am now gryllo hehetlor. For 
 your ' lampoon' on Lord Warwick I thank you, and was not 
 a little diverted by it. In truth however I am displeased with 
 you for courting the least pleasing of the Nine, when so many 
 others of the beauteous sisters would be gratified by your suit. 
 He who retains in his cabinet shells gathered from the Sun's 
 palace- porch should not defile his collection with dirty funguses. 
 I am running on however with the confidence of a man forgiven, 
 forgetful that my pardon is not yet assm'ed to me." 
 
 His next letter consisting wholly of expressions of 
 delight at a communication from Landor, and making 
 return in kind for friendly Latin verses, we may assume 
 the completeness of the pardon; and one ofliis confessed 
 reasons for choosing the ]Midland circuit a few months 
 later, was the hope of thereby meeting his friend from 
 time to time in Warwickshire. The letter that announced 
 this purpose was written early in 1802. 
 
 " I have chosen the Midland circuit as that which profes- 
 sionally is as likely to be serviceable as any other ; and as I 
 am not very sanguine of expectation on the score of interest, I 
 solaced myself by raising enchanted visions of Friendship and 
 Literature. With these floating across my brain I called on 
 your brother Henry, who tells me that he fears you will before 
 the 23d of March have quitted Warwickshire. Now, my dear 
 Laxdor, if you wish me not to be utterly discomfited, contrive 
 to remain there a few days longer than you at present intend, 
 and let me at least have one hour of Poetry and Imagination 
 during my grave and weary pilgrimage. Seriously, I shall be 
 sorry not to see you. I am likely to have a sort of prefatory 
 and introductory letter to a Dr. Lambe, Avho is represented to 
 me to be a man on many accounts most worth knowing. Your 
 brother says you have a friend of that name. If it be so, I shall 
 assuredly not reject the opening, in the meanwhile if you have
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SEEJEANT KOUGH. • 145 
 
 any select companions indicted for rape or horse-stealing, I shall 
 be happy on your account to exert myself professionally in their 
 behalf. God be with you, and teach j'ou to deem me ever your 
 obliged and sincere friend, W. Rough. I have done nothing of 
 late but write an indifferent prologue for Lewis's tragedy. And 
 you too are idle !" 
 
 Better be idle than wiiting lampoons : and that 
 Landor more recently had neither been wholly nnoccn- 
 pied, nor occupied so badly, will appear at the proper 
 time. On this first of Rough's circuits the friends did 
 not meet; but the busy lawyer had a warm greeting 
 from the Landor family, and found that what had been 
 told him of Doctor Lambe was true. This young physi- 
 cian had succeeded to the practice of Doctor Landor 
 on liis reth'ement ; for him and his pretty wife Landor 
 himself had a strong liking; and in his friend's letter 
 immediately after the circuit they found very cordial 
 mention. 
 
 " I was much, very much, pleased with my reception at War- 
 wick, You know, I suppose, that Lambe and myself dined at 
 Parr's, and that he was veiy communicative and good-humoured. 
 Except that (as men of his age and character are apt to think) 
 he seemed to suppose young men less read than they are now 
 usually found to be, he showed not one false sentiment. From 
 your own family I received more attention than in any Avay I 
 could have expected ; and I had enough talk with Lambe to 
 assure myself that he was no ordinary man. His wife, as you 
 say, is an angel. All indeed was fairer than my hopes, and I 
 say this without a single fee. I regret that I shall not see you 
 in town. Is there, think you, a probability of my finding you 
 at Warwick in July ? I trust there is." 
 
 One other acquaintance was then also made by 
 Rough ; a farther acquisition of tliat first circuit, though 
 not mentioned in this letter, Avhicli especially claims to 
 be mentioned here. The reader owes to it a delight- 
 ful sketch of the }'Oung lawj'er himself, taken by a keen 
 yet kindly observer, at this opening of his career. 
 
 VOL. I, L
 
 U& GEBIR ; AXD' EAELIEST FEIE^*DSHIPS. [Book IE 
 
 1797-1805, 
 
 " Rough learnt from our familv," ^^-rites Mr. Robert 
 Landor to me, " on liis first A-isit to Warwick, that there 
 ^' was another brother resident in Oxford ; and on his 
 ^- Avny liack to toAv^i he paid me a visit too, quite nnex- 
 " pectedlv. In more than sixty years wliich have passed 
 *' since then, I have never met witli any one who had 
 ^' so httle reserve. In about an hour I had become 
 *' acquainted with all his prospects, literary and profes- 
 *' sional ; and in this first circuit he had taken the meaT- 
 *' sure of all his 'future competitors. At no time was he 
 " arrogant or contemptuous ; ■ but, giving ample credit 
 ^' to the pretensions -of other people, he did equal justice 
 ■'• to his ovni. Iii addition to the honour vvdiich he con- 
 ''' ferred upOn so young a man, I felt delighted with so 
 *' much frankness, good-humoiu', and joyous familiarity. 
 ^- I again mot him on his second circuii at Warwick, 
 " accompanied by ISh: Copley : both of them dined witlj. 
 ^' my brother Henry. Walter was not there. Rough 
 "' assumed the superiority which his greater standing 
 " and experience had given him ; for he had received 
 ^' a brief that very morning. He jiromised his future 
 ^' countenance to Copley as his junior, and Copley lui- 
 ^' dertook^to prepare himself for thefavom' by ascertain- 
 ^' ing the distinction between a drake and a duck. It 
 ^' seemed that Rough had opened the. prosecution of a 
 '^ thief who had stolen a ch'ake ; and Rough persisted in 
 '^' describing the bird as a duck. Corrected again and 
 ", again, he^^^repeated the word 'duck' in court; and 
 *' after dinner he maintained that there was no differ- 
 ^' ence. CojDley said that there was the same chfference 
 '*' as between a bilU and a cow; the bull and the drake 
 '" being the husbands of the cow -and the duck; and 
 '*• also, that if an}' thief had stolen a bull, the animal 
 ^' must be so described, and not as a cow. I would
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SERJEANT ROUGH. 147 
 
 " have spared you this silhness, if it had not been cha- 
 " racteristic both of Rougli's habits and of his future 
 " fortune. Many years after these jests, I became ac- 
 " qixainted, at Tenby, with an elderly solicitor of hio-h 
 " professional character who was personally also familiar 
 ^^ with Rough. He mentioned that the two friends had 
 ^' recently obtained promotion, and regTetted that one of 
 " them had hazarded a small practice by becoming ]\Ii\ 
 ^' Serjeant Rough. Both gained the same rank at nearly 
 " the same time. My informant said that Copley was 
 -'• quite safe ; but that Rough was so careless and slo- 
 ■" A'enly in his practice that the conduct of any important 
 ■" case could not be intrusted to him. I had left War- 
 ^' wickshire, and had seen him but two or three times 
 ^' since my departure. J\Iy brother Henry always de- 
 -' scribed him as not less hi^ppy and hopeful — Avith so 
 " many plans, literary and professional, that he began 
 ■" hone of them. He was so busy that he did nothing."* 
 . ]Mr. Landor adds a remark ujion the sudden and 
 early close of Rough's intimacy >vith his brother, so 
 ardent "while it lasted, which I do not feel entitled to 
 ,omit. To a great degree in all men the Earlier and the 
 -later years explain each other; and what is here said 
 of a point of character which time and experience cor- 
 rected, but failed to the yery last to remoye, will suggest 
 needful allowance for Avliat is to be said hereafter. 
 
 " Rough's intercourse with Walter lasted only three 
 ■^' or four years. It was ended by some unintentional 
 -" offence similar to that by Doctor Wiiithrop at Parr's. 
 " Either Rough had smiled at a false argument, or in- 
 
 * One tliiuks of Chaucer's pleasant couplet in Jdi picUire of a 
 law'yer of his time : 
 
 " No whcr so besy a man as he ther n'as, 
 And yit he semedu besier tlum he was,''
 
 lis GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " terrupted my brother in some other "way, before several 
 " guests, whereupon Waher left his house and renounced 
 " his acquaintance. Your intercourse did not begin till 
 " many years, and a larger knoAvledge of society, had 
 " taught more self-control : and he must have felt more 
 " afraid, as well as unwilling, to offend you. But not 
 " twenty 3-ears ago he refused ever to see again a 
 " schoolfellow whom he valued almost as highly as 
 " Birch. It seems ungrateful on my part to remember 
 " these frailties — for, long after our early affection had 
 " ceased, he endured much more patiently my remon- 
 " strances and reproaches than those of any other per- 
 " sons, being resolved that we should never quarrel 
 " again as we had done almost forty years ago. Yet 
 " such knowledge is necessary if you would describe 
 " him truly. It Avas for the sake of his peace and repu- 
 " tation that I so often gave, or hazarded, oifence." 
 
 Nor had Rough scrupled to hazard it as well, during 
 the time of their intercourse. His high admiration for 
 Landor's powers, cherished all the more because shared 
 by so very few, made him keen to the perception of 
 faults that obstructed their healthful exercise; and, 
 genial, careless, good-natured as he was, he remon- 
 strated more than once against complaints which he 
 justly thought not the most manly. The Werterism of 
 that day was the Byronism of a quarter of a century 
 later ; but though Landor had to pass through this and 
 other distempers of youth, happily they left no mark 
 upon his Avritings. There is a tone in Rough's remon- 
 strances that commands respect and sjanpathy.* 
 
 " Dimmer than my eyes have been for this many a day," he 
 writes, " would they now be, my dear Landoe, if I believed your 
 
 * The letter is dated "May, Thursday 13th (1801), 10 Farrar's 
 " Buildings, Inner Temple."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SEEJEAXT ROUGH. 149 
 
 letter from Bath ■written in other than a casual and momentary 
 distemperature. No, no, my friend, I cannot and will not think 
 but that you have strength enough to fight against the sleep- 
 less nights jon speak of. This world of ours, if not a world of 
 chrysohte, is notwithstanding a bauble worth our looking at ; 
 and he who plays with the trinket is surely wiser than he who 
 sits in a corner and cries for the moon, which is out of his 
 reach. . . . Come, come, rouse yourself and Avrite. If you must 
 die, it is at least your duty to leave something behind you ; 
 and though Gebh- will do much, yet I am persuaded it is in 
 your power to do still more. Literature, like other things, as 
 often obtains the reward of praise by quantity as quality ; and 
 we are all of us so httle important to others, that unless we put 
 them in mind of us daily, we shall scarcely avoid being forgotten. 
 It is strange that you should be so insensible to the advantages 
 you possess as you seem to be. / am hourly rating my hard 
 fate, that compels me to pursue a profession in which Letters 
 rather impede than assist, and in which I am forced to exert 
 much benevolence to save me from despising most of my co- 
 labourers. You, on the other hand, are at liberty to move 
 whithersoever inclination leads — with a more than adequate 
 competence now, and with an assurance of a richer fortune in 
 years to come ; with the possession not merely of the love, but 
 the power, of intellect ; with the consciousness that you are 
 pursuing that which such beings as Homer, Virgil, and Milton 
 have cultivated before you ; and with a chance of gaining the 
 reward which they have gained. I address you thus freely be- 
 cause I suspect not only that j'ou, but that our friend Lambe is 
 a little tinctured with that sickness of mind which prompts us 
 to fret at the seeming respect paid to those who sleep on 
 gilded sofas and whose houses are castles — sofas pressed by illi- 
 terate indolence, and castles inhabited by folly. In all else he is 
 faultless. His wife, as you have said, is an angel. ... I will not 
 add to your naturally disobedient spirit by urging you to read, 
 from which you tell me you are severely prohibited. But that 
 the cause of that prohibition may speedily be removed, I do 
 most earnestly pray. Believe me your grateful and affectionate 
 friend, W. Roucai." 
 
 Anticipating my iiaiTative a little, I may add that 
 before the middle of the follo^ying year Rough's bachelor 
 life had ended, and, in thanking Landor for good wishes
 
 150 GEBIR ; AXD EARLIEST FPJEXDSHirS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 sent to him, he had ralHed his friend again upon his tone 
 of despondency, adjured him for heaven's sake to keep 
 up his spirits, and, with much grateful allusion to Doctor 
 Landor and the house at Warwick, expressed his hope 
 to be in a few weeks settled in a house of his own, where 
 he siiould at all times he eager to receive, and when 
 necessary to nui'se, the friend to whom he owed so much. 
 " My Henrietta I have at present left in the country. 
 " Be assiu'ed, however, that she is fully disposed to wel- 
 " come you as the most valued of her husband's friends.'' 
 His Henrietta was Jack Wilkes's daughter; and IVIr. 
 Robert Landor's brief allusion to her, and to the leading 
 points of the later life of her husband, must satisfy 
 whatever further interest my readers may feel in Lan- 
 dor's once celebrated, now forgotten friend, Chief-Justice 
 Rough.* 
 
 * Since this pnge was iu type I have received also some interesting, 
 recollections of Hough from my old friend Sir Frederick Pollock con- 
 fii'matory on every point of Mr. Landor's sketch. '• He became a ser- 
 " jeant on the 30th of May 1808, before I settled in London. He was 
 " in a batch of Serjeants with William Manley, and with Albert Pell 
 " who afterwards led the Western circuit and became a judge in 
 " bankruptcy. Five years later, in July 1813, Copley became a' 
 " Serjeant, and immediately extinguished Rough on his circuit ;' 
 " compelling him to seek for a maintenance in some judicial ap-' 
 " pointment abroad. He was made, first, chief-justice of Deme- 
 " rara ; where (as usual) the lawyer-judge quarrelled with the 
 " soldier-governor about some question of feminine precedence, the 
 " governor taking out some lad}' before the judge's wife : and here^ 
 " I think, Rough lost his wife. But to go back to 1808. I used to 
 " hear a great deal, and see a little, of him in the society of Mrs. 
 " Barbauld, Lucy Aikin, Mr. Aikin (son of the Doctor), and Mrs.- 
 " Aikin (daughter of Gilbert Wakefield). They all had the highest 
 " opinion of him, and expected him to be a great success at the bar: 
 " nor were his claims contemptible. His countenance was pleasing, 
 " his voice agreeable, his conversation lively ; if not powerfully, he 
 " talked always well and fluently, and in public his command of- 
 " language never failed him ; but for great business he was unfit. 
 *' He was more literary than legal j and had more elegance thaa
 
 ^T. 22-30.] SERJEANT ROUGH. 151 
 
 " ^Ir. Rouo;!! Iiad marriecl an illeoitimate daua;hter 
 " of the patriot John Wilkes ; attracted rather by the 
 " father's celebrity than the daughter's beauty. When 
 " he and I first met at Warwick, he proposed to travel 
 ^' a hundred miles by the stage-coach that he might 
 " attend a Christmas ball, and dance Avith Doctor Parr's 
 " daughter, whom he had never seen. As had been 
 " foretold, while ^Ir. Copley's profession advanced, Mr. 
 •" Kough's receded — and now he is a family man. Very 
 " reluctantly, he relinquished his hopes of a seat in the 
 " House of Commons — as solicitor-general, attorney- 
 5' general, on his way to better things. TJien he would 
 ^' find leisure to begin, at last, a very great poem^ 
 ^' Perhaps it was through the interest of the first Lord 
 " Lausdowne that he became chief-justice in one of 
 •" the AVest Indian islands : but his heart was left for the 
 " House of Commons, and he soon retmnied to it. Some 
 " quarrel about precedency at the governor s ball, be- 
 ^' tween ]Mi's. Rough and the wife of a general or colonel 
 ^' who commanded the garrison there, was decided un- 
 ,*' satisfactorily; and the chief- justice, if such was his 
 *' title, retmnied to England. I think that by tliis time 
 ^' Copley, had succeeded Lord Eldon as lord chancellor 5 
 " and if so, there were few men who could congratulate 
 *• him more sincerely than Hough; fpr Rough seemed 
 
 strength. From what I used ulwaj's to hear of his strong aifec- 
 tions, his good temper, and amiable character, I can understand 
 a great intimacy between him and Landor or 3Iackiutosh — such 
 as exists between the vine and tlie forest-trees that support it. I 
 never saw his verses, but tliey were greatly commended by Miss 
 Burge's and the ol a/jLcjii. In 1813 I married, and saw very little moi'd 
 of that literary society, Avhich seemed to meet merely that they 
 might praise each other. I saw Rough's declining business, and 
 heard with pleasure of his appointment. He did not return to the 
 bar ; and I think I never saw him again. He died chief -justice 
 of Ceylon."
 
 152 GEBIE; AXD EAELIEST FrjEXDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1 797-1 805. 
 
 " quite incapable of jealousy, and his own turn must 
 " come soon. Meamvliile he could not resume his 
 " former practice, and he had, I believe, two or three 
 " children. It was thought, unjustly, that his old friend 
 " might have forwarded his wishes more effectually by 
 " obtaining for him some such appointment as woidd 
 " keep Mm at home. But it is not improbable that the 
 " lord chancellor may have doubted his qualification 
 " for much responsibility so near to the House of Com- 
 " mons ; and Rough neyer changed his poKtical opinions, 
 " as Coplej' had done. At last, Mr. Rough was con- 
 " strained to accept the chief-justiceship of Ceylon. 
 " There he lest his wife ; and after the customary resi- 
 " deuce his own health failed, and for its restoration he 
 " retm'ned to England. ISIy brother Henry saw him, 
 " but I did not ; and I must caution you against too 
 " much confidence in my accuracy after more than fifty 
 " years. I cannot consult my brother, as his memory is 
 " far worse than mine ; and we haye outliyed all our 
 " contemporaries. Unable to accomplish such an ex- 
 " changs as he desired, Mr. Rough returned to Ceylon, 
 " and died there. He was kind, friendly, social; and 
 " of much more than average capacity : but too whim- 
 " sical for much success even as a poet." 
 
 How many a like career may we read in this, of 
 brilliant design and imperfect execution, of the eager- 
 ness without the pui'pose to excel, of judgment ready for 
 a friend's guidance and insufficient for oiu' oxaii, and 
 yet of ardent hopes so sui*yi\dng every disappointment 
 as to be themselves no mean compensation for all.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] PARK AXD ADAIR. 153 
 
 YI, CORPvESPOXDIXG WITH PaER AX^D AdAIE. 
 
 Triien Soutliey was at Cintra in tlie summer of 1800 
 lie had written to his friend Humphrey Davy at Bristol, 
 " I see the author of Gehir has been translating from 
 " the Arabic and Persian. Can there possibly be 
 " Arabic and Persian poetry which the author of Geliv 
 " may be excused from translating?"* This was an- 
 other of those " little pubHcations" of which his brother 
 has spoken, hastily conceived, more hastily printed, 
 forgotten as soon as published, yet with fancies and 
 thoughts that deserved more careful presentment and 
 a longer life. It was not from the Arabic and Persian 
 at all, but was a very clever imitation of such speci- 
 mens of Eastern literature as were then derived chiefly 
 through French translations ; and, consisting altogether 
 of not more than twenty quarto images, was accompanied 
 by notes in about an equal number that might have set 
 by the ears as many score of learned combatants, if the 
 notice ch'awn to them had borne any kind of proportion 
 to the loudness of the demand made for it. Bvit as 
 their scholarship attracted nobody, it was quite as well 
 
 * In a letter to Mr. Crabbe Robinson of the 2Gth April 1S3C, 
 writing of Goethe's translations and translators he adds : " It is 
 " curious that, when I was about three-and-twenty, I wrote some 
 " poetry in imitation of the Persian and Arabic. Few copies I 
 " believe were printed, and perhaps none sold. I never thought of 
 " making an inquiry about them. There are three or four of Hafiz 
 " not bad — I question where there is any thing else positively 
 " good in the whole range of Eastern poetry, except the Jewish," 
 Two-and-twenty years later he reproduced some of these imitations 
 (Z>/7/ Stichs) with the remark that they had originated m a friend's 
 having observed to him, on his seeming to undervalue the Orientals, 
 that he should be glad to see how any one would succeed in an 
 attempt to imitate them.
 
 151 GEBIR ; AXD EARLIEST FEIE^^DSHIPS. [Book IL 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 that wliat else tliev contained should have passed un- 
 challeno;ed. The thino- fell dead-horn, no one carino; 
 even to raise a douht of the anthenticity of the so-called 
 Orientalisms ; and Landor used always to say that the 
 imposition certainly had succeeded with Parr. The 
 old scholar was never an adept at poetry, and his brain 
 was just now occupied and overfilled Vvith politics. 
 
 " My good friend," runs one of his notes at this 
 time (Landor being in London), " pray go to the House. 
 " I have prepared Mr. Adair for an interview vnth you 
 " — as a man of intellect, and my valuable friend. Call 
 " on him in Great -marlborough- street, and leave a 
 ^^ card. The mighty are .not fallen, but they have de- 
 " scended to avoid being pushed down now, and to 
 " secure being raised up hereafter. . God bless you. 
 ^' !Mrs. Parr desires her kind ren;ards. We often talk 
 " of you, "Walter. I am truly yours, S. Parr."' 
 
 " Tlie mighty" were ^h\ Pitt and his friends Wind- 
 ham, Grenville, and Dundas, who had just retu'ed to 
 make room for Mr. Addington. The whole business is 
 now so completely dead and gone that it would only try 
 the reader's patience to tell him. hovf Pitt, in carrying 
 the Union, is alleged to have made promises to the Irish 
 Catholics which he could neither keep 'nor break %\-itli 
 decency;' how he was thereupon supposed, to have had 
 nothing for it but to quit the seat of power for a time/ 
 glutting somebody in to keep it Avarm and disengaged till 
 he should he al)le to return to it ; and Iioav it was that 
 thus came about that ludicrous thin£r called the Addino- 
 
 ton Administration. But thouo-li all the animation and 
 
 o ■ , 
 
 interest have gone out of it now, it was once filled vividly 
 Anth both ; and the best kind of notion I can give of 
 Landor s pursuits and habits of thought at this time in 
 <:onnection with it will be derived fi*om a few extract?.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] PARE AND ADAIR. 153 
 
 of letters tlieii addressed to liim, and of letters written 
 by himself. 
 
 Truth to say, however, this is not an easy task, with 
 Parr's letters at least. It is as chfficult to decipher 
 his handwriting* as to connect his sentences when deci- 
 phered. He has twelve words where one would do, and 
 as many seventhlys and lasth's for every cUvision of a 
 subject as one of the old Puritan preachers. In A^ehe- 
 mence as well as abundance of language, too, his ex- 
 ample was a l^ad one for Landor ; whose own self-suffi- 
 cient way of judging both men and things, if at this 
 time happily restrained rather than encouraged by any 
 one Avhose judgment he respected, might not have 
 gro\A^i into the unfortunate habit which tyrannised over 
 him in later years. Certainly no lessons were to be 
 ch'avrn from Parr, either of prudence in forming opinions 
 or moderation in expressing them. 
 
 Upon the first news of Pitt's resignation he wrote 
 to Landor to expose what he called the deep and mis- 
 chievous craft of the impostor. He wanted it laid open 
 to the public in parliamentary speeches, in newspaper 
 paragraphs, in general conversation, and in political 
 pamphlets; and with a view to each and all, Landor 
 was to do. what he could. Ao'ain and aojain the alarm- 
 was .to be sounded iu every quarter ; and in every 
 quarter were to be proclaimed the aggravations of his' 
 misbehaviour to the 'king and the Irish: He had be- 
 trayed the king and insulted the Irish, he had betrayect 
 tlie Irish and insulted the king. But it should all be 
 ripped up in the House of Commons. Why did he 
 
 '^ " You always wrote hierogl3'phically," says Charles Lamb to 
 George Dyer, " yet not to come up to the mystical notations and 
 " conjuring characters of Doctor Parr.?' And for an amusing illus- 
 tratiou of Parr's hieroglyphics £ee ILogcrs's Tahlc-Talk, p, CA. ,
 
 156 GEBIR; AXD EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1S05. 
 
 pledge himself to tlie Irish vrithout consulting the king ? 
 AYhy did he not consult the king before pledging him- 
 self to the Irish ? If he did consult the Mng, Avho was 
 to blame? If he did not consult the king, what was 
 the reason ? If he expected assent, then had he most 
 wantonly brought the king into a scrape. If, at the 
 moment of consultation, he expected dissent, then, at 
 the moment of action, he must have intended to compel 
 «ssent. — And so, to give but a few faint echoes of a 
 letter that wovdd take as many pages to print as are 
 here compressed in lines, and as many weeks completely 
 to decipher, the excited old whig see -saws through 
 a bill of indictment asrainst the retiring minister, to 
 which he '\Aishes Landor to give all the " attractiveness 
 " of his style, all the power of his eloquence, and all 
 " the bitterness of his sarcasm." 
 
 Landor nevertheless had some difficulty, which it was 
 the object of a second letter to remove ; and from this I 
 am able to extract, ^^'ith sufficient compendiousness, ten 
 several head-s of accusation, which, after due time for 
 reflection. Parr submitted as the objects Pitt must have 
 had in view, and the advantages he had proposed to 
 himself, in resigning. The shrewdness of the matter 
 and pomposity of the manner are Parr all over. 
 
 " I will enumerate the advantages he hopes to derive. 1. 
 Public attention is turned from the perUs of war to the change 
 of administration. 2. Pitt -will rise by comparison with the 
 weakness of his successors ; and while action is suspended, his 
 power to act will be forced upon men's memories, sifted in 
 their conversations, and enlarged in their imaginations, by con- 
 trast with notorious incapacity ; and thus he escapes from their 
 anger, he diverts that anger to other objects, and he recalls to 
 our minds the brighter parts of his character at a crisis when 
 every man feels that ministerial talents are necessary for na- 
 tional safety. 3. He has carried off his whole strength in a 
 mass, and in a mass he will preserve it, that it may be brought
 
 JE.T. 22-30.] PAKR AXD ADAIR. 157 
 
 again into action in a mass. 4. He has gone out in defence of 
 a popular measure, and the circumstance ■ndll secure a stout 
 party in Ireland, and will not be unwelcome to the sectaries of 
 England. 5. He has thrown the whole responsibility upon the 
 junto and the king : so as to induce a suspicion that he neither 
 has been nor "svill be governed by that secret and mischievous 
 Cabal, which controlled his father, which excludes Mr. Fox, and 
 to which, as their primary source, all the disasters of the reign 
 are usually traced up. 6. His descending orb is surrounded 
 with that glory which accompanied its meridian heighth, for it 
 is he who with magnanimity conducts the loan, and it is he 
 upon whose wisdom the money-holders rely. 7. He has con- 
 trived to show the inflexibility of the king's mind towards the 
 whigs, when in preference to them even the weakest persons are 
 called into office, at a most dangerous juncture. And this con- 
 sideration will have its due weight with the selfish and corrupt 
 parliament. 8. By his organ Lord Grenville he has instructed 
 his followers what part they are to take in supporting the same 
 principles under the guidance of other men, and consequently 
 he forbids them to prepare for acting according to other prin- 
 ciples with the members of opposition. 9. He will assume an 
 air of moderation ; he will affect not to clog the wheels of 
 government ; he will claim the merit of assisting measures 
 which he no longer guides ; he will find in them opportunities 
 sometimes for vindicating his own, when they were similar, and 
 sometimes for praising his own, when they were better ; and 
 thus he Avill encourage the superficial to believe, and the cun- 
 ning to maintain, that his ambition and his resentment are 
 quelled by his disinterested loyalty and unfeigned patriotism. 
 Finally, he knows that between himself and his sovereign there 
 is only one strong point of difference ; but that between his 
 rivals and the crown there is not only the same point of differ- 
 ence with greater provocations, but other points of even supe- 
 rior magnitude from which Mr. Fox will never swerve, and to 
 which the king will never accede. He therefore has quitted his 
 power at a time when it was most difficult to retain it, and 
 when he could take the best preparatory measures for resuming 
 it ; and, at the moment of resuming it, he will convert the 
 odium of beginning and misconducting the war into popularity 
 by making the peace." 
 
 These weve the texts he would have Lanclor write
 
 158 GEBIR : AXD EAELIEST FEIEXDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 Upon. Even yet the mischief might he staved. In 
 the matter of the ohl tories Pitt had heen reckoning 
 -without his host. They woukl be inflamed by all this. 
 If proper measures were taken, never was a period 
 more favourable for hunting him down ; and never 
 Such a favourable period for his return to power, if 
 such measures Avere not taken. Some miswivino; never- 
 theless whether Landor was the man to take them, and 
 whether he could be trusted for not straying too far 
 a-field, creeps into the letter. ^'I wish," says Parr, 
 ''• you would expand the matter contained in this letter, 
 " and publish it in the Courier, and lay out upon it that 
 " vigorous eloquence ^^ith Avliich you often charm my 
 " ears. It will have effect, if you will keep back some 
 *' of yoiu' favourite and perhaps erroneous o]:)inions." 
 There were also other difficulties that made Landor 
 uot very manageable. From the earlier attempts to 
 get him into regular harness, and put him under proper 
 leaders, he seems to have shied and bolted incessantly. 
 *•' Why," asks Parr in the same letter, " don't you go 
 f • down to. the House ? I will give you letters of intro- 
 " duction to men you will like ; and from the civility of 
 ^•' being introduced by them into the House, why should 
 ^' you shrink?" These strenuous efforts are not without 
 their effect, and we see him at the House at last under 
 charge of Adair. 
 
 But before turning to the letters of that stamichest 
 of whigs, a few further notes may be given from those 
 of Landor and Parr. Here is an acknowledgment from 
 the young poet of the old scholar s suggestions and 
 praise : 
 
 " I am rejoiced to find that you have not forgotten me, and 
 I raise myself up from the bosom of indifference to the voice 
 and the blandishments of praise. I never court the vulgiir, and
 
 s:t. 22-30.] PAIIE AND ADAlE. 150 
 
 how immense a majority of every rank and description this 
 happy word comprises ! Perhaps about thirty in the universe 
 may be excepted, and never more at a time. But I know how 
 to vahie the commendation you bestow on me ; for, though I 
 have not deserved it, nor so largely, yet it will make me attempt 
 to conquer my idleness, mj' disgust, and to reach it some time or 
 other. You will find that I have taken courage to follow the 
 path you pointed out, in pursuing the execrable [Pitt]. I sub- 
 join my letter. At present I have not sent it to the printer, 
 'though it has been finished a fortnight. The reason is this. I 
 wrote one a thousand times better than the present, in which I 
 aimed my whole force at a worse man than [Pitt] — there are 
 only two, and it was not W[indham] — and I sent it for inser- 
 tion to the Courier. Kow, svich is my indifference, that, when.- 
 once I have written a thing, I never inquire for it afterwards ; 
 and this was the case in respect to my letter. I have not seen 
 the Courier since, but I have some suspicion that it was not 
 inserted." 
 
 Tliat. is just tlie man as lie was IcnoAvn to me fortj 
 and Mtj years later: fancying always that he could 
 place himself " on a hill apart" even from those Avith 
 whom he was actually contending; and mistaking for 
 indifference both to opiniotis and to consequences, what 
 Avas but exaggerated impatience of contradictory opinion, 
 and a ninning away from consequences. 
 
 AYhat the tone of his letters to the Courier is likely 
 to have been, we are not without hints of. 
 
 " Did Mr. Pitfc expect, or did he not,' the roj-al assent to his 
 transaction with the Irish? I hardly know in which instance 
 of the two his crime would be the greater. If he did not^ how 
 gross the deception ; how, deep and unpardonable the insult ; 
 how cruel and killing a mockery !" 
 
 To which Parr rejoins in a letter taking a less 
 favourable view tlian before of Pitt's chances of success 
 in his " diabolical'' scheme. The peace had noAv been 
 made by Addington, and that advantage lost to his 
 expecting heir and successor. 
 
 " Pitt has insulted the king by pledging his word ; he has
 
 ICO GEBIR; AND EAELIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1S05. 
 
 betrayed liim by throAving responsibility upon him for the dis- 
 appointment of the Irish. He means to compel the sovereign 
 to recall his former ministers when the inefficiency of their suc- 
 cessors appears to the crown, the parliament, and the country ; 
 and when the alternative lies between Pitt, who contends only 
 for one point, and Fox, who will insist upon many. But he 
 cannot recover his popularity with the nation ; he cannot regain 
 all his strength in parhament ; he cannot efface our remem- 
 brance of the war, by seizing upon office to make the peace ; 
 and yet he may reestablish his influence over the mind of his 
 sovereign. My friend, we have gained one point by these strug- 
 gles between the ministry and the junto ; and the people, if 
 they are wise, will direct their suspicions, indignation, and re- 
 sistance against both. I wish you would look into the Second 
 Book of Xenophon's 'EWtiviko, for the character of Meno. Many 
 but not all the circumstances have the very strongest resem- 
 blance. Pray consider this last passage, for it luminously de- 
 scribes the subserviency of arrogance to cunning in the bosom 
 of this man My printing goes on but slowl}-. You esti- 
 mate rightly the great intellectual power of ]Mr. Wynne. Cathe- 
 rine [Parr's daughter] is at Mackintosh's, No. 14 Searle-street. 
 She leaves town in a day or two, and you may send any mess- 
 age by her. Watch what is passing. Mrs. Parr joins me in best 
 Avishes and best thanks. — I am, my dear Walter, ever your 
 fi-iend, S. Parr."* 
 
 I liave spared the reader, there, ten lines of Xeno- 
 phon ; though Greek is more legible than English in 
 the writing of Parr, and a substantial scrap interlarded 
 from the ancients is some help to his own puiFs and 
 pastry. But he carried the habit to excess, as he did 
 most things ; and Holof ernes himself was not more 
 ridicidons in chopping and changing for Latin or 
 Greek the baldest phrases of his mother tongue, than 
 this genuine scholar often was. See how he aclaiow- 
 ledges a gift from Landor: 
 
 " I have been eager to acknowledge the l^aeii XF^'^^ under 
 
 * Addressed to " Walter Landor, Esq. at E. Bevan's, Esq. No. 10 
 " Boswell-court, Carey-street." April 1801.
 
 iET. 22-30.] PARK AND ADAIR. 161 
 
 "which you have laid Mrs. Parr and myself by the present of a 
 very instructive book ; and of maps the most accurate, the most 
 splendid, and the most interesting that ever came into my pos- 
 session." 
 
 See also liovf he talks, or perorates, about the peace : 
 
 " True it is that by the cessation of hostilities there will be 
 less flutter of curiosity and less anxiety of expectation than we 
 felt dui'ing the war. But, in a calmer and a more permanent 
 and a more pleasing state of mind, we can now trace the pro- 
 gress of the victors and the retreat of the vanquished. There 
 will be a mellowness in our satisfaction and a distinctness in our 
 conceptions that will amply compensate for the want of those 
 feelings which accompany perturbation, and therefore partake 
 of hope and fear, and of rapture and agony. Glad shall I be 
 when you sit down with us again, and chat on the virtues of 
 Moreau, the talents of Buonaparte, the humours of Paul, and 
 the perilous condition of this oppressed and insulted kingdom. 
 As to late events, the ostensible is not the sole nor the chief 
 ciuse of JNIr. Pitt's plot, 
 
 [which I may translate to the effect that Pitt was to play the 
 lion's part when necessary, and the monkey's in division of 
 spoil]. " The wrangle about indulgence to Catholics, the re- 
 signation of the old ministry, the appointment of the nev/, the 
 strength studiously abducted from them, the compliments be- 
 stowed upon them, the assistance solicited for them, and the 
 principles imputed to them, are one and all mere ©etro-aXo aocpLcr- 
 fiara. Rely upon it, sooner or later, Paul will have Malta, the 
 French will have Egypt, and the ]Mamelukes will justify the 
 proverb, Seivol -kKskthv toi, &c. &c. &c." [I spare the reader more.] 
 
 Nor was Landor loth to pay him back the same 
 liberal largess for kindnesses expected or received. The 
 old scholar was just now publishing his Spital Sermon, 
 and had j^romised Landor a copy ; having given him a 
 few months before a small Catullus, which more than 
 half a century later I saw, still cherished, in his hands. 
 Here is characteristic acknowledgment of both : 
 
 " It is a sign that I have conversed with hardly a human 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1G2 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Rookll. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 being, not to know that your Sermon was published ! As you 
 intend to make me a present of one, pray do not keep it for me, 
 but send it me directly. I wish for all enjoyment at once. I 
 wish, while I improve my judgment and my taste, to indulge 
 my sentiment and affections in contemplating the present of my 
 friend. I have a little Catullus — I can repeat every word of it ; 
 yet again and again do I read my little Catullus. I never knew 
 the author, and I should not have esteemed him if I had, unless 
 as the most exquisite of poets. Do I not know the author of 
 the sermon ? Do I not esteem him far, infinitely, more than 
 for being the most elegant and energetic of our writers ? I 
 hope this noble work, for I can speak of as much as I have seen, 
 will be effectual in making Englishmen write English. Our 
 language is bruised, as it were, and swollen by the Latin ; but it 
 is contaminated, enervated, and distorted by the French ! If we 
 are to borrow, let us borrow from the principal and not from 
 the underlings ; but with a little good management I think we 
 are quite rich enough." 
 
 Catullus again and as^ain recurs in the letters of 
 botli. Landor had questioned a word in that delightful 
 writer : Parr promptly replies : 
 
 " I looked into my Catullus, and can relieve you from all 
 doubts about ' tympanum.' In Mattaire's Corjm.'s Poetarum 
 it is printed ' typanum,' and that is the true reading. It is 
 a Grecism, and furnishes an additional probability that some 
 Greek word was in the mind of the Roman writer. Scaliger 
 reads ' typanum,' and quotes from Homer — the line is in his 
 hymn to the Mater Deorum. Scaliger quotes also from Apol- 
 lonius Rhodius." 
 
 The letter bristles with Greek and Latin, which I 
 do not inflict upon the reader ; passes into a disquisition 
 on the metre of Catullus, with a sketch to show the 
 rhythm and its variations ; and closes thus : 
 
 " The cretic foot, whether in ' tympanum' or ' cymbelum,' is 
 quite inadmissible in the beginning of the galliambic. It re- 
 tards the progress. I will show you Jor tin's remarks. He errs 
 once or twice ; but he reads ' typanum.' " 
 
 As Landor went on writino; he seems at times to
 
 ^T. 22-30.] PARR AND ADAin. 163 
 
 have even bettered the instruction of his uncompro- 
 mising old " pastor and master ' in party warfare. Re- 
 marking on one of his pohtical satires which Landor 
 had sent him, Parr thinks "the composition animated, 
 *' hut the notes ratlier too acrimonious." Still he finds 
 them spirited, and can s^anpathise with the indignant 
 writer in the matter of Kotzebue. " But why attack 
 " the father? he was not a discarded player. The con- 
 " elusion is fierce, but witty and just." 
 
 One or two glimpses of their more private inter- 
 course may be added. 
 
 RETURN AFTER AN ABSENCE. 
 
 " I am very sorry that we missed each other when you called 
 on me and I on you ; and I am sure that if Walter Landor had 
 gone into the penetrate of Hatton Parsonage, he would have 
 found the Lares ready to welcome with a smile the return of 
 an old and justly-respected worshipper. Pray do you and Dr. 
 Lambe dine with me next Sunday ; and if you come in a chaise, 
 cram little A into a corner." 
 
 The matter next adverted to has no sort of inter- 
 est for us now, but seventy years ago was setting all 
 the world at Warwick by the ears ; and the colonel 
 mentioned is the same we made acquaintance with in 
 one of ]SIr. Robert Lander's letters. Indeed one may 
 discern in the tone here taken by Parr, and what it 
 reveals of the part in a personal dispute taken by 
 Landor himself, some connection with allusions made 
 in that letter. 
 
 ABOUT STONELEIGII LIVING. 
 
 "What a truth is there, and what lies, about Stoneleigh 
 living ! Upon one canticle of that Cyclean poem (for there is 
 such a want of regularity in the structure, and of dignity in the 
 agents, that I cannot call any part the episode of an epic), I 
 would assume the office of a critic ; strict indeed, but precise, 
 as Aristarchus. Colonel Packwood certainly applied to Lord
 
 1G4 GEBin; AND EAELIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 Hertford for his son ; Lord Hertford certainly applied to the 
 chancellor, but without mentioning Colonel Packwood's son ; 
 and Lord Hertford, if his application had been successful, cer- 
 tainly would not have given the living to Colonel Packwood's 
 son. Colonel Packwood certainly knows these are the facts as 
 well as I do, and before I did ; nor would he, as a gentleman 
 responsible for veracity and honour, ever attempt to dispute the 
 correctness of one tittle of this my statement. You may say 
 what I have said ; and quote my authority for saying it posi- 
 tively. — I am, dear "Walter, truly yours, S. Pakr."* 
 
 What folloAvs is later in date by a year or two ; but 
 it shows what a fierce enemy as well as fast friend this 
 eager old man could be, and how genuine the regard 
 w^as that Landor had inspired in him. The letter is 
 very characteristic, and there is no need to supply the 
 blank with a name. 
 
 AN OLD ASSOCIATE OF PAER'S AT HARROW. 
 
 " Dear Walter, I have known for thirty-six years and 
 
 more. But I do not like him ; and, for various reasons in the 
 politics of Harrow, we are not on very amicable terms. A letter 
 from me would do you no good. If there were the smallest 
 chance of advantage or convenience to you, I would write to 
 him. But he is not likely to fall into any measure because I 
 take an interest in it. Write to him at once ; in this there is 
 no trouble and can be no harm. I much doubt whether he would 
 sell, or exchange ; and if he knew your genius, your attain- 
 ments, your politics, your eloquence, and your dignified way of 
 thinking and acting upon all subjects in private and public 
 life, he would dread you, hate you, and drive you into the sea. 
 I know him well, and he knows that I know him. But his son 
 is a most high-minded, generous-hearted, clear and full-headed 
 hero. He would do for a friend to you, or to myself. Harry is 
 his name ; and he is a tutor at Harrow, and fellow of King's- 
 college, Cambridge. When Butler resigns, Harry shall be his 
 successor, if my aid can effect so desirable an end. I am very 
 well, and rather busy, and quite content with my own share of 
 loss by the change of ministry. You hate Bonaparte. But I 
 
 * " Dec. 23d, 1802."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] PAKE AND ADAIR. 165 
 
 do not suspect you have any strong affection for George and his 
 
 present advisers Farewell, God bless you, dear Walter. 
 
 I am truly, aye with real and great respect and regard I am 
 your friend, S. Pakr." 
 
 My two closing extracts, from letters of the date of 
 1800 and 1801, concern persons more widely known. 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF SHERIDAN. 
 
 " Beware, dear Walter, of prophecies about politicians. On 
 Friday at 3 p.m. I said, Sheridan will never meet me ! On 
 that very day at 6 p.m. Sheridan came in where I was dining, 
 on purpose to meet me. I sat with him enjoying my pipe after 
 dinner, and he sat with his claret." 
 
 A PARTY AT MACKINTOSH'S. 
 
 "My Jemmy (Mackintosh) was delightful, and I will tell 
 you who were with us. 1. A sturdy democratic yeoman. 2. A 
 university bedel, who, I find, is always reading in the Bodleian, 
 and who is a shrewd, argumentative, sceptical, anti-ministerial 
 dog. 3. What is more surprising, a doctor of divinity ; whom I 
 have known twenty - four years and not seen these ten ; who 
 took his degree twenty years ago, and has not been at Oxford 
 since ; who reads Greek well, has more Greek books than my- 
 self, makes war upon all bishops and archbishops, and is a rank, 
 fire-away, uncompromising whig in Church and State. These 
 were our companions. There never was such good-luck." 
 
 Adair's letters of this date in a great measure deal 
 with the same circmnstances ; but in the few extracts I 
 give it will be possible to avoid repetition. Though he 
 feels strongly, he -sratcs always with ability and a com- 
 mand of temper ; and in him, even while yet he was a 
 constant butt for the sarcasm of Canning and his friends, 
 I seem to recognise the same quiet courteous gentleman 
 whom I remember meeting at dinner at Holland-house 
 nearly forty years later. Here is one of his references to 
 
 THE DUKE OF PORTLAND'S DEFECTION. 
 
 " I have long ceased all intercourse, public or private, with
 
 1G6 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book IT. 
 
 I 797-1 805. 
 
 the Duke of Portland ; and as my connection with him was one 
 of the earhest of my life, I am not ashamed to confess that my 
 resentments are bounded by the wish of never seeing him more, 
 or hearing the mention of his name. But he has forfeited all 
 right to my interposition with others to spare him the reproaches 
 "which he has deserved from his country and from mankind." 
 
 Here lie speaks of a subject in some degree affecting 
 his loyalty as a whig, but on which, vdih all his ardour 
 in the cause, he could agree to differ with Landor. 
 
 WILLIAM THE DELIVERER, 
 
 "With regard to king William, I profess my gratitude to 
 him to arise from public principle, and public principle alone ; 
 but having no other means of forming my judgment of his 
 character than those which are common to every body, I do not 
 feel myself authorised to claim the concurrence of any man 
 living who has the faculty of reasoning for himself. With your 
 permission I will show your letter to Mr. Perry, but without 
 mentioning your name." 
 
 It recurs briefly in a letter where he alludes to 
 
 parr's sermon and LANDOR'S newspaper WRITINGS. 
 
 " I sent your letter to Doctor Parr this day. I have the plea- 
 sure to tell you that he will be in town next week. As you may 
 wish to read his sermon before his arrival, I take the liberty of 
 sending you my copy. There are some noble passages in the 
 notes. You seem not to be quite sure whether or no the editor 
 of the Courier' has rejected your letter. I will take the oppor- 
 tunity of looking at the file, and will let you know. The de- 
 graded state of the English press induces me to suspect that ifc 
 has been omitted. I have no hesitation in saying for myself, 
 and can answer for many of my friends, that we should have 
 been much gratified to have seen it in print. I confess that I 
 think better of king William than you seem to do, but perhaps 
 I am a little blinded by my gratitude (to use a Godwinism). 
 This however is but a difference of opinion, and cannot deti-act 
 from the substantial merits of the ^vriting. I am acquainted 
 with the Editor of the Courier, but am almost sure that you 
 would find an easy access to the Homing Chronicle if you would 
 permit me to speak to Mr. Perry. I would not name this to
 
 ^T. 22-30."] PARR AND ADAIR. 1G7 
 
 you, did I not know Mr. Perry to be a man of inviolable honour. 
 I win not vex you with praises, but only wish you to think as 
 well of my judgment as you do of my patriotism and my pohte- 
 ness when I apply those praises to your compositions." 
 
 Landor's ability had made a strong impression on 
 Adair, but he saw also his defects, and, as in a letter 
 where he criticises one of his attacks on the new go- 
 vernment, could give him wise and useful hints for 
 guidance. 
 
 ADAIK TO LANDOR : A COKRECTION AND A WARNING. 
 
 "That the Cathohcs were 'promised' emancipation in the 
 fair meaning of the word promise, as the price of their support 
 of the Union, I have not the smallest doubt ; but since the 
 positive denial of the fact in parliament, I do not think we are 
 authorised to state it as ' uncontroverted.' When you ask, very 
 justly as I think, ' where is the constitution but in the bosom of 
 ' such affectionate and disinterested defenders as the solicitor- 
 ' general ?' I am infinitely more afraid, I confess, of his reply ex 
 officio as a lawyer than as a logician. Believe me the press is 
 absolutely enslaved. Coupled with other sentences in your letter, 
 which by innuendo might be laid as tending to bring the govern- 
 ment into disrepute (a crime quite of modern date), I am afraid 
 a jury might be found to condemn it. But, of all men, you 
 have the least reason to despair as a public writer, for you pos- 
 sess such resources for escape in your powei's of satire and of 
 irony, that you will always be able, as soon as you have found 
 out the trim of the vessel, to state the strongest truths, and to 
 state them safely." 
 
 One more subject, an appeal in arrest of judgment 
 as to one of Landor's personal attacks, must close these 
 extracts for the present. Landor, in one of his j)olitical 
 letters on the defection of the Duke of Portland and his 
 friends, had laughed at the abbe Delille, at this time a 
 refugee in London, much jicttcd by the whigs and 
 bringing out a poem under their patronage. " The 
 " abbe Delille ran away from his property, the abbe 
 " DeHlle wrote some Georoics, and the abbe Delille
 
 1G3 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " talks of Virgil." Commenting on tliis letter, and 
 giving up the duke to its wrath, Adair writes to Lan- 
 der 
 
 V 
 
 A WORD FOR THE ABBE DELILLE. 
 
 " I could mucli rather intercede for the poor old abbe 
 Delille, were it only because he had the boldness to defy Robes- 
 pierre on his throne of blood, and to publish, I believe to recite 
 before him, his fine verses on the immortality of the soul. The 
 occasion of his writing them was as follows. In 1794 the Comite 
 de Salut Public sent to him to compose some verses for a festival 
 which they had ordered in honour of God, whom Robespierre 
 had previously recognised by a decree of the Convention. Delille 
 refused. It was told him that he had been permitted to live 
 quietly at Paris till that time, but that those who had protected 
 him might possibly not be able to protect him any longer if he 
 persisted in his refusal. He composed therefore an ode, which 
 he recited to some of them, in which are the following stanzas : 
 
 * Dans sa demeure inebranlable 
 Assise sur Teternite 
 La tranquille immortalite, 
 Propice au bon, et terrible au coupable, 
 Du terns qui, sous ses yeux, marche a pas de guant, 
 Defend I'ami de la justice, 
 Et ravit a I'espoir du vice, 
 L'asile horrible du neant. 
 
 O vous, qui de TOlympe usurpant le tonnerre, 
 Des eternels lois renversez les autels, 
 Laches oppresseurs de la terre, 
 Tremblez — vous etes immortels : 
 Et vous — vous du malheur victimes passag^res, 
 Sur qui veilleut d'un Dieu les regards paternels, 
 Voyageurs d'un moment aux terres etrang^res, 
 Consolez vous — vous etes immoi'tels.' 
 
 If you have never seen these lines, nor heard of the anecdote 
 before, the abbe Delille may perhaps rise in your estimation. 
 At all events I think I shall plead for him more successfully to 
 you than Corneille would to the attorney-general. ' Sa probite 
 ' stupide,' applied as you have applied it, would have been dan- 
 gerous at any time ; but would be particularly so at present, 
 when the object of it has lost even the remnant of his wits."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] AT TAEIS IN 1802. 169 
 
 Perhaps it may be owing to a favourable impression 
 made thus early by this kindly plea of Adair for the 
 good old abbe, that Landor made him afterwards an 
 interlocutor in one of his imaginary dialogues. But he 
 never conquered his own dislike of the French character 
 and literature. It was one of his earliest and one of his 
 latest peculiarities. The armed republic that was to 
 change the face of the world had failed of its glorious 
 mission ; even the hopes he once built on Bonaparte he 
 cherished no lonfjer ; and thouo;h eao;er to visit France 
 as soon as peace was declared, and curious to see her 
 first -consul, it was with very little of that kind of 
 sympathy for the hero of the eighteenth Brumaire and 
 now supreme ruler of France which carried over at the 
 same time Fox himself, Adair, and many eager followers. 
 
 VII. At Paris ix 1802. 
 
 Landor had declined all introductions ; though let- 
 ters had been oflFered him, as he told his brother, which 
 would have opened to him the salons of the second con- 
 sul Cambaceres, and of Berthier the minister of war. 
 There was but one Frenchman he cared to see, and one 
 portion of France. Paris, as the great city looked so 
 soon after the storm of the revolution, with her Louvre 
 tilled by the spoils of Italy ; and BoxArARTE, now 
 consul for life ; when these had been seen, he should 
 at once return. 
 
 The precise time of his arrival was that to which 
 
 Wordsworth's well-known sonnet has referred : 
 
 " This is young Bonapartu's natal day, 
 And his is henceforth an establisht sway, 
 Consul for Life." 
 
 Upon the occasion when Bonaparte first publicly as-
 
 170 GEBIK ; AND EAELIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 sumed tlie rank Avitli wliicli lie had been tlius invested, 
 Landor saw him. Advantage had been taken of it for 
 a great hohday, of which, as the young EngHshman 
 walked the streets, he saw every where the mighty pre- 
 paration. Yet in the signs of enthusiasm presented 
 outwardly there were curious contrasts. On the one 
 hand, " The private houses were no more illuminated 
 " than usual. The shops had two lamps instead of one. 
 " This w^as the only difference." On the other hand, 
 " The palace of the government, the metropolitan 
 " church, the arches of the bridges, the bridges them- 
 " selves and all the public edifices, were ilkmiinated 
 " most magnificently." That the enthusiasm had been 
 specially got up for Paris, in short, quite as much as 
 any other part of the ceremony, Landor had reason to 
 suspect; and the suspicion became a certainty when 
 the hero of the day made his appearance. 
 
 This was in the garden of the Tuileries ; and in a 
 letter to his brother Henry, now Ipng before me, he 
 described the scene. At various points there had been 
 built up pp-amids of wood, each of the height of five- 
 and-twenty feet, covered with lamps of extraordinary 
 brilliancy. In the same manner were ornamented " the 
 " sides of several pieces of water in which were fomi- 
 " tains plapng; and there was not a statue nor an 
 " orange-tree of which you could not distinguish the 
 " minutest part. Seven rows of benches w^ere erected 
 " over the grand flight of steps which leads into the 
 " palace, each containing fort}'- performers, the first 
 " musicians in the world. Immediately above, at the 
 " height pei'haps of thirty feet, sat the principal offi- 
 " cers of state. On the leads which cover the colon- 
 " nade the military guards were walking. Bonaparte 
 " made his appearance in the centre, where his wife
 
 ^T. 22-30.] AT PARIS IN 1802. 171 
 
 " had sat some time in company -v^-ith the other t\yo 
 " consuls. I expected that the sky woukl have been 
 " rent ^yith accL^mations. On the contrary, he expe- 
 " rienced such a reception as was given to Richard 
 " the Third. He was sensibly mortified. All bowed 
 " — ^but he waved to and fro, and often wiped his face 
 " with, his handkerchief. He reth'ed in about -ten mi- 
 " nutes." 
 
 Lan dor's own mortification could hardly have been 
 less than Bonaparte's. Not thus had he expected to see 
 the man by whose astonishing career, up to this tuniing 
 hom' of it, all the world had been enthralled : the hero 
 of Italy, by whom conflicting creeds were to be recon- 
 ciled ; the armed leader of the French Revolution, by 
 whom decapng nations were to be regenerated. Was 
 it possible that he in whom such hopes had centred 
 could now consent to become but another life-tenant of 
 the Tuileries, changing the substance for the shadows 
 of gi'eatness ? In the same year and month when these 
 letters were written by Landor, that question was sor- 
 rowfully put and answered by Wordsworth : 
 
 " I griev'd for Bonaparte with a vain 
 And an unthinking grief ! for who aspires 
 To genuine greatness but from just desii'es, 
 And linowledge such as he could never gain ?" 
 
 Bluntly and characteristically, but to similar effect, 
 Landor wrote oif to his brother under the immediate 
 influence of what Paris himself had shown him ; and 
 it is worthy of note that amid his many changes of 
 opinion, the opinion now formed of Napoleon, and of the 
 people under his rule, was never afterwards materially 
 changed. His point of view was not that of Words- 
 worth, and his wishes and aims were different : but he 
 had arrived substantially at the same result. " Doubt-
 
 172 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " less the government of Bonaparte," he wrote, " is 
 " the best that can be contrived for Frenchmen. Mon- 
 " keys must be chained, though it may cost them some 
 " grimaces. If you have read attentively the last 
 " senatus-consultum, you will find that not an atom 
 " of liberty is left. This people, the most inconstant 
 " and therefore the most contemptible in the world, 
 " seemed to have recovered their senses when they had 
 " lost their freedom. The idol is beyond their reach, 
 " but the idolatry has vanished. A consul of so great 
 " a genius will make the nation formidable to all the 
 " earth but England; but I hope there is no danger 
 " of any one imitating its example. As to the cause 
 " of liberty, this cursed nation has ruined it for 
 " ever." ^^Hiat he thus said in his twenty- seventh 
 year he was saying in his eighty-seventh, nearly in the 
 same words; the intervening sixty years having failed 
 to amend or remove the impression thus received in his 
 youth. 
 
 To his sister Elizabeth he described the second occa- 
 sion when he saw Napoleon. It was at a review in the 
 court of the Tuileries, when he stood A\itliin six or eight 
 yards of him for a quarter of an hoiu\ " His counte- 
 " nance," he wrote, " is not of that fierce cast which 
 " you see in the prints, and which perhaps it may 
 *' assume in bartle. lie seems melancholy and re- 
 " served, but not morose or proud. His figure and 
 " complexion are nearly like those of Charles Xorris. 
 " He rode a little white horse, about the size of my 
 " father's ; and cantered up and down six or eiglit lines 
 " of military, drawn out in the court of the Tuileries, 
 " which is about the size of Lincoln's-inn-fields. Each 
 " line lowered its colour's as he passed, and he took off 
 " his hat in retm'u. The French are not mightily
 
 ^T. 22-30.] AT PARIS IN 1802. 173 
 
 " civil, and one cannot much wonder — but I got an 
 " admirable place by a piece of well-timed flattery. 
 " After I had seen Bonaparte canter by me at the 
 " distance of about a dozen yards, I left my situation 
 " at the window and went down close to the gate of 
 " the palace. Presently came the chief consul and half 
 " a score generals. The people made room through 
 " fear of the horses, which indeed were fierce enough, 
 " being covered with blue and red velvet, one half of 
 " which was hid with gold-lace. Instead of going with 
 " the crowd, I pushed forward and got by the side of 
 " Bonaparte's Mamelouk, in a place where there were 
 " none but soldiers. There was a very tall fellow just 
 " before me. I begged him to let me see Bonaparte, 
 " and observed that probably he had seen him often 
 " and shared his victories. The youth was delighted. 
 " All! le voila, monsieur! said he; and in a moment 
 " there was nothing between me and this terror of 
 " Europe but the backs of two horses, over which I 
 " coidd see him as distinctly as I see this paper." 
 
 It is doubtful if he saw him again, though he always 
 believed it was the fugitive from Waterloo whom he met 
 at Toiu's thu'teen years later, when the allied armies were 
 in Paris ; but he remembered to the close of his life that 
 first sight of Napoleon ; and his description only the year 
 before his death, in conversation with an American lady 
 in Florence, is not contradicted by his letter written 
 more than sixty years before. " I was in Paris, said 
 " Landor one day, at the time that Bonaparte made his 
 " entrance as first-consul. I was standing within a 
 " few feet of him when he passed, and had a capital 
 " good look at him. He was exceedingly handsome 
 " then, with a rich olive complexion and oval face, 
 " youthful as a girl's. Near him rode IMurat, mounted
 
 174 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 ^' upon a gold -clad charger; and very handsome he 
 " was too, but coxcombical."* 
 
 Of the pictures and works of art from Italy then 
 assembled in Paris, ^yhicll next to the hero of Italy in- 
 terested him most, he also wrote to both brother and 
 sister. During the whole of his stay he had passed in 
 general three or four hours of every day in the Louvre, 
 and had convinced himself that what was to be seen 
 there could not be seen or studied properly in less than 
 three years. Out of so immense a quantity of works 
 (not less than a thousand, as he reckoned), scarcely a 
 dozen had been injured in their transport to Paris, and 
 not one beyond repair. Not that more than a fourth or 
 fifth were to be counted fairly as the spoils of Italy ; for 
 a gi'eat proportion had been brought together froin the 
 royal palaces, and from the private collections of the 
 old nobility now wandering in exile. Terrible as the 
 shock of the revolution had been, he wondered to see 
 around him so much that was unshaken. The religious 
 houses only appeared to him to have suffered irretriev- 
 ably. Versailles is his perpetual theme of wonder and 
 delight. It struck him to be five times as large as War- 
 Avick-castle. The rooms were incrusted with marble, 
 the gardens full of noblest works of statuary, every 
 thing magnificent beyond description. At poor Marie 
 Antoinette's petit trianon he had passed two days, and 
 fills half a letter to his sister with an account of its 
 marvellous beauty and most affecting associations, then 
 fresh with all their tragedy. 
 
 But he had also less dignified and agreeable subjects 
 
 * Atlantic Monthlij for April 18CG. " I looked with wonder upon 
 *' a person," says the lady who describes these last days of Landor, 
 " who remembered Napoleon Bonaparte as a slender j'oung man, 
 " and listened with delight to a voice from so dim a past."
 
 JET. 22-30.] AT PAEIS IN 1802. 175 
 
 to ^^Tite about, and among them were the hotels and 
 lodgmgs of Paris. He found them three times as dear 
 as in London. He paid four li^Tes a night for a 
 miserable bed-room, and for another poor brick-floor 
 apartment had to pay a louis a week. But unless you 
 had servants of your own, you could not dine at your 
 lodgings ; and when he changed again for another hotel, 
 it was the same. Though in that from which he wrote 
 there were sixty bed-rooms, there was not a fire in the 
 house, and he was obliged to put on his shirt as damp 
 as a newspaper from the press. Coach-hire was an- 
 other grievance, it having cost him on an average six 
 or eight shillings a day ; and altogether he was not sorry 
 to find his face turned again towards home. 
 
 On his way iDack he wrote to his sister of the carriage 
 and cart-horses of the country, and a few lines from 
 this letter are worth preser\ang. 
 
 "First I will tell you of those that are used in carriages. 
 Their sides are so flat that a whole horse looks like half a one, 
 and their harness is nothing but a hundred pieces of rope : 
 such harness is easily repaired. On the contrary the cart-horses 
 are decorated most magnificently. There is a high piece of 
 wood above the collar, on which is suspended a sheepskin, dyed 
 red or blue. The rest of the body is covered with a net, the 
 meshes of which are so large that it serves no purpose but orna- 
 ment. There is not a horse in France that would not give all 
 he is worth to be rid of these sheepskins, at least in summer ; 
 but there is no redress. They groan most bitterly under the 
 heavy imposition, and I have seen one or two of them perform a 
 counter-revolution. Their names are generally Jncoh — at least 
 I heard a fellow call two out of three by that name." 
 
 His feeling on finding himself in England* again was 
 
 * Here is the characteristic close of his last letter to his sister 
 before leaving Paris. " How go on the Lambes ? Is Mr. Lyttelton 
 " well 1 Has Lord Warwick run the country 1 Are the Greatheads 
 " at Guy's Cliff? How is Doctor Parr? I wrote to him by Miss
 
 17G GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 iipon tlie whole a healthier one than that with which he 
 quitted it. The splendom's of the Republic had paled. 
 Too many close resemblances had presented themselves 
 between the French cart-horse and the French citizen. 
 The meshes w^oven by the conquests of Napoleon were 
 no doubt highly ornamental, but otherwise not of much 
 benefit ; and the red sheepsldn of miHtary glory was not 
 w'ortli the galling pressure of its accompanying " high 
 " piece of wood above the collar." One of Landor's 
 first acts at his return was to assist in the jDublication of 
 a new edition of his Gehir, produced at Oxford under 
 his brother's direction ; and the line which had charac- 
 terised Bonaparte as "a mortal man above all mortal 
 " praise" appeared with a note of very large qualifica- 
 tion. "Bonaparte might have been so," he now said, 
 " and in the becnnnino; of his career it was augured that 
 " he would be. But unhappily he thinks that to pro- 
 " duce great changes is to perform gi'eat actions. To 
 " annihilate ancient freedom and substitute new; to 
 " give republics a monarchical government, and the 
 " pro^^nces of monarchy a republican one ; in short, to 
 " overthrow" by violence all the institutions, and to tear 
 " from the heart all the social habits of man, has been 
 " the tenor of his politics to the present houi'." Nor 
 did he hesitate in another note to declare, while con- 
 fessing the hopes he had indulged of an empire of jus- 
 tice and equality, that in such hopes raised from the 
 French Revolution eveiy good man had been disap- 
 pointed. " God forbid," he exclaimed, " that we should 
 
 " Ferrers, but he has not answered my letter. I cannot guess the 
 " day of the month within a fortnight ; so I pass it, and remain 
 " &c." In the letter immediately preceding he had complained of 
 his purse waxing feeble, telling her how impossible it was to live in 
 Paris for a little, " They know an Englishman every where, and 
 " the extravagance of a few is a heavy tax on the rest."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] POETRY BY THE AUTHOR OF GEBIR. 177 
 
 " ever be impelled to use their means of amelioration, 
 " or that oiu' arms should be attended by success like 
 " theirs — internal and external subjugation." 
 
 VIII. Poetry by the Author of Gebir. 
 
 Other literary work he also at this time took in 
 hand. We have seen that in the lecture-rooms at Ox- 
 ford he had made acquaintance with the story of the 
 Phocasans, the invaders of Gaul who built Marseilles ; 
 and, struck with its political as well as poetical capa- 
 bilities, he now took it for the subject of an epic. But 
 he wanted patience for such a design, and in what little 
 he managed to complete the politics had not strength- 
 ened the poetry. To uphold republics and liberty against 
 "Circean soul-dissolving monarchy" was plain sailing 
 enough : but commercial enterprise had then some pro- 
 minent features that made not so easy the other part 
 of his design, which was to exhibit the superiority of 
 commerce over the greeds of war; and not even Bona- 
 parte's offences against freedom were blacker in Lan- 
 der's eyes than the traffic and traffickers in slaves. 
 
 Of the exact time when he took up or laid aside his 
 plan, I cannot speak with certainty ; but between the 
 first notion and his execution of that part which he 
 published there had come tlie interval and influence of 
 Gebir. Unfortunately it was in some respects more ad- 
 verse than favourable. With the consciousness of poAver 
 it carried also the sense of failure, for as yet even the 
 ten admirers he challenged had not come to him. There 
 is a touching admission to this effect in one of his letters 
 to Southey in 1809. " I confess to you, if even foolish 
 " men had read Gebir I should have continued to write 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FKIENDSHIPS. [Book IL 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " poetry. There is sometliing of summer in the hum 
 " of insects."* He had less care or spirit, after such 
 experience, to renew the effort in any finished or elabo- 
 rate form. He rushed at once into print with what 
 he had ^\Titten ; sent it out uncorrected in another 
 sixpenny pamphlet; and, pleading the example of the 
 painter who asked people only to tell him his faults, pro- 
 tested that he Avished to ascertain not merely whether 
 his poetry was good but whether it was wanted. 
 
 The answer now may be given succinctly that it 
 was good and was not wanted ; falling dead-born, yet 
 containing what the world should not have let perish so 
 indifferently. 1 will quote a few passages to shoAV this, 
 the more willingly for having found that I had coun- 
 selled Landor not to include the piece in his works when 
 collected twenty years ago. Of this one of his let- 
 ters reminds me. "At college," he wTites to Mr. Brown- 
 ing, the year before his death and seventy years after 
 the time he recalls, "I and Stackhouse were examined 
 " by the college-tutor in Justin, who mentions the 
 " exj^ulsion of the Phoca^ans from their country. In 
 " my childish ambition I fancied I could write an epic 
 " on it. Before the year's end I did what you see" 
 (a copy of the old j)aper-backed sixpenny pamphlet, 
 printed by Sharp of Warwick, accompanied the letter), 
 
 * In a later letter (December 1810) he repeats : " The j^fj^vlaris 
 " aura, though we are ashamed or unable to analyse it, is requisite 
 *' for the health and growth of genius. Had Gebh' been a worse 
 " poem, but with more admirers, and I had once filled my sails, I 
 *' should have made many, and perhaps some i^rosperous, voyages. 
 " There is almost as much vanity in disdaining the opinion of the 
 " world as in pursuing it. In the one case we are conscious of pos- 
 " sessing dignity ; in the other we basely serpentize {sic) to obtain 
 " it. This is indeed a difference, and one worth knowing in the out- 
 " set."
 
 ^T. 22-30.] POETEY BY THE AUTHOR OF GEBIE. 179 
 
 " and corrected it the year following. Forster very 
 " judiciously omitted it in my printed large volumes, 
 " but I am persuaded now that it is worth preserving 
 " as a curiosity of the kind." 
 
 A little also for a better reason. Undoubtedly to 
 the poem as a whole, one of its own lines, speaking of a 
 Sardian vase of burnished gold, 
 
 " Dazzling without, but dark from depth within," 
 
 Is only too applicable; and though between a darkness 
 of this kind and the mud that thickens shallow streams 
 there is a difference, and obscucity will often be really 
 occasioned by depth, a poem is the worst form one 
 can find it in. On its surface nevertheless, as in the 
 Sardian vase, there will be beauties telling with all the 
 more dazzling prominence for that defect; and though 
 without the wonderful charm of Gebir, there are in the 
 little tract that contained the Pliocceans things more 
 masterly than in any other poetical writing of that day. 
 In the prayer to the Gods to " strengthen with new 
 " stars the watery way ;" in the invocation to the Powders 
 '^ whose silent orbs control The balanced billows of the 
 " boundless sea ;" and in the picture of the Destinies 
 intent upon their loom, unoccupied " Avith aught beyond 
 " its moody murmuring sound ;" single lines of unusual 
 power and expressiveness occur, and I may instance 
 especially those two in which a political creed held by 
 the young poet to the last is tersely stated : " I deem it 
 " first of human miseries To be a tjTant ; then, to suffer 
 " one." The same condensed meaning is in the prefer- 
 ence avowed for a countiy struggling hard with tyranny 
 over one where "Power o'er slaves was freedom and 
 " was ' rights,' And man degraded could but man de- 
 « grade."'
 
 180 GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 These will be admired : 
 
 " But when the God 
 Himself, resistless Neptune, struck one blow, 
 Rent were the rocks asunder, and the sky 
 Was darken'd with their fragments ere they fell." 
 
 And here, worthy to be placed beside them, is the 
 
 first fight of the island invaders : 
 
 " We dash from every pinnace, and present 
 A ridge of arms above a ridge of waves. 
 Now push we forward ; now the fight, like fire, 
 Closes and gapes and gathers and extends. 
 Swords clash, shields clang ; spears whirr atliwart the sky, 
 And distant helmets drop like falling stars." 
 
 Another picture maj accomj^any this, — one of war's 
 
 attendant horrors : 
 
 " From waken'd nest, and pinion silence-pois'd, 
 The huge vulture drops rebounding : first he fears ; 
 Looks round ; draws back ; half lifts his cowering wing ; 
 Stretches his ruffled neck and rolling eye, 
 Tastes the warm blood, and flickers for the foe." 
 
 Other lines will show the frequent reflective beauty 
 that sets off this vivid picturesqueness of writing : 
 
 " — Those who living fill'd the smallest space 
 In death have often left the greatest void. 
 When from his dazzling sphere the mighty falls. 
 Men, proud of showing interest in his fate, 
 Run to each other, and with oaths 2:)rotest 
 How wretched and how desolate they are. 
 The good departs, and silent are the good." 
 
 Again : from the smaller pieces in the same tract : 
 
 " In his own image the Creator made. 
 
 His own pure sunbeam quicken'd thee, man ! 
 Thou breathing dial ! Since thy day began 
 The present hour was ever markt with shade !" 
 
 Whatever else may be alleged of Landor's style, 
 there is nothing weak or pompous about it; flaccid or 
 turgid lines — the certain sign of inferior work — do not
 
 ^T. 22-30.] POETRY BY THE AUTHOR OF GEBIR. 181 
 
 occur ; and there are no gaspings for breath. His word 
 answers always to his thought; and the movement of 
 his verse, sustained at the level of his fancy and lan- 
 guage, takes its music from both. Passages quite perfect 
 in themselves stand ovit in this way from his composi- 
 tions, even when otherwise least successful. It is indeed 
 his defect too often to treat particular things mth an 
 excess of \^^ddness, by M'hich the general level of his 
 work is placed at disadvantage. Impetuosity, want of 
 patience, is as bad in literature as in life ; and it was 
 his very power of putting rapidly and visibly on his 
 page what he saw himself with astonishing vividness, 
 that, for want of certain links of connection, dropped 
 in his eagerness as of no account but very necessary 
 to the enjoyment of his readers, gave occasional ob- 
 scm'ity to a style in itself transparently clear. This 
 remark is made in connection with the poems under 
 notice, because, in reviewing them, the staunch and 
 as yet almost solitaiy friend of Gehir justified on this 
 ground a little wavering from the allegiance he so 
 generously and loyally had proffered to its writer, the 
 yomig poet still even by name unknown to him. 
 
 Southey's article appeared in what was called the 
 Annual Review,* a " history of literature" just set up by 
 Doctor Aikin, which happily for Southey had not a very 
 long life : the wage for which he was labouring at it 
 being so low that he must have struck work if it had 
 not by starving its authors starved out itself. At this 
 time it happened that William Taylor of Norwich had 
 great influence over Southey, and had been doing his 
 best to laugh him out of his idolatry of Gehir. Great 
 at the derivation of words, he declared it to have been 
 
 * rublished by Longman and Rees, 1802 : see vol. i. p. GG3.
 
 182 GEBIR ; AND EAELIEST FEIEXDSHIPS, [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 aptlj SO named, " quasi gibberish ;" and Southey, thougli 
 by no means abandoning his own opinion, Avas uneasy 
 at the adverse opinion of his friend. Reviewing the 
 new poem, he admits that the story of the former 
 had been related in lano-uao;e so involved and difficult 
 that few could penetrate its meaning; and that they 
 who did might perhaps have overrated its merits in 
 proportion to the difficulty they had overcome in dis- 
 covering them. Still he protested its merits to be of 
 most uncommon excellence; and that though the mine 
 was dark and the ore deep, there ivas ore of priceless 
 value. But he did not find the second effisrt equal to 
 the first, or that the five intervening years had matiu'ed 
 the taste of the author, whoever he might be. Some- 
 body,* he added, had said of Gehh' that its thoughts 
 were connected by flea-skips of association ; but Gehi}' 
 was lucid compared with the Phoccvans. At the same 
 time Southey defined the obscurity, not quite truly 
 but not unfairly, as arising from a passion for com- 
 pression ; pointing out that this might be carried so far 
 as to become a mere shorthand, reminding a A^Titer 
 of his own conceptions but never explaining them to 
 others. In short, with much complimentary admission 
 as to the few passages wliich he had found to be intel- 
 ligible, Southe}'^s verdict was adverse to Poetry hy the 
 Auilior of Gebir. 
 
 * It was William Taylor's remark. I quote from a letter to 
 Southey in wliich. he speaks of Gehir. " There are exquisitely fine 
 " passages, hut they succeed each other hy such flea-skips of associa- 
 " tion that I am unable to track the path of the author's mind, and 
 " verily suspect him of insanity. But as he makes his appeal to a 
 " jury of geniuses, I am sure of being challenged, and my ojjinion can 
 " be of no consequence. It is not the verdict of the panel." From 
 him too had come the allusion to Valerius Flaccus also used by 
 Southey at the close of his notice. See ante, p. 107.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] POETKY BY THE AUTHOR OP GEBIR, 183 
 
 Fortunately Landor never knew this, or tliat his 
 earliest critical friend had ever momentarily faltered in 
 allegiance to him ; but the remarks on Gehir''s obscurity, 
 supposed to have been Doctor Aikin's, were not without 
 their influence. The author had lately taken lodgings 
 at Oxford to be near his brother Robert, who was in 
 residence at Worcester -college ; and the fruit of their 
 deliberation was the publication, after not many months, 
 of an edition of Gebir now rarely to be met with, accom- 
 panied not only by a Latin version of it, the Gebinis, 
 but by prose arguments to each book in both languages, 
 with notes of explanation to the passages supposed to 
 be most obscure. I must add, however, that even this 
 concession provoked no kindly return ; that in his hand- 
 some coat Gebir fared no better than in his homely 
 one ; and that the brothers, imj)atient of the refusal of 
 the critics to take fui-ther notice of their labours, went 
 soon after into the critical line on their own ac- 
 count. 
 
 ]Mi'. Robert Landor's letters have informed me plea- 
 santly as to these matters. " Even the first edition of 
 *' Gebir was followed speedily by little unbound publica- 
 *' tions of which I cannot remember correctly either the 
 *' order or the titles. The Phoccvans, the commence- 
 ^' ment of an epic poem, various Latin verses and 
 '' English verses filling no more than a few pages, a 
 " little volume of Icelandic poems suggested by Mr. 
 " Herbert's success, but nothing in prose that I can 
 ^' remember before the first two volumes of his Ima- 
 " ginary Conversations except a few pages on Primitive 
 " Sacrifices. I often tried to dissuade him from such 
 " diminutive works, or rather scraps, as betraying too 
 " much impatience, and as excusing the public neglect. 
 ^' They were read by a few personal friends only, and
 
 18i GEBIE ; AND EARLIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " only one of tliem was noticed in a Keview. I am 
 " not unwilling that you should smile at my expense, 
 " knowing how tolerant you are. When there were no 
 " magazines excepting the Gentleman s, young aspirants 
 " to literature could try their pretensions nowhere else 
 " so safely as in the Reviews. The Edinburgh and Quar- 
 " terli/, a little later, were accessible only to a few of 
 " higher pretensions and qualities better ascertained. For 
 " the rest it was not at all necessary that they should 
 " have any Ivuowledge of the subjects about which they 
 " Avrote. They placed themselves as doctors learned 
 " in literary law. They took their seats on the judge's 
 " bench before they had prepared themselves by their 
 " stuches for the bar. It was necessary to assume great 
 " dignity and authority; a compassionate or contemp- 
 " tuous treatment of the culprits trembling before them 
 " was necessary; but learning, wisdom, and experience 
 " were not necessary. Excepting that my conscience 
 " acquits me of any wish to give pain, or of any malig- 
 " nant pleasure in tormenting my betters, such a critic 
 " was I ! — a professional critic I — a reviewer ! My first 
 " article was on Walter's Iceland tale of Gnnlaug and 
 " Helga — very confident in its patronage indeed ! Wal- 
 " ter was delighted; and both of us laughed at the 
 " imposture. The Oxford Review broke down after the 
 " first three or four numbers ; and my conscience is the 
 " more easy as I had contributed only two or three 
 " articles, conceited enough but not malignant. Up to 
 " this time there had, I think, been no notice of my 
 " brother's publications since that by Southey of Gehir. 
 " But Walter's impatience under such unmerited neg- 
 " lect was betrayed by repeated and veiy contemptuous 
 " challenges offered both to critics and authors, in little 
 " pubHcations which were never read by either. Then,
 
 ^T. 22-30.] WALTER BIRCH. 185 
 
 " as at a later age, he seemed equally enraged by tlie 
 " public neglect, and disdainful of its notice." 
 
 The best of those little "Icelandic" poems being 
 accessible still in the printed works, nothing more need 
 be said of it here except that it appears to have been 
 suggested to Landor by a letter from Birch, his favourite 
 and friend at Rugby. 
 
 IX. Walter Birch : and Succession to Family 
 Estates.* 
 
 Several of Birch's letters had been kept by his 
 schoolfellow, and some of them bear date shortly before 
 the latter, by Doctor Landor's death, became master of 
 the Staffordshire estate : his mother continuing life- 
 tenant of Ipsley-coru't and Tachbrooke. They are 
 hardly of a kind to justify publication, but they show 
 with what anxiety at that j)articular time this true 
 friend was looking forward to the future which lay 
 before the companion of his boyhood. 
 
 None of the figures of that distant past seems to 
 recur with kindlier association to Mr. Robert Landor's 
 memory. Before the latter went up to Oxford, Birch 
 had a fellowship at ^lagdalen, and he had become 
 tired of Oxford life and quitted it for a tutorship 
 before Mr. Robert Landor had obtained his own fel- 
 lowship. But during tlie whole of his undergraduate 
 career he had the advantage of companionship and 
 counsel from this friend of his brother's, and in his 
 letters he speaks of him with the utmost tenderness. 
 " Walter often visited me," he says, " when travelUng 
 
 * The reader is requested to substitute this title for that errone- 
 ously left at p. 81, iu the List of Contents of iJook II.
 
 SG GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 between Warwick, London, Bristol, or South Wales ; 
 and lie eagerly renewed his intercourse with Birch, 
 wdiom I had not seen till then. Here was an in- 
 stance of friendship which is so often formed be- 
 tween men as unlike each other as possible in every 
 other particular excepting a single pursuit. Bu'cli 
 was gentle, quiet, unassuming, very tolerant of other 
 men's ojDinions though sufficiently consistent in the 
 maintenance of his own, an earnest Christian, a sin- 
 cere chui'chman, and — O, ]\Ir. Forster! — rather too 
 much inclining to toryism. Walter was a black 
 jacobin. I very soon acquired the title, in my own 
 college, of Citizen Landor — and even the Citizen, as 
 being the only repu.blican there. But Birch loved 
 Walter and smiled at me. Walter used to speak of 
 his friend's maiden modesty, which extended beyond 
 ' his morals.* Perhaps this wide diffi^rence between 
 ' them kept both parties silent on graver subjects : both 
 ' feeHng unwilling to quarrel, and knowing how ir- 
 ' reconcilable were then* ojDinions. Yet Birch often 
 ' checked Walter's extravagant language by his laugh- 
 ' ter; and once he asked me how it could have hap- 
 ' pened that my brother should have met accidentally 
 ' so many ladies, in an evening's walk or two with him 
 ' and me, every one of whom was incomparably the 
 ' most beautiful creatiu'e whom he had ever seen? 
 ' how each of twenty fools could be by much the 
 ' greatest fool upon earth? and, above all, how ]\ir. 
 ' Pitt could be the greatest rascal living, if Mr. Can- 
 ' ning surpassed IMi". Pitt, and Lord Castlereagh sur- 
 ' passed Mr. Canning, and all three were infinitely 
 
 * "At school," Landor -writes in one of his letters to me, " Birch 
 *' was named Sanctij from the sobriety of his manners — ho^v cliff er- 
 ** ent fi'om mine !"
 
 JET. 22-30.] WALTER BIRCH. 187 
 
 " exceeded as brutes and fools by their gracious sove- 
 " reign Idng George the Third?" One may discover 
 in Birch's few remainino; letters not a little of this 
 humorous sense of his friend's ludicrous excesses of 
 speech, at once suggested and in its expression subdued 
 by personal regard of an uncommon kind, and in no 
 Avay abating an almost passionate admiration given 
 eagerly to Landor's genius and scholarship. 
 
 The earliest in date is one of April 1805, which, 
 after telling him of a publication by ISIi-. William Her- 
 bert of translations of Icelandic sonnets and of some 
 original pieces that he thinks would interest him by the 
 accurate information contained in the notes and by the 
 spu'it of the poetry, proceeds to say in the next sentence : 
 " Our friend Gary of Christ- chm'cli published about a 
 " month ago a translation of the Inferno of Dante, 
 " which I am just about to read. I anticipate consider- 
 " able pleasure from it. . I hear already that it sells 
 " well."* Exactly fifty -seven years had passed after 
 this when Landor, \vriting to ]\ir. Lyttonf of Birch 
 himself and of their schoolfellow the translator of 
 Dante, adds in the very next sentence : " We have 
 " another admirable translator in William Herbert. 
 " I owe my Gunlaug to his stories from the Icelandic. 
 
 * In the memoir of Caiy by his Son (1847) will be found letters 
 from Birch confirmatory of the character liere given, and showing 
 with what unbounded affection Cary regarded him. On the birth of 
 that sou (171)7) he addressed a sonnet to Birch, which closes thus : 
 
 " For if some fairy bade me take the boon 
 That most I covet for my darling child, 
 Though all my wandering wishes I might send 
 In search of everj' bliss beneath the moon, 
 Yet should I most desire thy wisdom mild, 
 Thy pure and open heart, my honour'd friend." i. 9G. 
 t See ante, p. 24,
 
 188 GECIR ; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " How incomparably better this nortliern poetry than 
 " that of the Troubadours ! The Icelandic seems to 
 " be a softer language than theirs, which is highly 
 " praised by people Avho surely never read it ; for it is 
 " excessively harsh, and much resembles the Genoese. 
 " The Gauls could never scale the highths of Parnassus 
 " since Apollo drove them down with thunder and light- 
 " ning." A word di'opped by accident, unconsciously 
 awakening some association of the past, had again con- 
 nected the names in the old man's memory. 
 
 Very frequently Birch alludes to the Gehirus. His 
 friend continuing to press him for any remarks it might 
 have sufrc>;ested in the readincj to so fine a Latin scholar, 
 Birch retorts that he is only a scholar as his old school- 
 fellow is a master: that his objection to criticism in 
 such a case is the presumption of it; and that he has 
 but to think of past days at Rugby and Oxford to know 
 the little reason he should have, by comparison with 
 his friend, " for confidence in his critical sagacity and 
 " still more in his grammatical accuracy." In vain 
 does his friend encoiu-age him to greater confidence by 
 sending him a list of faults he has himself already dis- 
 covered : Birch thinks unobjectionable several of the 
 passages named, and says (what is quite true of the 
 Gehirus) that not one of them to which objection might 
 be taken on strictly classical grounds is without beauty 
 of another kind more than compensating. In fine, 
 says Birch, " I have come to the conclusion, after re- 
 " peated reading of the Gehirus, that my knowledge of 
 " poetical latinity is much more confined than yours, 
 " and that a more extensive and habitual study of the 
 *' Latin poets has made you even more accurate than 
 *' I can pretend to be." 
 
 Another subject of discussion in their letters is pas-
 
 yET. 22-30.] WALTER BIRCH. 189 
 
 toral poetry, as to wlilcli some of Landor's opinions, 
 though far from exhaustive in the matter, are expressed 
 mth vigour and liveHness. His point is that in pastoral 
 poetry, though apparently the easiest of any, none since 
 the ancients had succeeded ; and though he does scant 
 justice to Thomson, a man not more loveable for his 
 character than for his writings, what he says has truth 
 at the bottom of it, and he was alwa}'s proud of what 
 he thought he had himself accomplished in this field by 
 the episode of Tamar. 
 
 " The Germans strain themselves into agony. Their shep- 
 herds toss about, and toil and sweat like drovers. Yet their 
 •woods are more romantic than woods in theatric scenery, and 
 their fields more gaudily flowered than Wilton carpets. You are 
 tired, and you would turn ; but turn wherever you will, you are 
 caught either in tears or in flames. In our own country (I omit 
 the puerilities of Pope and Phillips) there is Thomson. His 
 characters have all a ridiculous mixture of the modern and the 
 antique. There is the flaunting dress and high-coloured bloom 
 that the spruce apprentice on a Sunday evening admires in a 
 Birmingham housemaid. Whenever he rises, he rises by vio- 
 lent efforts — which show less of fervid and vigorous imagination 
 than of impatient languor and sickly restlessness. He was 
 however a most amiable man, and there are many great beau- 
 ties in his works ; though he never was at all successful in 
 the delineation of character. His verses make one pant in 
 reading them ; which is owing to their structure, not to what 
 they convey. He was too happy to know any thing of the 
 passions. In fine, we have nothing in common with pastoral 
 life : while even the highest of the ancients had much. Our 
 modes of address are different ; our habits, our inclinations. 
 They had a nerve more than we have. Ours is polish ; theirs, 
 poetry. We succeed in proportion as we remove ourselves from 
 home, particularly in pastoral." 
 
 Of the kind of life Landor was leading at this time, 
 while his father's health liad been declining, tlie letters 
 give various indications. He Avas far exceeding the in- 
 come put aside for him. Already indeed Doctor Landor
 
 190 GEBIR ; AND EAELIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 lias had to sell some property in discharge of debts con- 
 tracted by him; and in return he had undertaken to 
 present his brother Charles to the family living of 
 Colton, in the event of its not falling vacant before his 
 father s death. Though supposed to be mainly resident 
 in Bath or Bristol, or in Wales, he was very frequently 
 in London. Birch goes at his particular request to see 
 a horse he has set his mind nj)on ;* congratulates him 
 on the acquisition of a Titian; and is able, by lucky 
 purchase of his own at a broker's near Cavendish- 
 square, to add to his friend's collection a " grand old 
 " head."t In one of his letters Birch expatiates on the 
 pleasure he has had in Landor's description of the lofty 
 aims he is cherishmg, and in the next but one sends him 
 urgent remonstrance against his unnecessarily brooding 
 over calamities. You discover from one of the letters 
 that these calamities are connected ^^ith money; and 
 from another that a princely gift is nevertheless ready 
 for " the collection made lately in Christ-church to the 
 " amount of sixty pounds" in aid of the author of the 
 Pleasures of Hope. There are questions in politics 
 where it is plain enough that the friends are in im- 
 perfect sympathy; but even Birch could hardly have 
 refused a smile to one of his friend's epigi*ams upon 
 
 * " The horse is not very handsome, but can go seventy miles in 
 " a day : only five years old : I have told Charles to write and buy 
 " it. What livery-stables shall it be sent to, if we can get it for 
 " you?" 
 
 f " I do not fully assure mj^self you will like it, being aware that 
 " in matters of this sort (nor do I mean to limit the assertion there) 
 " your taste is much more penetrating and exact than my own. . . . 
 " You would deserve an oj^probrious title," he adds, i-eplying to a 
 remark of Landor's, " if you dared become a renegade from the 
 " Muse after having enjoyed so large a portion of her favour." In 
 the same letter he speaks very aflEectionately of Mr. Robert Landor, 
 and with great respect of the opinion of their brother Henry.
 
 ^T. 22-30,] WALTER BIECH. 191 
 
 the common talk then spreading itself abroad as to the 
 Prince of Wales and his doings. 
 
 " First Carlton House, my country friend, 
 And then the playhouse you should see ; 
 Here comedies in marriage end. 
 There marriages in tragedy."* 
 
 One political subject there was, however, on which 
 Landor found himself now in agreement with his tory 
 friend, as with most Englishmen who cared much for 
 England. In truth a powerful independent party hav- 
 mg its root in the higher middle class, indifferent for 
 the most part to the home quarrels of the leading 
 statesmen, and caring as little for the combinations of 
 Addington and Pitt, or Fox and the Grenvilles, as for 
 the foolish exclusiveness of the king, had been lately 
 reanimating and strengthening; the armed resistance to 
 France. The pre\aous year, which brought Pitt back 
 into office, had made the first -consul emperor and 
 launched against England the fleets of France and 
 Spain. But Nelson was again afloat, and the hope of 
 all that was best in England turned upon him. In 
 verses that have not survived, Landor had given ex- 
 pression to this confidence in the hero ; and almost 
 
 * From a satirical poem of earlier date, suppressed at the entreaty 
 of Birch, I take a couple of stanzas for the sake of some personal 
 allusions in them. It purported to be an address to the fellows of his 
 old college in Oxford upon their preparations against Bonaparte's 
 threatened invasion : 
 
 " Still, bred in your college, tho' no longer in it, I 
 Send ye health and fraternity, fellows of Trinity 1 
 Thro' haste to salute you, the feet of my doggerel 
 Like a drunken or down-hill and devil-drove hog reel. 
 Take me for your leader : }'ou have not forgot 
 That your most humble servant was once a good nliot : 
 Tho' ye dreaded, but dreaded without rhyme or reason, 
 He haply might turn his fmc talents to treason."
 
 192 GEBIR; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 simultaneously with the ne^YS of Trafalgar the poem 
 reached his friend, whose acknowledgment of it in a 
 letter dated the 11th Nov. 1805 is all that now remains 
 to indicate what it was. 
 
 " I thank you for your letter and animated verses, where 
 you seem to have been inspired by the prophetic spirit ascribed 
 to poets of old, and to have anticipated the glorious victory of 
 Nelson the news of which had reached me just before I received 
 them. I hope and trust the emotions which that unparalleled 
 achievement must have excited in your mind, signalised as it 
 was yet more by the fall of the hero, by the magnificent close of 
 the most brilliant naval career in all history, will not be suffered 
 to subside till they have assumed a shape and a form (as I well 
 know they may!) which it would be injustice to yourself and 
 the public to withhold from their applause. The news of ano- 
 ther considerable victory has arrived this very morning. What 
 a blow to the projects of that insatiable ambition, that restless 
 and enterprising spirit, which, avowedly grasping at maritime 
 as well as continental preeminence, was enlarging its views to 
 universal empire ! Already, in the sanguine anticipation of 
 Frenchmen, Avas Bonaparte become another Jove, and the affairs 
 of our little planet dependent on his nod ! Has not this now 
 passed for ever? The meridian is reached, and will he not 
 hasten to his setting ? God grant it !" 
 
 He closes the same letter by telling Landor that 
 their friend Gary has finished, and is about to send out 
 in small octavo, the second volume of his translation of 
 Dante, which, he adds, " considering its very close ad- 
 " herence to the original, seems to me more elegant than 
 " I coidd easily have conceived." In the same letter he 
 notices also the publication of Scott's Lay and Southey's 
 Madoc; saying he has read both, and that though he 
 believes it does not agree with the general sentiment 
 he will yet venture to say that he far prefers Southey. 
 But he thinks Southey's fault is diffusion, just as the 
 friend to whom he is writing has the grander defect of 
 compression, the excess in the other extreme, — an excel-
 
 ^T. 22-30.] WxYLTER BIECH. 193 
 
 lent remark, in wliicli lay mucli of the secret, never 
 perfectly known to himself, of Southey's singular 
 passion for Lanclor's poetry. It was an ideal he was 
 always aiming at, and missing; and in proportion as 
 he found himself still falling short of it, his admiration 
 increased. 
 
 During the period of these letters this amiable and 
 accomplished person was living as tutor in the family 
 of an English earl. " He seems," writes Mr. Eobert 
 Landor, " to have grown tired of a college life since 
 " the departure of so many friends from Oxford; and 
 " he undertook the tuition of a }0utli in one of our 
 " most wealthy and noble houses. Walter learnt 
 " some particulars of his residence there, certainly 
 " not from himself.* Birch resigned his office before 
 " the education of his pupil had been completed, 
 " gi-eatly to their regret. Some attachment had 
 " arisen between himself and a daughter of this 
 
 * Of filiout this date I find the subjoined hendecasyllabics, true 
 in every point to the character of his friend, as expressed in the pre- 
 ceding pages : 
 
 " Promisi mihi, Bikche, non tacere 
 Ut florens studiis bonis juventa 
 Utque sancta virilis esset astas 
 Pra3 cunctis tibi ; sed parum Cameuas 
 Felices habeo, inchoans honores 
 Quos tantis meritis parare vellem : 
 Nam dolore medullitus peresus 
 Sum doloribus optimi sodalis. 
 Possum hoc diccre, verum, at indisertum. 
 Clarus ingenio, lepore, cultu, 
 Doctus, nee nisi in optimis librorum, 
 Es quicquid cuperet quis esse natum, 
 Despcrans sibi, differensve tantuni 
 Et paulisper in otium reniittena 
 Ut nil proposito accidat molcstum. 
 Es talis quia vir jmerque, BllicUE, 
 Nullo tempore crastiuus fuisti." 
 VOL. I,
 
 19i GEBIK; AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1 797-1 805. 
 
 " family — wlietlier it was mutual, or on -wliicli side 
 " it was strongest, is not known. But Birch was much 
 " too honourable and conscientious for its encourage- 
 *' ment, and therefore rethed on a small college-li^-ing. 
 ^' I cannot understand how any disengaged lady could 
 ^' live in daily intercoui'se vdih such a man — for he 
 *' was very handsome too — and remain insensible to 
 ^' such amiability. Walter even believed that his 
 ^' friend's own heart was concerned, and had heard 
 ^' additions to the story which I fancy were quite apo- 
 ^' ciyphal. I suspect that Walter may here have con- 
 " founded the history of Bu'ch's friend Russell, who 
 '' left us only two sonnets, d^-ing of a broken heart, 
 " with some such narrative, heard imperfectly and 
 " easily believed, of his ovm friend." In the only 
 allusions to the family I find in Birch's letters, unusu- 
 ally strong regard appeal's, and very marked expressions 
 of respect ; nor does it seem otherwise probable that 
 any romantic ending to the little love-story was con- 
 tributed by himself, for he married and had children, 
 surviving it a score of years : but the mention of it can 
 now give pam to no one, and what may be accepted 
 for truth in it is characteristic and worthy of Lander's 
 favourite schoolfellow. 
 
 " I sincerely SATnpathise •udth you," he -v^Tote to 
 Landor on the Christmas-day of 1805, " in 3'our re- 
 " gret for the loss of your father, though his pre^-ious 
 " state certainly rendered it desu'able to himself, and 
 " on that account should make it less afflicting to his 
 '• family."* At the close of the letter there is a men- 
 
 * Doctor Landor died at the close of 1S05, but had been ailing 
 all that j'ear. I quote a letter of Landor's to his brother Henry 
 dated in Februarj', which mentions his father's anxiety at the time 
 to complete the settlement of his property. But I quote it also for
 
 ;et. 22-30.] WALTER BIRCH. 195 
 
 tion of tlieir Rugby clays in connection witli a youtli 
 who had there been fag to Landor, and to both of them 
 smce not a little troublesome. With a wise thought- 
 fulness Birch Avarns his friend against the dangers, In 
 the new position that awaits him, of indiscriminating 
 kindness. 
 
 The remark warns me that here closes the period 
 of Landor's hfe over which any kind of external re- 
 straint or control was jDossIble ; and that now opens 
 " that part of his history," I am quoting his brother's 
 langmage to me, " which followed om' father s death 
 *' and the sale of his Staffordshire property, and which 
 '^' appears like an exaggeration of the improbabilities 
 
 its closing allusions to Parr, his old schoolmaster James, and his 
 own Latin verses, in which the evident and eager interest contrasts 
 amusingly with the careless tone of request about the propertj', which 
 his brother is to explain when he has leisure. " My father tells me 
 " that ' he supposes you have informed me of his having conveyed to 
 " ' me the house my uncle lives in, and the two next, Godwin's and 
 *' ' John Holt's.' I do not comprehend this, nor see the necessity of 
 " anj' such conveyance. Explain it when you have leisure. My poor 
 *' father seems to take it for granted that my uncle will die before 
 " him ; for he says, ' When my brother dies, I would vecomnicnd to 
 '' ' you to sell them, and think that they would be a most desirable 
 " ' purchase to the proprietors of the Forge,' &c. I have often 
 " thought so too : but I am inclined also to think that these people 
 " would give as much for about one half of the garden with the 
 " paddock, as another person would for the whole of the premises. — 
 " I am surprised that Sir George Baker, who writes remarkably good 
 " and graceful Latin, should not have been able to make Inglis'a 
 " stuff show better than it does. But the Latin for inscriptions is 
 " widely different from that which is read at schools, and perhaps 
 " Sir George B. may not be versed in it. No man upon earth knows 
 " it so well as our friend at Hatton. It was a great disappointment 
 " to me that you were unable to decipher my verses. I took uncom- 
 " mon pains in transcribing them, and the verses arc above medio- 
 " crity. One night I happened to think on poor James, and com- 
 " posed before I went to sleep tlie following Iambics. I have often 
 " retouched them since. Send them to the Doctor [I'arr]. I mean
 
 19G GEBIR ; AND EARLIEST FEIENDSHIPS. [Book II. 
 
 1797-1805. 
 
 " of a dream." But before finally quitting tlie period 
 wliicli these two opening Looks include, I will let him 
 speak another word for himself upon his Eugby days. 
 Its ])roper place was earlier in the narrative; but before 
 I found the letter to me containing it, that jiortion of 
 my book was printed ofiP; and, as it confirms and ex- 
 plains what formerly was said* of the cause of liis 
 departure from Kngby, gives his little fag a pleasanter 
 word than Bii'cli could afford him in the letter last 
 quoted, and supjjlies another varied and vi^'id pattern 
 of the mingled yarn of which the web of eveiy part of 
 liis own life was made, it Avill not now be out of place. 
 At the date of the letter he had been corresponding 
 about an Eton boy's cruelty to his fag, which the 
 newspapers had got hold of and were sharply re- 
 proving. 
 
 " my copj-, as I have taken imcoiranon pains "svith the words and 
 " punctuation," &c. A portion of the verses, on his personal rela- 
 tions with his old master, will perliaps, after what has been said of 
 those Eughy days, have an interest for the reader : 
 
 " Vale, magister ! Jamese, ave et vale ! 
 Tu dum vocabas srepius flevi puer, 
 Versans, minatum ubi maxime est periculum, 
 Inefficaces, algidus metu, nianus ; 
 Nunc, dum voco ipse nee refers contra, fleo. 
 At hostis olim tu mihi tibique ego ... 
 Qui meque teque jam videntes crederent? 
 Ah cur reductis abnuebas naribus, 
 Spectans refrigeransque Irevo lumine, 
 Cui primum amicus ingenuusque omnis puer 
 Et cui secundum ipse remulus daret locum ? 
 Sed banc habebis, banc habebo, gratiam, 
 Quum carmine istorum excidas, vives meo. 
 Nam nee severus semper aut supercili 
 Tristis, nee inficetus aut expers salis, 
 Sed comis indulgensque vel nostro joco 
 Eras, solutis jam scholaj compagibus." 
 
 * Sec ante, pp. 31, 32.
 
 ^T. 22-30.] WALTER BIRCH. 197 
 
 " "When I ■s^Tote about the cruelty of the Eton boy 
 " I had not forgotten a lighter case at Rugby. With 
 " what pleasure and even pride do 1 recall to memoiy 
 " that I was the first of that school who paid the lad he 
 " fao-fred. Poor little B. H. had three or four bottles 
 " to fill at the pump in a hard frost, and was crying 
 " bitterly, when I took pity on him and made him my 
 " fag, at threepence a week I think. This exempted 
 " him from obedience to others, and 1 seldom exercised 
 " my vested rvjMs. Perhaps the head master James 
 " thought it an innovation to pay. He certainly hated 
 " me for my squibs, and had also threatened to expel 
 " me for never callino- Will Hill blister: I havino; 
 " told him I never would call Hill or any other Mister 
 " unless I might call the rest so. At last he wrote to 
 " my father that 1 was rebellious and incited others 
 " to rebellion ; and unless he took me away he should 
 " be obliged (' much to his sorrow') to expel me. As I 
 " was within five of the head, and too young for Oxford, 
 " I was placed under a private tutor and matriculated 
 " at seventeen. Among my enormities was writing the 
 " verses I now send you. James had chosen some of 
 " my worst verses to play for, as we called it : that 
 " is, every half-holiday was supposed to be gained for 
 " the lads by the best verses of the day. ]Mine were 
 " always the best, but, out of malice I am afraid, the 
 " very worst of them were chosen ; and this was my 
 " revenge." 
 
 Of the extent of it, far exceeding the precisely simi- 
 lar instance referred to in a former page,* the reader 
 must happily be left ignorant, the accompanying Alcaic 
 verses not admitting of translation. But what they show 
 of a man's intellect in youth entirely without guidance 
 
 * Ante, p. 31.
 
 198 GEBIR ; AND ExiELIEST FRIENDSHIPS. [Book 11. 
 
 I 797-1 805. 
 
 or control, tlie letter recalling tliem not less strikingly 
 sliows of the passions and impulses of youth sui'viving. 
 to extreme old age ; and it will he well to take this 
 douhle consideration with us into the years we have 
 now to retrace.
 
 BOOK THIED. 
 
 1S05-14. JET. 3C-39, 
 AT BATH AND CLIFTON, IN SPAIN, ^VND AT LLANTHONY. 
 
 I. Life at Bath. 11. Robert Southey. ill. First Letters to Soutliey. 
 IV. In Spain. V. Letters to Southey on Spain and Spaniards. 
 VI. Letters on Kehama and Roderich. vii. The Tragedy of 
 Count Julian, vill. In Possession of the Abbey, ix. 3Iar- 
 riage and Life at Llanthony. x. Public Affairs, xi. Private 
 Disputes. XII. Departure from England. 
 
 I. Life at Bath. 
 
 In the mter\'al that unmechately followed his succession 
 to the paternal estate, Lanclor lived chiefly in Clifton or 
 at Bath ; and at the latter place his younger brother 
 found him, soon after their father's death, "-with the 
 " reputation of very great wealth, and the certainty, at 
 " his mother's death, of still greater. A fine carriage, 
 '• three horses, two men-servants, books, plate, china, 
 " pictm'es, in every thing a profuse and wasteful out- 
 " lay, all confirmed the grandeur." Upon tlte whole 
 not a life, for such a man, either profitable then to have 
 lived or now to recall ; and very little here shall be said 
 of it. Some love- verses connected with the later por- 
 tion of it can also afford to perish. Their heroine, lone, 
 who translated far too easily into Jones, has retained 
 not so much as a fragment of romance. Even of his 
 lanthe, to whom in these days much beautiful and
 
 200 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 tender verse was dedicated, there is little now remain- 
 ing to claim a place in my story except sucli cliance 
 allusion as hereafter may drop from himself. 
 
 The sort of life thus led in Bath lioweA'er could not 
 he passed without results more or less grave ; and in 
 little more than a year they showed themselves in a 
 form for which the remedy was supposed to have been 
 found in a project for selling the old j^aternal estate in 
 Staffordshire, and reinvesting in other land at greater 
 profit. Reserving these things to a year or two hence, 
 when the necessary arrangements, meanwhile set on 
 foot, became practicable and were completed, I shall 
 dwell upon those incidents only of the intervening 
 years out of which matter can be extracted that is 
 worth remembering, or that throws any kind of light 
 u]5on the variable career and character of which, with 
 all its good and evil so capriciously intermixed, its 
 comedy and tragedy, its clouds and sunshine, its gene- 
 rous emotions and tempestuous passions, its use and its 
 waste of prodigious powers, it is my object in these 
 pages to convey at the least no false impression. 
 
 Kemembering allusions formerly made* to the wife 
 of a friend very dear to him in early Warwick davs, it 
 will be proper not to omit the mention of her death, 
 which occurred at this time. It should be given for such 
 evidence as it affords that, amid his present daily and 
 nightly tound of " routs, plays, concerts, and balls," his 
 heart was yet easily moved as ever, and keen in its sus- 
 ceptibility of suffering. The young wife of the physician 
 who had succeeded to his father's practice in Warwick, 
 the " angel" of his early letters, died so suddenly that 
 he had not even heard of her illness, and now first 
 read of it in a newspaper. Her infant daughter and 
 
 * Ante, pp. 145, 149, &c.
 
 JET. 30-39.] . LIFE AT BATH, 201 
 
 herself had died together. " Poor Lambe, poor Lambe," 
 he writes to Parr, at whose house tlie friends had so 
 often met : 
 
 " Poor little Elizabeth and her mother, now indeed divine ! 
 Yes, death has proved the fact, and not the contrary. For what 
 is death ? A change of situation, an enlargement of liberty, a 
 privilege, a blessing, an apotheosis. What hours have Ave passed 
 together, hours never to return, or to produce their likeness in 
 this world ! In vain have I tried every species of amusement : 
 routs, plays, concerts, and balls. Her image rises up every- 
 where before me. I sicken at the sight of beauty. Did she 
 not treat me as a brother ? did she ever call me by more than 
 one name ? The sound of Walter was the sweetest of sounds. 
 Pardon me, I will acknowledge it, she made me think myself a 
 virtuous and great man. Certainly I never left her company 
 but I Avas more happy and more deserving of happiness." 
 
 The same unmistakable sorrow is expressed to his 
 sister Elizabeth, one of his letters to her ending thus : 
 
 " It was a shock from which I have not yet recovered, and 
 which I shall feel, I believe, for ever. 
 
 " O Lambe, my early guide, mj' guardian friend, 
 Do thus our pleasures, thus our prospects end ! 
 All that could swell thj' heart, thy soul elate. 
 Heaven gaA-e, but pondering found one gift too great. 
 What now aA'ails thee, what avail'd thee then, 
 To shine in science o'er the sons of men ; 
 Each varying plant, each tortuous root to knoAV, 
 What latent pests from lucid Avaters flow ; 
 All the deep bosom of the Air contains, 
 Fire's parent strength and Earth's o'erflowing A'eins ? 
 The last unwelcome lesson teaches this. 
 Frail arc alike our knowledge and our bliss. 
 Against the storms of fate and throbs of pain 
 Wisdom is impotent and virtue vain."* 
 
 His eldest sister was his constant correspondent at 
 this time, and would have saved him from many a 
 folly if cleverness and good sense could have done it. 
 
 * A portion of these verses (without the last two) will be found 
 with variations in his published poems.
 
 202 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14.. 
 
 But lie was no sooner out of one scrape than he was 
 into another. "The battledore you talk of," he replies 
 from Bath to one of her letters, " is called a cornet, and 
 " I play at it better than any man in England. I was 
 " taught in France. A little girl said to me, Jouez 
 " done aux comets, mo7isieur? My reply was, A la bonne 
 ^' heure, ma petite. Je ne vie siiis pas marie a present. 
 " I played nevertheless, and have played the same 
 " game since. I believe I am more in request here 
 " than I have ever been ; not for myself — for we are 
 " not, like wine, improvable by age — but for Frolick 
 " and Favourite, and what is whispered of Llanthony." 
 Frohck and Favomite were his carriage -horses. He 
 ends his letter with a parable of a young lady whom a 
 spectre was reported to have visited at night, until lier 
 mother, by taking her to sleep in her own room, ex- 
 orcised the ghost, to which he had himself thereupon 
 addressed these lines : 
 
 " Thou, since she sleeps with her mama, 
 Lookst like a fox in some ha-ha, 
 Who views, with nostrils open'd wide, 
 A pheasant on the other side. 
 Pants, grmnbles, whines with lank desires, 
 And licks his whiskers, and retires !" 
 
 Very well for the ghost that he could; but some enter- 
 prises there were out of which retu'ement was less easy, 
 and they largely occupy his sister Elizabeth's letters. 
 She is in a jjerpetual agitation of warning agamst any 
 ill-advised marriage, one danger of this kind succeeding 
 another veiy rapidly. She has indeed no objection to 
 a well-considered proceeding of the sort ; and sketches 
 one in the language of an old sen^ant who has come 
 with her annual gift of a basket of chickens to the 
 f;\mily at Warwick, and has declared herself " anackaunt- 
 " able glad LIr. Walter is gTowing jolly, and hopes he
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LIFE AT BATH. 20S 
 
 " "will many some fine lady of a good family and for- 
 " tin, as he onglit, to be sure." Not that to the sister 
 these a2:)pear indispensable, if their place is othenvise 
 filled. "Birth and fortune," she tells her brother, "are 
 " not requisites, but good disposition and good under- 
 " standing are ; and how many innocents, only for 
 " being pretty, have you all your life been thinking 
 " sensible!" That was a home-thrust, and had some 
 effect, the lady against whom in particular it was aimed 
 not retaining her influence; but one of these affah's 
 had gone very far before any thing of it was kuoTsii to 
 her, and she has almost to resign herself to the confes- 
 sion that it must be. " I hope to God your choice may 
 " be a fortunate one, for I never was and never shall 
 " be happy when you are othen\dse. You are not just 
 " to me. I do wish you to be mamed ; but I am sure 
 " the common sort are not calculated for you." 
 
 Happily escape came again ; and in this case from 
 the lady herself. Some offence had been taken by her, 
 not clearly to be made out from Landor's letter, which 
 dAvells far less on the incident itself than ujDon the ball 
 and supper where it happened, with its "SAdnter pines, 
 peas, strawben'ies, and " sparagus," besides ice enough 
 to co^•er the Nieper and beauty enough to thaw it all. 
 To which his sister quietly rejoins that she hears with 
 delight of his being again heart-free; makes neat allu- 
 sion to the lady's predecessor as well as herself, by re- 
 marking that theu' friend " the old doctor" had declared 
 " neither to be worthy of him ;" hopes he may now 
 have time, as her mother says, to " think of somebody 
 " worth something;" and tells him that the blaze of 
 beauty over in Bath must be brighter than the fire by 
 which she is \NTiting if it succeeds in aoain makino; him 
 intemperately warm.
 
 204 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 But the heats that Lanclor suffered from were not 
 from that bLaze only. His eager interest in poHtics had 
 not meanwhile slackened ; and unpalatable as many 
 of his opinions were to the particular j)art of society 
 which his present mode of living necessarily threw much 
 in his Avay, moderation or compromise on any points, 
 even in the matter of speech, was a virtue still unkno^vn 
 to him. "About sixty years ago," his brother writes to 
 me, " an old friend of his who felt much esteem for 
 " him, a Major Tickell, the descendant of Addison's 
 " friend, expressed his siu'prise to me that my brother 
 " should have lived so long. ' We were occasional 
 " ' guests,' said he, ' at the same public table in Bath 
 " ' two winters, where there were other military men ; 
 " ' and if I had talked as he talked, there would have 
 " ' been half-a-dozen bullets through my body if the 
 " ' first five had been insufficient.' Such dangers w^ere 
 " in truth only escaped as his character became known 
 " for extravao;ance, and sometimes chieflv through the 
 " interposition of such friends as the major." On the 
 other hand it is to be remembered that there were esti- 
 mable men in the major's profession then, to whom the 
 mere praise of ]Mi\ Fox would be a horrible jacobin 
 extravagance ; and the accession of that statesman and 
 his friends to powder on Pitt's death in the early part of 
 the year had given unusual bitterness to party strifes 
 and hatreds. Landor's intercourse with Parr it natvi- 
 rally drew closer; and it brought him again into cor- 
 respondence with Adair, from one of wdiose letters we 
 may gather something of the turn Landor's outlook in 
 politics was taking at the time. More eager than ever 
 against Bonaparte, and resolute for maintaining the 
 efficiency of the power which had been thus for the 
 only check to his ambition, he had written to Adair
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LIFE AT BATH. 205 
 
 about the uaYj. The reply, very cordial in its toiie, 
 gives us a glimpse of the troubles of " All the Talents'' 
 from a source very near the fountain-head. 
 
 " I concur entirely with you in opinion respecting the times, 
 and the nature of the difficulties -with which the new adminis- 
 tration has to contend : I think also with you that ' whatever 
 ' can be done by wisdom and humanity' will be done by Mr. Fox : 
 but I confess that my hopes are not so great as my fears in any 
 view I can take of the situation of our affairs. Indeed it is my 
 firm belief that although, for reasons which appear conclusive to 
 them, they think it more prudent to abstam from laying open 
 to the country the true state of those affairs, they have found 
 them in a much worse condition than they could have themselves 
 believed at any time during their opposition. I have heard 
 many plans suggested at various times for the manning of our 
 navy, and for keeping up a sufficient number of seamen during 
 peace to enable government to equip their fleets on a sudden 
 without having recourse to pressing or similar methods ; but for 
 some reason or other, naval men have always rejected even the 
 experiment. The present Board of Admiralty would, I should 
 think, give a fair hearing at least to any new hints that might 
 be offered them on so important a subject. Indeed I think that 
 if you would give yourself the trouble to put your ideas into 
 a practicable form, much real good might result from submitting 
 them to the consideration of Lord Howick." 
 
 This letter "was "written at the close of April 1806, 
 and led of course to nothing. Before a year "was over 
 Fox had followed to the grave his gi'eat adversary ; the 
 rest of " the talents" "were nowhere ; and with the Port- 
 land and Perceval combinations the career of Castle- 
 reagh and Canning had begun. 
 
 It was while these changes were in progress that an 
 incident occurred which Landor would often himself tell 
 pleasantly in his latter years. On some occasion unex- 
 pectedly he had gone, after a long interval, to visit his 
 mother at Warwick ; when. Pan- happening to have a 
 large company at dinner that day, one of the guests
 
 ■20G BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 told their entertainer of the sudden and milooked-for 
 arrival at ]\Irs. Landor's. " Eat your dinner, eat your 
 ^' dinner," said Parr ; but hardly had the tablecloth been 
 removed, and the first glass of wine taken, when the 
 old doctor laid down his pipe. " Drink your wine, my 
 " friends, drink your wine ; I must go and see Walter 
 " Landor." And so he did. At War^^^ck he presented 
 himself, as unexpectedly as Landor had done very shortly 
 l^efore, and the friends had an hour together ; but no- 
 thing would he take, not even the cup of tea that was 
 pressed upon him. " No, no, Walter, I must go back 
 " to my friends ; they are all at dinner." And Landor 
 ■would finish the story in a pleasant elated way by de- 
 claring himself to be the only man in the world that 
 could have made Doctor Parr ride half a dozen miles 
 with his dinner in his mouth and his pipe out of it. 
 
 11. Robert Southey. 
 
 Soon after the incident last related Landor had 
 started on a tour in the lake-country, which Parr thus 
 announced to a friend who complained afterwards that 
 the promised visit was never paid him. " In the course 
 " of the summer you will be called upon by Mr. Walter 
 " Landor, who is going on a tour to the lakes. He is 
 " my particular friend. He is impetuous, openhearted, 
 " magnanimous; largely furnished with general know- 
 " ledge ; well versed in the best classical "writers ; a man 
 " of original genius, as appears in his compositions both 
 " in prose and verse; a keen hater of oppression and 
 " corruption ; and a steady friend to civil and religious 
 " liberty. I am confident you will be much interested 
 " by his conversation ; and it is my good fortune to 
 " laiow that his talents, attainments, and virtues amply
 
 ^T. 30-39.] EGBERT SOUTHEY. 207 
 
 " compensate for all liis singularities." No Lad picture 
 by a friendly hand. 
 
 With the lakes already were connected the chiefs of 
 the little band of writers whose fame became afterwards 
 identified with that beautiful country. Coleridge had 
 been living at Greta; Wordsworth at Grasmere, not 
 many miles away; and Southey was now permanently 
 fixed at Keswick, the richer for the Fox and Grenville 
 ministry by a pension of two hundred a year which one 
 of its members, his friend W}' nne, had obtained for him. 
 Yet far less for this did the name of the whig chief con- 
 tinue for some years longer a grateful sound to Southey, 
 than for an incident of one of the last social readings at 
 St. Anne's-hill; when Fox and his company, not closing 
 at eleven as usual, " went on till after midnight reading 
 " iliarfoc."* This was something for a man to remember 
 to whom poetry was all in all, and to whom the half of 
 seventy-nine shillings and a penny had just presented 
 itself as his share of Madocs profits after twelve months' 
 sale. But Landor admired Madoc too ; its writer's name 
 had become known to him as that of the first and almost 
 only friend of Gehir ; and in a letter to his sister in the 
 summer of 1807 he deplores his ill-fortune in having 
 missed an introduction to Southey. He had very nearly 
 bought an estate in his neighbourhood, adjoining Lowes- 
 water lake ; but he had not seen him. 
 
 Once afterwards they missed again. At the house 
 
 * The generous and genial statesman was indeed a favourite with 
 all the poets ; and but a very few years befoi'e, Wordsworth, sending 
 him the Lyrical Ballads, had thus written : " In common with the 
 " whole of the English people, I have observed in your public cha- 
 " racter a constant predominance of sensibility of heart. . . . This 
 " cannot but have made you dear to poets ; and I am sure that if, 
 " since your first entrance into public life, there has been a single 
 " true poet living in England, he must have loved you," (See Memoirs 
 by his Nephew, i. 1G7.)
 
 208 BATH, SPAIX, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 of a friendly ])li}'sician and his wife at Clifton, from 
 whom many kindnesses had been received by Landor's 
 sisters during an illness consequent on their watching at 
 the sick-bed of their father, Southey had in fonner years 
 been a frequent visitor ; and in a letter at the close of 
 1807 Mrs. Carrick writes to tell Landor that IVii'. Sou- 
 they, who had not been ^^'ith them for some years, had 
 called with his friend Mr. Danvers, very anxious to get 
 an introduction to the author of Gehir. " He says he 
 " will be particularly gratified to wait on you if you will 
 " allow him. I vdVi not repeat j\Ii\ Southey's opinion 
 " of Gehir; yet one may be permitted to be gratified 
 " by the opinion of svich a man. He is just now going 
 " to publish his History of the Cid. Did I "s^Tong when 
 " I said you would be pleased to see Mr. Southey? 
 ^' Perhaps I said 'delighted.' He has visited and ad- 
 " mired yoiu' Llanthony Abbey mth the enthusiasm of 
 " a poet. I will endeavour to let you know the precise 
 " time we may expect again to see him, and I hope you 
 " will not have taken yoiu' flight to Bath." Not yet 
 however was the meeting \d\h Southey to take place, 
 nor was Landor yet absolutely lord of Llanthony : but 
 all his friends knew he had set his heart on the place, 
 for that on hearing of it after the ftiilure at Loweswater, 
 without seeing it he had made an offer for it, and ^A-ith 
 a thumping oath protested he would have it : with what 
 truth as well as vehemence will shortly be seen. Never- 
 theless he and Southey were to meet first, after all. 
 
 At Danvers's lodmno-s in Bristol this memorable 
 friendship began. "At Bristol," \\Tote Southey to 
 Grosvenor Bedford at the end of April 1808, "I met 
 " the man of all others whom I was most desirous of 
 " meeting, — the only man living of whose praise I was 
 *' ambitious, or whose censure would have troubled
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ROBEET SOUTHEY. 209 
 
 " me. Yon will be curious to know wlio' this could be. 
 " Savage Landor, the author of Gelir ; a poem which, 
 " unless you have heard me speak of it, you have pro- 
 " bably never heard of at all. I never saw any one more 
 " unlike myself in every prominent part of human cha- 
 " racter, nor any one who so cordially and instinctively 
 " agreed with me on so many of the most important sub- 
 " jects. I have often said before we met that I would 
 " walk forty miles to see him ; and having seen him, 
 " I would gladly walk fourscore to see him again. He 
 " talked of Thalaha, and I told him of the series of 
 " mythological poems which I had planned ; mentioned 
 " some of the leading incidents on which they were to 
 " have been formed, and also told him for what reason 
 " they were laid aside ; — in plain English, that I could 
 " not afford to write them. Landor's reply was. Go on 
 " li'ith them, and I loill pay for printing them, as many as 
 " you will write, and as many copies as you please. I had 
 " reconciled myself to my abdication (if the phrase may 
 " be allowable), and am not sure that this princely offer 
 " has not done me mischief ; for it has awakened in me 
 '' old dreams and hopes which had been laid aside, and 
 " a stinging desire to go on, for the sake of showing 
 " him poem after poem, and saying, / need not accept 
 " your offer, hut I have done this because you made it. 
 " It is something to be praised by one's peers ; ordinary 
 " praise I value as little as ordinary abuse." 
 
 Prepared long for this meeting at last, as well in 
 likeness as in unlikeness suited for friendly intercourse, 
 finding at once a common ground in which what was 
 weakest in each took strength from what was best in the 
 other, the friendship so begun that day was ended only 
 by death. Soon there fell from it all that might have 
 taken the taint of patronage in Landor, and all that mere 
 
 VOL, I. p
 
 210 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 literary vanity might have suggested to Southey ; while 
 yet enougli was left of the spirit of the compact made 
 at their first meeting, not to weaken in either the con- 
 fidence inspired by it. 
 
 Regularly at successive intervals for five years from 
 that day Southey sent by post to Landor, transcribed 
 clearly in his wonderful autograph, each section of the 
 whole of his poems of the Curse of Keliama and Don 
 jRoderich (the latter under the name of " Pelayo"), 
 exactly as each had been first composed ; and duly by 
 the same channel payment as regular had been sent 
 back by his friend, in admiration always, often in shrewd 
 suggestion, never without zealous and loud encourage- 
 ment. Payment of other kind, though frequently pressed, 
 had been steadily declined; but Landor ultimately forced 
 upon Southey, through his publishers, a cheque for a 
 large number of copies o? Kehania, which had been dedi- 
 cated to himself. To this statement it will be right to 
 add that every transcript by Southey, with its covering 
 letter, was kept by Landor ; and that all of them, with 
 the rest of the correspondence stretching uninterrupt- 
 edly over thirty years, were given by Landor to myself 
 in view of some such undertaking as the present. Sou- 
 they's were aflenvards lent to his son and his son-in- 
 law for the selection of such portions as they might 
 desire to publish ; but Landor' s, which he had himself 
 reclaimed from the executors of his friend, were at his 
 own request wholly reserved for the use now about ta 
 be made of them. And with them, let it be clearly said 
 once for all, such portions only of Southey's will here 
 be given as have not before been printed in either his 
 son's Life* or his son-in-law's Letters.^ Excluded from 
 
 * Six volumes. (Longmans, 1849-1850.) 
 t Four volumes. (Longmans, 185G.)
 
 ^T. 30-39.] EGBERT SOUTHEY. 211 
 
 both publications, they will yet show probably better 
 than any thing in either what there was that formed the 
 curious likeness in unlikeness between these remarkable 
 men. 
 
 The time at which they met was when Southey had 
 abandoned his earlier Avithout finding his later opinions, 
 when he was out of Utopia but not yet settled in Old 
 Sarum. He remained still an ardent reformer. But a 
 few months back he had been deploring that Fox should 
 not have died before Pitt, and so been spared the dis- 
 grace of pronouncing a panegyric upon such an inso- 
 lent, empty-headed, long-winded braggadocio ; and not 
 a twelvemonth later, when the Quarterly Review sud- 
 denly confronted the Edinhwgh, armed to the teeth 
 against a tyranny which, absolute over poetry as well as 
 politics, had come to be intolerable to many,* he warned 
 the new-comer, which he had helj)ed into life, that he 
 should withdraw straightway from all connection with 
 it if it raised against reformers any cry of jacobinism, f 
 Expressly indeed he declared himself then to be, in 
 terms which Landor might himself have used, for no 
 peace while Bonaparte lived, and for reform as the only 
 means to prevent revolution. But it was less in the 
 opinions they thus held in common, than in their mode 
 of forming and maintaining opinions even widely op- 
 posed, that they were unconsciously so like each other. 
 To both belonged the sanguine temperament, the deter- 
 
 * " Wc shall hoist the bloody flag do^\Ti alongside that Scotch 
 " ship, and engage her yard-arm and yard-arm." (Southey to his 
 brother. Letters, ii. 114.) 
 
 f " Things are come to this dilemma, Hefurm or Uidn ; and on 
 " one of these horns I pray to God that John Bull may give his 
 " damned drivers a deadly toss. A constitutional reform would save 
 " the country, and nothing short of that will be of any avail," (To 
 Grosveuor Bedford, 21 AprU 1809. Letters, ii. 145.)
 
 212 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY, [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 mined self-assertion, and the habit, whether within or 
 beyond the Kmits where opinion was safe, of free un- 
 bridled thinking. To both was too often applicable what 
 Soutliey said of another friend, that the pride of reason 
 in him left no room or accessibility for any kind of rea- 
 soning ; and the Aveaknesses in both, the inconsistencies, 
 the extreme opinions professed so often without need, 
 were in a si;reat degree referable to this. In the years 
 that followed shortly, when to Southey reform and revo- 
 lution had come to mean the same thing, not admitting 
 the change in himself he attributed the whole of it to 
 others, and said the jacobins that surrounded him were 
 the antijacobins of his youth, equally unjust and as 
 ferocious. Nor was this without truth in a deeper sense 
 than he intended, for in all essential respects he con- 
 tinued what he had formerly been ; and what now most 
 attracted him to Landor was less the agreement in pre- 
 sent opinion of which he speaks, than the resemblance 
 in habits of mind of which he was less conscious, and 
 which in their younger days had made both of them 
 rebels to authority. Several expressions to be found in 
 the letters will seem less startling if these few vv'ords are 
 remembered. 
 
 There is yet also another point on which a word 
 should be said. It belonged to the nobler part of 
 Southey's character that he should take the most ex- 
 alted view of the calling to which he had devoted him- 
 self. He was one of the greatest, and pretty nearly the 
 last, of the genuine men of letters that England has 
 produced, and he honestly believed himself also to be 
 one of the greatest of her poets. He worked hard and 
 got little ; but while his bare maintenance, and hardly 
 that, arose from his work for the day, he laboured also 
 without pay at other work for Avhich he knew the re-
 
 MT. 30-39.] EGBERT SOUTHEY. 213 
 
 wards must be distant, but appears to have felt they 
 would be absolutely sure. " I was perfectly awai'e/' 
 he said to a friend who had been contrasting one of 
 his epics with a more j)oj)ular poetical romance, "that 
 " I was planting acorns wdiile my contemporaries were 
 " setting kidney-beans. The oak will grow, and though 
 " I may never sit under its shade, my children will." 
 Three years later than the present date he wrote to 
 Grosvenor Bedford : " I wish you would not call me 
 " the most sublime poet of the age, because in this 
 " point both Wordsworth and Landor are at least 
 " my equals. You will not suspect me of any mock- 
 " modesty in this. On the whole I shall have done 
 " greater things than either, but not because I possess 
 " greater powers." Not that the reader now may smile 
 at them are these things quoted, but to explain still 
 fm'ther what it was that knit so close the friendship 
 of which I am speaking, and made it so endm-ing. 
 Southey's akeady avowed admiration of Landor's poetry 
 made inexpressibly grateful to him Landor's praise of his 
 own; and in the pleasure each continued to derive from 
 the other on this point, or, to speak plainly, in theu' 
 frequently excessive self-laudations, simplicity was more 
 prominent than vanity. In a critical moment, too, the 
 offer to pay for printing more epics had gone straight to 
 Southey's heart, almost sinking at the time from want 
 of all encouragement. Kehama, just sketched out, had 
 been flung aside ; and the series that had been meant 
 but to begin with Jocm^ Thalaba, and Madoc, was in 
 danger of ending with them because of the heaps of 
 all three piled up in the publishers' cellars. " It is 
 " more than probable," he wrote to Wynne, "that I 
 " should never have written verse again had it not 
 " been for an accidental meeting with Landor. I had
 
 2M EATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14, 
 
 " totally disused the art for the last three years." He 
 told Walter Scott, of Landor's princely offer, that it had 
 stung him to the very core ; and as the bite of the 
 tarantula had no cure but dancing, so for this there 
 would be none but singing. To many other friends he 
 wrote the same, and often he said afterwards that but 
 for Landor Keltania would not have been finished and 
 Roderick never begun. 
 
 Whether the world could not have borne the loss is 
 another question. In this matter appearances at present 
 are against both Southey and Landor ; but as, for the 
 latter, appeal is made in this book against them, so for 
 the former it will be fair to say that besides many minor 
 poems which will live \6.i\\ the language, and ballads 
 which are masterpieces of fantastic beauty, the greater 
 jDoems would seem to have fallen into unmerited neglect. 
 I am not sure whether it might not be put as a test of 
 the existence or otherwise of a pui'e love of the art in 
 any man that he should like or dislike these achieve- 
 ments of Southey ; and if Ariosto is able to retain his 
 readers, it appears hardly creditable to the public taste of 
 our time that Southey should entirely lose his. It is at 
 least certain that for many subtle and pleasing varieties 
 of rhythm, for splendour of invention, for passion and 
 incident sustained often at the highest level, and for all 
 that raises and satisfies wonder and fancy, there will be 
 found in Thalaha, Keliama, and Hoderick passages of un- 
 rivalled excellence ("perfect," even Byron thought) ; and 
 these may here excuse, if they do not wholly justify, the 
 hopes that once centred in them, and to which exalted 
 expression is given in the correspondence of the friends. 
 
 Then- letters will extend, as I have said, over thii'ty 
 years ; and one more remark will fitly close this prelude 
 to them. Wliatever fitful or wayward changes were in-
 
 -ET. 30-39. 1 FIEST LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 215 
 
 cident to the life of wliich tliese pages are the record, and 
 over which ah'eady have passed some friendships formed 
 and broken, the intercourse with Southey was to feel no 
 reth'ing ebb, but to keep ahvays on at the full. As it was 
 at the first, it contmued to the end. Through all that 
 estranged Southey's opinions more and more from those 
 with whom he had been most in sjTupathy, Landor was 
 staunch to him. In every bitterness of the other ex- 
 treme wliich Landor did not scruple to indulge, Southey 
 had excuses ready for him. When Byron coupled 
 them in ridicule, Southey seized the occasion to avow 
 that no greater glory could befal his name than that 
 of comj)anionsliip A^th Landor' s, to have obtamed whose 
 approbation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a 
 man, would be remembered among the honours of his 
 own life when the petty enmities of the generation were 
 forgotten and its ephemeral reputations had passed away. 
 And when that life was nearing to its close, almost the 
 very latest words that Southey was permitted to read 
 wdth a full consciousness of their meanmg were these 
 from the friend whom he had loved so well : " If any 
 " man living is ardent in his -svishes for your welfare, 
 " I am — whose few and almost worthless merits your 
 " generous heart has always overvalued, and whose in- 
 " finite and great faults it has been too ready to over- 
 « look." 
 
 ni. First Letters to Southey. 
 
 Landor began his first letter* to Southey, who had 
 sent him all that was written of Kehama,^ by telling him 
 
 * Dated " Sunday evening, May 8" [1808]. 
 
 t " If lie likes it," he wrote to Miss Barker C2Sth April 1808), 
 " in good earnest, I will get up at six every morning, and give two 
 *' fresh houi's of morning work to it till it is completed," He told
 
 21G EATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 lie had not stoicism enough in his nature to deserve his 
 correspondent's good opinion or his own ; yet there were 
 objects of which he never lost sight, and in the pursuit 
 of which he was strenuous and persevering. " While we 
 " were together I could not press the offer I made, both 
 " because I was unwullino; to have it considered as a 
 " matter of importance in itself, and because I felt too 
 " sensibly how little right I had to the distinction. 
 " There are few, I confess, from whom I would have 
 '' accepted the proposal. I would from you, if I could 
 " afford you the highest of luxmies at an inconsider- 
 " able price." He then speaks of KeJiama, internux- 
 ing mth exalted eulogy skilful objection to its metres, 
 rhymed and unrhymed ; excluding novelties of experi- 
 ment from poetry as not within its lawful province ; and 
 very striking in what he says of Pindar and his metrical 
 difficulties. 
 
 " The subject you have chosen is magnificent. There is 
 more genius in the conception of this design than in the exe- 
 cution of any recent poem, however perfect. Shall I avow to 
 you that in general I am most delighted with those passages 
 which are in rhyme, and that when I come into the blank verse 
 again my ear repines ? Are we not a Uttle too fond of novelty 
 and experiment, and is it not reasonable to prefer those kinds 
 of versification which the best poets have adopted and the best 
 judges have cherished for the longest time ? In Samson Agon- 
 istcs and in Thalaha there are many lines which I could not 
 describe. There are some in Kehama. Poetry is intended to 
 soothe and flatter our prepossessions, not to wound or irritate 
 or contradict them. We are at hberty to choose the best modi- 
 fications, we are not at liberty to change or subvert. We are 
 going too far from our great luminaries. There must be a 
 period ; there must be a return from this aphelion. 
 
 Wynne several months later that he was still borrowing hours from 
 sleep to go on with it, that Landor might not be disappointed. And 
 60 he persevered to the close. (^Letters, ii. 60-69, &;c.)
 
 ^T. 30-39.] FIKST LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 217 
 
 "Tou have begun a poem which will be coeval with our lan- 
 guage. March on : conciliate first, then conquer. The ears of 
 thousands may be captivated — the mind and imagination of but 
 few. If Gray had written his Elegy in another metre, it would 
 not be the most admired poem in existence. Many would see 
 its disproportions and defects : though proportion has not been 
 studied, or perhaps known, beyond the drama. Kchama will 
 admit more diversity than has even been imagined in the works 
 of Pindar, 
 
 " I never could perceive that wildness for which Pindar has 
 been traditionally remai'ked. I could perceive an exquisite taste 
 and an elevation of soul such as never were united — not even in 
 the historical works of the Jewish writers, not in the Song of 
 Deborah nor of Moses. Ch. Burney is of opinion that we have 
 lost the best works of Pindar. In a little time however he will 
 teach people to read the remaining Odes in such a manner as 
 to — distinguish them from prose! Is it not humiliating and 
 painful to reflect that a poet who held the second place in the 
 ancient world, should have left it a question among those who 
 know his language the most intimately whether his verses have 
 any intrinsic melody, or owed it merely to the music by which 
 they were accompanied ? Meanwhile every one satisfied his own 
 ear with the despicable trash of Lycophron and Tryphiodorus. 
 The opposition of iambic and trochaic, in antispastics, may 
 have been suited to opposite choirs and instruments ; but I hope 
 the metre and language of our early ballads, which we have no 
 reason to retain, will be banished for ever by men of genius from 
 then- more elevated works. 
 
 " SouTHEY, we have had too much of the lute and of the 
 lyre. We forget that there are louder, graver, more impressive 
 tones. These indeed are not proper for every day ; nor is it 
 every day, every century, or every millennium, that we shall see 
 such poems as Kchama. I beseech you, Southey, use such ma- 
 terials as have already stood the test. Wildness of conception, 
 energy, passion, character — magnificent but wild profusion — 
 all this you can give it ; and with this you will confer on it 
 neither a hazardous nor a painful immortahty." 
 
 His second letter was of twelve days' later date ; 
 Southey having meanwhile made battle for his own 
 forms of verse, and propounded a private belief that 
 the whole system of classical metres had been nothing
 
 218 BATH, SPAm, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 more than a creating of difficulty for the sake of over- 
 coming it. Old intercourse with Parr will be traced in 
 portions of Landor's reply about CatuUus, though he 
 has partly forgotten the Doctor's suggestion.* 
 
 " I am delighted at the manner in which you intend to exe- 
 cute your work, and I am certain you will exhibit to the world 
 such combinations of harmony as poetry never yet embraced. 
 You will not however bring me over to your opinion that the 
 ancients raised difficulties in their metre for the sake merely of 
 combating and overcoming them. Nor am I indeed of opinion 
 that even the most complicated are so hard to manage as the 
 English blank verse. Recollect their vast resources, their mul- 
 tiform transpositions, their building up and pulling to pieces of 
 words, their particles, their substitutions of one foot for another, 
 and their infinity of sjTionomes. By how many terms and peri- 
 phrases might every god, every hero, every country, be desig- 
 nated. Of all the verses in the world, the Greek anapaest is the 
 easiest — dare I avow it, to me it appears a mark, the only one 
 indeed, of puerility and barbarism in the literature of this illus- 
 trious people. Our anapaest on the contrary is beautiful, par- 
 ticularly when alternated in rhyme. The Romans were not 
 unwise in restricting themselves to few metres. The gall- 
 iambic has been used but once. Catullus, whose taste was the 
 most exquisite quot sunt quoique fucre aut quotqaot aliis erunt 
 in annis, was forced into it by his subject. Perhaps he trans- 
 lated a poem he found in Bithynia. Th o caste is Greek, the 
 style is not Roman. A single word of i:. is a sufficient proof 
 to me that he was merely the translator : 
 
 Tymprmum | tubam ] Cybe [ les. 
 A Roman would not make an anapfest of tympanum ; a Grecian 
 would write Tviravov. No one will be so silly as to imagine he 
 wrote a trochaic ; for if a single foot is so, the remainder of the 
 verse is, as far as the dimeter iambic goes. But I am doing in 
 this letter as I did, I believe, in my last : I am writing as if I 
 paid no attention to your remarks." 
 
 Southey's remarks, put strongly in both letters, had 
 been to urge him to write. Write in English, he said, 
 because it is a better language than Latin ; " but 
 
 * See ante, p. 162.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] FIEST LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 219 
 
 " if you vriH not write Englisli, write Latin ; and in 
 " God's name overcome that superstition about Robert 
 " Smith. When I consider what he is, it puts me out 
 " of all patience to think that the ghost of what he has 
 " l)een should overlay you like a nightmare."* Other 
 remarks also he had made, on what he had heard of 
 affairs in Bath. He wished Landor were married ; 
 vv'ished he were as much quaker as himself; wished 
 above alh he wovild tlu'ow aside Eousseau, and make 
 Epictetus his manual. To all which Landor replied, 
 bringing lanthe herself into the sober presence : 
 
 " The reason I have given over poetry is this. I think it 
 better not to have cut the dragon's teeth than to have sowed 
 them. Wliat a rabble of enemies are raised up about one at 
 every new publication ! There are thousands who may vex me, 
 there are few who can delight or amuse me ; added to which, I 
 either feel or fancy that I am as fond of another's good poetry 
 as of my own. But alas ! I do want stoicism for every thing. 
 I once resolved to attain it. What was the result ? Your slave, 
 your Epictetus, was pursued and punished. 
 
 " Shall I give you an elegy I have written : 
 
 Yita brevi fugitura ! prior fugitura venustas I 
 Hoc saltem exiguo tempore duret amor. 
 
 These opening verses pleased me. I repeated them one morning 
 in the presence of lanthe. She held me by both ears till I gave 
 her the English : 
 
 Soon, O lanthe, life is o'er, 
 
 And sooner beaut3''s playful smile ! 
 
 Kiss me, and grant what I implore. 
 Let love remain that little while." 
 
 I A^-ill spare the reader the rest of his Latin eleg}', 
 not one of the two-and-thirty more verses of which did 
 
 * Omitted in the Life, iii. 144. Another omission on the same 
 page may be worth appending. " Your 21." says Southey, " has been 
 " paid to the subscription for the Grasnicre orphans. Enough has 
 " been raised to provide for their well-being and well-doing."
 
 220 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 lie spare liis friend ; winding up tlie close of his letter 
 
 also in cliaracteristic fashion : 
 
 "I once thought of publishing a collection of Latin poems, 
 in which I had written remarks on those of R. Smith, Fox, Frere, 
 Canning, Addison, Milton, May, Buchanan, Pitcairn, Cowley, 
 and half-a-dozen more of our countrymen. These notices in 
 general were not much longer than yours to the English Poets. 
 Here are two specimens : ' FoxiUM, cseteroquin prse rivalibus 
 suis clarum, poetam parcius laudaverim. Erat ei mitis, et dum 
 luderet, sapientia ; castigati sales ; verborum perstepe, nonnun- 
 quam rerum penuria ; interdum frigus animi, quod lenem spiri- 
 tum faventes vocitarent.' ' De Caninio dicam quod sentio : 
 nemo enim mortalium tanti est ut me mendacem f aciat. Bene 
 res malas scripsit, nee bona male. Dolendum est obscuros atque 
 infimos nebulones a poetis pessimis insequendis revocasse, in viros 
 illustres optimosque incitasse, nee novisse seipsum esse temnen- 
 dum, quando alios temnere pertinaciter, magnoque cum suo cru- 
 ciatu simulare.' "We really do want some Elegant Extracts of 
 the modern latinists. Many fine specimens are recoverable. I 
 wonder some German has not done it. I have pointed out the 
 bad poetry and the false metre of Sir William Jones — I correct 
 myself : you cannot point out the bad poetry of this worthy 
 man, but you may lay your hand upon it. Yes, both your hands. 
 Gyas might lay all his even, if each of them were as large as 
 the whole bodies of his brotherhood, and extended novem per 
 jugera." 
 
 The second consignment of Kehama manuscript lies 
 before me, scrawled over with innumerable addresses. 
 It had gone to the Hot wells, Clifton. It had followed to 
 Pulteney-house Bath, and to the South Parade. London 
 and Brighton had been tried ; and it had overtaken Lan- 
 dor at last in Falmouth ! From the latter place he writes 
 to acknowledge it, and one may fancy the amazement with 
 which Southey read these words. " Nothing I do, whe- 
 " ther wise or foolish, will create much surprise in those 
 " who know my character. I am going to Spain. In three 
 " days I shall have sailed. At Brighton, one evening, 
 " I preached a crusade to two auditors. Inclmation was
 
 ^T. 30-39.] FIRST LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 221 
 
 " not wanting, and in a few minutes every thing was 
 " fixed. I am now about to express a wish at which 
 " your gentler and more benevolent soul will shudder. 
 " May every Frenchman out of France perish ! May 
 " the Spaniards not spare one ! No calamities can chain 
 " them down from their cursed monkey-tricks ; no ge- 
 " nerosity can bring back to their remembrance that a 
 " little while since they mimicked, till they really thought 
 " themselves, free men. Detestable race, profaners of 
 " republicanism, — since the earth will not open to swal- 
 " low them all up, may even kings partake in the glory 
 " of their utter extermination ! I am learning, night 
 " and morning, the Spanish language. I ought not to 
 " give my opinion of it at present ; but I confess it ap- 
 " pears to me such as I should have expected to hear 
 " spoken by a Roman slave, sulky from the bastinado. 
 " I hope to join the Spanish army immediately on my 
 " landing, and I wish only to fight as a private soldier. 
 " There is nothing; in this unless it could be kno-\vn 
 " what I have left for it, and, having left, have lost."* 
 
 It was a kind of loss which his sister more msely 
 would have thought his gain ; but at the step thus sud- 
 denly taken his family were as much startled as his 
 friends. He had mentioned it to no one. The act 
 followed close upon the thought of it, and he was gone 
 before any one could have reasoned witli him. But as 
 we look back upon it now, and recall some of the cir- 
 cumstances that immediately impelled it, we may pos- 
 sibly find in it, besides the quixotic rashness, something 
 generous and noble. 
 
 * The letter has simply the date : " Falmouth, Wed, Eve." The 
 post-mark is 8th August 1808.
 
 222 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 IV. In Spain. 
 
 Napoleon's attempt to convert Spain and Portugal 
 into dependencies of France was tlie turning-point of 
 his fortunes. "When he conceived that design he had 
 all Europe, excepting England, at his feet, and nothing 
 seemed easier than its comjoletion. To one who had 
 struck do's\^i the whole of Germany and made a satellite 
 of Russia, what danger could there possibly be in over- 
 tiu-ning the Peninsidar thrones, one of them for years 
 the most abject of his vassals, and the other the most 
 despicable of his adversaries ? Yet his ruin dates from 
 his j^erfidy against them. 
 
 The plot had been in progress some time before its 
 real drift was suspected. Both countries had been over- 
 run with French troops, and the miserable Boui'bon 
 princes had been kidnapped, before the presence of Jo- 
 seph Bonaparte at ISIach-id told the whole treacherous 
 stoiy. A kind of dumb amazement and acquiescence 
 was at first the only feeling awakened. Resistance by 
 that time seemed dead beyond the hope or power of 
 revival. Spain had no treasury and no army. Her 
 soldiers had been carried off to the north of Em'ope, a 
 hundred thousand French veterans were in their place, 
 and French troops garrisoned her strongest fortresses. 
 Humanly speaking, all help and hope had come to an 
 end when the world was unexpectedly enthralled by 
 such a sight as even that centmy had not witnessed. 
 
 The Spanish people themselves arose in mass against 
 their invaders. All over the country there sprang sud- 
 denly into Hfe local bodies called Jxuitas, by whom the 
 powers of government were seized and exercised with a 
 success proportioned to their resolution and audacity. 
 The flame that had at first risen highest in Seville over-
 
 ^T. 30-39.] m SPAIN. 223 
 
 spread the land with marv^ellous rapidity. French fleets 
 were seized and French garrisons found themselves iso- 
 lated in fortresses supposed to be impregnable. Armies 
 were created and organised ; a free press was estabhshed; 
 the peasantry", self-formed into guerilla bands, strength- 
 ened every where the national levies ; and in the very 
 girls and women of Spain the French soldiers found 
 avenging furies. It seemed as if at last the conquering 
 career of Napoleon had been stayed in the presence 
 of a power grander than any arrayed against it by the 
 old governments. From the spirit of patriotism and 
 liberty which had originally been the strength of France 
 men now believed that her weakness and her downfal 
 were to come. 
 
 To say that the enthusiasm created by these events 
 in most parts of England was frantic, is to employ no 
 misplaced term. But what was done thereon, from its 
 ignoble beginnings to its noble end, is matter of his- 
 tory, and excluded from these pages. History however 
 scarcely tells us how deeply individuals were moved, as, 
 in broken and exaggerated fragments, piece by piece, 
 tlie glorious news came over. The shouts of towns and 
 cities far off, says Wordsworth, found echo in the vales 
 and hills aromid him ; where " the hopes and feai's of 
 " suffering Spain" had been equally in all men's hearts. 
 Every where, too, expectation went as fiu' beyond pro- 
 bability or reason as the exploits that had aroused it. 
 Castanos and Baylen, Palafox and Saragoza, names 
 hardly known to this generation, became v\'atchwords 
 over England ; and when king Joseph was reported to 
 have fled from IMadrid, it was as if Napoleon himself 
 had been tumbled from his throne. Coleridge, then 
 living in Grasmere-vale, has related how they would, he 
 and ¥/ordsworth together, often and often walk out to
 
 224 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III, 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 the Raise-gap as late as two o'clock in the morning to 
 meet the Keswick carrier with the newspaper. It was a 
 time unparalleled in history, exclaimed Southey, " and 
 " a more glorious one never has and never can be ex- 
 " hibited to the world." And, just at the time when 
 he was saying this, the excitement had fallen upon still 
 more inflammable stuff in Landor's breast, with the re- 
 sult that we have seen. He was for action, not talking. 
 He resolved to go out as a volunteer. He took money 
 to contribute to the common stock, and would himself 
 lead into battle the troops he should have equipped 
 and armed. Very quixotic ; yet at the heart of it also 
 something of a generous grandeur. If a more settled 
 earnestness of purpose had but entered into it! 
 
 Unfortunately of such enterprises in general it is to 
 be said that they fail as a matter of course. The fine- 
 hearted and hair-brained make an ill match ; unprofit- 
 able for the most part, and barren of issue. There can 
 be no sufficient calculation and no adequate provision. 
 Something there was, in the present case, of glory in 
 having been the first English volunteer that set foot in 
 Spain ; but this was about all achieved by it or got out 
 of it. At Corunna Charles Stuart was envoy; attached 
 in a friendly way to his mission was Charles Robert 
 Vaughan of All-souls Oxford, who had been at Rugby 
 with Landor ; and to Corunna Landor first went. His 
 two companions to whom he refers in his letter to Sou- 
 they were both Irishmen, an O'Hara and a Fitzgerald. 
 Upon reaching Corunna he sent to the governor ten 
 thousand reals for relief of the to^^^l of Venturada, burnt 
 to the gi'ound by the French. At the same time, in a 
 letter accompanying his gift, he stated his intention to 
 join at once the army of Blake; and declared that what- 
 ever volunteers were ready to join him, though to the
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN SPAIN. 225 
 
 number of a thousand, he was ready to pay their expenses, 
 to travel with them on foot, and to fight along with them ; 
 desiring no other glory than to serve under any hrave 
 Spaniard in arms for defence of religion and liberty. 
 By the supreme council of Castile, to which the gover- 
 nor straightway sent the money and the letter, both were 
 gratefully received ; the reals were deposited in the na- 
 tional bank, and the governor was instructed to express 
 to Mr. Landor the high sense which the council enter- 
 tained of his generosity, his valour, and his honourable 
 enthusiasm.* 
 
 * The subjoined is taken from Saunders's Dublin News-Letter 
 and Daily Advertiser of Monday the 3d October 1808, which now 
 lies before me. 
 
 " The Governor of Corunna has addressed the following letter to 
 Don Arias Mon, Dean of the Supreme Council of Castile : 
 
 " Illustrious Sir, — On the 24th an English gentleman, accom- 
 panied by two Irish gentlemen, delivered to me a letter to this effect : 
 
 " I take the liberty to present, through the medium of j'our re- 
 " spectable authority, a small offering of 10,000 reals for the unfor- 
 " tunate town of Venturada, destroyed on account of its loyalty to 
 " its king by most cruel and fei'ocious enemies. Two Irish gentle- 
 " men (Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. O'Hara), men of the first families of 
 " their country, accompany me, and are desirous of proceeding with 
 " me to the army of General Blake. If there are any volunteers in 
 " this town, or in tlie kingdom, who may wish to accompanj^ me, 
 " though their number should amount to 1000, I shall with much 
 " pleasure pay the expenses of their journey, travel with them on 
 " foot, and fight along with them, glorying to serve under the com- 
 " mand of any brave Spaniard who has taken up arms in defence of 
 " religion and liberty. W. SAVAGE LANDOR." 
 
 " The said 10,000 reals being in my hands, I infomi you thereof, 
 in order that publication may be made in the Court Gazette, and the 
 money approi)riated for the benefit of the unfortunate town of Ven- 
 turada. A. Alcedo. 
 
 " Corunna, Aug. 20." 
 
 " The Council ordered the a1)0ve 10,000 reals to be transmitted to 
 the National Bank for the use of the people of Venturada, and di- 
 rected the Governor of Corunna to express to Mr. Landor and the 
 two Irish gentlemen tlie high sense which the Council entertains of 
 their generosity, valour, and honourable enthusiasm." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 In the interval between the enrolment of his troop, 
 which was formed at once, and their departm*e for head- 
 quarters, a misunderstanding occurred with the English 
 envoy. Landor applied to himself an expression of 
 Stuart's overheard by him at one of the meetings of the 
 jmita, which undoubtedly was meant for another per- 
 son. The matter might easily have been cleared up, but 
 he did not even make the attempt. On the way with 
 his volunteers to Blake's army he wrote from Villa 
 Franca an intemperate letter to Vaughan, and printed 
 it both in Spanish and English before any reply could 
 reach him. In or near Aguilar he remained nearly three 
 months, engaged in petty skirmishing, and fretting at 
 the inaction of the northern division and its general. 
 Then, what the alleged affront of the envoy had begun, 
 the affair of Cintra and its disasters completed ; his troop 
 dispersed or melted away; and he came back to Eng- 
 land in as great a hmiy as he had left it. 
 
 At his return he told Southey that he wished greatly 
 to have seen Madrid, but he was afraid a battle might be 
 fought in his absence, and the mortification of not being 
 present at it would have killed him. " In this expecta- 
 tion I remained nearly three months in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Gallician army, sometimes at Reynosa, 
 sometimes at Aguilar. I returned to Bilbao after the 
 French had entered. I had the satisfaction of serv- 
 ing three launches with powder and muskets, and of 
 carrying on my shoulders six or seven miles a child 
 too hea\y for its exhausted mother. These are things 
 without difficulty and without danger; yet they please, 
 independently of gratitude or applause. I was near 
 being taken the following day. This would have 
 been exceedingly unpleasant, as I had already sent 
 the letter to Vaughan and Stuart, and myself and
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN SPAIN. 227 
 
 " the envoy must meet." He described Aguilar at that 
 time as an open town consisting chiefly and almost 
 entirely of one broad street ; and said, in proof of the 
 strange mistakes as well as fatal inaction of Blake, that 
 while his main force was at the town, he was himself a 
 mile on the east, and had so stationed his cannon on the 
 west, near a ford, that a regiment of horse might have 
 surjDrised and spiked it. 
 
 " Ah !" said Southey afterwards when he was writ- 
 ing Roderick, " it is much for a poet to have traversed 
 " the scenes in which the subject of his poem is laid. 
 " It gave you an advantage in Count Julian." It is cer- 
 tainly not difficult to understand, after reading what has 
 just been quoted, the double meanings in Landor's mind 
 in some of the earlier scenes of his tragedy, when its 
 hero, in arms against his countrymen, is praising their 
 simplicity of character : 
 
 " If strength be wanted for security, 
 Mountains the guard, forbidding all approach 
 With iron-pointed and uplifted gates, 
 Thou wilt be welcome too in Aguilar, 
 Impenetrable, marble-turreted, 
 Survej'ing from aloft the limpid ford, 
 The massive fane, the sylvan avenue ; 
 Whose hospitality I proved myself, 
 A willing leader in no impious war 
 Wlien fame and freedom urged me ; or mayst dwell 
 In Reynosa's dry and thriftless dale, 
 Unharvested beneath October moons, 
 Among those frank and cordial villagers." 
 
 Such was Landor's raid into Spain ; as to \vhich I will 
 now only give such further illustrations, from his own 
 and the envoy's letters, as may still be read with inter- 
 est. They will also tell what the Spaniards themselves 
 thought of the service rendered them, and what return 
 they made for it.
 
 228 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHOXY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Here is liis own description of his voyage to Co- 
 
 runna : 
 
 " The commencement of my journey did not augur a pro- 
 sperous continuance or a liappy termination. I arrived at Fal- 
 mouth when the packets had sailed two hours, and was de- 
 tained at that wretched place eight days. At last I went on 
 board, and the wind was favourable ; but while the sailors were 
 jBlling the casks it changed again suddenly, and we were buffeted 
 or becalmed on the Atlantic five days more. The water had 
 been put into foul casks, and it could not be more putrid if it 
 had been carried round the world. The tea seemed originally 
 to have had some connection with tobacco, and had formed a 
 fresh family compact in the voyage. There was not a lemon 
 on board ; but we found a few blighted figs and rotten apples. 
 As we approached Cape Prior, we discovered a French privateer. 
 Apprehensive that she might capture some of the transports 
 that Avere carrying our troops to Lisbon, I asked Captain Atkins 
 why he did not engage. She was then only at the distance of a 
 mile from our fi-igate. The captain said that the packets had 
 positive orders to the contrary ; but in fact the ship was larger 
 and the guns much heavier than ours. We continued two 
 whole days within sight of Corunna. The wind was violent, 
 and the vessel received some material damage. At last we en- 
 tered the harbour, and were greeted with all the alacrity of 
 pleasure by our new allies."* 
 
 Something of what happened in his march between 
 Cornnna and ViUa Franca I find in otlier letters, which 
 contain also delightful glimpses of the country and 
 characteristics of that part of Gallicia. 
 
 " At Lugo we took up our abode at a posada just beyond 
 
 * A letter from Captain Atkins dated the 13th November 180S 
 aclinowledges gratefully a gift of a compass which Landor had sent 
 him; says it will remind him always "of the many pleasant and 
 " instructive hours passed with the giver, notwithstanding the preva- 
 " lence of many adverse gales in a very leaky ship ;" and, describing 
 the defects in the latter as having been " found considerably alarm- 
 " ing," adds that he is nevertheless under immediate orders to join 
 the commander-in-chief, Lord Gambler. In one of the verj'^ next 
 engagements he lost his life.
 
 JET. 30-39.] IN SPAIN. 229 
 
 the walls. Near it was a magazine of brandy, wine, and corn. 
 About midnight we were awakened by a blaze brighter than 
 the day. Our first idea was that a party of French horse 
 had surprised the city. We threw on our clothes, seized our 
 swords and pistols, and discovered immediately under our win- 
 dow vast torrents of flame. We hastened to the spot, and in a 
 few minutes the guard had assembled with the governor and 
 his officers. He thanked us very cordially for our cooperation 
 in extinguishing the fire. There was no engine in the town, 
 and I had recommended to throw as much dust as could be 
 collected wherever the conflagration was extending. This me- 
 thod perfectly succeeded. The principal chui-ch here is partly 
 ancient, partly modern. The walls are of very remote anti- 
 quity. The surrounding scenery, particularly towards Astorga, 
 is grand, although enclosed and cultivated. Near the city the 
 fences are of stone ; further on, they are live and wild; but I 
 remarked that the rose and honeysuckle were not to be found 
 amongst them so frequently as in England. The bii'ds too were 
 silent. We heard, instead of them, loud and wearisome hymns, 
 the tune eternally the same, and one incessant noise of cart- 
 wheels creaking on wooden axles. About a quarter of a mile be- 
 yond the bridge the road is supported by a wall, and from this 
 place the river Minho on the right presents the appearance of 
 a lake, in the midst of lofty chestnuts. We rested at another 
 posada three leagues and a half from Lugo. The window, or 
 rather the small aperture which had escaped the shutters, showed 
 us a narrow dell bounded by romantic hills, on one of which was 
 a single spot of the most vivid verdure, and on another a small 
 entrenchment. In this country some honey is produced, but 
 here is little corn, little cattle, and no wine. The bread, which 
 they informed me was white as the bread of Lugo, was in- 
 debted for its whiteness to the sand with which it was mixed. 
 We proceeded to the house of Don Josef Manuel Gomez, at 
 Basside. It was hardly a league further. Here we slept. The 
 land is fertile and well wooded, but on the 1st of September I 
 saw some barley only six or seven inches high. Some standard 
 peaches in the garden were also laden with unripe fruit. In fact 
 this part of Gallicia is certainly later than many in England, 
 though the fruit more rai'ely fails and grows in more abund- 
 ance. Throughout a distance of ninety miles I have not seen 
 an elm or an ash. This, though incomparably the most valuable 
 of trees, is perhaps the most neglected in the whole of Europe,
 
 230 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 and its nature the worst understood. Its timber is of a firmer 
 texture when it grows in an elevated situation, for which it 
 is peculiarly adapted by the toughness and flexibility of its 
 branches. It could resist the wind and snow where any other 
 tree would split, and where very few would vegetate. We 
 reached Nocera, a lovely little village ; then la posada de Castro, 
 and el castel de los Moros on the left, twenty -seven leagues 
 from Corunna. About half a league further is the sweetest 
 vale divided into enclosures of irregular forms, hardly one of 
 them a quarter of an acre. A brook runs amongst them, whose 
 innumerable mazes it is impossible to trace : the fields, the 
 trees, and the waters seem all in infancy and all at play. 
 Before us lay a wide extent of ploughed upland with inter- 
 spersed clumps of chestnuts. Here was no species of herbage, 
 but it was covered with sheep. This is the only instance in 
 which I observed them on the fallows. Such bold and diver- 
 sified scenery would have been admired in an English park. It 
 wanted but verdure and deer, accompaniments (but not essen- 
 tials) to the picturesque. About a league further we reached 
 Yilla Franca." 
 
 From Villa Franca was "\^Titten his ill-advised letter to 
 Vauglian ; and of the impetuous mistake that suggested 
 it something must be said. Shortly after his anival he 
 was received at the palace of the junta during one of 
 their sittings, when Stuart had attended hastily not only 
 to introduce his countryman, but also to obtain liberation 
 for a Spanish official on his way to Monte Video, whom 
 the junta, upon false information, had placed under arrest, 
 and of whom, among other things, Stuart told them that 
 the poor man was distracted, and had no money to sup- 
 port him at Corunna. He had been talking just before 
 to the junta of the services proposed to be rendered by 
 Landor ; and in the confusion that prevailed, the latter, 
 believing himself still to be referred to, overheard the 
 words unquestionably meant for the other, il est foii, il 
 ria 'pas V argent, which he straightway applied to himself, 
 and made the text of his letter to Vaughan.
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 IX SPAIN. 231 
 
 " They were spoken in that half-formed and that half-stifled 
 voice which deep malignity is apt to utter, but has not the 
 power to modulate or manage. He would not dare to use such 
 language openly ; and on his return to England, whenever he 
 gives me the opportunity, I will teach him that if any one 
 speaks of me, his tone must be lower, or his remarks must be 
 more true. You, who remember me in my earliest years, re- 
 member that I was distinguished — was it either as a liar or 
 a fool ? Inform him if ever I broke my word, or ever en- 
 dured an insult. I made no reply at the time to" his calumnies 
 and his insolence. I thanked him for his offers of service. 
 Though I consider him as merely a petty envoy to a province, 
 yet I consider also what is due both to the Spanish and the 
 English nation. No action is recorded more heroic than that 
 of Louis XIV. towards the Due de Lausun. When the king 
 received a gross and grievous inisult from his subject, he rose, 
 thi'ew his cane out of the window, and made this calm re- 
 ply : ' I should be sorry to have caned a duke and peer of 
 ' France.' Vaugiian, I should be sorry to have done what I may 
 not be sorry to do. I have been able to restrain my impetu- 
 osity, but I will not conceal my disdain. I entertain the highest 
 and most inviolable respect for whatever is in office under the 
 king and constitution of my country. The forbearance I have 
 shown, and even the letter I am writing, will controvert the 
 charge of imbecility, as surely as the same charge would be 
 proved by whatever is intemperate or coarse. The ten thou- 
 sand reals (why am I forced to mention them ?) which I paid 
 into the hands of the governor at Corunna, and a daily allow- 
 ance of full pay to every soldier I am leading to the armies, 
 together with some occasional gratuities to keep up their spirits 
 on the march, are presumptive proof that the calculations of 
 Mr. S. are groundless, frivolous, and false." 
 
 A man who could have reasoned however slightly 
 ■with his anger might at once have detected, in the very 
 language employed by himself, much stronger presump- 
 tive proof against his own calculations. " I made no 
 " reply at the time to his calumnies and insolence. I 
 " thanked him for his offers of service." Any one 
 indeed must have been himself a fool, as Stuart after-
 
 232 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 wards said, to whom tlie occasion of offering thanks for 
 service should have presented itself also as a fitting one 
 for insolence to the person rendering it. The extracts 
 that follow not only exonerate Stuart, but show him in 
 a very pleasing light : and the mention of what else was 
 in Landor's offensive letter may be limited to what 
 fm-ther it tells of what occurred to him in Spain. He 
 declares himself grateful for the marks of distinction 
 conferred on him by the venerable Bishop of Orense, 
 and for the respect freely paid him by every Spaniard 
 of rank or consequence \^dth whom he had conversed. 
 He tells the junta of Corunna that he can yearly with- 
 out inconvenience save sufficient for the accomplishment 
 of every offer he has made, and cannot apply it with 
 more lasting pleasure to any other purpose than the 
 advancement of their cause. And he expresses his fixed 
 intention to reach the camp, and to conduct to head- 
 quarters the men intrusted to his care, in time for the 
 battle then immediately expected. 
 
 Stuart to Vaijghan : Madrid, 18th Oct. 1808. 
 
 " Don Benito de Novoa will certify that Mr. Landor must 
 have misunderstood me, and that the language he alludes to 
 could not have been du-ected against him. On the contrary I 
 one day cited Mr. Landor's handsome offer to the junta as a 
 proof of the good-will and enthusiasm towards Spain which 
 animates Englishmen ; and knowing from you the talents, for- 
 tune, and character of that gentleman, I should have been mad 
 or a fool myself had I been base enough to depreciate his 
 exertions in so good a cause, who have myself descended from 
 my own rank in the service to engage heartily in favour of 
 Spanish liberty on Spanish ground. You were the bearer of 
 a message to Mr. Landor expressing my regret for our departure 
 at the moment of his arrival in Corunna ; and afterwards the 
 same circumstance in Lugo would not permit me to show him 
 the civilities I desired. I would willingly have furnished him
 
 ^T. 3C-39.] IN SPAIN. 233 
 
 with such recommendations to the army as I could give him ; 
 and I actually requested General Broderick, when he passed 
 through Lugo, to forward his efforts in the cause of Spain by 
 every facility which his situation at head- quarters could com- 
 mand."* 
 
 Vaughan to Landor : Sanguesa, 1st Nov. 1808. 
 
 " The kind inclination I know to have been professed to- 
 wards you by Mr. Stuart, and what he had learned from me of 
 your fortune and talents, convince me that whenever he made 
 use of those expressions in your hearing it must have been with 
 respect to some other person. So highly did he think of your 
 conduct that I know it was his intention to communicate to 
 the central junta what you had done and offered to do in their 
 favour, suggesting at the same time that they should give you 
 some mark of their approbation or thanks. I ought to regret 
 that under my name unpleasant language should have been 
 conveyed to a gentleman for whom I have the most affectionate 
 regard, and for whose talents I have the highest respect ; but I 
 rejoice in an occasion of relieving from a painful impression the 
 feelings of an old schoolfellow." 
 
 Stuart to Landor : Araxjuez, Utii Nov. 1808. 
 
 " I learn with much regret that I had the misfortune unin- 
 tentionally to offend you at Corunna, and I hasten to clear up 
 a mistake which appears to have given rise to sentiments in 
 your mind very different from those I have always entertained 
 respecting yourself, since I witnessed your conduct in this 
 country. 
 
 " I can assure you I do not recollect the conversation you 
 state to have passed between myself and Don B. de Novoa the 
 
 * This is confirmed by several allusions to this general, and his 
 friendly cooperation, in Lander's letters. When criticising Southey's 
 history in one of liis letters of March 1821, ho writes : " The capture 
 " of Blake at iSeville with all his army explains to me what I sus- 
 " pected. General Broderick told me he could obtain no confidence 
 " from him. I replied, ' Then have none in him.' Eomana would 
 " have acted differently. I should he glad to sec jour reasons for 
 " the strange inaction of the Gallician army, when the French had 
 " fled across the Ebro."
 
 234 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 evening I saw you in the junta ; and I solemnly declare upon my 
 honour that if such expressions fell from my lips, they neither 
 applied to you nor to any friend of yours. I could not oppose 
 or calumniate an undertaking which every motive of interest 
 and zeal called on me to support ; nor is it compatible with my 
 character to hold language to the personal prejudice of any 
 Englishman, knowing it to be false. I could not be ignorant 
 of your talents, which are manifested in writings well received 
 by the world and were evident from your conversation ; our 
 mutual friend Mr. Vaughan bore testimony to your fortune 
 and rank in life ; and your character was fully proved by your 
 exertions in favour of Spain. I was myself embarked in the 
 same cause ; and having been commissioned by government to 
 ascertain the wants of the Spaniards, and to transmit them par- 
 ticulars of every description until an envoy should be appointed, 
 is it likely that I should counteract the zeal of others labour- 
 ing to the same purpose ? 
 
 " Though I never made a merit of language in your favour 
 at the time, I feel now compelled to tell you that I repeatedly 
 desired the junta of Corunna to hold up your conduct as an 
 example to other individuals equally well disposed. The dis- 
 tance of Gallicia will not allow me to send you the assurance 
 of Novoa that such is the case ; but I transmit the copy of a 
 letter from the president of that junta who was present on the 
 day you allude to, which (notwithstanding his mistakes) will 
 prove the truth of my assertions. I have also written to Vaughan 
 at Laregovia, who I doubt not will do the same. If however 
 their letters are not sufficient to show that I am incapable of 
 animosity to a person engaged in such a cause, I presume you 
 win be convinced by the enclosed answer from the Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs to a note I transmitted to the Central Junta 
 detailing the services you have rendered to Spain. Honorary 
 rank in their army can be no object to one in your situation ; 
 and though it is the only mode of distinction hitherto conferred 
 on any Enghshman by the central government, I should have 
 declined their offer, had not the consideration that you may 
 like a character giving you a right to repair to the head- quarters 
 of their armies when you please induced me rather to wait for 
 your own determination. 
 
 " When Mr. Vaughan returns to Madrid on his way home, 
 I shall request him to dehver to you the original letters which 
 have passed on the subject ; and if they are satisfactory, I
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LETTEKS TO SOUTHET ON SPAIN. 235 
 
 hope I may look forward to shake hands with you as a well- 
 wisher of that country wherever we meet." 
 
 The letter of tlie president of the junta of Corunna, 
 the Count Gimondi, proved tlie circumstances as I 
 have stated them, and was a triumphant exculpation of 
 Stuart ; the letter of the Spanish minister (Cevallos) 
 conveyed to Landor, with handsome expressions o£ 
 esteem, the honorary rank of colonel in the service of 
 King Ferdinand; and in the Madrid Gazette of a few 
 days' later date were published the thanks of the Su- 
 preme Junta " to ]Mr. Landor," not alone for gallant 
 personal service, but for his gifts of twice ten thousand 
 reals in aid of Spanish independence and freedom. 
 
 Not a great many years later, when the restored 
 Ferchnand had restored the Jesuits, Landor sent back 
 his commission in a letter to that same Don Pedro Ce- 
 vallos, telling him that he had done his best for Spanish 
 liberty against Napoleon and could not continue even 
 nominally in the service of a worse perjui'or and traitor. 
 
 V. Letters to Southey on Spain and Spaniards. 
 
 The time when Landor again set foot in England 
 was that of the arrival from Portugal of the news of 
 the convention of Cintra, by which the entire French 
 army, at the expense of the English government, had 
 been safely conducted back to France. Sir Hew Dal- 
 rymple and Sir Harry Burrard Avere its authors ; and 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley had not resisted it, though he had 
 never given it his approval. On all sides there were 
 shouts of reproach. " But in spite of their allies," wrote 
 Landor at his arrival to his friend, "the Spaniards 
 " will be victorious. Can we never be disgraced but
 
 236 BATH, SPAIN, AXD LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " tlie only good people in the universe must witness 
 " it? Under tlie influence of what demon is it that 
 " we are forced to periodical wrecks of honour on the 
 " Spanish coast ? Lord Douglas sees me fall ! If 
 " nothing personal had diiven me home, still I could 
 " not have endm-ed the questions of brave and gener- 
 " ous Spaniards, — why we permitted the French to 
 " retain their plunder, why we placed them again in 
 " array against Sjiain, why we snatched them from 
 " the fury of the Portuguese, why we indulged them 
 " mth more precious fruits than they could have 
 " gathered from the completest victory?" To which, 
 after expressing his gladness at his friend's return, and 
 referring to Stuart as its supposed principal cause in 
 terms more offensive than Lander's own, Southey thus 
 breaks out : " I am sure that for the first week after 
 " the news arrived, had Sir Hew Dalrymple appeared 
 " in any part of England, he would have been torn 
 " in pieces. My cry was. Break the terms and deliver 
 *' up the xcretch who signed them to the French, with a 
 " Tojie round his neck! This is what Oliver Crom- 
 " WELL would have done. O Christ ! — this England, 
 " this noble country, — that hands so mighty and a 
 " heart so sound should have a face all leprosy, and 
 " a head fit for nothing but the vermin that burrow 
 " in it !" That was pretty well, but was not all. He 
 went on to say that he and Wordsworth had been 
 trying to get up a county petition against the " damned 
 " convention ;" but " Lord Lonsdale had received mum 
 " as the Avord of command from those who move his 
 " strings, and he moves the puppets of two counties." 
 A court of inquiiy to be sure was talked of, he says 
 with scorn ; but the only coiu't to do any good would 
 be one that should send " the hand of Sir Plew Dal-
 
 iET. 30-39.] LETTERS TO SOUTHEY ON SPAIN, 207 
 
 " lymple to be nailed upon the pilloiy at Lisbon, and 
 " that of Sir Arthur Wellesley for a like exposition at 
 " ]Madrid"(!) And then, after sketching what England 
 with better advisers might have done, he uses expres- 
 sions that will perhaps help to make more lenient some 
 judgments of Landor's modes of sj)eech to be considered 
 hereafter. " But nothing can or will go on well in 
 " this country till the besom of destruction has swept 
 " the land clean. When Joseph gets back to Madrid, 
 " it would not surprise me if Spain were to produce 
 " a tyrannicide. He Avho should do the deed should 
 " stand next to Brutus in my kalendar."* 
 
 Other confidences had passed between the friends 
 at this first interchange of letters on Landor's return, 
 which it will be only just to him also to quote, for such 
 qualification or correction of remarks already made as 
 they may fairly suggest. They are themselves a curious 
 comment on his recent flight into Spain. "I believe," 
 he said, at the close of his letter, vdiich bears the post- 
 
 * The various passages and expressions here quoted are omitted 
 from tlie letter as printed {.Life, iii. 195-8). Other omissions tliere 
 are also, of which one having a joersonal bearing may be sub- 
 joined : "How has your health held out? Even ordinary travelling 
 " in Spain requires a patient body to bear up against broken rest and 
 " heating food. I am glad this beastlj' blockhead has been of so 
 " much use in the system of things as to force you home ; your life 
 " would eli^e in all likelihood have been sacrificed inadequately. It 
 " was likely you might die a martyr ; but there would be such an 
 " unfitness in your falling by the hand of a fool that I have no 
 " apprehensions upon that score." By the date of his next letter 
 (.lanuary 1800) Landor had received Stuart's explanations. " ]\Ir. 
 " Stuart has declared that he never could apply those expressions to 
 " me whicli I resented, and offers peace. I always accept this ofPer." 
 It was a pity he did not regret at the same time the wrong he had 
 plainly done. " Tlie Central Junta," he adds, " has given me an 
 " honorary commission which confers the privilege of being always 
 " at head-quarters. I had taken leave of the generals and the go- 
 " vernment."
 
 238 BATH, SPAIX, AND LLANTHOXY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 mark of Xovember 1808, "I slioulcl have been a good 
 
 " and happy man if I had married. My heart is ten- 
 
 " der. I am fond of children and of talking childishlj. 
 
 " I hate to travel even two stages. Never without a 
 
 " pang do I leave the house where I was born. Even 
 
 " a short stay attaches me to any place. But, Southey, 
 
 " I love a woman who will never love me, and am 
 
 " beloved by one who never ought. I do not say I 
 
 " shall never be happy. I shall be often so, if I live ; 
 
 " but I shall never be at rest. !My e\'il genius drags 
 
 " me tlu'ough existence against the current of my best 
 
 '• inclinations. I have practised self-denial, because it 
 
 " gives me a momentary and false idea that I am firni ; 
 
 " and I have done some other things not amiss, in com- 
 
 " pliance "s^'itli my heart ; but my most virtuous hopes 
 
 " and sentiments have uniformly led to misery, and I 
 
 '^ never have been happy but in consequence of some 
 
 " weakness or some Aice." To which Southey, at once 
 
 la^"ing bare the source of these self-accusings and self- 
 
 exaltings, -^^dsely as well as neatly replied that what he 
 
 learnt from Rousseau, before he laid Epictetus to his 
 
 heart, was that Julia was happy -svith a husband whom 
 
 she had not loved, and that Wolmar was more to be 
 
 admu'ed than St. Preux. He bade no man beware of 
 
 being poor as he grows old, but he would have all men 
 
 bewai'e of solitariness in old age. His advice to his 
 
 friend therefore was that he should find out a woman 
 
 he could esteem, and love would grow more surely 
 
 out of esteem than esteem would out of love. Experto 
 
 crede Roherto. It was the adA'ice of one who by such 
 
 means had quieted a natiu'e httle less tempestuous than 
 
 his o^^^\\. 
 
 But by the time this discreet ad^•ice was in his 
 
 friend's hands, the self-blamuig self-j)it;)dng mood had
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LETTERS TO SOUTHEY ON SPAIN. 239 
 
 passed away. To tlie outburst of grief and reproach 
 that followed Moore's retreat and death at Corunna 
 there had now succeeded bitter storms of attack, recri- 
 mination, and controversy ; and Landor was plunged 
 in the thick of them. He replied to Southey by send- 
 ing in a printed pamphlet three dashing letters which 
 he had ^mtten to one of the generals (Requelme),* 
 whose acquaintance he had made in Spain. They were 
 not such as to satisfy his friend, who remonstrated with 
 him for not speaking kindly of the Portuguese, and 
 thought him hard upon even some of the English 
 agents in the Avar. Nay, retorted Landor, the occasion 
 is lost, and perhaps never will return. The time when 
 few men would have done what many will not do now 
 was passed away, as he feared irrecoverably. Southey 
 did not essentially differ from him, but was hampered 
 by his new connections in the Quarterly ; and not small 
 was Landor's surprise to hear that he had consented to 
 defend Frere in the next re\dew against the friends of 
 Sir John Moore. Frere, Ellis, and Canning had been 
 Sovithey's keenest assailants in the Anti-Jacohin ; but 
 their alHance against the Edinhurgh had been swift in 
 -sA-iping out animosities, as any one might have foreseen, 
 though Southey was still far from conscious of the 
 extent of the change in himself. With some pain, but 
 \di\\ more surprise, he received Landor's next letter. 
 It was dated July 1809. 
 
 " I am curious to see your defence of Mr. Frere. It will 
 require the exertion of all your ingenuity. He, I understand, 
 
 * " I wish for many reasons," wrote Landor to Southey in May 
 1S19, "that general Kecjuehne were living, among the rest, because 
 " after a few days' acquaintance he felt a sincere friendship for me, 
 " and because he promised to give me such information as would 
 " have been useful to your history."
 
 240 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHOXY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 was among the people who -wrote against you in the Antl- 
 Jacohin. This alone could render the undertaking pleasant and 
 triumphant. But, alas ! his defence must necessarily be some 
 disparagement to one of the best among soldiers and among 
 men. Had he addressed to me the insolent and presumptuous 
 language he addressed to General Moore, I would have taken 
 him by the hand on his return, and have granted him three 
 hours for business and devotion. The messages and notes he 
 sent are not to be considered as from an ambassador : the 
 language is personal and beyond his office. In punishing his 
 ofEence, therefore, I should remember an ancient custom — they 
 scom'ged before they executed ; although I might here be sorry 
 for so much severity, as he wrote some good pentameters, 
 either at school or after." 
 
 This bitterness was hardly in excess of the occasion ; 
 and there are few that will not think it honourable 
 to Landor, who look back to the letters of Frere used 
 then to discredit Moore's memory. The fame of this 
 great soldier has since had ample Aandication, but was 
 at that time in imminent peril ; and the instinct which 
 brought loyally to his aid so eager a friend to the 
 Spaniards as Landor had shown himself, was a noble 
 and true one. I subjoin the rest of his letter. 
 
 " In his [Frere's] correspondence with the excellent Moore, 
 he runs on with a total assumption and utter ignorance of facts 
 — with all the tartness, petulance, impudence, and self-suffi- 
 ciency of an only son among his country neighbours in his 
 first vacation from the university. The only letters, official or 
 private, containing any correct information of importance to 
 the general, was addressed to him by the Duque del Infantado. 
 It was dated Dec. 1.3th. Mr. Frere did not forward it until 
 Dec. 22d. The packet, we now know, was unsealed by Sir John 
 Moore's executors. The French entered Madrid on the 4th. 
 Yet in a letter of the 14th he says, ^ All the rejjorfs from Madrid 
 ' represent the force of the French as much reduced. No offi- 
 ' cial report has yet been received of the capitulation of Madrid, 
 ' nor is it by any means certain that any formal stipulation 
 ' existed.' This is the language of a man who attempts to con- 
 ceal from a wiser than himself a truth which he ought to have
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LETTERS TO SOUTHED ON SPAIN. 241 
 
 sounded and transmitted. By what means could he imagine 
 was the force of the French reduced ? Among the ve'povts from 
 Madrid, was not a single one of them less favourable ? Were 
 the gates open to falsehood only ? Did not a breath transpire 
 which might either have proceeded from or have tended to- 
 wards truth ? So, an English ambassador does not know what 
 has happened in the capital of a country to which he was dele- 
 gated — does not know even an event so striking as the reduc- 
 tion of that capital itself five days before the intelligence was 
 published through every other capital in Europe, ten days 
 after the fact. Such vanity and incapacity have often existed 
 in statesmen and ambassadors, but such proofs have never been 
 so palpable nor crowded into so confined a space. If the un- 
 timely death of a character so illustrious and so nearly perfect 
 as Moore would allow us to laugh at anything that reminds us 
 of him, it would be laughable enough to look at those subscrip- 
 tions at the bottom of Mr. Frere's letters. The formularies of 
 diplomacy neither force nor authorise an ambassador to say, ' I 
 ' am with great truth and respect, sir, your most obedient hum- 
 ' ble servant.' But when a fellow has written not only without 
 truth but with absolute rudeness — when he has told another 
 he would disgrace the British arms and bring ruin on the coun- 
 try he was sent to succour and support — how can he pretend to 
 assert his truth in offering his respect? If the ludicrous is 
 founded on the inconsistent, here surely is its very pinnacle. 
 It reminds me, in some novel I have read — I believe in Hugh 
 Trevor — of a cui'ious flourish at the end of every letter from a 
 knavish old steward to a foolish old master. I thought, in 
 reading the book, it was a singular stroke of character and a 
 happy one." 
 
 Southey still had a word to say for Frere, tliinking 
 the ambassador might have shown more spirit than the 
 general ; but he left the writing of the defence to Ellis. 
 The tone of his letter was also such as to propitiate 
 Landor, to whom he announced his intention of writing 
 such a history of 1808 as would give him real plea- 
 siu'e. It was a task in which Scott had engaged him 
 for an Edinburgh Annual Ilcgister, to be started by 
 the Ballantynes. Landor would like the bitterness and
 
 242 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " undissemLled contempt" whicli he should there find 
 
 bestowed upon all parties alike. For indeed he found 
 
 himself in agreement with his friend as to the way in 
 
 which the war had been mismanaged ; and in despising 
 
 the " miserable ins and outs" among the same sets of 
 
 feeble politicians, who had all been tried and found 
 
 wanting. Had ever a gam.e been played so ^vretchedly 
 
 that might so easily have been won? Had he seen 
 
 Wordsworth's pamphlet on the Cintra convention ? 
 
 In spite of a difficult style, he w^ould admire its true 
 
 eloquence and true philosophy. Landor's reply is 
 
 highly characteristic. It is dated August 1809. 
 
 " This work of Wordsworth is vigorous and just. My opi- 
 nion of the Spaniards is corrected by the experience of Moore, 
 I believe no breed of people to be so good ; but they have 
 nothing to fight for, and nobody to lead them if they had. 
 The heads of nations must often be stirred, and occasionally 
 be removed. The water that one year is covered with lilies 
 and lotuses, in another may contract a film, and in a few after 
 may have nothing but weeds above and mud below. I like idle 
 people — they are not rapacious. It is from rapacity most evils 
 originate. At all events it is not from working in the field of 
 battle that the Spaniard is to procure more comforts ; and I 
 cannot blame him if he sees on his farm a swarm of bees with 
 more pleasure than a legion of locusts. All old governments 
 are bad, and my breech shall never go to the ground by resting 
 on one. "We are a great people because our constitution by 
 eternal changes is exempt from any violent. It has always 
 been pervious both to light and winds. Else, like those of 
 France and Germany, it would have been uprooted at the fii'st 
 tempest. Adieu. Vive valeque." 
 
 From Clifton, in the November of the same year, 
 he WTote still in much the same tone, with a shrewd 
 perception of all the weakness of the Spaniards which 
 his friend never reached, and -s^dtli a resolute appre- 
 ciation of the utter worthlessness of their leaders which
 
 JET. 30-39.] LETTEKS TO SOUTHEY ON SPAIN. 243 
 
 it took many more years to make apparent to every 
 body. 
 
 " May the spirit of prophecy never forsake you, and never 
 be less propitious to the cause of freedom ! The Spaniards, it 
 appears, have gained another victory ; but as they have no 
 prospect of a better government, I gTieve perhaps more at their 
 successes than I should at their defeat. That such exertions 
 should be vain and fi-uitless, that the patriotic shovdd pour out 
 their blood for the traitorous, that a Bonaparte or a Bourbon, 
 it matters not which, should erect his throne over the great 
 charnel-house of Spain, is most lamentable and most sure. Two 
 events leave me without the power of doubting that the pre- 
 vailing party in the Junta is devoted to the French. First, their 
 hesitation and slowness to convoke the Cortes ; and secondly, 
 the extreme absurdity which they combined with it of inviting 
 aU Spaniards to deliver theu' sentiments on what alterations 
 and improvements it would be requisite to make in the govern- 
 ment and constitution. To agitate the minds both of the wise 
 and of the ignorant, to make every man's vanity turn out 
 against his neighbour's, to bid people choose their representa- 
 tives yet exercise their judgment by giving then' votes indivi- 
 dually, could not enter any sound head for any good purpose. 
 The scheme was formed in the Tuileries, and is worthy of its 
 author. See what a parcel of rascals and boobies have been 
 appointed by the Junta to conduct their armies. Masaredo, a 
 most excellent man and a most experienced officer, joined the 
 French through the love of freedom and from the desire of 
 forming for his country an efficient and firm government. 
 Weakness and abuse he knew are often long-lived, though they 
 come to a violent end : and he thought it less disgraceful, as 
 perhaps some others do, to wi'ithe for a moment under superior 
 strength than to slumber out all his days in a sty of his own 
 littering." 
 
 Nor less remarkable is the remainder of the letter, 
 ■svhere Lander's discontent M'itli the government at home 
 which his friend was still outwardly condescending to sup- 
 port finds animated expression. He had become in June 
 of this year, at Southey's request, a subscriber to Cole- 
 ridge's Friend, in the twelfth number of which, published
 
 244 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 ill tlie month when his letter was written, appeared a 
 paj)er on vulgar errors respecting taxes and taxation, 
 wherein Coleridge contended that though taxes might 
 often be injurious to a country, it could never be from 
 their amount merely, but only from the time or mode in 
 which they were raised ; and, objecting to the analogy 
 set up between a nation indebted to itself and a trades- 
 man under obligation to his creditors, had said a m-uch 
 fairer instance would be that of a husband and wife 
 playing cards at the same table against each other, 
 where what the one lost the other gained. Landor 
 did not find this illustration quite satisfactory. 
 
 " Woe betide those governors whose paralysed hand holds 
 out unwittingly this problem to their countrymen — whether it 
 is better to sink under the ascendancy of exalted genius from 
 without, however malignant be its influence, or to be so supine 
 and idle as never to lift up their heads and use their arms 
 against the scorpions that sting them or the spiders and cock- 
 roaches that consume them from their own window-shutters ! 
 For my o-wti part I would buy a monkey, I would even bring one 
 over, to devour these mischievous vile household insects. When 
 rulers are so feeble or corrupt as to make men indifferent to 
 their country, which never was done to so blind and precipitous 
 a height as now, it is idle to talk of taxation. But I cannot yet 
 consider it so tranquilly as your friend Coleridge. If my wife 
 wins my money at cards, and she is really a prudent wife, 
 I sustain no detriment. But if she squanders it among un- 
 worthy favourites, and bribes her servants with it to pull her 
 neighbour's cap, I will take care in future to play less often and 
 for a smaller stake. If taxes are at no time injuries ' from their 
 ' amount merely,' it is because, when they are exorbitant, the 
 mode of raising them must be inquisitorial or violent. May we 
 not complain of a thing oppressive in itself, because there is also 
 another thing which adds to the oppression ? Certainly no lady 
 "Nvith 150Z. jointure and six or eight children, who pays such 
 taxes as she must at present do, could by any human ingenuity 
 in imposing or collecting them be made insensible of their 
 pressure. I remember the logical smndling of your neighbour 
 Bishop Watson, and the hot but honest reply of poor Gilbert
 
 ^T. 30-39.] LETTERS TO SOUTHEY ON SPAIN. 245 
 
 Wakefield. I remember too the crucem and the diadema. I 
 never liked either of these writers. The one would never have 
 made me a critic, nor the other a clxristian, nor have induced 
 me to think him so. As I never drink wine, I am forced every 
 now and then to write half-a-dozen verses, that I may forget 
 what is passing round about." 
 
 But lie continued to write on the things also he 
 most wanted to forget ; and these notices of his letters 
 about Spain should not close without mention of his 
 ^ Hints to a Junta/ which, as he told Southey in 
 March 1810, he had written fiercely but improvidently. 
 " Many of the things were useful at the moment. It 
 " is gone by : indeed I question if any bookseller would 
 " print the thing if I gave it him : and I never will ask 
 " for anything except for heaven and a wife." Sou- 
 they's next letter was very decisive of the influence ot 
 Landor over him. The conclusion had been forced 
 upon him, he said, that Bourbon was as bad as Bona- 
 parte ; ' Hants to a Junta' had not been thrown away 
 on him; and now more than ever he wished that, 
 at the outset of the French invasion, Spaniards and 
 Portuguese had sung Te Deiim for the loss of their 
 respective dynasties and united in a federal republic. 
 It was the form of government peculiarly adapted to 
 the Peninsula, because of the different fueros of the 
 different kingdoms ; and other good must have come of 
 it. " It might perhaps have prevented this country 
 " from assisting them, but they would have been better 
 " without its assistance ; and it would not impossibly 
 " have occasioned a resurrection of the Jacobins in 
 " France" — in other words, have destroyed Napoleon. 
 That was the temper in which, so late as 1810, Sonthey 
 was prepai'ing his second batch of history for the Kdin- 
 hurgh Register ; and Landor should see that it would be
 
 24G BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 composed " with a spirit that will sm*prise most people 
 " in these base times." 
 
 And then a misgivino; crosses him as he Avi'ites these 
 words whether the eagerness with which he was now 
 turning to that kind of composition might not imply that 
 history, not poetry, was his real function after all, at 
 any rate for the days that remained to him; only (he 
 adds with a pleasant touch of character) a proof-sheet 
 of Kehama is apt to disperse the cloud. With this letter 
 there went to Landor the commencement of his History 
 of Brazil. 
 
 His friend replied and reassured him. No poet 
 worth the name but must at times give way to thinking 
 that there are poets enough in the world without him ; 
 but let him be satisfied that a greater confidence would 
 not imply greater power. For himself he lamented 
 every hour that Southey deducted from poetry. Those 
 who might read Keliama would judge whether its writer's 
 present love for history could arise from anything like 
 " incipient decay" in the powers of imagination. He 
 knew not what poem was so vivid and so varied. 
 Wliereas he could not but doubt whether the world in 
 general cared about historical facts in the past affairs of 
 Brazil ; nay, whether even such facts of the day passing 
 before them excited any interest whatever. Very cha- 
 racteristically he proceeds : 
 
 " It is, I begin to think, for the good of mankind that for 
 ten or twenty years it should first sink, and afterwards smart, 
 under a severe and oppressive tyranny. The instrument wants 
 a good deal of playing upon. This mil prove either that it is 
 good for nothing or that it will come into tune by degrees. If 
 I had five thousand pounds to employ people to collect papers, I 
 would also write a history of the present reign. An insuperable 
 idleness, and a disgust and satiety of everything, will I am 
 afraid overcome all my faculties."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODERICK. 247 
 
 Nevertheless in tlie same letter of April 1810 lie 
 tells his fi'iend that he has just been writing a letter 
 to the pojDular hero Burdett, a Lrave and good one ; 
 five long hours' work, all of which he shall have to 
 re-copy. " Ah me ! this reminds me that you could 
 " not make out my Latin verses ! I wonder whether 
 " I shall be able myself to read my letter to Burdett 
 " when I see it to-morrow morning." Perhaps he 
 was not, for all trace of that production has vanished. 
 But the mention of the Latin verses may take us to 
 other parts of the correspondence of the friends, in 
 which only matters of literature were discussed between 
 them. 
 
 VI. On Kehaima and Eoderick. 
 
 The portions of letters contained in this section will 
 relate chiefly to the poems which, resumed at Landor's 
 instigation, Southey carried on to their completion 
 steadily amid his other labours ; and they shall be 
 such as I hope may still be interesting, or in some way 
 characteristic of either friend. There will at least be 
 no repetition, in any of the extracts given, of what has 
 before appeared in print. 
 
 From Bath, 11th Januauy 1809. 
 
 " Since my return from Spain I have hardly read anything 
 else than the Cld and Kchama. It will be long before we have 
 such warriors as the one, and such poems as the other. I never 
 felt the same anxiety to see the whole of any work as of this. 
 ' Twice bast thou set thy footstep : 
 Where shall the third be planted?' 
 
 If the next parcel is equal to the two former, the riches of the 
 East will vanish from the grasp of future poets. I am not des- 
 tined to be a great reader. Many hours have I passed, at dif- 
 ferent times, over these lines :
 
 248 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 ' There Kailyal stands 
 And sees the billows rise above his head. 
 She at the startling sight forgot the power 
 The Curse had given hun, and held forth her hands 
 Imploringly, — ^her voice was on the wind, 
 And the deaf ocean o'er Ladurlad clos'd.' 
 
 " There are some things in oior language whicli want fixing by 
 some convention among the higher powers. Shakespeare and 
 Milton -write toward and toward. But improperly : for we say 
 invariably backward, forward, and we ought also to say toward. 
 I have in general given more attention to language than to any- 
 thing else ; but I shall always think myself wrong in ' Bent to- 
 wards them, &c.' at the end of a book in Gehir. We possess a 
 high advantage in the double termination of the third person 
 singular — es and ctli. The former should never precede an s, 
 nor the latter a tli. To this rule I would adhere both in poetry 
 and prose. I hear no more of Mr. Coleridge's new project." 
 [The Friend : of which the first number did not appear till 
 June.] " Indeed I converse with no literary men here, nor do 
 I know for certain whether here are any." 
 
 An Objection : February 1809. 
 " When I can read what you send of Kehama more calmly 
 and dispassionately, which I would hardly Avish to do, I will 
 search it through and through to discover the slightest of its 
 imperfections. None of your enemies shall be more zealous in 
 the laboiu'. One line not only displeased but disturbed me, 
 
 ' Eye hath not seen nor painter's hand pourtrayed.' 
 I have an insuperable hatred to such words as 'painter' and 
 ' pom'tray' in grave heroic poetry : add to which, if ' eye hath 
 not seen,' it is superfluous to say the rest. The first words are 
 serious and solemn — the last put one in mind of the Exhibition 
 and the French. Take care how you ' o'erlay this poem with 
 ' ornament !' It is now suis poUens opibus, as Lucretius says of 
 the Gods. I know not whether we shaU find any one in any 
 language so full of originality and fancy. You will find fewer 
 things to embellish than to correct, and very few of these. Re- 
 member that I am to have something to console me for not 
 being able to -vrnte it. I am to be the typographer." 
 
 Southey's Reply. 
 " Yom' draft was put in circulation. Kehama would never
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODEPJCK. 249 
 
 have been resumed had it not been for you. It bad lain un- 
 touched for five years, and so it would have remained. You 
 stung me to the resolution of going on ; and I am not siu-e 
 ■whether the main pleasm-e which I have felt in proceeding has 
 not been the anticipation of addressing it to you and saj-ing so. 
 It is announced through the customary channel of magazines 
 as in considerable forwardness. I am going to Edinbiu-gh in 
 May, and for a week or ten days shall be Walter Scott's guest. 
 Kehama will then (God willing) be completed : and I think 
 Scott will enable me to ascertain in what manner it may most 
 advantageously be published. . . It has however cost me no ex- 
 pense of time. I have fairly won it, as Lincolnshire speculators 
 win estates from the sea ; — my daily work has been done just as 
 if no such composition was in my thoughts, without the slight- 
 est interruption. If therefore nothing be got by its sale, it 
 has not made me the poorer. I am so much the happier for 
 having written it, so much the richer as a poet, and in fact 
 have received from you half as much as the profits of an edi- 
 tion would be when shared by a publisher. Its success (I speak 
 solely of its marhct success) will only thus far influence me, 
 that a good sale would make me afford more time for other 
 such poems, which I should then publish as fast as they were 
 written. Its still-birth (which I entirely expect) will merely 
 make me write others as this is wi'itten, in the early morning 
 hours ; which I shall continue to do as long as the unabated 
 power is in me, and leave them behind as post-obits to my 
 children, in perfect confidence that such manuscripts Avill prove 
 good and secure property hereafter. At Edinburgh I shall feel 
 my way about the publication. When the obnoxious line was 
 written, I thought of better painters than the exhibitioners — of 
 those whose creative powers entitle them to be mentioned any- 
 where. It is however an ugly word, because it always reminds 
 one of the house-painter. I set a black mark upon the line. 
 Your remarks shall be well weighed, and every passage which 
 I cannot entirely justify shall be altered. Do not however 
 be at the trouble of criticising the first portion which you re- 
 ceived, for that has been greatly altered since by rhjTning most 
 of those parts which Avere rhymeless — a task which is yet to be 
 completed." 
 
 Landor's former objection to the rliymclcss metres 
 had led to this concession from his friend ; and speaking
 
 250 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 of it in his next letter he says that, apart from his admi- 
 ration of the higher beauties of the poem, the faciHty 
 displayed in the new rhymes had taken him greatly by 
 surprise. "It never was equalled. New rh}Tnes m 
 '• general seem strange ; and nine people out of ten, 
 " scholars I mean and literatists, imagine them forced, 
 " not chosen. Nowealaiess or absurdity is half so much 
 " scoflPed and scouted as a new or miusual rhyme." 
 From the same letter we leai'u that he had been lately 
 
 Eeading Euripides. 
 " I believe I shall remain at Bath a good while longer. I 
 am reading what I had not read before of Em'ipides. Between 
 ourselves, in most of his tragedies there is more preachment 
 than poetry. I was surprised and mortified to find it so. How, 
 in the name of heaven, could the Athenians endure on the 
 stage, so deplorably mutilated and metamorphosed, those heroes 
 whom they had followed in the vigour of unsophisticated Ufe 
 through the wide and ever-varying regions of the Iliad and 
 Ochjssea ? A hero, penned up and purgatorised in this middle 
 state, is fitted to become a Monseigneur bien poudre among 
 the mesdames and waiting-maids and patch-boxes of Racine. I 
 have been reading also Twining's translation, notes, &c. of 
 Aristotle's Poetics. I attempted the original once. It appeared 
 to me, what I suppose it is not, tautological though concise. I 
 found it too hard for me. At that time my teeth were better, 
 though my digestion not so good. I could reach the construc- 
 tion, but I could not analyse the parts." 
 
 Yery characteristic was Southey's next letter, in 
 which he described Kehama as approaching completion 
 so rapidly that already his thoughts were busy with 
 what its successor should be. Two more sections only, 
 he said, would finish what he had in hand ; and he was 
 eager for Landor's advice as to the metre most advisable 
 for his next poem, which should certainly be on the 
 founder of the Spanish monarchy, Pelayo. He could 
 not but feel the force of views formerly expressed to him
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODERICK, 251 
 
 by Lanclor, that what in itself was excellent would he best 
 in blank verse, but that everything below excellence 
 would borrow something from rhyme. As to the publi- 
 cation of Kehama, Scott had failed as yet to make the 
 hoped-for arrangement. 
 
 " His bookseller, Ballantyne, was here lately, and his advice 
 to me was to sell the copyright of whatever I wrote, because, 
 he said, booksellers repaid themselves by selling off shares of 
 the copyright. More persons were thus interested in the suc- 
 cess of the book, and consequently greater efforts were made to 
 sell it. This may be true, but it is a truth which is not appli- 
 cable to my case ; for it is utterly impossible that this poem 
 should become popular now. The copyright therefore is worth 
 little or nothing at present ; and yet if it be as good as I believe 
 it to be, there will come a time when it will have its reward. 
 The better W8.y, I think, will be to print it as a pocket volume, 
 and let it take its chance. Two hundred pages will hold the 
 poem, and about a hundred and fifty more the notes." 
 
 A little delay is still interposed ; improvements have 
 to be made in the metre, and lines to be altered or 
 added here and there; but at last, on the 26th Novem- 
 ber 1809, he is able to announce to Landor that on the 
 preceding day he had finished Kehama. He did not 
 expect that it would meet with more admirers than 
 Gebir, but should be thoroughly satisfied if they whom 
 it did meet with admired it as much. His work beino- 
 
 o 
 
 done, he is fall of fears for it. There was too little 
 beauty, he doubted, and too little human interest; and 
 perhaps all the feeling it could be expected to awaken 
 would be w^onder at the strangeness of the tale and the 
 monstrosity of the fiction. He can only comfort him- 
 self by looking forward, and resolving that Pelayo shall 
 be begun as soon as his plan is sufticiently matured. 
 Four days later Landor thus replied : 
 
 " Hardly could I assure myself that I was speaking with 
 Bincerity if I congratulated you on the completion of Kehama^ on
 
 252 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 abandoning those scenes and images which must have given such 
 exquisite and enchanting pleasure as they were rising and pass- 
 ing in yoiu' mind. You are right in beginning another poem 
 while the heart is warm with poetry. Pelayo and Richard the 
 First are the two finest subjects in the world. I thought of 
 Sertorius once ; but, I know not how, it appears to me that 
 nothing romantic or poetical can co-exist with what is Roman. 
 These two unfortunate words stand up, backing one another 
 against me and accusing me of a quibble. I meant simply to 
 say that the Romans were a blunt flat people, and that even 
 a Roman name breaks the spell of poetry on plain historical 
 ground. Spain is even yet a sort of faeryland, and we are yet 
 not too familiar with the faces of Goths and Moors. You pos- 
 sess here peculiar advantages. No other man in Em^ope has 
 had so minute an insight of their history and character. 
 
 " I perceive in many of the verses in Keliama a {)articular 
 ring of rhyme — a recui-rence not marking, nor waiting for, the 
 termination : such as we find in Italian : 
 
 * Ma sento che adesso 
 X' Istesso non fe.' 
 
 Nor indeed is it always in the same place. In some instances 
 it has not gratified my ear, coming upon it when it was unpre- 
 pared. If the poem could be translated into any oriental lan- 
 guage, what a happy effect it might produce ! It would show 
 them that puny conceits and weak extravagance are no requi- 
 sites in poetry, and that wildness of imagery is not inconsistent 
 Avith truth and simplicity of expression. I have read everything 
 oriental I could lay my hands on, and everything good may be 
 comprised in thu-ty or forty lines. There is a prodigious deal 
 of puckering and flouncing and spangles, but nothing fresh, 
 nothing graceful, nothing standing straight upwards or moving 
 straight forwards on its feet. I would rather have written the 
 worst page in the Odyssea than all the stufE Sir William Jones 
 makes such a pother and palaver on ; yet what volumes would 
 it fill ! what libraries would it suffocate ! God forbid that I 
 should ever be drowned in any of these butts of malmsey ! It 
 is better to describe a girl getting a tumble over a skipping-rope 
 made of a Avreath of fiowers." 
 
 The rest of tlie letter, dated 30th November 1809, 
 was filled with a Latin idyl. Like Sir Koger de
 
 ^T. 50-39. OX KEHAMA AND RODERICK. 253 
 
 Coveiiey, Landor had been reading at the end of a 
 dictionary, not like him an account of Hector, but the 
 story of Calhrhoe, who spurned the love of Coresus, 
 priest of Bacchus, whereupon he swore and prayed to 
 his god, who visited her people with pestilence. In 
 their affliction they betook themselves to Dodona, when 
 Jupiter announced that only the death of Callirhoe 
 or some. one in her stead could remove the curse, and 
 Coresus was appointed to fulfil the command of Jove. 
 But when Callirhoe stood before him at the altar, his 
 revenge paled before his love and pity, and he ch'ove 
 the knife into his own bosom. Landor had Avritten this 
 pretty and pathetic story in excellent Latin hexameters,* 
 close and dramatic, and now sent the first sixty-eight to 
 his friend, sending the remaining sixty-two in a second 
 letter after some weeks' interval, dming which Southey 
 had been silent. 
 
 " I have been happy in the idea that you are employed in 
 something interesting to yoiu'self and the age and other selves 
 and other ages, else I should have complained a little that I 
 have not heard from you so very long a time. I remember 
 that I transcribed some Latin verses in my last, but cannot find 
 "where I left off ! Whether these are good or bad or indifferent, 
 they are better than anything I can write on the spur of the 
 occasion, for these are spurs that alvrays catch my gi-eatcoat in 
 getting on. When I have done -writing I shall find a thousand 
 things I ought to have -written about." 
 
 Southey, alas! liad a good reason for not acknow- 
 ledging the Latin idyl : he liad not been able to deci- 
 pher it, and very frankly doth confess so much. He 
 had also been hoping to send Landor the first sections 
 oiPelayo. His letter is dated March 1810. 
 
 * It is the seventh of the Itlylla Ilcroica in Poeniaia ct Inscrip- 
 tiones (1847), and a translation by himself is in the Udlcnics (1859), 
 pp, 57-G3
 
 254 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " It is very long since you have heard from me, and for a 
 twofold reason : first, because your verses tantalised me as a 
 barrel of oysters would have done if set before me without a 
 knife. I could not read them. There is little difficulty in under- 
 standing the worst possible handwriting in om' own every-day 
 language ; though I once saw two parcels which had travelled 
 all over England, and at last found their way by the lucky guess 
 of some post-office clerk, who wrote on them ' Try Durham :' 
 they had tried Dublin previously. But when a foresight of 
 the meaning is necessary to make out the words, anything not 
 easy in itself becomes very difficult. If I could have read these 
 verses, I should have undei'stood them ; because I did not 
 understand, I could not read them. The case however is not 
 desperate : in some season of leism'e I purpose transcribing 
 them, and shall thus make them out step by step. 
 
 " The other reason was that I might send you the first sec- 
 tion of Pelai/o, and this I have been prevented from completing 
 because my hours for poetry have been partly employed in 
 correcting Kehama, partly diverted to the pressing business of 
 the Edlnhuir/h Register. Kcliama is half printed, and the re- 
 maining half still requires correction. I want to get rid of the 
 snake in the water-chambers, which is neither weU conceived 
 nor well wi'itten ; and something is wanting at the conclusion. 
 It will probably be published in June. I have made my usual 
 baro-ain with the booksellers — that is to say, no bargain at all : 
 they print, and I share the profits. Scott recommended strongly 
 the quarto form, and quarto accordingly it is ; my own opinion 
 being that in whatever form it appeared a sale to clear the 
 expense was certain, and anything beyond that exceedingly 
 improbable." 
 
 Pelayo, wliicli took afterwards the name of Roderick 
 in whom its interest finally centred as the hero, Avent to 
 Landor regularly as its predecessor, section by section, 
 when once he had despatched the first. But still this 
 was delayed, and with it the appearance of Kehama, 
 Southey's doubts and misgivings suspending some of 
 the sheets at press. In July 1810, however, he pro- 
 mises the published poem in six weeks, saying that he 
 thought it in structure, now he surveyed it as a whole,
 
 iET. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODERICK. 255 
 
 far superior to Tlialaba; and though in most other 
 respects he was afraid he did not himself like it quite 
 so well, he held it to be a work sui generis. Like 
 Gehir it would find its own admirers, and Landor's 
 preface on that point he had always sincerely echoed. 
 Then in September he announced that the last proof 
 had been corrected, that there will be yet a further 
 delay of another six weeks, and that it was dedicated 
 to his friend, but for whom it would never have been 
 finished. To this (writing from Bath in October) Lan- 
 dor says he cannot hope from Keliama more pleasure 
 than he has already derived from it, whatever new 
 ornaments his friend may have added, and however 
 exalted his own head may be by the chaplets and roses 
 placed upon it. Nevertheless, as late as November he 
 has again to ask, " Where is Kehama T To which 
 Southey replies, " Heaven knows what is become of 
 " Keliama. I look, and have for weeks and months 
 " daily been looking, for the advertisement. Longman 
 " has your Pulteney - street direction to send it by 
 " whenever it does appear, and I hope it will reach 
 " you before this." He adds that he thought to have 
 accompanied it with an epistle to Landor in blank 
 verse ; but that this remained still on the anvil. Lideed 
 it was never finished, a simple prose dedication taking 
 its place. 
 
 Li the same letter (17th December 1810) he asks 
 Landor for his Latin Alcaics, his friend having told him 
 that he had written some to the ex-king of Sweden, 
 the deposed Gustavus, and ordered a very few to be 
 printed. He is also to send him his Simonidea, if he 
 can by any influence command a copy, having him- 
 self in vain endeavoured to obtain one from London. 
 That was another of Landor's hasty, impetuous, private
 
 256 EATH, SPAIN, AXD LLxiNTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 publications, containing some charming Latin verse and 
 
 several English pieces to lone and lanthe.* 
 
 " Thanks, a thousand and a thousand," replying to 
 
 that December letter Landor sends him for Kehama, 
 
 which had arrived at last. " How am I delighted that 
 
 " the man, whom above all others I would wish to know 
 
 " me thoroughly, sees through me ! The inscription is 
 
 " most suitable to my taste ; and if I may think of 
 
 "myself somewhat magnificently, which I was never 
 
 " disinclined to do, most honourable to yoiu-s." In the 
 
 following month, writing still from Bath, he says Ch. 
 
 * Landor's reply described it. " There are many things of which 
 " I am ashamed in the Simonidea. I printed whatever was marlced 
 " with a pencil by a woman who loved me, and I consulted all her 
 " caprices. There is a sneer, of which I am heartily ashamed, at 
 " Mr. Grant, Mr. Heber, and Lord Strangford. But is it not a cursed 
 " galling thing to hear a woman (who is soul and senses to one) tell 
 " me to write like these 1 She had read no better and few other 
 " poets. I added some Latin poetry of my own, more pure in its 
 " Latinity than in its sentiment. But the Pudoris Ara is incompar- 
 " ably the best poetry I have been able to write. Adieu ; and when 
 " you read the Simonidea pity and forgive me." Whether Southey 
 received it does not clearly appear. He makes no mention of it. But 
 it most probably reached him, as he acknowledges the Ode to Gus- 
 tarus which had been sent along with it from the printing-press of 
 Valpy, asking him what was the meaning of the monogram in its title- 
 page, and saying he never read his Latin without wishing it were 
 English and regretting that he was ever taught a language so much 
 inferior to his own. To this Landor replied in his following letter 
 (Feb. 5, 1811) : " You inquire what is the meaning of the monogram, 
 " I looked at it. Surely it is a digamma ; a puerile sort of practical 
 " pun invented by Valpy no doubt. It serves as an initial instead 
 " of V. Grammarians tell us that it was pronounced so. I fancy 
 " they lie. Certain it is the Komans substituted the v when they 
 " assumed some words to which the digamma was affixed or inhe- 
 " rent — vinum, sylva, &c. The Greeks, I imagine, pronounced it as 
 " a double u. B seems in many countries to serve occasionally as V — 
 " Viscaia, &c. The modern Greeks read TroXvcpKoiaVoto for iro\v(pKoiff- 
 " fioio, giving the diphthongs as faint a sound almost as the French 
 " do."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] OX KEHAMA AXD EODEEICK. 257 
 
 Burney liad borroAved the book of bim, and admired 
 it not less enthusiastically than himself. He describes 
 himself at the time, however, as out of humour with 
 everything hut Southey and his poem, and proceeds to 
 show it by a remark on the notes : 
 
 " One thing I confess to you fills me with astonishment : 
 how you can A\Tite such poetry and admire, when to endure 
 would be immeasurably too much, the flimsy and fantastic 
 Spenser. Milton did too ; but our language in his time had 
 little good in it, except a few contracted passages, beside the 
 works of Shakespeare. Chaucer is much better than any of 
 the rest — a passably good novelist, but hardly to be called a 
 poet." 
 
 These heresies he abated greatly afterwards, but 
 never quite got rid of. His ill-humour at the politics 
 of the day and the kind of government England then 
 had, vented in the same letter, underwent little subse- 
 quent abatement or change : 
 
 " If Bonaparte were not the worst and most execrable of 
 human beings, sure people would hardly lift a hand up to save 
 these rascals who are dividing our property. It is better to 
 yield to force only than to have one's ribs bent together be- 
 tween force and fraud." 
 
 Uj^on these various points Southey has in turn, of 
 course, something to say. As to Kehama, which Scott 
 is going to review for next Quarterhj, he is glad of 
 Burney's good o])inion, as one which has Aveight in the 
 world. Him he had met only once ; but he had a fami- 
 liar acquaintance with his brother the captain, meeting 
 him at Rickman's, where they and their host and 
 Charles Lamb Avould make bad puns the whole night 
 through. Notwithstanding Peknjo, another poem is 
 already working in his brain, with a son of Goffe the 
 regicide for its hero ; and he has been writing for the 
 coming Quarterli/ on Captain Pasley's book, whicli he 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 would fain make "our political Lible."* Lander's heresy 
 about Spenser, however, he cannot overlook. Inferior 
 he admits him to be to Chaucer, who for variety of 
 j)ower had no competitor but Shakespeare ; but of Eng- 
 lish versification he is incomparably the greatest master 
 in the language. As for our having had little poetry 
 before Milton, Southey thinks rather that there had 
 been little since. What there was in the earlier time, 
 at any rate, was sterling sense in sterling English, with 
 thought and feeling in it ; whereas now the surest way 
 to become popular was to have as little of either ingre- 
 dient as possible. " Campbell's success is a notable 
 " example. "t 
 
 Landor shows some kind of fight for his heresies, 
 notwithstanding. But first he declares his amazement 
 
 * A letter from Walter Birch reached him just at this time, 
 which, for its acknowledgment of the Latin Odes by Landor (to 
 Gustavus of Sweden, &c), now sent forth anonymously, for other 
 points it touches on, and for its agreement with Southpy as to Pasley's 
 book, may be read with interest. " Dear Landor, thank you for 
 " your elegant Latin Odes, of which I did not know you to be the 
 " author till this morning. I send you in return some verses which I 
 " wrote for the Examiner at Oxford, which will show how far I agree 
 " with you. Their tone was not quite coincident with the desponding 
 " spirit attributed to some of Lord Grenville's party, or I did not 
 " mean that it should be so. I have lately been reading with high 
 " interest a publication entitled A71 Essay on the Jfilitari/ Policy 
 " and Institidions of the British Empire, by Captain Pasley, K.E. 
 " It appears to me to be a noble work, and calculated to be more 
 " useful than any political publication I have seen since the days 
 " of Burke. I have also been much interested in Sir E. Wilson's 
 " book, notwithstanding some little ambition of style and other 
 " defects of no great consequence ; but for which the Edinburgh 
 " Review will, I have no doubt, give him a trimming. By the 
 " bye, did you read Coplestone's second reply to the Edinburgh Ke- 
 " viewers 1 I really never saw a more decisive and triumphant piece 
 " of controversy. I have not yet seen Southey's poem, but hope 
 " to do so before long. Believe me, dear Landor, yours very affec- 
 " tionately, W. BiRCH." 
 
 f Omitted in the imperfect copy printed in the Life, iii. 295.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND RODERICK. 259 
 
 at the new poem his friend is planning (" the War of 
 " the New Englanders, the prmcij)al character a Qua- 
 " ker" !) as what no other man ahve would be bold 
 enough to undertake. And how in any case will he 
 ever manage to write two poems at one and the same 
 time? 
 
 " To dictate to half a dozen secretaries, in as many lan- 
 guages, is a trick ; but to do it at once is a difficult one. How 
 you can write two poems at a time I cannot conceive. I could 
 write history and poetry, but I could not divide my passions and 
 afEections. When I write a poem, my heart and all my feelings 
 are upon it. I never commit adultery with another ; and high 
 poems will not admit flirtation. 
 
 " I should like to talk about Spenser with you, and to have 
 the Faery Qiteen before us. Passion can alone give the higher 
 beauties of versification. Shakespeare, who excels all mortals in 
 poetry, excels them aU in verse frequently ; but I am convinced 
 he formed erroneous opinions on the subject, and that he pre- 
 ferred a stiff and strutting step systematically, and was great 
 only when he was carried off his legs in spite of himself. In 
 my opinion there is more transcendent poetry in Shakespeare 
 than in all the other poets that have existed since the creation 
 of the world, and more passages filled with harmony from its 
 insph-ation. Immeasurably as I prefer Chaucer to Spenser, I 
 cannot as a poet — a great one is here understood — because he 
 never comes up to the ideal so well exprest by Horace : ' meum 
 ' qui pectus inaniter angit,^ &c. The language of Chaucer is the 
 language of his time ; but Spenser's is a jargon. No, I do not 
 think we had little good poetry before Milton. Some truly pure 
 grains of gold were carried down by the streamlets in rude 
 old times, Ul exchanged for the tinsel which we are just re- 
 moving from ours. The English nation was in all respects at its 
 highest pitch of glory in the times of Shakespeare and Hooker. 
 Chivalry had forgotten all the f oUics of its youth : it retained 
 its spu'it, and had lost only its austerity. The Tudoi's, those 
 blackguard and beastly Welsh , had never infected the mass of 
 English mind. People read ; and to our national manliness a 
 little was now added of Roman dignity. I am going on as if 
 I had nothing else to do or say." 
 
 Leaving unnoticed the close of this letter, Southey
 
 2G0 BATH, SrAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 replied upon its opening remark, that his abihty to think 
 of two poems at once proceeded from weakness, not from 
 strength. The continuous excitement Landor had lately 
 gone through in the composition of a tragedy, he could 
 not stand : in him it would not Avork itself off, as with 
 Lander, in tears ; the tears would flow while in the act 
 of composition, and they would leave behind a throbbing 
 head and a whole system in the highest state of nervous 
 excitability, whicli would soon induce the most fearful 
 form of disease. This was a dream that always haunted 
 Southey. Not, alas, Avholly without reason, as after- 
 wards appeared. 
 
 The tragedy referred to had been written in the in- 
 terval covered by these letters, and will be the subject of 
 the next section. To this will now only be added such 
 fresh allusions to Pelayo in its progress as may be read 
 independently, and other matters incidentally arising 
 that have in them some personal interest. 
 
 One of Southey's letters in 1810 told Landor a 
 melancholy story of a young Bristol poet who had died 
 at nineteen, cherishing to the last a hope that his 
 poems, printed after his death, might save his sister from 
 destitution. They had been sent to Southey. 
 
 " Thirty years ago they would have been thought wonder- 
 ful, — neither you nor I wrote better at nineteen, perhaps not 
 so well, — but what can be produced at nineteen except pro- 
 mises of after-excellence, which serve only to give one the 
 heart-ache when the blossom has been cut off ? I do not know 
 the family ; but I am exerting myself earnestly to make this 
 poor bequest productive." 
 
 To which Landor answered : 
 
 " I grieved at your account of poor "William Roberts ; and 
 the more as among all my friends I hardly knoAv one on whom 
 I can reckon as a subscriber for his poems. Plenty of peojale 
 will say 2)oor felloio ! and moralise and sentimentalise. It is
 
 ^T. 30-39.] OX KEHAMA AND EODEEICK. 261 
 
 better to go to the devil than hear or hazard their hypocrisy. 
 Pray write again, and tell me how I can forward two or three 
 guineas to his friends without wounding their tenderness or 
 their pride. It may be long before the work is printed ; and, 
 if they wait for twelve hundred sub.'-cribers, never. I went to 
 Bristol the morning I received your letter, and am ashamed to 
 say did nothing. I want dexterity, and never did an;ything 
 right except in moments of great danger. Then instinct pre- 
 vails." 
 
 In one of the letters immediatelv follo^Yin^• he is still 
 talking of the poem of which Southey has sent him the 
 dedication. 
 
 " My feelings are hardly more gratified by the marks of 
 kindness and distinction you confer on me than by the exalted 
 pleasure I receive from the perfection of the work. . . I like to 
 talk of myself to you, though no earthly being is so univer- 
 sally silent as I am on his hopes and fears and speculations. I 
 confess to you, if even foolish men had read Gehir^ I should 
 have continued to write poetry ; — there is something of summer 
 in the hum of insects. I like either to win or to extort an ac- 
 knowledgment of my superiority from all who owe it. No 
 others owe this so sincerely and indisputably as those who write 
 against me. I am informed two or three people have done it. 
 Of these I have only seen one, and he calls me by names which 
 Mr. Pitt would have said, or might have said, are quite irrele- 
 vant. I forget whether cuckold or pirate, but something I am 
 sure as little concerned with poetry." 
 
 Soiithcj promptly replied -with genuine sympathy 
 and wise advice. He spoke of what had prevented Gehir 
 from being read by the foolish. Ko doubt it was too 
 good for them, but it was also too hard. Of course 
 they could not understand it, but they did not find mean- 
 ing enough upon its surface to make them even fancy 
 they understood it. AVliy should he not displa^y the same 
 powers upon a happier subject, and write a poem as good 
 and more intelligible? Yet very certain was it, after all, 
 that Gehir had really excited more attention than its
 
 262 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 author seemed to be aware of. For instance, two mani- 
 fest imitations had appeared — Hough's plaj, and the first 
 part of Sotheby's Saul. To which Southey added all 
 about his own review of it in the Critical, and what a 
 laugh he had had in connection vnih it at GifFord, the 
 editor of the new Re\aew of which the first numbers 
 were lately out. 
 
 " When Gifford published his Juvenal, one of the most base 
 attacks that ever disgraced a literary journal was made upon it 
 in the Critical Review, by some one of the heroes of his Baviad. 
 Gifford, who gives way to all sorts of violence in his writings,* 
 wrote a desperate reply, in which he brought forward all the 
 offences of the Revieio for many years back, and one of those 
 offences was its praise of Gehir!" 
 
 At last, in July 1810, Southey sent to Landor, in 
 six closely-written folio columns, the first section of 
 Roderichy or as he continues for some time to call it, 
 Pelayo. The subject at the outset enthrals him, and 
 he has a second sight of what its course and treatment 
 is to be with which he is more than satisfied. The re- 
 ceived legend of Roderick's escape from the battle-field 
 and dying in penitence at Visen is that which he means 
 to follow ; discarding his alleged abode at Nazareth and 
 other stories out of the miracle-shops ; and what effect 
 he means at the last to produce by bringing together 
 him and Florinda and Count Julian, his friend shall 
 see. Nor shall this be his only achievement. Landor 
 has laughed him a little out of his qnaker hero; but 
 
 * In the imperfect copy of this letter in the Life (iii. 228-31) these 
 words and the " desperate" reply are altogether omitted. One of the 
 other omissions at the close of the letter is touching, and worthy to 
 be kept. " God knows I do not begin to be a-wearj' of the sun, and 
 " yet the wish which I most frequently express is, that the century 
 " were over, and that I and mine had all reached our haven of eternal 
 " rest."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODERICK. 263 
 
 his brain seethes and teems with other subjects. He has 
 visions of a poem built on the Zenclavesta, wherein the 
 evil powers should be leagued against a son of the 
 great king, and, by every new calamity inflicted upon 
 him, should evolve in him some virtue which his rank 
 had stifled, till it would end in his abandoning Persia 
 in company with a Greek slave, the philosopher of the 
 story, and becoming a citizen of Athens. And some- 
 thing of this and other projects* he now tells his friend 
 that he may wind up with an adjuration to him, vnth. 
 his full leisure and abundant power, to do likewise, and 
 thus leave behind him what distant generations would 
 take delight in — other Gehirs with happier fables. 
 
 Landor's reply took Southey somewhat by surprise, 
 for it announced that he had at intervals been writino; 
 other things beside Latin Idyls and Alcaics, Hints to 
 Jmitas, Simonideas, and Letters to Burdett, and that 
 among them was a tragedy with Count Julian for 
 its hero ! "\'^^iat other feeling also arose to Southey 
 as portions of the tragedy were sent to him, we shall 
 shortly see ; but when, after a few months, all was com- 
 pleted and before him, he could not but survey with 
 some despondency his own Pelayo. He talked of com- 
 pressing some parts of it, and said it was well that 
 their conceptions of all the historical personages were 
 so entirely unlike, as he should inevitably have been 
 
 * One of these I extract iu greater detail from another of 
 Southey's unpublished letters. It was a poem that he felt would 
 be more difficult of execution than Kchavia, if he should ever feel 
 at leisure to execute it. It was to paint such a future state as 
 should be consistent with the reason and hopes of the wisest and 
 best men. " An earthly story must he chosen, in order to have 
 " the interest of earthly passions ; but the point of view should be 
 " from the next stage of existence. Perhaps this is not very in- 
 " telligible. Such as it is, however, it is the seed from which I am 
 " confident a fine tree might arise."
 
 264 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 deterred from proceeding. With eager and frank re- 
 assurance Landor replied. In the portions just sent 
 to him lie perceived the same strain of high impassioned 
 sentiment, proper and peculiar to the character on which 
 it was to act. The poem would be different from Southey's 
 former efforts in a greater degree than any two ej)ic 
 poems known to him, however remote their ages. 
 
 " I do not see Tvliat you can compress in this part of Pelayo. 
 If you take away too many leaves you starve the blossoms. 
 There is a light luxm-iant arborescence, which shows the vigour 
 of the roots and stem, and answers for the richness of the 
 fruit. As I live, I have wi'itten three verses ! made so by a 
 stroke of the pen."* 
 
 Nor was this a loftier strain of eulog}- than the 
 subject of it fairly challenged. Some of the noblest 
 parts of Roderick are remarked on here : 
 
 " I have read, and I know not when I shall cease reading, 
 the incomparable description of Roderick's wanderings and 
 agony. What are those of iEneas or Ulysses in comparison ? 
 The story of Adosinda is heart-rending. When I have looked 
 long enough at the figures of great painters, I dwell on the 
 landscape. It is only the great ones who make it strikingly 
 peculiar and appropriate. We wish for more, yet are conscious 
 that we ought not to wish it. In the beginning of the sheet, 
 the scene of the pine-forest is a perfect example of what I 
 mean. I hope you will meet with no more inten-uptions.f I am 
 
 * " There is a light luxuriant arborescence 
 
 Which shows the vigour of the roots and stem, 
 And answers for the richness of the fruit." 
 
 f Referring to what Southey had written on the 10th October, 
 giving an amusing picture of how he wrote his epics : " You would 
 " have had a book of Pelayo ere this, had not Gooch very uncon- 
 " sciously prevented me. He happens like myself to ri?e about 
 " seven, and found his way into my library as early as I did. Now 
 " poetry is the only thing which I cannot compose if any person be 
 " present ; because voice, gestures, and eyes require a freedom which 
 " the sense of any human presence would restrain. What has been
 
 JET. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA liXD KODEPwICK. 265 
 
 fortunate ; for I never compose a single verse within doors, ex- 
 cept in bed sometimes. I do not know what the satirists would 
 say if they knew that most of my verses spring from a gate-post 
 or a mole-hill. Many hundreds, as good at least as any I have 
 A^Titten, I have foreborne to -vrrite for want of a pencil or a dry 
 seat." 
 
 The letter from Soutlicy M'liicli accompanied tlie 
 sixth book of Pelayo is a comment on the mo.st cri- 
 tical part of this masterly poem, and on the reasons 
 that led to the form it finally assumed, too cui'ious and 
 interesting to be lost : 
 
 " I know nothing like this book in poetry ; but there is 
 something like it in romance. Gyron le Coartoys, a book which 
 has some of the best and some of the worst things of chivah'ous 
 romance, has something which is so far like it that great part 
 of the hero's former history is i-elated to himself. It has a very 
 good effect there, though there is no passion connected with it ; 
 and I was led to this mode of back-narrative by the natural 
 and necessary course of my own story, not by imitation. Least 
 of all things am I an imitator ; though you will see that I have 
 borrowed something from Count Julian. 
 
 " The next book is nearly finished. I believe I must go 
 back to the fifth, and interpolate a passage introductory of 
 Egilona, whose death I think of bringing forward in Book viii, 
 and in whose character I must seek for such a palliation of the 
 rape of Florinda as may make Roderick's crime not so abso- 
 lutely incompatible with his heroic qualities as it now appears. 
 The truth is that in consequence of having begun the story 
 with Roderick, I have imperceptibly been led to make him the 
 prominent personage of the poem, and have given him virtues 
 which it will be very difficult to make consistent with his fall. . . 
 
 " I shall soon have two more books to send you, when I 
 have fitted in two passages which must be interpolated in the 
 earlier part of the poem. The way is opening before me ; and 
 now the farther I get, the more rapidly I shall proceed for the 
 sake of getting to the conclusion, which Avill be full of fine 
 
 " wTitten since my return, if it be not good, deceives me grievously ; 
 " for I never produced anything under tlio intluencc of deeper fcel- 
 " ing."
 
 2G6 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY, [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 things. The Spaniards will never forgive me for making their 
 Virgin Mary at Covadinga into Adosinda, and performing the 
 miracle by human means." 
 
 Acknowledging this in November 1812, Landor 
 Avrites : 
 
 " I have now received two detachments of Pelayo since I 
 wrote, which proves that one sits much more quiet and idle 
 under pleasurable sensations than even under those which are 
 indifferent. In the mean time I have written a score sUly things 
 to a score silly people. . . . The more I read of Pelayo, the more 
 arduous the undertaking seems to me ; but at the same time 
 the strength with which it is carried on increases. People have 
 formed their opinions of heroic poetry from Homer and his 
 successors. All who have followed Homer have failed de- 
 plorably. VirgU is great only where he has not followed him. 
 You will not persuade any one that anything is heroic with- 
 out kicks and cuffs. All can enter into the spirit of a battle, 
 and perhaps the timid man likes it most of all from a con- 
 sciousness of security : there are very few who will feel at 
 heart what Pelayo feels, and fewer still who will follow tip 
 with intensity all the vicissitudes of Roderigo. How many, 
 how nearly aU, of our poets and critics will read these con- 
 cluding lines as if they were common ones ! 
 
 ' Eoderick alone appear'd 
 Unmoved and calm ; for now the royal Goth 
 Had offered his accepted sacrifice, 
 And therefore in bis soul he felt that peace 
 "Which follows painful duty well perform'd — 
 Perfect and heavenly peace — the peace of God.' 
 
 The language is so plain and the sentiment so natural that 
 I am the only man in England who know the full value of 
 them. You yourself would only find it out in the -wTitings of 
 another." 
 
 A verbal criticism may be worth presemng : 
 
 " In one place you have written forsook as the participle. 
 Now I am very jealous of the participles. I would not write 
 ' it was held,' but ' it was holden ;' although custom authorises 
 both, and rather (in late years) has preferred the former. I
 
 ^T. 30-39.] ON KEHAMA AND EODEPJCK. 267 
 
 wish to see our language perfect in your works : it is very far 
 from perfect in any other of our poets." 
 
 To which Southey : 
 
 " Your remark about the participles is right ; and when I 
 have written incorrectly, it has been [in] virtue of a privilege 
 which, in spite of all precedent, is best honoured in the disuse," 
 
 Nor should a pleasant note be lost on the introduc- 
 tion of Roderick's dog (which Southey, by the way, did 
 not improve by substituting Theron for Whitefoot in 
 the poem as printed) : 
 
 " Eesting his head upon his master's knees, 
 Upon the bank beside him Whitefoot lay," &c. 
 
 " Though the dogs," said Landor, " are the best people 
 " among us, the fastidiousness of poetry rejects their 
 " names. Homer has given none to the dog of Ulysses, 
 " though Ovid has signalised every cur that devoui'ed 
 " Actseon." 
 
 His last letter on Southey's manuscript from which 
 I shall quote for the present has a touch of personal 
 significance. 
 
 " Certainly this last section of Pelayo is the most masterly 
 of all. I could not foresee or imagine how the characters 
 would unfold themselves. I could have done but little with 
 Florinda and with Egilona, taking your outline ; yet I could 
 have done a good deal more with them than any other man 
 except yourself. For I delight in the minute variations and 
 almost imperceptible shades of the female character, and con- 
 fess that my reveries, from my most early youth, were almost 
 entirely on what this one or that one would have said or done 
 in this or that situation. Their countenances, their move- 
 ments, their forms, the colours of their dresses, were before 
 my eyes. 
 
 " One reason why we admii'c the tragedies of the ancients 
 is this : we never have had our images broken by the icono- 
 clast effort of the actors. Within my memory we never have 
 had any worthy of the name ; but I feel convinced that Gar-
 
 2GS EATH, SrAIX, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14, 
 
 rick himself, who was probably the greatest that ever lived, 
 would not have recompensed me for the overthrow and ruin 
 of my Lear." 
 
 A kind of practical comment on tins Avill now be laid 
 before the reader in letters written during tlie composition 
 of Count Julian, and the weakness as well as the strength 
 which Landor carried to the enterprise of writing a tra- 
 gedy will be seen. That the natiu'al bent of his genius 
 went strongly in the direction of the drama, as he seems 
 himself at all times to have felt with greater or less 
 vividness, there is no doubt. The old Greek had. not a 
 more unquestionable power than his of giving objective 
 shape to the most subtle and the most ethereal fancies, 
 and this in itself involves a very intense element of the 
 di'ama. Where any marvel occurs in Gehir, there is 
 no doubt about it : it is actually tliere, and to be seen. 
 Transfer this to the drama, assume that a passion is 
 to be represented, and by the same power there it is ; 
 not mere language describing it, but the thing itself, 
 and language only as the effluence or outbreak of the 
 thino;. In the abstract there cannot be a hiiiher form 
 of the dramatic than this, and it holds to a large extent 
 even in what may be called the concrete, the details of 
 the scene. Because, no doubt, at a pli^y it is from 
 other arts than the poet's that what is mainly material 
 shoidd reach us. Strictly speaking the poet might 
 claim to be entirely discharged from any part of the 
 office of setting forth, before an audience of spectators, 
 what already is or ought to be visible to them. But 
 unassailable as this is in theory, in practice it is not 
 found to be possible, and all kinds of descriptive and 
 other indulgences have to be brought in aid of the pm-ely 
 dramatic. The result expresses just the concession or 
 compromise which the stage requires from the di'ama.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] OX KEHAMA AND EODEEICK. 2(;!) 
 
 which Shakespeare understood as he understood every- 
 thing, and which even such writers as Landor and Lamb 
 comprehend imperfectly when they ol)ject to the stage- 
 presentation of Lear. Lear was written to be played ; 
 and its author, we may safely affirm, would rather have 
 seen it acted however wretchedly in a barn, than heard 
 it read to perfection in a palace. Landor tells us in this 
 letter that he delights in " the minute variations and 
 " almost imperceptible shades" of character, and that he 
 has " countenances, movements, forms, the very colours 
 " of dresses," before his eyes as he writes. Doubtless it 
 was so. No one conceives a character more vividly, or 
 puts it more expressively in action. Each has a dis- 
 tinguishing mark and a specialty of utterance, the look 
 that none else should give, the language that none 
 other so appropriately could use. He described it him- 
 self on another occasion in saying to Southey that he 
 could never publish a poem that contained any char- 
 acter of a human being until he had lived two or three 
 years with that character, and that he left off Count 
 Julian and his daughter twice because each had 
 said things which other personages might say. But 
 though all this may seem to raise a perfect ideal, tlie 
 practicable is another thing. Too little is left for the art 
 of the actor, and too much for the imagination of the 
 audience. We may get at the most magnificent results 
 too quickly, when all the little intermediate stages have 
 been overlooked. It may indeed be the smallest part of 
 genius that is thus wanting to complete upon the stage 
 its highest manifestations, but the fact admits of no 
 dispute that to the highest without it the stage is 
 inaccessible. An example is about to be afforded 
 than which there have been few nobler, that no given 
 number of scenes, each of the first order of dramatic
 
 270 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONT. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 genius, ^vill constitute a play. Let the characters, as 
 here, be all marked and all in position ; let the passions 
 he at their highest, and always at work ; let the situa- 
 tions even he the best; but unless there is also obtain- 
 able from the story an interest of quite another kind 
 than that which, by creative rather than merely appre- 
 ciative j)ower, the audience must elicit for themselves, 
 there will be no tragedy in the true sense of the word. 
 There will only be a succession of dialogues. In all 
 the various "scenes," however, and in all the "con- 
 " versations," through which, from the beginning to 
 the close of his life, and under every " imaginary" form, 
 Landor's genius has most delighted to express itself, 
 none have higher claims to admiration, or will better 
 reward faithful study, than those of Count Julian. 
 
 yil. The Tragedy of Count Julian. 
 
 The period of the tragedy is supposed to be that 
 which immediately preceded the final defeat and myste- 
 rious fate of the last of ths Gothic kings of Spain, when 
 his most powerful noble Count Julian, whose daughter 
 he had by violence dishonoured, to avenge that wrong 
 brought back into his native land the Moorish hosts 
 whom he had just gloriously driven out, overthrew the 
 monarchy, and delivered over his country to the infidel. 
 A more tragical conception nowhere exists. In its 
 isolated grandeur indeed it is rather epical than tragic ; 
 and there is a fine passage in one of ]Mr. De Qumcey's 
 essays where he speaks of the tortm^es inflicted in 
 old Rome, in the sight of shuddering armies, upon a 
 general who had committed treason to his country, as 
 not comparable to Landor's fancy of the imseen tor- 
 tm-es in Count Julian's mind : " who — whether his
 
 ^T. 30-39-1 THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULLiN. 271 
 
 " treason prospered or not ; whether his dear outraged 
 " daughter Hved or died ; whether his king were tram- 
 " pled in the dust by the horses of infidels, or escaped 
 " as a Avreck from the fiery struggle ; whether his dear 
 " native Spain fell for ages under misbelieving hounds, 
 " or, combining her strength, tossed off them, but then 
 " also himself, with equal loathing from her shores — 
 " saw, as he looked out into the mighty darkness, and 
 " stretched out his penitential hands vainly for j)ity or 
 " pardon, nothing but the blackness of ruin, and ruin 
 " that was to career through centuries." 
 
 The characters grouped around this central figure 
 have each an individuality strongly marked, but all sub- 
 serve to a common purpose. From every point they 
 draw Julian only closer and closer within the meshes of 
 miserj^ which love for his daughter had woven round 
 him first, and in which all his other virtues since have 
 but the more despairingly involved him. It is the old 
 story of crime propagating crime ; of evil failing ever to 
 expiate evil; and of blind necessity, out of one fatal 
 wrong, reproducing wrong in endless forms of retaliatory 
 guilt and suffering. 
 
 The tragedy opens at the moment when, though the 
 extent of his successes over his countrymen has alarmed 
 Julian, nothing is yet decisive, and there seems still a 
 chance for the old monarchy. The outrage had been 
 done upon his daugliter Covilla in the absence of her 
 betrothed Sisabert, who, uj)on his return in ignorance of 
 what had passed, finding her separated from him and 
 her father in arms against Spain, believes Julian to be 
 simply aspiring to the throne, and for a time joins 
 Eoderigo against him. The gleam of success emboldens 
 the hard-pressed king to attempt conciliation. Imploring 
 Julian to wipe out his treason against Spain by a second
 
 272 BATH, SPAIX, AND LLAXTIIONY. [Book III. 
 
 1S05-14. 
 
 treason against his ISIoorisli confederates, he proposes to 
 divorce liis wife Eo-ilona, himself to marry the wronged 
 Covilla, and to divide witli the father his daughter' s- 
 throne. Julian rejects these overtures with scorn ; but 
 Muza, the cruel and arrogant ISIoorish chief, suspects 
 him to have yielded, and Koderigo's wife, believing her 
 divorce to be resolved on, accepts the love of Abdalazis, 
 Muza's more generous son. This is the position at the 
 opening of the third act, when Sisabert's discovery of the 
 truth as to his betrothed joins again his arms to those 
 of Julian, who accom])lishes the triumph of the ]Moor. 
 Roderigo is now at Julian's feet, and is spurned by him ; 
 but Spain is in the hands of the Infidel, who continues to 
 watch v.'ith distrust the victorious renegade, and believes 
 he will yet prove traitor again. Julian meanwhile has 
 been found by Roderigo inaccessible to mercy. The 
 conqueror permits him to live only that life may become 
 to him a burden ; and while the fallen king still pite- 
 ously pleads to be permitted to atone his wrong, the 
 terrible sentence is pronounced which separates eternally 
 the wrongdoer and his victim, sending Covilla to the 
 convent's peace and Roderigo to the penance of the felon. 
 Ignorant of what has really passed, however, e-\-en the 
 most generous of the Moors drops away from Julian when 
 he hears that the defeated king has been suffered to 
 escape with life ; and Egilona, blinded by her jealousy 
 and love, and avIio has witnessed the departure at the 
 same time from the camp of both Roderigo and Covilla, 
 denounces Julian to the Moorish commander as having 
 yet the purpose to continue the throne of the Goths to 
 his daughter and her betrayer. Throughout every scene, 
 whatever else its ebb or flow of passion, Julian has to 
 bear the brunt of suffering and sorrow. High above 
 the rest still towers that shape of solitary pain, to Avhich
 
 ^T. 30-39-] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 273 
 
 all converge, -wlietlicr in love or hate, with fruitless effort 
 to overstep the abyss that has eternally jiarted him alike 
 from foe and friend. Such hopes as animate the rest 
 from scene to scene exist but to show that from him 
 hope is gone for ever; and the tragedy closes as the 
 intelligence is brought to him that, for the supposed act 
 of treachery which he has not committed, his wife and 
 two sons have been murdered by the ]Moor whom his 
 victories had made master of his native land. 
 
 I propose now, as was done with Gehir, to fill-in this 
 outline of the story by a series of passages exhibiting 
 the varieties of power and beauty with which its tragic 
 scenes are written. Landor's style is here at its best ; 
 and contemporary poetry has nothiug to show beyond 
 Count Julian in purity or in grandeur. 
 
 In the first scene Opas, metropolitan of Seville, has 
 
 found admittance to Julian's tent, ostensibly to induce 
 
 him to see his daughter, but with the secret desire that 
 
 his intercession may yet ward off the last meditated 
 
 stroke of vengeance. Not itnmoved but resolute is 
 
 Julian's reply. He knows that by what already he has 
 
 done — 
 
 " my fair fame in after-time 
 Will wear an alien and uncomely form, 
 Seen o'er the cities I have laid in dust." 
 
 But, until the tyrant is hopeless and beggared as himself, 
 there can be no peace or comfort for him, and no child. 
 The rejoinder of Opas, interceding with Julian for those 
 to whom the war will bring unmitigated horrors, is one 
 of the many evidences afforded throughout the scenes of 
 Landor's recent personal experience of Spain. 
 
 " No pity for the thousands fatherless, 
 
 The thousands cliildless like thyself, nay more, 
 
 The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless. . 
 
 Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so, 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Who now perhaps, round their first winter fire, 
 
 Banisli, to talk of thee, the tales of old. 
 
 Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown : 
 
 Precious be these and sacred in thy sight. 
 
 Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind. 
 
 If only warlike spirits were evoked 
 
 By the war-demon, I would not complain, 
 
 Or dissolute and discontented men ; 
 
 But wherefore hurry down into the square 
 
 The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race, 
 
 ■WTio would not injure us, and can not serve ; 
 
 Vv''ho, from their short and measured slumber risen, 
 
 In the faint sunshine of their balconies, 
 
 With a half legend of a martyrdom 
 
 And some weak wine and withered grapes before them, 
 
 Note by their foot the wheel of melody 
 
 That catches and rolls on the Sabbath dance," 
 
 In tlie scene that follows between Julian and Eocle- 
 rigo, where the king has reached him protected as a 
 herald and offers to divide with him the throne, there 
 are some noble passages. Roderigo is permitted to wit- 
 ness what the duty of revenge has cost the avenger. 
 Julian exclaims in his anguish : 
 
 " And Spain ! parent, I have lost thee too ! 
 Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days, 
 Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe, 
 Eoderigo, I have gloried in her sons, 
 Sublime in hardihood and piety : 
 Her strength was mine : I, sailing by her cliffs. 
 By promontory after promontory. 
 Opening like flags along some castle-tower. 
 Have sworn before the cross upon our mast 
 Ne'er shall invader wave his standard there." 
 
 Not the less is he adamant against every proposal for 
 pardon of the outrage of his daughter, or for the baser 
 compromise, which Eoderigo urges on him, of condoning 
 it bv marriage. 
 
 " Julian. She call upon her God, and outrage him 
 At his own altar ! she repeat the vows
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN, 275 
 
 She violates in repeating ! who abhoi'S 
 Thee and thy crimes, and wants no crown of thine. 
 Force may compel the abhorrent soul, or want 
 Lash and pursue it to the public ways ; 
 Virtue looks back and weeps, and may return 
 To these, — but never near the abandon'd one 
 Who drags religion to adultery's feet. 
 And rears the altar higher for her sake. 
 
 Roderigo. Have then the Saracens possest thee quite ? 
 And wilt thou never yield me thy consent ? 
 
 Julian, Never. 
 
 Roderigo. So deep in guilt, in treachery 1 
 
 Forced to acknowledge it ! forced to avow 
 The traitor 1 
 
 Julian, Not to thee, who reignest not, 
 But to a country ever dear to me, 
 And dearer now than ever 1 What we love 
 Is loveliest in departure ! One I thought, 
 As every father thinks, the best of all, 
 Graceful and mild and sensible and chaste : 
 Now all these qualities of form and soul 
 Fade from before me, nor on anyone 
 Can I repose, or be consoled by any. 
 And yet in this torn heart I love her more 
 Than I could love her when I dwelt on each, 
 Or claspt them all united, and thankt God, 
 Without a wish beyond. Away, thou fiend ! 
 
 ignominy, last and worst of all I 
 
 1 weep before thee." 
 
 In the second act Julian and lils daughter are 
 
 together, and the tenderness of his pity for her becomes 
 
 more profoundly affecting from his inability to cheer 
 
 her with other hope than that the misery brought upon 
 
 Spain may last for ages. 
 
 " Crimes are loose 
 At which ensanguined War stands shuddering, 
 And calls for vengeance from the powers above, 
 Impatient of inflicting it himself. 
 Nature in these new horrors is aghast 
 At her own progeny, and knows them not. 
 I am the minister of wrath ; the hands 
 That tremble at me, shall applaud me too. 
 And seal their condemnation."
 
 276 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Then suddenly enters Sisabert who had been be- 
 trothed to her, who beheves the change he sees to be 
 lier own unfaithfuhiess leagued with her father's am- 
 bition, and to whose reproaches neither can make the 
 only rej)lj which would show them to be unjust. 
 
 " We, who have met so alter 'd, meet no more. 
 Mountains and seas 1 ye are not separation : 
 Death ! thou dividest, but imitest too 
 In everlasting peace and faith sincere." 
 
 When he has left the scene, this passes between the 
 
 father and child : 
 
 " C'uvilla. He thinks me faithless. 
 Julian. He must think thee so. 
 
 Covilla. tell him, tell him all, when I am dead." 
 
 No, not death, cries her loving father ; without crime 
 she has suffered its penalties, and even on the earth 
 there shall yet at the least be peace for her. The local 
 colouring of Spain is again strongly here. 
 
 ^^ Julian. Wide are the regions of oiir far-famed land : 
 Thou shalt arrive at her remotest bounds, 
 See her best peoj^le, choose some holiest house ; 
 Whether whei-e Castro from surrounding vines 
 Hears the hoarse ocean roar among his caves. 
 And, thro' the fissure in the green cliurch}'ard, 
 The wind wail loud the calmest summer day ; 
 Or where Santona leans against the hill, 
 Hidden from sea and land by groves and bowers. 
 
 Covilla. for one moment in those pleasant scenes 
 Thou placest me, and lighter air I breathe I 
 Why could I not have rested, and heard on ! 
 My voice dissolves the vision quite away. 
 Outcast from virtue, and from nature too ! 
 
 Julian. Natui'e and virtue ! they shall perish first. 
 God destined them for thee, and thee for them, 
 Inseparably and eternally ! 
 Tlie wisest and the best will prize thee most, 
 And solitudes and cities will contend 
 Which shall receive thee kindliest." 
 
 On the eve of the decisive battle Opas makes inter-
 
 iET. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 277 
 
 cession Avitli the king, as frnitless as had been his appeal 
 to Julian; pleads in vain for Egilona; and, replying 
 to Roderigo's taunt that he wants no pity, wants no- 
 thing that enemy or friend can give, declares in these 
 noble lines how lower than even Julian's is the fate that 
 awaits the man who has wronged him. 
 
 " Proclaim we those the happiest of mankind 
 Who never knew a want? O what a curse 
 To tliee this utter ignorance of thine ! 
 Julian, whom all the good commiserate, 
 Sees thee below him far in happmess. 
 A state indeed of no quick restlessness, 
 No glancing agitation, one vast swell 
 Of melancholy, deep, impassable, 
 Interminable, where his spirit alone 
 Broods and o'ershadows all, bears him from earth, 
 And purifies his chasten"d soul for heaven. 
 Both heaven and earth shall from tJiij grasp recede !" 
 
 In the same mouth is placed one of the most en- 
 chanting descriptions in the tragedy, where Roderigo's 
 wife, Egilona, is exhibited as she was while yet her 
 husband was true to her, and as she is, now that his 
 indifference and falsehood have transformed her, and 
 she is ready to become wife to the infidel. 
 
 " Sisahert. She may foi-give him yet. 
 Opas. Ah, Sisabertl 
 
 Wretched are those a woman has forgiven : 
 With her forgiveness ne'er hath love return'd. 
 Ye know not till too late the filmy tie 
 That holds heaven's precious boon eternally 
 To such as fondly cherish her ; once go 
 Driven by mad passion, strike but at her peace, 
 And, though she step aside from broad reproach, 
 Yet every softer virtue dies away. 
 Beaming with virtue inaccessible 
 Stood Egilona ; for her lord she lived. 
 And for the heavens tliat raised licr sphere so high : 
 All thoughts were on her, all, beside her own. 
 Negligent as the blossoms of the field,
 
 278 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Array'd in candour and simplicity, 
 
 Before her path she heard the streams of joy 
 
 Murmur her name in all their cadences, 
 
 Saw them in every scene, in light, in shade, 
 
 Eeflect her image, but acknowledge them 
 
 Hers most complete when flowing from her most. 
 
 All things in want of her, herself of none, 
 
 Pomp and dominion lay beneath her feet 
 
 Unfelt and unregarded. Now behold 
 
 The earthly passions war against the heavenly 1 
 
 Pride against love, ambition and revenge 
 
 Against devotion and compliancy : 
 
 Her glorious beams adversity hath blunted ; 
 
 And coming nearer to our quiet view, 
 
 The original clay of coarse mortality 
 
 Hardens and flaws around her 
 
 His was the fault ; be his the punishment. 
 'Tis not their own crimes onlj' men commit, 
 They harrow them into another's breast, 
 And they shall reap the bitter growth with pain." 
 
 With tlie fourtli act the stress of the tragedy arrives ; 
 for only with the completeness of Julian's victory comes 
 the whole unutterable anguish of his misery. When the 
 ruined and fallen king stands wailing before him for 
 mercy, he employs an image to express his own present 
 weakness and his former strength, which, for the vivid- 
 ness of its appalling contrast, is probably among the 
 finest in the range of English poetry : 
 
 " I stand abased before insulting crime, 
 I falter like a criminal myself ; 
 The hand that hurl'd thy chariot o'er its wheels, 
 That held thy steeds erect and motionless 
 As molten statues on some pa,l ace-gate, 
 Shakes as with palsied age before thee now," 
 
 The last lines are the only others I may quote from this 
 great scene : 
 
 " Julian, I swerve not from my purpose : thou art mine, 
 Conquer'd ; and I have sworn to dedicate, 
 Like a torn lianner on my chapel's roof. 
 Thee to that jiower from whom thou hast rebell'd.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULLVN. 279 
 
 Expiate thy crimes by prayer, by penances. 
 Rodcrigo. One name I dare not . . , 
 Julian. Go; abstain from that ; 
 
 I do conjure thee, raise not in my soul 
 Again the tempest that has wreckt my fame ; 
 Thou shalt not breathe in the same clime with her. 
 Far o'er the unebbing sea thou shalt adore 
 The eastern star, and may thy end be peace !" 
 
 All that the tragedy has now to do is to show to 
 its extremest verge what the conqueror and avenger is 
 still to suffer ; and with exquisite art the poet interposes 
 before this a picture of what he had been before he 
 lifted arms against the country that idolised and gloried 
 in him. His foster-brother Hernando who has cleaved 
 to him through all, who in all that he has done is the 
 solitary heart (except his daughter's) which has loved 
 and comprehended him, strives to win him into gentler 
 and reassming thoughts by memories of the past. 
 
 " Often we hardly think ourselves the happy 
 Unless we hear it said by those around. 
 O my lord Julian, how your praises cheer'd 
 Our poor endeavours ! sure, all hearts are open, 
 Lofty and low, wise and unwise, to praise : 
 Even the departed spirit hovers round 
 Our blessings and our prayers ; the corse itself 
 Hath shined with other light than the still stars 
 Shed on its rest, or the dim taper nigh. 
 My father, old men say Avho saw him dead, 
 And heard your lips pronounce him good and happy, 
 Smiled faintly through the quiet gloom that eve. 
 And the shroud throbb'd upon his grateful breast. 
 Howe'er it be, many who tell the tale 
 Are good and happy from that voice of praise." 
 
 Again he takes up the theme : 
 
 " Early in youth, among us villagers 
 Converse and ripen'd counsel you bestow'd. 
 O happy days of (far-departed !) peace, 
 Days when the mighty Julian stoopt his brow 
 Entering our cottage-door ; another air
 
 280 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Breath'd through the house ; tir'd age and lightsome youth 
 
 Beheld him with intensest gaze ; these felt 
 
 More chasten'd joy ; they more profound repose. 
 
 Yes, my best lord, when labour sent them home 
 
 And midday suns, when from the social meal 
 
 The wicker window held the summer heat, 
 
 Prais'd have those been who, going unperceived, 
 
 Open'd it wide that all might see you well : 
 
 Nor were the children blamed, hurrying to watch 
 
 Upon the mat what rush would last arise 
 
 From your foot's pressure, ere the door was clos'd, 
 
 And not yet wondering how they dared to love." 
 
 But all sucli kindly efforts are vain ; and at tlie 
 opening of the fifth act, from the same friendly lips, we 
 have a picture of him to Avhich j\lr. De Quincey's lan- 
 guage will do greater justice than any words of mine. 
 " Mr, Laudor, who always rises with his subject, and 
 " dilates like Satan into Teneriffe or Atlas when he sees 
 " before him an antagonist worthy of his poAvers, is 
 " probably the one man in Europe that has adequately 
 " conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency, 
 " and the monumental misery of Count Julian. That 
 " sublimity of penitential grief, which cannot accept 
 " consolation from man, cannot hear external reproach, 
 " cannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much 
 " as see the curiosity of bystanders; that awful care- 
 " lessness of all but the troubled deeps within his own 
 " heart, and of God's spirit brooding upon their sur- 
 " face and searching their abysses; never was so ma- 
 " jestically described." 
 
 The generous Moor, Tarik, having said that at last 
 Count Julian must be happy, for " delicious calm fol- 
 '' lows the fierce enjoyment of revenge," here is what 
 succeeds : 
 
 " Hernando. That calm Avas never his : no other 
 will be. 
 Not victory that o'crshadows him sees he ;
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 281 
 
 No airy and light passion stirs abroad 
 To ruffle or to soothe him ; all are quell'd 
 Beneath a mightier, sterner stress of mind : 
 Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved, 
 Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men ; 
 As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun 
 Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray, 
 Stands solitary, stands immovable 
 Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye, 
 Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased, 
 
 In the cold light above the dews of morn 
 
 He can not live much longer. Thanks to God ! 
 
 Tarik. What ! wishest thou thy once kind master dead? 
 Was he not land to thee, ungrateful slave ! 
 
 Hernando. The gentlest, as the bravest, of mankind. 
 Therefore shall memory dwell more tranquilly 
 With Julian once at rest, than friendship could, 
 Knowing him yearn for death with speechless love. 
 For his own sake I could endure his loss. 
 Pray for it, and thank God ; yet mourn I must 
 Him above all, so great, so bountiful, 
 So blessed once 1 bitterly must I mourn. 
 'Tis not my solace that 'tis his desire ; 
 Of all who pass us in life's drear descent 
 We grieve the most for those that wisht to die." 
 
 Solemnly beautiful is this close to the magnificent 
 image with which the speaker opens. For all the irre- 
 parable ruin there is only death, and even Hernando 
 wishes it for him ; not with any comfort in the thought 
 that he wishes it also himself, but because only from 
 the grave can ever come restoration or peace. While 
 yet the hero, however, is in presence of tlie spectator, 
 this is not to be. In the ordinary sense Death is neces- 
 sary to constitute a tragedy; but the intensity of tragic 
 suffering, here, is in continuing to live. 
 
 If I add yet a few more lines from this remarkable 
 poem, the apology which Mi*. De Quincey made for 
 giving but one passage will perhaps equally serve as 
 mine for offering so many. " Plow much, then, is in 
 " this brief drama of Count Julian^ chiselled, as one might
 
 282 BATH, SPAIN, AKD LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " think, by the hands of that sculptor who fancied 
 " the great idea of chiselHng Mount Athos into a demi- 
 " god, which almost insists on being quoted; which 
 " seems to rebuke and frown on one for not quoting it ; 
 " passages to which, for their solemn grandeur, one 
 " raises one's hat as at nio;ht in walldn^ under the 
 " Coliseum ; passages which, for their luxiuy of love- 
 " liness, should be inscribed on the phylacteries of 
 " brides or the frescoes of Ionia."* 
 
 Love of Countey. 
 
 " All men with human feelings love their country. 
 Not the high-horn or wealthy man alone, 
 Who looks upon his children, each one led 
 By its gay handmaid from the high alcove, 
 And hears them once a day ; not only he 
 Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires 
 The name of some far village all his own ; 
 Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills 
 
 * See the ninth volume of De Quincey's works {Leaders in Lite- 
 rature), pp. 32G-32. The closing passage affords evidence still more 
 impressive of the effect produced by this tragedy on a mind of no or- 
 dinary character. " After all has been done which intellectual jiower 
 " conlcl do since Jilschylus, and since Milton in his Satan, no embodi- 
 " ment of the Promethean situation, none of the Promethean charac- 
 " ter, fixes the attentive eye upon itself with the same secret feeling of 
 " fidelity to the vast archetype, as Mr. Landor's Count Julian. There 
 " is in this modern aerolith the same jewelly lustre, which cannot be 
 " mistaken; the same non imitabilefulffor; and the same character 
 " of ' fracture' or ' cleavage,' as mineralogists speak, for its beaming 
 " iridescent grandeur, redoubling under the crush of misery. The 
 " colour and the coruscation are the same when splintered by vio- 
 " lence ; the tones of the^ rocky harp are the same when swept by 
 " sorrow. There is the same spirit of heavenly persecution against 
 " his enemy, j^ersecution that would have hung upon his rear, and 
 " burn'd after him to the bottomless pit, though it had yawn'd for 
 " both ; there is the same gulf fixed between the possibilities of 
 " their reconciliation ; the same immortality of resistance, the same 
 " eternity of abysmal sorrow. Did Mr. Landor consciously cherish 
 " this J*]schylea-a ideal in composing Cotint Julian ? I know not : 
 " there it is."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TEAGEDY OF COUNT JULLIN. 283 
 
 Toucli the last cloud ujion tlie level sky : 
 No ; better men still Letter love their country. 
 'Tis the old mansion of their earliest fiiends, 
 The chapel of their first and best devotions." 
 
 MoNAECHiES Elective and Dn'ixE. 
 
 " Muza. "WTiere is the king ? 
 
 Jidia?i. The people must decide. 
 
 Muza. Imperfectly, I hope, I understand 
 Those words, unworthy of thy birth and age. 
 
 Jvllan. chieftain, such have been our Gothic laws. 
 
 Ifuza. Who then amid such turbulence is safe ? 
 
 Julian. He who observes them : 'tis no turbulence, 
 It violates no peace : 'tis surely worth 
 A voice, a breath of air, thus to create 
 B}' their high will the man, form'd after them 
 In their own image, vested with their power. 
 To whom they trust their freedom and their lives. 
 
 Muza, They trust ! tlie i)eoi)le ! GOD assigns the 
 charge ! 
 Kings open but the book of destiny 
 And read their names ; all that remains for them 
 The mystic hand fi-om time to time reveals. 
 Worst of idolaters ! idolater 
 Of that refractory and craving beast 
 Whose den is in the city ! at thy hand 
 I claim our common enemy, the king. 
 
 A Statesman's Cakes. 
 
 " destiny ! that callest me alone, 
 Hapless, to keep the toilsome watch of state, 
 Painful to age, unnatural to youth, 
 Adverse to all society of friends, 
 Equality, and liberty, and ease. 
 The welcome cheer of the unbidden feast, 
 The gay reply, light, sudden, like the leap 
 Of the young forester's unbended bow. 
 But, above all, to tenderness at home. 
 And sweet security of kind concern 
 Even from those who seem most trulj' ours," 
 
 A Character, 
 
 " He was brave, and in discourse 
 Most voluble ; the masses of his mind 
 Were vast, but varied ; now absorb'd in gloom,
 
 2S-i BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Majestic, not austere ; now their extent 
 Opening and waving in bright levity . . ." 
 
 Persecution and its Victims. 
 " Although a Muza send far underground. 
 Into the quarry whence the Tjalace rose, 
 His mangled prey, climes alien and remote 
 Mark and record tlie pang. While overhead 
 Perhaps he passes on his favourite steed. 
 Less heedful of the misery he inflicts 
 Than of the expiring sparkle from a stone, 
 Yet we, alive or dead, have fellow-men 
 If ever we have served them, who collect 
 From prisons and from dungeons our remains, 
 And hear them in their bosom to their sons. 
 Man's only relics are his benefits ; 
 These, be there ages, be there worlds, between, 
 Eetain him in communion with his kind : 
 Plence is our solace, our security. 
 Our sustenance, till heavenly truth descends. 
 Covering with brightness and beatitude 
 The frail foundations of these humbler hopes, 
 And, like an angel guiding us, at once 
 Leaves the loose chain and iron gate behind." 
 
 Christian Sanctions. 
 
 " Is any just or glorious act in view, 
 Your oaths forbid it : is your avarice. 
 Or, if there be such, any viler passion 
 To have its giddy range and to be gorged, 
 It rises over all your sacraments, 
 A hooded mystery, holier than they all." 
 
 Guilt. 
 " Guilt hath pavilions, but no privacy." 
 
 Peace. 
 
 " Peace is throughout the land : the various tribes 
 Of that vast region sink at once to rest. 
 Like one wide wood when every wind lies husht." 
 
 MuzA's Son describes Koderigo's Fall. 
 
 " There is, I hear, a poor half-ruined cell 
 In Xeres, whither few indeed resort. 
 Green are the walls within, green is the floor
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. " 285 
 
 And slipperj' from disuse ; for christian feet 
 
 Avoid it, as half-holy, half -accurst. 
 
 Still in its dark recess fanatic Sin 
 
 Abases to the ground his tangled hair, 
 
 And servile scourges and reluctant groans 
 
 Eoll o'er the vault uninterruptedly, 
 
 Till (such the natural stillness of the place) 
 
 The very tear upon the damps below 
 
 Drops audible, and the heart's throb replies. 
 
 There is the idol maid of christian creed, 
 
 And taller images whose history 
 
 I know not nor inquired. A scene of blood, 
 
 Of resignation amid mortal pangs, 
 
 And other things exceeding all belief. 
 
 Hither the aged Opas of Seville 
 
 Walkt slowly, and behind him was a man 
 
 Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfoi-tless, 
 
 In sackcloth ; the white ashes on his head 
 
 Dropt as he smote his breast ; he gather'd up, 
 
 Eeplaced them all, groan'd deeply, lookt to heaven, 
 
 And held them like a treasure with claspt hands." 
 
 Julian's described by the same. 
 
 " Behold him, once so potent, still so brave, 
 So calm, so self-dependent in distress ; 
 I marvel at him : hardly dare I blame 
 Wheu I behold him fallen from so high. 
 And so exalted after such a fall. 
 Mighty must that man be, who can forgive 
 A man so mighty ; seize the hour to rise, 
 Another never comes : say, my father I 
 Say, 'Julian, be my enemy no more.' 
 He fills me with a greater awe than e'er 
 The field of battle, with himself the first, 
 When every flag that waved along our host 
 Droopt down the staff, as if the very winds 
 Hung in suspense before him. Bid him go 
 And peace be with him, or let me depart. 
 Lo I like a God, sole and inscrutable, 
 He stands above our pity." 
 
 Eesuming Landor's coiTespondence with Soutliey^ 
 it will now be seen in what circumstances this poem 
 was composed, what varieties of alteration it underwent,
 
 286 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 and what throes of labour and enjoyment, doubt and 
 encouragement, hope and despair, attended the succes- 
 sive stages of its production. 
 
 The first allusion to it is in a letter of July 1810, 
 when Landor had heard from Southey that he was be- 
 ginning a poem on Eoderick. 
 
 " Among a dozen unfinished things, I have somewhere about 
 the third of a tragedy, the subject of which is Count Julian. I 
 represent him as the most excellent and the most patient of all 
 earthly beings, till the violation of his daughter. When he 
 hears the narrative of this, or rather narratives, for there are 
 three, the inwards of his heart develop themselves. I have 
 chosen that three different persons should describe to him the 
 events that had taken place, both for the sake of variety and 
 extent : a father and son, his friend and Florinda's lover, and 
 a natural daughter of Roderigo, known at present only as the 
 early confidante and companion of Florinda, and beloved by 
 Count Julian. I left off this and began another on Ferrante 
 and Giulio, natural sons of the Duke of Ferrara, half-brothers 
 of Cardinal Ippolito di Este. But I left off making cobwebs, 
 for I felt no anxiety to catch flies. If I had finished Count 
 Julian, he would have landed in Spain within a few hours of 
 the first intelligence of his calamity ; for the Moorish army was 
 investing Ceuta both by sea and land, and had only to sail 
 across. He would have taken Roderigo prisoner dm-ing an 
 engagement in the night, would have forced him on board a 
 vessel, and have exacted no more than his oath to pass the re- 
 mainder of his days in penitence at the Holy Sepulchre. If I 
 had written down aU I composed in my walks, I should perhaps 
 have finished half. But I cannot sit to write anything, and 
 whatever I propose to do, I leave undone. This argues a most 
 deplorable imbecility of mind, such as never can happen but 
 from an uninterrupted series of vexations and disappoint- 
 ments." 
 
 The reader sees, of course, how different was this 
 proposed execution of the piece from that which he 
 adopted. The theme he had chosen shook his friend a 
 little at first; but soon came the frank and generous
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TEAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 287 
 
 praise. Soutliej tliouglit the conception of the Count 
 very fine and original : his OAvn, on the contrary, imput- 
 ing no grandeur of mind to him, but a great deal to his 
 daughter. Not until November, writing from Bath, does 
 Landor refer again to his tragedy, with characteristic 
 account of how he had been writing it ; and the rough 
 draft then enclosed of what he meant for its very last 
 scene, sketched before the first scene of the first act was 
 completed, is here given with the letter because of its 
 agreement in feehng, but entire unlikeness in detail, to 
 the scene as subsequently altered and printed. It begins 
 when Julian has been told of the murder of his sons. 
 
 " One evening, as I returned from the concert, I -wrote down 
 a speech for my tragedy of Count Julian. I am happy we take 
 such opposite, or rather such distant ground ; for if I came too 
 near you, it would avail me little to be entrenched up to the 
 teeth. My magnificent plan is now totally changed. I had 
 made some fine speeches, really and truly ; but, alas, I rejected 
 them all because they loere fine speeches. I am a man who 
 semper ad eventum festinat ; and although I have not more than 
 about four hundred verses that will remain on the permanent 
 establishment and do duty, yet I have finished the last scene. 
 Here it is. I will wTite it as legibly as I can. 
 
 ' Julian {after a2)ausc). I will not weep — pity and joy 
 and pride 
 Soften me and console me. {Pause.) Are they dead 1 
 
 Muza, Yes, and unsepulchred. 
 
 Julian. Nor wept nor seen 
 
 By any kindred and far- following eye ? {Pause) 
 
 O children, ye are happy. Ye have lived 
 Of heart unconquer'd, honour miuiipairxl, 
 And died, true Spaniards, loyal to the last. 
 
 3Iuza. Away with him ! 
 
 Julian. Slaves I not before I lift 
 
 My voice to heaven and man : though enemies 
 Surround me, and none else, yet other men 
 And other times shall hear : the agony 
 Of soul, the wheel that racks the heart, is heard. 
 Nature, amidst her solitudes, recoils
 
 288 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III, 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 At the dread sound, nor knows what she repeats. 
 The cities swell with it. The villager 
 Honeys with fallen pride his infants' lore. 
 The element we breathe will scatter it. 
 The ministers of heaven, i^i'esiding o'er them, 
 Breathe it ! And none dares dream whence it arose. 
 From prisons and from dungeons mortals hear 
 Expiring truth, nor curse repentant crime. 
 
 Enter a Messenger, 
 
 M. Thy wife, Count Julian — 
 
 Julian {afraid). Pause ! — 
 
 31. — is dead. 
 
 Julian.. Adieu, 
 
 Earth ! and the humblest of all earthly hope. 
 To hear of comfort, though to find it vain. 
 O soother of mj' hours, while I beheld 
 The light of day, and thine ! Adieu, adieu ! 
 my lost child, thou livest j'et — in shame ! 
 
 agony past utterance ! past thought ! 
 
 That throwest death, like some light idle thing. 
 With all its terrors, into dust and air — 
 
 1 will endure thee — for I see again 
 My natal land, and cover it with woe.' 
 
 ■When Count Julian says to the messenger, Pause ! he says it 
 in great vehemence and distraction, as if he apprehended the 
 same outrage as had dishonoured his daughter. 
 
 " I have one passage which is better than this, and only one 
 of any great extent. I will now give you a specimen of the old 
 
 leaven : 
 
 ' 0]>as. I never yet have seen where long success 
 Hath f oUow'd him who warred upon his king. 
 
 Julian. Because the virtue that inflicts the stroke 
 Dies with him, and the rank ignoble heads 
 Of plundering factions soon unite again, 
 And, prince-protected, share the spoil in peace.' 
 
 " I sometimes rise into too high a key, but I have an in- 
 stinctive horror of declamation." 
 
 Keplying in December* Southey tells his friend that 
 
 * It is perhaps not necessary again to remark that what is quoted 
 here of Southey's from the correspondence will not be found in his 
 Life or Letters.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 289 
 
 he is not sure he does msely in rejectinoj fine speeches 
 from his tragedy, and remarks of the speech of JiiHan 
 above, given as a specimen of the old leaven, that it 
 seems to him perfectly in character, such sort of rea- 
 soning being of the essence of passion. The concluding 
 scene he thinks very fine, though he loses some of its 
 force from want of knowing precisely the situation. One 
 line, where the villager 
 
 " Honeys with fallen pride his infants' lore," 
 
 he does not yet understand. But, as in Gehir he used 
 to read over difiicult passages till the meaning flashed 
 upon him, perhaps by to-morrow he shall feel the pur- 
 port of this. The action of his own poem, he adds, 
 does not begin till Landor's has finished, and he encloses 
 and explains its opening sections. Landor meanAvhile, 
 at the end of the same month, had been sending fiu'- 
 tlier news of Julian, when, in the midst of his letter, 
 that of Southey with its enclosures arrived. He has 
 now altogether discarded the plan first chosen, and has 
 completed his first act on the new plan. 
 
 " I have completed my fii'st act of Count Julian. I believe 
 I have not a syllable to alter ; but who knows that, so early in 
 the business ? Has nobody ever chosen Count Julian for the 
 subject of a tragedy? Not that I care — I find that Alfieri 
 has not. I shall reject the greater part of what I wrote long 
 ago. I cannot graft anything on such twigs. I am abler than 
 I was. I will cut all my figures out of one block, under one 
 conception of their characters. My tragedy, after all, will 
 have many defects ; but I did not imagine I could do so well 
 as I have done. lUhe papillaris aura., though we arc ashamed or 
 unable to analyse it, is requisite for the health and growth of 
 
 genius '•' I believe I am the first man who over wTote 
 
 the better part of a tragedy in a concert-room. Your letter 
 has come this instant." 
 
 * A touching passage, already given in note p. 178, is omitted 
 here. 
 
 VOL. I, U
 
 290 BATH, SrAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 He explains the line not intelligible to Soutliey ; 
 throws out a remark worth study on the varieties of 
 ancient method in poetical language ; and closes with a 
 remark on the opening of his friend's Roderick. 
 
 " I spared as poetry what I had once rejected as tragedy. 
 ' Honeys with fallen pride,' &c. ; the Adllager sweetens his 
 children's lesson by giving them a story of f aUen pride. This 
 is the meaning ; but nothing ought to stand in a tragedy of 
 which one is obliged to say, This is the meaning. Added to 
 which, all views of country life should be excluded by the tur- 
 moil and (Uploiemcnt of the passions. The ancients permitted 
 the sense to sink deeper below the surface than we do. Look 
 at Pindar and Sophocles ; or take Sophocles alone. His lan- 
 guage is generally the sacred language of poetry in the more 
 impassioned parts, though in the shorter and more familiar 
 dialogue it is nothing more than the conversation of ordinary 
 life. — You rise in energy and spirit as you proceed ; but I fear 
 that the portico wiU be too large for the temple, if you propose 
 to rear yom* structure by the ancient rules. Is this necessary ? 
 May not a poem be more comprehensive than we have been 
 used to ?" 
 
 Then, on the 21st of January 1811, less than three 
 weeks from the time when the first act had been com- 
 pleted, writing from the South-parade in Bath he exult- 
 ingly announces that the entire tragedy is done, and is 
 unable to suppress the hope he entertains that it may 
 even prove worthy to be acted. 
 
 "I have finished Count Julian this evening. It cannot be 
 well done, written with such amazing rapidity. In forty hours 
 I have done a thousand lines. Little of the original plan is re- 
 tained, but about three hundred verses are unaltered, or nearly 
 so. When my fingers are fairly well again, I will transcribe 
 the whole for you — that the eye may take in all at a time. I 
 ought to have it acted, as an indemnity for the sleeve of a new 
 coat which it has actually made threadbare. Do not whisper 
 to any one that I have wi'itten a tragedy. My name is com- 
 posed of unlucky letters. But if you know any poor devil who
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 291 
 
 can be benefited by the gift of one, he may have it — profit, 
 fame, and all ; and what is more, if it is not successful, he 
 may say it is mine. At all events, it will have a better chance 
 Avith him than with me. It would be impossible for me, in- 
 deed, to have anything to do with such people as managers 
 and lord chamberlains — though, as the latter is a person of 
 rather more consequence, I may employ him, a few years hence, 
 to empty .... I used to believe that I was prodigiously less 
 ahsenf, as people caU it, than other reading and writing men ; 
 and I can hardly bring to my memory an instance of the kind, 
 before the one I am going to mention. I sent for a volume of 
 Racine (having no books) from the library, for the sole purpose 
 of counting what number of verses was the average of a tragedy. 
 I was writing when it came ; and I turned over his messiem's 
 and mesdames with a vacant stare, and sent the volume away 
 in a passion without the least idea what had induced me to 
 order an author I dislike so much. Let me however do justice 
 to Racine. I have a reluctance to begin, but if I begin I go 
 on. His great fault is, every tragedy represents the same state 
 of society, of whatever country the characters may be, or in 
 whatever age the event. In a few of our higher feelings this 
 is really the case ; but the reasonings and moral sentiments of 
 this poet, and above aU the mode of expressing them, may be 
 fairly laid down between the Luxembom-g and the Bois de 
 Boulogne." 
 
 He had indeed done wonders with Count Julian, 
 was Southey's answer ten days later. He had never 
 himself had a quicker run (in sailor's phrase) than 
 twelve hundred lines in a week. But that was nothing 
 to Landor's exploit ; " and your manner involves so 
 " much thought (excess of meaning being its fault), 
 " that the same number of lines must cost thrice as 
 " much expense of passion and of the reasoning faculty 
 " to you as they would to mc." To see the tragedy 
 as completed he is now all impatience. As to tlie line 
 of which he had asked an explanation, the meaning liad 
 flashed upon him, as he thought it would, ten minutes 
 after the letter Avas gone, and he be-blockhcaded
 
 292 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1S05-14. 
 
 himself according to liis deserts.* As to the notion 
 of putting it on the stage he says, with a manifest 
 ignorance of the art which may in some sort excuse 
 his not less obvious contempt for its workmen and pro- 
 fessors : " Of manan;ers I have as great an ahhorrence 
 " as you have ; but if your play be fitted for repre- 
 " sentation, which is supposing it to have certain vices 
 " that it is not likely to have, and to be without certain 
 " merits which are sure to be found there, means may 
 " be devised of putting it into their hands, in that sort 
 " of cavalier manner which is likely to have more effect 
 " with such fellows than any other conduct." The tra- 
 gedy, in its complete form, reached Southey with a letter 
 of tiie date 5th Feb. 1811. 
 
 " I have laboured days and nights, Vidthout intermission 
 almost, in correcting my tragedj*. I send it you transcribed. 
 Keep the copy, for I never shall have another fair enough to 
 print fi-om — if I do print. My rapidity in the composition was 
 not quite so great as I led you to imagine. My hours were 
 four or five together, after long walks, in which I brought 
 
 * As an illustration not without value of what the keenest per- 
 ception may here and there find " obscure" in Lander's style, I give, 
 with his friend's comment and explanation, another jjassage which 
 to Southey had been unintelligible. It is where Opas implores 
 Julian that it should never be his 
 
 " To drag the steady prop from failing age. 
 Break the young stem that fondness twines around. 
 Widen the solitude of lonely sighs. 
 And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day 
 The ruins and the phantoms that replied." 
 The last two lines being the difficulty, Landor told him thereupon 
 that between them he had written 
 
 " Spectres of bliss and avenues of hope ;" 
 " the meaning being — and destroy all those scenes of privacy and 
 " retirement in which the wretched raise up those illusions which 
 " reply and are correspondent with their distempered imagination." 
 The explanatory line nevertheless has failed to get into the printed 
 copies of the play.
 
 ^T. 30-39.J THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 293 
 
 before me the various charactei-s, the very tones of their voices, 
 theii' forms, complexions, and step. In the daytime I laboured 
 and at night unburdened my inind, shedding many tears. People 
 have laughed at Voltau-e for weeping at the representation of 
 his own tragedies. For my own part I believe he never was 
 half so sincere on any other occasion. Through-paced rascal 
 and true Frenchman as he was, here was neither deceit nor 
 affectation." 
 
 Not disappointed was Soutliey in tlie finished Count 
 Julian. After six days he acknowledged it. Too Greek 
 for representation in those days, it was altogether 
 worthy of its aiithor. The thonght and feeling fre- 
 quently condensed in a single line was unlike anything 
 in modern composition. The conclusion too was Greek. 
 He should have known the play to be Landor's if it 
 had fallen in his way without a name. What that icas, 
 poor Rough's had only tried to be. Never Avas a cha- 
 racter more finely conceived than Julian. The picture 
 of his seizino; the horses was the m-andest imao;e of 
 power that ever poet produced, and in the very first 
 rank of sublimity.* Nor could he have placed the story 
 in a finer di-amatic light. Of course he must print the 
 tragedy. It would not liave many more admirers than 
 Gehir, but they would be of the same class and cast ; 
 and with Gebir it would be known hereafter, when all 
 the rubbish of their generation should have been swept 
 away. And what, was asked in conclusion, would he 
 do next ? "I cannot reconcile myself to the abandon- 
 " ment of the Phocceans, of which the fragments are 
 " so masterly." 
 
 This, at the close of February 1811, brings grateful 
 reply from Landor. First he sends several corrections ; 
 says there was an embarrassed sentence at the end, to 
 which after vast labour he has given pliability ; and pre- 
 
 * See ante, p. 278,
 
 294 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 sents tlie last brief scene in an unquestionably improved 
 form, as ^411 be obsen^ed by comparison of the version 
 given in these letters with that in the printed play. 
 Then he continues : incidentally remarking on two sub- 
 jects, Sertorius and Spartacus, from which Southey had 
 been anxious that he should make choice for a poem, 
 unless he should prefer to go on mth the Phocceans : 
 
 " I finished this tragedy only because I thought it disgrace- 
 ful to have formed so many plans and to have completed none. 
 Indeed, I had some doubt whether I could write a tragedy, a 
 thing which I have always considered as a desideratum in mo- 
 dern literature. For the Harpies have left their filth among 
 even the rich feasts in the theatre of Shakespeare, and Otway 
 is an unclean beast. Siu-ely an age that can endm-e the vile 
 and despicable insipidities of Addison's Cato may listen to Count 
 Julian. I wish it were possible for me, mthout a name, to bring 
 it forward. I care not what is omitted in the representation. 
 The plan and characters are well proportioned, which is sure 
 to please people, though they know not why. The events of 
 the first act lead naturally to the last, and every scene is instru- 
 mental to the catastrophe. Twice I struck out and replaced 
 the verses, ' O happy days,' &c.''- Such feelings and reflections 
 occur in Sophocles and Euripides, but generally in the choruses. 
 I wanted them as a dcmi-tinf, to use the expression of another 
 art, to surround and set-off Count Julian. It relieves us from 
 the agonies of the preceding scene, and renders him an object 
 of the most powerful sympathy as well as of the highest ad- 
 miration. How different from the man who is forced to be- 
 come the scom'ge of his countiy ! 
 
 " I never could have made the Phocceans a good poem, I 
 began in a wrong key for English verse. I had written several 
 hundred lines in Latin, but I threw them into the fire at the 
 bad reception that English volume met with. If I had not, my 
 Latin poem of ' Phocasis' would have been the sheet-anchor of 
 my poetical fame, and the labour of this very hour, probably. 
 It would have contained very very little of what is now in the 
 English. 
 
 " I admu'e the character of Sertorius more than any other 
 
 * See ante, p. 279-80.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 295 
 
 Roman whatsoever ; but tlie Romans are the most anti-pic- 
 turesque and anti-poetical people in the universe. No good 
 poem ever was or ever will be written about them. The North 
 opens the most stupendous region to genius. What a people 
 were the Icelanders ! what divine poets ! Even in the clumsy 
 version of WiUiam Herbert they strike my imagination and 
 heart differently from others. Except Pindar's, no other odes 
 are so high-toned. I have before me, only in the translation 
 of MaUet's Northern Antiquities^ the ode of Regnor Lodbrog, 
 the corrections of which I remember. What a vile jargon is 
 the French ! ' Nous nous sommes battu a coups d'epees' ! ! 
 There is one passage I delight in. ' Ah, if my sons knew the 
 ' sufferings of their father, &c. &c.—for I gave a mother to my 
 ' children from whom they inherit a valiant hearth Few poets 
 could have expressed this natural and noble sentiment ; few 
 are aware that it is the highest of all virtues to choose such a 
 woman as may confer a good form and good dispositions on her 
 progeny." 
 
 This strildng letter, anotlier proof of the invariable 
 effect of the old Northern fictions on poets and men of 
 genius, was followed after a few days by sundry fillings- 
 up for the last act of Julian, to come immediately on 
 the annomicement made to the hero of the death of his 
 sons . 
 
 " The tragedy is now 1600 lines long — too much I fear ; but 
 when I recoUect first one thing and then another which I have 
 omitted, I cannot help saying of one or two favourites, ' I have 
 ' thrown a pearl away richer than all its tribe.' But I was afi'aid 
 of the verses above.* I fancied the tenderness of them was 
 
 * The speech is that beautiful one in which, witli pathetic yearn- 
 ing to his favourite, called after him, he contrasts the characters of 
 
 his sons : 
 
 * 
 
 " Ermenegild ! thou mightest, sure, have lived ! 
 
 A father's name awoke no dread of thee 1 
 
 Only thy mother's early bloom was thiuc ! 
 
 There dwelt on Julian's brow , . tliine was serene . . 
 
 The brighten'd cloiids of elevated souls, 
 
 Fear'd by the most below : those who lookt up 
 
 Saw at their season in clear signs advance 
 
 Eapturous valour, calm solicitude,
 
 296 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. LEook III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 almost equal to wliat he felt for liis daughter. This would 
 have been wrong. I see it plainly, now I can bring the whole 
 into one view, and at some considerable distance from the 
 period of writing it. His feelings were inadequately and im- 
 properly expressed before. I made him betray some anger and 
 resentment at the idea that Muza had caused the death of his 
 wife.* Now, the hceplng is good, and I have only to scrutinise 
 the words and retain the vei'ses, which I do. I have added 
 one touch of vanity and selfishness, f of that hardness which 
 is so frequently superinduced on the female character when the 
 bloom of early fondness is blown off." 
 
 On the 12th of March South ey answered. Too Greek 
 for representation as he thought the tragedy to be, 
 he seems nevertheless to have gravely entertained his 
 friend's manifestly eager desire to have it acted. First 
 he remarks upon the changes and interpolations,^ and 
 in particular says of the speech last sent, upon Julian's 
 sons, that it is " a grand passage — a mixture of the 
 " pathetic and the lofty and the profound, which is 
 " not to be found in any other living writer, and in 
 
 All that impatient youtli would press from age, 
 Or sparing age sigli and detract from youth : 
 Hence was his fall ! my hope ! myself ! my Julian !" 
 
 * See ante, p. 288. 
 
 •j- This is where Egilona, whose heart had softened to Eoderigo 
 on hearing of his last humiliation, hardens again at hearing that no 
 vvord but that of penance had fallen from him : 
 
 " If he had only call'd upon my name, 
 Seeking my pardon ere he lookt to heaven's, 
 I could have — no ! he thought not once on me !" 
 X The reader who compares the last scene as given in Landor's 
 letter at p. 287-8 with the same scene as divided into two in the printed 
 play, will understand what these were ; and, besides that named in the 
 text, I may subjoin these : 
 
 " the agony 
 Of an opprest and of a bursting heart 
 No violence can silence : at its voice 
 The trumpet is o'erpower'd, and glory mute, 
 And peace and war ..."
 
 JET. 30-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN, 207 
 
 " very few of those who are immortal ;" next he says 
 that "there is nothing in the play so obscure as the 
 " last line and a half will be ;" and then he talks of the 
 stage. The chance for it, he shrewdly remarks, would 
 lie in John Kemble's vanity; and he thinks that through 
 Longman, who has some property in Covent-garden, 
 backed by a note from himself, he can at least insure a 
 readiuff from the actor-manager who would doubtless 
 bring it out if he thought it calculated to display his 
 talents, though as for " understanding the power and 
 " might and majesty that the tragedy manifests," this 
 was not to be expected from a man who, after Shake- 
 speare, could act in such trash as Cato and the Revenge : 
 the last a play which had so turned his stomach on seeing 
 it nine years ago that he verily believed he should never 
 set foot in a theatre again. But was it, after all, worth 
 trial ? Less from its want of pageantry than because 
 of its excellencies, he very much doubted its success ; 
 and for himself he did not think he could ever consent 
 to submit to the decision of such a crew as the London 
 dramatic critics a production that had cost him thought 
 and passion, blushes of cheek and throbs of head and 
 quiet tears. However, he was ready to send the play 
 to Keml:)le, and manage all the correspondence with 
 him ; and failing him, he thought he might send it Avith 
 yet a better chance, through AValter Scott, to tlie Edin- 
 burgh theatre. 
 
 Landor promptly replied, after two days' interval, 
 first, that Southey's remark on tlie last lines of the 
 tragedy* was perfectly just. lie might explain them ; 
 but as he could explain them in two ways, and was not 
 able to recollect his precise feeling at the moment of 
 
 * These remained still as in the first draft, ante, \). 288.
 
 298 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. LBook III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 \^Titing them, it was proper tliey should be altered. He 
 
 would now say 
 
 " I will endure thee ! I have seen again 
 My natal land, and cover'd it with woe ! 
 "What can I not, what should I not, endure !" 
 
 That idea, he thinks, would open a new source of pathos. 
 Then, as to the stage, he makes an interesting and note- 
 worthy comment. Not until a quarter of a century 
 later, the reader at all conversant with such matters 
 will remember, this disgrace of the lobbies was ■s\aj)ed 
 out by !Mr. Macready, the last of the really great actors 
 of our generation. 
 
 " Kemble may be ti'ied. It really does appear to me, on 
 recollection, that Count Julian is a character suited to him ; 
 but I have seen very little of Kemble. You would hardly 
 imagine it, I have not seen a play acted a dozen times in my 
 life. I am not remarkably pure or chaste ; but to hear generous 
 and pathetic sentiments and to behold glorious and grand ac- 
 tions amidst the vulgar hard-hearted language of prostitutes 
 and lobby-loungers, not only takes away all my pleasure by the 
 evident contrast, but seizes me with the most painful and in- 
 superable disgust. Added to which, I cannot restrain my tears, 
 sometimes at even an indifferent piece. It is curious that we 
 should be more anxious to conceal our best passions than our 
 worst. Our pity and love are profaned by the most casual 
 glance ; but one would imagine om' hatred and vengeance were 
 pro bono publico. I think now of the public taste precisely as 
 I did when I wrote the first preface to Gchlr. That preface 
 would not serve for a second edition. It was the language of 
 a man who had not tried the public, and who threw down the 
 full measure of his expectations. If Count Julian is endured, 
 it will be because it is different from anything of the day, and 
 not from any excellence. If Kemble will not act it, I would 
 not submit it to inferior actors." 
 
 Thereupon, writing early in May 1811, Southey told 
 Landor he was going up to London, and would carry 
 with him the tragedy for Kemble. He ought to jump
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TEAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN, 299 
 
 at it if he kneAV what was really excellent in dramatic 
 comjDOsition ; but Southey did not expect that from him, 
 and Landor might rely at least on the man's being made 
 to understand that no favour was soKcited, the obhga- 
 tion being quite as much on the Kemble part as on 
 theu's. But at this point Landor seems suddenly to have 
 gathered from Southey's tone, what he ought clearly to 
 have discovered much earlier, how vain was any hope 
 from that quarter ; and the eagerness so suddenly ex- 
 pressed for the stage was now just as hastily withdrawn. 
 " Count Julian shall never lie at the feet of Kemble. 
 " It must not be offered for representation. I will 
 " print it, and immediately. Give me yom* advice how 
 '' this is to be done." 
 
 Southey's advice was ready, though hardly what 
 Landor meant by his question. " Print the tragedy in 
 " a volmiie," he wrote early in June, " with boarded 
 " covers, not as a pamphlet to be dog-leaved." Scott 
 also, he told him, was writing on Roderigo ; and if the 
 old Goth ever got any literaiy news in the other world, 
 it would surprise him to hear what work he had made 
 for the poets of the nineteenth centuiy !* 
 
 Wliile yet however that letter was on its way, Lan- 
 dor had "\ATitten three or foiu' more to his friend, each 
 with its changes, interpolations, additions, or sugges- 
 tions. "Whether to admit the fresh lines that rise to his 
 mind he is frequently doubtful ; and the doubt mostly 
 ends in exclusion. But some there are that haunt him, 
 so that he cannot decide ; and two or three, apparently 
 unmiportant, it had cost him a day each on an average 
 
 * Writing to Scott in 1812, to thank him for his Vision of Bon 
 Modcrick, Southcy tells him : " I have a tragedy of Landor's in my 
 " desk, of which Count Julian is tlie hero : it contains some of the 
 " finest touches, both of passion and poetiy, that I have ever seen."
 
 300 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 to alter. The second scene of the third act he had 
 fonnd it necessary to enhirge; and instead of officers 
 withont names he had introduced Osma and Raniiro. 
 By augmenting the same scene he had given time for 
 tlie retm'n of Sisabert and Opas, as well as reason and 
 opportunity for the departure of Ramiro and Osma, to 
 whose characters he had moreover given size enough 
 for some discriminating touches. " I have made," he 
 adds, " many improvements ;" and he instances some 
 new lines descriptive of Egilona.* kSouthey would ob- 
 serv^e also that he had slightly altered the last line. 
 Does he now like it better ? 
 
 " No, not yet, not quite," Southey at once replied. 
 Those concluding lines were not yet what they should 
 be ; nor would Landor have asked for a further judgment 
 if they had been. " All bad poets admire all that they 
 " wi'ite. A true one never suspects a passage of his 
 " own to be imperfect without cause. His suspicions 
 " are of the nature of conscience." But the passage he 
 had sent descriptive of Egilona was indeed perfectly 
 Landorean ! " It has a character of sublimity wholly 
 " yoiu" own, and of that kind which has set the seal of 
 " immortality on Gehlr.'"' Not welcomer to the thirsty 
 grass the summer dews and rains, than to Southey's 
 friend his ever noble, unstinting, unmisgiving praise; 
 and with fresh heart he labours on, adding, transcribing, 
 strengthening everywhere. 
 
 " I have had enough trouble in the transcribing : I will have 
 no more. The conclusion never pleased me, and I shall pass a 
 few hours agreeably enough in bringing it nearer to my mind." 
 
 He had sealed his letter, but opens it again to send 
 
 * See ante, p. 277-8. The introduced Hues are those beginning 
 " Negligent as the blossoms of the field" to the close.
 
 ^T. 3C-39.] THE TRAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 301 
 
 the fresli closing lines, wliicli he thinks have something 
 
 of a moral — a thing most critics want. 
 
 " I M'ill endure thee, — I, whom lieaven ordained 
 Thus to have served beneath my enemies, 
 Their conqueror, thus to have revisited 
 My native land with vengeance and witli woe." 
 
 Still this does not satisfy him ; and the letter con- 
 taining it had hardly been dispatched Avhen another took 
 to SoLithey the additional lines as the}- now stand. 
 
 " I have added some lines for the conclusion, more dramatic 
 according to modern notions, containing one stroke more of 
 Julian's character. He orders the guards of Muza to follow 
 him. It was requisite that even Muza, at the last, should ac- 
 knowledge his superiority. 
 
 ' Henceforward shall she recognise her sons 
 Imjiatient of oppression or disgrace. 
 And rescue them or perish. Let her hold 
 This compact, written with her hlood and mine. 
 Now follow me . . but [turidng round, as he goes out, to 
 3Iu:a'\ tremble ! 
 
 Years sliall roll 
 And wars rage on, and Spain at last be free.' 
 
 " I wrote also for my last scene, immediately on reading your 
 letter, after some repressions, these lines : 
 
 ' Justice, who came not up to us through life, 
 Loves to survey our likeness on our tombs. 
 When rivalry, malevolence, and wrath, 
 And every passion that once storm'd around, 
 Is calm alike without them and within.' " 
 
 That letter was written in the middle of June ; when 
 already, after a fashion his friend had not dreamt of^ 
 he had been acting on Southey's suggestion about the 
 printing of the play. The result was described in a 
 letter from Llanthony on the 25th June 1811 ; and a 
 more characteristic one does not appear in the series. 
 
 " I sent Count Julian to your bookseller Mr. Longman, and 
 gave him to understand, though not in so many words, as people
 
 302 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 say, that you thought not unfavourably of it. I would have 
 been glad to have given it up to him for half-a-dozen copies : 
 not that I have half-a-dozen friends who know anything of 
 poetry, or indeed so many of any kind ; but I wanted half-a- 
 dozen to give to people who have been civil to me. This would 
 not do. I then proposed to print it at my own expense. This 
 also failed. They would have nothing to do with it. We have 
 lately had cold weather here, and fires. On receiving the last 
 letter of Mr. Longman to this purport, I committed to the 
 flames my tragedy ol Ferrcmtl and Glulio, with which I intended 
 to surprise you, and am resolved that never verse of mine here- 
 after shall be committed to anything else. My literary career 
 has been a very curious one. You cannot imagine how I feel 
 relieved at laying down its burden and abandoning this tissue 
 of humiliations. I fancied I had at last acquired the right 
 tone of tragedy, and was treading down at heel the shoes of 
 Alfieri." 
 
 At all tins Soutliey is overwhelmed vdih grief. 
 Why such a man as his friend, certain as he must be of 
 the sterling value of his poems, should care either for 
 good or evil report of them, was utterly unaccountable 
 to Southey. He looked upon Gebir as he did upon 
 Dante's long poem in the Italian, " not as a good poem, 
 " but as containing the finest poetry in the language ;" 
 so it was with Julian ; and so no doubt it was with the 
 play he had so provokingly destroyed. Could he only 
 have knoAvn thatLandor thought of oifering Count Julian 
 to Longman, a word from himself would have prevented 
 all that irrej)arable mischief! 
 
 " The people at that house know nothing about books 
 except in the mere detail of trade ; and the only thing which 
 they would think of was, that single plays did not sell unless 
 they were repi'esented. And because these Paternoster-row 
 men have acted in the spmt of their vocation, you have bm'ut 
 a play which doubtless contained as much pm'e ore as Julian, 
 and which would have lived as long as the language. Zounds ! 
 I could swear almost as vehemently at you as at them !" 
 
 This was written from London ; in the interval be-
 
 ^T. 30-39.] THE TEAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN. 303 
 
 fore returning to Keswick, Southey and his wife visited 
 Landor at Llanthony ; and September was the date of 
 Landor's next letter. He talks of the favourable weather, 
 and what it is domg for the land. " After all this, if I 
 " talk of my tragedy, I shall remind you of the lottery- 
 " men in the newspapers. The weather has most cer- 
 " tainly made several verses grow up in several places, 
 " and occasioned me to prune some of the rankest 
 " parts." He speaks of portions recovered from his holo- 
 caust oi Ferranti and Giiilio ; and closes by saying that 
 if Southey could tell him of any bookseller who would 
 prmt Count Julian without giving him any more trouble 
 than might arise from correcting the sheets, he should 
 be very much obliged. 
 
 When that letter arrived at Keswick, Southey tells 
 him on the 10th of October, both the Latin and Eng- 
 lish Gehirs were on his table. He had been putting them 
 into the hands of Doctor Gooch, then on a visit to him ; 
 which was sufficiently expressing his opinion of Gooch, 
 as it was a maxim with him never, except in the un- 
 avoidable way of publication, to tlirow pearls before swine. 
 The doctor had left that afternoon, and the last word 
 spoken by him at parting was an entreaty to himself to 
 entreat Landor to wi'ite another poem. He winds up 
 by saying that he had written by the same post to Mur- 
 ray, the publisher of the Quarterly, in order that no 
 time might be lost about the tragedy. The result was 
 declared in a note dated nine days later. 
 
 " Send Count Julian as soon as you jDleasc to Mr. Murray, 
 Fleet-street, and he will be your publisher. I told him that I 
 should recommend it to you to print only 250 copies, because 
 the play would be highly admired by the few, but probably not 
 popular ; being too good for the many. In the latter part of 
 this opinion I may be mistaken ; so much the better : in the first 
 I cannot."
 
 304 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Landor acted on tins suggestion at once ; and in his 
 next letter, at the opening of 1812, he is in the midst of 
 proofs and printing. He forgets whether he had men- 
 tioned to Southey that after some deliberation he re- 
 jected the name of Florinda as that of Julian's outraged 
 daughter. 
 
 " It is absolutely worse than Amanda or Musidora. I am 
 certain that in the time of the Goths there never was so finical 
 a perversion of a Roman name. 1 have substituted Covilla. 
 It is said that the city so named was called so from La Cava ; 
 which, by the way, was a designation given after her death. 
 If Covilla was named so after the daughter of Count Julian, 
 that probably was her very name, without any change or de- 
 rivation. I have said something of this kind in a short preface. 
 
 " Mr. Murray -wTote me a very civil letter indeed. He prints 
 the thing in the same manner as Gehlv. I have added another 
 fifty to the number of copies, wishing to give so many to the 
 poor felloAV who desired to print that poem, and suffered for 
 his temerity. I believe he sold a hundred or two, but he printed 
 five. I receive a sheet every Aveek. At present only the first 
 has reached me, but I expect another on Monday. Of course 
 it wiU not appear in a shorter time than two months after this. 
 If you have leisure to read it again, you will find that I have 
 polished it somewhat. I have reflected more on it than on 
 Gcbir, and my critics will be very angry that they cannot find 
 so many faults in it. I am surprised that Upham has not sent 
 me Mr. Scott's poem yet. However, I am not sorry. I feel a 
 sort of satisfaction that mine is gone to the press first, though 
 there is little danger that we should think on any subject alike, 
 or stumble on any one character in the same track." 
 
 Early in February 1812, Southey received the printed 
 Count Julian ; and most fitly shall I close these curious 
 critical passages by gi^'ing the substance of his manly 
 letter. It was a work, as he believed, sui genens. No 
 drama to which it could be compared had ever yet 
 been Avritten ; and none ever would be, except it were 
 by the same hand. Landor was the only poet whom it 
 seemed to Southey impossible to imitate. JSIilton's Ian-
 
 ^T. 30-39. 1 THE TllAGEDY OF COUNT JULIAN, 305 
 
 guage and structiu'e, Sliakespeare's phraseology, though 
 attempted by men immeasurably inferior, might 3'et be 
 so resembled as infallibly to remind of the prototype ; 
 but in Gehir, and still more in Count Julian, the 
 manner ^\as no more separable from the matter than 
 the colour from the rainbo^v. The fonn seemed in- 
 capable of subsisting without the spirit. And therefore 
 neyer had he regretted anything so much as the play 
 which Landor lately destroyed — except the lost books 
 of the Faery Queen ; and for them he had never grieyed 
 to the same extent, because the eyil Avas too long past 
 to be a vexation as well as a loss. 
 
 Some of the finest passages as printed he found to 
 be new. He spoke of the picture of the Spaniards at 
 the opening, and of various passages with a marked 
 local colouring in them,* as evincing of what import- 
 ance it w^as for a poet to have witnessed his own scenery. 
 He singled out the description of Julian by Hernando, 
 and the image of the eagle, as to his feeling in the very 
 highest degree of sublimity. The concluding scenes, 
 he also thought, were gi'eatly improved. 
 
 What then would be the reception of this drama ? 
 With the Athenians for its audience, Southey could have 
 told the author. But being what they were, and li\ang 
 in an age when public criticism upon works of fine lite- 
 rature was "at the \qvj point of pessimism," he could 
 only guess that it would pass silently ; that a few per- 
 sons would admire it with all their hearts, and all their 
 soul, and all tlieir strength ; but that envy and her 
 companions in the Litany ^youl<l not hear enough to 
 induce them to blow their trumpets, and even abuse it 
 into notoriety. 
 
 And thus, by a hand skilful as generous, was the 
 
 * The reader will find these, ante, pp. 227, 273-4, 27G, &c. 
 VOL. I. X
 
 30G BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY, [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 lioroscope of Count Julian cast, and its fate exactly pre- 
 figured ! 
 
 Vni. In Possession of the Abbey. 
 
 Between Lander's return from Spain and Ms com- 
 pletion of Count Julian three years had passed, and 
 personal incidents now calling for mention had occurred 
 in the interval. 
 
 The Staffordshire estate, which had been so long in 
 his family, and which alone became absolutely his by 
 his father's death (the Warwickshire estates of Ipsley- 
 court and Tachbrooke not descending to him until the 
 death of his mother), fell short in value of a thousand 
 a year, and went but an inconsiderable way to the pm'- 
 chase of an estate with an estimated annual rental of 
 more than three thousand. But after the failure of 
 Loweswater and its lake he had set his heart on Llan- 
 thony and its abbey, and everything had to giA'e way 
 to his overpowering desu'e to possess it. In the end 
 his mother consented to sell Tachbrooke, the smaller 
 of her two estates, to enable him to buy Llanthony, on 
 condition of a life settlement upon her from the latter 
 of four hunch'ed and fifty pounds a year. What she 
 thus gave her eldest son was the difference between 
 that amount and the sum of twenty thousand pounds, 
 for which Tachbrooke sold ; but she imposed only the 
 further condition that the advowson of Colton should 
 be surrendered to his brother Charles, to whom he had 
 abeady presented that family living. An act of Parlia- 
 ment and the consent of all the brothers were required 
 to give effect to these aiTangements ; the settlement 
 being the same as that of his mother's estates, upon 
 Landor for life with remainder to his issue and that
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY. 307 
 
 of his brothers successively in tail male. The act was 
 also to enable adcUtional sums to be raised upon the 
 new purchase for improvements and to pay off mort- 
 gages, and it gave to the tenants in possession power 
 to charge the estate 'with, marriage jointures of not 
 more than five hundi'ed a year. 
 
 The letter of January 1809, in which he told Southey 
 that he had a private bill coming on before Parliament, 
 replied likewise to an invitation from his friend to go to 
 the Lakes, giving him the additional ai^artling informa- 
 tion that since affaii-s had been going on so badly in 
 Spain he had again offered his services, and that if he 
 went, there was Kttle chance he should ever again see 
 Derwentwater, or, what was next in beauty and he hoped 
 to have called his own, Loweswater. But that he was 
 not going, all the rest of the letter showed pretty clearly. 
 " I wish I had settled in your country. I could live 
 " without Bath. As to London, its bricks and tiles and 
 " trade and fogs make it odious and intolerable. I am 
 " about to do, whether I live or die, what no man hath 
 " ever done in England, to plant a wood of cedar of 
 " Lebanon. These trees will look magnificent on the 
 " mountains of Llanthony unmixt vnih others ; and per- 
 " haps there is not a spot on the earth where eight or 
 " ten thousand are to be seen together." He proposed 
 to be in London shortly, and should lose all abhorrence 
 of travelling if he could but hope that they should meet. 
 
 No sooner did Southey get this news of the parlia- 
 mentary bill than he was all eagerness to introduce his 
 friend to his older friend Hickman, clerk to Parliament, 
 praised by everybody, and whom Charles Lamb thought 
 to be the most perfect man, up to anything, do^vn to 
 everything, fullest of matter with the least verbosity, that 
 he had ever known. He would manao;e all the house-
 
 •SOS BATH, SrAIN, AXD LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14.. 
 
 of-commons part of the bill. To him Southey wrote 
 accordingly, with no misgiving that he should raise too 
 high his expectation of the friend he had to introduce. 
 In seeing him, he said, Hickman would see one of the 
 most extraordinary men that it had ever been his fortune 
 to fall in with, and who would be one of the greatest if it 
 were possible to tame him. ''He does more than any 
 " of the gods of all my mythologies, for his very words 
 " are thunder and lightning, such is the power and 
 " the splendouiiKvith which they burst out. But all is 
 " perfectly natiu'al ; there is no trick about him, no 
 " preaching, no parade, no playing off."' Of Hickman 
 at the same time he ^ATote to Landor, that he was a 
 man to whom he owed hardly less tlian to himself in 
 the way of mental obligation ; for it was not more true 
 that he had learnt how to see for the jiurposes of jDoetry 
 from Landor than that he had learnt how to read for 
 the purposes of history from Rickman. 
 
 I doubt however if these two worthies ever saw each 
 other. Everything preliminary to the bill had to be done 
 exclusively in the upper house, and Landor failed to 
 find Riclonan, though he attempted it twice. "My 
 " brother, who manages my affairs, saw him, but I did 
 " not; nor could I have enjoyed his conversation if I had, 
 " for London, as usual, gave me a fever and cough." 
 Southey had explained his own inability to be in Lon- 
 don at the time by a promise made to visit "Walter Scott 
 In Edinburgh ; and Landor tells him in this letter to be 
 sure and see Professor Young. " He is an admirable 
 " scholar; but his version of Tyrtjeus is as bad as it 
 " ought to be. I met him at Harrogate, and he showed 
 " me great civility." Unhappily the loss of one of his 
 children prevented Soutliey's Edinburgh visit, and was 
 thus referred to in Lander's next letter :
 
 ^T. 3C-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY. 309 
 
 " I fancied you were in Scotland, and my mind was often 
 occupied on the accessions you had been procuring to your 
 fame and happiness. If I moralise or reflect on these events, 
 it disinclines me from speaking and from writing ; not fi-om 
 an excess of sorrow or depression of spirits, so much as from 
 inertness and torpor, and that flatness of soul lying abject at 
 the foot of fatalism." 
 
 He had other matters equally troubling him at the 
 same date. Though hardly yet in complete possession 
 of the abbey, his " uninterrupted series of vexations and 
 " disappointments in connection with it" had already 
 begun. Not only his Welsh neighbours had been doing 
 him some mischief, but one of his own servants had cut 
 dovm about sixty fine trees, lopping others; and this, 
 which he considered as the greatest of all earthly cala- 
 mities, as he told Southey in a letter from Bath, had 
 confined him to the house several days. "We recover 
 " from illness, we build palaces, we retain or change 
 " the features of the earth at pleasure — excepting that 
 " only ! The whole of human life can never replace 
 " one bovigh."' But it is time that I should now, how- 
 ever briefly, describe the place which was to be the 
 som'ce to him of so many anxieties, and Avhose acquisi- 
 tion cost him so much more than was justified or repaid 
 by any happiness it yielded him. 
 
 A letter to me nearly thirty years ago thus whim- 
 sically referred to it. " Llanthony is a noble estate : it 
 " produces everything but herbage, corn, and mone3\ 
 " My son, however, may perhaps make something of 
 " it ; for it is about eight miles long, and I planted a 
 " million of trees on it more than thirty years ago. I 
 " lived there little more than eight months altogether, 
 " and boiilt a house to pull it down again. Invent a hero, 
 " if you can, who has performed such exploits." Here was
 
 310 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONT. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 an instance of my old friend setting down as the thing 
 he did the thing he only intended to do ; for his mil- 
 lion of trees fell considerably short in the reality of per- 
 haps a tenth of the nmnher at which his fancy reckoned 
 them. Such as they "were however, his plantations have 
 been the most profitable part of the estate ; which might 
 in other points also have deserved as little the irony 
 applied to it, if its capabilities even to the same extent 
 had been seen and used. Very far from ill laid out 
 would have been the whole seventy or eighty thousand 
 pounds drawn into it, if they had but been expended 
 with competent skill and prudent management. 
 
 I saw it lately. From Abergavenny I posted along 
 those eight miles of hill and vale which belong still to 
 Landor's son, the mountains on either side becoming 
 more steep, and the valley more rich and picturesque, 
 as, twining round and round the circuitous approach, 
 Llanthony comes in "\'iew. Less of corn than pasture 
 there is of course, and much of unreclaimed and moun- 
 tain waste ; but I saw also, through the whole extent of 
 valley that we passed, abmidance of fair meadow land, 
 farms to all appearance under good cultivation, and 
 sheep feeding on the slopes that even the famous 
 breeds which Landor boasted to have brought over 
 from Spain could hardly have excelled. At almost the 
 farthest corner of the northern angle of Monmouthshire, 
 into which the estate projects itself, stands what is left 
 of the abbey from which it takes its name ; and it would 
 not be easy to find in any part of Britain a ruin amid 
 nobler surroundings. 
 
 It is at the base of an amphitheatre of lofty hills, 
 forming part of the chain of the Black Mountains, 
 through ^vhich runs the rich deep vale of Ewyas. Dray-
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY. 311 
 
 ton lias described the place in that good old book the 
 Polyolhion, which Charles Lamb himself could hardly 
 have liked better than Landor did : 
 
 " 'Mongst Hatterill's lofty hills, that with the clouds are crown'd, 
 The valley Ewyas lies, immur'd so deep and round, 
 As they below that see the mountains rise so high 
 Might think the straggling herds were grazing in the sky : 
 Which in it such a shape of solitude doth beai", 
 As nature at the first ajipointed it for pray'r :" 
 
 — and that still is the impression it gives. As it may 
 have been two hundred or twelve hundred years ago, 
 as when the old poet saw it or when the uncle of king 
 Arthur is fabled to have chosen it for his retreat, it 
 strikes the visitor now. I saw it in the later days of 
 autumn ; but the gaiety of summer would not have been 
 so suited to the scene. Beautiful as the principal 
 portion of the ruin is, the sense of beauty is not the 
 feeling it first awakens. All that instantly attracts 
 and fascinates the eye in the lovely and light pictu- 
 resqueness of Tintern is absent from Llanthony. But 
 deeper thoughts connect themselves with the solid sim- 
 plicity of its gray massive towers, and the severely 
 solemn aspect of its ruined chm'ch, taking from nature 
 no ornament other than that worn by the hills around, 
 m.ajestic and bare as they, and even in ruin seeming 
 as eternal. A place to meditate or pray in ; but not, 
 one cannot but instinctively feel in looking at it, to 
 carouse or build a house in. 
 
 What is yet standing of the house once attempted 
 to be built there, something less than half a mile up the 
 slope at the back of the abbey, is nearly all that is left 
 upon the spot to point tlie moral of the story I am to 
 tell. Of the million trees that were to have enriched the 
 estate but a small tithe are visible in the plantations now. 
 The bridge built over the river Hondy that crosses the
 
 312 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 valley Avas swept away by floods. The praiseworthy de- 
 sign of restorino; the mao-nificent centre-nave, for which 
 many Saxon and Norman stones were taken down and 
 numbered, added only fresh fragments to the ruin. The 
 road that was to connect the abbey mth the mansion 
 has all but passed away without a trace. But in three 
 high ragged walls, open to the sky and when I saw 
 them enclosing a haystack, and in some ruined but 
 not yet unroofed stables and cellars, built on the very 
 edge of a mountain stream that rushes swiftly past into 
 the valley, what had once been an inhabited d^velling 
 presents itself still. And the visitor who doubts the 
 wisdom of building in such a scene at all has his 
 wonder infinitely raised at the spot selected for the 
 mansion. 
 
 Fifty-six years ago a})})eared the well-known Beau- 
 ties of England and Wales, in which Landor is stated to 
 have become recently proprietor of the abbey, and is 
 reproached for indifiPerence to its artificial beauties by 
 haA-ing " directed many alterations to be made in the 
 " ruins, and fitted up some parts for habitation.*' This 
 however is not just. Lander's only wish was to re- 
 store ; and it was not his act, but that of his prede- 
 cessor, to build among the ruins. In March 1809, a 
 year before that book was published, he was thus writ- 
 ing to Southey : " I am about to remove an immense 
 " mass of buildino- which Colonel Wood erected against 
 '' the abbey, and with Avliich he has shamefully dis- 
 " figured the ruins. I would live on bread and water 
 " three years to undo what he has done, and three more 
 '• to repair what he has wasted. It is some consolation 
 " to have the idea of receiA'ing you in ^ionmouthshire 
 " next season. I will soon have something of a cottage 
 ^' built, and Avill send down a whole teacaddyful of
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY. 313 
 
 " books."' The something of a cottage ^vas the unfor- 
 tunate mansion ; but it rose from the earth so slowly 
 and amid so many troubles and A'exations, that he "was 
 fain from time to time to add to his temporary abode in 
 the southern toAver originally fitted up by Colonel Wood 
 as a shooting-box, and which these additions enabled him 
 to make his home for the most part of the time he 
 lived at Llanthou}'. That home is now the Llanthony 
 Abbey tavern, the bailiff of the property being land- 
 lord ; and its condition at this day is proof that Lan- 
 der's makeshifts " sixty years since" were not contemp- 
 tible. Part of the old abliot's lodgings are adjacent, 
 the arched refectory now serving for cellar to a spa- 
 cious antique kitchen at the base of the tower ; and 
 tliere is also part of the old building in separate use as 
 a farm, which then Avas available for domestic offices. 
 Altogether, when the pictures had been placed and the 
 teacaddy of books emptied, it was no bad temporary 
 dwelling for the new lord of Llanthony. 
 
 Nor were the objects proposed by him in taking pos- 
 session of his new estate other than the worthiest, and 
 such as he might fairly have hoped to accomplish. He 
 was bent upon restoring and civilising on every side of 
 him : the mountain wastes, the church and abbey ruins, 
 the shocking impassable roads, the ignorant barbarous 
 ])eople. The extent to which he failed will appear as 
 the little story unfolds itself, and some of the reasons 
 why : but it is right to say at once that he realh^ enter- 
 tained such designs. Unha])j)ily he found the stubborn 
 and evil qualities of the Welsh in his neighbourhood to 
 be greatly in excess of his cx])ectation ; and what most 
 repelled him from his self-chosen task was what should 
 most have impressed him with its supreme necessity. 
 Objecting a few years later to the phrase that the
 
 314 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 vulgar have tlieir prejudices, lie said that the preju- 
 dices belong not to them but to those who ought to 
 remove them if they have any ; and the same remark 
 applies equally to other accompaniments of humanity 
 in its more abased and neglected forms, "which will ever 
 remain ill-intentioned till we have given it other inten- 
 tion by some kind of cherishing and care. 
 
 Landor's earliest correspondence about Llanthony 
 was with the bishop of the diocese. Burgess of St. Davids, 
 afterwards translated to Salisbiuy. A part of the estate 
 was the living of Cwmyoy, of which the parish clim'ch 
 is five miles from the abbey on the Abergavenny road ; 
 its chapel of ease, in which there is regular afternoon 
 sendee still, being the old clim'ch within the abbey 
 enclosure : a structure which by its rudeness as much 
 startled me at my visit the other day, as it seems, 
 when first seen, to have surprised and dissatisfied the 
 new lord of the estate. He at once put before the 
 bishop a proposal to restore wdiat he believed to have 
 been the original church, and to apply to more becom- 
 ing use the materials of the existing chapel. His letter 
 had been six weeks unanswered when he wrote again ; 
 and one would like to have seen the bishop as he read 
 this second letter. 
 
 " Several weeks ago I thought it my duty to address a letter 
 to your lordship on some alterations it is expedient to make in 
 the chapel of Llanthony. I wished to restore to its former 
 state and uses an edifice which I believe to have been the 
 original chapel, no less from its internal and external struc- 
 ture than from the field in which it is situated being called 
 the Chapel -field. The ruinous place which receives the few 
 people who attend divine service in the summer months was 
 not originally built for any such purpose ; and your lordship is 
 best able to judge, or to discover, whether it ever has been con- 
 secrated. If it has, it is the only instance of an ancient chapel 
 in which I ever saw a chimney. It is under the same roof with
 
 iET. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY. 315 
 
 oxstalls, and surrounded by a farmyard. My intention is to 
 remove instantaneously the buildings on whicb it leans ; and 
 it declines so greatly from the perpendicular that its fall is 
 certain. I had hoped for permission to construct from the 
 materials a school and a receptacle for the poor. I have 
 conversed with the lower ranks of more than one nation in 
 Europe, and last of all with those who have generally been 
 considered the most superstitious and the most barbarous. 
 But if drunkenness, idleness, mischief, and revenge are the 
 principal characteristics of the savage state, what nation, I 
 ■vviU not say in Europe, but in the world, is so singularly tat- 
 tooed with them as the Welsh ? Had I never known how to 
 appreciate the sacrifice your lordship makes, voluntarily and 
 silently and alone, turning away your eyes from the most per- 
 fect models of the most polished ages on a country which at 
 no period of its history hath produced one illustrious character, 
 most certainly I should not have requested your assistance in 
 forwarding its interests. God alone is great enough for me to 
 ask anything of twice. I wished to repair some monuments of 
 antiquity, and to rescue some others from the injuries of time. 
 We have beheld without attention a strange phenomenon. While 
 Scotland and Ireland have been producing in every generation 
 historians, philosophers, and poets, the wretched Welsh repeat 
 their idle legends from first to second childhood, bring forward 
 a thousand attestations to the existence of witches and fairies, 
 boast of their illustrious ancestors and of the bards more illus- 
 trious who have recorded them, and convert the tomb of Talies- 
 sin into a gate-post." 
 
 To this the bishop was prompt in his reply, wisely 
 avoiding the Celtic question introduced so explosively, 
 and confining himself as strictly to the first letter as 
 if but a jog-trot reminder had reached him with the 
 second. 
 
 " Abergwilly, Oct. 9, 1809. Sir, I am very sorry that your 
 letter of the 13th of August has lain by me so long unanswered. 
 My only apology is the true one, that it has been overwhelmed 
 in an accumulation of daily correspondence. I was much inte- 
 rested in the subject of your letter, and in the liberality of your 
 offer to exonerate the parish from all charges in the improve- 
 ment which you suggest, by the removal of Llanthony chapel.
 
 31 G BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 I should be very glad if my consent would be sufficient for 
 enabling you to do v>'liat you think would be serviceable to the 
 parish, as v/ell as convenient to yourself. But I believe an act 
 of parliament would be necessary for the removal of a place of 
 public worship. Of this, however, you are probably aware. I 
 shall have it in my power very shortly to inform myself of 
 everything that concerns your request and my consent, when 
 you shall hear from me again. I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 T. St. Davids." 
 
 The promise was kept within a month ; the bishop 
 writing a^ain on tlie 8th of November to tell Landor 
 that, having had the opportunity of inquiring into the 
 state of Llanthony church, and the advantages of the 
 proposal for its renewal, he had no hesitation in giving 
 his assent to it : but that an act of parliament also 
 would be necessary. To which Landor replied on the 
 15th from Clifton; first remarking very drily that as he 
 had recently been obliged to adopt such a measm'e to 
 effect the settlement of some estates, he should be slow 
 to renew his efforts in that quarter; and next pro- 
 ceeding to su^bmit some points for episcopal considera- 
 tion which the bishop found probably harder to digest 
 than even the Celtic onslaught had been. 
 
 " Although the chapel might be better, I dare not replace 
 it Avhen we must be exposed ad millia quindecim et ducentos. 
 When I first addressed your lordship on the subject, I had a 
 precedent in view obscurely. Mr. Chetwynd, of Ingestre, had 
 permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury to take down 
 the parish church and build another. Plott mentions it in his 
 History of Staffordshire. This event has been impressed on 
 my memory from another cause. The church is dedicated Deo 
 Opt : Max : although Voltaire has asserted that he was the first 
 and only man who had ever dedicated a church to God. I 
 should not have ventured so far, in reply to your lordship's 
 condescension, if I had been aware that parliament had ever 
 taken away or lessened this power in the bishop or the pri- 
 mate,"
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBET. 317 
 
 The bishop made no reply, and here ended Landor's 
 first and last effort as a chnrch-restorer. But a Con- 
 ser\ati^e in cluu'ch affairs he always called himself, 
 soberly as Avell as jocosely ; and when proposing, some 
 thirty years later, to cnt down bishops' incomes and 
 add a trifle to the stipends of curates, he published his 
 letters under that title ;* which, in this j^articular 
 transaction of Llanthony church, let us confess that he 
 deserved perhaps better than his right reverend corrc- 
 s]Dondent did. 
 
 Six months earlier than his first letter to the bishop 
 he had been writing of the Welsh to Southey in much 
 the same strain, and the letter will tell us also how 
 slowly things were getting into shape at Llanthony. 
 He writes from Bath, and has been sending a message 
 to his friend's uncle, who had a parsonage on the bor- 
 ders of the Wye. 
 
 " Happily on the borders of the Wye the people are more 
 civilised than about me. They are more active, and activity 
 Avill not permit the lurking and loose indulgence of malignity 
 and revenge. My people are idle and drunken. Idleness gives 
 them time, and drunkenness gives them spirit, for mischief. 
 
 * TJiC Letters of a Conservative (183G). I quote from the third 
 letter. " I had three church liviugs in my gift, one very consider- 
 " ahle (about a thousand a 5^ear), and two smaller, which are still 
 " in my gift. It may therefore be conceived that I am not quite 
 " indifferent to what may befall the church. These things it is re- 
 " quisite to mention, now I deem it proper to appear not generically 
 " as a Conservative, but personally." A sentence or two from the 
 second letter are also worth giving. " I never had a quarrel or dis- 
 " agreement with any clergyman on any occasion. I owe my edu- 
 " cation, such as it is, to virtuous men of that profession. Two of 
 " them are dead, whom I remember with love and reverence ; the 
 " gentle and saintly Benwell, my private tutor at Oxford, and the 
 " good old fatherly Langley, who received me previously. The pa- 
 " tient instructor and the gentlemanly scholar. Doctor Sleath of 
 " Saint Paul's, will accept the gi-atilude, while he discountenances 
 " the politicks, of his unruly pupil at llugby."
 
 318 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 I hope before the close, not of the next but of the succeeding 
 summer, to have one room to sit and converse in, with two or 
 three bedrooms. The bad weather has endangered both what 
 is ruined and what is repaired. As these repairs are to be an- 
 nihilated by me, I grieve the less ; but if the stones are thrown 
 doAvn, they will be broken, and much time will be consumed in 
 "working more." 
 
 In the succeeding summer he A\Tote from Llanthony 
 itself, not uncomfortably lodged in the southern tower, 
 and eager to have a visit from his friend. Direful and 
 never ceasing had been his troubles. His new house, 
 not half finished, had cost him already two thousand 
 pounds. Upon his estate, of which he had not been in 
 possession three years, he had expended in labour eight 
 thousand pounds. Yet the people who chiefly had bene- 
 fited by this outlay treated him as their greatest enemy. 
 The picture is not a cheerful one, but would probably 
 have been not less true if its tints had been somewhat 
 softened. 
 
 " While I was in Spain more injury was done to the abbey 
 than I think it possible to repair, though I would live on a 
 hundred a year for the remainder of my life to do it. In 
 architects I have passed from a great scoundrel to a greater, 
 a thing I thought impossible ; and have been a whole year in 
 making a farm-house habitable. It is not haK finished, and 
 has cost abeady two thousand pounds. I think seriously of 
 filling it with chips and straw and setting fire to it. Never was 
 anything half so ugly, though there is not a brick or tile through- 
 out. Again and again I lament I was disappointed in my 
 attempt to fix in your delightful country. The earth contains 
 no race of human beings so totally vile and worthless as the 
 Welsh. I doubt whether they wiU allow me to make improve- 
 ments, I am certain they will not allow me to enjoy them. I 
 have expended in labour, within three years, eight thousand 
 pounds amongst them, and yet they treat me as their gi'eatest 
 enemy. Nevertheless, when I see the spherical head of a Welsh- 
 man, I am indebted to him for a perfect view of Loweswater.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OP THE ABBEY. 319 
 
 My mind glances from him, as the point of a sword from a 
 block of stone, and I lose my aversion in my regi'et." 
 
 [The letter is finished at " Crickliowel" on " Monday morn- 
 ing."] 
 
 " So far I had written on Friday night. On Saturday I 
 went to Ragland, and yesterday came hither. I am dismiss- 
 ing one half of my workmen ; and by superintending the re- 
 mainder I shall certainly find irXeov t^/xktv ttuvtSs. When I 
 had the happiness of meeting you in Bristol, you mentioned 
 your design of coming into Monmouthshire this summer. I 
 hope nothing will hinder it. Before two months have passed 
 I can give you a comfortable bed. I have two small rooms 
 finished, and my kitchen will be completed in six weeks. If 
 you go soon to your uncle's, I will send you some melons. If 
 he is fond of them, I wiU send him some more. Let me hear 
 if you are not too busy, for I would wish him to remember me ; 
 though sending him melons is like twitching him by the coat to 
 make him look back at me. When the weather is bad and un- 
 healthy, as we have had it lately, I think of your little family ; 
 when it is fine I think of you and the mountains and lakes. 
 Adieu. Let me add, for a little while." 
 
 The visit was not paid till the summer following ; 
 and soon after the date of that letter he left Llanthony. 
 Worth subjoining are some remarks of his written 
 just before he left to a friend (Miss Holford) who had 
 sent him a j^rinted reply to one of the sneering attacks 
 on Wordsworth of which there was no lack in those 
 days. 
 
 " I am not surprised that the criticism stands higher in your 
 estimation than in mine. It is evidently the composition of a 
 zealous and indignant friend. The poems, in my opinion, are 
 far above the necessity of any such defence. The attack was 
 not only weak but wicked. Weak, because a man of genius must 
 know, and common minds alone can be ignorant, what breadth 
 of philosophy, what energy and intensity of thought, what in- 
 sight into the heart, and what observation of nature, are re- 
 quisite for the production of such poetry. Wicked, to behold 
 such signal gifts not merely with disrespect, but with irrevcr- 
 nce and malice. I am sorry to say it, there is as great a
 
 320 BATH, SPAIX, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 difference between our commendations and our censures as 
 there is between a riding-school and a race-course, both in 
 respect to latitude and animation. Still, indignation is not 
 only the offspring but the parent of injustice, as regularly as 
 the John Joneses in my parish are fathers and children of J. 
 Joneses with a Jones ap John between. I will show it to be the 
 case in this criticism on Mr. Wordsworth, where there is often 
 an outcry preceded by no wound, and a sarcasm accompanied 
 by no wit. The charm of irony is always broken at the very 
 first glance of anger. No WTiter ever wrote more violently 
 than Swift, yet he had the just caution and genuine taste to 
 keep his irony at all times separate from any such expressions. 
 This, added to a closeness of argument and a compactness of 
 style, was indeed his principal excellence. He never attempted 
 to round his sentences by redundant words, aware that from 
 the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of genuine 
 harmony." 
 
 And because he Avould himself have Hked that a 
 particular letter should be printed that did not reach till 
 lie had quitted Llanthony, from which it followed him, I 
 here subjoin it. During this year Doctor Parr had lost 
 in rapid succession his wife, his grand-daughter, and his 
 eldest daughter (Sarah, married to Mr. Wynne);* Landor 
 
 * Put up with the same letter I find two others, dated respectively 
 the 15th and 2-ith Xovember 1805, having reference to his younger 
 daughter Catherine's death, really touching. I find also, under date 
 of 21st June 1808, a reply from Parr to Laudor's disavowal of a satiri- 
 cal attack that seems to have made some noise in Warwick. " To 
 " my learned, ingenious, high-spirited, sound-hearted friend, Y\"alter 
 " Landor, greeting. I had not even heard of the poem you men- 
 " tion ; and if it contain any abuse of me, I should instantly have 
 " pronounced it impossible for such abuse to flow from your pen. 
 " My excellent and dear friend, how could you give yourself the 
 " trouble of defending j'ourself to me against a Warwick rumour ; 
 " or for one moment suppose me so completely sottish as to believe 
 " such an imputation against Walter Landor." Some light is tin-own 
 on what the squib was, and on the general prevalence of the rumour 
 that rendered necessary Lander's disavowal, by the subjoined allu- 
 sion in one of his sister Elizabeth's letters of the lOtli of June ISOS : 
 " A little poem entitled Gmfs Porridge-pot has been much talked
 
 ^T. 30-39.] IN POSSESSION OF THE ABBEY, 321 
 
 had been eager to offer sympathy to his grieving friend ; 
 and here is the old man's acknowledgment, dated in 
 August 1810. It is ciu'iously characteristic of him. 
 One can hardly read it with gravity, yet it would be 
 grossly unjust to treat it with disrespect. Grandiose 
 and attitudinising as it is, it is yet the expression of a 
 genuine sorrow, for his daughter's death had struck him 
 hea'^'ily. 
 
 . " Dear Walter Landor, Many and wise and affectionate 
 are the letters which I have received from my friends, wishing 
 to console me under the severe affiictions which with a rapidity 
 almost unexampled have lately fallen upon me. But in can- 
 dour of feeling, in grandeur of topics, in energy of language, 
 they are far, very far sm'passed by the letter which you wrote 
 to me on the last and the heaviest of the calamities which I am 
 doomed to suffer. Walter, I shall cherish and preserve it as a 
 noble monument of your eloquence, your sensibility, and your 
 friendship. My religious principles, Walter, are deep and 
 most sincere. They are sufficient, I believe, to support me, 
 even in this season of sorrow. I have yet remaining friends 
 whom I love and honom.\ I have many duties to discharge for 
 the good of my fellow-creatures. I resign myself to the un- 
 searchable but righteous dispensations of my Maker ; and I 
 wiU endeavour so to act that death succeeded by judgment 
 may be a pure and perpetual source of the most salutary and 
 animating reflection. I am going on a ramble into Shropshire, 
 and pray ^vrite to me, at Rev. Mr. Butler's, Shrewsbmy. I in- 
 
 " of here : it is printed by Slatter and Munday, and sent here to 
 " PeiTj-^'s, who on reading sent it back again, as they feared to offend 
 " their neighbours by selling it. You arc supposed to be the author, 
 " as Mrs. Perry tokl Ellen with some half -hour's circumlocution ; and 
 " she affii'med it to be the comicallest book she ever read. It could 
 " not be written by other people hereabout because it was far too 
 '• clever for them. It laughs at most of the people who go to Doctor 
 " Parr's, some it treats tenderly, some it roasts terribly ; whilst the 
 " Doctor himself fills the foreground of the jjieture, with all his good 
 " and many of his ridiculous qualities about him. Yet though it 
 " professes to bring in all who surround the Doctor, it never men- 
 " tions your name." Landor nevertheless was not the author. 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLAXTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 tend some time or other to go into Devonshire. I shall reside 
 next in Bath, and I •will so make my arrangements as to have 
 the comfort of your society. Write to me, and come to me 
 when you come to Warwick. Again and again your letter re- 
 curs to me, and refi'eshes me. Let us cultivate fi'iendship while 
 we continue in this world, and cherish the hope of meeting in 
 another and a better state, where the pangs of separation will 
 be felt no more. I pray God to bless you, and am most sin- 
 cerely, dear Walter, your friend, S. Parr. When you have 
 nothing else, or nothing better to do, recall to your mind the 
 image of my dear Sarah, and employ your mighty genius in 
 describing what you think of her deserts and her virtues. Jtily 
 31, 1810." 
 
 From Bath, to which tliat letter was re-directedj he 
 continued to report to Southey of his buildings and 
 plantings at the abbey ; and this was the ^\'inter when 
 he began Count Julian in the concert-room. 
 
 " In reading your Hisfory of Brazil I envied those who pos- 
 sessed the seeds of the pine, and wish Sir Home Popham had 
 brought a few to England. I am convinced that in time the 
 prophecy in Virgil's Pollio will not be far from verified : Omnis 
 fert omnia tellus. All resinous woods, I think, are better 
 adapted to cold climates than to hot, because, if insects punc- 
 ture them while young, or any violence is done to them in 
 later periods, the gum exudes from them and kills them. This 
 cannot be so excessive in a colder and more astringent climate. 
 I fancy I am acting wisely in ordering ash to be planted on the 
 highest ground, because ash is more flexible and more tough 
 than fir ; added to which, by losing its leaves, it does not pre- 
 sent so compact a body to the "wintry winds." 
 
 Still his planting did not thrive ; his cedar-groves 
 were like the groves of romance ; and he saw the mil- 
 lion trees with which he had indulged his fancy daily 
 dwindle and decay. He began by bujang two thou- 
 sand cones, calculating a hundred seeds for each, and 
 behe%'ing that such had really been the product ; " but, 
 " alas ! the rains and the field-mice have hardly left
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 MARKIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 323 
 
 " me a thousand. I must begin again ; and instead of 
 " raising a hundred and fifty thousand trees must be 
 " contented with fifty thousand, or perhaps with thirty." 
 The rest of the letter is about Count Julian, which he 
 says will be fairly transcribed within a week. 
 
 The evening of the day when the transcription began 
 was for Landor a memorable one. 
 
 IX. Maheiage AND Life at Llanthony. 
 
 "Writing to Southey in Aj)ril 1811 of many unimpor- 
 tant and indifferent things ; suggestions for his tragedy, 
 criticism of an epitaph by his friend which he thought 
 comparable to the few finest specimens of such things 
 in the Greek, questions of whether they are to meet in 
 London or in Bath, where he has a spare bed ready ; he 
 thus fills up the last unoccupied corner of his letter. 
 " It is curious that the evening of my beginning to 
 " transcribe the tragedy, I fell in love. I have found 
 " a girl without a sixpence, and with very few accom- 
 " plishments. She is pretty, graceful, and good-tem- 
 " pered — three things inchspensable to my happiness. 
 " Adieu, and congratulate me. I forgot to say that I 
 " have added thirty -five verses to scene 2 of act iii. 
 " There was hardly time enough for the re-appearance 
 " of Opas." Southey is delighted at the news and 
 gives him joy sincerely. The very Welshmen will 
 become more endurable if he takes a wife to Llan- 
 thony. He means himself to be at Bath in July, and 
 insists that, if Landor is absent from it then, he shall 
 come on to Keswick. 
 
 A few days after the letter to Southey he Avrote to 
 his mother, who had questioned him on the reports she
 
 ^24 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 liad heard, qualifying her motherly interest with a little 
 
 tender reproach. 
 
 " Dear Mother, I hasten to ackiioAvledge your very kind 
 and affectionate letter, though I am several hours too late for 
 the post. You have, throughout the whole of my life, con- 
 stantly treated me with the same goodness, and I should be 
 very ungrateful if I could ever forget it. I hope we shall often 
 meet again, and pass many happy days together yet. My pre- 
 sence will be so often requisite to overlook what is going on at 
 Llanthony that I am afraid I should hardly be able to stay 
 longer than a few days with you at Ipsley. It would give me 
 the greatest pleasure to see you, and I certainly would come 
 over for that purpose if it were only for a day. The name of 
 my intended bride is Julia Thuillier. She has no pretensions of 
 any kind, and her want of fortune was the very thing which 
 determined me to marry her. I shall be sorry to leave Bath 
 entirely, but when I have completed my house I must remain 
 there. Believe me, dear mother, your ever affectionate W. S. 
 Landor." 
 
 Not only had want of fortune been no sort of draw- 
 back, but it was in truth the very thing for which he 
 was marrying the girl ! There was small opening for 
 family remonstrance after that, nor does any seem to 
 have been attempted. The marriage took place before 
 the end of May. It had all been arranged and settled 
 after the manner of the eternal friendship between Cecilia 
 and Matilda in the Anti-Jacohin. A sudden thought had 
 struck him and the thing was done. He had married 
 a pretty little girl, of whom he seems literally to have 
 had no other knowledge than that she had more curls 
 on her head than any other girl in Bath ; and that she 
 was, as I find him also saying in one of his letters, 
 descended from a Swiss noble family. In sober fact his 
 little baroness, as he liked to call her, was the daughter 
 of a banker at Banbury, whom ill success had taken to 
 other employment in Spain, while his family found a
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 325 
 
 home in Bath. There was nevertheless, in all this, no- 
 thing of necessity to prevent the marriage proving suit- 
 able and haj^py, if what was so entirely wanting in Loth 
 before the ceremony had only been in any sufficient 
 degree supplied by either after it. This, unfortunately, 
 continued to the last to be altogether absent ; and with 
 whom primarily, and to the greatest extent, the blame 
 must be held to rest, I do not think there can be any 
 kind of doubt. I ^vill in fairness add what is told me 
 by Mr. Robert Landor in one of his letters. " I must 
 " do this little wife the justice to say that I saw much 
 " of her, about three years after her marriage, during a 
 " long journey through France and Italy, and that I 
 " left her with regret and pity." 
 
 All the danger appears to have been foreseen by 
 Bu'ch, who ^^Tote his congi-atulations from Magdalen- 
 colleo;e on the 20th of June. The marriage had taken 
 him by sui'prise, and he had been expecting that Landor 
 would have written to him. He now told him that such 
 a step, he had long thought, would be likely to improve 
 and secure his happiness, and he did not doubt but that 
 the choice made would confirm this opinion. Excel- 
 lent as the rude material might be however, something 
 would still be wantino;. " You will think me a strano;e 
 " fellow for talking in this coarse and homely way on 
 " such an occasion. The air of a college perhaps con- 
 " tributes to chill one's feelings a little prematurely, 
 " though indeed it is time they should be pretty well 
 " sobered by the age of thirty-seven, at which I am 
 " noAV arrived. Well, then, do not smile at me, but it 
 " is my belief that an excellent wife is seldom made 
 " perfect to our hands, but is in part the creation of the 
 " husband after marriage, ihe result of his character and 
 " behaviour acting upon her oion" How much might
 
 326 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONT. [Book III. 
 
 1 805-14, 
 
 have been saved to Landor if he had but taken suffi- 
 ciently into his brain and heart these few "uase words ! 
 
 No misgivings had the good old Parr, nothing but 
 affectionate rejoicings. " Be assured," he wrote on the 
 7th of June, " that my heart would leap for joy if I saw 
 " both of you at ray parsonage-gate, and that I should 
 " give you a most cordial reception. God bless you 
 " both ! Walter, your genius and talents, your various 
 " and splendid attainments, your ardent affections, your 
 " high and heroic spmt, will ever command my ad- 
 " miration, and give me a lively interest in your hap- 
 " piness. I have read the Alcaics five or six times. 
 " They are worthy of you." With the announcement 
 of his marriage Landor had sent the staunch old whig 
 a Latin 2:)oem against the ministry. 
 
 By the middle of June Landor and his vnfe had 
 taken up their abode at Llanthony, and at the end of 
 that month he reminded Southey of his promised lisit. 
 " After mj marriage I stayed at Kodboro' and Petty 
 " France for three weeks, intending to spring upon 
 " you on your way to London. There was a disin- 
 " clination in my mfe either to remain at Bath or visit 
 " Clifton. She wished to escape from ^asits of cere- 
 '' mony and curiosity, and I would not hint to her any 
 " reason why I should be happy to pass a few days at 
 " Bath." Telling him then of his coiTespondence with 
 Longman about Count Julian, the ruin of his hopes and 
 conflagi'ation of his unfinished tragedies, as already de- 
 tailed, he goes on : 
 
 " I now employ my mornings in cutting off the heads of 
 thistles with my stick, and hoeing my young chestnuts. My 
 house is raised half its highth. Do we lie out of your way ? 
 I cannot promise you much comfort here, but I should be most 
 heartily glad to see you. I live among ruins and rubbish, and
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 327 
 
 what is infinitely worse, bandboxes and luggage and broken 
 chairs : but I have a spare bed in the same turret where I sleep ; 
 and I have made a discovery, which is, that there are both 
 nightingales and glowworms in my valley. I would give two 
 or three thousand pounds less for a place that was without 
 them. I hardly know one flower from another, but it appears 
 to me that here is an infinite variety. The ground is of so 
 various a nature and of such diiferent elevations, that this 
 might be expected. I love these beautiful and peaceful tribes, 
 and wish I was better acquainted with them. They always 
 meet one in the same place, at the same season ; and years have 
 no more effect on their placid countenances than on so many 
 of the most favoured gods."* 
 
 To this and another letter extending the invitation 
 to ]\ii*s. Southey, his friend rephed from London in the 
 middle of July that in three weeks they hoped to see 
 him in his turret. They were to leave London that day 
 week. Southey was full of hope and eagerness for the 
 visit. He had been once at Llanthony thirteen years 
 before, and had then to ford the Hondy on foot because 
 he could not find a bridge. He wonders whether Lan- 
 dor had yet discovered the St. David's- cavern which 
 Drayton places there, and for which he had himself 
 inquired in vain? They proposed before niglitfall on 
 Monday the 12th of August to reach the Vale of Ewyas, 
 where they would stay two days, going on then to Lud- 
 low ; and, weary of London which he hated, it would 
 refresh him both soul and body to breathe the air of 
 the mountains once more. No time was lost by Landor 
 in replying. 
 
 " We shall be most happy to see you on the twelfth. But 
 there are two things which trouble me not a little — your depar- 
 ture so soon as two days afterwards, and your arrival here just 
 at nightfall. The road is perfectly safe, and indeed excellent : 
 but I, who could not in common decency take a seat in the 
 
 * For the rest of this passage in liis letter see ante, p. 13.
 
 328 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 inside of the carriage, dare not, for fear of a rheumatism which 
 tormented me nearly two whole years, sit on the outside late 
 in the evening. If you are resolved to continue your journey 
 in such haste however, do not let me lose the only chance per- 
 haps I shall ever have of being your fellow-traveller. My tra- 
 velling carriage is the easiest I beheve in the world, and the 
 road to Hereford, through which place I presume you go to 
 Ludlow, is the roughest. I have looked in vain for St. Da^-id's- 
 cave : not a cave is there in my whole manor. This is very 
 extraordinary in so mountainous a country, and where the earth 
 has given way in so many other directions." 
 
 The visit passed off \\dth perfect success. Visits of 
 other friends were made in that and the follomng year ; 
 Landor's sisters came ; and he prevailed even upon his 
 mother to see for herself what the abbey was like ; but 
 he always had a satisfaction in remembering that the 
 first who shared his turret with him there were Ixobcrt 
 and Edith Southey. They stayed three nights and two 
 days : days to which Southey referred six-and-twenty 
 years later, when writing the prefaces to his collected 
 poems, as having left with him still " a joy for memory;" 
 and of which, more than forty years later, Laudor gave 
 this memorial, in lines to Southey's son. 
 
 " Twelve years had past* when ujion Avon's cliff, 
 Hard by his birthplace, first our hands were joiu'd ; 
 After three more he visited my home. 
 Along Llantbony's ruin'd aisles we walkt 
 And woods then pathless, over verdant hill 
 And ruddy mountain, and aside the stream 
 Of sparkling Hondy. Just at close of day 
 There by the comet's light Ave saw the fox 
 Eush from the alders, nor relax in speed 
 Until he trod the pathway of his sires 
 Under the hoary crag of Cwmyoy. 
 Then both were happy." 
 
 Other memorial of the visit remains not, excepting 
 
 * He means, from the time when Southey wrote the generous 
 review of Gehir.
 
 JET. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 329 
 
 in such hints as may be gathered of subjects talked of 
 between them, from these passages of letters written im- 
 mediately afterwards. 
 
 " Julia and I have been anxiously waiting to hear how Mrs. 
 Sauthey and you find yourselves after so long a journey." 
 
 " This morning I had a letter from Portugal from a sensible 
 man and excellent officer, Walter O'Hara. The officers do not 
 appear to entertain very sanguine hopes of ultimate success. 
 We have lost a vast number of brave men, and the French have 
 gained a vast number, and fight as well as under the republic. 
 This revives in my mind a toast I was accused of giving at 
 Oxford : May there be only two classes of people, the republican 
 and the paralytic !" 
 
 " As there are not quarrels enough in the world, my plas- 
 terers and carpenters have had a vehement one, and one party 
 or other resolved to go away. The dispute was referred to me. 
 I told them I would examine it thoroughly ; that a very few 
 days would show who were in the wrong ; and that if I heard 
 anything more until I had taken time to consider, I should 
 think those the most blameable who showed themselves the 
 most impatient. How easily duped men are ! I had heard 
 nothing of the matters in dispute, yet all Vv^ere satisfied, and 
 probably I shall hear nothing, and they T^^ll all stay. I cease 
 to wonder how Pitt, the shallowest man I can bring to my 
 recollection, cajoled the gentlemen of the House of Commons, 
 who certainly are far less acute than these carpenters and plas- 
 terers, and whose living is far less dependent on the continual 
 practice of petty knaveries." 
 
 " Let me trouble you, if you have any correspondence with 
 the agriculturist in Durham, to mention that I have already 
 several hundred acres to let insfantli/, for a pound an acre, 
 tithe free, extremely small parochial rates, a lease for twenty- 
 one years, but after the first ten a rise of four shillings per 
 acre. Many thousands of land to be enclosed, at three shillings 
 for the first ten years, six for the remaining. A raihoad now 
 forming within a mile along a perfect level to the market-town ; 
 lime and marl on the estate, and underwood sufficient for all 
 the new enclosures, which will be (jiccn. I hope to get a scien-
 
 330 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 tific tenant for about 1600 acres. He shall have every en- 
 couragement, but he should have 6 or 7000/. I have received 
 two offers since I saw you, but for parts only." 
 
 That last reference was to the subject of Landor's 
 earnest Avish to get a good tenant for a large farm at 
 Llanthony, on which they had specially talked together 
 at the Aasit ; and it contained unhappily the germ of in- 
 finite vexation and trouble. Southey now repKed that 
 he had written to Durham, and hoped to get him the 
 tenant ; but he had to inform him afterwards that his 
 Durham farmer, George Taylor, would not be ready 
 for a year or two. Then there went another letter to 
 tell him that Taylor had strongly recommended Thomas 
 Hutchinson, the brother of Wordsworth's viife, and that 
 tlu-ough Wordsworth he was goina; himself at once to 
 put the matter in train. " Thomas rents a farm not very 
 " far from you, being on the edge of Radnorshire near 
 " Kington : he is an illiterate man, but a very worthy 
 " one, and a thorough- bred farmer, with money at 
 " command."* Unfortunately it turned out that even 
 Thomas was not to be had either, and they must try 
 again elsewhere. The man vet unthought of, who was 
 
 * In the same letter from Keswick (of course unpublished, or I 
 should not quote it), there is a whimsical mention of the lengths 
 to which priest-tyranny was going in Ireland. " Wakefield, who is 
 " about a statistic account of Ireland, has been here. He tells me 
 " that when a Methodist gets up to preach to the people the Catholic 
 " priest comes with a horse-whip and lays about him till he puts the 
 " congregation to flight. This he has twice been an eye-witness of. 
 " The Bishop of Meath also, who is lodging here, tells me that when 
 " a school had been established in his neighbourhood uj^on Lancas- 
 " ter's sneaking system of teaching no peculiar religion, the priest 
 " used to waylay the children with the horse-whip ; and thus lite- 
 " rally kept the little Catholics away by main force, when he could 
 " not operate upon the minds of their parents." Remembering the 
 clamour raised with especial vehemence at the time for Catholic 
 " Emancipation," this seems rather strong.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONT. 331 
 
 to be Landor's plague in the matter, waited in the back- 
 ground. Southey had vohinteered to find a '"'farmer 
 " agriculturist" willing to become a Llanthony tenant, 
 and nothing short of success would satisfy him ; but the 
 very last man in his thoughts, the man of all others he 
 was not likely to have chosen, the spiteful Fates had 
 themselves already laid hold of, and when the rest had 
 wdthdrawn were to thrust unasked on the scene. These 
 are things of destiny. 
 
 By this time September had arrived ; and the abbot 
 of Llanthony, as his half-sister Arden persisted always 
 in calling him, was writing with unwonted cheerfulness, 
 as commonly happens at the very moment (astrologi- 
 cally) when some malignant influence is crossing one's 
 house of Hfe. 
 
 " Julia desires I will present her love to Mrs. Southey. 
 ' Yes, if you will send it to Mr. Southey too.' We had lately 
 some rainy days, after six weeks of weather perfectly fine and 
 hot — a thing never known before since the creation. Thanks 
 to the comet. When Darwin was projecting a scheme for 
 destroying the ice at both poles, I wish he could have found 
 a coadjutor who would have planned a lai'ge wire trap, or any 
 other, to catch comets. Your hills in Cumberland and ours in 
 Monmouthshii'e might then produce plenty of good wine, and 
 perhaps a little coffee. I seriously think we have the best 
 climate in the world ; because it is the most comfortable to 
 brute animals — and there are a hundred of these to one man 
 — and because men must be industrious to keep thelnselves 
 warm in winter. Bodily strength, of course national strength, 
 arises from it ; together with such habits as exempt them from 
 the vices of idleness."* 
 
 * The action of climate on character is a subject frequently men- 
 tioned in his writings ; and something of the thought in this letter 
 found afterwards nobler utterance in the magnificent lines (^Hel- 
 lenics) : 
 
 " We are what suns and winds and waters make us ; 
 The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
 
 332 BATH, SPAIN, AND LL ANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 When next he -wiites it is winter ; but though the 
 scene has sadly changed, he is happily unconscious yet 
 of the blow that has fallen on him, and thus innocently 
 discourses of that man of destin}", his coming tenant, 
 who is to occasion him so much misery. 
 
 " It is likely that I shall owe a tenant to you. A Mr. 
 Betham has mentioned your name, and proposes to come over 
 here next week. He brings his wife. I am afraid she will be 
 starved to death almost. The rain runs every day down the 
 stairs ; and the wind, once or twice a week, blows half a win- 
 dow down. I cannot wait for my masons to finish. I must be 
 off to Bath in another fortnight. This is no place to spend a 
 Christmas in. I have lost some stained glass which I intended 
 for my bath, and must supply its place with worse." 
 
 To which replied Southey that Charles Betham was 
 certainly known to him, and came of an excellent stock, 
 but he had never tliouo;ht of asking; him to be tenant 
 at Llanthony. His knowledge of him was derived from 
 a liking for one of his sisters, very dear to Charles Lamb 
 as well as himself for her genius and goodness, though 
 both had to be discerned through a most unprepossess- 
 ing exterior and a nervousness looking like silliness. 
 The introduction of her brother vv^as the strangest ac- 
 cident. Writino; to himself the other dav she said her 
 
 Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. 
 
 But where the land is dim from tyranny, 
 
 There tiny pleasures occupy the place 
 
 Of glories and of duties ; as the feet 
 
 Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down 
 
 Trij:) o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. 
 
 Then Justice, call'd the Eternal One above, 
 
 Is more inconstant than the buoyant forms 
 
 That burst into existence from the froth 
 
 Of every-varying ocean : what is best 
 
 Then becomes worst ; what loveliest, most deform'd. 
 
 The heart is hardest in tlie softest climes ; 
 
 The passions flourish, the affections die."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 333 
 
 brother wanted a flirm, but she as Kttle expected in 
 such a matter to be helped by him, as he to be asked 
 by her. " Betham has probably to learn farming," he 
 ominously added, " and so far is less desirable than 
 " Hutchinson." This was of course disregarded, and 
 Betham was duly installed. Considerably more will be 
 heard of him hereafter. 
 
 Landor's next letter was from Bath, and dated the 
 12th February 1812 : 
 
 " After travelling through Gloucestershire, "Worcestershire, 
 and Warwickshire, v/here I passed several weeks with my 
 mother, I went to superintend my workmen at Llanthony. 
 Violent floods have carried aAvay two bridges. I am engaged 
 in building a third also, for the union of two farms, now under 
 one tenant. I am rebuilding a house foe Ch. Betham, and 
 erecting a new one for a Gloucestershire man. Yesterday I 
 returned to Bath, for the sake of meeting Mr. Thuillier, my 
 wife's father." 
 
 A few months later Southey pleasantly took up the 
 strain of Bath, the friends interchanged their experi- 
 ences of the famous city, and what they said of it has 
 not yet lost its interest. 
 
 Southey to Landoe. 
 
 " Will this find you in the Vale of E^vyas, or have you taken 
 wing for Bath, which, in spite of thii-ty years' labour toward 
 spoiling it, still remains the pleasantest city in the kingdom ? 
 I remember it when it ended at the Crescent, and there was not 
 a house on the Bath-wick side of the river. The longest walk 
 in which I was ever indulged was to a cottage — the cottage we 
 called it, in a little orchard, a sweet sequestered spot at that 
 time — my ne plus ultra then, beyond which all was terra incog- 
 nita. No doubt it is now overgrown with streets. But the 
 only alteration which I cannot forgive is the abominable one 
 of converting the South Parade into one side of a square, and 
 thus destroying the finest thing, perhaps the only thing, of its 
 kind in the world. I have often walked upon that terrace by 
 moonlight, after the play, my head full of the heroics which I
 
 334 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 had been imbibing — and perhaps I am at this day the better 
 for those moonlight walks." 
 
 Landor to Southey. 
 " You remind me of Bath ! if not a dehghtfid, a most easy- 
 place. I cannot bear brick houses and wet pavements. A city 
 without them is a city fit for men before the FaU. But, alas, 
 they fell before they built. The South Parade was always my 
 residence in winter. Towards spring I removed into Pulteney- 
 street — or rather towards summer ; for there were formerly as 
 many nightingales in the garden, and along the river opposite 
 the South Parade, as ever there were in the bowers of Schrraz. 
 The situation is unparalleled in beauty, and is surely the warm- 
 est in England. I could get a walk into the country without 
 crossing a street, which I hate. These advantages often kept 
 me in Bath until the middle of June, and I always returned in 
 the beginning of November. I wonder that your grave medi- 
 tations were not distm'bed there ; for as sure as ever there was 
 moonlight, a train — not qualis per juga Cynthi exercet Diana 
 choros — was ready to invite you. I always hated plays and 
 playhouses, and in the nine first years I was only once at the 
 Bath theatre ; but if I had a very large fortune I would have 
 one of my own, and give a company a thousand pounds to act 
 once a week in the summer, for me and four or five more. I 
 would have only the best actors and the best audiences, and I 
 would have no comedies — except Moliere's, for the ladies." 
 
 What progress meanwhile was making in affairs at 
 Llanthony, whether affecting Landor himself or his 
 relations with the neighbouring gentry, should now be 
 told. Southey's prediction that a wife would make the 
 very Welshmen endurable had unfortunately not been 
 realised. Matters went on so badly, that even when 
 the building of his house was finished, and some rooms 
 had become habitable, he simply from time to time 
 occupied these, left the rest unfurnished, and never 
 wholly quitted the tower. He never seems quite to 
 have settled to the conviction that he should continue 
 to occupy the place. " This blessed day," he wrote in 
 August 1812, "to use an expression which people sel-
 
 ^T. 30-39.] JIAERIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONT. 335 
 
 " dom use so emphatically, my masons have left me, 
 " after a job of three years. I live in my house merely 
 " to keep it diy, just as a man would Hve in a dog- 
 " kennel to guard his house. I hate and detest the 
 " very features of the country, so much vexation have 
 " I experienced in it. I wish to God I could exchange 
 " it for a house in Bath, or anywhere. Another man 
 " would not have the same causes for A^exation. The 
 " people would not be his tenants. I never can be 
 " happy here, or comfortable, or at peace. Adieu. 
 " Melioribus utere fatis !" He had also special causes 
 of vexation at this exact date, of which the brief nar- 
 rative contained in letters preserved among his papers 
 may now be not unamusing. It will at least be full of 
 character. 
 
 Being a member of the grand jury of the county of 
 Monmouth, he had startled his colleagues at the sum- 
 mer assizes of 1812 by an unexampled departure from 
 precedent. Accepting in their literal signification the 
 formal expressions in ^Ii*. Baron Thompson's charge, he 
 presented with his own hand into that of the judge a 
 statement of alleged felony committed by one of the 
 surveyors of taxes in the county. And this he did, as 
 he further amazed the learned baron by informing him, 
 because his fellow-jurj'men, whom ^dth himself his lord- 
 ship had adjured to lay before him whatever they might 
 have heard of felony committed in the comity, had in 
 the particular case refused to perform that duty. 
 
 At the same time (29th August 1812) he Avrote to 
 the grand jury in their official character to acquamt 
 them with what he had done. I substitute initials for 
 names, though there is nothing now to give offence to 
 any. 
 
 " Gentlemen, As one of the grand jury for the county of
 
 336 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Monmouth, I have thought proper to give into the hands of 
 Baron Thompson a statement of felony committed by J. P. 
 sm'veyor of the taxes in that county. I understood that he 
 was displaced from that office for neglect of duty, and since 
 hear that he has been reinstated by the influence of Su' C. M. 
 and Su- R. S. That he has on many occasions been guilty of 
 vexatious surcharges is a matter of the most public notoriety ; 
 and that he has met with countenance and favoin' from certain 
 men in power for something the very reverse of surcharging is 
 as much the subject of general belief. That the minds of the 
 common people, which are too apt to be unquiet in these times 
 of severe and almost intolerable taxation, may be relieved from 
 the painful idea that they are paying up the deficiencies of the 
 rich, is the intention and pm'port of my letter. I was informed 
 (I am not certain whether it was officially), when I came into 
 the county, that if I would invite Mr. P. to dinner, and send 
 him occasionally some game, I should not find him trouble- 
 some ; that he surcharged ]\Ir. B. of Caerleon and offered to 
 remove the surcharge for a dinner ; that Major M. and Mr. J. 
 of Lanarth for several years were not charged to near the 
 same amount as he discovered they were liable to when hunger 
 or resentment made him more keen ; that Sir A. M, Sir R. S, 
 Mr. L. of Landilo, and many other gentlemen in the neigh- 
 bourhood, have never been charged up to four parts in five 
 of the amount. These things it is impossible for me to ascer- 
 tain ; but it is your duty to examine into them, and if I shall 
 be found to mention the facts from light and frivolous report, 
 I am subject to no small portion of just censure. I have heard 
 it again and again, in the county and out of it ; and was myself 
 surcharged while I was in Spain. Since my return I was sur- 
 charged again, to which no man in his senses would be liable 
 knomngly ; and although half a year has elapsed, the sm*- 
 charge has not been confirmed. A servant in my absence 
 was twice seen riding an old coach-horse of mine past use ; 
 while I was at Bath my gamekeeper was said to have dogs of 
 mine, which however were not mine ; and some other things 
 were brought against me which I left totally to the manage- 
 ment of my agent, as I did the whole of my entries, &c. For 
 the present I think it more proper to lay this statement before 
 you than before parliament or the public : because an open 
 discussion would irritate the public at a period of such accu- 
 mulated oppression and almost universal distress ; and because
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 337 
 
 you will be equally able to quiet the minds of the suffering 
 community by immediately instituting a strict inquiry, and by 
 showing them that it is not they alone who are liable to sur- 
 charges, and that a surveyor is not readmitted to an office which 
 he was dismissed from for neglecting, merely because he is fa- 
 voiu-ed by the rich and powerful, who are now not only the dis- 
 pensers of but the gainers by this patronage. I have the honour 
 to be, W. S. L.VNDOR." 
 
 Some clays passed, and no direction for inquiry 
 being vouchsafed by the judge, Landor proceeded to 
 ^^Tite to that learned person himself. He recounted what 
 he had done, and why he had done it ; said he had never 
 in the most trifling matter disputed or quarrelled with 
 any of his colleagues on the gi*and jury; named one of 
 them as the magistrate who had given him the evidence 
 on which the statement of felony was drawn up ; and 
 asked if his lordship was prepared to screen these Mon- 
 mouthshire gentlemen in refusing inquiry against the 
 demand of that member of their body who had shown 
 its necessity : " a man who never committed, or con- 
 " nived at, any base action, who never avenged an in- 
 " jury, who never accepted a favom^ at the expense of 
 " independence; and who, in everything that elevates 
 " the character or adorns the mind, Avould blush at 
 " descending to a comparison with the first and wisest 
 " among them." Very lately indeed, it was reported, his 
 lordship had entertained the majority of the grand jury 
 at cUnner, when this matter had been the subject of con- 
 versation ; and if he had really said to them, as alleged, 
 in gi^'ing up the question to their AAnshes, ice shall all 
 go to the House of Lords together, he had taken accurate 
 measure of tlie character of his present correspondent. 
 " I would indeed bring you all before the House of 
 " Lords if such a step were requisite : but if I read 
 " your decision as clearly as you read mine, you will 
 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY, [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " order the affair to be investigated, and you will con- 
 " sider it worth some deliberation whether felons should 
 " be servants of the Idng, or are proper supporters of 
 " his crown and dignity." 
 
 The learned baron nevertheless, meaning nothing of 
 the sort, prudently abstained from even answering the let- 
 ter: upon which Landor wrote again to remind him that 
 there was a time when the courtesies of life reqiiired 
 that a letter should be answered, though WTitten by an 
 inferior in fortmie or in learning. " Matters of even 
 " small importance had always their share of notice ; 
 " and somewhat was occasionally added that they might 
 " not repine at what they could not aspire to, and that 
 " the inequalities of fortune might be smoothened by 
 " her condescension. These things have been. Among 
 " the things that I should have fancied could never be, 
 " is a judge refusing to investigate a felony, when a 
 " grand juror, whom he had commanded to lay such 
 " matters before him, states the fact, and a magistrate 
 " brings the e\ddence. I acknowledge my error and 
 " must atone for my presumption. But I really thought 
 " your lordship was in earnest, seeing you, as I did, 
 " in the robes of justice, and hearing you speak in the 
 " name and with the authority of the laws." Aud so 
 ended the matter, as indeed it could not help ending; 
 Landor being not so much WTong as ■vvrong-headed, and 
 preferring to lose what he wanted rather than fail to 
 overturn all common law and usage in getting it. 
 
 The transaction was in truth not so foolish as it looks. 
 The object of Landor's wrath was an electioneering 
 attorney whom every^body believed to be a rascal, but 
 some had found convenient to their purposes, others did 
 not like to meddle with, and Landor alone was for ex- 
 posing at all hazards. The thing in its way was quite
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 MAERIAGE AND LIFE AT LL ANTHONY. 339 
 
 as chivalrous as anything in the page of Cervantes, and 
 to many perhaps will seem not much less absurd ; but 
 that at least one Monmouthshire magistrate, a clergyman 
 and a man of education and refinement, thought Landor 
 right and unselfish in moving in the matter, I learn from 
 the letters of Mr. Davies of Court-y-Gollen. They are 
 besides very pleasing evidence of the terms on which 
 the lord of Llanthony remained with one of the most 
 intelligent of the resident gentry as long as he lived in 
 the county. The fiimilies exchange visits, and more 
 substantial courtesies. Mr. Davies overflows with thanks 
 for a Rembrandt Landor has given him, and sends him 
 back no end of poplars and other trees. They stock each 
 other's ponds and gardens with fish and fruit, discuss 
 amicably Cuyps and Claudes, and do not quarrel even 
 over politics. Mr. Davies is for an influence in the 
 county adverse to the Beauforts, " or we shall be lost ;" 
 being appealed to in one of Landor's disputes with 
 his tenantry, he decides in his favour, but not without 
 shrewd advice as to points of temper ; and he is one of 
 the two magistrates long afterwards referred to in the 
 imaginary conversation with a Florentine Adsitor, where 
 Landor, speaking in his own person, says : " Li the 
 " covmty where my chief estate lies, a waste and un- 
 " profitable one, but the third I believe in extent of 
 " any there, it was represented to me that the people 
 " were the most lawless in Great Britain ; and the two 
 " most enlightened among the magistrates wished and 
 " exhorted me to become one."* 
 
 * Worka, i. 326. The result is thus described : " It would have 
 " been a great hindrance to my studies ; yet a sense of public good, 
 " and a desire to promote it by any sacrifice, induced me to propose 
 " the thing to the duke of Beaufort, the lord-lieutenant. He could 
 " have heard nothing more of me, good or evil, than that I was a 
 " studious man, and that, although I belonged to no society, club, or
 
 340 BATH, 8rAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 He made the application accordingly; and I am able 
 to relate from his papers what followed its rejection. 
 The time for making it must be admitted to have been 
 ill-chosen ; his letter to the lord-lieutenant bearing date 
 in the same month when he had written to the grand 
 jury, the foreman of whom was the lord -lieutenant's 
 brother. This was hardly an excuse, however, for the 
 dryness of the duke's reply. 
 
 " Badminster, August 28, 1812. Sir, I beg leave to acknow- 
 ledge the receipt of your letter, and to exjDress my regret that at 
 present it is not in my power to comply with your request. I 
 am, sir, your most humble servant, Beaufokt." 
 
 Lander's rejoinder, Amtten on the 2d of September, 
 was not without dignit}'. Since it was not his grace's 
 pleasure, he wrote, to nominate him on the commission 
 of the peace, he requested that the duke would have 
 the goodness to appoint some other person of more in- 
 formation and of more independence ; " qualities which 
 " no one can better appreciate, and which are so abun- 
 " dant in all parts of the county, particularly the ma- 
 " gistracy." It was absolutely requisite, he added, that 
 
 ' party, and never sat in my life at a public dinner, I should oppose 
 • his family in elections. The information, however probable, was 
 ' wrong. I had votes in four counties, and could influence fifty or 
 ' sixty, and perhaps many more ; j^et I never did or will influence 
 ■' one in any case, nor ever give one while Representation is either 
 ■' cheat or coaxer. The noble duke declined my proposal." In the 
 same dialogue he makes these further personal allusions : " Had 
 " avarice or ambition guided me, remember I started with a larger 
 " hereditary estate than those of Pitt, Fox, Canning, and twenty 
 " more such amounted to : and not scraped together in this, or the 
 '■ last, or the preceding century, in ages of stockjobbing and pecu- 
 '■ lation, of cabinet-adventure and counterfeit nobility. My educa- 
 " tion, and that which education works upon or produces, was not 
 " below theirs ; yet certain I am that, if I had applied to be made 
 " a tide-waiter on the Thames, the minister would have refused me."
 
 JET. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTIIONY. 3-11 
 
 some justice of the peace should reside within ten miles 
 of Llanthony parish, in which, for want of one, every 
 sort of misdemeanour was almost daily committed with 
 impunity ; and he now made that request not only as 
 a compliment usually paid the lord-lieutenant, but to 
 avoid any appearance of discourtesy in applying directly 
 to the chancellor. 
 
 The dulve made no reply : a circumstance he pro- 
 bably regretted when, after a very few days, the sub- 
 joined communication reached him, and, as well from 
 its contents as from the papers transmitted with it, he 
 knew better the kind of man he had treated with dis- 
 courtesy. 
 
 " Mr. Landor begs leave to enclose some testimonies of his 
 fitness for the office which, in furtherance of the public good, 
 he was willing and desirous to undertake. When the lord- 
 lieutenant sees them coming from persons of experience and 
 virtue, it is much to be hoped that he wiU approach one step 
 towards wisdom by taking some advantage of theirs. Hy 
 generous and elevated minds many deficiencies are overlooked 
 on a little relaxation of arrogance, and many follies are par- 
 doned for retracting one. This observation is made by Mr. 
 Landor in the same spirit of pure benevolence as constantly 
 and zealously animates him in the guidance of weaker intel- 
 lects, which are always in the more danger the higher the 
 station is ; and he entreats that it may not be considered as a 
 reflection, much less as a reproach. He has been given to under- 
 stand that the duke of Beaufort acts honestly according to his 
 ideas of honesty, wisely according to his ideas of wisdom, and 
 independently according to his ideas of independence ; and it 
 would be ungenerous to try him by any other standard. Never 
 will Mr. Landor be induced to believe that a person invested 
 with authority (which however, as a stronger safeguard against 
 revolutionary principles, is more often conferred on rank than 
 on information, and on subservience than on integrity) would, 
 for the indulgence of an irrational prejudice, or the gratifica- 
 tion of an unmanly resentment, render himself an object of 
 detestation to the honest or of ridicule to the wise."
 
 342 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Landor followed this up by a letter of nearly the 
 same date to the chancellor, in which he stated the 
 urgent gromids that existed for the appointment of a 
 justice of peace in the neighbom-hood. There was not 
 one within ten miles, and several parts of the parish 
 were thirteen miles from one. As a consequence thefts 
 and every kind of misdemeanour were committed almost 
 daily, and always with impunity. For, men were un- 
 mlling to leave their little farms, cultivated by their 
 own personal labour, to take offenders a whole day's 
 journey over mountains so wild and perilous ; and were 
 no less afi'aid of returning to their homes than reluctant 
 at leaving; them on such a business. He had mentioned 
 these facts to the lord-lieutenant, and had taken the 
 trouble also of cb'awing the inferences for him ; but 
 they were probably not understood. The office of a 
 magistrate would of course be a troublesome one to a 
 man of retirement and letters, if it was not presump- 
 tuous to call himself so; yet he was willing to have 
 undertaken it. The duke of Beaufort however thought 
 him unfit, and he was quite content to submit to the 
 decision of a person whose family had always been so 
 remarkable for its discernment. His grace's induce- 
 ment or motive he had not himself asked, this being an 
 inquiry of a by no means philosophical cast ; but it 
 was right the chancellor should know the rumour pre- 
 valent in the county that the lord -lieutenant's prin- 
 cipal reason "which it was foretold me would operate 
 " as it has done, is that I preferred a charge of felony 
 " against an attorney who is said to have been very ser- 
 " viceable in elections. Li doing so, I conceive I did 
 " my duty as a grand juryman. The chairman, Lord 
 " Arthur, thought otherwise : the rest followed." The 
 letter closed Avith a waiver of his o^^ai claims in favour
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MAREIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 343 
 
 of any more suitable person, and \^dtll a reiteration that 
 the appointment was necessary. 
 
 The chancellor made no reply. It is difficult now 
 to believe possible, what could then be done, or omitted 
 to be done, with perfect impunity. As Sydney Smith 
 says of the time comprised in the first quarter of the 
 centmy when this particular chancellor and his court 
 pressed so llea^dly on mankind, it was an awful time for 
 hberal opinions and for all who had the misfortune to 
 entertain them. A man raising his voice against a tory 
 lord-lieutenant was a man crying out in a desert, vnih 
 about equal chances of reply ; but Landor did not there- 
 fore abate his voice, and happily we may hear it still. 
 He wrote another letter, which I think myself fortunate 
 to have found, because its interest rises above the occa- 
 sion of it, and gives it value in a higher sense. It tells 
 us wdiat in favourable circumstances he proposed to 
 have done at Llanthony, and what, in cu'cumstances less 
 happy, he did ; and so much as it eloquently and quite 
 truly claims of unselfishness of intention and worthiness 
 of design may stand hereafter not unfairly against some 
 serious faults and failures of execution. It is a masterly 
 apology, if not a complete defence, and vnW soften if it 
 does not arrest judgment. Its date is October 1812. 
 
 To THE Lord Chancellor Eldon. 
 
 " My Lord, It would ill become me to complain in public 
 or private that your lordship has not noticed my letter. My 
 letter was such indeed as any common person might have 
 written, but the business was not a common, nor a private, nor 
 an unimportant one. I requested that a justice of the peace 
 might be nominated by your lordship in the district where 
 I hve. I gave my reasons for the necessity of the thing itself, 
 and of applying to you for its accomplishment. The lord- 
 lieutenant had declined it. I never was anxious to obtrude 
 myself on the notice of the great or of the public ; but this
 
 3ii BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 affair is one iu which the community is much interested. The 
 choice of justices and their conduct are perhaps of greater 
 importance than any things now remaining of the English 
 constitution. I thought myself qualified. I have constantly 
 endeavoured from my earliest youth to acquire and disseminate 
 knowledge. My property in the county is little short of 3000Z, 
 a year, and capable of improvement to more than double that 
 amount. I have estates in other counties, both in possession 
 and in reversion. I have planted more than 70,000 oaks, and 
 300,000 other forest-trees ; and I shall not leave off until I 
 have planted one million. Fifteen thousand acres of land wiU 
 allow room enough for their growth. Yet I have sought no 
 medal or notoriety, and the mention of it is now extorted from 
 me to prove that in one instance I have not without success 
 attempted to benefit the county. I have at my own expense 
 done more service to the roads in a couple of years than all the 
 nobility and gentlemen around me have done since the Con- 
 quest ; and I stated my desu'e of being in the commission of the 
 peace to arise from the power it would afford me, at the sessions, 
 of presenting what are still impassable, and of repressing those 
 lawless acts which are committed in all countries where, from 
 similar impediments, there is little intercourse with manldnd. 
 When the Duke of Beaufort thought proper to decline my offer, 
 I wrote again to him with perfect temper, and requested him to 
 appoint one better qualified. He had no reply to make. It may 
 indeed justly be said of me, if anything shall be said, Serit 
 arhores qiicc alteri sceculo prosint ; and what honoiu* it will confer 
 on the lord-lieutenant to have rejected the public and gratuit- 
 ous services of such a man, is worth his consideration rather 
 than mine. It certainly will bestow on him a more lasting 
 celebrity than any other Duke of Beaufort has acquired. I 
 did not believe him to have been so ambitious. But if it 
 should appear that any lord-lieutenant has erred in pur- 
 suing fame by a track so unfrequented and so cheerless, your 
 lordship at least has the power of preventing the iU conse- 
 quences which would arise from his stupid precipitancy or his 
 unruly passion. You will not countenance ^rational prejudice, 
 will never support vmmanly resentment, will never sanction dis- 
 honourable patronage. It is possible that a lord-lieutenant 
 may have been instructed in little else than in the worming of 
 hounds, the entrapping of polecats, the baiting or worrying of 
 badgers and foxes ; that he may be a perverse, and ignorant,
 
 ^T. 30-39.] MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 345 
 
 and imbecile man ; that he may be the passive and transfer- 
 able tool of every successive administration ; and that he may 
 consider all whose occupations are more becoming, the gentle- 
 man and the scholar who is wiser or more independent than 
 himself, as a standing and living reproach. In this case, which 
 I entreat your lordship to consider as merely an hypothetical 
 one, would not you be anxious to superintend him a little, and 
 even to control him in the choice of those magistrates on 
 whose information and on whose integrity the basis of English 
 jurisprudence must repose ? If, for instance, he should reject 
 from the bench of justices a person who, in estate, understand- 
 ing, quiet political demeanour, and sound constitutional prin- 
 ciples, is rather more than on a level with the generality of 
 them, and for no other reason than because this person, pur- 
 suant to a charge from the judge of assize, gave information 
 of a felony committed by a partisan of that lord-lieutenant, 
 would not you cry out against such an abuse of power, such 
 a prostitution of honour, such a violation of equity, such a 
 mockery of the judge, such a scandal and impediment and sub- 
 version of the laws ? This case also, for obvious reasons, must 
 be hypothetical : but the answer may be direct, to the person and 
 to the point. I never now will accept, my lord, anything what- 
 ever that can be given by ministers or by chancellors, not even 
 the dignity of a country justice, the only honour or office I ever 
 have solicited. In truth it was the only one fit for me. I can- 
 not boast that high cultivation of mind, that knowledge of 
 foreign nations, that intercourse with men who have esta- 
 blished and men who have subverted empires, that insight 
 into human nature, that investigation and development of the 
 causes why Europe has diverged from the same (original) state 
 of society into such variations of civic polity ; in short, those 
 travels abi'oad and those studies at home which have adapted 
 the great statesmen of the day for the duties they so ably and 
 disinterestedly fulfil. Yet somewhat of all these things have 
 fallen within my reach and exercised my moderate powers of 
 mind. Demosthenes and Polybius, Livy" and Tacitus, Ma- 
 ciiiAVELLi, Davila, Gravina, Beccarta, De Thou and Mon- 
 tesquieu, Milton and Sydney and Harrington and Locke, 
 may console me for the downfal of my hopes from that bright 
 eminence to which none of them, in these times and in this 
 country, would have attained ; and for which my pursuits 
 equally disqualify me. Here I have only occupied my hours with
 
 346 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 what lie beneath the notice of statesmen and governors : in 
 pursuing, Avith fresh alacrity, the improvement of public roads, 
 of which ah'eady I have completed at my own expense more 
 than a distance of seven miles over mountains and precipices, 
 and have made them better and much wider than the turn- 
 pike roads throughout the country ; in relieving the wants and 
 removing the ignorance of the poor ; and in repressing, by 
 personal influence rather than judicial severity, the excesses to 
 which misery and idleness give rise. These things appear of 
 little consequence to the rich and prosperous, but they are the 
 causes why the rich and prosperous cease to be so ; and if we 
 refuse to look at them now in the same point of view as hu- 
 manity and religion see them in, they will have to be looked at 
 hereafter from a position not only incompatible with leisure 
 and quiet, hut far too close for safety. I am, my lord, Walter 
 Savage Landor." 
 
 With this, and a poetical epistle in the same month 
 to Southey, the subject vv^as dismissed, and he troubled 
 duke and chancellor no more. Tlii'ough the verses, per- 
 haps more than through his graver protests, his bile had 
 completely discharged itself; and for a better reason 
 also than this the reader will thank me for subjoining 
 some of them. They were the first important example 
 of a kind of writing he was afterwards very fond of, 
 and showed much mastery in : the rhymed verses which 
 in Swift's time were called " occasional," but for which 
 we now borrow an epithet from the French. Swift 
 himself hardly threw them off more successfully than 
 Landor. For it is the consummate art of such writing 
 to seem infinitely easier than it is, and commonplace pro- 
 fessors of it are slip-shod when they ought to be easy. 
 It should condescend without condescending, combine 
 the most perfect finish with an apparent carelessness of 
 rhyming, and to the utmost terseness of language give 
 the tone of mere conversation.* And hence it is that 
 
 * What other higher qualities it may be enriched by, I have ex- 
 pressed in my Life of Goldsmith, who wrote it as well as any man.
 
 .ET. 30-39.1 MAEEIAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHONY. 347 
 
 the finest examples of it are often found in men wlio 
 have also \^Titten poetry of the highest order. 
 
 The opening couplet in the letter to Southey was 
 taken from Catullus. 
 
 " Laugh, honest Southey ! prithee, come 
 With every laugh thou hast at home ; 
 But leave there Virtue, lest she sneer 
 At one 'most noble' British peer, 
 Who ties fresh tags upon his ermine 
 By crying ' aye,' and catching vermin. 
 Terror of those, but most the foe 
 Of all who think, and all who know. . . . 
 ' Such characters,' methinks you say, 
 ' We meet by hundreds every day ; 
 And common dolts and common slaves, 
 Distinguish'd but by stars or staves, 
 Should glitter and go out, exempt 
 From all but common men's contempt. . . . 
 Ribbons and garters, these are things 
 Often by ministers and kings. 
 Not over-wise nor over-nice, 
 Conferr'd on folly and on vice. 
 How wide the difference, let them see, 
 'Twixt these and immortality !' 
 Yes, oftentimes imi^erial Seine 
 Has listen'd to my early strain. 
 Beyond the Rhine, beyond the Rhone, 
 My Latian Muse is heard and known. 
 On Tiber's bank, in Arno's shade, 
 I woo'd and won the classic maid. 
 When Spain from base oppression rose, 
 I foremost rushed amidst her foes : 
 Gallicia's hardy band I led. 
 Inspirited, and clothed, and fed. 
 Homeward I turn : o"er Hatteril's rocks 
 I see my trees, I hear my flocks. 
 Where alders mourn'd their fruitless bed, 
 Ten thousand cedars raise their head ; 
 And from Segovia's hills remote 
 My sheep enrich my neighbour's cote. 
 The wide and easy road I lead 
 Where never paced the harnessed steed ; 
 Where scarcely dared the goat look down 
 Beneath the fearful mountain's frown,
 
 348 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1S05-14, 
 
 Suspended, while the torrent's sj^ray 
 
 Siirings o'er the crags that roll away. 
 
 But Envy's steps too soon pursue 
 
 The man who hazards schemes so new ; 
 
 Who, hetter fit for Eome and Greece, 
 
 Thinks to he— justice of the peace ! 
 
 A Beaufort's timely care prevents 
 
 These wild and desperate intents. 
 
 His grandsons, take my word, shall show for't 
 
 This my receipt in full to Beaufort."* 
 
 But tliough the affair was thus finally dismissed, it 
 would be difficult to overstate its effect on his temper 
 while it lasted. Pie had made up his mind even to quit 
 England altogether, and become a citizen of France. 
 Efe would live in some French town in retirement on half 
 his income, and give up the other half to a trustworthy 
 agent vrho should employ it exclusively in improving 
 his English estates. I gatlier the details of this notable 
 scheme from the letter which reasoned and shamed him 
 
 * Some of these lines he printed with variations in his Dry Sticliit, 
 having already admitted them, with erasure of every i-eference to the 
 duke or the magistrates, into one of his published poems ( Worhs, ii. 
 G35-6) from which I borrow these additional verses : 
 
 " Llanthonj' ! an ungenial clime 
 And the broad wing of restless Time 
 Have rudely swept thy massy walls 
 And rockt tliy abbots in their palls. 
 I loved thee by thy streams of yore, 
 By distant streams I love thee more ; 
 For never is the heart so true 
 As bidding what we love adieu. 
 Yet neither where we tirst drew breath, 
 Nor where our fathers sleep in death, 
 Nor where the mystic ring was given, 
 The link from earth that reaches heaven, 
 Nor London, Paris, Florence, Eome, 
 In his own heart's the wise man's home 1 
 Stored with each keener, kinder sense, 
 Too firm, too lofty for offence, 
 Unlittered by the tools of state, 
 And greater than the great world's great."
 
 JET. 30-39.] MARraAGE AND LIFE AT LLANTHOXY. 349 
 
 out of it : a wise and kindly letter of his brother Ro- 
 bert's, who had forgotten it and the occasion of writino; 
 it but Avhose permission I have obtained to insert it 
 here. Datinfj so long since, it is identical in tone and 
 temper with those that have enriched this memoir, and 
 even as !Mr. Landor "writes of his brother now he was 
 writing to that brother himself fifty-five years ago. It 
 is dated from Dawhsh in August 1812. 
 
 " Dear Walter, At the very time that I most assuredly 
 expected to find that you were become exactly like other people, 
 that you had been melted down, in the matrimonial crucible, 
 to the same common shape and quality with other mortal men, 
 you turn out a stranger fellow than ever ! If you will listen 
 patiently to me, I will modestly undertake to prove that you 
 are wrong in every respect. First, to think of going into France 
 Avhen there is a peace. Supposing that a peace be possible — 
 which it is not while Bonaparte lives and this country remains 
 unconquered — who would voluntarily become the subject of 
 :iuch a tyrant? Who would sacrifice the right — whether he 
 uses it or not — of speaking what he thinks ? For my own part, 
 if I were certain that I should never feel the slightest inclina- 
 tion to speak or write on political matters again, if I were cer- 
 tain of being protected and well treated, I would rather live 
 as a day-labourer in England than as a prince in France. I 
 should feel that in choosing to live under an absolute govern- 
 ment, I voluntarily relinquished honour and liberty, that I went 
 out of my way to seek a master, and to look for servitude. It 
 is in vain to say that a man is not oppressed till he feels the 
 oppression. I think with Johnson that ninety-nine men out 
 of a hundred might live as free from any actual tyranny in 
 Tm'key as in England ; but the knowledge that we are subject 
 to tyranny, that we are liahle to caprice, that we must abstain 
 JTom such and such particular topics, is the toi-ment. To see 
 others oppressed without daring to expostulate, in fact to be 
 indebted to the forbearance of any absolute authority, is de- 
 grading. It may be said that people are wronged and op- 
 pressed even in England sometimes, and that they can obtain 
 no redress ; but that will not apply. No government can hinder 
 f-ome injuries ; but the constitution does not authorise them ; 
 and the laws, however administered, are in themselves just.
 
 350 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONT. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Consequently there may be wrong, but there is no degradation. 
 You say that a proof is wanting that no personal desire of gain 
 has influenced your actions. This implies some deference to 
 opinion. Now, what would not only your enemies, but even 
 your friends say, if you settled either in France or in any 
 other country under French influence ? The latter would say 
 that ' this apostle of liberty, who passed so much of his life in 
 praising it, who not only talked of it and wrote for it, but who 
 gave his money and risked his person to defend it, he has left 
 his connections, his property, his country, and chosen to live 
 under the most arbitrary government in Europe.' Tom* enemies 
 would point you out as an example to prove that extremities 
 often meet, and that what they call Jacobinism is closely allied 
 to Tyranny. I do not say this to dissuade you from going into 
 France and settling there, because I know that you will never 
 be able ; because the war can nevei? terminate till either this 
 government or the French government is overthrown ; but to 
 dissuade you from entertaining, and still more from disclosing, 
 a wish which many men who hate your character and envy 
 your understanding will otherwise exult at. No, sir, every- 
 thing, so far, can be explained by the love of liberty. You 
 will never do, or on consideration wish to do, what you talk of. 
 As for the determination to give up society, and to spend the 
 best half of your income in improving your estate, that I think 
 also wrong. Why not enjoy yourself now ? Wliy look so far 
 forward, and that for those who at present are not in existence ? 
 It is making money of too much consequence, and time of too 
 little. You will leave as good a fortune as you received, with- 
 out anxiety or deprivation. Instead of shutting myself up at 
 Llanthony, I would take a pleasant house in a good neighboiu-- 
 hood, and live, after setting apart a quarter of my income for 
 repairs, on the remainder. A man, and particularly a married 
 man, risks everything by determining on solitude. Solitude 
 influences the temper in one year more than society can in 
 twenty. It creates habits and feelings the most dangerous, 
 particularly to a warm and sensitive character. The melan- 
 choly man becomes infinitely more melancholy, and the proud 
 man more proud. That which was at first a rill becomes a 
 torrent. There is no resistance, no hope. I am both melan- 
 choly and proud, and I dread solitude. The more I observe, 
 the more I am convinced that everything in life which is sin- 
 gular is dangerous. You have now the happiness of others to
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 351 
 
 consider : so take the safest road, whicli is the coramonest. I 
 have a right to talk to you in this way because you mention 
 your schemes, and because I am vested with authority to teach 
 and preach, though the hearers may be wiser and better than 
 myself. I had much to say about books, but my paper is filled 
 and my beef is gi-owing cold. Let me hear from you at Dawlish 
 where I shall continue this month. I have been told that not- 
 withstanding your indifference" [in mai-ri^dng] " about every- 
 thing else besides good temper, you have contrived to get a 
 great many other qualities into the bargain. Yours affection- 
 ately, Robert Eyres Landor." 
 
 Landor acquiesced and submitted. But it is to be 
 added, quite apart from any question of individual com- 
 plaint, that his opinion of the waj in which affairs were 
 at this time administered in England differed materially 
 from his younger brother's ; and that what he has been 
 writing on that special subject to Southey* dm^ing the 
 past two years is consistently the tone of all his letters, 
 and has upon it the impress of very strong convictions 
 unwarped by personal irritation or wrong. The reader 
 ^^^ll perhaps not be sorry to have some of these opinions 
 laid before him. Originality and interest always, very 
 frequently great worth and value, constitute a claim to 
 preservation even apart from their strildng illustrations 
 of character. 
 
 X. Public Affaiks. 
 
 Southey's connection with Scott's scheme of the 
 Edinburgh Register, for which he had undertaken to 
 supply the history of each year as Burke did for Dods- 
 ley's, led to occasional interchange between the friends 
 on the political questions of the day more frank and 
 outspoken than his Quarterly lucubrations at any time 
 afforded. In the Eeview he was never able quite to un- 
 
 * See ante, p. 241.
 
 352 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 muzzle himself, and it is curious to observe how ill from 
 the first he and GiflFord got on together both in politics 
 and literature. As for the notice he wrote of Count 
 Julian for the Quarterly, and by which he hoped to have 
 . given Landor satisfaction, Gifford had so completely 
 knocked its brains out before publication that no sub- 
 sequent mention of it, to Landor or any one else, was 
 ever made by the Avriter. 
 
 Sendino; his friend in the summer of 1810 the first 
 volume of his Edinburgh history, he tells him of the 
 second he is already working at ; inquires as to places 
 visited by Landor in Spain, of which he wishes to give 
 good descriptions ; and, declaring his opinion that that 
 country is not to be subdued, says he means to burst 
 out upon the subject on all fit occasions. The French 
 emperor, he believes, will find the grave of his power 
 in the Peninsula ; and he takes pride in the opportunity 
 this history-^^^.'iting for the Register is giving him, to 
 denounce all incapable half-hearted contemporaries, and 
 to " speak of Bonaparte as befits a republican."* Not 
 backward of course is Landor s sympathy here; and 
 finding his friend's history much to his liking, he praises 
 loudly its manliness and spirit.! 
 
 The next jDrominent subject in their letters is Sou- 
 
 * Another passage in this letter (suppressed in the printed copy, 
 Letters, ii. 203) says that he gets 400Z. a year from tliis undertaking 
 of Scott and the Ballantynes, and that he has vested 209?. of his first 
 year's payment in a twelfth share of the concern which is to hring 
 him in 40 per cent. Poor Landor himself could not have taken a 
 simpler or more sanguine view of the transaction. Alas ! we find 
 Southey soon in trouhle arising from this over-confident calculation, 
 and glad to put off further responsibility by sacrificing all he had 
 invested. 
 
 ■f One exception only he makes, in highlj' characteristic phrase. 
 Why should Southey have thrown so romantic a cast over the valour 
 of a certain general, " as great a rascal as any of his family, which 
 " has been rascally for many generations" ? He was a Welshman,
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 353 
 
 tliey's increasing work for the Quarterly, with which his 
 grumbling at the editor continues to keej) j^ace ; but he 
 has good hope that he will not meddle with a forthcoming 
 article on Methodism which he has written in reply to 
 Sydney Smith's in the Edinburgh, and which he shall 
 follow up in the number following with a mortal blow 
 at Malthus, the especial object of his contempt and ab- 
 horrence. Then, after several months, while yet he is in 
 pains of labour with his second product of history for the 
 Register, his article on Methodism has appeared and given 
 such delight to Perceval that Southey feels he has lost 
 a rich benefice by not going into the church.* There 
 are, however, subjects less pleasant. Had Landor seen 
 Jeffrey's criticism on Keliama, as original as the poem 
 and altogether matchless for impertinence? And had 
 he not, seeing what the Portuguese had just done (it is 
 now May 1811), repented of his unkind words about 
 them in his letters to liiquelme? Characteristic in 
 every point was Landor's reply, in which the reader 
 will not now care to criticise closely words out of which 
 the heat and venom have long since departed. Jeffrey 
 himself gave hard words in those days, and Avas prepared 
 to receive them ; but, though a greatly overrated lite- 
 rary critic, he was a man of prodigious ability in various 
 ways, of an unequalled quickness and keenness of intel- 
 lect, and with a power of inspiring attachment possessed 
 only by sincere fine natures. 
 
 * This I need hardly say was Southey's destination originally, if 
 lie had found himself able to accept the Articles. I possess a curious 
 little note of Coleridge's to Cottle in 1790, consisting simply of these 
 words : " Dear Cottle, I congratulate Virtue and her friends that 
 " Robert Southey has relincjuished all intentions of taking Orders. 
 " He leaves our party however, and means, he thinks, to study the 
 " law. Yours, S, T. Coleridge." " Our party" was the Pantisocratic 
 cxi:)editiou. 
 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 354 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " I was shamefully wrong in speaking as I did of the Por- 
 tuguese, and I am very glad they have acquitted themselves, 
 and punished me, in the manner they have done. Men are 
 brave until bad governments have made them forget the use 
 of bravery. Then the very breed degenerates for want of 
 action. Look at the Chinese for an example. 
 
 " Your review of Methodism is admirable. It is impossible 
 to mistake the author. This is not my observation : it is Mrs. 
 Carrick's. 
 
 " Jeffrey is called a clever man, I hear. If so, people may 
 be clever men without knowing the nature of a lie, or the dis- 
 tinction between virtue and vice. No species of dishonesty is 
 surely so unpardonable as Jeffrey's, no profligacy so flagitious. 
 Thievery may arise from early example or from urgent want. 
 It may have grown into an incurable habit, or have been pushed 
 on by the necessities of nature. A man may commit even 
 murder itself from the sudden and incontroUable impulse of 
 a heart still uncorrupted ; but he must possess one of a very 
 different kind who can air and exercise his faculties on no 
 other gi'ound than the destruction of fame and the mortifica- 
 tion of genius. I was once asked whether I would be intro- 
 duced to this gentleman. My reply was, No, nor to any other 
 rascal whatsoever. I like to speak plainly, and particularly so 
 when the person of whom I speak may profit by it." 
 
 That was in May 1811 ; and Jeffrey, if he could 
 have read it and the letter which followed it in July, 
 would doubtless have smiled at the worshipful society of 
 rascals in which he found himself. Landor was then 
 expecting his friend at Llanthony, and after telling him 
 of the copy of Drayton's Polyolhion he had bovight at 
 Rugby,* thus continues : 
 
 " What a series of fools and scoundrels have managed this 
 country ! Siu"ely such fellows as Pitt and Fox should never 
 have gone further than the vestry-room. A parish workhouse 
 
 * See ante, p. 23. He cannot tell how to direct that letter, " and 
 " the worst is, I never was right in my life if I hesitated." Alas ! it 
 was his habit of not hesitating oftener, and reflecting more, that led 
 him into all kinds of intemperances of act as well as speech.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIKS. 355 
 
 had been too mucli for their management, and they have been 
 making a national one !" 
 
 It must at the same time be admitted that this sort 
 of thing was more harmless than Southey's occasional 
 outbreaks. A few months later there is a letter of his, a 
 strange medley of shrewdness and violence, criticising 
 affau's in Spain, hopeful of Wellington, giving Bonaparte 
 a lease of less than seven years, confident of seeing a 
 peace dictated under the walls of Paris, and condemning 
 the Spanish soldier Blake as a general, which ends by 
 his declaring it humiliating that Spain should have 
 produced two centuries ago half a dozen men resolute 
 in a mistaken cause to slay the Prince of Orange at the 
 sacrifice of their own lives, " and that now she has not 
 " fomid one to aim a dagger at the heart of Bona- 
 " parte !" Southey was more scrupulous than his friend 
 as to flinging about reckless ej)ithets ; but where he felt 
 very strongly, the flame of his anger burnt with a fiercer 
 as well as a more intense glow. 
 
 Replying at the opening of 1812 from Bath, whither 
 he had gone to meet his wife's father, Landor says : 
 
 " INIr. Thuillier has just left Cadiz. He represents the go- 
 vernment as fools and traitors, every individual intent on 
 making his fortune. It grieves me to hear that Blake also 
 v/as accused of the same unworthy propensity, and that not 
 a doubt was entertained that all his principal officers were 
 latterly in the French interest. Zayas is not exempt. Mr. 
 ThuUlier knows many members both of the government now 
 existing and of the last. All the old ones hold office under 
 the present, in one form or other. It certainly was intended 
 to sacrifice the Enghsh at Barrosa, where he also was, and 
 where that silly f eUow Whittington was acting under La Pena. 
 Had he marched with two thousand men under his command, 
 the French might easily have been cut off from their retreat, 
 for retreat they most certainly did. It is terrible to think that, 
 such is the state of Em'ope, no nation can go on tolerably well
 
 356 BxiTH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14-. 
 
 ■without an usurper. France would have fallen -wdthout Bona- 
 parte. If Palafox had retired from Zaragoza, he might have 
 rescued Spain. The world is ruined by stupidity, and not by 
 knavery or cruelty. I heard it reported, for I never read any 
 newspaper or new book, that Lord Cochrane is appointed to a 
 command of ten thousand men in Catalonia. This is so wise 
 a thing that I cannot believe it. He would do more with ten 
 thousand than any other Enghsh oflBcer with thirty thousand. 
 If he really has the appointment, I will lay a thousand guineas 
 to thi-ee farthings that the ministry act in such a manner as 
 wiU force him to resign in six months. If I were unmarried, 
 I would join him ; and I think, with my fortune, I could show 
 a way in which ten thousand men might do greater things than 
 these are destined for. Periculosse plenum opus alese. It 
 would be easy -wdth such means to draw round them twice as 
 many Spaniards who would laugh at nation and party. In 
 fact there is not a government in Europe that might not be 
 and should not be destroyed. The French is unquestionably 
 the best, because it is in the hands of the wisest ; as for virtue 
 or vice, the shades of difference are utterly undiscernible." 
 
 This was written a few montlis before his scheme of 
 finding a home for himself in France, so wisely rebnked 
 by his brother Robert ; but it was not to his discredit at 
 this time that while denouncing as loudly as Southey 
 the misdeeds of Bonaparte, he recognised not only his 
 genius, which the oth.er never did, but, in the fact of his 
 being by far the ablest of living Frenchmen, some sort 
 of reason for putting him at the head of France. There 
 was small comfort of that kind to be got out of a survey 
 of the existing English government, whatever its other 
 merits might be ; and if the genius for statesmanship 
 possessed by Pitt and Fox were to be measured by 
 the England they had left behind them, by ministerial 
 piu:ity, party fidelity, or national prosperity and honour, 
 Landor had some excuse for pitching it so low. It was 
 a time when disasters were certain and -s'ictories yet 
 doubtful, and when the people were as unfairly re-
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFxlIKS. 357 
 
 stricted in tlieir liberties as in their energies, industry, 
 and enterprise. With the regency had begun the undis- 
 jDuted reign of the mediocrities, JMr. Perceval entering 
 with tlie new year as Lords Grey and Gren"vdlle. were 
 finally bowed out ; and England had become chiefly 
 famous for Walcheren defeats abroad, for machinery 
 riots and bread riots at home, and for every land of 
 revolting variety of ex-officio informations and furious 
 attacks oa the press. So great was the misery about 
 Llanthony, Landor proceeds to say in his letter, that 
 not only had his people ceased to be mischievous, but 
 had even lost the spirit to exult in their landlord's losses 
 and misfortunes. He puts the matter with a whimsical 
 sense of humour that we cannot but smile at still. 
 
 " What tliink you of our detestable villains of the House ? 
 While the people are starving for want of food and employ- 
 ment, those infamous scoundrels reject an act for the enclosure 
 of waste lands. So the attorneys and the commissioners will 
 eat up two-thirds of the scanty allotments which would other- 
 Tv-ise be the portion of the poor. If they suffer this, they will 
 deserve their sufferings. Three pounds of miserable bread costs 
 two shillings at Abergavenny. The poor barbarous creatures 
 in my parish have actually ceased to be mischievous, they are 
 so miserable. We can find them employment at present, and 
 f our-and-sixpence a day ; yet nothing can solace them for then* 
 difficulty in procuring bread. All my hay is spoilt. This is 
 always worth a day's meal to them, but it can happen only once 
 in the season. The poor devils are much to be pitied, for they 
 really look now as if they hardly enjoj'ed it. It is their moult- 
 ing time, and they cannot crow."' 
 
 That letter was dated the 12 th of February, and 
 was crossed by a letter from Southey of two days 
 earlier date, written in much alarm. " Trotter's book" 
 was the life of Fox lately published hy his secretary ; 
 and A^ith Air. Murray, the reader aaiII remember, Lan- 
 dor had been placed in communication by the printino- 
 of his tragedy.
 
 358 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONr. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14, 
 
 " About an hour ago came a parcel to me from Murray, 
 containing among other things an unfinished commentary upon 
 Trotter's book. Aut Landor, aut Diabolus. From the manner, 
 from the force, from the vehemence, I concluded it must be 
 yovirs, even before I fell upon the passage resj^ecting Spain 
 "which proves that it was yours. I could not lie down this night 
 with an easy conscience if I did not beseech you to suspend the 
 pubUcation till you have cancelled some passages : that attack 
 upon FeUowes might bring you into a court of justice ; and 
 there are some others which would have the more painful effect 
 of making you regret that you had written them. . . I have 
 but looked into the leaves as I opened them, and will not delay 
 this entreaty a single post : but to-morrow I mil point out 
 every passage which is likely to inflict undeserved pain upon 
 others, and therefore to recoil upon yourself. It would equally 
 grieve me to have the book supprest, or to have it appear as it 
 is. It is yours and yours all over — the non imitabile fulmen." 
 
 On the 15tli Landor replied, telling what the thing 
 was, how it originated, and the objection Murray had 
 himself made to a proposed dedication of it to the Pre- 
 sident of America, against whom England was then on 
 the eve of a declaration of war. This, the rejoinder of 
 Southey, and the letters that followed, besides being 
 highly characteristic, have a special value for the com- 
 pleteness of the description they give, not only of the 
 Commentary, of which a few copies got into subsequent 
 circulation as " Observations on Trotter's Life of Fox,"* 
 
 * A reference to this is in one of the letters of an old country 
 gentleman of Staffordshire, Mr. Whitby of Creswell ; whose son, the 
 captain of the frigate Cerberus which formed part of the squadron 
 in the Adi-iatic, was hero of one of the most daring individual ex- 
 ploits in the war, often referred to in exalted strain by Landor. 
 Eeturning thanks for a copy of Count Julian, which Murray had 
 just published, Mr. Whitby tells its author that his brother the 
 rector of Colton had called and told him of the publication of 
 some Observations on Trotter^ s Life of Fox, which he was extremely 
 anxious to see, because with no one upon politics did he so entirely 
 agree as with Landor, and his independence of all party. In an- 
 other letter he tells him he has read the Observations, and found 
 them filled to overflowing with original and bold remark.
 
 ,ET. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 359 
 
 but of a suppressed companion tract called the Parallel, 
 and of the suppressed Dedication. All that Landor 
 intended by them, the startling paradoxes put forth in 
 them, the personal attacks they contained, and the 
 strange combination tln^oughout them of largeness and 
 wisdom of view with proposals worthy of Laputa and 
 an absmxl intemperance of expression, we see in these 
 letters so vividly depicted that any further allusion or 
 quotation will not be necessary. 
 
 " Did I never mention that I was writing the Commentary ? 
 In truth I seldom can tell whether I have communicated any- 
 thought or intention of mine, so that often I must appear the 
 most barren of tautologists, and often more reserved than a 
 quaker or a Jesuit. How egregiously mistaken are those who 
 judge of people by their letters, or indeed by anything they 
 write ! Not twenty men know that Addison and Pope abounded 
 in the worst basenesses, or that Swift was anything better than 
 a satirist and misanthropist. 
 
 " I will do precisely as you recommend, and request you 
 particularly to mention such other passages as should be can- 
 celled. If there is any eloquence in the Commentary, I will 
 give you the reason. I was determined to try whether an 
 oi'ation could not be written more like what the Athenians 
 were accustomed to commend than any such speeches as we 
 have heard in parliament, or than any which were delivered in 
 the French Academy. I first apologised for praising the living 
 instead of the dead, and argued that although some might per- 
 vert the practice, yet with others it would undoubtedly have 
 the effect of preserving them from subserviency and corrup- 
 tion ; that, to give themselves the importance which they 
 claimed on the assumption of such an office, they must pre- 
 serve a perfect and most absolute independence, and cherish 
 in their own hearts those vh-tues whose features they were de- 
 sirous of transmitting to posterity. I praised Hastings, and 
 drew a comparison between him and Fox ; but, said I, possibly 
 this great ruler may have been deaf to the voice of misery and 
 of justice. I drew a comparison also between Lord Peterboro 
 and Lord Wellington, in which I ijroved the latter to be equal 
 to the other. In short, with reference to the military admi-
 
 8G0 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 nisti'ation, I preferred the present to every other in this reign 
 except Lord Chatham's. But I asked myself what source of 
 corruption these Percevals and people had cut off ? What pro- 
 tection they had given to freedom or to literature ? 
 
 " After all, who will read anjiihing I write ? One enemy, 
 an adept in bookery and reviewship, can without talents and 
 vidthout industiy suppress in a great degree all my labours, as 
 easily as a mischievous boy could crush with a roller a whole 
 bed of crocuses. Yet I would not destroy what I had written. 
 It filled indeed but eight or nine sheets, interlined, it is true, 
 in a thousand places and everywhere close. I transferred, then, 
 whatever I could conveniently, with some observations I had 
 written on Trotter's sUly book, and preserved nearly half, I 
 think, by adopting this plan. 
 
 " I am sm-prised that Mm'ray should object to publish my 
 dedication to the President of the United States. It is very 
 temperate, and, I believe, not ineloquent. "War is not declared ; 
 and I earnestly point out the mischief it would do America 
 — how deplorable that freemen should contend with freemen, 
 and diminish a number already so reduced ! I never wrote 
 anything better. It contains the best sentences of my oration. 
 I will desire Murray to send it you, together with a piece aimed 
 at the attorney-general of Ireland, but not mentioning him, 
 nor subject to the cognisance of even an attorney-general's 
 law." 
 
 In his allusions to America Landor had gi'eatly the 
 advantage of his friend, who had no indisjiosition to the 
 war tlien imminent, was ready to give credit to any 
 absiu'dity that might help to put a wider breach be- 
 tween us and our transatlantic kinsmen, and was as 
 eager as many people since have been to believe in a 
 disruption of the United States Republic as both de- 
 sirable and likely. ^AHiat he says on the other hand of 
 George Rose is not a bad comment on what Lord Shel- 
 burne is reported to have said to him, "Good God, 
 " Mr. Rose, why have you not more ambition !" Rose 
 had been twenty years Pitt's secretary to the treasmy, 
 and was everybody's factotum in those days; but we
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. • 361 
 
 may easily understand Landor s slowness to recognise 
 abilities of which only the most meagre memorials have 
 even yet come to light, though he has been dead half 
 a century. In the recent changes Rose had stuck to 
 Perceval, in spite of all Canning's attempts to draw him 
 off; and his appointment as treasurer to the navy, with 
 Croker for secretary, a selection he w^as supposed to 
 have suggested but which in reality he very strongly 
 disapj)roved, had greatly moved Lander's wrath. The 
 whole of Southey's letter, which is dated Feb. 21, 1812, 
 is worth preserving ; and among the personal bitternesses 
 in the Commentary, the reader will not be unamused to 
 see, Fellowes and Kett* had not been forgotten ! 
 
 " I have re-read and re-i'e-read the Commentary. The de- 
 dication and the postscript are so full of perilous matter that it 
 will be difficult to weed them clean. And there is this objection 
 to both, that they, far more than the Commentary itself, tend to 
 produce that state of feeling which such wretches as Cobbett 
 are continually labouring to excite and inflame for the worst 
 purposes. We are suffering for the antijacobin vfar, — the sins 
 of the fathers are visited upon the children, — now it seems as 
 if you designed to represent that the sins were our own. That 
 we are not in peace and abundance and security, is the effect 
 of that war, — this is unavoidable, and so are the expenses which 
 it necessitates. 
 
 "We rivet the chain in Sicily, and we do not break it in 
 Portugal ; but certain it is that in Spain we have pressed upon 
 the government the necessity of liberal measm'es and popular 
 reform. Towards the Spanish colonies this country has not 
 acted ill ; all that it could do was to endeavour to mediate. 
 Those colonies offer a wretched prospect ; they are even more 
 unfit for independence than the Americans were, who have 
 become independent (by our fault most assuredly) a full cen- 
 tury before they were of age. See what it is to have a nation 
 to take its place among civilised states before it has either gen- 
 tlemen or scholars ! They have in the course of twenty years 
 acquired a distinct national character for low and lying Icnavery ; 
 
 * See ante, pp. 59-GO ; and pp. 110-112.
 
 362 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 and so well do they deserve it that no man ever had any deal- 
 ings with them without having proofs of its truth. 
 
 " There is now a probability that the damned junta of 
 Cadiz wiU be crushed, and the colonial trade thrown open. I 
 have no doubt that what you recommend, America is looking 
 to ; but I have as little doubt that it is under the direction of 
 Bonaparte, who keeps the American government in pay. They 
 dream of conquering Canada on the one hand, and Mexico on 
 the other ; and happy would Bonaparte be if he could see them 
 doing his work. But the more probable consequences of that 
 war with this country into which he is bribing them, would be 
 the separation of the Northern States, and the loss of New 
 Orleans, which it would be our first business to secure, and thus 
 seal up the produce of the whole western territory. 
 
 " You have plucked George Rose most unmercifully. Yet 
 if I were asked what man in the House of Commons had done 
 most good there, I should name this very hero, who, according 
 to a song sung by his company of Christchurch volunteers to 
 his praise, while he used to get drunk with them drinking alter- 
 nately his own health and his wife's, is ' as brave as Alexander.' 
 The encouragement of the benefit-societies, the population and 
 poor returns, and the naval schools, we owe to G. Rose. He 
 has actually done more good than the whole gang of reformers 
 have even proposed to do. The worst I know or think of Can- 
 ning is that he seems to be laying out for popularity by show- 
 ing symptoms of falling in with that party whose economy is 
 injustice, and who never hold out any nobler object to the 
 people than that of saving pounds, shillings, and pence. 
 
 " But I meant to confine myself merely to those passages 
 which are either directly actionable, or which after a while 
 you would yourself be sorry to have published. They are that 
 about Croker, the recommendation to withhold supplies, the 
 mention of Lord Chatham and Lord Riverdale, of Fellowes and 
 Kett, and what is said of the Irish attorney-general. About 
 Irish affairs the English can never be made to take any strong 
 interest. I should retain your parallel of Wellington -ndth 
 Peterborough to substitute as appendix. It would do good : 
 for the great good which is now to be done is to keep up the 
 spirit of the country. Thank God, England is not upon her 
 stumps like Witherington ; but we must fight on tiU we bring 
 France into that condition. 
 
 " Your prose is as much yom* own as your poetry. There is
 
 ^T, 30-39.J PUBLIC AFFAIES. 363 
 
 a life and vigour in it to which I know no parallel. It has the 
 poignancy of champagne, and the body of English October. 
 Neither you nor Murray gave me any hint that the Commen- 
 tary was yom's, but I could not look into these pages without 
 knowing that it could not be the work of any other man. God 
 bless you. R. S." 
 
 How much wiser, of how much more prophetic view 
 and with what uumistakeable earnestness expressed, are 
 the striking passages having relation to America in Lan- 
 dor's rejomder, dated ten dajs later ! 
 
 " I perceive that Murray is disposed to suppress the Com- 
 mentary ; whether for pay, or prejudice, or fear, I cannot tell. 
 He did not advertise it in his catalogue as about to be pub- 
 lished, though he received it in December, and the date of the 
 catalogue is February. 
 
 " I never can be induced to believe that Maddison is in the 
 pay of Bonaparte, or that an American wants any pay to make 
 him resent the indignities and privations he endures from our 
 maritime laws. All parties are against us now. So tyrannical 
 a system never existed ; nor one which would so certainly throw 
 America into a confederacy with France. Why could we not 
 have revoked our orders in council, and left nothing to the 
 French but her hatred and vengeance ? On the contrary, we 
 resolve to seize American vessels so long as Napoleon perseveres 
 in his system ; as if the Americans could alter it, as if they could 
 hinder him from doing what he chooses to do on the Continent, 
 or indeed had any right, if they could, provided he did renounce, 
 which he has done publicly and effectually, all right to seize 
 their property, even though searched by English ships, and 
 even after many of their crews have been in English ports, and 
 some on board of English ships of war. Whichever Power was 
 inclined to relax first from its pretensions, was certain of con- 
 ciliating the Americans, and of dii-ecting all their animosities 
 against the Power that persevered in its injustice. Napoleon 
 saw this, and his pride and hatred yielded to his policy. I pray 
 fervently to God that no part of America may be desolated ; 
 that her wildernesses may be the bowers and arbours of liberty; 
 that the present restrictions on her commerce may have no 
 other effect than to destroy the cursed trafficking and tricking 
 which debases the brood worse than felonies and larcenies ; and
 
 364 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 that nothing may divert their attention from their own im- 
 mense neighbonrhood, or from the determination of helping 
 to set free every town and village of their continent ! To 
 accomplish this end I would throw myself at the feet of Mad- 
 dison, and implore till I were hoarse with imploring him. I 
 detest the American character as much as you do, and com- 
 merce as much as Bonaparte does ; but a civil war (and ours 
 would be one) is so detestable a thing as never to be coun- 
 tenanced or pardoned, unless as the only means of bringing a 
 ferocious and perfidious tyi-ant to public justice. Nothing can 
 be more animating than such a tiger-hunt as this, and even the 
 peril itself is salutary. But the Americans speak our language ; 
 thej read Paradise Lost ; and their children, if fire and sword 
 should not consume them, will indulge then' mild and generous 
 affections in Kchama. Surely there must be many still amongst 
 them who retain, in all their purity, the principles that di'ove 
 their ancestors from this country. In my opinion one such 
 family is worth all the turbulent slaves and nobles in the wilds 
 of Poland, and all the thoughtless heads that are devoted for 
 Fernando Settimo. 
 
 " I do believe with you that Franklin formed the American 
 character as we now see it ; but without him the people would 
 never have been independent, at least not for many years. To 
 destroy the power of one people over another, is enough of 
 itself to constitute a great man. I have heard, and give full 
 credit to it, that an immense bribe was offered him by Genei^al 
 Howe to use his influence in bringing back the people to merely 
 their own proposals. I believe he sent the letter to Congress. 
 
 " Whatever you do, do not despise Locke. Remember he 
 refused a pardon, because acceptance of pardon would appear 
 as an acknowledgment of guilt. It must be a glorious principle 
 which could make a man resolve to live in Holland when he 
 might live in England. There are some errors in his reasoning ; 
 but he cleared away much lumber from philosophy, and his 
 writings tend to promote the interests of genuine freedom and 
 sound thinking. 
 
 " I am heartily glad that the prince has shaken off Grey and 
 broken up the Foxite pack ; but I could wish that Mr. Perceval 
 would allow forty thousand Englishmen to fight for religion 
 and loyalty in Spain, though neither the loyalty nor the religion 
 is perfectly to my taste. The capitulation of Blake is detest- 
 able and most infamous. Twenty thousand could cut their
 
 JET. 30-39.] rUBLIC AFFAIRS. 3G5 
 
 Avay through any army on earth, provided that army was sur- 
 roundmg a vast city. But it appears that at first Suchet had 
 not thirty thousand under him, so that the Spaniards could 
 bring against him in any one point a much greater force than 
 he could oppose. After all, the most advantageous way would 
 perhaps be to fight fi-om the houses and squares, where cavalry 
 could not act, and where women and children, by throwing tiles 
 from the roofs, would be as formidable as veterans. In Tar- 
 ragona and Valencia, the Spaniards lost greatly more than two- 
 thirds of their effective force. Suchet in the capture of these 
 two places has done more against them than all the other 
 generals since the commencement of the war in the Peninsula. 
 Bonaparte is the only general who has performed such signal 
 exploits. I saw Carrol here (Bath). I believe he is now in 
 London. I did not ask him what he came for ; j^et I thought 
 he would be more useful in Spain. He is an active and good 
 ofiicer, but should abstain from other views and projects." 
 
 But before that letter was even posted Southey had 
 been writuig to confirm the suspicion with which it 
 opened, that INii'. Murray had taken fright at the Com- 
 mentary, and was anxious to be reheved from going on 
 Avith it. Not havinw read it when he undertook its 
 publication, he has since been reading it in the proofs, 
 and now finds that its remarks on Mr. Canning would 
 put him in so painful a position that he has appealed to 
 Southey to get him out of the scrape. 
 
 " I have a letter this evening from Murray, which I would 
 enclose to you if it were not for the time which would be lost 
 in sending it round for a frank. The sum of it is that it would 
 relieve his mind from some very natm'al and very unpleasant 
 feelings if you would allow him to procure another publisher 
 for this Commentary, into whose hands he will deliver it ready 
 for publication, and with whom he will settle for you. This 
 is purely a matter of feeling and not of fear. He is, on the 
 score of the Quarterhj Review, under obligations to Canning, and 
 would on that account have refused to publish any personal 
 attack upon him. The manuscript he never read, looking 
 forward to the perusal of the book as a pleasure. What he 
 Avishes will be no inconvenience to you, and no doubt you will
 
 366 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 readily assent to it. ' I confess,' lie says, ' I hesitatingly propose 
 ' this, for I fear even you could not now speak of this to the 
 ' author in any way that would not offend him. I will, however, 
 ' leave it entirely to you ; and if you say nothing about it, I wUl 
 ' publish it without any further trouble to you or Mr. L, how- 
 ' ever painful, from my peculiar situation, it will prove to me.' 
 These are his words. For my own part I should feel any fear of 
 giving offence as the only thing which could occasion it. It is 
 but for you to signify your assent to Murray in a single line, 
 and the business is settled without any injury to any person's 
 feelings. That it is purely a matter of feeling with him I verily 
 believe. The not reading the manuscript was a compliment to 
 the author, and a mark of confidence in him." 
 
 Landor's reply deals not alone witli the Commen- 
 taiy but with the Parallel (in which comparison of 
 Wellington and Peterborough was made), and is a won- 
 derfully characteristic production. Its date is March 
 1812. "A plague on both your houses !" He is so 
 disgusted with both factions, that, by way of grinding 
 both into the dust, he means to lay out five thousand 
 (borrowed) pounds in establishing a printing press at 
 Llanthony ! His other scheme of establishing Lord 
 Wellington on the throne of Portugal one might suppose 
 to have involved yet greater difficulty for so staunch 
 a republican. But for the time no doubt he was hotly 
 bent on both, and equally ready when the cool fit came 
 to sm'render either. Observe at the same time how 
 large and just were his views on leading questions of 
 civil liberty. 
 
 " My Parallel lies unfinished. It covers a good number of 
 sheets ; so many that I never shall have the heart to transcribe 
 them ; for I write not only on sands, but on such sands as are 
 exposed to storms and tempests from every quarter of the hea- 
 vens. When you come to Llanthony, which I hope and entreat 
 you will this summer, I will show you what I have done, and 
 help you to read the manuscript. I have lost one sheet or half- 
 sheet, I cannot remember which ; but it grieved me at the time,
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 367 
 
 because it contained some very laboured passages. I believe I 
 threw it into the fire, thinking I had transcribed it afresh, as 
 I had done with another page or two. 
 
 " My Commentary is condemned to eternal night. I have 
 just written to Murray. One sentence in my letter to him will 
 explain the whole. 
 
 " ' Deceived or not deceived, the fault was not mine that 
 you first undertook it yourself; that you next proposed to find 
 another who would undertake it ; and that at last you relapse 
 even from this alternative. I am not surprised that, in these 
 circumstances, you find some vexation. Had you, in the begin- 
 ning, pointed out such passages as you considered dangerous 
 to publish (although this very danger would have shown the 
 necessity of them), I would have given them another appear- 
 ance and stationed them in another place.' 
 " I am convinced he has been persuaded, either by Canning 
 or some other scoundrel whom I have piquetted in the work, to 
 withdraw from the publication of it ; although I have soaped 
 all the bristles that could have been clutched by the foul hand 
 of our attornej^-general. 
 
 " At this time I am reading the Correspondence of Erasmus, 
 2146 pages ! How infinitely more freedom, as well as more 
 learning, was there in those days than in ours ! yet establish- 
 ments of every kind were in much greater danger of inno- 
 vation. 
 
 " Two things are wanting. Perfect equality in aU religion- 
 ists as to their competency in civil emplojTuents, and an ac- 
 knowledgment of the principle, ne quid falsi cUcere atideat^ ne 
 quid veri non audeat. In fact, that there is no libel without 
 falsehood. Unless these rights are admitted and established, I 
 think it a matter of utter indifference who governs. I confess 
 I care not how fast that system runs to ruin which opposes 
 them. 
 
 " It is delightful to see how the Foxites have disabled them- 
 selves from serving the Regent. The people will be able to pay 
 taxes two years more, and those fellows will then excite them 
 to some expression of their discontent ; they will force them- 
 selves into the places of government ; they will govern with as 
 much corruption and fraudulence as their predecessors ; and as 
 much timber will be wanted for gibbets as for fleets. 
 
 " I think we have thro'svn away a greater sum of money in 
 vain than ever was expended before for any possible good. "We
 
 3G8 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLA.NTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 have gained nothing but what it would have been better not 
 to have gained, and the last vestiges of the constitution have 
 totally disappeared. The senate of Rome did not impose so 
 heavy a contribution on conquered Carthage as we pay every 
 two years to our own senate, which strips us of everjrthing 
 that can make such subjection tolerable, and adds the grossest 
 insult to the most insatiable extortion. The fear of Bonaparte 
 keeps people quiet, as children are kept quiet by the name of 
 some giant. I think of employing my time in proving that 
 neither war nor ministers are formidable ; that nothing is very 
 much so but poverty, Avhich strips us of all resistance when the 
 enemy comes to close quarters ; that this is the nearest and 
 most urgent mischief ; and that those who demand our money 
 in every by-road and high-road of our lives are to be crushed 
 at any peril, if we hope at any future time for comfort or secu- 
 rity or peace. 
 
 " I am about to borrow five thousand pounds that I may 
 establish a press for this purpose, and may have the glory, at 
 much private loss, disquiet, and danger, of setting the public 
 mind more erect, and throAving the two factions into the dust. 
 
 " I shall not cease to uphold the cause of Lord Wellington, 
 and to recommend his establishment on the throne of Portugal; 
 to revolutionise South America, which is a far more civilised 
 country than any in Europe (as I myself know from conversing 
 with both officers and soldiers who were natives), and which 
 Avill otherwise be under the power of Bonaparte in another 
 year. The people of South America are of a military origin, 
 the descendants of brave and honourable men ; they are un- 
 contaminated by blackguard religions, and neither befooled by 
 kings nor cowed by inquisitions. Their religion and all their 
 other habits must perpetually remind them of their ancestors ; 
 and those men are always the best between whom and their 
 forefathers no cloud or indistinctness intervenes. A North 
 American can see his only through the pillory ; this is a very 
 different view from that which is presented under the banners 
 of Pizarro and Cortes. It must also be conceded that an Eng- 
 lishman does not lift his foot so high above the dirt as a 
 Spaniard, and that he degenerates much sooner and much 
 more." 
 
 To that letter Soutliey had much to say, and said it 
 with the strangest possible mixture of his former and
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 3C9 
 
 his present self, jacobin and antijacobin. He has a 
 view of the libel-law that might have satisfied Eldon him- 
 self; with a faith in republicanism (everywhere but in 
 America) and a theory of colonial independence that the 
 same learned " Old Bags" would have treated as in- 
 sanity. At the notion of setting up a printer's press he 
 is terrified in the extreme. Heaven forbid that Landor 
 should draw on himself such vexations ! Cold lead was 
 more perilous than cold iron. If he would but bear in 
 mind what the laws of libel were, he might say what he 
 liked to the public mth safety. ' Of individuals all that 
 ' ought to be might be said ; of the state anything that 
 ' did not e^'idently show the wish to overthrow it ; and 
 ' if he would but always be careful that the vehemence 
 ' of his manner did not belie his intentions.' One can- 
 not but now remember nevertheless, that within a few 
 months of this date Mr. Perry of the Chronicle had been 
 dragged before the covu'ts for copjdng a gentle sarcasm 
 about the Prince of Wales becoming " nobly popular," 
 and that Mr. Leigh Hunt and his brother were sent to 
 Horsemonger-lane gaol exactly seven months later for 
 calling the same high personage an Adonis of fifty. 
 
 Southey went on to say that he and Landor had the 
 same end in view ; they only differed as to means. He 
 would on no account have Wellington king of Portugal ; 
 the good powers forfend he should wish it ! What he 
 of all things desired was that the tide of opinion should 
 take a republican direction, " and the whole Peninsula 
 " form itself into a great federal commonwealth ; the form 
 " of polity which seems the best attainable in our present 
 " state." Then very wisely he sums up his cplonial policy 
 thus : You must send out colonies, as a hive sends out 
 swarms. Let them govern themselves. Protect them 
 as long as they need protection. When that is neces- 
 voL. I. B B
 
 370 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 saiy no longer, though the countries be then each 
 different and independent, let the policy never be lost 
 of remaining one people. Give the Briton who goes to 
 you all pri\aleges of a nation ; let the colonist here be an 
 Englishman when he lands. " In fifty years America 
 " would jDetition to be received back into the family." 
 
 Absurdly wrong as to that latter point, it is yet plain 
 from the frequent recurrence of such passages in his 
 letters that Southey had in his heart a more genuine re- 
 publicanism than Landor, with whom it was often little 
 more than an unreasoning hatred of kings. The illus- 
 tration we have just seen the latter employ, that those 
 men are always the best between whom and their fore- 
 fathers no cloud or indistinctness intervenes, and that a 
 North American could see his only through the pillory, 
 is not one that Southey would have used. He puts the 
 matter in another way. In his opinion, the present 
 letter went on to say, Landor rated the American Span- 
 iards too highly, just as he overrated the Americans 
 themselves. He asks his friend to read Cotton Mather's 
 History of Neio England of which the annals were told 
 by succession not of princes but preachers. Half the 
 Anglo-Americans, in Southey's view, went over red-hot 
 from the conventicle, the other half flagrant from Bride- 
 well ; and the tertium quid had the roguery of the one 
 suj)erinduced upon the hard vulgarity of the other ! 
 
 After this, for two or three months, other than pub- 
 lic subjects occupy the letters of both, and not until 
 October are politics resumed. The interval had been 
 marked by stirring events, of which the latest were 
 Borodino and Moscow ; and at the reverses of Napo- 
 leon's fortune Southey's exultation knew no bounds. 
 
 " Will Bonaparte leave his army as he did in Egypt, or stay 
 with them and keep his Chi-istmas at Moscow ? A Lenten sort
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 371 
 
 of Christinas it mil prove. The Russians, like the Turks, are 
 in a very unsubduable state ; their beards and their idolatry- 
 are in their favour. It is of prodigious consequence that they 
 don't understand parlez-vou-ing ; and it will take a Frenchman, 
 popinjays as they aU are, a long while before he can gabble 
 in Russ. Huzza ! fight on, my merry men all, must be our 
 tune ; and as long as we can keep out the white-livered Foxites 
 at home, the cause of Europe will never be to be despaired of. 
 Should they get the ascendancy, it would then indeed be time 
 to turn Tui-k in despair." 
 
 Landor's reply is less exultant ; his toleration of 
 the English government, to the direction of which Lord 
 Liverpool had succeeded on the murder of Perceval, and 
 of which Castlereao-h and Sidmouth were now the ani- 
 mating spirits, is very naturally not on the increase ; and 
 as to Bonaparte the view here expressed by him is in 
 effect that which Hazlitt supported in later years with 
 the same abuse of power arising from personal passion. 
 
 " I do not think with you about Bonaparte. I hate him ; I 
 execrate him ; but I detest our own government worse. Genius, 
 in a political sense, is the Salvator or the Redemptor mundi. 
 Corruption is the devil — not the Satan of Milton, but the sheer 
 mean-spirited creature of the Evangelists. As for the cause of 
 Europe, which you say is never to be despaired of, the kings 
 and governments are such fools and rascals that I wish from 
 my soul Bonaparte may utterly extinguish all of them. I want 
 to see some paring and burning. I can wait patiently for the 
 fresh vegetation that will follow. I want to see Finland libe- 
 rated. That remote people had made a greater progress in 
 agriculture and civilisation in thirty years than any in Europe, 
 if perhaps we except the Scotch. Bonaparte will do an infinity 
 of good ; but I wish, when he has done it, he may be impaled. 
 He forced the emperor of Austria to act infamously towards 
 Prussia ; the king of Prussia to act infamously towards Austria ; 
 and the emperor of Russia to act infamously to every power in 
 Europe. Willinglj' should I sacrifice my fortune, my life, every- 
 thing but my soul, to abolish kingship throughout the world. 
 Men never can be honest or peaceable, God will never permit 
 it, while they live under this most cursed idolatry.
 
 372 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " I am more and more convinced that Lord Wellington 
 alone is able to unite such discordant nations as the Portuguese 
 and Spanish. It requires but very little wisdom to govern well 
 when a people knows that he who governs can enforce obedi- 
 ence. He would not permit any great demand for it. I have 
 finished my book on this subject, and a part of it will probably 
 light the candle when I seal this letter. It was at least as well 
 written as anything of mine, and was enough to have raised 
 me a host of enemies if I could have performed but the mere 
 mechanical part of forcing it into day." 
 
 Immediately upon this followed the general election, 
 in which Landor so far took part as to issue an addi'ess 
 to the freeholders of Monmouthshire. He had declined, 
 he said, himself to come forward ; but he hoped they 
 would choose a better colleague for their old member 
 than the brother of the lord-lieutenant, to whose family 
 jiretensions in the point of intellect he was the re- 
 verse of complimentary. "We often find throughout 
 " whole families," he \^Tote, " as lifeless an equality of 
 " mind and soul as the revolutionists of France would 
 " have estabhshed in rank and property. I trust we 
 " should be as unwilling to countenance the one as the 
 " other. Let us compassionate the evils we cannot alter, 
 " and remove the evils we can. Let us prove that the 
 " race of country gentlemen is not yet extinct, and that 
 " some one of this order can be formd in the county of 
 " Monmouth whose character for probity and intelli- 
 " gence renders him worthy to be the colleague of Sir 
 " Charles Morgan." Another passage will show the 
 view he took generally of public affairs, how closely he 
 went to some of the main grievances, and how narrowly 
 he missed the proper remedy. His strong opinion of 
 the duty of the House of Commons to deal with the 
 question of waste lands has ah'eady been seen ; and 
 other allusions made by him may be explained by the 
 fact that he was A\Titing within a few weeks of the exe-
 
 JET. 30-39.J PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 373 
 
 cution at York, in one day, of fourteen miserable men 
 who had taken part in Luddite riots. 
 
 " We have seen a great number of prime-ministers since the 
 beginning of the war, and, as far as the constitution is con- 
 cerned, very little if any difference in their method, whatever 
 there may have been in their maxims, of government. This 
 consideration should reconcile all parties. Since we are en- 
 gaged in a contest, which could not have been avoided with 
 honour nor terminated with safety, I have always thought the 
 most favourably of those who have acted with most firmness 
 and energy. To support us in the expenditure that is neces- 
 sary, two other things are necessary also : first, the abolition of 
 useless offices and unmerited pensions ; secondly, the encourage- 
 ment of agriculture and commerce. Englishmen "will endure 
 any privations for the glory of their country and the preserva- 
 tion of their liberties ; but they never will endure that the pit- 
 tance of the brave should be thrown into the lap of the sloth- 
 ful. There are pensioners, each of whom receives from the 
 country they never have benefited as large a sum annually as 
 would raise a thousand industrious mechanics from want and 
 despondency to competence and comfort. Yet it is from these 
 mechanics that the country was rich and powerful ; and it is 
 from these pensioners that she is exhausted and distressed. If 
 their pension-money had been applied to the sustenance of our 
 starving manufacturers by wise and liberal encouragements, 
 what violations of peace and security, of law, of order, of 
 the British character, what miseries and crimes, what oaths 
 and perjuries, what robberies and murders, what imprison- 
 ments and chains and executions might have been spared for 
 ever ! You will remember not many months since, at a time 
 when among the labouring classes there was a wide scarcity 
 and universal discontent, that a general act of enclosure was 
 recommended by the united voice of several counties. Al- 
 though the scarcity could not have been relieved by an act 
 of which the effects were not immediate, yet many of its 
 painful feelings would have been removed by a disposition to 
 prevent its recurrence. Such an act would not only have 
 excited the industry of those useful men who wanted, in a 
 greater degree than was ever known before, employment and 
 subsistence, but it would have separated and diverted from 
 mischief those turbulent spirits which were rising in the north.
 
 374 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 The only person in your grand jury who opposed a general act 
 of enclosure, however, with the exception of the duke's steward, 
 was the duke's brother. And though certain it is that the 
 opinions of men so little distinguished for abilities or infor- 
 mation must have proportionately little weight with the wise, 
 yet equally certain is it that the wise do not constitute the 
 majority of mankind, and that wealth and rank have a greater 
 influence on the affairs of this world than knowledge or in- 
 tegrity." 
 
 The date of that address was October 1812 ; the 
 new parhament, from which it had failed to exclude 
 Lord Arthur Somerset, assembled in November; and 
 two months later Landor was eagerly intent on bring- 
 ing before it an enclosure-bill of his own. Writing to 
 Southey from Llanthony in the last days of January 
 1813, he thus refers to it : 
 
 " I remain here, not so much for pleasure as for business. 
 I am bringing into parliament a bill for enclosing these com- 
 mons, which are now depastured by the sheep of no less than 
 nine other parishes. Mine is perhaps the only manor in the 
 world that is surrounded by so many. Persons of all desciip- 
 tions have assumed to themselves the liberty of turning out 
 their cattle here. Among the rest is one who has a peculiar 
 enmity against me, both as an Englishman and a gentleman, 
 though we never met ; and this enmity is increased and exas- 
 perated by the necessity which he is aware that he lies under of 
 showing his right, such as he has, of tui-ning out cattle in a 
 manor where he has no property. He has given notice that he in- 
 tends to oppose my bill in parliament, although I possess 95 in 112 
 of the land-tax ; and he has raised the common people of other 
 parishes against me. If you can procure me any assistance in 
 parliament, you will render me the greatest service, as all oppo- 
 sition is attended by grievous expense. If the public good were 
 not about to be promoted, as weU as my own, I would not ask 
 one earthly being for support ; but in the present state of things 
 a few miserable sheep are infected by the scab, all improvement 
 in the breed is discouraged, and the large half -starving flocks 
 break into the enclosures and destroy the grass and corn of the 
 farmer, and the garden and croft of the cottager. In case of
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 375 
 
 enclosure, I shall plant above a million of trees on land whicli 
 is now unproductive, and raise a very large flock of Spanish 
 sheep, which at present can with great difficulty be kept from 
 the contagion that eternally prevails here. The landlord I have 
 mentioned is so base a man that he bought the cottage of a 
 woman bowed down by poverty and age, for one guinea. It 
 was worth thirty." 
 
 Soutliey did all he could for the bill, and there is 
 a mention in his letter of the members he had written 
 to about it ;* but, the opinion of his own county repre- 
 sentatives being adverse, Landor had to abandon it 
 early in the session. Even by that time, however, sub- 
 jects of more engrossing interest had supervened ; and 
 what with his own troubles and Bonaparte's troubles 
 he had more than enough to occupy him. The private 
 disputes are reserved to another section ; but what passed 
 between Southey and himself during the eventful months 
 that preceded the abdication at Fontainebleau will pro- 
 perly be added here. 
 
 In April 1813 Landor notices a newspaper report 
 of Austria joining the coahtion against France. "Kings 
 " and emperors are such a detestable race of rascals, I 
 " mean the present families of them, that I can hope 
 " nothing from their coalition at all favourable to the 
 " happiness of mankind. Alexander seems beneficent 
 " by nature. At all events, the fewer Frenchmen there 
 
 * One of Parr's letters has reference to the subject. " Dear 
 " Walter, I will give you all the assistance in my power, when 
 " T have received your hill, and am informed by your solicitor about 
 " the time at which it is to be debated in the House. He must 
 " get the bill sent, as if to some member of parliament at my house. 
 " I am very much pleased with your brother Charles. I tried to get 
 " him over to dinner, when I had two very learned visitors. But he 
 " could not come. I shall very soon ask him again, for he is a very 
 " sensible and a very well-mannered clergyman. Pray give my best 
 *' compliments and best wishes to your lady, and believe me truly 
 " your friend, S. Parb."
 
 376 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1S05-14. 
 
 " are in the -vvorkl, tlie happier will the world be. There 
 " is no comfort or quiet for these gnats."* In something 
 of the same spirit Southey replies ; saddened by private 
 as well as public occui'rences, and less eager than he 
 had been a few months before for continuance of war 
 with America. He was full of fear that the German 
 campaigns might lead to a peace, being convinced that 
 a peace leaving Bonaparte alive would be worse than 
 Avar. Still, therefore, he hoped to see his destruction, 
 and then peace might be lasting. But how disastrous 
 was the outlook at home ! His friend had been too 
 true a prophet. " Our naval superiority stricken, the 
 " foundations of every establishment undermined, and 
 " the dragon's teeth sown all around us." 
 
 " I suspected that the Americans must have made some im- 
 provements in gunnery, and it was a relief to my heart when I 
 learnt that this was actually the case. They stuff their wadding 
 ■with bullets, — which accounts for the carnage on board om* ships, 
 — and they make their cartridges of very fine sheet-lead, so that 
 it is not necessary to sponge the guns ; thus they fke nearly two 
 to one, almost doubling their force. I fear I shall not see you 
 this year. Remember me to Mrs. Landor. God bless you." 
 
 Happily for himself, however, he recovered spirits 
 
 as the year went on ; for the laureateship fell to him in 
 
 the autumn, and it would never have done to open in 
 
 less cheery strain than he did, rejoicing in the gift and 
 
 exulting in the return he was able to make for it. 
 
 " In happy hour doth he receive 
 The Laurel, meed of famous bards of yore, 
 Which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore — 
 In happy hour ; and well may he rejoice, 
 
 Whose earliest task must be 
 To raise the exultant hymn for Victory !" 
 
 * In the same letter, I may mention, he tells him of the failure 
 and collapse of the scheme of the Edinburgh Register, from which 
 he had expected so much. See ante, pp. 241, 351-2.
 
 ^T. 3C-39.] rUBLIC AFFAIKS. 377 
 
 The letter in which Southey told his friend all abont 
 his appointment — how Croker had applied on his behalf 
 to the prince, who promised it to him ; how lords Liver- 
 pool and Hertford had meanwhile offered it to Scott, 
 who waived it handsomely in his favour ; and how, in 
 taking it, he had neither fear of the newspaper jokesmiths 
 nor distrust of his own poAver to make the office respect- 
 able — was written immediately upon his return to Kes- 
 wick, after a five-and-forty hours' mail-coach journey 
 from London in the middle of November 18 13 ; and Avas 
 acknowledged by Landor in the same month from Swan- 
 sea, with hearty congratulations on finding at the least 
 so much honesty and discernment chsplayed by the men 
 in power. " I never thought that a place gave honour 
 ^^ to any one, or that any one gave honour to a place ; 
 " but there is something equally agreeable both to the 
 " reasonable and the romantic mind in reflecting that 
 " in war and in poetry, the elements of ardent souls, the 
 " first men of our country fill the first station." 
 
 The interest in the great war-tragedy was mean- 
 v.hile thickening fast, and the catastrophe was rapidly 
 approaching. The battle of Leipsic had been fought in 
 October, and before the end of the year Germany w'as 
 free. Then, at the opening of the next momentous 
 year, came out Southey's first laureate effort, the Carmen 
 Triumpliale ; and Landor, whom business had taken to 
 London at the time, was hoping also to sustain the feel- 
 ing against France by a series of letters in the Courier 
 Avith the signature of Calvns. " You have seen," Sou- 
 they Avrites to his brother,* " Calvus's last letter in the 
 " Courier. Landor is the writer. I entirely agree with 
 " him that this is the time for undoing the mischief 
 " done by the peace of Utrecht. France was then 
 * Letters, ii. 351.
 
 378 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY, [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " made too strong for the repose of Em*ope, and slie 
 " ought now to be stript of Alsace, Lorrame, and 
 " Franche-Comte." 
 
 Of these letters Landor had told Southey imme- 
 diately on his return from London in the first days of 
 February 1814 : 
 
 " The Carmen Triiimphale was sounding in my ears all the 
 way as I returned. I wish from my soul that this most admir- 
 able ode could (but too surely it cannot) be translated into 
 every language, and chanted in every church, of Christendom, 
 and that the notes were affixed to the door of every townhall. 
 I too had been employing some midnight hours to prove that 
 
 ' Justice must go before, 
 And Eetribution must make plain the way ;'* 
 
 but the evil genius to whom I committed the manuscript has 
 printed what he chose and omitted all the best. I hope he has 
 however executed one order of mine, in sending to your book- 
 seller the Letters of Calvus. The best he declines to print. I 
 have written a most complete refutation of Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh's speech. Scorn forbids me to ask the fellow whether he 
 has received it. Let it perish. What think you of Lord Castle- 
 reagh visiting the scoundrel Caulincoiirt ? The Courier pub- 
 
 * These lines are from the last stanza of the Ode : a spirit-stir- 
 ring one undoubtedly, and such as might justify still the uses of a 
 poet-laureateship, if anything, even Tennyson's genius, could do it. 
 
 " When shall the dove go forth 1 0, when 
 Shall peace return among the sons of men 1 
 Hasten, benignant Heaven, the blessed day ! 
 
 Justice must go before, 
 And Retribution must make plain the way ; 
 Force must be crushed by Force, 
 The power of evil by the power of good, 
 Ere order bless the suffering world once more, 
 
 Or peace return again. 
 Hold then right on in your auspicious course. 
 Ye princes and ye people, hold right on ! 
 
 Your task not yet is done : 
 Pursue the blow — ye know your foe — 
 Complete the happy work so well begun."
 
 MT. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 379 
 
 lished one out of ttree parts of my reply to the impudent paper 
 of Bonaparte." 
 
 But already Southey had heard of the Calvus 
 through Coleridge, then also writing in the Cowngr; and 
 in his next letter, everyway a characteristic one, asks if 
 Landor had seen what he had himself been writing in the 
 same paper. Who calls for peace at this momentous hour ? 
 an ode that had gTown out of the castrations of the Car- 
 men Triiimphale, whose official character had precluded 
 entire freedom of speech. For five years, Southey con- 
 tinued, he had been preaching the necessity of declaring 
 Bonaparte under the ban of human nature ; and if this 
 had been done in 1805, even the emperor of Austria, 
 " wretch as he is," could never have given him his 
 daughter in marriage. Now his hope was that the other 
 '• wretch" might require terms of peace that the allies 
 would not consent to. Not that he wanted the Bourbons 
 restored. Except when expulsions had been effected 
 by foreign force, restorations were bad things. The 
 Bourbons had been a detestable race, and adversity had 
 failed to restore in them the virtues royalty had stifled. 
 It was an old notion of his that the Revolution would 
 not have done its work till the houses both of Austria 
 and Bourbon were destroyed ; and he proceeds to tell 
 Landor a story of Hofer, which he had himself heard 
 from Adair to whom the facts were known, to the effect 
 that when that gallant man had actually succeeded in 
 getting himself into an Austrian prison for safety, he 
 was deliberately turned out of his asylum by the Aus- 
 trian government. If any member of that government, 
 therefore, escaped the sword or the halter, there woidd 
 be a lack of justice in this world, "which will require 
 " some expense of brimstone in the next to balance the
 
 380 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " account. The fact is one of the most damnable in 
 " human history." 
 
 Eager and prompt was Landor's reply : 
 
 " I have indeed seen, or rather heard, that trumpet-tongued 
 ode, beginning 
 
 ' Who calls for peace at this momentous hour ;' 
 and I smile at this moment when I find you caUing it ' from 
 ' the castrations' 01 the Carmen Triwnphale. Those of old 
 Saturn, falling on the sea, produced a Venus. These, falling 
 on an island, will I hope produce a Minerva. I, and my friends 
 the dogs, can never forget the honours you have bestowed on 
 Whitefoot ;* but I am afraid they will be followed up by some 
 irreverence from our critics. They like to pick a bone with 
 their betters. 
 
 " I often wonder at myself, and it is the only occasion on 
 which self-complacency falls in with my wonder, to find yom- 
 sentiments and mine so very similar both in poetry and politics. 
 On Spenser alone we differ totally. You will find in the letters 
 of Calvus as deep a hatred of the Austrian court as could be 
 expressed in them ; and your anecdote of its conduct to the 
 excellent Hofer makes me yearn from my soul for its destruc- 
 tion. No family that ever existed in the world was ever so 
 ungrateful, not even the Stuarts. A scoundrel of an emperor 
 held a long debate in what manner he should receive John 
 Sobieski, who had just saved him from being an assistant to the 
 black eunuch, after the proper initiation. It was determined 
 that he could not, according to etiquette, shake hands -with 
 him, much less embrace him. Instead of returning any thanks 
 for the salvation of the capital, he enlarged on the benefits his 
 ancestors had conferred on Poland. Sobieski said he felt happy 
 that Poland had been able in some measure to return them. 
 How scandalously was the Duke of Marlborough stripped of 
 his petty principality of Mendelheim ! and what an ungrateful 
 
 was Maria Theresa ! Bonaparte now sees that his vanity 
 
 alone has been his ruin. As a politician he should have left no 
 king or emperor of the old race, except in Russia. If he had 
 only destroyed the house of Austria, he might have soon, but 
 not immediately, restored the kingdom of Poland in his own 
 
 * See ante, p. 267.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 381 
 
 family, with all Prussia Proper. He might then have played 
 oflf the Russians against the Turks, or the Tux-ks against the 
 Russians, and in either case would have had the Persians for 
 his allies or his dependants. By this train of policy, which how- 
 ever was broken at the first link, he would have ruined us in 
 the East Indies." 
 
 There is something in that view of the case un- 
 doubtedly; but on the whole it is singular and not 
 satisfying to observe how little of what we now should 
 think the true moral of the momentous events then 
 passing was extracted from them by two such near 
 lookers-on as these famous correspondents. What the 
 mere politicians of the time might be forgiven for drop- 
 ping out of account can hardly be excused to Landor or 
 to Southey. Men of such activity of intellect, familiar 
 Avith ancient and with modern history, and who had so 
 clear an understanding of what the French Revolution 
 involved, might surely also have been expected more 
 clearly to see that so decisive an outbreak of democracy 
 would have to run its natural course; that the prmcij)les 
 embodied and represented by Bonaj^arte would survive 
 his repression and abuse of them ; and that the curtain 
 about to fall on him would have to be uplifted again for 
 them. 
 
 Two more passages from Southey's letters imme- 
 diately following the last from Landor, and too curious 
 to be lost altogether, are all that can here be given. 
 The date of the first is after the news of the fatal affair 
 of Bergen-op-Zoom. 
 
 " As for the Dutch, their torpor at this time is such that 
 they deserve, according to the old punster's curse, to be un- 
 dammed in this world, and damned in the next. Yet I was 
 struck the other day in I'eading George Gascoigne's poems to 
 come to a passage which added one to the many striking points 
 of comparison between their war of deliverance and that of the
 
 382 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Spaniards. He speaks of them just in the same contemptuous 
 manner as the Spaniards are spoken of by almost all who have 
 served with them : 
 
 ' they be but hollow gear, 
 
 As weak as wind which with one pufE up goeth ; 
 
 And yet they brag, and think they have no fear, 
 
 Because Harlem hath hitherto held out, 
 
 Altho' indeed (as they have suffered Spain) 
 
 The end thereof even now doth rest in doubt.' " 
 
 Then, in May 1814, when Bonaparte had left for 
 Elba, when Wellington had been created a duke, and 
 when Louis the eighteenth had taken possession of the 
 Tuileries, Southey thus wrote ; 
 
 " So the curtain has fallen after a tragedy of five-and-twenty 
 years ! In two respects the catastrophe is as it should be. Bona- 
 parte's degradation is complete. Even his military reputation 
 is lost, and he is suffered to live more because he may safely 
 be despised than because of his Austrian marriage. And the 
 French in baseness and impudence have contrived to outdo 
 their former masterpieces in this kind. Amiable people ! they 
 have been rather the victims of the tyrant than his agents ! 
 Then the patriotism of the rascals ! The municipality can no 
 longer reconcile it to their consciences to keep silence ! Wretches ! 
 If Bonaparte's last order concerning his good city of Paris had 
 been executed, I could with little difficulty have brought myself 
 to believe that the powder could not have been more fitly ex- 
 pended." 
 
 But before that letter reached its destination Landor 
 had quitted England; and the causes that led to his 
 departure will appear in my resumption of the narrative 
 of his residence at Llanthony. 
 
 XI. Private Disputes. 
 
 In the early months of 1813 Landor reminded Sou- 
 they that the year had come which, according to his 
 promise, was to be that of his second visit to Llanthony. 
 Since his and Mrs. Southey's fix'st visit there had been
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PRIVATE DISPUTES. 383 
 
 many improvements as to comfort ; a truth of wliicli 
 lie would not find much difficulty in persuading her. 
 Could he also persuade her to make the trial? HQs 
 house, Avhich had been built for a bachelor, and would 
 be enlarged next year by an addition of four good bed- 
 rooms, had two large ones already, and several smaller ; 
 and the best had the advantage which Italian architects 
 laid great stress uj)on, — they were "aZ mezzo giornor 
 He could insure them well-aired beds, and his horses 
 should meet them anywhere and at any time. 
 
 Southey hesitated, doubted if he could make the 
 time suitable, desired it too much to drop it altogether, 
 and was still entertaming it as not impossible, when, 
 mthin three weeks of the former, a second letter reached 
 him. It opened ominously, for already Southey had 
 sufficient experience of his friend to know that any new 
 literary enterprise was not unlikely to foreshadow some 
 fresh personal vexation ; the one being commonly used 
 as a safety-valve or escape from the other. " I have," 
 this letter began, "written a comedy, and shall send it 
 " mtliin a few days to your booksellers for you. This, 
 " in my opinion, may be acted. There is a prefatory 
 " discourse by the editor, much in the style of our 
 " great editors on the other side of the Tweed." But 
 the personal vexation, of which here was the sure fore- 
 runner, carried with it in this case a special annoyance 
 to Southey himself; for the letter opening thus lightly 
 passed into tragical utterance in the very next line, as 
 it conveyed the terrible announcement that with the 
 tenant he had himself introduced — the "agriculturist" 
 of whom so many letters had been written, the supposed 
 man of capital to whom the best farm of Llanthony had 
 been let on terms extravagantly liberal, the real man of 
 destiny pre-selected to be a plague and torment to both
 
 384 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1S05-14. 
 
 friends — Lanclor was now plunged over head and ears 
 in disputes of an irreconcilable bitterness, and to which 
 the only possible issue must be hopeless and irretriev- 
 able loss. 
 
 " I am under no small tribulation from that Betham of 
 wliose family you know something. Hearing a good account 
 of his father fi'om you, and that he was desirous of settling 
 here, I offered the old gentleman my two livings here, worth 
 about 270Z. a year, on the decease of the present incumbents 
 Avho are each above seventy. That the son might have a com- 
 fortable house and a large farm, I consented to accept the resig- 
 nation of a lease from an excellent tenant, and to allow him 
 50Z. a year for it, which 50/. however Mr. Betham was to pay 
 me — the old tenant thinking my security better than his. Mr. 
 B. neglected to gather in his corn, of which the crop was excel- 
 lent, .and lost at least 2001. by this ; he did not thatch his hay, 
 by which he lost 200/. more ; and by a series of such conduct as 
 might be expected from a sailor turned farmer, and by living 
 at the rate of lOOOZ. a year, he has succeeded in spending his 
 mf e's fortune — about 3000Z. In fifteen months I have received 
 no rent from him, though his rent amounts to above 1100?. I 
 did not demand it the Jirst half-year, however much I wanted 
 it ; and that he might not pay it the second he lopped my trees, 
 and ploughed all the meadow - ground on one farm. In the 
 midst of this last transaction I wrote civilly to him, telling him 
 that I presumed it was by mistake, and requesting that it 
 might be discontinued. He replied that he should not be ham- 
 pered in what he considered for the good of the farm, and 
 ' besides, that I had promised him every indulgence.' In fact, 
 I had never refused him any request, however um'easonable. 
 To prevent my other meadows from being ruined, which would 
 render the estate quite undesirable to any future tenant, I have 
 (as he foresaw and wished) brought an action against him, but 
 expressed at the same time a readiness to settle it by arbitra- 
 tion. This he refused ; and refuses also to pay any rent, under 
 pretext that the matters in dispute will be settled in a court 
 of law. 
 
 " Although for several months he came uninvited and passed 
 his evenings in my house ; although his sheep have consumed 
 the produce of my garden and fields and woods ; he has had
 
 ^T. 30-39.] rrJYATE DISPUTES. 385 
 
 the baseness to threaten to shoot my chickens if they come 
 into his fields. I mention this to show the extreme baseness to 
 which he descends. I offered to put his hedges in repair, if he 
 would keep them so — he declined it ; finding it more convenient 
 to pasture his sheep in my meadows, and turning them into bare 
 fallows that they may be forced upon my land by hunger. 
 
 " I have mentioned only a few instances of this fellow's 
 roguery and ingratitude ; but enough for you to judge of him. 
 All his brothers — three certainly — have abandoned every visible 
 means of procuring an honest livelihood, and are with him ; 
 although his poor labourers are starving, and he has actually 
 borrowed money fi'om them. In fact, he thinks it more reput- 
 able to be convicted of roguery than suspected of poverty. He 
 has embezzled the money I allowed for the repairs of the house, 
 because I insisted on no written agreement and relied on his 
 honour. He has discharged me and my gamekeeper from 
 shooting on his farm !" 
 
 Making allowance for hardly avoidable partiality in 
 stating one's own case, there will aj^pear to have been 
 evidence to support every count in this inchctment, as 
 well as others to be preferred hereafter. Southey's omin- 
 ous remark upon Betham's ignorance of agricultui'e will 
 be recollected ; his previous employments having in fact 
 been those of usher in his father's school, and afterwards 
 of petty officer in an India Company's ship. But it 
 was not the character of the man only, but, as appears 
 from this letter, all the surroundings of the man, that 
 marked him out for the part he had to play. It was one 
 of his sisters, as before we have seen, who induced Sou- 
 tliey to recommend him. The old gentleman his father, 
 as we here observe, was the origin of Landor's first tron- 
 Ides with him. Nor could a non-paying tenant present 
 himself to a luckless landlord under conditions more 
 aggravating than those of givincr bed and board to a 
 quarter of a dozen idle brothers avIio had "abandoned 
 " every other visible means of procuring an honest live- 
 " lihood." Does it not all confirm what has been said 
 
 VOL. I. C C
 
 386 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 of destiny in the matter, and connect ^^dtll it, after the 
 manner of the Greeks, the offender's whole helpless 
 family ? "I forgot to tell you," wrote Charles Lamb to 
 Landor nearly twenty years later in an unpublished 
 letter now lying before me, " I knew all your Welsh 
 " annoyancers, the measureless Bethams. I knew a 
 " quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers and 
 " sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. 
 ^^ There was one of them that used to fix his long legs 
 ^' on my fender, and tell a story of a shark, every night, 
 " endless, immortal. How have I gi'udged the salt- 
 " sea ravener not havmg had his gorge of him ! The 
 " shortest of tlie daughters measured five-foot-eleven 
 " without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer 
 " about them. But they were tall. Surely I have 
 " discovered the longitude — " Of course the hero of 
 the shark was Landor's chief tormentor. He had been 
 in the East and in the West Indies ; and, for the sake 
 of the whole family of sharks he was to bring up to have 
 their gorge of Landor, the salt-sea ravener had spared 
 him. 
 
 Southey's answer was written in the midst of family 
 distress. His wife's brother had come to them on a 
 visit, had been suddenly attacked by illness which proved 
 fatal a few days before the date of his letter, and had 
 left everything dismal and comfortless around them. 
 But bitter beyond all was his grief and sur^srise at Be- 
 tham's conduct. Personally he knew little of him, and 
 never meant to recommend him ; but the man certainly 
 had come of a good stock, and if he had not himself 
 implicitly beheved in his honour and honesty he would 
 never in an evil hour have directed him to the Vale of 
 Ewj'as. It was very strange, but misgi\angs about him, 
 though not affecting his honesty, had occurred a few
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PRIVATE DISPUTES. 387 
 
 months ago. He had sent over to Keswick last summer 
 from Abergavenny a verj vulgar fellow with letters of 
 introduction ; and this had given Southey a bad opinion 
 of his taste in companions. 
 
 Southey then talks of the Charitable Doumger. He 
 supposes the heroine to have been drawn from the life, 
 and thinks that as a drama there was a want of incident, 
 and, in that on which the catastrophe depends, of ^vo- 
 bability ; but he had found the dialogue abounding with 
 those felicities that flashed fi-om Landor in prose and 
 verse more than from any other writer. He remembered 
 nothing but Jeremy Taylor that at all resembled them. 
 Jeremy had things as perfect and touching in their kind 
 — but a different kind : the same beauty, the same exqui- 
 site fitness : but not the point and poignancy displayed in 
 the Comedy and the Commentary, or the condensation 
 and strength that characterised Gehir and Count Julian. 
 He goes on then to notice certain neighbourly compli- 
 ments bestowed in the comedy on the town and to^vns- 
 folk of Abergavenny; and, in proof that some good 
 nevertheless might come out of Wales besides flannel 
 and lambswool stockings, instances a book he has been 
 lately reading on eastern history by a Major Price. He 
 adds that in three weeks he is going to London, and 
 that he has given up the Edinburgh Register Avith the 
 fourth volume, having got into bad hands ^dtli it, and 
 being in a fair way of being defrauded; but he does 
 not regret the transaction on the whole. Scott owed 
 him a good turn for that indifferent one, and the lau- 
 reateship now hung within his reach. 
 
 From Lanthony Landor answered in August : upon 
 the personal points first, and after on the comedy. No- 
 thins; can be Avittier than his attack on the old method 
 of comedy-writing, nothing more ingenious than the
 
 388 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 simpler mode he prefers ; but it may be feared that his 
 chances were not gi'eater in the Dowager than they for- 
 merly were in Count Julian of carrying a theatreful of 
 patient listeners along with him. 
 
 " There are two things in your letter which grieve me ; yet 
 perhaps there are hardly any two things that have wider open- 
 ings for consolation. Mrs. Southey will be unhappy at losing 
 her brother, from the great gentleness and pure affections of 
 her nature. You will enter into all these, and come to your 
 own at last. My habits have been more dissipated, and my 
 heart more hardened, than yours could have been by any acci- 
 dents or occurrences of life ; yet nothing can happen to the five 
 or six people I love, whether it be by death or loss of any kind, 
 but I must devise some reasons for them why they must not be 
 unhappy. If you continue the History, I hope and believe 
 there will be little to regret, ultimately, in yovir abandonment 
 of the Edinburgh Register. You have been defrauded : it can- 
 not be of anything which you may not recover by the same 
 means as you acquired it. I have also been defrauded, and 
 have no means whatever of replacing what I have lost. 
 
 " Betham told Addis, my tenant and a very honest man, 
 that he should pay me no rent at all events for four years. 
 Here is between four and five thousand pounds gone by trusting 
 to his honour. I suffered by the same infatuation before. I 
 cannot bring myself to be comforted by Ovid, whose sentences 
 are full of poetry and wisdom, and are his greatest excellence. 
 
 ' Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare ferendum est : 
 Qua; venit indigno poena, dolenda venit.' 
 
 " I wish to improve my comedy, and to have it acted. The 
 acting I never thought of ; but Juan Santos de Murieta, a poor 
 man of Castro who received me hospitably when I found Bilbao 
 in occupation of the French, is perhaps ruined by those bar- 
 barians. I see no speedier way, little speed as there is in this, 
 of sending him some money. If some dashing and adventurous 
 bookseller would give me 100/. or 50/. or 30/. for all I can ever 
 get by the comedy and the preface — which is, I think, a humor- 
 ous specimen of modern editorship — he might recover as much 
 by the mere acting. But not unless you will suggest some im- 
 provement in the plan. I never could keep to any plan of my 
 own. I am romantic, and I am in eternal dread of being ab-
 
 ^T. 30-39-] PRIVATE DISPUTES. 389 
 
 surd. This has often thrown a chill over me, and closed the 
 petals of my fairest flowers. I will add a poi-tion of the Preface, 
 in which I defend, in the character of Hardcastle, my own 
 manner. The editor says : 
 
 " It is far from a hasty or a slight production ; yet the plot, one 
 would imagine, is too simple for the times. Hardcastle has preferred 
 truth to surprise, and character to everything ; for, although the 
 follies and vices he satirises are general enough, still the persons in 
 whom they are rej^resented are choice individuals of their kind. In- 
 tricacy of plot was always considered necessary, and the moi-e so 
 when delicacy was not : it was however so difficult to make the 
 audience keep watch and ward for it, and to command an uninter- 
 rupted attention for five whole acts, that many of the best writers, 
 from Terence to the present times, have combined two entire plots, 
 hoping, as our author expresses it, ' that what is twisted together 
 will untwist together, and leaving a great deal to the goodness of 
 providence and to the faith and charity of their fellow-creatures. 
 Your intricate plotters bring many great changes into many whole 
 families, and sometimes into several and distant countries, within 
 the day ; and what is more difficult and incredible, send off all parties 
 well satisfied. For my own share,' he proceeds, ' I am contented with 
 seeing any one fault wittily rebuked and checked effectually ; and 
 think that surprising enough, considering the time, without the for- 
 mation of attachments, the begetting or finding of children, bicker- 
 ings, buffets, deaths, marriages, distresses ; wealth, poverty ; wealth 
 again, love again, whims and suspicions, shaking heads and shaking 
 hands. All these things are natural ; but one would rather breathe 
 between them, and perhaps woidd think it no bad husbandry to 
 put some of them off to another time. The combination of them, 
 after all, marvellous as it appears, is less difficult to contrive than to 
 credit. I have been an idle man, and have read or attended the 
 greater part of the plays that are extant, and will venture to affirm 
 that there are barely a dozen plots amongst them, comic or tragic ; 
 so that it is evidently an easier matter to run over the usual varia- 
 tions than to keep entirely in another tune and raise no recollections. 
 Both in tragedies and comedies the changes are pretty similar, and 
 nearly in the same places. You perceive the turns and windings of 
 the road a mile before you, and know exactly the precipice down 
 which the hero or heroine must fall : you can discover with your 
 naked eye who does the mischief and who affords the help ; where 
 the assassin bursts out with the dagger, and where the old gentleman 
 shakes the crab-stick over the shoulder of his dissolute nephew. I 
 do not admire these direction -posts to perplexities and intrigues : I 
 oppose this agrarian law, this general-enclosure act : I would not
 
 390 BATH, SPAIX, AXD LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 attempt to square the circle of poetry, and am avowedly a nonjuror 
 to the doctrine of gi-ace and predestination in the drama.' Of the 
 Chai'itable Doivager he says : ' One action leads to and brings about 
 one event, naturally but not necessarily : the action is vicious, the 
 event is desirable, and is accompanied by the chastisement of the 
 evil-doer, whose machinations are the sole means of accomplishmg 
 what their motions seemed calculated to thwart and overthrow. 
 No character is introduced that does not tend towards the develop- 
 ment of the plot, or does not manifest the bent and inclination of 
 the principals : no one is merely a prompter to a witticism, or gen- 
 tleman-usher to a repartee. Characters in general are made sub- 
 servient to the plot : here the plot is made subservient to the cha- 
 racters ; all these are real. I have only invited them to meet, and 
 bestowed on them those abilities for conversation without which a 
 comedy might be very natural, but would not possess the nature of 
 a comedy. I wanted to expose the very peculiarities I have exposed. 
 I could not bring them together in another way. Any one may com- 
 pose a more artificial piece ; but whoever could make the present one 
 more complex, preserving its regularity, its consistency, its truth of 
 character, can do more than I can. I should lose myself in attempt- 
 ing it ; I should lose also whatever I might carry about with me to 
 prove that I am I. Perhaps I should be more like others ; but I 
 should be more visibly their inferior.' " 
 
 " Wiiat is your opinion of my giving acts the name of scenes, 
 and scenes of acts ; and my reasonings on that head in the letter 
 of Hardcastle to his cousin Leonard Dusset — "which I forgot to 
 date, 
 
 ' From my lodgings at the Bath, this 14th of January 1687.' " 
 
 To wliicli may be added a fm-tlier fragment, foimd 
 among liis papers, from tliis mucli-clierislied " editorial" 
 or Hardcastle preface ; pursuing his laugli against the 
 bookmaking of which the principal scene then was 
 Edinbiu'gh and the chief promoter Scott, in whose 
 life may still be read the melancholy page of it dis- 
 closing the story of his commercial partnership ^^'itll 
 Constable and the Ballantynes. That ill-fated partner- 
 ship began some three or four years before this date; 
 since then had followed in rapid succession a series of 
 printing and bookselling ventm'es of which every one is 
 now known to have been a disastrous failure ; and m the
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PEIYATE DISPUTES. 391 
 
 present year there had appeared those letters of jMiss 
 Seward which even Scott was ashamed to have helped 
 in putting forth. Landor, on the other hand, was never 
 verj tolerant of the publishing "craft;" protested all 
 his life (in my judgment properly) against such offices 
 of echting as consisted simply in collecting indiscrimi- 
 nately the worst as well as the best productions of a 
 famous writer, and swelling out even these by needless 
 annotation; and his present humorous attack represented 
 something more than his personal resentment of the 
 mention of himself in the Seward book.* All the jest 
 has perished now ; but these two fragments may tell us 
 with what avidity it was followed at the time, and how 
 little, while the humour of it lasted, Landor is likely to 
 have cared for, or given any proper consideration to, the 
 troubles and losses now darldy closing in upon him. 
 
 " Motto for thk Comedy. 
 Nunc adeo, si ob earn rem vobis mea vita invisa, J*]schine, est, 
 Quia non justa, injusta, prorsus omnia omnino obsequor ; 
 Missa f acio : eff undite, emite, f acite quod vobis lubet. 
 
 Teeent. AdelpTi. cii-c. finem. 
 
 Prefatory Discourse. 
 
 Aia Toxn &p'' aurov koL KaX" ^u ra Spa^ara" 
 
 "OfJ-oia fjlkv Tzoiilv avdjKr] rfj (pvffei, 'Aptarocp, QeffiJ-ocpopid^ovaai. 
 
 Non lo couobbe il mondo mentre V ebbe. Petrarch. 
 
 " The editor of the CJiaritahle Dotvager has waited a con- 
 siderable time in the hope of obtaining two able coadjutors in 
 the departments of annotator and antiquary : for the public is 
 not to be informed, ' at this time of day,' that the office of 
 editing a work is far more difficult and delicate than the mere 
 labour of writing one. Under which conviction men of the 
 most lively genius have toiled through glossaries and archives, 
 with great punctuality and good faith. A few words indeed 
 have slipped inadvertently into their commonplace books — such 
 words however as the most morose of the original writers 
 
 * See ante, pp. 110-12.
 
 392 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 "would willingly resign. With this exception, they have taken 
 nothing ; satisfied with the more honourable reward that the 
 booksellers have promptly and prodigally bestowed. Every 
 author who can be clearly proved to have failed in business 
 by no imprudence in his ventures of wit and no launching out 
 in his expenditure of learning, hath all his books and papers 
 given back, which, although to him perhaps the memories of 
 little but misfortune, may excite the industry or curiosity of 
 others : those works also of the more prosperous, which their 
 modesty or their indifference threw away, have been presented 
 to them again, in the same letter and binding, as their most 
 cherished offspring. Our maxim hath been. If you tahe Isaac, 
 you shall tahe Esau : let each have his Messing. . . . Letters 
 of state, of love, of enmity, are edited in many instances by the 
 same ingenious and celebrated hand, assisted by those literary 
 friends who are most conversant on the dift"erent topics. And 
 he hath taken care, for the consistency and character of the 
 wi'iter, that no asperity shall be softened, no rash assertion re- 
 called, no error of any kind corrected ; resolved that the features 
 of the dead shall not be relaxed by death, and that the passions 
 of the living shall not be irritated by any whom their resent- 
 ments can reach.* . . . Returning to the comedy before us, 
 the reader for the present must regret the volume of notes 
 which at a time perhaps not distant ^viR be appended. Such 
 only can be afforded to this first volume as are requisite to elu- 
 cidate the editor. Nor has it been thought necessary in a 
 preliminary discourse to discuss whether the author were a privy 
 councillor or a puisne judge. One of the name, a Humphrey 
 Hardcastle, was certainly a puisne judge ; but there is reason to 
 suppose it was either the father or son of our comic writer. 
 On a more minute inquiry made by my learned friend Archi- 
 bald Stokes, Esq. of the King's Mews, in the journals of the 
 Privy Council, for which distinguished body I take this oppor- 
 tunity of expressing my esteem and veneration, it hath been 
 discovered that our author was not actually a privy councillor, 
 but was only brought before, and interrogated by, that illustri- 
 ous assembly : not, as it would appear, for any actual misde- 
 meanour, but because those unsettled times requned" — [^Cetera 
 desunt.'] 
 
 * " See the Letters of Miss Anna Seward, in which her consistency 
 is put upon as firm a foundation as her judgment, her genius, or her 
 chastity."
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PraVATE DISPUTES. 393 
 
 To tlie Llanthony letter Soutlicy did not immedi- 
 ately reply, being now in London on the laureate busi- 
 ness ; from this date (October 1813) to the May follow- 
 ing the Llanthony disputes assumed their most serious 
 form, and involved the most disastrous consequences ; 
 yet this is exactly the interval when, judging from 
 Landor's letters to his friend, not his own but the 
 public affiiirs and not his law-pleas but his Latin poems, 
 we might suppose to be receiving his exclusive atten- 
 tion. Assuming that the letter above named had not 
 reached Southey, or that he had not leisure to answer 
 so many things at once, he selects the thing as to 
 which his needs are most pressing. " I really do wish 
 " that my comedy should be both printed and acted. 
 " You alone are capable of giving me any advice that 
 " I am likely to follow in altering the plot. A comedy 
 " must have some bustle ; a tragedy should have none. 
 " The passions will permit no movements but their 
 " own — they should be painted naked, like heroes and 
 " gods. If I can make my comedy worth ten pounds, I 
 " Avill send the money to an honest and generous man 
 " named Juan Santos de ]\Iureta, whose property was 
 " destroyed by the French at Castro. He received me 
 " there most hos[)itably when, on my return from the 
 " frigate which poor Atkins* commanded, I found that 
 " the enemy had entered Bilbao." His friend would 
 observe that he had lowered his hopes from a huficbed 
 pounds to ten ; but seriously he did not at present be- 
 lieve he could, by any exertion, -wi'ite anything for which 
 a bookseller might safely exceed the amount he here 
 mentioned. 
 
 Nor had that letter been dispatched many days 
 before he ■s^Tote again to say that he had been finishing 
 * See ante, p. 228.
 
 394 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 an old scrap of Latin poetiy as usual. " Finishing ! as 
 " usual ! — no, continuing and altering ; tlien eitlier 
 " losing it or lighting a taper with it to seal a letter. 
 ^' Here are a few lines that will give you some idea of 
 *' the present work. I have written about two hun- 
 " dred." And the letter closes ynih forty-three closely 
 transcribed lines of the poem of Corytlms* 
 
 Southey meanwhile had been writing mth some 
 misgivings about the comedy. He began his letter 
 by saying that when in London he had been asked 
 whether he was the author of Count Julian : a question 
 implying a great compliment to him and small discern- 
 ment in the questioner. To his own thinking Landor's 
 notion of tragedy was perhaps too severe ; yet he be- 
 lieved that his friend could write one, that -even in 
 representation might succeed, more easily than he could 
 a comedy ; and very certainly he would find it easier to 
 write a new comedy altogether than to introduce action 
 and bustle into a plan constructed without them. That 
 was his verdict, expressed with all delicacy, on the Dow- 
 ager. Yet had he found in the dialogue of it a peculiar 
 character easier to feel than to analyse. Landor's 
 prose was like his verse ; everywhere terse, condensed, 
 and full of thought; and with flashes of which the 
 thought and the expression were so apt, so happy, and 
 so original, that he knew not where they were to be 
 parallelled, or where anything approaching them was to 
 be found. Corythus he had also read with immense satis- 
 faction : and he reminds Landor of a scheme formerly 
 mentioned by himf of publishing a selection of modern 
 Latin poems with criticisms ; urging him now to carry 
 it out, shoAving how suitable it would be to pubHc 
 
 * It is the fifth of the Idyllia Heroica in Poemata et Inso-'qjtiones, 
 pp. 19-32. And see Hellenics (pp. 174-186). f Ante, p. 220.
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PRIVATE DISPUTES. 395 
 
 schools and universities, and expressing himself san- 
 guine of its success. 
 
 To all this however there is not even allusion in the 
 next of Landor's letters, nor does the Doivager herself 
 appear again ! Occupation upon his Latin verse absorbs 
 him once more, and everything else is as though it 
 had not been. In the pleasm^e of any new composition 
 past disajjpointments were always as quickly forgotten 
 as even present pains and disquietudes. "Valpy the 
 " printer," he now wrote to tell Southey, " the gi-eatest 
 " of all coxcombs, very much wished to print my Latin 
 " poems ; but I have an intention to print them at 
 " Oxford, under the title of Idi/Uia Heroum atque He- 
 " roidimi, in a size hke the sixpenny books of children. 
 " It will cost me 35/; and I intend to give whatever 
 " they sell for, which may amount to about half the 
 " money, to the poor of Leipzig. If I had finished or 
 " preserved my Pohjxena, it would be perhaps the best. 
 " At present they consist of, 1. Cory thus, sive Mors 
 " Paridis atque (Enones. 2. Dri/ojye. 3. Pcm et Pitijs. 
 " 4. Coresus et Calliroe. 5. Helena, ad Pudoris Aram. 
 " I have published nothing that will bear a moment's 
 " comparison with Corythus. My head rises to the 
 " shoulder of Robert Smith, and every other of the 
 " modern Latin poets is below my knee. Such are my 
 " dreams. What poet would tell his as frankly ? or to 
 " whom else could I tell mine?" And he winds up 
 with forty-six more lines of Corythus. 
 
 Yet at this very time the most critical hour of his 
 fortune had come. Out of his great dispute with Be- 
 tham had sprung sundiy minor differences, not merely 
 with people who took Betham's part, but with others 
 having small interest in the tenant but some dislike 
 of the landlord. A state of thino;s had arrived when
 
 396 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONT. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 any one ill-disposed to the master of Llantliony liad 
 means of annoyance at hand which not a few were 
 ready to use. Among them were magistrates, clerical 
 and lay, Avith the old grand-jury grudge against him ; 
 small farmers with rents overdue, "na'Iio fancied they saw 
 advantage to themselves in his disadvantage ; labourers 
 to whom honest work was hateful, but eager for any 
 amount of labour that Avas vicious or mischievoiTS ; and 
 (not least though last) attorney's sharp enough to tm'n 
 to bitterness every hasty act or ill-considered word. 
 Landor s chief pride, his plantations, supplied generally 
 the ground of attack. His trees were uprooted, and 
 his timber stolen ; and upon the rare occasions when 
 offenders were caught, sympathising magistrates ad- 
 mitted them to bail. Against one desperate fellow he 
 had to swear that he was in personal danger ; but 
 though the magistrate who first heard the case di- 
 rected the man's committal, ten pounds were subse- 
 quently thought bail sufficient to justify his release.* 
 
 * To the magistrate who accepted the bail, Mr. Richard Lewis of 
 Llandilo, Landor wrote : " The threats Avere not such as any one who 
 " cared for me could hear without alarm. It was the conversation 
 " of the parish that he had resolved to murder me. My wife, who 
 " heard this repeatedly from the servants, the tenants, and the 
 " workmen, was afraid to leave the house even for exercise. To 
 " quiet her alarms I at last swore the peace against him. That my 
 " own are not liable to be quite so easily excited, I am ready to 
 " i^rove before any man who has at once the baseness to traduce me, 
 " the impudence to affront me, and the spirit to meet me. I really 
 " do think however that the hazard of my life is worth more than the 
 " hazard of ten pounds." The closing sentences of the letter are too 
 good to be lost : " Lot me entreat of you, sir, to reconsider your con- 
 " duct. I do not look for any acknowledgment of error ; such is made 
 " only by ingenuous and well-regulated minds, and requires a degree 
 " of magnanimity to which self-importance and self-delusion are 
 " strangers. But I do hope, if not for your credit and reputation, at 
 " least for your comfort and repose, that you will never in future 
 " court a transient popularity with the ignorant and the wicked at
 
 ^T. 30-39.] rrJVATE DISPUTES. 397 
 
 This fellow soon after cbank himself to death at Aber- 
 gavenny; and by the Mr. P. whose acquaintance has 
 before been made by the reader,* Landor was accnsed 
 of having cansed his death : but the accuser was ac- 
 quitted when Landor prosecuted him for slander. On 
 the other hand, when one of Betham's brothers had 
 been overheard to threaten that certain trees alleged to 
 have been planted disadvantageously to his brother's 
 farm should be removed, and Landor posted the fact 
 in a handbill charging him by name as meditating 
 felony and offering reward for his apprehension, the 
 tlireatener recovered damages against Landor for libel. 
 Another of the brothers with sporting tastes had taken 
 up with congenial associates of whom the most pro- 
 minent was a notorious poacher, son of the keeper of 
 the village alehouse ; and this party, according to Lan- 
 dor, " with dogs of all descriptions and as many guns as 
 " they could procure, sported over several of my farms, 
 " destroyed my game, and dined upon it at the alehouse 
 " afterwards." Out of this arose a third lawsuit, which 
 ended in an apology; and when, for the fourth time, 
 Landor went into the court-house at Abergavenny to 
 give evidence against a man upon trial for stealing 
 property belonging to him, he protested that if he had 
 been the thief in the dock he could not have been 
 treated worse than he was in the witness-box by the 
 cross-examining counsel. 
 
 Of some of these and other kindred matters, apart 
 from the gi'aver suit in progress against the elder 
 Betham, Southey appears to have inquired with great 
 
 the expense of that lasting peace of nihid which a conscientious 
 discharge of your duties will impart — at a period of life, too, when 
 such feelings are most requisite, and such rewards most welcome." 
 * In the letter to Baron Thompson, ante, p. 33G.
 
 398 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 concern upon reading a paragraph in one of the Bristol 
 papers. " I burst into a loud fit of laughter," was 
 Landor's reply, " at hearing that I was likely to be 
 " made an outlaw. One Moseley, who had broken all 
 " the principal restrictions of his lease, and had even 
 " taken up and sold to one Fredericks of Crickhowel 
 " the new quick fences of his farm, moved me to pity 
 " by the number and greatness of his family ; and in- 
 " stead of recovering two or three hundred pounds 
 " damages, I gave that sum for his resignation. Des- 
 " cury had bought oats, &c. and even all his stock, at 
 " double the value. Near four years afterwards, dur- 
 " ing all which time his family wanted bread, he is 
 " persuaded by some of his friends to bring in a bill 
 " against me of 18^, although every bill was always 
 " paid instantly, and although a settlement was made 
 " for all demands on his quitting the estate. I received 
 " an impertinent note from Hugh Jones, his attorney 
 " at Abergavenny, in reply to which I stated the cir- 
 " cumstances as above, and the utter improbability 
 " that I could be in his debt, or that so poor a man 
 " could permit it for such a length of time. The s^me 
 " Jones had incited a poacher to take a false oath 
 " against me, as the poacher declared to my servants in 
 " the presence of two respectable tenants. I reminded 
 " him of all this, and treated him as he deserved. He 
 " brought a criminal action against me. The grand 
 " jury of com'se brought in a true bill. Yet the fellow 
 " was ashamed, and proposed to accommodate the mat- 
 " ter by the intervention of two arbiters. They decided 
 " that I should write an apology for what was unlawful, 
 " and prescribed the form. He afterwards refused to 
 " comply with their decision, which was contained m 
 " the form, and which stated that, the offence being of a
 
 ^T. 30-39.] PEIVATE DISPUTES. 399 
 
 " private nature, tlie apology should not be made public. 
 " I shall be cited to take my trial at ISIonmoutli ; and 
 " as I certainly shall not appear, I shall be outlawed. 
 " That is the meaning of the paragraph. Again, a 
 " fellow of most notoriously bad character who has been 
 " tried for more than one crime, a fellow who collects 
 " the window-tax, was the friend of one Toombes who 
 " took a farm of me of 300^. a year and never paid one 
 " farthing, but ran away and lived at Abergavenny 
 " where he killed himself by drinking brandy; and 
 " that tax-collecting fellow, merely to insult me, took 
 " occasion to come up to me and inqmi'e aloud of a 
 " person with whom he was walking whether I was 
 " the person who mmxlered poor Toombes. He then 
 " followed me into the office of my attorney Mr. Gabb, 
 " and on my demandmg of him whether he asked that 
 " question of me^ he said * Yes,' and that his friend 
 " had answered in the affirmative. Well, I brought my 
 " action, as the magistrate, Islx. Powell, recommended. 
 " The juiy w^ere unanimously of opinion that he asked 
 " only for the* sake of information, and found him not 
 " guilty. You perceive what chance I have of justice, 
 " and how subject I am both to robbery and insult. 
 " When the materials of my house were stolen, and 
 " when the thief ran away from the constable and hid 
 " (in a ditch) the wood which the constable was making 
 " him carry as evidence of his theft, I was treated by 
 " Mr. Taunton, his counsel, with much more violence 
 " than any criminal. Our laws protect none but the 
 " guilty. I would not encounter the rudeness I ex- 
 " perienced from this Taunton to save all the property 
 " I possess. I have however chastised him in my Latin 
 " poetry now m the press. I heard accidentally, from 
 " ]\Ir. Hawldns of Pembroke-college, a little anecdote
 
 400 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " which sliall not be veiy soon forgotten of this fellow 
 " Taunton." 
 
 That was his comfort, and not an inconsiderable one. 
 He chastised Taunton (afterwards the judge) in Latin 
 poetry, and, what was more to the purpose, in such 
 English as Swift might have written.* Many are the 
 passages in the " E})istle to a Barrister" worthy still of 
 preservation, and noAV to be read, by such as have read 
 the foregoing, with a proper understanding of their sar- 
 casm and wit. 
 
 " Two badger eyes has Themis ; one 
 Is always leering toward the throne ; 
 The other wanders this way, that way, 
 But sees the gap and leaves the gateway. 
 
 My sheep are flayed ; the flayer bears 
 
 The best of names, our vicar swears. 
 
 And why reproach the mild divine ? 
 
 He loves his flock, his flock loves mine. 
 
 My timber stolen, could I know 
 
 The mark I made a month ago ? 
 
 My barns cleared out ; my house burnt down ; 
 
 Could the whole loss exceed a crown ? 
 
 Shame ! are such trifles worth my cares 1 
 
 I'm. freed from rats and from repairs ! 
 
 A year is past ; I beg my rent : 
 
 I must mistake — that ivas not meant. 
 
 I tarrj' on : two years elapse : 
 
 The halance may be theirs 2>erhaj}s. 
 
 For insolent requests like these, 
 
 Their gentle hands ujiroot my trees ; 
 
 While those, they told me hurt their grain, 
 
 I fell, their gentle hands detain. . . 
 
 Of late a sort of suitor there is 
 
 "Who courts a horsewhip like an heiress. 
 
 * For a specimen of the Latin verse the reader may be referred 
 to some Iambics '• Ad Causidicum" in the Poemata et Inscriptiones, 
 p. 180.
 
 ^T, 30-39-] PEIYATE DISPUTES. 401 
 
 Kick him . . not Midas would enrich 
 
 With surer stroke the flaccid breech ; 
 
 The blow above reiterate . , 
 
 A broken head's a good estate ; 
 
 Add Swindler . . and behold, next minute 
 
 He's out of jail, and you are in it !" 
 
 Nor less terse and whimsical are the lines descriptive 
 of Welsh witnesses and magistrates; the "Dick Loose" 
 being the Mr. Richard Lewis of Llandilo who liberated 
 on bail the man whom another magistrate had commit- 
 ted for threats of personal violence. 
 
 " The land that rears sure-footed ponies 
 Eears surer-footed testimonies. 
 And every neighbour, staunch and true, 
 Sv.-ears, and Got i)less licr ! what will do. 
 Exclaim ' A perjury P and you libel . , 
 Each his own way may use his Bible, 
 Else how is ours a freeborn nation 
 Or wherefor was the Reformation ? 
 If you demand 5'Our debts, beware, 
 But, robb'd, cry ' Uohhers !' if you dare : 
 You only lost a farm of late. 
 Stir, and you pay your whole estate : 
 Expose their villanies, Dick Loose 
 Will shudder at the gross abuse. 
 Free them from prison on their bail. 
 And pledge them in his mellowest ale. 
 
 Here all but Innocence may trust, 
 And all find Justice but the Just." 
 
 Landor had left Llanthony and was in his house 
 in Batli when tlie action of libel which Mr. Frede- 
 rick Betham had brought for the handbill was decided 
 against him : and thereupon, in graver mood than that 
 which had suggested the poetical attack on ]\Ir. Taun- 
 ton, he addressed a letter to the plaintiff's counsel ^Ir. 
 Jcrvis (afterwards the chief-justice), by whose unscru- 
 pulous attack upon himself the case had mainly been 
 decided ; and from whom he hoped by this means to 
 VOL. I. D D
 
 402 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 elicit an expression of regret for the language lie had 
 used, failing which he told him he should consider him 
 as a calumniator in whatever spot ujdou the earth they 
 might meet, except in the courts miscalled of justice 
 " where calumny is sanctioned by custom, and insolence 
 " has the protection of the laws." From this letter, 
 which he printed, a few brief passages will tell what- 
 ever else may need to be told of these painful matters ; 
 and it is only just to my old friend that I should pre- 
 face them with the maniiscript note appended to the 
 copy of the printed letter transmitted to Southey, who 
 made himself in consequence some inquiry into the case, 
 and, friendly as he still continued with several of the 
 family of the Bethams, declared himself satisfied that 
 these averments were true. 
 
 In the course of the letter to IVIr. Jervis it is stated 
 that no landlord had ever acted wdth greater Idndness 
 than he had done to the family which had so WTonged 
 him ; and it was to that remark the note following was 
 made for Southey. 
 
 " I thought it better to omit the numerous instances I had 
 brought to my recollection, as the statement of grievances was 
 long enough without any statement of ingratitude. 
 
 " 1. I had given 200/. for ornamenting the house heyond 
 what I engaged for. 
 
 " 2. I allowed timber for ploughs, carts, waggons, sheep- 
 folds, &c. also beyond my engagement. 
 
 " 3. I gave a cottage and nearly an acre of land, to be added 
 to the farm without rent, which cottage he offered for sale as 
 his freehold. 
 
 " 4. I offered another and a greater quantity of land to fa- 
 cilitate the exchange of part of a field with a tenant of the 
 manor, that some draining might be done at less expense. 
 
 " 5. He had so little sense of delicacy as to apply repeatedly 
 to my gardener to have my garden of between two and three 
 acres. To accommodate him, I consented to exchange it, to- 
 gether with a niu'sery which he also wanted, for a less quantity
 
 ^T. 30-39.J PKIVATE DISPUTES. 403 
 
 of ground, above 200 feet liiglier and mucli more exposed ; and 
 as it was impossible to remove the trees from the nursery at 
 that season of the year, and he expressed a strong desire to 
 have the garden, I gave it up to him, and accepted no com- 
 pensation whatsoever. I did not accept, nor did he ask me, 
 any of the small quantity of land which was to be exchianged 
 for it, until I could also give up the nursery. Yet he has the 
 inconceivable baseness to state to the Court of Exchequer that 
 I did not fulfil my agreement with him in this particular ! 
 
 " 6. On hearing that the father was likely to occupy one of 
 the farms, I offered him the next presentation to two Livings. 
 He never thanked me ! On my asking whether he was likely 
 to reside in the parish, he cooUy replied, ' he believed he was 
 ' as well where he was.' I had afterwards reason to be of the 
 same opinion. He admired a smaU picture at my house of 
 trifling value, and I gave it to him. He promised to send me 
 a book he had written on the Baronetage of England, but for- 
 got it. No differences at that time existed between his son and 
 me, nor until several months afterwards. Mr. Lisle Bowles 
 tells me of a letter which he wrote to the late Marquis of Lans- 
 downe, in which he strongly urges his subscription to the Baronet- 
 age book with some cogent reasons for it from the character of 
 the minister his father." 
 
 From the letter itself few extracts will suffice. 
 Making all allowance for vivacity of statement, they 
 a;ive so startling a picture of what the life in these latter 
 days at Llanthony must have been that but for what 
 formerly has been said of the practical withdrawal of jus- 
 tice from the district, and of the condition of the lower 
 orders of Welsh at that time, it might seem wholly 
 incredible. Landor describes the annoyances practised 
 against him on system by the Bethams. 
 
 " It was customary for this person, whom it appears I have 
 so traduced and disparaged, to stand upon a gate-post, with his 
 brother, for the purpose of looking into my dining-room, and 
 when I walked out, to thrust some notice into my hands or face : 
 this he did in the presence of Mrs. Landor, after following us 
 through our pleasure -gi'ounds. He and some other of the most 
 disorderly people in the parish surrounded the house after ten
 
 404 BATH, SPAIX, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 o'clock at night on such pretences, and some one attempted to 
 force open the door. On another occasion he aimed a bayonet 
 at the wife of my gamekeeper. In consequence of these pro- 
 ceedings, which were varied every day, neither I nor my family 
 could reside any longer in the country. On the purchase and 
 improvement of Llanthony I had laid out between sixty and 
 seventy thousand pounds, and I employed for many years from 
 twenty to thirty labom'ers in building and planting. I have 
 planted and fenced half a million of trees : a million moi'e are 
 lost to the country by di'iving me from it. I may speak of tlicir 
 utility, if I must not mention my own." 
 
 A subsequent passage supplies furtlier illustration. 
 
 " I had planted a great number of stocks for orchard ; they 
 were of large size, and brought fi'om Hereford at considerable 
 expense : he promised to preserve them — thej' are all ruined ! I 
 had planted many ornamental trees near the Abbey ; the fences 
 were broken down at night, and my keeper forbidden to replace 
 them ! I collected together some of the hewn and ornamental 
 stones belonging to the Abbey ; the Bethams came into my 
 court-yard, and threw them into the road they were making. 
 They took down a saw-pit on the waste ground opposite then' 
 house, which had been used in common by the tenants of the 
 estate from beyond the memoxy of man ; they threw my timber 
 into the road, and placed the posts of the saw-pit in dii'ect view 
 of my drawing-room and library windows, for the purpose, as 
 they expressed themselves, of annoying me ; and they passed no 
 inconsiderable portion of then- time in looking through my 
 "windows from this place, which was within eighty yards." 
 
 Soutliey had professed little hope of Betham's fann- 
 ing from the first, but he declared himself not less dis- 
 mayed than his friend at the picture here presented 
 of it. 
 
 " The one who rents under me told me on his fii-st coming 
 that he intended to lay out a capital of from 4 to 5000/. on the 
 farm ; but he told Francis Robbins a few weeks afterwards that 
 if he had 4000/. he never would be a farmer. He promised to 
 introduce the Suffolk husbandry, with an intelligent bailiff : 
 and for the sake of this example, I consented to let him a farm 
 within a few pounds of 1000/. per ann. He broke his promises
 
 ^T. 30-39-] nilYATE DISPUTES. 405 
 
 to his bailiff, Tvlioin lie induced to come into Monmouthshire 
 with his wife and child, and who threatened soon afterwards, 
 as many others have done for want of their wages being paid 
 to them mouth after month, to come upon the parish. An old 
 miller, a very industrious and honest man, was obliged to com- 
 promise or starve, and he had to consent to take a part only of 
 the money for which he was engaged : others, when they applied 
 for money, were referred to the devil with their wives and 
 families, while these brothers had their two bottles of wine 
 upon the table. As for the Suffolk system of agriculture, wheat 
 was sown upon the last of May, and cabbages for winter food 
 were planted in August or September," 
 
 To these may be added tlie passage in wliicli Landor 
 stated his excuses for the act which the hiw had pro- 
 nounced to be a hbeL 
 
 " I considered the rooting up of my trees as a felony. I did 
 not know that threatening to root them up lessened the crime, 
 when a threat to injure any one, in general, is thought to aggra- 
 vate it. It was the opinion of Mr. Phillimore that this Betham 
 should be prosecuted for a felony under the Black Act, and the 
 Rev. Mr. Davies, of Court-y-gollen, a most intelligent and up- 
 right magistrate, declared that he would commit him whenever 
 I could bring forth witnesses of the fact. If I erred in my 
 opinion as to the extent of the crime, I erred in common both 
 with a most discreet and excellent magistrate, and with a most 
 dispassionate and learned counsellor. Yet you have had the 
 insolence to declare in a com^t of j ustice that I acted unlike a 
 man of honour and a gentleman. Was it not natural that a 
 man who had planted more than half a million of trees, and 
 who had double that number ready to plant, should take the 
 most prompt and efficacious measures to detect and expose so 
 wanton and criminal a destroyer ? When you assert that I 
 condescended to become a bill-stickei", you again assert an un- 
 truth. The crime committed by Frederick Betham was dis- 
 tinguished from a felony by a very slight shade of difference : 
 the error on my part was an error in law only, or rather in the 
 nomenclature of law. No court could even have taken cogni- 
 sance of it, if the woxd felony had not been prefixed to the offer 
 of reward." 
 
 But the most impressive point made in the letter
 
 406 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 was at its close, when Landor, to illustrate tlie veracity 
 of a statement of liis adversaries that so far from having 
 any claim upon them, he was actually in theu' deht, 
 described drily and without comment the result of the 
 action for rent which he had brought against his default- 
 ing tenant. "The Com-t of Exchequer has overriJed 
 " the whole of theu' exceptions, dissolved the injunction, 
 " and awarded to me every fartlmig of my demand, to 
 " the amount of one thousand nine hundred and sixty- 
 " eight pounds seventeen shilHngs and sixj^ence." 
 
 Such indeed was the decision of the Exchequer upon 
 the leading matter m dispute. All the lesser differences 
 sprang out of it, the life at Llanthony had been embit- 
 tered and broken up by it, and now one of the highest 
 courts of the realm declared Lander's claim to be just. 
 But the help this might have given opportunely came 
 now too late. As he bitterly said on recei-vdng it, ' The 
 ^ laws that permit a man to be deprived of his property 
 
 * for two years may restore it to him when it is worth- 
 ' less — but better order him at once to be staiwed in an 
 
 * iron cage.' The delays which his adversary had been 
 permitted to intei'pose, and the facihties afforded him 
 even after this verdict to intercept its immediate opera- 
 tion, were fatal to Landor. He had already quitted 
 Llanthony, and was now making preparation to depart 
 from England. 
 
 Xn. Departure from England. 
 
 Li the middle of May 1814 Landor had taken the 
 resolution to quit England, and on the 16th he commu- 
 nicated his intention to Southey. Writing from Swan- 
 sea he told him that two conditions would regulate the 
 exact time of his going. When Mr. Jervis had made
 
 ^T. 30-39.] DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND. 407 
 
 up his mind wlietlier or not to notice liis letter; and 
 wlien the Oxford printers should have finished his Latin 
 poems, of which the profits (if there should happen to 
 be any) were to go to the sufferers of Leipzig; he would 
 remove from his country for ever. 
 
 His intention and its motive will be best described 
 by himself. "I must borrow at 15 per cent by annuity, 
 " as I have no other means, my estate being settled ; 
 " and my property is worth 2001. a year less, even if I 
 " get these fellows out. I expect to lose at least 2000/. 
 " besides the 2001. a year and law expenses; for they 
 " have squandered away whatever they had by mar- 
 " riage or otherwise. The sister has told innumerable 
 " falsehoods to Lady Beddmgfield and others, but I 
 " trust the decree of the Court of Exchequer will suf- 
 " ficiently expose the principal one. I pray to God I 
 " may see you before I go abroad. I remain here ten 
 " days. I spend three weeks with my mother, part at 
 " Warwick, part at Ipsley-court near Redditch ; or, if 
 " the weather continues so cold as it is, all the time at 
 " Warwick. After that, I go to France. I am trying 
 " to sell my life-interest in the Llanthony estate. If I 
 " get 30,000/. I shall be contented. The pm-chaser, for 
 " about 3000Z. more, might buy up the lifeholds, and 
 " make a clear income of 3000Z. per annum." 
 
 Southey had not replied to these painful tidings when 
 the Weymouth post of the 27th May took him Lander's 
 last letter from England, and with it more startKng an- 
 nouncements. "Every hope of meeting you again in 
 " England has vanished. Pardon me if this is only the 
 " second of my wishes. My first is, that I may become 
 " by degrees indifferent to this comitiy. The Com't of 
 " Exchequer has decided in my favour; but Betliam 
 " has been able to promise bail and a replevy, so that the
 
 408 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 " ends of justice are defeated. Nearly three years' rent 
 
 " will be due before I can receive one fartliing from 
 
 " him ; and all my timber is spoiled. I shall be utterly 
 
 " ruined. Not beincr able to pay the interest of 10,000^. 
 
 " debt on the Llanthony estate, the mortgagee will im- 
 
 " mediately seize on it until he has paid himself the 
 
 " whole of the principal. The laws of England are 
 
 " made entirely for the protection of guilt. A creditor 
 
 " could imprison me for twenty pomids, while a man 
 
 " who owes me two thousand, and keeps me from the 
 
 " possession of two thousand more, can convert wealth 
 
 " and affluence into poverty and distress — can, in short, 
 
 " di'ive me for ever from my native country, and riot 
 
 " with impunity on the ruins of my estate. I had pro- 
 
 " mised ray mother to visit her. I never can hope to 
 
 " see her again. She is 72, and her sorrow at my 
 
 " overwhelming and most unmerited misfortunes vnW too 
 
 " surely shorten her days. !My wife, when she married 
 
 " me, httle thought she should leave all her friends to 
 
 " live in obscurity and perhaps in want. For my sake 
 
 " she refused one of the largest fortunes that any pri- 
 
 " vate gentleman possesses, and another person of dis- 
 
 " tino;uished rank. Whoever comes near me is either 
 
 " unhappy or ungrateful. There is no act of forbearance 
 
 " or of kindness which Betham did not receive from 
 
 " me. His father saw, and knew perfectly, that his 
 
 " farming must ruin him. Yet, instead of persuading 
 
 " him to resign it, he sent the remainder of his family 
 
 " to live with him, and to countenance him in all his 
 
 " violence and roguery. I go to-morrow to St. Malo. 
 
 " In what part of France I shall end my days, I know 
 
 " not, but there I shall end them ; and God grant that 
 
 " I may end them speedily, and so as to leave as little 
 
 " sorrow as possible to my friends. No time will alter
 
 ^T. 30-39.1 DEPAKTUEE FROM ENGLAND. 409 
 
 " my regard and veneration for you : nor shall anything 
 '• lessen the kind sentiments you entertain for me. It 
 " is a great privilege to hold the hearts of the ^^rtuous. 
 " If men in general knew how great it is, could they 
 " ever consent to abandon it ? I am alone here. My 
 " wife follows me, when I have found a place fit for her 
 " reception. Adieu." 
 
 To the first of these letters Southey, sending at the 
 same time the close of the MS. of Hoderick, had replied 
 before the second reached him; earnestly dissuading from 
 the project of selling Llanthony, and advising that his 
 friend should go abroad for a time only : not as an emi- 
 grant, but as a guest or stranger. " A few years might 
 " be pleasantly passed on the Continent, while your pro- 
 " perty is vested in England ; but not if you went with 
 " a purpose of not returning. My own intention is to 
 " take my family abroad at the expiration of the first 
 " term of my lease, if I can compass the means. The 
 " difference of living will probably balance the expense 
 " of the journey, and my young ones will pick up lan- 
 " guages while I enjoy a genial climate. But a few 
 " years, a very few, would sufiice : for the older we 
 " grow the dearer those old ties become which time 
 " has spared. I grant there is vexation enough in our 
 " laws ; but take it for all in all, there is no country in 
 " which a man lives with so little annoyance from the 
 " government." The rest of the letter was about Ho- 
 derick and the death of Dan vers : " one of my oldest 
 " and dearest friends, at whose lodgings I first saw you. 
 " I loved him Avitli my whole heart, and scarcely any 
 " loss could have womided me so deeply." 
 
 But though Southey wrote only one day later than 
 his friend had last written to him, Landor was ah'eady 
 gone. Two brief notes will tell their own stoiy.
 
 410 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Robert Landor to Southey. 
 
 " Sir, It is proper to inform you that two letters intended 
 for my brother, with the Keswick postmark, are lying at War- 
 wick. We are not aware that he has any other correspondent 
 in that neighbourhood besides yourself. You will pardon me if 
 it should be otherwise. My brother was indeed expected at 
 Warwick. He is in France. I feel no hesitation in commu- 
 nicating what we are anxious to conceal from every other per- 
 son, that he left this country under circumstances the most 
 perplexing to his family, and with feelings the most unhappy 
 for himself. We cannot forward the letters in question because 
 we are ignorant of every other particular relating to him ex- 
 cepting his arrival. Hitherto we have waited in the expectation 
 that we might hear from him and learn his address. We do not 
 return the letters because we are by no means certain that they 
 are from you, and because we still hope that they may be sent 
 to France shortly. It is right however that you should learn 
 why they have not been answered, and that you should have 
 the power to determine in what manner we shall dispose of 
 them. I am, su', with the greatest sincerity and respect, your 
 obedient servant, Robert E. Landor. 
 
 "Warwick, Monday, June 27th, 1814." 
 
 Southey to Robert Landor. 
 
 " Keswick, 4 July 1814. 
 " Sir, The letters concerning which you have done me the 
 favom' to write are from me. They contain parts of a long 
 poem which I used to take pleasure in transcribing for your 
 brother's perusal, and some attempts at dissuading him from a 
 resolution which he had communicated to me of quitting Eng- 
 land for ever. A few days after they were despatched I received 
 a letter from him from Weymouth, explaining the causes of his 
 departure in a manner which I sincerely hope the natural 
 warmth of his mind has made him overcharge. The whole 
 affair has given me gi-eat uneasiness, and the more because I 
 cannot but feel that I have been, very innocently, instrumental 
 in it, having been the means of introducing Betham to him. 
 May I request you to inform me of his address as soon as you 
 are acquainted with it. I am, sir, with great respect, your obe- 
 dient humble servant, Robert Southey." 
 
 Wliat happened in the inten^al of nearly three months
 
 ^T. 30-39. ] DEPAETUEE FEOM ENGLAND. 411 
 
 before Southey again knew anything of his friend, it is 
 not strictly incumbent on me here to tell ; but no pain 
 can be caused by the brief description I shall give of it, 
 and there are points of character involved that it may not 
 be right to omit. Yet even so much reference to it will 
 not be easy. Disagi'eements between husband and wife 
 are very delicate to the touch ; and I have the example 
 to encourage or deter me of the biographer of one of 
 Landor's brother poets, who laid it down as an esta- 
 blished truth that a man of the highest order of genius 
 must in the unavoidable nature of things quarrel with 
 his wife.* That however is hardly my view, and the 
 facts wdll not carry off my hero so handsomely. It is 
 rather to show that genius has no immunity from the 
 conditions on which all kinds of happiness rest, that 
 domestic differences springing solely from faults of tem- 
 per are the subject of passing mention here. 
 
 Landor had gone first to Jersey ; and while staying 
 at this place, where he was joined immediately by Mrs. 
 Landor and one of her sisters, the expressed intention of 
 taking up permanent abode in France led to frequent 
 disagreement. The one, having made up his mind, 
 could not bear that the matter should be talked of; the 
 other, having equally made up her mind, could talk of 
 nothing else ; and " a pleasant sort of thing truly, that 
 " you are never to be contradicted !" was the usual and 
 only reply to entreaties, repeated again and again, that 
 she would not drive him to distraction. The usual charges 
 and retorts succeeded ; the harsher followed the lighter 
 word; what, even while it provoked, had been attrac- 
 tive, became provoldng without the attractiveness ; and 
 at last, in the presence of the sister, such allusion was 
 made to the difference of years between them as Lan- 
 * Moore's Life of Byron, passim.
 
 412 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14, 
 
 dor interpreted into deliberate insult, and resolved there- 
 upon to leave her. He was up at four o'clock the next 
 morning, and before midday, having walked to the 
 other part of the island, was sailing on board an oyster- 
 boat for France. From Tours, on the 2d of October, 
 he wrote and told Southey what had happened. He 
 was ignorant then that his wife's elder sister had al- 
 ready written to acquaint him with his wife's extreme 
 grief and very serious illness ; but this is the subject of 
 his next letter to his friend, written at the opening of 
 1815, in which he says that it had at once banished 
 from his mind all traces of resentment, and that he had 
 written instantly to comfort and console her. As soon 
 as her health and the weather admitted of her joining 
 him, he added, he was to meet her in England, where 
 he shoidd stay only two days ; and his closing assm'- 
 ance that Southey would receive his Latin poems in a 
 fortnight has amusinc; confirmation in what one of his 
 brothers soon afterwards wrote to his mother about this 
 unhappy domestic dispute : " When we supposed him to 
 " be so miserable at Tours after parting with his wife, 
 " he was busy about a long Latin poem on the Death 
 " of Ulysses r 
 
 The reader will now understand the allusions to 
 the incident in the extracts that follow from letters to 
 Southey. 
 
 Tours : Oct. 2, 1814 : A Domestic Quarrel. 
 
 " How many sad events have crowded into a life already full 
 and overflowing with them, between the writing and the arrival 
 of your letter ! My brain seems to be heaving on an ocean of 
 fire when I attempt to recollect what I would say. Julia had 
 long shown a disinclination to quit this country, and hardly a 
 day elapsed without some expression, more or less energetic, of 
 her sentiments. I subdued my temper — the worst beyond com- 
 parison that ever man was cursed with — remembering the rank 
 and fortune she had refused for my sake, and the content and
 
 ^T. 30-39-] DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND. 413 
 
 moderation she had always preserved in the midst of privacy 
 and seclusion. We had passed above a month at Jersey, and in 
 another day were about to sail for Fi'ance. Her little sister was 
 with us." [The cu'cumstances of the quarrel are then described : 
 arising from an ordinary dispute, but embittered by the lan- 
 guage which Mrs. Landor is alleged to have permitted herself 
 to employ.] " All these things, with a thousand variations, both 
 of anger and mockery, and all of them turning upon what she 
 declared to have been her own fault in marrying such an old 
 man, made her little sister burst into tears. Julia told her not 
 to be such a fool as to cry ; that if she cried, it certainly shoidd 
 not be about me. I endured all this a full hour and a half 
 without a syllable of reply ; but every kind and tender senti- 
 ment was rooted up from my heart for ever. , . . No woman 
 could or ought to live with a man by whom such language 
 was merited : nor could any man support life with a woman 
 from whom it fell undeserved. I remained broad awake, as 
 I firmly believe, and yet I had a succession of dreams, rapid, 
 incoherent, and involuntary. I rose at four. I walked to the 
 other part of the island, and embarked alone, on board of an 
 oyster-boat, for France. It was this very day mouth. I am 
 resolved to see her no more. I wish to have only IGOZ. a year 
 for myself. It is enough. I have neither wife nor family, nor 
 house nor home, nor pursuit nor occupation. Every man alive 
 will blame me ; many wiU calumniate me ; and aU will cherish 
 and rejoice in the calumny. This is natural on all occasions, 
 but more so here ; for who will believe that, where there are 
 such smiles and spirits, there can be such an itch for tormenting, 
 such rudeness, such contradiction and obstinacy ? All that were 
 not unjust to me before will be made unjust to me by her. A 
 thousand times have I implored her not to drive me to distrac- 
 tion ; to be contented if I acknowledged myself in the wi'ong ; to 
 permit me to be at once of her opinion, and not to think a con- 
 versation incomplete without a quarrel. The usual reply was, 
 ' A pleasant sort of thing truly, that you are never to be contra- 
 ' dieted !' As if it were extraordinary and strange that one 
 should wish to avoid it. She never was aware that more can be 
 said in one minute than can be forgotten in a lifetime. For 
 the sake of exercising her ingenuity and of improving my tem- 
 per, she wiU cause me to die among strangers and probably in a 
 madhouse. She gave me my first headache, which every h-rita- 
 tion renews. It is an affection of the brain only, and it an-
 
 414 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 nounces to me that my end mil be the most miserable and the 
 most humiliating. I wish I could acquire all the heartless pro- 
 fligacy of this people — that I could be anything, good or bad, 
 dead or alive, but what I am." 
 
 Close of same Letter. 
 
 " Never shall I spend so delightful an evening as when we 
 met at the house of poor Mr. Danvers. I called on him twice, 
 but never saw him afterwards. I shaU think of his death many 
 houi's this night, and envy it many in future. There is in the 
 first of your letters — for both have reached me together and 
 but this morning — something that raises my hopes and gives me 
 a glimpse of comfort : the idea that you will one day come into 
 France. Do not forget to tell me in your next when is the 
 expiration of the lease. The cUmate here is delicious. I cannot 
 say much for either the town or country, which many travellers 
 have admu'ed. There is not one great or shady tree within 
 view, even from the towers of the cathedral, and the river is 
 fuU of sand-banks. These, and the poplars, give a sad paleness 
 to the scene, which is covered too with square white walls and 
 ragged vineyards. Vines are sometimes pretty enough ; but a 
 vineyard is always ugly I think, unless when it hides the naked- 
 ness of a hill destitute of form and grandeur. I live in a tower, 
 with a large and shady garden, where I intend to be bm-ied, if I 
 die here. Adieu. May you enjoy aU happiness — as much as 
 I have lost ! or rather as much as I fancied I had found !" 
 
 Grateful for the Sympathy of Southey : Tours, 
 Nov. 4, 1814. 
 
 " There is more kindness in one sentence of your letter than 
 I have received fi'om all quarters of the world from my birth 
 to the present horn'. I have often thought of your happiness, 
 and enjoyed a portion of it in the thought itself ; but the tem- 
 pest that drove me into France prohibits my return, and the 
 halcyons will never make their nests on the seas that I must 
 traverse." 
 
 Threatened with Outlawry : Same Place and Date. 
 
 " I can lose nothing by gutlawry. Whoever chooses to take 
 any part of my property can only do what he could do before 
 with the same impunity. I am told that aU my woods and 
 plantations are laid waste; tlu-ee hundred thousand trees are
 
 ^T. 30-39.] DEPAETURE FE03I ENGLAND. 415 
 
 lost — but not to me ; nor have I room for any more vexations. 
 It is not improbable that in the spring I shall go into the north 
 of Italy, for this place begins to be infested with English : they 
 reckon near two hundred. But if ever you come on the Conti- 
 nent, I will come near you ; it will make me wiser, better, and 
 happier. I do not beUeve that any lake in the universe is equal 
 to yours. I wait some attainable image of it. I shall see the 
 lake di Como ; but I shall never say on its banks, as CatuUus did, 
 
 ' O quid solutis est beatius curis 
 Cum mens onus reponit.' " 
 
 Eeconciliation : TouKS, Jan. 23, 1815. 
 
 " Not long after I received your last letter, I received one 
 from the sister of my wife, dated so early as the middle of 
 September. It acquainted me with her extreme grief, and of 
 an illness which thi'eatened to be fatal. This banished from my 
 mind aU traces of resentment, and I wrote instantly to comfort 
 and console her. My own fear is, that I shall never be able to 
 keep my promise in its full extent, to forgive humiliating and 
 insulting language. Certainly I shall never be so happy as I 
 was before ; that is beyond all question. If there is a pleasm^e 
 in pardoning, there is a proportionate pain in doubting whether 
 we possess the power. Julia has not yet recovered her health 
 entirely, but expresses a wish to join me. Whenever the weather 
 is a little milder, I shall meet her in England, where I shall not 
 remain longer than two days." 
 
 The Latin Poems : Same Place and Date. 
 
 " You will receive my Latin poems in about a fortnight. I 
 took extreme care, as I fancied, to correct the press ; yet I dis- 
 cover, in a copy just now sent me, some odious and most stupid 
 misprints. I cannot help thinking that the fellow has employed 
 a blockhead to correct the press after me for the sake of greater 
 security. Happily they are of such a nature that the most male- 
 volent cannot attribute them to me. There are not less than 
 six or eight. 
 
 " I have addressed one of my Latin poems to you : 
 
 Quo vetus asseruit laurea vate decus 
 Nempe chorus primam tibi, Suthei, detulit omnis, 
 Invidiasque angues pectore vulsit amor. 
 
 I have hazarded, or rather more than hazarded, a lie in the last
 
 416 BATH, SPAIN, AND LLANTHONY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 line ; but it is the province of eloquence, in all kinds, to say 
 lion quod sit, scd quod decent esse. The concluding verses of this 
 short piece contain a thought which I afterwards paraphrased : 
 
 Mild is the parting j'ear, and sweet 
 The odour of the falling spray ; 
 
 Life passes on more rudely fleet, 
 And balmless is its closing day." 
 
 Dedication of the Latin Poems to Parr : Same Place and 
 
 Date. 
 
 " I have dedicated the volume to Parr, in a very short dedi- 
 cation : that is, about fom* pages of 14 or 16 lines each. I men- 
 tion his hospitality and kindness of heart as my reason. There 
 is also another. People attempted to pei'suade him — for he is 
 credulous — that I wrote a satmcal poem on him and his ac- 
 quaintance.* The appearance of this satire gave me great 
 uneasiness . . . and I could only assure Parr that I never lost my 
 respect or my regard for him ; that I owed to him a great deal 
 of what I knew ; and that I had spent some of my most joyous 
 hom's at Hatton. If you had not mentioned to me that the 
 
 poem was attributed to , I should perhaps have closed my 
 
 lips on the subject, even to you ; though there is a difference 
 between communicating a fact and divulging a secret. Parr 
 believed me instantly. Strange inconsistency ! to fancy that I 
 could be guilty of exposing a friend to ridicule, yet to reject all 
 suspicion that I could utter a falsehood. As if the latter were 
 the greater baseness ! Of all the others that came under the 
 lash, Greathead is the only one I would have exempted. He 
 is fantastical, conceited, and pompous ; but he is good-humoured 
 and beneficent. In my opinion the foibles of such a character 
 should not be dwelt upon. It will not do to pretend that the 
 attack is made purely against bad taste. The worst taste of all 
 resides in that busybody rashness which knocks off the noses of 
 the charities in its alacrity to sweep the cobweb. The weather 
 here is so bitterly cold that the archbishop can no longer amuse 
 
 * This is noticed ante, pp. 320, 321. I subjoin an allusion to Parr 
 from another of Lander's letters of this date. " He treated me with 
 " all the kindness I could have wished in a father, and invited me to 
 " live in his house. Yet we never quite agreed on politics. I was 
 " the only person who could, without bringing down a tempest on 
 " his head, attack his friend Fox,"
 
 iET. 30-39.] DEPxiRTURE FROM ENGLAND. 417 
 
 himself among the little girls of Paris, and the weathercock of 
 the cathedral is too slippery for the jackdaws. Adieu." 
 
 To that letter Soutliey replied on the 5th of Febru- 
 ary, loud in pleasure at the reconciliation, and encour- 
 agino- his friend not to doubt but that he would be able 
 to keep his promise, and be the happier for keeping it. 
 He bids him also not forget that Tours holds the grave 
 of Ronsard, who would have been a great poet if he 
 had not been a Frenchman. " But poetry of the higher 
 " order is as impossible in that curst language as it is 
 " in Chinese." For himself he is climbing trees in the 
 Hesperides still; and though not without the graver 
 feelings uttered in Landor's quatrain,* he is convinced 
 they will both be the better for believing that the de- 
 cline of life has also delights of its own, autumnal odours 
 and sunset hues. The letter closes with the hope that 
 they may meet somewhere on the continent before an- 
 other autumn is gone : but not many weeks were gone 
 before the hope began to look desperate, and Napoleon 
 was again in the Tuileries when Landor replied. Never- 
 theless this had found him prepared. War or no war, he 
 would not return to the country that had cast him out, 
 by refusing to his property the protection of its laws. 
 He thought Bonaparte's government not unlikely now 
 to last, and he had obtained leave from it to continue 
 resident in France. That it was not his intention to 
 retm'n to England, and that he had every disposition to 
 prefer the empire to the government it had so suddenly 
 displaced, he told his friend in this letter. 
 
 * Which appeared in his collected poems with this addition : 
 
 " I wait its close, I court its gloom, 
 
 But mourn that never must there fall 
 Or on my breast or on my tomb 
 
 The tear that would have sooth'd it all." 
 VOL. I. E E
 
 418 BATH, SPAIX, AXD LLANTHOXY. [Book III. 
 
 1805-14. 
 
 Return of Napoleon : Tours, 8 May 1815. 
 
 " An Englishman is returning, who mil convey a letter from 
 me, an opportunity -vvhich perhaps may not occiu- again for some 
 years. I have applied to Fouche for permission to remaia in 
 France, and he has granted it. Whether our countrymen in 
 general will be molested or not depends, I presume, in great 
 measm'e, on the future conduct of oiu' government. I should 
 rather have said, of your government ; for with me they have 
 nothing more to do than to despoil me of my property to sup- 
 port their stupendous folly. "What has happened was quite cer- 
 tain to happen from the beginning. Can anything be more 
 clear than the prediction of Calvus?* The alienation, or ra- 
 ther the perfect indifference of the people, arose from a paper 
 in the Journal des Dehats on the possibihty of renewing the 
 tithes. The Journal des Dehats was perhaps the best-written 
 paper that ever appeared in Europe, and was devoted to the old 
 monarchy. It was read in every coffee-house. Now certainly a 
 government which could permit, without disavowing it formally 
 and by proclamation, so horrible a report to spread and propa- 
 gate, deserves annihilation. All the oppressions France ever 
 suffered are light in comparison with tithes. "Where they already 
 exist, purchasers and proprietors of land endure them as known 
 contingencies, as bad air, as the dry-rot, &c. But who, when 
 he had repaired his house, would permit any man to infect it 
 again with either the one or the other ? The French laws, if 
 they are observed, are incomparably better than ours, which are 
 calculated only for the rich and the crafty. A man in France 
 cannot be ruined by pursuing his rights. In England he un- 
 questionably may. This reduces the debatable ground to an 
 inch in extent, and proves my assertion at once." 
 
 Two more months however again unsettled every- 
 thing, and greatly -weakened in Landor the desh'e to 
 continue a French citizen. 
 
 * See ante, pp. 377-S.
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 1815-1821, ^T. 40-46, 
 
 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY : AT COMO, PISA, AND 
 PISTOIA. 
 
 I. From Tours to Milan. 11. At Coma. iii. At Pisa. iv. At 
 Pistoia. V. Again at Pisa. vi. On the way to Florence. 
 VII. Retrospect and Prospect : a new Literary Undertaking. 
 
 I. From Tours to ^Iilan. 
 
 The intention of remaining in France survived Water- 
 loo but a little while, and with the second Bourbon 
 restoration Landor resolved upon quitting Tours. But 
 any return to England being for the present impossible, 
 he now thought of Italy for his home. 
 
 What had been his homes in Llanthony and Bath 
 were now no longer his. His personal property had been 
 sold in both places, and the management of his real 
 estate had been taken out of his hands. It was a sad 
 time. The Llanthony vision was over. No more pos- 
 sibility now of what once had been his di'eam, to rebuild 
 the abbey as a princely mansion ; no more chance of 
 seeing in its plantations the two or three million trees 
 which with a desperate fidelity his fancy and his hopes 
 had made almost real ; and though his new roads were 
 to sm'vive him as they do even yet, too surely had the 
 doom akeady been pronounced against whatever else
 
 420 FIRST SIX YEARS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 lie would have associated with his name at Llanthony. 
 Before liis house had well been inhabited his new trustees 
 had ordered it to be taken down ; but a few months 
 earlier a flood had carried away the bridge he built ; 
 and whatever beside he valued had as ruthlessly since 
 been swept away by a public sale. " I have here in my 
 " rectory," writes Mr. Robert Landor, " a Titian valued 
 " at twelve hundred guineas which my brother Henry 
 " jDurchased at the auction for ten pounds." It needs 
 not to dwell further on these things. 
 
 As to his real estate he was happily more fortu- 
 nate. By the annuity reserved under the act of parlia- 
 ment to his mother she became the first of his credi- 
 tors ; and being enabled to demand the management 
 of Llantliony, she set apart from it for his use five hun- 
 dred a year on condition that the money so advanced 
 should be repaid to her younger children whenever by 
 her death the estate at Ipsley should fall into his hands. 
 Her life was prolonged for fourteen years, during which 
 she had thus paid to him seven thousand pounds ; and 
 what was held to be a sufficient provision having ac- 
 crued in the same interval to the younger children 
 partly by her economy and partly by the bequests of 
 other relatives, shortly before her death, with the entire 
 concurrence of those other children, the above-named 
 condition was abandoned and Llanthony released from 
 that incumbrance. To this it will be only necessaiy 
 to add that ii'respective of all these arrangements there 
 were simple contract debts unsettled Avhich rendered for 
 the present unadvisable not only any return to England, 
 but even a continued residence at Tours ; and Mr. Robert 
 Landor, having at the time a project to A'isit Italy, at 
 his brother's earnest request joined him at Tours that 
 they might make the jom-ney together.
 
 JET. 40-46.] FLOM TOUES TO MILAN. 421 
 
 Lander's stay in the hospitable old French town, not 
 then so overrun mth English as in later days, had been 
 not -without many enjoyments ; for the ease with which 
 at will he put off from his thoughts whatever troubled 
 or harassed him, the old characteristic well known to 
 his family, surprised even his brother when they met so 
 soon after the tragedy of Llanthony. I have heard the 
 latter, in relating their first visit together to the quaint 
 old market-place with its splendid fountain where Walter 
 had been in the habit of doing his own marketing daily 
 during his exile, describe the joyous greeting that broke 
 forth from all the market-women successively as he 
 came in view, and his laughing word of jest or compli- 
 ment for each that had given him universal popularity. 
 The prefet of the town, next to the market-women, he 
 seems to have regarded with most favour ; it was the 
 same who (I believe erroneously) was reported to have 
 given brief refuge to Napoleon in his recent flight to the 
 English coast ; and it was always Landor's belief that he 
 had seen the fugitive emperor dismount in the coiu'tyard 
 of the prefet's house in one of the subui-bs, to which he 
 had himself gone, finding the door unexpectedly closed 
 to him, upon the very day when Napoleon was sujDposed 
 to have passed through Tours. 
 
 In September the brothers started for Italy, and by 
 means of a; letter addressed in the following month to 
 their mother by the younger of them I learn some of 
 the incidents of their journey. Here are its opening 
 sentences : " Walter wished very much to leave Tours 
 " on many accounts ; amongst others, on account of its 
 " nnhealthiness, the probability of fresh revolutions, 
 " and some personal apprehensions about his English 
 " creditors. I wished to see Italy ; and as he pressed it 
 " most earnestly, and indeed could not travel mthout
 
 422 FIRST SIX YEARS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 " me, I agreed to accompany him. After contests vrith. 
 
 " his landlady of a most tremendous description, we set 
 
 " off. Walter had kept his own carriage in all his 
 
 " distresses, and as posting was the cheapest thing in 
 
 " France, we posted : Walter and myself on the dicky, 
 
 " his vrife and her maid within. Our road lay on the 
 
 " eastern side of the river Lou'e for more than two hun- 
 
 " dred miles. This side was occupied by the German 
 
 " troops, and the other by the French. Thus we passed, 
 
 " between Tours and Lyons, a distance of fom' hmidred 
 
 " miles, through 200,000 men ; Austrians, Prussians, 
 
 " Bavarians, Wii'tembergers, Hessians. At Moulins 
 
 " the prince of Hesse with all his staff was at the same 
 
 " hotel ; and amused himself, whilst we were at supper, 
 
 " by standing with another officer at the door of our 
 
 " room and looking at Walter's wife. I ordered the 
 
 " door to be shut in his face. As this was done by an 
 
 " Englishman he only laughed. If it had been done 
 
 " by a Frenchman or a German there would have been 
 
 " no lauHiincr on either side." 
 
 The acres of vineyards seen by them on the banks 
 
 of the Loire, Landor himself would often refer to with 
 
 enthusiasm as not numbering less than hundi'eds of 
 
 thousands ; and as they passed, he told me, he could not 
 
 but remember Goldsmith and his flute ; though the 
 
 scene otherwise was unlil^e the poet's pastoral picture, 
 
 for along the rocky parts of the shore they observed, 
 
 miles together, the people making theii' homes in the 
 
 rock. The towns on the route were dirty and ill-built 
 
 as Lyons itself; but for the last half of the distance, the 
 
 two hundred miles nearest that second city of France, 
 
 they found the scenery liker their own than anywhere 
 
 else, saw enclosures of quick with timber in the fences, 
 
 rich and well-cultivated land, and yomig wheat much
 
 ^T.4c^46.1 FEOM TOUES TO MILAN. 423 
 
 forwarder than in England. " It was from the bridge 
 " of Lyons we first saw the Alps, extending imme- 
 " diately in oiu' front to a great distance. They were 
 " covered with snow half way from the summits. It 
 " was about twenty miles from Lyons that one of our 
 " wheels broke for the third time, and we were detained 
 " more than a day. At last however we proceeded to- 
 " wards Chambery the capital of Savoy, and passed 
 " through a most enchanting and romantic country; 
 " rocks, woods, vineyards, and the finest passes." What 
 the letter proceeds to tell of then' first unpression of 
 Italy, destined to be the home of one of them for more 
 than twenty years and after another thirty years his 
 final resting-place, is told with much reaHty and vivid- 
 ness. At first, it will be seen, Landor meant to have 
 fixed his quarters at Chambery ; but he made wiser 
 ultimate choice of the Lake of Como. 
 
 " Walter had hitherto intended to stop at Chambery and 
 live there ; but he was too restless. Nothing can be more 
 delightful or romantic than the country about Chambery ; and 
 there are a great many pleasant houses situated at some dis- 
 tance from the town. The town itself is bad, and the eternal 
 passage of Austrian troops made it disagreeable. Here we 
 agreed with a voiturier ; a man who undertakes to conduct you 
 with his horses and carriages to any given distance for a certain 
 sum, and to pay for your eating, drinking, and lodging. Walter 
 gave him his carriage on condition that he would carry him free 
 of expense first to Milan and afterwards to Como, twenty-five 
 miles farther, where the princess of Wales resides. I do not 
 think that the bargain was a bad one for Walter, as his carriage 
 was no longer serviceable in its present state. I gave eighteen 
 louis-d'or, or guineas, a little more than the common price, to 
 be carried as far as Rome. From Chambery we travelled along 
 level roads between the most magnificent mountains. Many 
 were covered with snow. These are the lowest Alps. We rested 
 four nights at miserable inns, and then passed Mount Cenis, 
 one of the highest Alps, where a road was cut by Bonaparte
 
 42i FIRST SIX YEARS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 which is considered the most wonderful in the world. It is not 
 very steep in any part, but runs backwards and forwards up the 
 side of the mountain. We had been rising very greatly for four 
 days before we reached the foot of Mount Cenis, and it took as 
 many hours to get up the side. But the other side, when we 
 descended, was infinitely more grand and beautiful. It was 
 indeed sublime. We looked down into Italy from above the 
 clouds ; and when we had travelled more than two hours we 
 passed among vast woods of the grandest chestnuts for two 
 more to the bottom. The waggons of the Austrian army were 
 descending at the same time. It is the Italian side of these Alps 
 that is far the finest. We reached Turin, the capital of Pied- 
 mont, two days after : a fine town, with many large palaces. 
 On one side there is a range of beautiful hiUs, which would 
 be called mountains in England, covered with woods, palaces, 
 country-houses, churches, and convents : on the other the Alps, 
 which do not appear to be ten miles ofE though they are thirty 
 or f ortj', covered with ice and snow, and formed more beauti- 
 fully than any painter in the world could imagine. The streets 
 of Turin are all straight ; and from some of them you see the 
 hills which I have described when looking one way, and the 
 Alps when looking the other. Three days more brought us to 
 Milan, a great, ill-built, ugly town with a wonderful cathedi-al, 
 the capital of Lombardy. Walter and his wife set ofE almost 
 immediately for Como, and would arrive the same night. I 
 wait tiU the carriage returns which took them, and in two days 
 more shall set off again for Florence and Rome." 
 
 Of the small and great discomforts, and their trials 
 of temper, incident to such a twenty days' journey over 
 the seven hundred miles separating ISlilan from Tom's, 
 the son's letter told also something that the mother 
 might be glad to hear, and, so far as there are touches 
 of character, my readers too ; but it must be read with 
 allowances. If Mr. Robert Landor did not spare him- 
 self, of his brother he was quite as unsparing; and, 
 with a very humane and proper chivalry which need 
 not now be construed ynih. excessive strictness, all his 
 sympathy and all his pity were reserved for the pretty 
 little vd{e. To an observer so generous as well as just
 
 ^T. 40-46.] FEOM TOURS TO MILAN. 425 
 
 her advantages of sex as well as of youth and beauty 
 were indeed very great ; but though prepared for Wal- 
 ter's " ten thousand" fits of temper, it is a little start- 
 ling, after the incident at Jersey, to find Walter's wife 
 never giving way to even one. " He is seldom out 
 " of a passion or a sulky fit excepting at dinner, when 
 " he is more boisterous and good-humoured than ever. 
 " Then his wife is a darling, a beauty, an angel, and 
 ^' a bird. But for just as little reason the next morning 
 " she is a fool. She is certainly gentle, patient, and 
 ^' submissive. She takes all the trouble, is indeed too 
 " ofiicious, and wOuld walk on foot most willingly if he 
 ^' -wished it and she were able. If he loses his keys, his 
 " purse, or his pocket-handkerchief, which he does ten 
 " times in an horn', she is to be blamed ; and she takes 
 " it all very quietly." Perhaps one might have said 
 too quietly. There is such a thing as an ostentatious 
 meekness, or, as the poor bad-tempered husband in the 
 play puts it, a "malign excess of un demanded patience." 
 Nor is it difiicult to discover that the fits of passion, 
 on the other side, were rather of the lambent and 
 phosphorescent than of a scorching or consuming kind. 
 " If he is ever really unhappy, it is because the cook 
 " has put oil or garlic into the soup. Give him a good 
 " dinner well cooked, and he is happier than an em- 
 " peror. He writes and reads all the day besides. As 
 " for his creditors, he cares no more about them or 
 " his own concerns than about Bonaparte's. He has 
 " plenty of money for this country ; lives as well as ever 
 " he did in his life ; and at Tours had even saved five- 
 " and-thirty pounds. He has one entire quarter in his 
 " banker's hands at present, after travelling so far." 
 
 Again, on the 10th of December in the same year, 
 being then at Rome, Mr. Robert Landor wrote to his
 
 420 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 mother that he had heard from Walter at Como ; that 
 he found it expensive, was dissatisfied with it, and 
 talked of going farther east ; but that he had himself 
 written to dissuade this, at least for the present. " He 
 " has seen nothing of Italy, and yet he swears that it 
 " contains nothing worth seeing. Every place is the 
 " worst." From Rome the writer had moved to Naples 
 in April 1816; and in a letter of the 26th of that 
 month to their sister Elizabeth he tells her that Walter 
 had written in the last week from Como, and seemed 
 just then very tranquil and comfortable, but that for 
 himself he would as soon trust to Vesu^'ius. Finally, 
 ha-vang meanwhile paid a visit himself to Como, he 
 writes thus again to that sister from Venice on the 
 24th of June : " At Como I fomid Walter and his 
 " wife in comfortable ajsartments, or rather in a com- 
 *' fortable house. But they had lost their English 
 " maid, whose misconduct in lea^dng, and depravity 
 " after ha\ang left, were not the least part of the griev- 
 " ance. Julia looks thin, but not pale; talks much 
 " of djang, and of returning to Bath, preferring the 
 " latter a little ; and amuses herself in learning the 
 " very worst Italian from the old cook, who is quite 
 " unintelligible to Walter and everj^body else. Walter 
 " is much as usual; that is, in very unequal spmts; 
 " fretful, gloomy, absent, and very gay by turns. Un- 
 " fortunately the latter is not frequent, and I beHeve 
 " that I saw him to the greatest advantage. The Lake 
 
 " is charming. The M s joined me at Como, and 
 
 " liked Walter and his ^ife very well." 
 
 At Como Landor lived three years ; and three more 
 wandering years he passed, between Pisa and Pistoia, be- 
 fore he pitched his tent in Florence in 1821. Between 
 the home he had lost m England and that which he
 
 ^T. 40-46."] AT COMO. 427 
 
 thus found in Italy, this interval, measured even by tlie 
 general diiftless character of his life and ways, was so 
 entirely unsettled, that it is not my intention to dwell 
 upon it at any length. It will suffice if I indicate, by 
 passages from his coiTespondence in these various places 
 of abode, the subjects that from time to time occupied 
 or interested him, and the manner in which his life was 
 passed. ISIy own comments will be very sparing. 
 
 II. At Como. 
 
 The first letter written to Southey from Italy mis- 
 carried; and when again, in the June of 1816, Landor 
 wrote to him, he had heard nothing from Kes^vick since 
 lea^'ing Tours. 
 
 Letter-Smugglers. 
 
 " About three months ago a sort of pedlar was going from 
 Como to England, and I fancied I had an opportunity of send- 
 ing you a letter by him. But I discovered that they are nar- 
 rowly searched by the custom-house officers, and letters taken 
 away from them and destroyed. I was disappointed, and he 
 was more so ; for I told him my letter was for the poet laureate 
 of England, and to remove all incredulity wrote the address in 
 that manner. I sent it however by the post." 
 
 What his Brother Robert thought of Rome. 
 
 " My youngest brother, who has been at Rome and Naples, 
 and indeed in all the other celebrated places of Italy, is now on 
 his retmni, and will put this into some English post-office. He 
 appeared to admire the character of the present Romans, though 
 he carried with him many and strong prejudices against them. 
 He represents them as sedate and silent, delicate and disin- 
 terested, brave and adorers of liberty. He was disappointed in 
 all their ancient buildings, and thinks nearly all the modern 
 extremely destitute of good taste. He pi'efers a picture of 
 Theseus on one of the walls of Pompeii to even the best of 
 RafEael, and indeed to any work of art he has ever seen except 
 the Apollo Belvidere, and is convinced that the ancient painters
 
 428 FIRST SIX YEAKS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21, 
 
 were as much superior to the modern as the ancient sta- 
 tuaries." 
 
 Eegrets and Wishes of an Exile. 
 
 " "VVe often talk of you. I wish to God I could exchange 
 the Lake of Como for the Lake of Keswick, just one evening. 
 I know nothing of what passes either in the political or literary 
 world. To be deprived of reading your works, and of seeing 
 you for so many years, is infinitely the greatest loss I sustain in 
 losing my country. I have engaged my house for a year and a 
 half. I wish there was any hope of your coming into Italy. 
 We have two spare rooms and one spare bed, the cleanest on 
 this side of the Channel, and at Milan they make butter." 
 
 Amusements on the Lake : June 1816. 
 
 '• At Como we have been exempt from the of the 
 
 princess of Wales for a considerable time. I think I told you 
 that her scudiere was postillion to Pino, a deserter fi'om the 
 Austrian service. He has now purchased an estate for 200,000 fl. 
 and his wife keeps her carriage and is allowed 15,000 fl. a year. 
 His brother is maggiordomo to the princess, and rides out co- 
 vered with gold lace and accompanied by her servants. These 
 rascals have kept her so poor that she has not yet been able 
 to furnish her rooms. Is it not scandalous that the money of 
 England should be squandered away on the most worthless 
 ■\vretches in Italy, when the most industrious men in England 
 want bread ? If we had one honest man in parhament, would 
 not some sort of notice be taken of it ? Above all it surprises 
 
 me that the prince does not divorce her Lady Cumming, 
 
 daughter of Lady Charlotte Campbell, went over to visit the 
 princess. She saw her in the midst of the lake with her scu- 
 diere, whose arm was round her waist. Instead of returning, 
 they proceeded to the house, where they found the prefet of 
 Como, and soon afterwards the princess entered. In a few 
 minutes the scudiere came swaggering in, made a slight bow to 
 them, took no notice of the princess, but said to the prefet, 
 ' Shall toe see you at dinner ?' The princess then invited him, 
 and he stayed. As Lady C. had remembered him a footman 
 under the princess, and now recognised him to be the person 
 whose arm was round her waist, she took her leave. These 
 rascals make a point of insulting all the English." 
 
 He liad himself suflfered from such insuhs, as he
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT COMO, 429 
 
 fancied, taking to himself what had probably no refer- 
 ence to him ; and his present information was to be 
 accepted with much more caution than in the circum- 
 stances was likely to be given to it. It will appear 
 hereafter that it was tui'ned to immediate use. That 
 any use would be made of it at all he does not seem 
 to have imagined, and some sentences in this portion of 
 the letter I am obliged to suppress. 
 
 It will be best so to deal also with its burst of auger 
 against ]\Ir. Munday of Oxford, for misprints in the 
 Ichjllia and for not sending the volume to his friends ; 
 nor will the reader regret to lose its tlu'ee-and-thirty 
 scathing Latin lines against Ferdinand of Spain, just 
 written for the cenotaph of Porlier, which he implored 
 Southey to make public in the Courier with the name 
 of the writer, as he wished to circulate them on the 
 continent as widely as he could. 
 
 Still Southey did not reply, and for many more 
 months there was a silence incomprehensible to his 
 friend. It had been a year of great trouble at Keswick. 
 The heaviest affliction of Southey's life, the loss of his 
 (then only) son, had fallen upon him in the spring of 
 1816 ; and in the following spring occurred the greatest 
 vexation of his life, tlie publication from a stolen manu- 
 script of his youthful drama of Wat Tyler, and the chan- 
 cellor's (not very logical) refusal to restrain its sale, 
 because of the injiuy it was calculated to do to society. 
 To this troubled interval of silence on Southey's jjart 
 belongs a letter characteristic of Landor in his best 
 mood : sensitive and self-distrustful, but loyal to his 
 friend ; in the manliest vein of sympathy ; and, though 
 full of sorrow, nay, by reason of it, nobly consolatory. 
 
 " I have wx'itteii many letters to you since I received one 
 from you. Can anything occur that ought to interrupt our
 
 430 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY, [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 friendship ? Believe me, South ey — and of all men living I 
 will be the very last to deceive or to flatter you — I have never 
 one moment ceased to love and revere you, as the most amiable 
 and best of mortals, and your fame has always been as precious 
 to me as it could ever be to yourself. If you believe me capa- 
 ble, as you must, of doing anji;hing to displease you, tell it me 
 frankly and fully. Should my reply be unsatisfactory, it "will 
 not be too late nor too soon to shake me off from all preten- 
 sions to your friendship. Tell it me rather while your resent- 
 ment is warm than afterwards, for in the midst of resentment 
 the heart is open to generous and tender sentiments ; it closes 
 afterwards. I heard with inexpressible grief of your most severe 
 and irreparable loss, long indeed ago : but even if I had been 
 with you at the time, I should have been silent. If your feel- 
 ings are like mine, of all cruelties those are the most intoler- 
 able that come under the name of condolence and consolation. 
 Surely to be told that we ought not to grieve is among the 
 worst bitternesses of grief. The best of fathers and of hus- 
 bands is not always to derive perfect happiness from being 
 so ; and genius and wisdom, instead of exempting a man from 
 all human sufferings, leave him exposed to all of them, and 
 add many of their own. "Whatever creature told me that his 
 reason had subdued his feelings, to him I should only reply 
 that mine had subdued my regard for him. But occupations 
 and duties fill up the tempestuous vacancy of the soul ; afflic- 
 tion is converted to sorrow, and sorrow to tenderness ; at last 
 the revolution is completed, and love returns in its pristine but 
 incorruptible form. More blessings are still remaining to you 
 than to any man living. In that which is the most delightful 
 of all literary occupations, at how immense a distance are you 
 from every rival or competitor ! In history, what information 
 are you capable of giving to those even who are esteemed the 
 most learned ! And those who consult your criticisms do not 
 consult them to find, as in others, with what feathers the most 
 barbarous ignorance tricks out its nakedness, or with what gypsy 
 shuffling and arrant slang detected impostures are defended. 
 On this sad occasion I have no reluctance to remind you of jour 
 eminent gifts. In return I ask from you a more perfect know- 
 ledge of myself than I yet possess. Conscious that I have done 
 nothing very wrong, I almost hope that I have done something 
 not quite right, that I may never think you have been unjust 
 towards me. W. L."
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT COMO. 431 
 
 With more than the okl affection Southey at once 
 replied; explained now his recent silence by uncertainty 
 as to a visit into Italy he had resolved himself to make ; 
 and hoped they would shortly meet. At Coma they 
 met accordingly at the end of Jmie 1817; and Southey 
 stayed with his friend three days. In the poem already 
 quoted* for its mention of the visit to Llanthony, there 
 is record of this visit also : 
 
 " War had paused : the Loire 
 Invited me. Again hurst forth fierce War. 
 I minded not his fury : there I stayed, 
 Sole of my countrymen, and foes ahstain'd 
 (Tho' sore and hleeding) from my house alone. 
 
 * See ante, p. 328. I will add some lines from a later poem, A 
 Dream of the Elysian Fields, in which his friend appears to him, 
 " the genial voice and radiant eye" unaltered, and they speak of 
 their past days together : 
 
 " ' I do not ask,' 
 Said I, ' ahout your happiness ; I see 
 The same serenity as when we walkt 
 Along the downs of Clifton, Fifty years 
 Have roll'd behind us since that summer-tide. 
 Nor thirty fewer since along the lake 
 Of Lario, to Bellaggio villa-crown'd. 
 Thro' the crisp waves I urged my sideling hark, 
 Amid sweet salutation off the shore 
 From lordly Milan's proudly courteous dames.' 
 
 * Landor ! I well remember it,' said he ; 
 ' I had just lost my first-born only boy. 
 And then the heart is tender ; lightest things 
 Sink into it, and dwell there evermore.' 
 
 The words were not yet spoken when the air 
 Blew balmier ; and around the parent's neck 
 An angel threw his arms : it was that son, 
 
 * Father, I felt you wisht me,' said the boy ; 
 ' Behold me here I' 
 
 Gentle the sire's embrace, 
 Gentle his tone, ' See here your father's friend 1' 
 He gazed into my face, then meekly said, 
 ' He whom my father loves hath his reward 
 On earth ; a richer one awaits hkn here.' "
 
 432 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1S15-21. 
 
 But female fear impell'd me past the Alps, 
 "VVliere, loveliest of all lakes, the Lario sleeps 
 Under the walls of Como. 
 
 There he came 
 Again to sec me ; there again our walks 
 We recommenced . . . less pleasant than hefoi'e. 
 Grief had swept over him ; da3-s darken'd round : 
 BcUaggio, Valintelvi, smiled in vain, 
 And Monte Rosa from Helvetia far 
 Advanced to meet us, wild in majesty 
 Above the glittering crests of giant sons 
 Station'd around ... in vain too ! all in vain !" 
 
 Nay, not wholly so ; for it appears from what Sou- 
 tliey ^^Tote of his journey home, immediately on his re- 
 turn, that these and other shapes of beauty had made 
 so far successful appeal to him as even to shake for a 
 time his allegiance to his native lakes and momitaius. 
 
 SouTUEY TO Landor : Sept. 1816. 
 
 " Our journey home was as prosperous as we could desire. 
 The Lake of Lugano seemed to exceed the Lario in variety and 
 in beauty ; and the Maggiore, where we crost it, to exceed 
 both : but probably in such scenery that which is present must 
 always obtain the preference. The Isola Bella is at once the 
 most costly and the most absurd effort of bad taste that ever 
 has been produced by wealth and extravagance. What you had 
 been told of the hissing of serpents in the vaults proved to be 
 the noise of the bats, who have taken possession of the ground- 
 tier in this ridiculous place. We saw them in great numbers 
 flying in and out. Taking aU things into consideration I should 
 prefer the neighbourhood of Lausanne to any place on the con- 
 tinent which I have seen for a residence. The loveliest places 
 which we saw were the little tract between the Lakes of Thun 
 and Brientz, and the Lake and Valley of Lingern, than which 
 the heart of man could desire nothing lovelier. On my return 
 Skiddaw did not appear to have lost anything in magnitude — 
 the mountains around the lake had ; and I perceived a poverty 
 and coldness in the valley : this however wore off in a few days, 
 and Keswick is now as beautiful as ever." 
 
 When the friends met at Como their talk had been
 
 iET. 40-46.] AT COMO. 433 
 
 much of poetry ; of wliat they were fiiin to think the 
 veiy doubtful chauces of duration to the then raging 
 popularity of Byron ; and of the advance made by 
 Wordsworth in his last great poem. To these matters 
 Southey refers in that letter of September, telling 
 Landor that he had already dispatched to him, along 
 with his OAvn History of Brazil and other books, not 
 only Wordsworth's collected edition, but both his great 
 poems published separately during the two last years, the 
 Excursion and the White Doe. At the close of the same 
 letter also, with much less than his usual discrimination 
 of passing events in those regions, he had spoken of the 
 " ill-judged attempt at revolution" in Brazil, vrhicli ho 
 believed to have failed, and had expressed an opinion 
 not only against the revolutionary governments in South 
 America, but in favour of the probability of Russia 
 joining Spain to put them down : " both powers equally 
 " regarding the Yankee Americans (we must not call 
 " them Anglo-Americans) as interlopers on that coast." 
 In England he had found at his return little to relieve 
 the generally black and dreary outlook, the Watson and 
 Thistlewood trials having just ended in verdicts of ac- 
 quittal : but there had been a good harvest, and " though 
 " the seditious press is as active as ever, the poison 
 " which it administers docs not operate vv^tli the same 
 " effect upon a full stomach as upon an empty one." 
 Upon all which subjects Landor will be found himself 
 to have something to say. 
 
 One letter, bearing date the last day of August, he 
 had already written since his friend's ^-isit ; and the 
 verses which close it, and which have not been preserved 
 elsewhere, show something of the effect upon the writer 
 of wliat he had doubtless heard from Southey of his 
 Wat Tyler and other feuds. The bitterest of the Byron 
 VOL. I. F F
 
 434 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 quarrels had not yet broken out ; but of all the Quar- 
 terly reviewers he who had been the most resolute and 
 unsparing in striking at reform and reformers, remem- 
 bering past days and his own fierce passion for reform, 
 could hardly wonder at having now become a mark for 
 many eager and envenomed assailants.* 
 
 " I know not any better way of celebrating the anniversary 
 of St. Abondio, the patron of Como, in whose chiu'ch we en- 
 joyed a cool hour in the hottest day of June, than by showing 
 him as well as the police, who both have the privilege of read- 
 ing my letters, that I have not forgotten the benefit I received 
 from him. "Whether you are yet at Keswick I can but conjec- 
 ture. I hope shortly to hear that you are there, for you can 
 feel and communicate all the pleasures of an Englishman's 
 home. My plans are never fixed and never will be. I have 
 taken my house at Como for another year, because my wife is 
 unable to travel, and expects to be confined in the beginning of 
 March. The climate does not agree with her, nor indeed can 
 she bear any great degree of heat. You perceive that I creep 
 onward in my pilgrimage to Rome like the good brother who 
 had peas in his shoes, and not the boiled ones. There is one 
 object which I have constantly wished to see above all others, 
 and which I would rather see than all the cities in Italy, with 
 Rome at their head : I mean the tomb of Cicero. And there is 
 one duty which, if ever I am rich enough, I will perform. I will 
 inscribe a simple tablet (for I hear there is none existing) to 
 Ludlow. I am reminded by this resolution that I wrote some 
 verses on your laureateship. They are these : 
 
 * It may not be out of place to show what Byron's real opinion 
 of Southey was before bad temper embittered and distorted every- 
 thing. They met at Holland-house at the close of 1813, when Byron, 
 greatly struck by Southey's appearance, protested that he would have 
 written his Saiiphics to have had his head and shoulders. Some- 
 what later, in a diaiy he was writing, he entered a more deliberate 
 opinion : " Southey's appearance is cjy'tc ; and he is the only existing 
 " entire man of letters. . . . His talents are of the first order. His 
 " prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions. There 
 " is perhaps too much of it for the present generation ; posterity wUi 
 " probably select ; but he has passages equal to anything."
 
 JET. 40-46.] AT COMO. 435 
 
 Breath of what god hath Ijlown the mists away, 
 
 That thou whose influence filled the solitude, 
 
 Whose music was for souls that shun the world, 
 
 At length from thronging cities art beheld 
 
 And hail'd from pinnacles of palaces 
 
 Far under thee, Southey ! late-beheld, 
 
 As were the greater of the first-born stars 
 
 The nearest to their mighty Maker's throne. 
 
 Sit light of heart in the clear cool serene, 
 
 Where other voice than that which call'd thee none 
 
 Is heard around, nor other harp than thine. 
 
 What serpents slid athwart thy noontide path ! 
 What birds of evil omen flapped their wings 
 Heavily, lower and lower ! their darksome eye 
 Saw not that radiant visage burst the clouds, 
 That right hand beckon upward, and that left 
 Point toward Python with the golden bow. 
 
 If this be earth, so lofty and so pure, 
 Thou hast not left it utterly, divine 
 Astrea 1 She who led the son of Jove, 
 And fixed his choice, perform'd her office here ; 
 But Thou upon the summit hast received 
 Him whom she brought, and from thy righteous hand 
 (Nine white-robed vii'gins hymning slow before) 
 Upon his brow I saw the crown descend." 
 
 Hardly had that letter been dispatched however when 
 Southey's of the 17th September reached its destina- 
 tion ; and on the various subjects named in it comment 
 was made in a reply by Landor on the 20th November 
 1817. 
 
 Non-arrival of Books and Booksellers' Rogueries. 
 
 " I have been expecting not a little impatiently the library 
 you have sent me from England. Two months have expired 
 since the date of your letter ; the ship ought to have reached 
 Genoa in twenty days. It is unfortunate that Longman did 
 not inform you of its name and captain. I am not much sur- 
 prised at the roguery of Munday. He was paid in advance for 
 printing my Latin poems, and has not sent a single copy to any 
 of my friends or to myself ; in contempt of my repeated orders. 
 I begin to think that the English are become more rascally than 
 any other nation. Few men have had concerns with fewer men
 
 43G FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 than I have ; yet I have been defrauded to the amount at least 
 of seventeen thousand pounds by about half-a-dozen rogues." 
 
 South-American Republics and Dangers from Russia. 
 
 " I never trouble my head with European politics ; but I 
 must confess that, for many reasons, I am deeply interested in 
 the success of the South Americans. First, because I wish every 
 nation under heaven to be independent ; and secondly, because 
 it is highly advantageous to England that some near and close 
 countei'poise should exist against North America, now becoming 
 a formidable and most mischievous power. Is it possible that 
 the English can be insensible to the efforts of Russia in favour 
 of Spain ? Ai'e our ministers ignorant that the empire of Rus- 
 sia in five-and-twenty years will extend from the Adriatic to 
 the plains of Mexico, from Lapland to the fountains of the 
 Ganges and the Avail of China ? I will stake my head against a 
 brass sixpence — or, what is of less value, against any one of 
 theirs — on the fact. We ought to have insisted on the inde- 
 pendence of Poland, governed by a Russian prince, but never 
 united to Russia ; we should have insisted on its integrity, and 
 have given Denmark and Saxony (both fau'ly forfeited) in lieu 
 of PoUsh Prussia. I am certain that we never shall be what we 
 have been, and I am equally certain that we might have been 
 more great than ever." 
 
 Evil of too many Ministers : A Word for Chatham, 
 " We are the only people in the universe, except the Spa- 
 niards, whose national debt is a grievous burden ; and that of 
 Spain is intrinsically so inconsiderable, that a firm hand could 
 reduce it to nothing in ten years. The proper means are appa- 
 rent, and, what is better, are adopted ; but can they be carried 
 into execution by a government that has many ministers ? Ca- 
 binets, as they are called, are the ruin of politics. Never was 
 this fact so clearly proved as in the time of Chatham. A minis- 
 ter ought to be sole and absolute, but responsible. Had I been 
 in the place of Chatham, I would have committed all the oppo- 
 sition of the cabinet to the Tower on a charge of high treason, 
 and have brought them to trial when I had cai*ried my plans 
 into execution. The success of them, which was certain, would 
 have satisfied the public mind, and have left me without impe- 
 diment in future." 
 
 The letter closed with a long Latin poem. He had
 
 MT. 40-46.] AT COMO. 437 
 
 at last had coui'age, lie told liis friend, to recommence 
 his Sjjonsalia Poli/xenw, and he "svonld transcribe just 
 what his paper will hold : whereupon he makes the 
 paper hold all of it, no less than 127 hexameters! He 
 did not imagine, he adds, that he could have written in 
 such small characters as to include the whole poem. 
 " You will rank me as a sort of undertaker among the 
 " fraternity. I could not refuse a bunch of white 
 " plumes and a sprig of rosemary to poor Polyxena; 
 ^' but I have much curtailed my original plan, of which 
 " I retain only the two first verses."* 
 
 Of course his alarm about the books Vv\as premature. 
 I say of course, because the characteristic that attended 
 him though his life, and which I never knew once to 
 fail him in all his later years, was his inability to wait 
 with proper patience for anything. He wrote again, in 
 the middle of December 1817, to say that the packet 
 had come. 
 
 The Censorship in Italy. 
 
 " If I had waited five days longer, I should not have sounded 
 an alarm about the books. They have arrived safe, and, what 
 is extraordinary, sound. Before I was permitted the use of 
 them they v/ere examined by a person who understands not a 
 word of English, lest they should contain anything against the 
 church or the government. When he had satisfied his mind on 
 the subject, he sent them to my house. Siu'ely against a govern- 
 ment so liberal and enlightened as it ought to be from its 
 vicinity to Turkey the most ingenious and the most malevolent 
 could utter not a syllable ; but the church is at least equal in 
 liberality, and has its own authoritj^ (an inflexible one according 
 to its own decrees) that it never can be shaken. Its liberality 
 is carried to such a point that any man may be an atheist and 
 must only not be a heretic, and may follow Clu'ist where he 
 
 * See Poemafn et Iiiscriptlones, pp. 1]-1G. Translated by him in 
 HelJoiies, pp. 193-200. In its final form the Smmmlla had become 
 enlarged to 184 lines.
 
 438 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 chooses if he is not ordered to the contrary by St. Augustin. I 
 perceive by the Lugano Gazette that an accession has lately been 
 made to literature by the discovery of two hundred sermons 
 "written by this saint. They were found in the library of Monte 
 Cassino. I very much fear that, even in our own times, some 
 classical works have been destroyed or consigned to darkness by 
 the persons whom the Pope appoints to superintend this ancient 
 repository." 
 
 A Visit feom an Editor of Plato. 
 
 " Two months ago I received a visit from M. Becker, who 
 has made discoveries in Greek works and has added a little to 
 those of Plato, of whom he has given, as I understand, a very 
 correct and admirable edition. I never saw a more modest 
 man. He informed me, on my inquiry, that after repeated 
 applications to several persons in power, he could not obtain 
 permission to see anything more of the Ambrosian Library than 
 any other traveller. Before he had time to begin writing any 
 remarks, the doors were closed, and they are opened only on 
 stated days. He could not help comparing this conduct with 
 the frankness and anxiety shown in every German library that 
 books should be read and examined. Dr. Angelo Mai, who 
 published a few pages of Cicero and Pronto and Symmachus, 
 promised much and performed nothing. He seemed to consider 
 the library as a property, in which his friends support him. The 
 Ambrosian Library has not even a catalogue." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 " The first of your magnificent books that I took out of the 
 box was Wordsworth. I would have given eighty pounds out 
 of a hundred that he had not written that verse, 
 
 ' Of high respect and gratitude sincere.' 
 
 It is like the verses of the Italians, Spanish, &c. quite collo- 
 quial ; and ' li'icjli respect,' an expression borrowed from the 
 French, is without intrinsic sense. Wordsworth has the merit, 
 the rarest of all merits and the most difficult to be certain of, 
 to avoid street-and-house language and to be richly endowed 
 with whatever is most simple, pure, and natural. In his Lyri- 
 cal Ballads he has sometimes disappointed me, just as an ^olian 
 harp has done when I expected a note more. These books have 
 wakened me up. I shall feed upon them till I fall asleep again, 
 but that wiU not be until I have devoured all."
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT COMO. 439 
 
 The line objected to is in the dedication to the Excur- 
 sion, and is one of those unaccountable descents into 
 dead flat prose which dismay, not seldom, the readers of 
 this noble poet. 
 
 Before the year closed Southey wrote to him again ; 
 thanldno; him for a box of books he had sent from 
 Milan ; describing to him a corresj)ondence with his 
 brother Robert about the Latin poems, of which the 
 result had been that the impression printed at Oxford 
 would be transferred from Slatter and Munday to the 
 Longmans, so that he might strike the Oxford printers 
 out of his black list; and, upon a subject of which they 
 had talked much when together, the serpents in the 
 neighbourhood of Milan, sending him not merely a 
 learned disquisition but some prescriptions against their 
 venom, which he prays that St. Abondio may bless, since 
 he owes that saint indeed a good turn for the delicious 
 shelter he had afforded them on that hottest of days of 
 which his friend had reminded him. Then there is a 
 curious passage. Landor is told that what he had com- 
 municated about the lady of the lake might not impro- 
 bably be important (it wanted yet three years to the 
 too famous "trial"); that the amusements of Como were 
 not unlikely before long to become the amusements of 
 England ; and that if it should be so, from the lady's 
 sympathisers throughout the Idngdom the " knight" 
 would doubtless have plenary absolution for all those 
 offences which in old time were punished with brim- 
 stone, the "assassin" would be as popular among the 
 London liberals "as Bonaparte (why not?)," and the 
 other worthy would be a red-letter saint in the Morning 
 Chronicle. Similar and not less significant passages 
 were in the letters that he and Landor's brother had ex- 
 changed upon the transfer of the Latin poems.
 
 440 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITxVLY. [Cook IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 SouTHEY TO Egbert Landor : Keswick, 27 Dec. 1817. 
 
 " I had a letter from your brother three days ago. He is 
 more out of humour with the Ambrosian Library, or rather 
 Avith the Ubrarian, than I was. Perhaps this may be because 
 Becker, who complained to him of his treatment there, was a 
 German, and therefore less likely to be treated with attention 
 at Milan than an Englishman would be. 
 
 " It would not surprise me if the amusements of Como were 
 to be brought forward ere long for public discussion, and the 
 Scudiere, the Knight, ajid the Assassin were to enjoy their de- 
 served celebrity in this enlightened country, and become as 
 popular as Bonaparte and Mr. Hone." 
 
 Egbert Landor to Sguthey : Hitchenden, 7 Jan. 1818. 
 " I am induced by some inquiries which have been made 
 relative to Como since the receipt of your letter to believe that 
 your suppositions are well founded. For my part I had nothing 
 to communicate, and I am sorry that the subject should be dis- 
 cussed. Since it is now so clear in the opinion of all enlight- 
 ened men that blasphemy is not injurious to religion, we may 
 shortly learn that adultery is not offensive to morals. As for 
 treason, there is no such thing : it is as ridiculous as witchcraft. 
 There is no way by which a man can gain either fame or riches 
 half so easy and expeditious as by doing something for which 
 he would have been hanged fifty years ago. "We shall have 
 large subscriptions for the scudiere and assassin, and this ' per- 
 secution' will end in making the most infamous woman in Europe 
 the most popular." 
 
 A family event of some importance Avas announced 
 in the next letter to Soutliey from Como. 
 
 Birth of Landgr's First Child in March 1818. 
 " When we met at Como last year, I do not think you had 
 any suspicion that I was in process of time about to become a 
 father. Such however is the case. I have at last a little boy, 
 to whom I have given the names of Arnold Savage. I w^ould 
 rather that he had been born in England, and wish I could look 
 forward to his education there. However, if I can do nothing 
 more for him, I will take care that his first words and his first 
 thoughts shall arise within sight of Florence. We certainly 
 leave Como in September, and shall probably sjDend the winter 
 at Genoa ; if not, it will either be at Florence or Pistoia."
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT COMO. 441 
 
 That was in May 1818. Already, on tlic 5tli of tlic 
 preceding month, he had informed his mother of the 
 event as having occurred " exactly a month ago." 
 
 Arnold Savage Landor. 
 
 " I intend to call the boy Arnold Savage, from a Sir Arnold 
 Savage, who was second speaker of the House of Commons, 
 and who, as Mr. Bevan assured me, was of our family, and pro- 
 prietor of Baginton. I looked for him in a book which I bought 
 on purpose, and procured vv^ith extreme difficulty, written by a 
 person named Hakewell, on the manner of holding parliaments, 
 and found that Sir Arnold Savage was the first who declared 
 that grievances should be redressed before money should be 
 granted. I have so much respect for a person of this stamp 
 that I should be likely to name a son after him even if I had 
 no connection with his family or name. The ceremony of 
 baptism is the same here as in England, and the godfather does 
 not promise that the child shall be educated in any kind of 
 Romish idolatry or superstition. For which reason I shall 
 comply wth the custom of the country in about five or six 
 days. He will be christened again in England, if he should 
 return within the next twelve or fourteen years ; but on this 
 subject I am doubtful, or rather I am indifferent. I have 
 leai'ned that it is possible to live out of England, and that a 
 person who hates all society can do without it here full as well 
 as there." 
 
 The other contents of the May letter to Southey 
 may be left to explain themselves. 
 
 A stkaxge Report. 
 
 " A most extraordinary piece of intelligence reached us yes- 
 terday, that the Princess of Wales and five of her rascals had 
 been poisoned. Such is the profound ignorance of the English 
 character among this most degraded and infamous people, that 
 it is considered as a thing beyond all doubt that the English 
 have committed this atrocity. I could not refrain from making 
 the following remark : ' There is only one nation in Europe ac- 
 ' cused of such villany, and that nation is far removed in all its 
 ' institutions and feelings from the English.' Although the 
 report is circulated among the best-informed, I am inclined to
 
 442 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-ai. 
 
 disbelieve it. Surely it is more probable that the sudden and 
 violent heats have inflamed the blood of creatures who are always 
 half -drunk, or that disease or the remedies of disease are prey- 
 ing on their constitutions. It is not indeed qiiite impossible 
 that those who are implicated in the forgery of the two letters of 
 exchange have despatched a "WTetch capable both of employing 
 and betrajang them ; nor that jealousy, not arising fi'om the en- 
 joyment of personal charms but from the disposal of pecuniary 
 favours, has precipitated some of the scoundrels in her service 
 to commit this atrocious deed. She has a known and convicted 
 assassin in her household, and who knows but some such un- 
 toward accident may have befallen her as befel Cesar Borgia, 
 and played a sorry trick upon the infallibility of his father ? 
 We shall certainly know more of the matter soon. The Pope's 
 government is excellent in all respects, and Consalvi is at once 
 the most honest and prudent statesman in Europe. He will 
 unravel the mystery ; for whoever may be the contriver of this 
 mischief, the perpetrator must be in the house." 
 
 The Attempt to assassinate Wellington. 
 
 " The attempt that was made a little while ago on the Duke 
 of Wellington is blamed by a French poet — for failing ! His 
 verses are : 
 
 ' La maladresso est un def aut ; 
 
 Mais tout s'explique, et void comme : 
 L'imbecile a vise trop haut, 
 
 II I'aura pris pour uu graud-horame.' 
 
 Surely the maladresse of the assassin was not greater than that 
 of the poet, that all the French generals, with the emperor at 
 their head, should be conquered by a person who was not a 
 great man at all. I wrote an answer : 
 
 A nos trois premiers chefs qui vainquirent la France 
 
 H coutoit maint effort et de glaive et de lance. 
 
 Qui uous expliquera, po&te ou guerrier, ' comme'' 
 
 On le fait aujourd'hui sans s'appeler ^ grand Jwmme'?" 
 
 As TO Serpents. 
 
 " The only well-informed and rational man I ever converse 
 with here informs me as a certain fact that other serpents than 
 are commonly met with are seen occasionally on the mountains 
 near Val Intelvi, where he formerly lived. In the family of the
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT PISA. 443 
 
 Borromei is the skeleton of one — of that species which gave rise 
 to the fable of dragons with something like wings. There is no 
 appearance, he says, of fallacy in this phenomenon. He him- 
 self has seen the aspide, which he represents as having a head 
 broader and larger than any other snake. That some islands 
 should be exempt from these reptiles and others abound in 
 them proves clearer than anything that some are split off from 
 continents and others emerged from the sea. Britain was cer- 
 tainly part of a continent ; and one would fancy that Ireland 
 was, from its proximity. But this simple fact, in my mind, 
 destroys the hypothesis. Cyprus always abounded in poisonous 
 reptiles. Crete was always exempt from them ; so was Delos 
 and the Cyclades. The situation of all the latter leads one to 
 believe in their marine origin, different from Cyprus. I must 
 go to see the Borromean serpent. I cannot but suspect that a 
 bat's wings have been appended by some learned TagHacotius. 
 If a serpent had wings, he would have no occasion to be a 
 serpent." 
 
 This was Lanclor's last letter from Como, which he 
 quitted for Genoa in the following September. He had 
 already so resolved, as we see ; but when the time came 
 it was no longer a matter of choice, for he had mean- 
 while, as he said himself in a note to one of his sisters, 
 made the place too hot to hold him. 
 
 in. At Pisa. 
 
 Last Incidents at Como. 
 
 " A scoundrel, one Monti, wrote a most violent invective in 
 the form of a sonnet against England, in which he prays that 
 heaven may refuse her light for her wars and treachery against 
 St. Napoleon. I answered it in Latin, and attempted to print 
 my poem, with an epigram on Voltaire and f oiu" others, in which 
 no name whatever was employed. The censor declared that 
 they were six libels. I expostulated with him. I informed him, 
 for I had consulted a sensible jurist, that censors never refused 
 their license to Latin compositions unless sovereigns or their 
 alliances, or religion or morals, were attacked. I atti'ibuted his 
 proceeding to ignorance of these customs, and not to injustice ;
 
 444 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. LBook IV. 
 
 1 815-21. 
 
 and I dii-ectcd a copy of my letter to Count Strasoldo, principal 
 of the council. Instead of correcting a gross abuse of power, 
 thiy gentleman wi'ote a long letter to the regio delegato of the 
 province. The regio delegato sent me information that my 
 Latin poems were detained only because it was customary to 
 send two copies, one of which continued in the archives of the 
 censor, but that if I was desu-ous of it I might ajiply to his office. 
 Not caring about the copy, I never went. About a week after- 
 wards he sent a second letter, to inform me that he requested 
 my attendance on aflrah's very interesting to me. I went imme- 
 diately. He then discovered his first fallacy, and began to read 
 a letter from Count Strasoldo, in which this fellow expressed 
 his surprise that I should use injurious expressions towards the 
 royal censor, a person immediately acting under government. 
 He then closed the letter and thought it requisite to make a 
 comment upon it. He was astonished that I should write an 
 insolent letter. I stopped him quietly, and said, ' Sir, the word 
 ' insolent is never applied to a gentleman. If you had known 
 ' the laws of honour or propriety you would not have used it ; 
 ' and if you had dared to utter it in any other place you would 
 ' have received a bella bastonata.' At this he sprang from his 
 chair and rang the bell. He called the guards and all the officers 
 of the police, who live under the same roof diu-ing the dajd^ime. 
 With these reinforcements he pursued : ' Prepare instantly to 
 ' conduct this gentleman to Milan. Sir, unless you immediately 
 ' retract yovu" words you answer to government.' I replied, ' I 
 ' never retract any word of mine ; but I tell you in presence of 
 ' aU these persons that before I leave this room you shall retract 
 ' yom's.' He then pretended that he said rather insolent, that 
 insolent meant disrespectful or violent, that if I had understood 
 the language I should not have animadverted on the expression, 
 that he expressed the sentiments of Count Sti'asoldo. I replied, 
 ' I care not a quattrino what are the sentiments of Count Stra- 
 ' soldo ; but he would not dare, and you may tell him that he 
 ' woiUd not dare, from me, to use any such expression towards 
 ' his equal. There is not one among the guards you have called 
 ' in who would endiu?e it. As for your sending me to Milan 
 ' under aiTest, do it, if you are not afraid of exposing yom'self 
 ' still more than you have done.' He then began talking of his 
 honour, that he had been in the service, that the threat of a 
 caning was not to be borne, and that if it was not for his high 
 office he would settle the business with his sword in the square.
 
 ^T. 40-4-6.] AT PISA. 445 
 
 I la,ughed in his face ; and the rascal had the baseness to offer 
 his hand in token of reconciUation, and to tell me what a fi-iend 
 he had always been of the English. The story was carried all 
 over the town the same evening, although it rained heavily; 
 and what surprises me is that it was told correctly. I remained 
 in Como a week longer, rather wishing to be sent for to Milan. 
 My time expired on the 19th of September. I protracted my 
 stay till the 28th, and no attempt was made to assassinate 
 me." 
 
 After brief stay at Genoa, Landor now determined 
 to settle at Pisa for a time. He would ftiin have pushed 
 on to Florence, but the reported cheapness of living at 
 Pisa induced him to make trial of it. 
 
 From Como to Pisa. 
 
 " I reached Genoa in three days, the most magnificent city 
 in the world, and the most reasonably discontented. I found 
 the people civil, and, contrary to their usual character, honest. 
 They flattered themselves that 20,000 English were coming to 
 take them under our dominion. I came to Pisa because I had 
 heard formerly that it was a cheap place. On the contrary, it 
 is the very dearest I ever lived in, and the tradesmen sell no- 
 thing but refuse. Tea is double the price it is at Genoa, and, 
 considering the quality, ten times dearer. The wine I cannot 
 swallow. Several English gave fifty and forty-five zechins a 
 month for indifferent lodgings. What blockheads must those 
 be who imagine the hanging tower to have been built design- 
 edly so ! Almost every tower and every great building either 
 leans or is cracked in the neighbourhood. In fact the founda- 
 tions are of sand, formerly covered by the sea. Here is a clois- 
 ter round an old cemetery called the Campo Santo, by much the 
 best building I have seen in Italy. It is a light but not too 
 florid Gothic, and by miracle no architect has been permitted to 
 corrupt it. The Italian architects, with the single exception of 
 Palladio, are the most fantastic merry - an drews. Even Bra- 
 mante and M. Angelo would not permit antiquity to be anti- 
 quity; they wanted girlish airs and graces where they found 
 matronly decorum. I remain here rather more than two months 
 longer. Pray let me hear how you and Mrs. S. do, and whether 
 you have bought your house as you intended. If it were in a
 
 446 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 milder climate it would be better. When we stand between 
 forty and fifty we want the sun and zephyrs for other purposes 
 than poetry." 
 
 Reading Wordsworth. 
 
 " It is very very long indeed since I have heard from you. 
 I forget whether in my last letter or the preceding I mentioned 
 that I had received the books. I am reading over and over 
 again the stupendous poetry of Wordsworth. In thoughts, feel- 
 ings, and images not one amongst the ancients equals him, and 
 his language (a rare thing) is English. Nations are never proud 
 of living genius. Siu'ely no country under heaven has produced 
 in twenty years so much excellent poetry and such a rich latter- 
 math of what approaches to good as our own in the last twenty. 
 Our breakfast-table poets alone are fairly worth all the long- 
 winded beaux of Louis XIV. I have however a great fondness 
 for La Fontaine ; for I never see an animal, unless it be a par- 
 rot or a monkey or a pug-dog or a serpent, that I do not con- 
 verse with either openly or secretly. Besides, La Fontaine is 
 the only French writer in verse who knows when he has said 
 enough." 
 
 Sontliej lost no time in replying ; but anotlier letter 
 crossed his on its way, conveying to liim, early in Fe- 
 bruary 1819, a Latin ode to Bernadotte, Carmen ad 
 Regem Suedorum. 
 
 " Hearing that all the poets in France and Germany are 
 contending for the prize decreed by the Academy of Stockholm 
 to be given for the best ode on the accession of Bernadotte, I 
 resolved to set myself against the continent. If you have any 
 means of forwarding my ode to the Royal Academy of Stock- 
 holm, pray do. Bernadotte has this merit : he has kept his 
 word, and given an excellent and most liberal constitution to 
 Sweden, or rather restored one. For which reason I place him 
 next to the duke of Saxe -Weimar among the sovereigns of 
 Europe, and sincerely wish him a long and happy reign. The 
 few lines at bottom, announcing my intentions, should be en- 
 closed, and sealed or waf ered separately. I never felt greater 
 anxiety than now to hear from you. For God's sake write soon. 
 Direct Mr. W. S. Landor, gentiluomo luglese, Firenze, Italy, 
 because the English letters are always put apart in the office. I
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT PISA. 447 
 
 remember your mentioning that Mr. Frere had made out some 
 old Greek ballads from the Odi/ssea. It is curious that Cicero 
 should have entertained the same idea ; surely not from his 
 knowledge of poetry. He however must have given Mr. Frere 
 his idea of the fact. Adieu. Many many happy years !" 
 
 The " few lines at the bottom" were in characteristic 
 vein. If the lines got the prize, it was to be given away 
 in charity. " Si forte hoc, Academici, carmen prasmio 
 " dignetur, id velim panperibus detis, aut, quemad- 
 " modum visum erit, adversa valetudine laborantibus. 
 " Savagius Landor." 
 
 Meanwhile from Keswick, on the 3d of January, 
 Southey has acknowledged (" it came in eighteen days") 
 the December letter from Pisa ; has excused his recent 
 silence by prolonged anxiety for the health of his wife ; 
 has recommended Landor, when he had seen enough of 
 Italy, to try a short stay in Switzerland ; and has told 
 him that before that time they may perhaps meet again. 
 " I dream of seeing Rome before I die." 
 
 Landor's Eeply. (April 1819.) 
 
 " The idea that I shall see you before I leave Italy makes 
 my residence here much delightfuUer. When my spirits wax 
 faint I say to myself, ' I have yet to see Rome and Southey.' " 
 
 Again the Latin Ode to Bernadotte. 
 
 " If I remember right, your last letter of the 3d of January 
 came a few days after I wrote from Pisa. Mine contained an 
 ode to the king of Sweden. I wrote it, both because I consider 
 him as the most patriotic king that ever lived, and because I 
 hear the Germans and French are contending for a prize to be 
 given for the best poem on the subject by the Royal Academy 
 of Sweden. In a separate piece of paper I said something of 
 this kind : ' Si carmen hoc nostrum pr^mio dignum judicabi- 
 ' tur, habeant pauperes,' with my name. If my letter reached 
 you, perhaps you have had some opportunity of sending it to 
 the president. Lest it should not, I will transcribe the verses 
 again, not caring greatly whether they ever reach their further
 
 448 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1S15-21, 
 
 destination or not. Remember what a library you sent me last 
 year, and pray do not think of adding anything to the two 
 volumes I am anxiously expecting, the last of the JJlstory of 
 Brazil and Life of Wesley. I shall read both with great in- 
 terest, but less the first time than Roderich the fourth. Rode- 
 o'icJc, I think, contains a greater variety of powers put into 
 action than Kehama. It did not delight me nor agita,te me so 
 much, yet there is no poem in existence that I shall read so 
 often." 
 
 Very sore was Soutliey's need of his friend's praise 
 just now, for upon him and upon Wordsworth dark 
 days had set in. The still continuing and increasing 
 rage for Byron and his imitators had all hut extin- 
 guished what scant popularity the others once enjoyed, 
 and for selling power their books were at zero. Sou- 
 they had hoped to see the bubble burst in a year or 
 two; but double the time had come and gone, and 
 never did it soar so high as now, or flare out with 
 what doubtless seemed to him such frothy but highly- 
 coloured pretences. Replying to that letter of his friend 
 in ISIay 1819, he cannot control his temper. He de- 
 scribes the fashionable compound as made up of mor- 
 bid feelings, atrocious principles, exaggerated charac- 
 ters, and incidents of monstrous and disgusting horror ; 
 adding that the more un-English, un-Christian, and 
 immoral it was, the surer it was of being better liked, 
 provided only it were slavered over with a froth of 
 philosophy. Was it wonderful that, such being the 
 fashion, Wordsworth was despised and abused? The 
 getting abused in such company was his own solitary 
 bit of comfort, for nobody paid him the compliment of 
 imitating what he did. Plis friend's ode had gone to 
 Sweden through the ambassador ; and he was going 
 shortly to send him, by Wordsworth's exj^ress desu^e, a 
 little poem with a prologue he -should be much pleased
 
 ^T. 40-46.J AT PISTOIA. 449 
 
 with.* At the close of the letter, v/hicli announces also 
 the hirth of a son, he tells Landor that somebody had 
 mentioned him that week in the Westmoreland Gazette 
 as the English poet who most resemljles Goethe. " I 
 " do not know enough of Goethe to judge how far this 
 " assertion may be right ; but a writer who estimated 
 " you so justly must have been capable of estimating 
 " him. O that you had been as incapable of writing 
 " Latin verse as I am ! God bless you." 
 
 To this letter Landor replied from Pistoia ; whither 
 he had gone, moving still nearer to Florence, at the 
 approach of the summer of 1819. 
 
 IV. At Pistoia. 
 
 Birth of a Son to Southey : June 1819. 
 
 " Thank God ! Tears of joy came into my eyes on seeing 
 that you are blessed with a son. The same kind Providence 
 that has given the child will watch over the mother. Present 
 my most cordial congratulations to her, and tell her that of all 
 the women that exist on earth, she has occupied my thoughts 
 the most for many many months. A long series of happy 
 days lies before you — of happy days well earned. I am glad 
 on every account that your brother is come to reside near you.f 
 Exercise in itself is good ; but the cessation of studj^, at more 
 frequent intervals than you are disposed to alloAV, is far more 
 important. I never studied so much as you have always done, 
 yet, after four years of a rather close attention to books, my 
 eyes were weakened. Sea-bathing restored them, but they are 
 sometimes dim. I used to play the river-god in a very humble 
 manner, placing the palms of my hands upon the hard gravel 
 of the Arrow, and making my legs plash about like weeds. 
 
 * " Peter Bell." 
 
 t Soutliey's letter had told of his brother the sea-captain's farm 
 within four miles of Keswick, and of his own pleasure in visiting him 
 there, and bathing in the " beck" at the bottom of bis fields, " where 
 " there are natural baths of all depths, and seats where you may 
 " act the river -god." 
 
 VOL. I. G G
 
 450 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 Idleness is as dear to me as to any gypsy, but above all, idle- 
 ness in the water or upon it." 
 
 Brazil and the American Eepublics. 
 
 " In respect to Brazil, you have many means of forming a 
 correct judgment which I have not, but I differ from you totally. 
 Mali ijecoris contagia Iccdent. The Portuguese will not be se- 
 duced by the republic of Venezuela ; the inhabitants of Monte 
 Video, whether subject to Brazil or not, will harmonise little 
 Avith the Brazilians, but the sailoi\s and mei'chants of North 
 America will instil the slower poison of disaffection. The mili- 
 tary system of Brazil is both oppressive and inefficient. Chili 
 seems to me the most likely to be happy and powerful : happy 
 because virtuous, powerful because unassailable. The climate, 
 the people, the remote situation, are equally favourable to the 
 growth of freedom. I wish they were governed by a Berna- 
 dotte or a Consalvi. But how seldom in a thousand years is a 
 nation blessed with such prudent statesmen ! Would to God 
 that either one or the other had governed England at the com- 
 mencement of the French Revolution ! France had been divided 
 by her factions at this hour, and England the arbitress of Europe 
 without the pressm-e of debt, 
 
 " Yankee-land* will crack and split asunder, either in the 
 combustion of party or under the driving sirocco of avarice, 
 but will corrupt many thousands of our seamen first, and injure 
 the character of our merchants by her connection with them." 
 
 Byron, Himself, and Goethe. 
 
 " It is just as easy to write a breakfast-table poem as to 
 make the drawing of a giant on a wall : who cares about the 
 features, or looks for anything but the giant ? I have read the 
 Bride of Ahydos. Lord B. may well ask, 
 
 * Soutliey had talked freely in his last letter of Yankee-land in 
 connection with a visit to him of some young Bostonians, George 
 Ticknor and others, whom he had found accomplished in fine litera- 
 ture far beyond the run of their countrymen, but who had failed to 
 cure him of his grudge against America. " Our French neighbours 
 " are fond of comparing us to the Carthaginians, but the parallel 
 " would suit the Americans better, for their commercial, mihtary, 
 " and naval skill, their boundless ambition, their dishonesty, and 
 " their lack of literature."
 
 .ET. 40-46.] AT PISTOIA. 451 
 
 ' Know ye the land 
 Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
 And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ?' 
 
 Who the devil does ? But vs^hy should the young rascal, the 
 hero of the piece, take such infinite pains to show his mistress 
 his insincerity at the moment he would seduce her from home ? 
 
 ' Bound where thou wilt, my barb, or glide my prow. 
 But be the star that guides the wanderer, tlioii.'' 
 
 The star then is either a barb or a boat, explain it as he may 
 afterwards. There are several other such incoherences, not 
 worth looking for. I would never publish a poem that con- 
 tained any character of a human being until I had lived with 
 that character two or three years. I left off Count Julian and 
 his daughter twice, because each had said things which other 
 personages might say : the other characters are no characters at 
 all — mere shadows, passing before me often, but never entering 
 into my heart, or questioned by me why they did this or thought 
 that. As to Gehir, I am certain that I rejected what almost 
 every man would caU the best part. I am afraid that I have 
 boiled away too much, and that something of a native flavour 
 has been lost in procuring a stronger and more austere one. 
 My sole felicity as a poet is this, that when I wrote Gehir I had 
 read no modern continental poetry whatever, except the Hen- 
 riade of Voltaire, one tragedy (I forget which) of CorneUle, and 
 La Fontaine's fables. Fresh fi'om reading the Greek tragedians 
 and Pindar, Voltaire and Corneille were intolerable to me. La 
 Fontaine gave me, and gives me stUl, great pleasure, because I 
 love to enter into the thoughts of animals and contract a friend- 
 ship with them whenever they come in my way. I could wish 
 I understood a little German, to see the resemblance between 
 me and so celebrated a poet as Goethe. I do not admire his 
 Sorrows of Werter.''' 
 
 Poets and their Imitatous. 
 " I am glad you have finished the History of Brazil, not be- 
 cause our literature wanted history, as it did most grievously, 
 but because the New-England poem will give you in vpriting 
 and me in reading ten thousand times greater delight. You 
 have no imitators, not because you are not fashionable only, 
 but because you have no ti'ick. Have you never observed how 
 fond low people are (and poetry has its low people) of imitating
 
 452 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 any legerdemain ? God in his mercy preserve you and Words- 
 worth first from translators, and next from imitators. The 
 present of a book from W. will be one of the three or four 
 eras in my life ; and those who come after me, if they remem- 
 ber and love me, will show it to their friends. Give your 
 little boy a kiss for me. In one of my letters that miscarried 
 from Como I mentioned that I also had a son. He begins to 
 walk. I am anxious for the time when he will talk as much 
 nonsense to me as I have to him. Among mj' few blessings I 
 have always reckoned this, that every child in the world loves 
 me. Amongst grown men, I question whether there are five 
 upon earth that do." 
 
 The same subjects are resumed and pursued in an- 
 other letter, written also from Pistoia in the following 
 month, which continues the reply to his friend. 
 
 Socthey's Son : July 1819. 
 
 " On the receipt of your letter, which gave me more joy than 
 anything that has occm'red for many years, I immediately wrote 
 an answer, and requested Dr. Randolph to leave it, with a little 
 poem, at Longman's. A few hours afterwards I recollected that 
 he did not think of reaching England before October. What 
 a large and varied scene of delights and enjoyments is opening 
 before you ! Nor are they lost upon me. I enjoy them in all 
 my walks, and in all the better moments of my solitude." 
 
 Drawbacks of Bathing in the OiMbrone. 
 
 " I too used formerly to act the river-god and sea-god on 
 every fair occasion ; but our Ombrone is a river only a few 
 months in the year, and if I assumed the dignity of represent- 
 ing him in any little hollow of his channel, there would be a 
 danger of being obliged to sustain the same character in the 
 streets of Pistoia. The first passenger would steal my clothes. 
 Have you never observed in the Roman wi'iters how perpetually 
 they talk of thieves? All the authors on husbandry, and all 
 the poets, are full of them. The windows of every house, both 
 in town and country, are barred below. The Italians have 
 always been the most thievish of nations, and I think the 
 French (to their honom- be it spoken) the least."
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT PISTOIA. 453 
 
 WORDSAVORTII AND HIS ASSAILAXTS. 
 
 " I am impatient to see Wordsworth's new poem : partly, I 
 am afraid, from an avidity of honour. Tiiis passion preys upon 
 me as little as upon most men, but I am rather feverish at the 
 thought that Wordsworth is about to give me one of his writ- 
 ings. Exhort him, if he wants exhorting, to continue his great 
 work ; and, if it can be done without offending him, press him 
 never to notice in future those contemptible writers and bad 
 men to whom his notice even in resentment is an important 
 acquisition. Hostility, not only between states, but between 
 individuals, is apt to present some idea of parity. God forbid 
 that these rascals, drunk or dreaming, should ever experience 
 or excite it." 
 
 Again the American Republics. 
 
 " Yoxiv Hi story of Brazil contains facts which would have 
 been eternally lost to the world if you had not collected them. 
 In my opinion another half -volume would close it entirely. I 
 cannot see how so vile a government can endure seven years. 
 What an amazing general is Artigas ! Europe has seen nothing 
 like him since Sertorius. Happy would it have been for Buenos 
 Ayres if its armies had been intrusted to this marvellous crea- 
 ture instead of opposed to him. I hope our government vnR 
 discern that South America may become our best ally against 
 North America, and that we may, next year or the following, 
 assist it in recovering Florida or Louisiana. 
 
 " Our first business is to intercept the rotten expedition at 
 the moment when the crew is dying of thirst. I dread the 
 future naval power of North America, because she will fight 
 us with the best of our own sailors, and will employ none but 
 experienced ones. Why could not we have given every sailor 
 a badge, and have paid his arrears weekly, with rather more 
 than a proportional increase ? In that case thej^ must have 
 remained with England : they would have received somewhat 
 above their due, and, before it could be exhausted, would have 
 found new employment from our own merchants, who should 
 have been obliged to take those who bore the badge in prefer- 
 ence to others. 
 
 " It appears to me perfectly just to strip Spain of Mexico 
 and the island of Chiloe. A declai-ation of war against us could 
 never have done us a tenth of the injury we suffer from the
 
 454 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. LBook IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 cession of Florida. The South Sea presents a new world to 
 our commerce, which territory alone can establish and secure." 
 
 Close of the Lettee. 
 
 " I hope Mrs. Southey has quite recovered from her con- 
 finement, and that your little boy wiU be your comfort and 
 blessing. 
 
 " I just now remember some verses I "OTote last year at 
 Nervi near Genoa : 
 
 Estate dulce est, sub latebris rupium, 
 Aurfc marinfe mitibusque fluctibus 
 Meutem atque corpus otiosum tradere ; 
 Sed gaudium isto majus unum est gaudio 
 Quascunque terras alluat mare, iniiataus 
 Te, patria, tango, et potior amplexu tuo." 
 
 At the approach of winter Lanclor tiu'necl back to 
 Pisa ; disappointed of a house he hoped to have engaged 
 in Florence, but still bent upon finally settling there. 
 His principal occupation since he left Como had been 
 the preparation of a Latin dissertation, to accompany 
 another more complete collection of his Latin Poems, 
 On the use and cultivation of the language by modern 
 Latinists, the reasons why they were not read more 
 widely, and the advantages that would result from em- 
 ploying Latin universally in works of taste and imagi- 
 nation. Upon this latter amazing paradox he wasted 
 wonderful pains and ingenuity; and for its extraordi- 
 nary^ masteiy over the language, its free and daring criti- 
 cism of classics both ancient and modern, and its varied 
 reading not alone in Greek and Latin but in Italian 
 and English literatui'e, it would justify a mention in 
 greater detail than can be given to it here.* I use it 
 here only as an illustration of character. It was written 
 under a persuasion, absolute while it lasted, that he 
 
 * With some changes and many additions it will be found at the 
 close of his Poemata et Inscriiotiones (1847).
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AT PISTOIA. 455 
 
 might thus obtain an audience for Avhat he had to say 
 not only greatly wider but far more enduring than if he 
 continued to write in his native tongue ; and though he 
 soon repented of this j^urpose to put forth nothing more 
 in English that was either critical or imaginative, he 
 had a lurking belief to the very last that he should live 
 to be recognised as a poet by reason of his Latin writ- 
 ings, when not only his, but all the English poems con- 
 temporary with his, should with the language itself have 
 di'ifted hopelessly away. Nor were the eccentric turns 
 of his temper on this point without some advantage in 
 the end. Never till he was making that preposterous 
 engagement to use the brave old speech no longer, had 
 he made himself so thoroughly acquainted with its mas- 
 terpieces even in tracks quite apart from his ordinary 
 reading. What the character of his studies had been 
 in j)ast days of leisure he has already related in his 
 letter to the Chancellor Eldon,* and his silent com- 
 panions at Llanthony were his later heroes in many an 
 imaginary conversation : but besides this large acquaint- 
 ance with other than English writers, the latter also had 
 recently become more variously familiar to him. Until 
 he lived abroad, he used to say, he did not know what 
 a library was ; and very generally he had now enlarged 
 the circle of the authors with whom he was in the habit 
 of passing great portions of his time. " You surprised 
 " me," wrote Walter Birchf to him just before he quitted 
 Pistoia, " by the familiarity you displayed with the lite- 
 " rature of our old divines in the letter I had from you 
 
 * Ante, p. 345. 
 
 ■\ In the same letter Birch announces to Lander his marriage, 
 and tells him he has become " rusticated and country-parson-fied" 
 upon a living in Wiltshire which Lord Pembroke had given him. 
 This he changed three years later for a better living in Essex given 
 him by his college, and -which he held to his death.
 
 456 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1S15-21. 
 
 " almost a year ago." Another remark from tlie same 
 letter may be added. Landor had been writing to his 
 old schoolfellow of the Latin Essay he had in hand, and 
 of the eulogy it would contain of Wordsworth ; and 
 " would you believe it," Birch replies, " I inquired for 
 " the Excursion at Upham's last year, and found that 
 " they did not even know that such a book had been 
 " published." The poem had been out nearly five years 
 Avlien this letter was A\Titten. 
 
 V. Agaix at Pisa. 
 A Birthday Letter to Southey : 30 Jax. 1820. 
 
 " It appears to me an age since I heard from you, nor have 
 I yet received the new poem of Wordsworth. A poem given 
 by him, as I have just been telling my friend Walter Birch, is 
 like a kingdom given by Alexander or Cyrus. As I myself have 
 been confined by a bilious and nervous fever, I fancied that 
 something of the kind must have happened to you. God for- 
 bid. Neither my time nor my life are worth anything ; but 
 yours are very precious, and, like the mines of Mexico, have 
 many proprietors. I think my last letter contained a long extract 
 from a poem I have written called ' Catillus and Salia ;' but I 
 have not begun the necessary custom of taking any note of 
 what I -^vrite about, so that some f avoiuite thought may occur 
 two or three times, and another, more necessary, drop altoge- 
 ther. I suppose the intelligence has reached England that 
 Cicero's hook. De Re puhlic a has been discovered at Rome by Au - 
 gelo Mai. I read Cicero with indescribable delight ; but I would 
 rather either read or have written almost any one of Words- 
 worth's later poems than the most celebrated woi-k of Cicero. I 
 have often turned both to his and to yours, sometimes to make 
 my heart, sometimes my spirits, and sometimes my body better ; 
 for good poetry and perfect solitude I have always found the 
 best nurses. My brother Robert informs me that he has sent, 
 addressed to you at Longman's, my poem Siionscdla Polyxenm f~' 
 
 * Ante, p. 437. It is the same "'little poem" to winch he refers 
 in his last-quoted letter, and which he had now privately printed.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 457 
 
 and, v/liat is of more importance, that lie lias heard from Mr. 
 Senhouse that you are well. But his letter is dated above three 
 months ago. I sent the poem in June, and wrote either in May 
 or April. You told me in your last that Mrs. Southey had just 
 recovered from a very severe and dangerous illness. I am ex- 
 tremely anxious to hear how she does ; and pray give your little 
 boy a kiss for me. This is my birthday ; and as I never, as far 
 as I can recollect, slept soundly on its annivei'sary, I do not 
 flatter myself that I shall to-night. G-ray talks of 
 
 ' Slumbers light that fly the approach of morn.' 
 
 Mine are and always were light enough, but instead of ' flying 
 ' the approach of morn,' they wait for it. I sometimes amuse 
 myself with writing Latin poetry or correcting what I have 
 written, but I read little. Some time or other I propose to 
 finish Dante, which I began about eleven years ago, but wanted 
 perseverance. A twentieth or thirtieth part of what I read was 
 excellent. You cannot say the same of Ariosto. He is a Car- 
 nival poet ; but he is never very bad. When shall we see your 
 Quaker ? Do not let the times make any impression on your 
 writings, and as little as possible on your mind. I think of 
 England as if I were in another world and had lost all personal 
 interest in it. I foresaw and predicted the whole of these cala- 
 mities when that madman Pitt united the French of all parties 
 by hostility. Men reduced to poverty must be discontented. 
 We wither the tree and complain that it becomes touchwood 
 and catches fire. I shall remain here all the -winter, all the 
 spring, and perhaps the summer. So that I cherish the hope of 
 hearing fi-om you more than once before my departm'e. Pisa, 
 Jan. 30." 
 
 Soutliey replies with renewed lamentation over the 
 misfortune of his friend's predilection for Latin verse, 
 of which he never thinks but as of a great loss to Eng- 
 lish literature ; speaks of Byron's imitations of Frere in 
 JBeppo and Don Juan, the last of which he denounces 
 as " a foul blot in the literature of his country, an act 
 " of high treason in English poetry, for which the au- 
 " thor deserves damnation ;" and gives news of ^Vords- 
 worth's doings and his own.
 
 458 FIEST SIX YEAES IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 " Wordsworth's ' Peter Bell' lias not been sent to you yet, 
 because I have been waiting for other things to accompany it ; 
 by itself it would neither be worth carriage nor have any chance 
 of reaching you, unless an opportunity had offered of sending it 
 by a private hand. It wiU have in company now as many other 
 of his smaller pieces as suffice, with it, to form a third volume 
 of his poems. The last of these portions is now in the press, 
 and my ' Life of Wesley' will be forthcoming nearly at the same 
 time — in the course of three or four weeks. He desires me to 
 send the whple, having as just a sense of your powers as a poet 
 as you have of his. Wesley and the third volume of BrazU will 
 give form and weight to the parcel ; I do not however mean to 
 undervalue them. You will find some very interesting matter 
 in both. I hope also that I shall be able to send some verses 
 of my own upon the king's death. My taste for ex-officio verses 
 is not very unlike your own. But you will not be apprehensive 
 that I shall debase myself by the matter ; and the manner will 
 interest you as an experiment in versification." 
 
 In tlie same letter, dated March 1820, there is a 
 sharj) protest against Lander's recent praise of one of the 
 Soiith- American leaders. " You mnst have seen some 
 " exaggerated accounts of Ai'tigas. He is merely one 
 " of the ruffians whom circumstances have brousht for- 
 " ward in that miserable part of the world : those of 
 " Buenos Ayi'es being only not so bad as those of 
 " Venezuela because they have not had an opportunity 
 " as yet of committing as many crimes. A deluge that 
 " should sweep those countries clean w^ould be a merci- 
 " ful visitation : such is the character of then' present 
 " inhabitants, and such the atrocity with which they 
 " carry on an internecine warfare." 
 
 To this Landor rejoined in May. 
 
 " In a few days I shall have dispatched for England a vo- 
 lume of Latin poems, which wiU be printed at the close of the 
 ensuing week. Longman will send you a couple of copies, to- 
 gether with one for Wordsworth. I beg that one of the copies 
 may be presented with my compliments to your uncle Mr. Hill, 
 of whom I have often thought since I had the pleasure of meet-
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 459 
 
 ing him at Bristol, and to whom the literary world is so much 
 indebted for the strength with which he has supplied you for 
 the History of Brazil. Yet I wish that cursed country had never 
 been discovered, since it withdraws your attention from poetry. 
 The English consider the Portuguese and the negroes in nearly 
 the same point of interest, and all the genius in the world will 
 never make your History a popular work. Now about Artigas. 
 I never read anything about him except in the newspapers ; 
 but I conversed one day with an ignorant but acute Swiss who 
 had resided four months at Monte Yideo and a year at Buenos 
 Ayres. He assured me that A. was more dreaded by the latter 
 city than all the Spaniards and Portuguese united ; that while 
 he was at Monte Video A. had destroyed nearly a whole regi- 
 ment lately arrived from Portugal, and obliged four thousand 
 Portuguese to retreat. Yet he had no money except what arose 
 from the confiscation of Portuguese property and the sale of 
 licenses to capture their vessels, the whole amount of which in 
 a year could not amount to 20,000 dollars. The greatest force 
 he ever collected was 2800. Surely then whatever may be the 
 moral character, whatever the political views, of this man, in 
 war no age has produced his superior except J. Cassar and Ser- 
 torius. He appears to possess a siu'prising influence over the 
 near tribes in all directions, particularly about Buenos Ayres 
 and Monte Video. The troops he has beaten and destroyed 
 fought under Lord Wellington and are equal to our own. He 
 has killed of Spanish Americans and Portuguese fTom seven to 
 ten thousand at different times, with the loss of about 2000, 
 and was never beaten. The Portuguese are unwilling to attack 
 him when he commands in person, but he is often forced to be 
 absent to collect troops and encovu'age the provinces in his 
 favour. This man (the Swiss) was intercepted and plundered by 
 his soldiers, but supplied with provisions, a horse, a guide, and 
 allowed to go to Buenos Ajves. I hope the government of Bue- 
 nos Ajves will conciliate an enemy so formidable ; if not, that he 
 will overturn it and exterminate the Portuguese government, 
 than which nothing ever was more iniquitous in its whole sys- 
 tem. Poller (the Swiss) corroborates all that Koster says of the 
 mode of levying troops, and the taxes have since been much 
 increased. Floreat quercus Guernica. Adieu. I have a few 
 books which I want to send you. Did not you say that if 
 directed to the Austrian ambassador books came to you free ? 
 Give me the direction."
 
 4G0 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1S15-21. 
 
 Southey's next letter (19tli of August) announced 
 
 that the books so long promised by himself had been 
 
 dispatched ; Wordsworth's Peter Bell and Sonnets on 
 
 the River D addon, with his o^yn last volume of the 
 
 History of Brazil and his Life of Wesley. It told 
 
 also of his otlier labours in history and poetry, tlie 
 
 Peninsular War and the Tale of Paraguay; the last 
 
 retarded by the Spenser stanza, but now resumed once 
 
 more. It related some of the incidents of the neAV 
 
 reign ; Scott's baronetcy ; his oAvn doctorate at Oxford, 
 
 where nobody even at his own college remembered him 
 
 except the old porter and his Avife; the proceedings 
 
 begun a month before against " the modern Messalina," 
 
 with the support given her by the devilish ncAvspapers, 
 
 the moral pestilence of the age; and the beautification 
 
 of London, Avhich his friend will scarcely know Avhen he 
 
 returns to it, if the Catilines should not first have luTrnt 
 
 it down. Finally it told of a Series of Dialogues which 
 
 he proposed to write upon apian suggested byBoethius; 
 
 and this announcement, as it turned out, was a very 
 
 memorable one for Landor, Avhose reply was Aviitten in 
 
 September, and begins Avitli allusion to the books he in 
 
 the foregoing letter had jiromised his friend. 
 
 A Batcu of old Books for Soutuey. 
 " My anxiety to receive your last volume of the Brazilian 
 History, the Life of Weslej', and Wordsworth's poems, is sharp- 
 ened if possible by the letter I receive to-day. . . . Two of 
 the books I proposed sending to you are folios and heavy. One 
 is Vincentii Speculum Historic, praised highly by Scaliger, and 
 in which he saj^s things are found which are found nowhere 
 else. I have read a great deal of the book Avith surprise and 
 satisfaction. Tell me if you have it ; and if not, whether you 
 think it worth the duty. The other folio is Paul Hoste's Trea- 
 tise on NaA^al Tactics, which perhaps may amuse your brother. 
 The French pretend that it has taught us everything we know 
 of such matters. It certainly is a scientific work, and contains
 
 ^T. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 461 
 
 some pretty vignettes : commendations Avhich the French would 
 naturally place together. The other books are small, and 
 valueless in all other respects than that I have found few of 
 them in the public libraries. They are chiefly modern Latinists, 
 of which some persons, I hear, begin to make collections, among 
 others Mr. Heber." 
 
 Brazil and the Roman Catholic Religion. 
 
 " I am reading a second time your History of Brazil — a 
 totally ncAv world to all the literary men in Europe, whatever 
 may be their pretensions. If you had not undertaken the work, 
 it never, could have been performed. If my opinion is correct, 
 that barbarism is constituted of three principal things, filth, 
 cruelty, and superstition, the difference is hardly anything be- 
 tween the discoverers and the discovered. But the spirit of 
 discovery, you will argue, proves the superiority. I do not see 
 that. The spirit that induced the American to search for wild 
 animals to eat, is more natural, more laudable, and more saga- 
 cious, than that which propelled the Spaniard and Portuguese to 
 hazard his life and lose his comforts in search of what was more 
 difficult to find and more unsatisfactory when found. The Roman 
 Catholic superstition appears to me infinitely worse than any 
 other species of idolatry, because it has every evil inherent in it 
 which any one of those has, and in addition is more propense to 
 intolerance and idleness. Everything can be done by pi'oxy. 
 Men in Catholic countries pray to God and get children by 
 proxy, and by proxy are damned or saved. The priest even eats 
 and di'inks for you at supper, and helps you to a slice of meat by 
 putting into his mouth a piece of bread. A cannibal eats you 
 because he is hungry or because he hates you ; a Catholic kills 
 you upon a full stomach for your own good and to please God. 
 How very few men are not barbarous ! how very few arc free 
 from cruel actions, even towards those whom they would be the 
 happier for loving !" 
 
 Next he speaks — with no more thought of Childe 
 Harold, and of the mastery of the Spenser stanza ex- 
 hibited by its writer, tlian if there had been no such 
 poem or poet in that century — 
 
 Of the Spenser Stanza and of Wordsworth. 
 " You delight me by saying that you must take up the poems
 
 462 FIRST SIX YEAIIS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 . 1815-21. 
 
 which have been so long on hand. The stanza of Spenser is 
 less difficult to you than to anyone. It has made poets, and 
 ought not to deter one. How infinitely more pure is Thomson 
 in his admirable Castle of Indolence than elsewhere and Shen- 
 stone in his Schoolmistress ! How greatly has Wordsworth sur- 
 passed the noblest passages of Spenser himself in his Laodamia ! 
 The stanza is not new to you, and you possess a copiousness 
 and richness of language such as few poets have possessed. I 
 hope Wordsworth ^vill -write no more short poems until he has 
 finished his Recluse. If our country must fall, let her expire in 
 the arms of genius. France, in all her troubles, has produced 
 no writers fit to compose the title-page of an almanac, and the 
 period has been thirty years. Athens had her Demosthenes 
 and her Ai'istoteles, Rome her Cicero. Modern ages indeed have 
 produced no great prose-writers, but in poets we far surpass the 
 ancients : a position which half a century ago was untenable is 
 now unassailable. Let those who have rendered it so, add to 
 its outworks." 
 
 A Recollection of Bath. 
 
 " I shall never see London again. I never saw it willingly. 
 But surely nothing can make a cold brick-kiln a fine city. The 
 Circus in Bath is the most perfect thing I have seen, or shall 
 see ; but the inhabitants have injured it by cutting down the 
 mndows to the floor. The Parades have been deprived of then* 
 balusters, and iron palisades substituted. Still, the rest of 
 Europe has nothing equal to them. The northern part of 
 Queen's-square was never surmounted by balusters on the roof- 
 wall, and we see a broken-backed roof called a Bath roof : yet 
 London and Paris have nothing so fine. The Crescent, if streets 
 joined the two extremities, without roads between, would be 
 perfect ; it is matchless in other places. The architecture of 
 Pulteney-street does not quite please me, and perhaps is little 
 better than Portland-place. I know not what they have been 
 doing in your capital ; but unless they open a street from St. 
 Paul's across the Thames, the whole width of the church's 
 length, they may as well do nothing." 
 
 Southey's Doctorate at Oxford. 
 
 " The University of Oxford ought to purchase an estate for 
 you in the country, as a reward for becoming one of its doctors. 
 How extremely few are the occasions when honorary and pro-
 
 a3T. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 463 
 
 stituted are not one and the same ! Learned bodies, and above 
 all those in which divinity and morals are professed, should 
 guard against this. The very division into commoners and gen- 
 tleman-commoners in this age is most scandalous and offensive. 
 In Cambridge the name is less detestable, but the thing not less 
 invidious. Learning and virtue should alone distinguish young 
 men, or indeed old ones. . . . Your, letter has made me think 
 again not of Christ-church walk, but of my favourite Magdalen 
 and the half -hidden Cherwell." 
 
 At tlie close of October Soutliey AATote again, and 
 tlie wliole of his letter should be given. It is interest- 
 ing still, much of it too curious to be lost ; and beside 
 what it tells of Landor's story, or illustrates of the cha- 
 racter of both the friends, it is necessary to explain what 
 will follow. 
 
 South EY to Landor : 29 October 1820. 
 
 " I hope you have received the books long ago ; they were 
 ' shipped by the grace of God in good order and well-condi- 
 ' tioned in and upon the good ship called the Cosmopolite, 
 ' George Holland master, June 27th,' according to the invoice, 
 which has been sent to me since I wrote to you last. 
 
 " Have you heard of Su- Charles Wolseley's letter to Lord 
 Castlereagh ? I fell upon it to-day in the Times, and copy 
 for your astonishment this paragraph : ' I beg leave to in- 
 form your lordship that, if his majesty's government will 
 allow me a month's leave of absence fi'om my present place 
 of confinement, I will undertake to be of the utmost service 
 to her majesty in the pending prosecution against her, by 
 going from hence to Como, where dm'ing the year 1817 I 
 lived several months with my family ; and from that circum- 
 stance, and being acquainted with several people who were 
 employed by the queen, I have an opportunity of getting 
 at evidence that would be of the greatest consequence, that 
 no Englishman but myself and a Mr. Walter Landon, who 
 is now in Italy, can have had the same opportunity of know- 
 ing.' You probably know that one of Brougham's brothers 
 has been on the continent beating up for witnesses. If this 
 letter had appeared in time, no doubt he would have gone in 
 search of you, and I should like to have been present at the
 
 id FinST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1 815-21. 
 
 interview. Sir Ch. W. must be half crazy. We may judge how 
 capable he is of forming a sane opinion upon any subject, when 
 he has so topsy-turvy a recollection of your knowledge upon 
 this. His letter of course has not obtained the slightest notice, 
 and therefore none can be needful on your part. Had the men- 
 tion of your name been such as in any way to compromise you, 
 I should without hesitation have written to the newspapers. 
 
 " Most persons seem to apprehend that this trial will not 
 terminate without some violent explosion. Certain it is that 
 every possible art is used for making the mob rise in open rebel- 
 lion. But though it is very possible to foresee the consequence 
 of public opinions, public madness must baffle all foresight ; and 
 this is an absolute insanity. It was well observed by an ac- 
 quaintance of mine the other day, upon hearing that Bedlam 
 Avas to be enlarged, ' Enlarge Bedlam indeed ! better build a 
 ' wall round London.' 
 
 " The course of events in Spain and Portugal may perhaps 
 lead to an union of the two kingdoms, but not I think as 
 hingdoms. I have long thought that the tendency of revolution 
 in the Peninsula was to break it up into its old subdivisions, 
 give to each province its OAvn cortes and its own fueros, and 
 unite them in a federal compact, like the Americans. And if 
 there were no rubs in the way, and if the example could do 
 no one harm in other countries, this might be desired. Alas, 
 neither the Bourbons nor the Braganzas are worth a wish. As 
 yet it is not known what course the king of Portugal will take : 
 probably he must yield to what he cannot oppose, and what in 
 fact is both reasonable and right, considering the monstrous 
 misgovernment which has so long prevailed. But concessions 
 made under such circumstances are only likely to retard the 
 catastrophe, not to alter it. In the present state of Europe the 
 abuse of monarchy tends to produce democracy ; and democracy, 
 Avhich is more certain to produce immediate and more intoler- 
 able abuse, brings on military despotism. The first book which 
 I shall have to send you will contain my speculations upon the 
 progress of society, in the form of dialogue. This is evidently 
 one of the climacteric periods of the world. I am not afraid 
 of the issue of the crisis in England, where we have so much at 
 stake, that is, where we have most to lose and least to gain. 
 In Italy, whatever may happen, you will be ' only a lodger.' It 
 is well however that we are not as young as we were at the 
 commencement of the French Kevolution. For my part I look
 
 iET. 40-46.1 AGAIN AT PISA. 465 
 
 on with a wholesome but not impatient interest ; knowing per- 
 fectly what end to wish for, but so doubtful resijecting the 
 means that I am well content to trust Providence : and in that 
 confidence I rest. 
 
 '• I have none of the books which you mention, and I shall 
 prize them when they arrive. Direct them to Longman's care. 
 Every day I expect the first proof of my Peninsular War. The 
 leaves are falling fast. We have now long evenings, and I have 
 a long season of uninterrupted work before me ; with, thank 
 God, good health and fair spirits for the prospect. God bless 
 you. Yours affectionately, R. S." 
 
 Sir Charles Wolseley was sufficiently notorious in 
 those days, but now nobody remembers him. Few of 
 us have even read about the meeting of fifteen thousand 
 non-electors in the summer of 1819 who elected him their 
 " legislatorial attorney and representative for Birming- 
 " ham ;" and the arrest for sedition that followed, or the 
 sentence of imprisonment he was still undergoing while 
 Southey wrote, interests no one now. But we know 
 all of us still too well what generally had characterised 
 that infamous year of Six-acts and Peterloo-riots to be 
 very tolerant of the eagerness of one of its radical 
 heroes thus to make terms with Castlereagh for a trip 
 out of gaol into Italy as a spy and informer in even 
 the interest of the mifortunate queen. Landor saw the 
 thing apparently in that light, and cared no longer to 
 remember what once he had been so ready to relate of 
 her alleged amusements on the lake of Como. Whether 
 strictly she were guilty or innocent had in truth ceased 
 to be the question by this time. The great body of the 
 people had declared u2:)on her side ; and whatcA^er Lan- 
 dor's former statements or the use made of them might 
 have been, iir what he now sent to one of her hottest 
 partisans in society, to be published by her most power- 
 ful advocate in the press, he was guilty of nothing for 
 which he had call to be ashamed. 
 
 VOL. I. H H
 
 4CG FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 His next letter to Southey, A^Titten in the month 
 (November 1820) when the bill of pains and penalties 
 had to be abandoned, tells what he did ; and as it was 
 done at the moment of receiving Wolseley's letter, by 
 the time Southey knew it all the readers of the Times 
 knew it too, and what he Avould fain even then have 
 prevented was past recall. 
 
 " I had hardly given myself time to read your letter when I 
 ■wrote the following to the editor of the Times, and enclosed a 
 copy of it to Doctor Parr. As there is a possibility that the 
 editor of the Times may not insert my letter, I send you a copy 
 of it. 
 
 " Sir, In perfect reliance on your justice and integrity I enter- 
 tain no doubt that you will insert in an early number of yoin- paper 
 the following paragraph. I have received this day an extract from 
 a letter addressed by Sir Cb. Wolseley to Lord Castlereagh, and in- 
 serted in the Times, containing these words : ' I have an opportunity 
 ' of getting at evidence that would be of the greatest consequence, 
 ' that no Englishman but myself and a Mr. Walter Lando?^, who is 
 ' now in Italy, can have had the same opportunity of knowing.' Sir, 
 whatever I may have heard relating to the queen, I know nothing 
 positive, and never made a single inquiry that could either inculpate 
 or acquit her in the cause now pending. Were she engaged, to my 
 linowledge, in correspondence with the enemies of the country, it 
 would be my duty to inform the king's ministers ; but the secrets of 
 the bedchamber and the escritoire have never been the subject of my 
 investigation. An extreme anxiety to deliver my name from all con- 
 tact with such persons as either formed or directed the committee at 
 Milan urges me to publish this avowal, no less than the letter of Sir 
 Ch. Wolseley. During my residence on the lake of Como my time 
 was totally occupied in literary pursuits ; and I believe no man of 
 that character was ever thought worthy of employment by the pre- 
 sent administration. Added to which, I was insulted by an Italian 
 domestic of the queen, and I demanded from her in vain the punish- 
 ment of the aggressor. This alone, which might excite and keep 
 alive the most active resentment in many others, would impose eter- 
 nal silence on me. Whether such is or ought to be my character, the 
 queen's servants may learn from Dr. Parr and the king's from Mr. 
 Southc}-, two friends of whom I should find it difficult to say whether 
 they are more firmly attached to me or more affectionately beloved. 
 I desire that in future the name of a Jlr.lValter Landoii may not be 
 united with a Sir Ch. Wolseley, I am, sir, &c,, Walter Savage 
 Landoe."
 
 ^T. 4.0-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 467 
 
 " I lament that Parr should take so active a part in favour 
 of that woman. Never did I entertain a doubt of her guilt and 
 infamy; but those wretches are more guilty and more infamous 
 who employ false keys in bedrooms and escritoires. Such is the 
 intelligence we read here of the Milan committee. God for- 
 bid that any Englishman should have employed this Ompteda 
 on so scandalous and abominable an action. Had Brougham's 
 brother entered my house, the interview would have been 
 short, and both standing. I admire the impudence of Wolseley. 
 He attempted to defend the doings of the princess, but never 
 hinted a thought of her innocence when I constantly repre- 
 sented her what all Italy knows her to be, not indeed with legal 
 proofs (such are almost impossible in similar cases), but accord- 
 ing to all appearances year after year. Yet if a court of justice 
 called on me to give evidence, I should give my evidence ac- 
 cording to the orders and spirit of our laws, and say that, not 
 knomng her guilty, I am not authorised to prejudice her : 
 proofs alone constitute guilt. If you have interest with the 
 editor of the Courier^ and he admits what is impartial and 
 honest, I should be heartily glad to see inserted in that paper 
 the letter I address to the editor of the Times." 
 
 In the same letter lie describes some of the results 
 of the holy alliance, then in full action on the continent; 
 and says he has been trying his hand against it in an 
 oration written in Italian ! 
 
 The Movement for Kepresentative Institutions. 
 
 " I am delighted both at the spirit and the wisdom of Spain, 
 Portugal, and Naples. They recur to old and wise institutions, 
 and defeat by this recurrence the madness both 'of monarchical 
 and democratical ambition. I am printing at Naples a paper 
 to show the present state of representative government. I lay 
 down only two principles : one, that there are no degrees of 
 liberty, and that few representatives are enough ; the other, 
 that whatever nation has really its representatives is free, 
 whatever has not is not. Although I would not, in England, 
 destroy (for I tremble at a void in all things) the house of 
 peers, I would by no means recommend the erection of one 
 where institutions have gro-\vn up without it. The senate was 
 the subversion of Kome by its cupidity and injustice ; and the
 
 4G8 FIEST SIX YEARS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1 815-21. 
 
 house of lords ruined the EugHsh government by its blind ac- 
 quiescence in the outrages of Charles I. I would wish to see a 
 government where no man or body of men has interests oppo- 
 site to or beyond the interests of the people. But in politics 
 how many articles of faith ought to be held in secret ! I will 
 wait for my sheet of Italian, and send it with the other books. 
 You iDerhaps will think it intemperate : in England it would be 
 so : but England has a government to defend, Naples is creat- 
 ing one ; England is safe and unassailable, Naples is threatened 
 and insecure. Added to which, it is necessary on the continent 
 to warn the representative government and the despotic, and to 
 persuade them, if possible, to form a league for their mutual 
 defence. In yoiu? letter you say nothing of your little boy, yet 
 there is no intemperate weather that I do not think of him." 
 
 An Objection to Peter Bell. 
 " I received the books about six weeks ago, if my recollec- 
 tion is right, and wrote immediately to Wordsworth a letter of 
 thanks, waiting to hear from you whether I might send the 
 heavy folios. They shall be dispatched by the first English 
 ship from Leghorn. ... In whatever Wordsworth wi-ites there 
 is admirable poetry ; but I wish he had omitted all that precedes 
 ' There was a time' (p. 9) in Peter Bell. The first poet that 
 ever wrote was not a more original poet than he is, and the 
 best is hardly a greater." 
 
 One may see a little personal weakness in that ob- 
 jection. A Avhole half of the famous prologue he would 
 have dropped, and among the lines so condemned are 
 
 these : 
 
 " Swift Mercury resounds with mirth, 
 Great Jove is full of stately bowers ; 
 But these, and all that they contain, 
 What are they to that tiny grain, 
 That little earth of ours ?" 
 
 Very much were they still, just now indeed the little earth 
 itself not nearly so much, to a man who lived his life 
 in the remote far more than in the near; whose mind 
 hal)itually dwelt in those regions of imagination which 
 the homelier poet here designedly had abandoned ; who
 
 .i:T. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 469 
 
 in his ardoui' for classic forms was even ready to re- 
 strict himself to classic speech ; and whose volnme of 
 poems and idyls about ancient deities and heroes, com- 
 posed in one of the languages of antiquity and dispatched 
 to England before that letter was written, reached Kes- 
 wick almost at the very time when Peter Bell and his 
 adventures with his ass made their entrance into Pisa. 
 Southey was \^Titing at the time the preface to his Vi- 
 sion of Judgment in which he made his onslaught on 
 the Satanic school, and a passage from Landor's Latin 
 essay came in with apt enforcement of his bitter charges 
 against Byron.* Yet neither Latin essay nor Latin 
 poems were grateful to him. At both of them, as at his 
 friend's objection to the Wordsworth prologue, he doubt- 
 less gravely shook his head, and gave expression once 
 again to his never-ceasing regret that Landor could write 
 so well in a language not comparable to his own. 
 
 Some of these matters find allusion in his next letter, 
 
 * I will quote the passage. It is interesting in itself ; uuderljiug 
 its reference to Byron and his eulogists is an important truth too 
 often disregarded ; and it is a good specimen of the style as well as 
 matter of the essay. " Summi poetaj in omni poetarum sajculo viri 
 " f uerunt probi : in nostris id vidimus et videmus ; neque alius est 
 " error a veritate longius quam magna ingenia magnis necessario 
 " corrumpi vitiis. Secundo plerique posthabent primum, hi maligni- 
 " tate, illi ignorantia ; et quum aliquem iuveniunt styli morumque 
 " vitiis notatum, nee inficetum tamen nee in libris edendis parcum, 
 " eum praedicant, stipant, occupant, amplectuntur. Si mores aliquan- 
 " tulum vellet corrigere, si stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio 
 " temperare, si mor;i3 tantillum interjionere, turn ingens nescio quid 
 "' et ver^ epicum, quadraginta anuos natus, procuderet. Ignorant 
 " vero febriculis non indicari vires, impatientiam ab imbecillitate non 
 " differrc : ignorant a levi homine et incoustante multa fortasse scribi 
 " i^osse plusquam mediocria, nihil compositum, arduum, ajternum." 
 Pocmuta et Inscrijjtioncs (18-17), p. 285-G. The title of the essay Lan- 
 dor changed in the later edition from " De Cultu atque Usu Latini 
 " Sermonis" to " Quiestio qiiamobrem Poetie Latini llecentiores minus 
 " legantur."
 
 470 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 which bears date the 8th February 1821, and which I 
 shall 2:»robably be thanked for not suppressing. 
 
 " I have received your Latin volume, and in cutting open 
 the leaves (while the other contents of the parcel are left un- 
 examined) I find my own name mentioned in prose and verse 
 in that manner which brings with it the greatest gratification 
 at present, and will bear with it the greatest weight hereafter. 
 
 " I am printing my History of the Peninsular War. And I 
 am endeavouring to find how to send you a poem which will be 
 published in about a fortnight. The title is A Vision of Judg- 
 ment : the personage brought to judgment is the late king ; 
 and the verse is a metre consti^ucted in imitation of the hexa- 
 meter. The principle of adaptation is, that, as by the Germans, 
 the trochee is used for the spondee ; with the farther alteration 
 of employing any foot of one or tvro or three syllables in the 
 first place in the verse (for the sake of beginning with a short 
 syllable), and occasionally, but with a rarer license, in the second, 
 third, or fourth place. I have satisfied my own ear, and that of 
 every person, learned or unlearned, upon Avhom the measure has 
 as yet been tried. There is no one of whose opinion I stand so 
 much in doubt as of yours, for you have made yourself ' an an- 
 ' tique Roman' in these things : take however the opening of 
 the poem : 
 ' 'Twas at that sober hour when the h'ght of day is receding, 
 
 And from surroundiug things the hues wherewith day has adoru'd 
 them 
 
 Fade, like the hopes of }"outh, till the beauty of earth is dejiarted,' 
 &c. 
 
 You have here a sample* of the measure. The poem is long 
 enough for the reader to become accustomed to it, and lose the 
 first sense of its strangeness. It is something more than 600 
 lines. I expect a hurricane of abuse — hurricane-like, from all 
 quarters ; for among the worthies of the late reign I have placed 
 neither Pitt nor Fox. The spirits whom I have confronted with 
 the king are Wilkes, Junius, and Washington. If you can 
 tolerate the measure, the rest will be sufficiently in accord with 
 your feelings. I shall see if I can get a copy sent to you through 
 the Foreign Office. 
 
 * Thirty-two lines are thus given ; but as they do not differ from 
 the opening of the poem as printed, it was not necessary to rej^eat 
 them here.
 
 JET. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 471 
 
 " My family, thank God, are well ; but I have recently sus- 
 tained a great shock in the death of my poor friend Nash, who 
 was with me at Como, and who, at home and abroad, had 
 spent more than one year out of the last toixv with me. My 
 little boy thrives, and is a fine creature. These are such pre- 
 carious blessings that I do not inquire concerning yours without 
 some degree of fear. 
 
 " Your letter was inserted in the Times. Some parts of it 
 you would have altered if you had seen fair statements of the 
 case. The madness is now abating : still, this is the time for 
 the Catholics to attempt the reestablishment of their religion ; 
 for if the people of England choose to have such a queen, they 
 cannot possibly object to the whore of Babylon. Oiu' ministers 
 want decision and firmness, but I believe it is not possible for 
 men to act with better intentions, nor more uprightly. The 
 whigs are acting as basely as they did in the days of Titus 
 Gates. God bless you. R.S." 
 
 Landor replied on the 12tli of March, and refers to 
 another child, a daughter, recently born to him. This 
 event had been announced to his mother on the 6th of 
 the March preceding (1820) as having taken place at 
 seven o'clock that evening. " It is the cvistom at Pisa 
 " to cany the children to be baptised the A'ery day of 
 *' their birth, but I shall not pay any attention to such 
 " foolery." He delayed it, as we shall see, till after the 
 date of his present letter to Southey. 
 
 His Children : March 1821. 
 
 " I hear with great delight that your little boy thrives. My 
 two creatm'es have caught a cough from a servant-maid, but are 
 recovering, dear hearts. I caught it from them." 
 
 Southey's Vision of Judgment : George III, Junius, 
 AND Washington. 
 
 "Your hexameters have sharpened my appetite for the re- 
 mainder. As I know nothing of German, it is the first time I 
 ever read any, and only remember that you once repeated a 
 single sentence. I am afraid the poetry has made me a convert 
 to the measm'e. You manage it with wonderful address, and
 
 472 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 there is only one verse that I found necessary to read twice : 
 ' For it tells of mortality always,' &c. 
 
 " I pitied more sincerely than many of the courtiers the 
 dreadful affliction of the late king, but I never felt much respect 
 or esteem for him : first because he was too prompt in undertak- 
 ing the American and French war, the one most nefarious, the 
 other most impolitic ; and because he pocketed from the duchy 
 of Cornwall the property of his son, and permitted the aflEair to 
 come before parliament under so shallow a pretext as that of 
 a claim for the expenses of his education. He was also insincere. 
 The marquis of Rockingham told lord Shelburne, lord Shelburne 
 told colonel Barry, and colonel Barry told me, the following 
 anecdote. Lord Rockingham had never been cordially or in- 
 deed more than coldly received by him, and was greatly surprised 
 and gratified at a favourable change of manner. A few days 
 afterwards he was deprived of office. He mentioned (I forget 
 to whom) the king's cordiality on .such a day, and it was dis- 
 covered that on tlmt very morning it was resolved to deprive him 
 of his place. Parr told me that he had heard the same anec- 
 dote, and I think he added from Fox. I believe Junius to be 
 Burke, well knowing the versatility of his style, and observing 
 that neither he nor his friends are mentioned in the letters. The 
 objection that they are too uniformly correct and elegant weighs 
 lightly with me. He had not room for extravagance in the 
 compass of a letter ; he was forced into consistency and com- 
 pactness. It is reported with great confidence that Sh' Joshua 
 Reynolds prevailed with him to correct his discourses. Now 
 any one of these is surely Avorth all the letters of Junius both 
 for materials and workmanship. I tremble at the vicinity of 
 such a rascal as Wilkes to Washington. I believe Washington 
 to excel both in political and military wisdom all men except 
 Gustavus Adolphus. Surely never had human being such diffi- 
 culties to ovei'come ; and how difficult, how nearly impossible, 
 how utterly so to any but himself, to give ductility to such 
 drossy materials !" 
 
 Roman Catholic Emanx'ipation and Radical Reform. 
 
 " I entertain no fear whatever that the woman of Cernobbio 
 AvUl introduce her sister of Babylon. That bloated ringdropper, 
 that bastard of milliner and perfumer, has long ago lost her 
 charms for Englishmen. Surely it is absurd to deprive men of 
 a seat in parliament because they believe in transubstantiation.
 
 iET. 40-46.] AGAIN AT PISA. 473 
 
 It is quite enough if they swear that they will obey no person 
 whatever in any act opposing the authority of king and parlia- 
 ment. For my own part I could just as easily believe that I seal 
 this letter with a god, as that I eat and drink one. Now the Eng- 
 lish Church says that ' the body and blood of Christ are. verily 
 ' and indeed taken in the Lord's supper.' It is childish to draw 
 any line between two absurdities so enormous. I am firmly of 
 opinion that no danger whatever can arise to England from the 
 reception of the Catholics into parliament, nor (however odious 
 the name has become) from a radical reform. In the last years 
 of the war I would have opposed such a measure as strenuously 
 as any of the ministers, knowing the infatuation of some men 
 in favour of Bonaparte, and the indifference of others to any 
 calamity or disgrace that the nation might suffer, provided they 
 could come into the possession of wealth and power. I rejoiced 
 in the battle of Waterloo, but I dreaded fi'om that moment the 
 reaction under which the continent groans. Avistria promised 
 to Lombardy a representative government, and Prussia promised 
 it to aU the states of that crown. How basely have the people 
 been deceived ! Sicily had begun to respire under a liberal 
 government. The king abrogated the whole system. His troops, 
 who saw the good effects of it, no sooner returned into Italy 
 than the whole body of the officers united with those they had 
 lately fought against, and at present there are not ten families 
 in Naples even suspected of any propensity towards despotism." 
 
 Orations in Italian against the Holy Alliance. 
 
 " I have TV'ritten three orations exposing the duplicity of the 
 Alleati Scinti (as the Neapolitans call them), the danger to which 
 all constitutional governments are exposed, and the inexpedi- 
 ency, not to say impossibihty, of forming a house of lords. 
 With due praises to the moral character of the English aris- 
 tocracy, I have remarked that their two most memorable acts 
 are theii' opposition to the repeal of the slave-trade, and their 
 miserable weakness and indecision in the affair of the queen. 
 I have observed that to form a house of lords materials are re- 
 quired which ai'e not to be found anywhere in Europe out of 
 England, not even in Venice ; that they must be of long growth, 
 strong fibre, gi'cat girth, and well-seasoned. Much of the two 
 first editions was omitted by a most indiscreet and foolish editor. 
 I have ordered another to be printed, with a third letter. The 
 first edition was distributed gratis ; of the second I know no-
 
 474 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY, [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 thing but its mere existence in the same incomplete form. I 
 was surprised and vexed that the box of books had not left 
 Leghorn, and am now pleased, that I may enclose some copies 
 of this work." 
 
 That is one of his works of which there is now no 
 trace, except in passages of his later dialogues ; and 
 the letter closes with mention of another of his perished 
 undertakings. Upon the questions of poetry and criti- 
 cism opened up in Wordsworth's prefaces he had planned 
 a Latin essay supplementary to the treatise prefixed to 
 his Latin poems ; and " I have finished," he tells Sou- 
 they, " my translation of Wordsworth's criticisms, say- 
 " ing in the preface that I had taken whatever I wanted 
 " from him, with the same liberty as a son eats and 
 " drinks in his father's house ... I wish," he abruptly 
 adds, "I had some thousand pounds to spare, as I had 
 " when the Spaniards rose against Bonaparte, that what 
 " I offered to them I might offer to the Neapolitans." 
 The revolt at Naples, it is hardly necessary to add, was 
 but one of the series of demands for representative go- 
 vernment that arose in various parts of the continent 
 in that and the preceding year, and to which Landor's 
 sympathy had been eagerly offered in the " orations" 
 composed, printed, and circulated during the last weeks 
 of his residence at Pisa. It was a natural reaction against 
 the repressive system established on the fall of Napoleon, 
 and, though in itself sliort-lived, was not without per- 
 manent results. Very soon thrust down again in Spain, 
 in Portugal, in Naples, in Piedmont, even in Turkey 
 to which the movement had extended, it led directly to 
 the independence of Brazil, to the recognition by Eng- 
 land of the South- American republics, and to the Greek 
 revolution. In the excitements caused by these events 
 no man shared more largely than Landor.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] OX THE WAY TO FLOEEXCE. 475 
 
 YI. Ox THE Way to Florexce. 
 
 In April 1821, resolved not to pass that summer at 
 Pisa, Lanclor had come to Florence in search of a house. 
 A letter from his mother had reached him as he started 
 on his journey, and from Florence he answered it. She 
 had told him that there could not now be many more 
 days for her at Ipsley, which would soon have to pre- 
 pare for its new master. But he says nay to that, and 
 prays that many more summers there may yet be hers. 
 
 " The misery of not being able to see you is by far the 
 greatest I have ever suffered. Never shall I forget the thousand 
 acts of kindness and affection I have received from you from 
 my earliest to my latest days. I have deferred the christening 
 of my little daughter because I wished to have one to be named 
 after you, and to whom I might request you to be godmother. 
 As perhaps I may never have another, I shall call my little 
 Julia by the name of Julia Elizabeth Savage Landor, and with 
 jomr permission will engage some one of Julia's English fi-iends 
 to represent you. This is the first time I was ever a whole day 
 without seeing Arnold. I wonder what his thoughts are upon 
 the occasion. Mine are a great deal more about him than 
 about the house I must look for. He is of aU living creatures 
 the most engaging, and ah-eady repeats ten of the most beau- 
 tiful pieces of Italian poetry. The honest priest his master 
 says he is a miracle and a marvel, and exceeds in abilities aU he 
 ever saw or heard of. He turns into ridicule every person that 
 speaks bad Italian. What a pity it is that such divine creatures 
 should ever be men and subject to regrets and sorrows ! Julia 
 is thin and weak, but is without any particular complaint, and 
 is recommended to change the air for the summer, as Pisa lies 
 low and is abandoned by all the inhabitants in the warm sea- 
 son. There are some Austrians in Florence, but not many. 
 They are a great annoyance wherever they go ; in fact, foreign 
 soldiers are nowhere favourites." 
 
 Well might he so acknowledge the letter she had 
 written to him, for it told him what the result had been
 
 476 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 of her always tender and proud thouglit of him, as well 
 as of all her prudent savings in the six years that had 
 passed since he quitted England. " Whenever I die 
 " you will find by my will that the arrears which belong 
 " to me from the Llanthony property I have given up 
 " to yon, as it may the sooner lessen your embarrass- 
 " ment ; and I hope in time you will come and spend 
 " the remainder of your life in this country where you 
 " have many well-wishers, which some time or other 
 " you will be convinced of. By my retired way of 
 " living I have been enabled to provide comfortably for 
 " your sisters; and whenever I leave this world you 
 " will find your property improved by my having kept 
 " all in good repair." She describes the most recent 
 purchases made by her for the various farms, and jDlea- 
 santly adds : " As I cut no timber for the repairs, I 
 " depend on you, for my sake, not to cut any down, as 
 " the timber is the beauty of Ipsley." This was a 
 point of character with her. Replying afterwards to 
 that Florence letter of his, she hopes the place may suit 
 him better than Pisa; and indeed she thinks it may 
 be a healthy situation enough ; but as for beauty, " no 
 " place can be truly beautiful without fine trees, which 
 " I suppose in Italy you seldom see." 
 
 Her letters, shrewd in all they observe upon, and 
 homely in most of their applications, are full of cha- 
 racter of this kind. Excellent in their descriptions of 
 the country, and models of good sense and cleverness in 
 everything pertaining to the cultivation of her farms, 
 they contain little politics and less literature ; yet never 
 anything as to either that her son might not read with 
 a smile. " Doctor Parr," she says in one of them, after 
 describino- with a whimsical ffood-humour the excite- 
 ment about the queen, "Doctor Parr is made her do-
 
 ^T. 40-46.] ON THE WAY TO FLORENCE. 477 
 
 " mestic chaplain. I think at his time of hfe he might 
 " have been quiet at home." In another she relates 
 her having met " JSIr. Moore the poet, who speaks very 
 " highly of your Count Julian, which he had been read- 
 " ing and was quite delighted with." In a third she 
 tells him of the king's death and of the duke of Kent's, 
 reading him a motherly lecture on the fact that the 
 duke's had been caused by " sitting in wet boots and 
 " taking cold." She never names Llanthony as by 
 possibility to be ever his future home, but dwells always 
 upon Ipsley. There is a very pleasing letter where she 
 describes the gardens there and tlie beauty of them, and 
 in which she hopes, it being so much more retired than 
 Tachbrooke, it will be his residence for a part of every 
 year when he returns. Some of the pictures at Llan- 
 thony he had been fondest of, she tells him, had been 
 bought for him by his brother Henry, and they were 
 now placed at Ipsley as heirlooms. " For I do so wish 
 " you, dear Walter," she adds with a touching sim- 
 plicity, " some time hence to be able to return and find 
 " as much pleasure here as I have done these many 
 " years." That was two years before she announced 
 to him tlie result of her generous savings ; and in the 
 letter of the present year containing it and lately 
 quoted, there is a mention of the last book he had sent 
 over to her which in its homely way might have con- 
 vinced him, as he was already beginning even to think 
 for himself, that what he gained bore no proportion to 
 what he lost by writing his poetry in the Latin tongue. 
 After telling him that she expects at her age soon to 
 leave the world, that she is now seventy-seven, and had 
 enjoyed health so long she could not expect it much 
 longer, she tells him the book he had sent her had 
 arrived safely, " and is thought by the learned to be
 
 478 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 " a very dellglitful book; but one cannot read it, to 
 " understand it, oneself." 
 
 Landor wrote two more letters to Soutliey before he 
 finally pitched his tent in Florence, and from these the 
 following extracts are given. The " little work" referred 
 to, of which I have found no other existing trace, was a 
 copy in English of his Italian orations against the holy 
 alliance. 
 
 Movement against the Continental Despotisms : Eising 
 OF the Greeks. 
 
 " At last the box of books is on its way to England, after a 
 parcel, containing twenty-four volumes, had been robbed from 
 the house at Leghorn to which they were consigned. There 
 were some suspicions as to the thief, and ten of the worst are 
 since discovered. Nistri, who bound them, saw them in a shop 
 at Pisa, too late however to send them with the rest. I have 
 requested Longman to open the box, and to print what I have 
 written on the present state of 'constitutional governments. 
 The system of Bonaparte seems to be adopted by Russia and 
 Austria ; and I am convinced that, unless our government is 
 both more energetic and more liberal, no particle of sound and 
 rational government will remain in Em'ope. I hope no differ- 
 ence of opinion will prevent Longman from pubUshing my little 
 work, although a part of its interest may be lost by the sudden 
 change in the affairs of Naples. I distrusted the people in 
 office there ; my praises were exhortations. I did not think it 
 proper to omit anything I had written. What is durable may 
 be founded on what is transitory. There are at Pisa nearly 
 two hundred young Greeks studying medicine, or what is called 
 humanity, but mostly medicine. One of these visited me, after 
 reading what I had written on the affairs of Naples, and he 
 alone was intrusted with the secret of the Greek insurrection. 
 I allude to it in a sentence in the second or third part. No 
 other man in Italy knew anything of the design. Few of the 
 Greeks are younger than twenty-five or thhty, and they are 
 remarkably studious. From what I can collect the Greeks were 
 treated by the Turkish government with great humanity and 
 justice, and their impositions were extremely light. Woe betide 
 them if they fall under Austria, Eussia, or any other power. I
 
 ^T. 40-46.] ON THE WAY TO FLOEENCE. 479 
 
 am told tliat the people of the Adriatic Islands are extremely 
 discontented under England. I know not how it happens, but 
 England certainly is more hated than any other power, ancient 
 or modern, by her colonies and dependencies. Nothing can 
 exceed the rage of the Italians at what they call the perfidy of 
 England towards Naples. I see no perfidy ; I see much cow- 
 ardice and baseness, and such as will end in war. If Russia is 
 permitted to possess anything either in the Adriatic or Medi- 
 terranean, she wiU be able to tiu-n the balance of power against 
 us in that quarter. And that she would have permitted the 
 aggrandisement of Austria without the certainty of an equiva- 
 lent is improbable in the last degree. To have permitted this 
 collusion is one among the crimes against humanity which will 
 cause the downfall of England. The people of Tuscany are 
 contented ; they live under a mild and most amiable prince. 
 Yet Austria sends 10,000 troops to live at Florence, and the 
 number for all Italy is to be 125,000. Five regiments are 
 enough to keep all Italy in subjection : nothing can exceed the 
 cowardice of this people." 
 
 Southey's proposed Dialogues. 
 
 " I have not received your dialogues, which I look for anxi- 
 ously. We are sailing, I think, in different dkections. ' Vela 
 ' dare atque iterare cursus cogor relictos,' by the winds that 
 predominate here. God grant that one or the other of us may 
 be able to do some good. All hope that England can ever be 
 what she was before the administration of Pitt is vain and 
 futile. There never was a time when her inhabitants were 
 more vicious, more unhappy, or more divided. They act with 
 all the folly and desperation of men who have nothing left, 
 neither goods nor credit. Your judgments, foi-med on the spot, 
 must be more correct than mine. What is going on throughout 
 the continent seems to be intended by Providence for the popu- 
 lation of America." 
 
 Insecurity of Letters. 
 
 " I am inclined to beUeve that you have written to me since 
 my last from Pisa, not however without some suspicion that this 
 among others may have miscarried. The Neapolitan war is a 
 sufficient plea for the roguery of certain men here, who indulge 
 their cm-iosity and malice under the mask of duty. There is 
 not a viler scoundrel than a certain Fossombronio, formerly a
 
 480 FIRST SIX YEAKS IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 surveyor, now minister of the foreign affairs. I have collected 
 various anecdotes of this fellow, formerly a violent partisan of 
 the French, and among the rest his habit of detaining the letters 
 of those foreigners who, from their acquirements or virtues, may 
 reasonably be suspected of the power and inclination to treat 
 him as he deserves. Remittances from bankers have been de- 
 tained a month or more at his office." 
 
 Suppression of his Orations against the Holy Alliance. 
 
 " Longman has not thought it worth his while to give me 
 any information about the work I sent to be printed. I am 
 very soi'ry for it, as it contains remarks of great utility and 
 perfect novelty, useful indeed at all times, but most materially 
 so at the ^jresent. I am informed that I should have done bet- 
 ter if I had sent it to Ma"\vman, who Avould have executed it 
 gladly." 
 
 George the Fourth's Coronation. 
 
 " I am happy to understand that the coronation has been 
 performed without any popular disturbance. Surely if that 
 woman Avhom the ministers are pleased to call queen continues 
 to excite disturbances, she will be at last coerced. "Were I a 
 magistrate, I should not hesitate to commit her to Bridewell. 
 I hope to hear that you have wi'itten an ode on the coronation. 
 In itself a coronation can raise but small enthusiasm in a poet : 
 the ckcumstances are everything, and never were they so mo- 
 mentous as now." 
 
 Court of the Grand Duke op Tuscany. 
 
 '■ I cannot sleep for the Greeks. They disturb my rest more 
 than the Sultan's, but with very different sensations. On the 
 news of Bonaparte's death the festivities at court were sus- 
 pended. His brother-in-law, Borghese, did not however put on 
 mourning. He resides eutu-ely at Florence. The grand duke 
 was persuaded by his ministers to marry the sister of his son's 
 Avife, who also was desirous that, if he married anyone, it should 
 be her. She is far fi'om beautiful, and the bridegroom appears 
 melancholy. In fact he loved the duchess of Lucca's daughter, 
 a, sweet, amiable, and lovely girl. The ministers must have 
 1)een fools, or something worse, to persuade him : for neither his 
 son's wife, nor her sister the queen of Spain, has children. Yet 
 they pretended it was to secure the succession in his family, the
 
 ^T. 40-46.] ON THE WAY TO FLOKENGE. 481 
 
 hereditary prince being sickly. In fact, it was to secure their 
 own power — the secret of policy in all ministers." 
 
 Public Affairs and Salaries in England. 
 " We have had a few days of intense heat, but, I thank God, 
 it has not affected the children. I wish to hear what you are 
 doing. All the accounts I receive from England are distress- 
 ing, particularly the report made by the committee of the House 
 of Commons on the state of the landed interest. A reduction 
 is spoken of in the payment of public offices of 15 per cent in 
 the quai-ter. Now provisions being 15 per cent cheaper than 
 when these places were given, this is no reduction at all. My 
 opinion is that no offices,' except the kingly and the judges, 
 should exceed 1500Z. a year. I would give the chancellor 3000/, 
 the judges 2500/. Ambassadors should be chosen from elevated 
 and wealthy men, as elsewhere. That commissaries and consuls 
 should be better paid than admu'als and generals would be 
 utterly incredible, if anything like reason were admitted into 
 our expenditm-e. Farewell, and pray let me hear soon from 
 you. When will Wordsworth publish the remainder of his great 
 poem?" 
 
 Before Southey replied on that latter j)oint, Words- 
 worth had himself answered Landor's question. His 
 letter was dated at the beginning of Sej^tember 1821, 
 and spoke of both the published and the unpublished 
 portion of his celebrated poem. " The Excursion is 
 " proud of your aj)23robation. The Recluse has had a 
 " long sleep, save in my thoughts. My manuscripts 
 " are so ill-penned and blurred that they are useless 
 " to all but myself : and at present I cannot face them. 
 " But if my stomach can be preserved in tolerable order, 
 " I hope you will hear of me again, in the character 
 ^' chosen for the title of that poem." Not simply to 
 tell Landor this, however, but to speak of the Latin 
 poems and dissertation,* and explain why they had not 
 earlier been acknowledged, was the principal intent of 
 Wordsworth's letter. He had been suffering from an 
 * See ante, pp. 454-5, 468-9. 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 482 FIRST SIX YEAES IX ITALY. [Book TV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 irritation in his eyes that had disabled him hitelj from 
 reading and writing, hut he had not been unmindful or 
 ungrateful ; and, chary as he was of praising even those 
 among contemporary poets who had the strongest claims 
 on his personal regai'd, we are entitled fairly to accept 
 as of peculiar significance and weight what he now said 
 to Landor of the author of Gehir and Count Julian. 
 
 " It is high time I should thank you for the honour- 
 " able mention you have made of me. It could not but 
 " be grateful to me to be praised by a poet who has 
 " written verses of lohich I would rather have been the 
 " author than of any j^^^oduced in our time. And what 
 '' I now thus write to you I have frequently said to 
 " many." 
 
 Of the Latin poems he afterwards speaks, and, with 
 a simple gravity not un amusing, upholds as a time-hon- 
 oured custom the habit of writers writing in their native 
 tongue. He had felt himself greatly honoured by the 
 present of Landor's book. " It arrived at a time when 
 " I had the use of my eyes for reading, and with great 
 " pleasure did I employ them in the perusal of the dis- 
 " sertation annexed, which I read several times. The 
 " poems themselves, however, I have not been able to 
 " look into, for I was seized with a fit of composition at 
 " that time, and deferred the pleasure to which they 
 " invited me till I could give them an undivided atten- 
 " tion. But alas ! the complaint in my eyes, to which 
 " I have been occasionally subject for several years past, 
 " suddenly retm^ned ; and I have since suffered from it 
 " as ah'eady mentioned." Referring then to the some- 
 what singular cu'cumstances in which they were living at 
 Rydal Mount, in solitude dui'ing nearly nine months of 
 the year, and for the rest in a round of engagements, 
 he says that having nobody near him that reads Latin
 
 ^T. 40-46.] ON THE WAY TO FLOKENCE. 483 
 
 he can only speak of the essaj from recollection ; but 
 Landor will not perhaps feel surprised to be told that 
 he differs in opinion as to the propriety of the Latin 
 language being used by moderns for works of taste and 
 imag-ination. "Miserable would have been the lot of 
 " Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, if they had preferred 
 " the Latin to their mother tongue (there is, by the by, 
 " a Latin translation of Dante which you do not seem 
 " to know) ; and what could Milton, who was surely no 
 " mean master of Latin, have made of his Paradise Lost, 
 " had that vehicle been employed instead of the lan- 
 " guage of the Thames and Severn ! Should we even 
 " admit that all modern dialects are comparatively 
 " changeable, and therefore limited in their efficacy, 
 " may not the sentiment which Milton so pleasingly 
 " expresses when he says he is content to be read in his 
 " native isle only, be extended to durability? and is it 
 " not more desirable to be read with affection and pride 
 " and familiarity for five hundred years by all orders 
 " of minds and all ranks of people, in your native tongue, 
 " than only by a few scattered scholars for the space 
 " of three thousand ? My frequent infirmity moreover 
 " gives me an especial right to urge this argviment. 
 " Had your Idylliums been in English, I should long 
 " ere this have been as well acquainted mth them as 
 " with your Gehir and with your other jioems; and 
 " now I know not how long they may remain to me a 
 " sealed book." 
 
 Particular points in the dissertation then recur to 
 him, as, warned by his failing sight, he proceeds to dic- 
 tate the remainder of his letter to Mrs. Wordsworth. 
 A hundred things he had met with in it which fell in 
 with his own sentiments and judgments ; but there were 
 also many he should like to talk over with Landor. He
 
 484 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1815-21, 
 
 thinks tlie arrangement or " ordonnance" of the essay 
 might be improved ; and that several of its separate re- 
 marks, thovigli perfectly just, as in particular those upon 
 Virgil, being yet details that obstruct the \'iew of the 
 whole, would perhaps have been better placed in notes 
 or an appendix. " Vincent Bourne sui'ely is not so gi'eat 
 " a favourite with you as he ought to be. Though I 
 " acknowledge there is ground for your objection upon 
 " the score of ultra-concinnity (a queer word for a female 
 " pen, Mrs. Wordsworth has boggled at it), yet this ap- 
 " plies only to a certain portion of his longs and shorts. 
 " Are you not also penurious in yoiu* jDraise of Gray ? 
 " The fragment at the commencement of his fourth 
 " book in which he laments the death of West, in ca- 
 " dence and sentiment touches me in a manner for which 
 " I am grateful. The first book also of the same poem 
 " appears to me as well executed as anything of that 
 " kind is likely to be. Is not there a speech of Solon 
 " to which the concluding couplet of Gray's sonnet 
 " bears a more pointed resemblance than to any of the 
 " passages you have quoted ? He was told not to giieve 
 " for the loss of his son, as tears would be of no avail. 
 " ' And for that very reason,' replied he, ' do I weep.' " 
 Not many days after recei\ing this letter* Landor 
 had succeeded in settling himself in the Palazzo Medici 
 
 * I give its closing sentences. " Were I able to recur to your 
 
 " book, I should trespass further upon your time, which however 
 
 " might prove little to your advantage. I saw Mr. Southey yester- 
 
 " day at his own house. He has not had his usual portion of re- 
 
 " laxation this summer, and looked, I thought, a little pale in con- 
 
 " sequence. His little boy is a stout and healthy child, and his other 
 
 " children have in general good health, though at present a little 
 
 " relaxed by the few days of extreme heat. With best wishes for 
 
 " your health and happiness, I remain, my dear sir, most sincerely 
 
 " yours, Wm. Woedswoeth,"
 
 ^T. 40-46.] RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 485 
 
 ill Florence, and Avas now to rest awliile from his wan- 
 derings. To the cities he has Kved in during the six 
 unsettled years, and to incidents not recorded in the 
 letters quoted above, allusions are scattered through his 
 wiitings that need not here be reproduced. The little 
 children in the cart on the campo santo at Pisa, the 
 dispute about the damp walls in the lodgings at Pistoia, 
 the visit to the palace of the Odeschalchi at Conio, will 
 be remembered by readers familiar with the Conversa- 
 tions. Suffice it only to add that Como seems to have 
 been his favourite resting-place before he found his home 
 in Florence, and that with the little turreted city he had 
 associations he was always fond of recalling. There he 
 had received the visits of Southey, of Bekker, and of the 
 brave descendants of the Jovii ; there, in talking daily 
 with one of its residents, "the calm philosophical Sironi," 
 he had found what seemed to him no imperfect type of 
 the Roman of antiquity ; and there, or as he had made 
 his first journey there, he had seen the most venerable 
 object in the most interesting sj)ot of ancient Italy, the 
 cypress standing on the spot where Hannibal fought 
 his first battle with Scipio. This, he would say, was 
 one of the two things best worth seeing in all the 
 country, the other being the statue at the base of which 
 Caesar fell. 
 
 Vn. Retrospect and Prospect : A new LiTERiVRY 
 Undertaking. 
 
 Southey's project of writing a Book of Dialogues, 
 first mentioned not many letters back and since more 
 than once referred to, had confirmed Laiidor in a pro- 
 ject of his own entertained for a longer time. It was 
 not a new thouoht with him : but the circumstances in
 
 486 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 which he now took it up, and the particular form it 
 assumed, had a result very memorable. 
 
 The bent of his genius, it is hardly necessary to say, 
 lay in the direction of Dialogue, and the peculiarities of 
 his temperament led him the same way. It was his first 
 design after trial of his strength in Gebir, He had pro- 
 jected a series of tragic scenes in his early days of friend- 
 ship with Mocatta. His Count Julian was a succession 
 of dialogues in verse, as was doubtless also the tragedy 
 sacrificed to appease its ill-fortune, Ferrante and Giulio* 
 In his comedy of the Charitable Dowager he had given 
 himself the same indulgence in prose. The very fonn, 
 as of an ancient oration or address in the pnyx or agora, 
 into which he had thrown his recent commentaries on 
 home and foreign politics, whether written in EngHsh 
 or Italian, expressed still that direction of his mind. At 
 the bottom of it all was the strong sense of his own in- 
 dividuality which made so large a part of his character, 
 and which he thus with the 2[;reatest advantage could 
 bring into play. For the same form of wi'iting most 
 often used to conceal one's personality is also that which 
 may be employed with the greatest success to indulge 
 in peculiarities intensely personal without the ordinary 
 conditions or restraints. 
 
 When a man writes a dialogue he has it all to him- 
 self, the pro and the con, the argument and the reply. 
 Within the shortest given space of time he may indulge 
 in every possible variety of mood. He may contra- 
 dict himself every minute. In the same page without 
 any sort of violence the most different shades of senti- 
 ment may find expression. Extravagance of statement 
 which in other forms could not be admitted may be 
 freely put forth. Dogmas of every description may 
 
 * Ante, pp. 302-3. See also p. 286.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] RETKOSPECT AND PEOSPECT. 487 
 
 be dealt in, audaciously propounded or passionately op- 
 posed, with a result all the livelier in proportion to the 
 mere vehemence expended on them. In no other style of 
 composition is a ^^Titer so free from orderly restraints 
 upon opinion, or so absolved from self-control. Better 
 far than any other it adapts itself to eagerness and im- 
 patience. DisjDensing wdth preliminaries, the jump in 
 medias res may at once be taken safely. That one thing 
 should be unexpectedly laid aside, and another as capri- 
 ciously taken up, is quite natural to it; the subjects 
 being few that may not jsermissibly branch off into all 
 the kindred topics connected with them, when the for- 
 malities held ordinarily necessary in the higher orders of 
 prose composition have disappeared in the freedom of 
 conversation. 
 
 How far such a style or method would be found 
 suitable to the weakness as well as the strength of the 
 character depicted in these pages, the reader has the 
 means of judging. By many it may be thought that I 
 have supplied such means too amply. But if the wish 
 for whose gratification the pajiers here printed were 
 given me by my old friend was to be complied with at 
 all, I could not consent so to use them as to convey an 
 imperfect or a false impression. Thus far, up to his 
 forty-fifth year, through the full half of a life prolonged 
 far beyond the allotted term, Landor stands before the 
 reader, not perhaps completely yet not partially or un- 
 fairly depicted, and in the main by himself. He desired 
 nothing so much as that some record having claim to 
 be remembered of his early intercourse with Southey, 
 and as far as possible of the letters they interchanged, 
 should be made by me ; and with the materials afforded 
 I have done my best in such a manner to comply, as, 
 while it satisfied that wish, should do offence as little
 
 488 FIRST SIX YEAKS IN ITALY, [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21, 
 
 to the patience of the li\ang as to the memoiy of the 
 dead. 
 
 Upon the latter point my chief hesitation has been 
 whether it was advisable to re^^ve the Llanthony dis- 
 putes or to tell again the story of the Bethams. But by 
 omission of the former I should have lost some illustra- 
 tions of character important in their bearing on the later 
 passages of Landor's career; the other narrative was 
 necessary to explain his sudden exile from England; 
 and in 2;i\ane: effect to his ovai wish that both should 
 be retained, I have been careful to take no part in the 
 quarrels they involve. Such also would have been to 
 him the course most pleasing ; for he was never indif- 
 ferent to the truth even at the times when he failed 
 with accuracy himself to recollect it, and he thought 
 always he could afford to have it frankly told better 
 than any imperfect or garbled representation of it. I 
 remember his anger at some remarks upon him by 
 ]\Ir. De Quincey in which the " fiery radiations" of 
 his spirit were enlarged upon, and he was described as 
 a man intended by nature to be a leader in storms, a 
 martyr, a national reformer, or an arch-rebel, but whom 
 the accident of possessing too much wealth had turned 
 into a solitary unsympathising exile. Nor was his anger 
 less at reading an anecdote of himself, I think by the 
 same writer, wherein he was said to have sold, out of 
 mere offence at the conduct of some of his tenants, 
 what his ancestors had held as their patrimony for 700 
 years. In both statements, as in many similar ones 
 made since his death, fact and faction had become so 
 oddly intermixed as only to be clearly separable by such 
 detail as I have given. 
 
 What there is in either that has a bearing on his 
 real character, will be to any who has read these pages
 
 ^T. 40-46.] EETEOSPECT AND PROSPECT. 489 
 
 obvious enough ; and he would himself have been the 
 last to object to anyone who said of him, that whether 
 better or worse than his fellows it had at least been too 
 much his boast to be other than they. From the days 
 of his boyhood this was his fault. At school, at home, 
 at college, conscious always of powers that doubtless re- 
 ceived but scant acknowledgment, he contracted such a 
 habit of looking down upon everybody that he lost alto- 
 gether the power, wdiich the very wisest may least afford 
 to lose, of occasionally looking down upon himself. Every- 
 thing was to begin or to be altered anew for him, he was 
 to be more sagacious than his elders, judge better than 
 anybody what was best for himself, indulge unchecked 
 whatever humours pleased him, and, glorying that he 
 was not cast in the mould of other men's opinions, find 
 nothing that it became him to object to in his own 
 provided only they were sufficiently wild, irregular, sin- 
 gular, and extreme. The contradictions in such a cha- 
 racter as this, its generous as well as its selfish points, 
 its comic and its tragic incidents, are necessarily marked 
 with more prominence than in the ordinary run of men; 
 and almost everything will depend upon the side you ap- 
 proach it from.* 
 
 Those Llanthony disputes it is impossible to review 
 altogether with gravity, though they are a comedy with 
 a very tragical fifth act. But until, by Betham's utter 
 
 * " I doubt whether among all your acquaintances," TVTote Mr. 
 Robert Landor to me, " you have ever known any two men more 
 " unlike each other than my brother as he appeared when paying 
 " his customary visits to you or Mr. Kenyon, so joyous, so benevolent 
 " then, and as he proved to be in his father's house while young, 
 " or in his own when twenty years older. Where there was no dis- 
 " respect, but only a difference of opinion on some subject of no 
 <' consequence whatever, I once heard him tell an old lady (my 
 " father's guest, but in my father's absence) that she was a damned 
 " fool. If you ask why such an anecdote should be related by me.
 
 490 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 failure and break-down in his payments, the serious 
 element comes in suddenly, we can only see, in the 
 entire tenor of that life at Llanthony, another phase 
 or develoj)ment of a career curiously consistent in its 
 inconsistencies. It began with the old difficulty of co- 
 operating in the ordinary way with ordmary human 
 beings. He doubtless had the best designs in the world 
 when he persisted in claiming the right as a grand- 
 juryman to act independently of his fellow jurors in 
 presenting for investigation alleged crimes in no way 
 pre\dously the subject of charge or inquiry; but, in con- 
 testing such a claim, his fellow-jurors had common sense 
 as well as custom on their side. Every reason, public 
 and private, supported his demand to be jilaced m the 
 commission of the peace ; but those who had to act "\rith 
 him in such a capacity might not unreasonably object 
 to an impracticable colleague. No one, in short, was 
 half the trouble to him at Llanthony that he began by 
 being to himself. Everything that followed had this 
 for its source. In j)rivate and in public affau's his plan 
 of proceeding was on the same eccentric principle of 
 differing as widely as he could from everybody else. 
 He was never beyond the control of the mood that pos- 
 sessed him for the moment ; and though it was easy, by 
 humouring this, to continue friendly with him, it was 
 yet easier to quarrel with him by opposing it, in how- 
 ever slight a degree. Of course he began by exhi- 
 bitins an unwise excess of kindness and concession to 
 
 " I must reply that there may be still Imug many persons, beyond 
 " his own family, who still remember such, and would contradict 
 " any narrative of yours in which the best qualities were remem- 
 " bered, the worst forgotten." I had not w'aited for this appeal to 
 resolve, that, if this memoir were Avi-itten at all, it should contain, as 
 far as might lie within my power, a fair statement of the truth.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 491 
 
 Betliam. To Soutliey's friend he could not do less. 
 He never refused him, as he says, any request how- 
 ever unreasonable ; he conceded them moreover in that 
 grand style which makes the receiver seem to be con- 
 ferring the favour; and it was the man's own com- 
 plaint, when the unreasonableness had arrived at the 
 point of not paying anything he was under obligation 
 to pay, that there was no conceivable indulgence he had 
 not been taught to rely upon at Landor's hands. Then 
 came discovery on both sides; on the one that some rent 
 must be paid or the farms given up, on the other that 
 there was a limit to those wonderful resources of which 
 an impression so boundless had been conveyed ; and, in 
 the differences that followed, all the advantage Avent to 
 the side of him who had the coolness to retain it when 
 it fell to him. It never falls in such cases to the irrit- 
 able temper and the habit of hasty language, no matter 
 for the consciousness of right that has provoked them, 
 or for the freedom from everything ungenerous that 
 may accompany them. 
 
 Nor should this subject be quitted in its connexion 
 with Landor's character without the remark that, ^hen 
 we now look back to the most part of what we find that 
 he intended to do, and measure it by the means that 
 alone he possessed of doing it, absurd as in some respects 
 the impression is, there is yet more in the retrospect to 
 please and to excuse, at times even to excite admiration, 
 than to offend. Few of his infirmities are without 
 something kindly or generous about them ; and we are 
 not long in discovering there is nothing so wildly in- 
 credible that he will not himself in perfect good faith 
 beheve. AA^ien he published his first book of poems on 
 quitting Oxford, the profits were to be reserved for a 
 distressed clergyman. A^Hien he published his Latin
 
 492 FIEST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21, 
 
 poems, the poor of Leipsig were to have the sum they 
 reahsed. When his comedy was ready to be acted, a 
 Spaniard who had sheltered him at Castro was to be 
 made richer by it. When he competed for the prize of 
 the Academy of Stockhohn, it was to go to the poor of 
 Sweden. If nobody got anything from any one of these 
 enterprises, the fault at all events was not his. With his 
 extraorchnary power of forgetting disaj)pointments, he 
 was as prepared at each successive failure to start afresh 
 as if each had been a triumph. I shall have to delineate 
 this peculiarity as strongly in the last half as in the first 
 half of his life, and it was certainly an amiable one. He 
 was ready at all times to set aside out of his own posses- 
 sions something for somebody w^ho might please him for 
 the time ; and when frailties of temper and tongue are 
 noted, this other eccentricity should not be omitted. He 
 desired eagerly the love as well as the good opinion of 
 those whom for the time he esteemed, and no one w^as 
 more affectionate while under such influences. It is 
 not a small virtue to feel such genuine pleasiu'e as he 
 always did in gi\TLng and receiving j)leasure, for one-half 
 cannot be selfish. His generosity, too, was bestowed 
 chiefly on those who could make small acknowledgment 
 in thanks and no return in kind. 
 
 The similarity in habits of mind between himself 
 and Southey was pointed out in a jorevious part of this 
 memoir, and has since had illustration from their corre- 
 spondence. But it will have been seen that while both 
 have continued to display the same peculiarity of put- 
 ting in the place of reason their imagination and their 
 passions, and of thinking thus and thus by mere force 
 of then' will or pleasure, a wide difference has been 
 declaring itself between the tastes and desires which 
 have thus so largely constituted opinion in each. Lan-
 
 ^T. 4.0-46.] RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 493 
 
 dor's wishes liave expanded, while those of Southey have 
 contracted, under the same influences. It was not ill 
 said, by an acute observer who knew them both, that 
 their fault was not that of blindness to the truth so 
 much as that of indifference to give it welcome unless 
 as a discovery or possession of their own ; and that, with 
 the possession of what they so desired, satiety ever fol- 
 lowed quickly. Napoleon did what they talked, and 
 they hated him. They were themselves ready enough 
 to pull down sovereignties, but for the man who by his 
 own might trampled on the necks of sovereigns they 
 had nothing but contempt and dislike. With some 
 modification this was true, up to Napoleon's fall; but 
 what followed put wide differences between them. 
 Every protest against repression at home, every rising 
 against reaction abroad, had from Landor as hearty a 
 sympathy as it had bitter opposition from Southey. The 
 men had not altered in temperament ; but, from altering 
 circrmistances, while self-opinion in the one had been 
 opening itself to impressions more permanent and uni- 
 versal, in the other it had narrowed itself more and 
 more to what in his position was merely accidental and 
 personal. The distinction marks what had thus far 
 been Landor' s advantage in his exile, in his removal 
 from sordid cares, in his freer observation of the life of 
 the present, and in his less-restricted commerce with the 
 wisdom of the past. It shows also, as to both, that what- 
 ever plight continue to be their impetuosities of opinion, 
 there was more in Landor than in Southey of a stronger 
 spirit of the understanding to give body and consistency 
 to such better judgments as he might form. He was 
 indeed preparing himself in banishment and adversity 
 for what probably never would have come to him in 
 happier fortune, and the result will soon be seen.
 
 494 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 That his opinions were meanwhile separating mdely 
 from those of his friend he seems to have been anxious 
 that Southey himself should knoAV. " We are sailing, 
 " I think, in different dii'ections," is his remark in the 
 letter last quoted, making allusion to the dialogues on 
 which both were engaged; and Southej, replying on 
 almost the same day to what he had said in a preceding 
 letter* of the line of argument taken by him against 
 includinof a house of lords in the constitution he was 
 recommending for the Italians, gave illustration him- 
 self of their growing differences. "I have read with 
 " all the attention in my power what you say against a 
 " house of lords. Perhaps the most difficult of all things 
 " is to establish a free government among a people al- 
 " together unused to freedom; and if they are, as in 
 '' France anjl Italy, a corrupt people, the difficulty be- 
 " comes still greater. Where you have a representative 
 " government, two houses have at least the advantage 
 " of jnterposing delay in times of popular excitement ; 
 " they afford something more than an appeal from Phi- 
 " lip drunk to Philip sober. The house of lords, since 
 " its cowardly conduct in the Queen's business, which 
 " indicated the same want of fibre that proved fatal to 
 " it in the days of the Long Parliament, has performed 
 '' the service of stopping the question of catholic eman- 
 " cipation after it had passed the commons. This is 
 " the most important act that it has ever performed. 
 " For the sure consequences of that emancipation would 
 " be a religious war in Ireland upon the demand for a 
 " dominant roman-catholic estabhshment, which is the 
 " next step : and in England, the repeal of the test act ; 
 " the intrusion of the dissenters into all corporations, 
 ^' their predominancy in all town elections, where the 
 * Ante, p. 473.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 495 
 
 " election is not purely popular ; the sale of the tithes ; 
 " and so, in sure progress through the overthrow of the 
 " church establishment, to general anarchy and spolia- 
 " tion."* To say that upon every allusion here made 
 Landor's views were as extreme in the oj^posite cHrection, 
 would express the truth quite moderately. 
 
 Nevertheless in essential points of temperament they 
 continued marvellously alike ; and pausing thus between 
 the two di-visions of Lan dor's life, in the hope of drawing 
 from what is gone some help to the better understanding 
 of what is to come, there is one subject on which a word 
 may properly be said. Both friends had fallen into a 
 habit of applying heathen doctrines and precedents in a 
 manner alarmingly unsuitable to a christian common- 
 wealth; and we see how often it has gravely recurred 
 that they could hit upon no better remedy than the 
 dagger of Brutus for the treacheries of Ferdinand or 
 the t}Tannies of Bonaparte. The same vehement ex- 
 travagance of speech, for such only it was, both of them 
 indvilged to the end ; it was a part of the weakness of 
 temperament, of the ' believing without reason and 
 * hating without provocation,' into which, while as to 
 other subjects time had mollified them, special subjects 
 always betrayed them; yet if Landor's life had been 
 prolonged but a few months, no man, at the murder 
 which then astonished the ci^dlised world and for a time 
 reconciled all opinions, would have been more shocked 
 than he, and no man more indignant to be told that on 
 more than one occasion, without even the poor excuse 
 of the excitement of ci%il war or of the madness arising 
 
 * Southey to Landor: 19 Dec. 1821, This is one of the letters 
 printed in the L^fe and Correspondence (v. 105-107), but the whole of 
 the passage in the text had been suppressed (with many others), and 
 is now printed for the first time.
 
 496 FIRST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 from political defeat and ruin, lie had himself seemed 
 to give his sanction to the same crime. Nor would his 
 indignation have been unreal. A man must be judged, 
 at first, by what he says and does. But with him such 
 extravagance as I have referred to was little more than 
 the habitual indulgence (on such themes) of passionate 
 feelings and language, indecent indeed but utterly pur- 
 poseless ; the mere explosion of wrath provoked by 
 tyranny or cruelty ; the UTegularities of an overheated 
 steam-engine too weak for its own vapour. It is very 
 certain that no one could detest oppression more truly 
 than Landor did in all seasons and times ; and if no one 
 expressed that scorn, that abhorrence of tyranny and 
 fraud, more hastily or more intemperately, all his fire 
 and fury signified really little else than ill-temper too 
 easily provoked. Not to justify or excuse such language, 
 but to explain it, this consideration is urged. If not 
 iiniformly placable, Landor was always compassionate. 
 He was tender-hearted rather than bloody-minded at 
 all times, and upon only the most partial acquaintance 
 ■with his wi'itings could other opinion be formed. A com- 
 pleter knowledge of them would satisfy any one that 
 he had as little real disposition to kill a king as to kill a 
 mouse. 
 
 In fact there is not a more marked pecuharity in his 
 genius than the union with its strength of a most un- 
 common gentleness, and in the personal ways of the 
 man this was equally manifest. When, in the year fol- 
 lowing that to which this narrative has arrived, Leigh 
 Hunt went to Italy and saw him, he endeavoiu'ed to 
 convey the impression produced by so much vehemence 
 of nature joined to such extraordinary delicacy of ima- 
 gination by likening him to a stormy mountain j^ine that 
 should produce lilies. " After indulging the |)artialities
 
 ^T. 40-46.] EETEOSPECT AND PROSPECT, 497 
 
 " of liis friendsliips and enmities, and trampling on 
 " kings and ministers, he shall cool himself, like a 
 " Spartan worshipping a moonbeam, in the patient 
 " meekness of Lady Jane Grey." This is anticipating 
 somewhat, for though imaginary conversations in manu- 
 script lie already in his desk, none have as yet emerged 
 from it. But from letters to his family, from papers 
 preserved by him of this date, and from some enclosures 
 in his letters to Southey, I have discovered that this was 
 the precise date of some of the smaller of his poetical 
 pieces which will illustrate the remark just made as well 
 as almost any of his writings. 
 
 At Swansea in former years he had made the ac- 
 quaintance of some ladies of Lord Aylmer's family, one 
 of whom, regarded by him always with a very tender 
 sentiment, went shortly afterwards to India and died 
 suddenly while yet very yoimg. 
 
 " Ah, what avails the sceptred race, 
 
 Ah, what the f onn divine ! 
 What every virtue, every grace ! 
 
 Rose Aylmer, all were thine. 
 Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful ejes 
 
 May weep, but never see, 
 A night of memories and of sighs 
 
 I consecrate to thee." 
 
 The deep and tender pathos of that little poem could 
 hardly be surpassed, and in dehcacy and sweetness of 
 expression it is perfect. It was first printed ten years 
 after the present date, and has since affected many 
 readers with the same indefinable charm ascribed to it 
 by Charles Lamb in an unpublished letter to Landor of 
 the date of 1832. "Many things I had to say to you 
 " which there was not time for. One why should I for- 
 " get? 'Tis for Eose Aylmer, which has a charm I 
 " cannot explain. I lived upon it for weeks." 
 VOL. I, KK
 
 498 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 I sulojoin other brief pieces (all of them subsequently 
 printed) from his letters during the first years of his 
 residence in Italy. In some of them we meet again a 
 heroine of former years, as to whom further allusion 
 may be made hereafter ; but the passion is now a playful 
 tenderness, and sorrow or reproach has passed into very 
 gentle pathos. 
 
 " A provident and wakeful fear 
 
 Impels me, while I read, to say, 
 When Poesy invites, forbear 
 
 Sometimes to walk her tempting way : 
 Readier is she to swell the tear 
 
 Than its sharp tinglings to allay." 
 
 " No, my own love of other years I 
 
 No, it must never be. 
 Much rests with you that yet endears ; 
 
 Alas, but what with me? 
 Could those liright years o'er me revolve 
 
 So gay, o'er you so fair, 
 The pearl of life we would dissolve. 
 
 And each the cup might share. 
 You show that truth can ne'er decay, 
 
 Whatever fate bef als ; 
 I, that the myrtle and the bay 
 
 Shoot fresh on ruin'd walls." 
 
 "Why, why repine, my pensive friend, 
 At pleasures slipt away ? 
 Some the stern Fates will never lend. 
 And all refuse to stay. 
 
 I see the rainbow in the sky, 
 The dew upon the grass ; 
 
 I see them, and I ask not why 
 They glimmer or they pass. 
 
 With folded arms I linger not 
 
 To call them back ; 'twere vain ; 
 
 In this, or in some other spot, 
 I know they'll shine again."
 
 ^T. 40-46.] KETKOSPECT AND PKOSPECT. 499 
 
 " My hopes retire ; my wishes as before 
 Struggle to find their resting-place in vain : 
 The ebbing sea thus beats against the shore ; 
 The shore repels it ; it returns again." 
 
 " All tender thoughts that e'er possest 
 The human brain or human breast 
 
 Centre in mine for thee . . 
 Excepting one . . and that must thou 
 Contribute : come, confer it now : 
 Grateful I fain would be." 
 
 Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak 
 Four not exempt from pride some future day. 
 
 Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek 
 Over my open volume you will say, 
 'This man loved we/' then rise and trip away. 
 
 Pleasure ! why thus desert the heart 
 
 In its spring-tide 1 
 I could have seen her, I could part, 
 
 And but have sigh'd 1 
 
 O'er every youthful charm to stray, 
 
 To gaze, to touch . . 
 Pleasure ! why take so much away. 
 
 Or give so much ?" 
 
 " Poet. Thus do you sit and break the flow'r; 
 That might have lived a few short hours, 
 And lived for you ! Love, who o'erpowers 
 
 My youth and me, 
 Shows me the petals idly shed. 
 Shows me my hopes as early dead. 
 In vain, in vain admonished 
 
 By all I see. 
 Lady. And thus you while the noon awny, 
 Watching me strip my flowers of gay 
 Apparel, just put on for May, 
 
 And soon laid by ! 
 Cannot you teach me one or two 
 Fine phrases ? if you can, pray do. 
 Since yun are grown too wise to woo. 
 
 To listen I.
 
 500 FIRST SIX YEARS IX ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 Poet. Lady, I come not here to teach, 
 But learn, the moods of gentle speech ; 
 Alas ! too far beyond my reach 
 
 Are happier strains. 
 Many frail leaves shall yet lie pull'd, 
 Many frail hopes in death-bed lull'd, 
 Or ere this outcast heart be school'd 
 
 By all its pains." 
 
 ' In Clementina's artless mien 
 
 Lucilla asks me what I see, 
 And are the roses of sixteen 
 Enough for me 1 
 
 Lucilla asks, if that be all, 
 
 Have I not cull'd as sweet before : 
 Ah yes, Lucilla, and their fall 
 I still deplore. 
 
 I now behold another scene, 
 
 "\Miere Pleasure beams with heaven's own light, 
 IMore pure, more constant, more serene, 
 And not less bright : 
 
 Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose, 
 
 Whose chain of flowers no force can sever, 
 And Modesty, who, when she goes, 
 Is gone for ever." 
 
 ' From you, lanthe, little troubles pass 
 Like little ripples down a sunny river ; 
 
 Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass. 
 Cut down and up again as blithe as ever." 
 
 " I often ask upon whose arm she leans, 
 
 She whom I dearly love. 
 And if she -visit much the crowded scenes 
 
 Where mimic passions move. 
 There, mighty powers ! assert your just control. 
 
 Alarm her thoughtless breast, 
 Breathe soft suspicion o'er her yielding soul, 
 
 But never break its rest. 
 0, let some faithful lover, absent long, 
 
 To sudden bliss return ;
 
 ^T. 40-46.1 EETEOSPECT AND PKOSPECT. 601 
 
 Then Lanclor's name shall tremble from her tongue, 
 Her cheek thro' tears shall burn." 
 
 " She leads in solitude her youthful hours, 
 
 Her nights are restlessness, her days are pain. 
 
 O, when will Health and Pleasure come again, 
 Adorn her brow and strew her path with flowers. 
 And wandering wit relume the roseate bowers, 
 
 And turn and trifle with his festive train? 
 Grant me, 0, grant this wish, ye heavenly Powers ! 
 
 All other hope, all other wish, restrain." 
 
 At Pistoia lie saw the hair of Lucretia Borgia, on 
 which he wrote a quatrain solemn yet fantastic in its 
 beauty as the subject that suggested it. 
 
 " Borgia, thou once wert almost too august 
 And high for adoration ; now thou'rt dust : 
 All that remains of thee these plaits unfold, 
 Calm hair meandering in pellucid gold." 
 
 On his way to Florence these were written : 
 
 " I leave with unreverted eye the towers 
 Of Pisa pining o'er her desert stream. 
 Pleasure (they say) yet lingers in thy bowers, 
 
 Florence, thou patriot's sigh, thou poet's dream ! 
 
 0, could I find thee as thou once wert known. 
 Thoughtful and lofty, liberal and free ! 
 
 But the pure Spirit of thy wreck has flown, 
 
 And only Pleasure's phantom dwells with thee." 
 
 It would be difficult to surpass the delicacy and beauty 
 of writing in all these pieces. If indeed they have here 
 and there a fault, it will be found in something of an 
 oreJ^choiceness and conciseness of expression, at times 
 allying itself rather to subtlety of thought than simpli- 
 city of sentiment. But for the most part, as even the few 
 thus presented will show, they are both in feeling and 
 style as nearly perfect as such things can be, and the 
 most famous of the short pieces in the Greek Anthology 
 have not a more pervading and indescribable air of re-
 
 502 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1 815-21. 
 
 finement and grace. Southey had now to confess, jea- 
 lous as he was of the time given by his friend to com- 
 position after the ancient models, that he did not write 
 his own language worse for having become more thor- 
 oughly practised in theirs. He told Grosvenor Bedford 
 of Landor's improvement from his years of exile, and 
 that his wonderful genius was freeing itself rapidly from 
 everything harsh or obscure. But he spoke of him still 
 as a man born pre-eminently a poet ; and could indeed 
 have had small conception that he was at this moment 
 engaged on any prose literary labour of which the sud- 
 den and wide success would go far even to dismiss from 
 men's further remembrance his Gehir and his Julian. 
 The letter received by Southey immediately before the 
 allusion to the ' dialogues' reached him which is printed 
 in the last section, had enclosed what in especial I sup- 
 pose to have at this time raised his hope so high for his 
 friend's chances at last of beinff admitted to the highest 
 rank among poets. This was two dramatic pieces : one 
 taken from the story of Ines de Castro ; and the other, 
 under the title of ' Ippolito di Este,' a re-written version 
 of a couple of scenes from his burnt Ferrante and Giulio* 
 out of which one or two brief extracts wall not be in- 
 appropriate here, as well to justify what Southey built 
 upon it, as for the light it throws upon the other work 
 its author then was busy with. 
 
 It has been said of the Imaginary Conversations 
 that it is never possible to read them without feeling 
 that whatever may be their truth to the circumstances 
 and times in which their supposed speakers lived, they 
 are still more true to Landor himself; that we always 
 feel it is he who is speaking; and that he has merely 
 chosen characters whom he considered suitable to de- 
 
 * See ante, pp. 302-303.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 503 
 
 velope particular phases of his own mind. There is 
 something in this, but it is far from expressing on the 
 particular point all that requires to be said. If the 
 conversations had been only this, they would not have 
 differed in result from the many similar undertakings 
 by writers of that and the preceding century. Their 
 distinction, and their success^ was the combination with 
 the intense individuality to which I have alluded at the 
 opening of this section, of some of the subtlest arts of 
 the dramatist and of the highest poetical imagination. 
 So calm a judgment as Julius Hare's found creations 
 in them comparable only to Sophocles or Shakspeare ;* 
 and to so keen a criticism as Hazlitt's it appeared that 
 the historical figures they evoked were transfused with 
 nothing short of the very truth and spirit of history 
 itself.f Applied to some few of the conversations neither 
 praise is in excess ; and even where, as in by far the 
 greater number, that is said from time to time which 
 the speaker in life would not be likely to have said 
 or to have been in the position to say, the man may 
 thus be forgotten but the character remains. True or 
 false, the character conceived by Landor is in the forms 
 of thought and speech there still. The dramatic con- 
 ditions continue to be observed. Landor may be disco- 
 verable where we ought to be conscious only of Cicero, 
 but it is in a difference between the fact as known to 
 us and the conception formed of it, not in any falsehood 
 to that conception or in any merely personal intrusion. 
 If it had been otherwise, the defect would have shown 
 itself in his poetical as in his prose conversations; and 
 it is to exhibit the same spirit animating both that I 
 now speak of the scenes of Ferrante and Giulio. They 
 
 * London Magazine, ix. 523, 538-9. 
 f Edinburgh Itevierv, March 1824.
 
 oOi FIRST SIX TEAES IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 are not more perfect tliau those Ayliicli accompanied 
 them ; but in a brief space they illustrate with sm-pris- 
 ing force Landor's management of a dialogue bringing 
 the extremes of passion and tenderness into play. 
 
 The first scene is in a cathedral, the second in a 
 prison ; and the position of the persons introduced in 
 a few words is this. The did^e Alfonso and his bro- 
 ther the cardinal have two brothers by their father's 
 side, Ferrante and Giulio, whom they refuse to acknow- 
 ledge. The duke is jealous of Ferrante's power over 
 his subjects, and the cardinal of his influence over the 
 girl beloved by his eminence himself. The prince is a 
 tyrant of the approved t}'pe of mediasval Italy, and the 
 priest very exactly foreshadows Victor Hugo's famous 
 archdeacon. The first scene shows him in the cathedral, 
 maddened by the rejection of his love. 
 
 " Surely no air is stirring ; every step 
 Tires me ; the columns shake, the ceiling fleets, 
 The floor beneath me slopes, the altar rises. 
 Stay ! here she stept : what grace ! what harmony ! 
 It seem'd that every accent, every note 
 Of all the choral music, breath'd from her : 
 From her celestial airiness of form 
 I could have fancied purer light descended. 
 Between the pillars, close and wearying, 
 I watcht her as she went : I had rusht on ; 
 It was too late ; yet, when I stopt, I thought 
 I stopt full soon : I cried, Is she not there ? 
 She liad been : I had seen her shadow burst 
 The sunbeam as she parted : a strange sound, 
 A sound that stupefied and not aroused me, 
 Fill'd all my senses : such was never felt 
 Save when the sword-girt Angel struck the gate, 
 And Paradise wail'd loud and closed for ever." 
 
 His passion in all its forms only repels its object. See- 
 ing her weep after leaving Ferrante, he builds uj)on it a 
 kind of hope which she at once destroys, comparing him 
 \di\\ the brother that she loves.
 
 ^T. 40-46.J RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 505 
 
 " All tears are not for sorrow : many swell 
 In the warm depths of gratitude and bliss ; 
 But precious over all are those that hang 
 And tremble at the tale of generous deeds. 
 These he relates when he might talk, as you do, 
 Of passion : but he sees my heart, he finds 
 What fragrance most refi-eshes it. 
 
 How high, 
 O Heaven I must that man be, who loves, and who 
 Would still raise others higher than himself 
 To interest his beloved 1 
 
 All my soul 
 Is but one drop from his, and into his 
 Falls, as earth's dew falls into earth again," 
 
 What follows is the dialogue in prison to which I 
 have more especially referred, and in which is expressed 
 what the Italian legend drily tells us, that the cardinal 
 obtained an order from the duke to deprive Ferrante of 
 his eyes because the gu'l beloved by his eminence had 
 praised the beauty of them. Ferrante had been im- 
 prisoned for sanctioning some poj)ular tumult, and his 
 brother Giulio had come to solace him, when the car- 
 dinal brother enters suddenly, and after bitter words of 
 reproach and defiance thrusts a paper upon Giulio and 
 goes. Ferrante, ignorant that this paper contains the 
 sentence depri"\ang him of sight, wonders to see Giulio, 
 after glancing at it, rush round " the wide light cham- 
 ber" in uncontrollable agony. 
 
 " Ferrante. my true brother Giulio ! why thus hang 
 Around my neck and pour forth prayers for me ? 
 Where there are priests and kinsmen such as ours, 
 God hears not, nor is heard. I am pi-eparcd 
 For death. 
 
 Q'mUo. Ah ! worse than death may come upon you, 
 Unless Heaven interpose, 
 
 Ferrante. I know the worst, 
 
 And bear one comfort in my breast that fire 
 And steel can ne'er force from it : she I love 
 Will not be his, but die as she hath lived. 
 Doubt you ? that thus you shake the head and sigh.
 
 506 FIRST SIX TEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 Glulio, Far other doubt was mine : even this shall cease. 
 
 Fen-ante. Speak of it. 
 
 Ghilio. I must : God pardon me 1 
 
 Ferrante, Speak on. 
 
 Giul'w. Have we not dwelt in friendship from our birth, 
 Told the same courtier the same tale of joy, 
 And pointed where life's earliest thorn had pierced 
 Amid the sports of boyhood, ere the heart 
 Had aught of bitter or unsound within ? 
 
 Ferrante. We have indeed. 
 
 Criulw, Has my advice been ill ? 
 
 Ferrante. Too often ill observed, but alwa}'s good. 
 
 Glulio. Brother, my words are not what better men 
 Would speak to you ; and yet my love, I think. 
 Must be more warm than theirs can ever be. 
 
 Ferrante. Brother's, friend's, father's, when was it like yours ? 
 
 Giulio. Which of them ever said what I shall say? 
 
 Ferrante. Speak ; my desires are kindled, my fears quencht. 
 
 Giulio. Do not delay to die, lest crueller 
 Than common death befall you." 
 
 The intensity of anguish in those quiet words could 
 not be surpassed. For dramatic language and expres- 
 sion, in the sense formerly contrasted with stage dia- 
 logue,* the scene is indeed a masterpiece. Ferrante 
 cannot yet take in the horrible truth. But gradually 
 as it dawns upon him he loses faith in all things — in 
 everything but her for whose love he is to suffer. 
 
 " Giulio. Talk not so. 
 
 Pity comes dovra when Hope hath flown away. 
 
 Ferrante. Illusion ! 
 
 Glulio. If it were, which it is not, 
 
 Why break with vehement words such sweet illusion ? 
 For were there nought above but empty air. 
 Nought but the clear blue sky where birds delight, 
 Soaring o'er myriad worlds of living dust 
 That roll in columns round the noontide ray, 
 Your heart would faint amid such solitude, 
 
 * See ante, pp. 268-9. I shall be obliged if the reader will alter 
 upon the latter page, 8th line from the bottom, " intermediate stages" 
 to " intermediate steps :" not my excellent printer's error, but entirely 
 my own.
 
 ^T. 40-46. 1 EETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 507 
 
 Would shrink in such vacuity : that heart 
 (Ferrante 1 can you hide its wants from me?) 
 Eises and looks around and calls aloud 
 For some kind Being, some consoling bosom, 
 Whereon to place its sorrows, and to rest. 
 
 Ferrante. 0, that was here . . I cannot look beyond." 
 
 A gleam of hope then suddenly rises. The discontent 
 of the people at Ferrante's imprisonment being heard 
 in a clamour beneath the dungeon mndow, Giulio pas- 
 sionately urges his brother to show himself to his friends; 
 but the other, knowing that failure will destroy both, 
 invents a reason to evade the risk of sacrificing his 
 brother. The scene closes as the lights approach by 
 ■wiiich the sentence is to be executed; and, from the 
 brother whose life has been one act of love for him, 
 Ferrante receives the dagger with which he stabs him- 
 self. No stage directions are wanted here. Everything 
 is visible to us, as well of the outward form and move- 
 ment of the speakers as of the soul that throbs and 
 burns beneath. 
 
 " Giulio. Hark ! hear you not the people 1 to the window I 
 They shout and clap their hands when they first meet you 
 After short absence ; what shall they do now 1 
 Up I seize the moment ; show yourself. 
 
 Ferrante. Stay, Giulio ! 
 
 Draw me not thither ; speak not of my wrongs ; 
 I would await but not ai'ouse then- vengeance. 
 And would deserve but court not their apj^lause. 
 Little of good shall good men hope from them, 
 Nothing shall wiser. 
 
 \_A&idc'\ 0, were he away I 
 
 But if I fail, he must die too, being here. 
 
 Giulio. Let me call out : they are below the grate ; 
 They would deliver you : try this one chance. 
 Obdurate 1 would you hold me down ? They're gone 1 
 
 Ferrante. Giulio, for shame ! weep not, or here I stay 
 And let vile hands deform me. 
 
 Giulio. They shall never. 
 
 Ferrante. What smoke arises ? are there torches under ? 
 Surely the crowd has past : 'tis from the stairs.
 
 508 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 Giulio. Anticipate the blow. 
 
 Ferrante. One more must grieve ! 
 
 And will she grieve like you, too tender Giulio 1 
 Turn not away the head, the hand. What hold you 1 
 Give, give it to me. 'Tis keen. They call you forth. 
 Tell her . . no, say not we shall meet again, 
 For tears flow always faster at those words . , 
 May the thought come, but gently, like a dream !" 
 
 As a matter of mere literary skill this dialogue 
 deserves careful study. Here no action requires to be 
 written in, no stage-direction to be given, no index or 
 finger-post to be set up, for what the reader seems ac- 
 tually to see mth his eyes even before the pain of it 
 touches his heart. The marvel is that a man who could 
 wi'ite in this way should have lived considerably beyond 
 the term of middle age without having won for himself 
 any name or reputation in a world to whose good opmion 
 he never was indifferent, even when loudest in professing 
 not to care for it. Some will also think it perhaps the 
 greater marvel that he was now to succeed after failure 
 during all those years, yet without abatement in the 
 smallest particular of the wilfulness, the eccentricity, or 
 the impatience which before had made success so diffi- 
 cult. The scene we have quoted may help us to a brief 
 explanation. 
 
 One ob\aous advantage of his new undertaking was, 
 that, avoiding further competition on a ground now 
 seized and held in absolute possession b}- Byron, it was 
 to be written in prose ; but another and greater con- 
 sisted in the fact, that while the dialogue-form not only 
 left him scope for humoiu's indulged so long as to have 
 become part of his nature, but brought under some kind 
 of discipline both the strength and weakness that were 
 part of his genius, the general design was at the same 
 time such as to display in their most perfect develop-
 
 ^T. 40-46.] EETROSPECT AND PKOSPECT. 509 
 
 ment his choicest accomphshments as a master of style, 
 and his most refined power as a dramatic writer. His 
 five-act dramas had been dialogues, but his dialogues 
 were to be one-act dramas ; and, placed in future to a 
 certain extent mider dramatic conditions, there was to 
 be hereafter some purpose in even the most violent of 
 the caprices by which he had abused his strength, and 
 in the idlest of the paradoxes on which he had wasted 
 it. For whatever he had yet to say, he was to get 
 appropriate utterance at last ; his mind was to find a 
 settled place in which it might rest and expatiate ; and 
 his life was not to be a failure altogether. 
 
 " I shall rejoice to see your Dialogues," wrote Sou- 
 they to him in the letter (May 1822) following that 
 just quoted. " Mine are consecutive, and will have 
 " nothing of that dramatic variety of which you will 
 " make the most. My plan grew out of Boethius, 
 " though it has since been so modified that the oricrin 
 " would not be suspected. The personage who visits 
 " me is Sir Thomas More, as one who recognises in me 
 " some dis-pathies, but more points of agreement. This 
 " age is as climacteric as that in which he lived ; and 
 " you see what a canvas I have taken, if I can but fill 
 " up the sketch." It is an ill canvas for dialogue which 
 takes a road so narrow, " where but one goes abreast ;" 
 and such was Southey's, as it had been Kurd's and 
 Lyttelton's in similar books; mere monologues cut up 
 into short sentences uttered with equal appropriateness 
 by A and B ; the main object being to recommend 
 particular systems or lines of thought, special opinions, 
 or social changes. Far different was Landor's. His 
 plan had taken a range as wide as life and histoiy. All 
 the leading shapes of the j)ast, the most familiar and 
 the most august, were to be called up again. Modes
 
 510 FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY. [Book IV. 
 
 1 815-21. 
 
 of thinking the most various and events the most dis- 
 tant, all that had made the greatness or the littleness 
 of mankind, were proposed for his theme. Beside the 
 fires of the present, the ashes of the past were to be 
 rekindled, and to shoot again into warmth and bright- 
 ness. The scene was to be shifting as life, but con- 
 tinuous as time. Over it were to pass successions of 
 statesmen, law}'ers, and chui'chmen ; wits and men of 
 letters; party men, solcHers, and kings; the most ten- 
 der, delicate, and noble women ; figures fresh from the 
 schools of Athens and the courts of Rome ; philosophers 
 philosophising and politicians discussing questions of 
 state ; poets talking of poetry, men of the world of mat- 
 ters worldly, and English, Italians, or French of their 
 respective literatures and manners.* The very extent of 
 such a design, if success were to be obtained at all, was 
 a security for its fan' execution. With a stage so spread 
 before him, whether his immediate purpose were ex- 
 pression of opinion or representation of character, he 
 could hardly help breaking through the " circumscrip- 
 " tion and confine" of his own small round of hkings 
 and dislildngs. His plan compelled it; and what else 
 it exacted no man hving could have supplied so well. 
 The requisites for it were such as no other existing 
 writer possessed in the same degree as he did. Notliing 
 had ever been indifferent to him that affected humanity ; 
 poetry and history had dehvered up to him their trea- 
 sures ; and the secrets of antiquity were his. 
 
 The first beginnings of his enterprise were men- 
 tioned to Southey in a letter from Florence of the date 
 of the 9th of March 1822. " It is long ago," he ^\Tites, 
 
 * If I have here used occasionally an expression to be found in 
 a paper in the Edlnhurgh Iteview on Landor's collected works, this 
 may perhaps he forgiven, as I wrote that paper.
 
 ^T. 40-46.] EETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 511 
 
 " since jou first told me that jou were -on^-iting some 
 " dialogues. I began to do the same thing after you, 
 " having J formerly written two or three about the time 
 " when the first income-tax was imposed. I have now 
 " written fifteen new ones, throwing into the fire one 
 " between Swift and Sir William Temple, and another 
 " between Addison and Lord Somers ; the former be- 
 " cause it was democratical, the latter because it was 
 " composed maliciously, and contained all the inele- 
 " gancies and inaccuracies of style I could collect from 
 " Addison. The number would surpass belief. The 
 " two earlier ones, the first between Lord Grenville 
 " and Burke, the other between Henry the Fourth 
 " and Sir Arnold Savage, were written more than 
 " twenty years ago, which no person would believe of 
 " the former ; but I gave the substance of it to Robert 
 " Adair to get inserted in the Morning Chronicle, and 
 " a part of it (now omitted) was thought too personal, 
 " and it was refused. I hope your dialogues are printed, 
 •' that they may give some credit and fashion to this 
 •' manner of composition." 
 
 Thus employed, we leave him at the close of the 
 first half of his life happier upon the whole than he has 
 been since its outset in the Tenby and Swansea days, 
 with a better outlet than has yet been open for his 
 powers and faculties, and with even a little gleam of 
 sunshine, from his mother's care and sacrifices, again 
 lighting up his personal fortune. Li the letter to Sou- 
 they just quoted he tells him of his hope to be able, 
 some day soon, to fix himself permanently, not in Flo- 
 rence itself, but in a villa in its neighbourhood ; and he 
 says that he shall add a garden to it by converting a 
 vineyard into one, which "I cannot do unless I pur- 
 " chase it ; and (a thing I never expected) this too is in
 
 512 FIKST SIX YEAES IN ITALY. [Book lY. 
 
 1815-21. 
 
 " my power." Another thing as unlooked-for he was 
 
 soon also to find within his power. He never expected 
 
 that, if any considerable number of people were found 
 
 to praise or admire him, he should be able to entertain 
 
 other than a mean opinion of himself; and of this 
 
 excuse for every eccentricity, this foolish principle 
 
 which has dominated over so much of his past life, he 
 
 will very shortly be deprived. He will discover that 
 
 when people praise him they do not necessarily lower him 
 
 to then" level ; that they do not prove him to be, for that 
 
 reason, only so much more like themselves ; and that it 
 
 is not therefore essentially a base or unworthy thing to 
 
 desire or to deserve, nay even in some small degree to 
 
 obtain, popularity. We may not be sanguine indeed 
 
 that this Aviser experience will be permanent, or that 
 
 old errors and extravagances will not still be abundant ; 
 
 but the promise is fairer than it has been, and from the 
 
 last half of Landor's life there is at least the prospect 
 
 of better results than have attended the years that are 
 
 gone. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 ROBSON AKD SON, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 " A bit of ribbon," i. 64. 
 
 Ablett, Mr., of Llanbedr-hall, ii. 140 
 and 230 ; Landor's bust, ii. 2W ; 
 Landor's visit to England with, ii. 
 241, 244 ; Landor's ode to, ii. 257 ; 
 death of, ii. 480. 
 
 Absence of mind, ii. 202. 
 
 Adair, Robert, takes Landor to the 
 House of Commons, i. 123 ; intro- 
 ductions to the press, i. 124 ; his 
 correspondence with Landor, i. 165- 
 68; on the Fox administration, i. 
 205. 
 
 Addington administration, i. 154. 
 
 Addison, Landor's estimate of , i. 137; 
 pi-aise of Milton, ii. 523 ; and see 
 521. 
 
 ^schines and Phocion (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 34. 
 
 ^schylus, ii. 174, 297, 299, 327, 377, 
 530, 578. 
 
 Alexander, emperor, and Capo d'ls- 
 trias (Imag. Con.), ii. 51. 
 
 Alexander and the pi'iest of Ham- 
 mon (Imag. Con.), ii. 186. 
 
 Alfieri and Jletastasio (Imag. Con.), 
 ii, 66 and note, 414 ; Carlyle on, ib. 
 
 Alfieri, Landor's liking for, ii. 68 and 
 note ; Salomon the Florentine Jew 
 and (Imag. Con.), ii. 68. 
 
 American war of 1812, view of, i. .363; 
 as to Americans, i. 364 ; Southey's 
 grudge against, i. 450 note. 
 
 Anacreon and Polycrates (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 188. 
 
 Andrea of Hungary, &c. , Landor's, ii. 
 348-356 and 360-363; critical re- 
 marks on, ii. 356-360; opinions of 
 friends, ii. 362. 
 
 Anecdotes of Landor at Rugby, i. 18. 
 
 Angelo, ]\ricliael, and Vittoria Col- 
 onna (Iinag. Con.), ii. 414. 
 
 Anne of Swansea, i. 80. 
 
 Annual Review, i. 181. 
 
 Anti-Jncohin, the, i. 124 ; its attack 
 on Landor, i. 125. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Antoir, M., Landor's dispute with, 
 
 ii. 236. 
 Antonelli and Gemeau (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 412; and Pio Nono (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ibid. 
 Antony and Octavivis, scenes for a 
 
 study, ii. 505-13. 
 Aristoteles and Calisthenes (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 72. 
 Arnold of Rugby, ii. 213, 227, 233, 
 
 472, 517. 
 Artigas, a South- American leader, i. 
 
 458, 459. 
 Ascham, Roger, and Lady Jane Grey 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 55. 
 Athencmm, appearance of Landor's 
 
 odes to Southey and "Wordsworth 
 
 in, ii. 250 ; publication of Conver- 
 sations in, ii. 574. 
 Athenians, laws of the, discussed 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 34. 
 Atkins, Captain, i. 228 and note, 393. 
 Atlantic Monthli/ quoted, i. 174 note, 
 
 ii. 570-4. 
 Aurora Leigh, Landor's opinion of, 
 
 i. 104 note. 
 Aylmer, Rose, i. 79 and 497, ii. 8 note, 
 
 243. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, and Richard Hooker 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. .57. 
 Bailos, Lopez, and Romero Alpuente 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 70. 
 Barry Cornwall (B. W. Procter), ii. 
 
 424. 
 Bath, ii. 343 ; a sunset, ii. 485 ; a 
 
 miserable squabble, ii. 545 ; and 
 
 see ii. 560, .569. 
 Beaufort, Duke of, line.s by Landor 
 
 on, i. 347. 
 Beauties of Eiir/land and Wales, er- 
 ror as to Llanthony corrected, i. 
 
 312. 
 Beddoes, his Dcatli's Jest -Book, ii. 
 
 495. 
 Belmore, Lady, ii. 484. 
 
 LL
 
 514 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Beniowski and Apliaiiasia (Imag. 
 Con.), iL 184. 
 
 Ben well, Lander's tutor at Oxford, 
 i. 42. 
 
 Bemadotte, ii. 49. 
 
 Betliam, i. 333-4 ; Lander's tenant at 
 Llanthony, i. 384, 395 ; Lamb's re- 
 collections of the Betham family, 
 i. 386 ; their system of annoyance, 
 i. 403-406. 
 
 Birch, "Walter, Landor's friend at 
 Eugby, i. 24 and note, and 186 
 note ; at Oxford, i. 42 ; Kobert 
 Landor's recollection of, i. 185, 186 ; 
 on the Latin Gchtnis, i. 188 ; cor- 
 respondence with Landor, i. 185- 
 198 ; on Pasley's Essay, kc. , i. 258 
 note ; on Landor's marriage, L 235; 
 notices of later life, i. 455. 
 
 Bhickuoocrs Magazine and Landor, ii. 
 317 ; and see ii. 518. 
 
 Blake, "Wm., Landor attracted by 
 ■writings of, ii. 322. 
 
 Blake and his brother Humphrey 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 413. 
 
 Blessingfon, Lord and Lady, ii. 3, 
 135-137, 214, 215, and note; the 
 Shakexpeare Ms. forwarded to the 
 latter, ii. 271, 272, 273 ; visits to 
 Gore-house, ii. 325-G; letter from 
 Landor to, ii. 445 ; death of, ii. 481 ; 
 and see ii. 573. 
 
 Boccaccio and Petrarch (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 184. _ 
 
 Boileau, ii. 49. 
 
 Bonaparte, the one Frenchman Lan- 
 dor cared to see, i. 1G9 ; his re- 
 ception at Paris described by Lan- 
 dor, i. 170 and 172 ; note on, to 
 a ijassage in Gebir, i. 176 (see 
 also ii. 121 note) ; in Spain, i. 222; 
 Landor's later opinion of him and 
 his work, i. 257, 371 ; Southey on 
 the last move of, i. 382 ; the Pre- 
 sident of the Senate and (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 48; Landor's x-iew of, ii. 
 49 and 420 ; visit to Landor of 
 Prince Louis Napoleon, ii. 467; au- 
 thor's note on lattei-, ii. 469. 
 
 Bonaparte, King Louis, ii. 49. 
 
 Book of the CImrch, Southey's, ii. 109, 
 404. 
 
 Books, the first two bought by Lan- 
 dor, i. 23. 
 
 Eossuet and the Duchess de Font- 
 anges (Imag. Con.), ii. 184. 
 
 Boulter, Archbishop, and Philip Sav- 
 age (Imag. Con.), ii. 183. 
 
 Bowles, Caroline, second wife of Sou- 
 they, ii. 401, 450. 
 
 Boxall's portrait of Landor, i. 17. 
 
 British and Foreign Quarterly on the 
 Pentameron, ii. 371 ; Landor's reply 
 (unpublished), ii. 373-387. 
 
 Broderick, General, i. 233 and note. 
 
 Br.iwn, Mr. Armitage, the friend of 
 Keats, ii. 204, 206, 387 ; letter in 
 justification of Landor's departure 
 from Fiesole, ii. 307 ; dedicates his 
 book to Landor, ii. 388; his death, 
 ibid. 
 
 Bro^vning, E. Barrett, i. 104, ii. 298, 
 334, 421, 513, 537, 568. 
 
 Browning, Robert, ii. 347 ; letters 
 quoted from, ii. 424, 425, 562-70. 
 
 Bruce, the traveller, Landor's obli- 
 gation to, i. 96 note. 
 
 Bugeaud, Marshal, and an Arab 
 chieftain (Imag. Con.), ii. 411. 
 
 Bunsen, ii. 472. 
 
 Burdett, Sir F., letter to, i. 247. 
 
 Burgess, Bishop, correspondence with 
 Landor on Llanthony abbey-church, 
 i. 314-316. 
 
 Burnet, Bishop, and Humphrey 
 Hardcastle (Imag Con.), ii. 42. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, at Eugby, i. 19. 
 
 Byron, Lord, and Gebir, i. 85 note ; 
 his opinion of Southey, i. 434 note ; 
 of Landor, ii. 100 note, 101, 102 and 
 note ; remark of Landor's mother 
 on, ii. 124 ; for Landor's 'portrait 
 of, see ii. 42-44. 
 
 Cjesai-s, the, ii. 39; as to Tiberius, 
 ii. 39, 40. 
 
 Caldwell, Miss, ii. 484. 
 
 Calvus, Landor's signarture in the 
 Courier, i. 377-378. 
 
 Canning, i. 124, 365, u. 104, 169-71, 
 328-9, &c. 
 
 Carlo- Alberto, King, and the Duchess 
 Belgioiso (Imag. Con.), ii. 412. 
 
 Carlyle on a passage by Landor on 
 language, ii. 66 ; Southey and the 
 French Revolution, ii. 409 ; on the 
 Pelrarca Essay, ii. 443 ; visits Lan- 
 dor, ii. 465 ; on Last Fruit, ii. 513 ; 
 and see ii. 82, 268. 
 
 Carmen Triumphale, Southey's, i. 
 377 and 378, and note. 
 
 Carrick, Mrs., a friend of Southey, 
 i. 208, 354. 
 
 Gary and Birch at Rugby, i. 23, 24 and 
 note, aad 187 note ; Gary's transla- 
 tion of Dante, i. 187 and 192 ; and 
 see ii 307. 
 
 Catheiine and Daschkofif (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 184. 
 
 Catholic emancipation, Adair to Lan-
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 dor. i. 107; and see i. 494, ii. 91, 
 97-9, 100, &c. 
 
 Cato, Addison's, referred to, i. 294. 
 
 Catullus, Parr and Landor in corre- 
 spondence on a word in, i. 161, 162 ; 
 and see i. ;M7, ii. 328, 340, 383-4. 
 421, 438-440, 544, 556, &c. 
 
 Chapman, Dr. of Trinity, Oxford, 1. 
 55-57. 
 
 Cha7-itahh Dorvager, Landor 's com- 
 edy, i. 387-392, ii. 53. 
 
 Chatham, i. 436, ii. 328. 
 
 Chaucer and Spenser, Landor and 
 Southey on, i. 257-259. 
 
 Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarch 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 184. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, and Lord Chat- 
 ham (Imag. Con.), ii. 71. 
 
 Children, pleasure derived from, ii. 
 Ill, 112 and note ; Landor's fond- 
 ness for hi.s, ii. 126, 132, 233. 
 
 Cicero, Marcus TulUus, and Quinctus 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 73. 
 
 Chxrke and Landor, i. 59-62. 
 
 Cleopatra, (juestion of her age, ii. 
 506. 
 
 Clerke, Captain ShadwcU, ii. 105, 155 
 note. 
 
 Coleraine, Lord, Eev. Mr. Blooms- 
 bury, and Rev. Mr. Swan (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 173. 
 
 Coleridge on Gebir, i. 105; Southey's 
 letters to on the same, i. 109 ; 
 connection with the press, i. 122 ; 
 letter to Cottle from, i. 353 note ; 
 Landor's visit to him at Highgate, 
 ii. 242; 255; unpublished lines on 
 his death, ii. 258 ; Landor on his 
 Lay Sermon, ii. 419. 
 
 Colloquies, Southey's, i. 460, 479, 485, 
 509, ii. 120, 147. 
 
 Commentarti, the, Landor's, i. 358, 361. 
 
 Commonwealth, English, heroes of, 
 ii. 318. 
 
 Competition, Landor's dislike to, i. 
 20, 42, and 1.59. 
 
 Conolly, Dr. John, ii. 226. 
 
 Conspiracy of Gowrie, Rough's, i. 142, 
 143. 
 
 Convention of Cintra, i. 235-237. 
 
 Copley, Lord Lyndhurst,i. 142, 140-7, 
 151-2. 
 
 Corunna, Landor's description of his 
 voyage to, i. 228. 
 
 Cori/thus, i. 394-5. 
 
 Cottle, Southey's letter to, on Gebir, 
 i. 108 ; and see ii. 321, 408. 
 
 Count Julian, Landor's, i. 227; con- 
 ception of the tragedy, i. 270-273 ; 
 De Quiuccy's remarks on, i. 270, 
 
 280, 281, and 282 note ; examina- 
 tion of the work in detail, i. 273- 
 285. Correspondence with Southey 
 concerning it : first plan of the 
 work, i. 280 ; sketch of the final 
 scene, i. 287 ; first act finished, i. 
 289 ; note on the method of the 
 ancients, &c. , i. 290 ; the work 
 completed, i. 290 ; revision, i. 292 ; 
 alterations and additions, i. 295 ; 
 on its chances of representation, 
 i. 298 ; further interpolations, i. 
 299-301 ; difficulties of publication, 
 i. 301-304. 
 
 Cowper, AVilliam, Landor's estimate 
 
 of, ii. 525. 
 Critical Jtevieio on Gebir, i. 107. 
 Croker (J. W.), i. 301, &c. 
 Cromwell and Noble (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 33 ; and Sir Oliver Cromwell 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 413. 
 Curse of Kehama, Southey's, i. 210- 
 
 215 and note, 210, 240, 247-249; 
 
 its publication, i. 251. 
 Cymodameia, Landor's, ii. 447, 449. 
 Czartory.ski, Prince and Princess, 
 
 Landor's interview with, ii. 398. 
 
 Dan Stewart, i. 122. 
 
 Dante, Landor's opinion of Cary's 
 translation of, i. 23 ; Wordsworth 
 to Landor on, ii. 27 ; and see ii. 
 331-346, 530, &c. 
 
 Darley, George, ii. 362. 
 
 Dashwood, Blrs., ii. 140; and Landor's 
 domestic affairs, ii. 310-12 note. 
 
 Davies, Mr., of Court-y-Gollen, i. 
 339. 
 
 Davis, Thomas, and Landor, ii. 436, 
 437. 
 
 Death, as to choice of, ii. 145 ; ante- 
 dated, ii. 5.52. 
 
 De Foe, Landor to the Times on, ii. 
 461. 
 
 De Quincey and Gelnr, i. 107, 108 ; 
 on Dr. Parr, i. 119 to 121 ; his re- 
 marks on Count Julian, i. 270, 280, 
 
 281, and 282 note. 
 
 De Vere, Aubrey, ii. 456, 526. 
 Delille, Abbe, Adair's intercession 
 
 for, i. 168; Landor and (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 49. 
 Demosthenes discussed (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 34 ; Eubulides and (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 48, 188, 190. 
 Dickens, Charles, on Landor's villa 
 
 at Fiesole, ii. 224 ; first message 
 
 to, ii. 395; his Loythorn in Bleak 
 
 House suggested by Landor, ii. 
 
 394, 399, and 459; vibits to Luu-
 
 616 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 dor, ii. 459, 460; Lis opinion of De 
 
 Foe, ibid. ; last message of Landor 
 
 to, ii. .589. 
 Dillon, Lord, ii. 206. 
 Diogenes and Plato (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 
 188. _ 
 Disraeli, Mr., Ms estate of Hughen- 
 
 den, i. C. 
 Disraeli, Isaac, i. 128 and 139, and 
 
 note ; letter to Landor on the Pcn- 
 
 tameron, ii. 345. 
 Donne, Dr., style happily caught, ii. 
 
 183. 
 Dry Sticlcs, Lander's, ii. 490, 550, 
 
 552 ; see also Last Fruit, kc. 
 Dudley, Lord, and the Cicero Con- 
 versation, ii. 76 ; Hallam and, ii. 
 
 372. 
 
 Earl of Brecon, tragedy by Kobert 
 
 Landor, ii. 364. 
 Edgeworth, Miss, ii. 67. 
 Edinburgh Register, the, i. 241, 245, 
 
 251, 252 and note, and 376 note. 
 Eldon and Elcoml)e (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 
 413. 
 Eldon, Lord Chancellor, Landor's let- 
 ter to, i. 343-6. 
 Elizabeth and Burleigh (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 35. 
 Emerson on Landor and the Imag. 
 
 Con., ii. 80-82, 174, 261-4 ; present 
 
 of books to Landor from, ii. 261 ; 
 
 pubKshed account of bis meeting 
 
 with Lundur, ii. 266-268 and 270 ; 
 
 Landor's reply to, ii. 266-70. 
 Emigration, Landor on, ii. 95. 
 Empress of France, ii. 466 note, also 
 
 ii. 577. 
 Endymion and Selene, Landor's, ii. 
 
 579. 
 English visiter, Florentine visiter, 
 
 and Landor ( Imag. Con. ), ii. 175. 
 Epictetus and Seneca (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 194. 
 Ejjicurus and Metrodorus (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 414. 
 Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa 
 
 (fmag. Con.), ii. 188; and see ii. 
 
 545-6. 
 Essex and Spenser (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 
 289. 
 Examination of William SJiakespeare 
 
 before Sir Thomas Lucy touching 
 
 Deerstealing, Landor"s, ii. 255, 260, 
 
 272-292. 
 
 Fame, Landor's sure, ii. 283, .593. 
 Fawn of Sertorius, Robert Landor's, 
 ii. 431, 603-4. 
 
 Ferdinand, Don, and Don John-Mary 
 
 Luis (Imag. Con.), ii. 168. 
 Ferranti and Giulio, Landor's, i. 302- 
 
 303 and 502 ; some extracts from, 
 
 504-508. 
 Fielding's remark about "Warbiuton, 
 
 i. 34. 
 Fiesole, Landor's villa at, ii. 70, 220, 
 
 574. 
 Fisher's portrait of Landor, ii. 402. 
 Florence, archbishop of, and Fran- 
 cesco Madia! (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 
 412. 
 Florentine art, a doubtful phase of, 
 
 ii. 264. 
 Flowers, Landor's love for, i. 13. 
 Fonblanque, Albany, referred to, ii. 
 
 492. 
 Fox, Charles, Landor and Napier on, 
 
 ii. 475; and see i. 204-5, 207, 354-6, 
 
 &:c. 
 France and the French, Landor's view 
 
 of, i. 171-176 and 221 ; and see ii. 
 
 575. 
 French Eevolution, influence upon 
 
 Landor, i. 41 and 176 ; ALfieri on, 
 
 ii. 68 note. 
 Frere, on Southey's defence of, i. 239- 
 
 241, 447. 
 Friend, the, Coleridge's, i. 243. 
 
 Garibaldi and Mazzini (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 412. 
 
 Gebir, germ of, where, i. 79 ; Quar- 
 terly lieview on, i. 81 ; intention of 
 the poem indicated, i. 81, 82 ; ef- 
 fect of, on his fame, i. S3, 113; ana- 
 lytical summary of, i. 83-105 ; Scott 
 deeply impressed bj', i. 84 note ; a 
 passage from used by Byron and 
 Wordsworth, i. 85 note ; note from 
 the first edition of, i. 89 note ; lines 
 sjjecially quoted by Shelley, Davy, 
 and Scott from, i. 95 ; also by 
 Lamb, ii. 243 ; the early and later 
 editions of, i. 102-105 ; loss and re- 
 covery of the manuscript of, i. 104 
 and note ; manner of publication, i. 
 105 ; extract from preface to, i. 106 ; 
 De Quiucey on, i. 106 ; Shelley's 
 fondness for, i. 114 ; Landor's let- 
 ter to Parr about, i. 121 ; critique 
 in the Monthly Review, i. 126 ; the 
 suppressed postscript to, i. 127 ; 
 Rough's imitation of, i. 142, 143, 
 and 262 ; note to passage on Bona- 
 parte in, i. 176, see also ii. 120 
 note ; Landor to Southey on the 
 reception of, i. 177, 178 and note, 
 and 261 ; jiroduction of a carefidly
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 517 
 
 edited edition, i. 183 ; alterations 
 
 in new edition, ii. 121. 
 Gibson's bust of Landor, ii. 140-142. 
 Gifford and his Juvtnal, i. 262 and 
 
 note ; dislike of Southey, L 352 ; 
 
 and see ii. 525. 
 Giovanna of Naples, ii. 356. 
 Gleichem, Count and Countess (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 414. 
 Godiva, i. 32. 
 
 Goetiie, i. 449, 450, ii. 321-5, 521, 
 Gomez, Don Josef Manuel, i. 229. 
 Gray's Elegy, ii. 422. 
 Greenough, the American sculptor, 
 
 and Landor, on Florentine art, ii. 
 
 264. 
 Guizot and Louis Philippe (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 412. 
 Gunlaug and Helga, i. 184 and 187 ; 
 
 and see ii. 586. 
 Gvi/'s Porridffe-Fof, a squib wrongly 
 
 attributed to Landor, i. 320 note. 
 
 Hallam, review of the Pentameron 
 in British and Foreign Quarterly, 
 attributed to, ii. 372. 
 
 Hamadryad, poem of, ii. 441-3. 
 
 Hare, Augustus, ii. 4 and note ; and 
 see ii. 253. 
 
 Hare, .Julius, ii. 1-4 ; on the Imagin- 
 ar>i Conversations, i. .505, ii. 20, 
 30!; 41, 43, .52, 74, 86 ; Landor to 
 Soutliey on, ii. 15 and 18 ; finds a 
 publisher for the Imaginary Con- 
 versations, ii. 19 ; his connection 
 with the publication, ii. 15, 17, 19, 
 20, 22, 23 ; article in London Ma- 
 gazine, ii. 87, 163 note ; letter to 
 Landor on the same, ii. 89 ; to the 
 same on Byron and Hazlitt, ii. 102 
 note ; to the same, on the sale of 
 the first series (Imag. Con.) ii. 144; 
 letters from Landor on the Imagin- 
 ary Conversations, ii. 151 ; letters 
 to Landor, on the same, ii. 149, 
 155, 158, 162, 16.5, 166; on the 
 visit to Wordsworth, ii. 247 ; on 
 the effect of the reform ajiitation 
 upon Wordsworth, ii. 247 ; re- 
 turns to Italy with Landor, ii. 
 248; opinion of the Pentameron, 
 ii. 334 ; opinion of the Trilogg, ii. 
 362 ; on Landor's collected works, 
 ii. 4.53 ; visits to, ii. 472 ; lines to 
 Landor, ii. 487 ; last letter and 
 death, ii. 4>-6-489; and see, for let- 
 ters of Landor to Hare on the Con- 
 versations, ii. 89, 90, 14.5, 147, 151, 
 160, 163 ; sec also ii. 254. 
 
 Hare, Francis, character, and friend- 
 
 ship with Landor, ii. 2-4 ; new edi- 
 tion of Landor s poems dedicated 
 to, ii. 122 and 1(15 note ; his mar- 
 riage, ii. 143 ; letter to Landor urg- 
 ing him to keep the peace at Flor- 
 ence, ii. 222 ; his interest in Lan- 
 dor's domestic affairs, ii. 312 note ; 
 a conversation suggested by, ii. 313 ; 
 last visit to, ii. 395. 
 
 Hazlitt on the Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions, i. 505, ii. 37-40, 48, 56, 74 ; 
 on the same, in the EdinJiurgh Re- 
 view, ii. 87, 90, 210 note ; with 
 Leigh Hunt in Florence, ii. 150 ; 
 visit to Landor. ii. 201 ; story of 
 his divorce, ii. 207 ; his attempt to 
 paintWordswoith'spoi trait, ii. :i09; 
 letters to Landor, ii. 210 211 note ; 
 Landor on his works, ii. 420 ; and 
 see ii. 161 note. 
 
 Hellenics, Landor's (see Last Fruit. 
 &c.), ii. 457-8, 514, &c. ; severity of 
 style in writing, ii. 514. 
 
 Heniy VIII. and Anne Boleyn (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 74. 
 
 Henry IV. and Sir Arnold Savage 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 30. 
 
 Herbert, William, i. 187. 
 
 High and low Life in Italy, Landor's, 
 ii. 219 note. 
 
 Hillard, Mr., of Boston, ii. 295 and 
 note. 
 
 " Hints to a Junta," i. 24.5. 
 
 History of Brazil, Southey's, i. 246. 
 
 Hofer, Andrew, and Count Metter- 
 nich (Imag. Con.), ii. 67; see also 
 249. 
 
 Hogarth, ii. 47L 
 
 HoHg, Jefferson, author of Shelley's 
 Life, on Shelley's liking for Gcbir, 
 i. 114; with Lambe and Hare, ii. 
 130 ; on Dr. Lambe, ii. 242 note. 
 
 Homer, i. 21. ii. 298, 299, 302, 376, 
 530 5.53 572-3 
 
 Hoiace, ii.'340, 382 3, 438-9, 575. 
 
 Home Tooke and Imaginary Con- 
 versafions, ii. 60. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, ii. 261. 
 
 Hughenden manor, i. 6. 
 
 Hume, David, and John Home 
 (Imag. ( 'on ), ii. 68. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, i. :H>9 ; on Landor and 
 bis friends, i. 4»(;, ii. 206 211 ; his 
 residence in Italy, ii. 1.50, 223 ; opi- 
 nion of the Pentameron, ii. 334. 
 
 Icelandic poetry, i. 295. 
 
 Imaginar;/ Conversations, Landor's, 
 some characteristics of, i. .502 and 
 503 and 509 ; dialogue a form of
 
 518 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 writing suited to Lanclor, i. 486 
 and 509 ; the plan confided to 
 Soutliey, i. 510 ; the first portion, 
 ii. 11-17 ; a publisher found, ii. 
 19 ; preparing for press, ii. 19-28 ; 
 Southey and Person on Words- 
 worth, first published in London 
 Magazine, ii. 23 ; summary of the 
 first volume, ii. 28-53 ; of the 
 second volume, ii. 53-82 ; their 
 reception, ii. 82-90 ; j)ublication 
 urged by Francis Hare, ii. 122 ; 
 opinion of Landor's mother, ii. 124 ; 
 Dr. Parr and, ii. 127; 3d, 4th, 
 and 5th vols, in progress, ii. 138 ; 
 sum realised to author by the first 
 two vols., ii. 141 ; the second series, 
 ii. 144-1G8; a volume of in Ms. 
 destroyed by Landor, ii. 148, 153 ; 
 second edition published in 1826, 
 ii. 162 ; contents of second series, 
 ii. 168-197 ; additional series, ii. 
 197 8 note ; the shoitest one, ii. 398 
 and note ; contents of the last 
 series, ii. 411-418 ; final unpub- 
 lished scenes, ii. 578-586. 
 
 Impious Feast, the, Eobert Landor's 
 poem, ii. 141. 
 
 Inez de Castro, Landor's, ii. 197. 
 
 Ion, Talfourd's, fii-st night of, ii. 315. 
 
 Ipsley-court and estate, L 4 and 5 
 note, 420, ii. 234, 557. 
 
 Ireland, Southey and Landor on the 
 errors and grievances of, ii. 95-99. 
 
 Irish church establishment, Landor 
 on, ii. 55 (Imag. Con.), ii. 413 ; and 
 see ii. 520. 
 
 Italy, i. 445, 467, 479 ; as to Italians, 
 ii. 44-47, and 271 ; a free Italy, ii. 
 51 and 567 ; in 1823, ii. 93 ; in 1831, 
 ii. 238-9. 
 
 .Tacobinism at Oxford, i. 47, 48. 
 James, G. P. R., ii. 292, 311, 393; 
 
 on Landor's iriloyy, ii. 362. 
 James I. and Isaac Casaubon (Imag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 37. 
 James, Doctor, master of Riigby 
 
 school, i. 14 ; Landor's dispute 
 
 ■with, i. 31 ; Landor's verses to, i. 
 
 196 note. 
 Jeffi ey, Francis, i. 353, 354 ; ii. 24, 
 
 408. 
 Jephthah, Buchanan's, Landor's trans- 
 lation of, i. 35. 
 John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 181. 
 Johnson, Dr., his interview with Dr. 
 
 Parr, i. 115 ; and Home Tooke 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. GO. 
 
 Jones, Nancy, i. 199, ii. 8 note. 
 Julian, Count. See Count Julian. 
 
 Keats, John, ii. 141, 161 ; Landor's 
 interest in, 167; and Shelley, 176 7 
 and note ; and see iL 388, 527. 
 
 Kemble suggested to represent Count 
 Julian, i. 298. 
 
 Kenyon, John, iL 1-4, 9, 116; cha- 
 racter of, 389-90 ; receives Landor's 
 odes to Southey and Wordsworth, 
 ii. 249, 250 ; on the Pen.tamtron, 
 ii. 334 ; to Landor describing ex- 
 cursion with Southey, ii. 400 ; as 
 to second Mrs. Southey, ii. 401 ; 
 his death, ii. 489, 547 ; see also 
 232, 317. 
 
 King of the Sandwich Islands, Mr. 
 Peel, Mr. Croker, and Interpreter 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 173. 
 
 King ofAva and Kao- Gong- F,T,o (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 170. 
 
 Kirk up, Mr. Seymour, recollections 
 of Hare and Landor at Florence, 
 ii. 3, 200, 201, 204, 236, 562, 590-1 ; 
 and see as to Dante, ii. 332. 
 
 Kosciusko and Poniatowski (Imag. 
 Con ), ii. 51. 
 
 La Fontaine, Landor likens himself 
 to, ii. 130. 
 
 Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 181. 
 
 Lamartine, Landor's introduction to, 
 ii, 206. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, i. 122, 257 ; his re- 
 collections of the Betham family, 
 i. 386; letter to Landor, i. 497; 
 Landor's visit to him at Enfield, ii. 
 242 ; letter to Landor, with copy of 
 Elia, ii. 243 ; lines by Landor on 
 the death of, ii. 260; opinion of 
 Landor's Examination of Shake- 
 speare, ii. 273 ; and see ii. 324, 335. 
 
 Lambe, Dr., of Warwick, i. 144, 145, 
 ii. 134 ; Landor's grief at death of 
 Mrs. Lambe, i. 200, 201; visit to 
 him in London, ii. 242 and note. 
 
 Landor, Waltek Savage. 
 
 Vol. I. Character and writings, 
 i. 2, 3, 486-512; (ii. 85-89, 451- 
 458, 593-595 ;) his claim to old de- 
 scent, i. 6 ; born 30th of January 
 1775, i. 9 ; early want of restrain- 
 ing influences, i. 9, 10; lost re- 
 miniscences of his childhood, i, 
 10; sent first to school at Knowle, 
 i. 11 ; his love for flowers, i. 13 ; 
 dislike of grammar, kc, i. 14;
 
 GENERxVL INDEX. 
 
 519 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage : 
 
 (ii. 107 ;) at Rugby school, i. 14 ; 
 his ajjpearance when fii\st teen by 
 the author, i. 16, 17; (ii. 315;) se- 
 cret of his scholarship, i. 20 ; his 
 excellence in Latin verse, i. 19, 21 ; 
 peculiar constitution of his mind, i. 
 19, 20 ; his knowledge of Greek, i. 
 
 22 ; Baker's Ghroti iclc and Drayton's 
 Polyolbion his first two books, i. 
 
 23 ; not unjjopular at school, i. 25, 
 29 ; removal from Rugby, i. 31, 32 ; 
 a tribute to his tutor, i. 33 ; his pro- 
 gress at Ashbourne, i. 35 ; Medea 
 at Corinth, i. 36 ; his early poems, 
 1. 37 ; his excellence in translation, 
 i. 40 ; entered Trinity-college Ox- 
 ford 1793, i. 40 ; not much moved 
 by the French Revolution, i. 41 ; a 
 toast of his, i. 41 note ; life at Ox- 
 ford, i. 42 and 47 ; his satire on 
 the affairs of 1794, i. 44, 45 ; other 
 poems of the same date, i. 45, 46 ; 
 close of his Oxford career, 1. 49 
 and note, and 53-57 ; deceived him- 
 self first, then others, i. 51 ; his first 
 vol. of Poeyns published 1795, i. 53 
 and note, 58-62 ; his relations with 
 his father, i. 50-52, 55, 56, 57, 66, 
 67; A Moral Epistle to Earl Stan- 
 hope, i. 69, 70 ; his " pious wish" 
 as to George the Third, i. 73 and 
 note ; was never offered a commis- 
 sion in the ai-my, i. 74; exaggera- 
 tion in urging his opinions, i. 75 ; 
 at Tenby and Swansea, i. 77, 78 ; 
 Gebir, i. 81, 82 ; a desciiptive sur- 
 vey of the poem, i. 82-105 ; his own 
 estimate of Gehir, i. 106, 107 ; lack 
 of courtesy to his father's fi lends, 
 i. 110; his impatience of argument, 
 i. 113 ; friendship with Dr. Parr, 
 ibid. ; his remark to Hogg about 
 Gehir, i. 114 ; his introduction of 
 the same to Parr, i. 121 ; letters to 
 the Courier, i. 122 and 159 ; corre- 
 spondence with Robert Adair, i. 123 
 and 165-168, 205; urged to con- 
 tribute to the Morning Vhronide, 
 i. 124 and 166 ; unpublished jiost- 
 script to Gebir, i. 127-140; self- 
 confidence illustrated, i. 131 and 
 note, 132 ; fiienrlship with Serjeant 
 Rough, i. 142-152 ; bis imitations 
 of Oriental literature, i. 1.53 ; cor- 
 respondence with Parr, i. 154-165 ; 
 visits Paris 1802, i. 169 ; his esti- 
 mate of Bonaparte and the French 
 people, i. 171, 172, also 221 ; note 
 to a xjdssage in Gtbir written on 
 
 Landor, "Walter Savage : 
 his return from France, i. 176 ; the 
 Phocaans, i. 178-182 and 294; some 
 characteristics of his style, i. 180, 
 181 ; arranges with his brother a 
 new and f tiller edition of Gehir, i. 
 183; Gunhim andHelga,!. 184 and 
 187 ; correspondence with Birch, i. 
 185-198 ; on pastoral poetry, i. 189 ; 
 mode of life (1805), i. 189 ; epigram 
 on the " Carlton House" rumours, 
 i. 191 ; lines from an address to 
 the fellows of Trinity (suppressed), 
 i. 191 note ; moved to enthusias-iir 
 by the prospect of Trafalgar, i. 191, 
 192 ; his tribute in Latin verse to 
 Birch, i. 193 note ; his accession to 
 property, i. 195 ; his verses to the 
 memory of Dr. James, i. 196 note ; 
 life at Bath, i. 199 ; various love- 
 affairs, i. 77, 202, 203 and 238 ; in- 
 stance of Parr's affection for him, 
 i. 205 ; (ii. 127 ;) leading features of 
 his character sketched by Parr, i. 
 206 ; his introduction to Southey, 
 i. 208 ; friendship with Southey 
 begun, i. 209 ; their correspond- 
 ence, i. 210 ; characters of the two 
 men compared, i. 211-215. Letters 
 quoted : on Kehaina, i. 216 ; on 
 metre, i. 218 ; in reply to an appeal 
 to write more poetry, &c., i. 219, 
 220 ; on France and the French, 
 and his sudden departure for 
 Spain, i. 220 ; in Spain, i. 222 ; his 
 share in the revolution, i. 224-228 
 and 231-2; resigns his Spanish 
 commission on the restoration of 
 the Jesuits, i. 235 ; on the con- 
 vention of Cintra, i. 235; on the 
 Stuart affair, i. 237 note ; on some 
 personal hojies and regrets, i. 238 ; 
 on Sir John Moore and the at- 
 tack by Frere, i. 239-40 ; on Span- 
 ish affairs, i. 242 ; on the same, i. 
 243 ; on Coleri<lge and taxation, 
 i. 244; on "Hints to a Junta," i. 
 245; on history-writing, i. 246; a 
 note on English pronunciation, i. 
 248 ; objection to a passage in Ke- 
 liaina, 1. 248 ; on Euripidex, i. 250 ; 
 on themes for epic poets, i. 251 ; ac- 
 knowledgment of Kthama and its 
 dedication, i. 256 ; on his own 8i- 
 monidea, kc, i. 256 note ; note on 
 Spenser and Chaucer, i. 257 ; on the 
 same, and Southey 's double jiroject, 
 i. 259 ; on the reception of (lebiv, 
 and its effects U[)on himself, i. 261 ; 
 on the first portion of Pelaijo (after-
 
 520 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage : 
 
 wards Roderick), i. 2(54 ; on the pro- 
 gress and completion of the same, 
 i. 266, 267 ; the nature and extent 
 of his dramatic faculty, i. 268-270 
 and 294; Count Julian, i. 270-306 ; 
 story of the tragedy followed and 
 illustrated, i. 270 - 285 ; original 
 plan of Count Julian, i. 286; the 
 last scene arranged first, i. 287; 
 the first act finished, i. 289 ; 
 note on Roderick and the method 
 of the ancients, i. 290 ; the work 
 completed, i. 290 ; revision, i. 292 ; 
 alterations and additions, i. 295 ; 
 on its chances of representation, i. 
 298 ; further interpolations, i. 299- 
 301 ; difficulties of publication, i. 
 301-304 ; confessions of personal 
 "weakness, i. 309 ; the Llanthony 
 estate and abbey, i. 13, 309-323 ; 
 letter to the author on the same, i. 
 309 ; letters to Bishop Burgess on 
 restoration of tlie abbey-chapel, i. 
 314-316; his Letters of a Conserva- 
 tive, i. 317 note ; letters to Southey 
 on affairs at Llanthony, i. 307, 309, 
 312, 317, 318 and 322; his esti- 
 mate of the Welsh, i. 315 and 318; 
 letter on a reply to an attack on 
 AVordsworth, i. 319 ; his marriage, 
 1. 323-325 ; receives Mr. and Mrs. 
 Southey at Llanthony, i. 328 ; ec- 
 centric conduct as grand-juryman, 
 i. 335-339 ; is desired to become a 
 magistrate, i. 3.39 ; offers himself 
 to the loid-lieutenant, i. 340 ; cor- 
 respondence incident upon this, i. 
 340-348; influence of the affair 
 upon him, i. 348 ; letter from Ro- 
 bert Landor dissuading him from 
 leaving England, i. 349 ; on Jef- 
 frey, Pitt, and Fox, i 354; state 
 of the government, i. 355 ; and of 
 the people, i. 357; on his Obser- 
 vations on Trotter's Life of Fox, i. 
 359 ; his Commentary and Parallel, 
 i. 359-368 ; on America and its re- 
 lations (1812), i. 363; on liberty and 
 other matters, i. 366 ; on the good 
 done by Bonaparte, i. 371 ; on the 
 enclosure bill, i. 374 ; on Southey's 
 appointment to the laui-eateship, 
 i. 377 ; on Southey's Carmen Tri- 
 umphalc, i. 378 ; on the conduct 
 of Austria, i. 380 ; an address to 
 the freeholders of Monmouthshire, 
 i. 372, 373 ; troubles at Llanthony, 
 i. 384, 396; his Charitable Doiv- 
 ayer, i. 387 392 ; Cor //thus, i. 394; 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage : 
 Idyllia Heroum atque Heroidum, 
 i. 395; persecution at Llanthony, 
 i. 395-400 ; letter to Mr. Jervis on 
 the Betham action, i. 403-6; notes 
 for Southey prefixed thereto, i. 
 402 ; his departure from England, 
 i. 406-410 ; letters of Robert Lan- 
 dor and Southey, i. 407 ; delicate 
 questions, i. 411 ; a domestic 
 quarrel, i. 412 ; acknowledgment 
 of sympathy, i. 414 ; on the de- 
 solation of Llanthony, i. 414 ; 
 domestic reconciliation, i. 415 ; 
 on some Latin poems, i. 415, 416 ; 
 return of Napoleon, i. 418 ; at 
 Tours, i. 421 ; journey to Italy, 
 i. 421-427 ; wishes, regrets, and 
 experiences, i. 427, 428; on lake 
 Como, i. 428 ; touching letter on 
 Southey's silence, i. 430 ; verses 
 on his laureateship, kc, i. 434; 
 books, booksellers, and politics, i. 
 435-4.37 ; Italian censorship, Words- 
 worth, etc., i. 437 ; birth of his first 
 child, &c., i. 440-443; last inci- 
 dents at Como, i. 443 ; going to 
 Pisa, i. 445 ; ode to BeVnadotte, 
 i. 447 ; on Byron, himself, and 
 Goethe, &c., i. 449-454; birth- 
 day letter to Southey, i. 4.56 ; 
 about Artigas, a South-American 
 leader, i. 459; some old books, kc, 
 i. 460-463 ; his letter to the Times 
 in rejjly to Wolseley's, i. 466 ; 
 birth of a daughter, and varioiis 
 matters political and social, i. 471 ; 
 on the rising of the Greeks, &c., 
 i. 478; at woik on a Latin disserta- 
 tion, i. 454, and 469 note ; his Ora- 
 tions in Italian, i. 473, 478; sym- 
 pathy with the Neapolitans, i. 474 ; 
 letter to his mother about his 
 family, i. 475 ; letters from his 
 mother, i. 476-78 ; (ii. 123-133, and 
 213 ;) letter from Wordsworth, i. 
 481-484, and note ; in the palazzo 
 Medici in Florence, i. 484 ; his wish 
 to be remembered with Southey, 
 i. 487 ; illustrations of character, 
 i. 491; advantages from self-banish- 
 ment, i. 493 and 502 ; his gentle- 
 ness as well as strength, i. 497-501 ; 
 two scenes, ii. 504-8 ; plan of Con- 
 versations confided to Southey, 1. 
 510 ; better prospects, i. 511, 
 
 Vol II. Influencedbyintercourse 
 with Francis Hare, ii. 2 ; first por- 
 tion of the Conversations, ii. 11-17; 
 letters to Sjuthey on the publica-
 
 GENEKAL INDEX. 
 
 521 
 
 Landor, "Walter Savage : 
 
 tion of same, ii. 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 
 19 note ; in reply to objections, ii. 
 21, 22 ; his Imag. Conversotions, 
 on Wordsworth's poetry, ii. 24, 25; 
 contents of the first series, ii. 28- 
 82 ; English language, reform of, 
 criticised, ii. 60-6, and note ; his 
 liking for Al fieri, ii. 68 and note ; 
 reception of the Conversations, ii. 
 82-90; in dispute with the secre- 
 tary of the Florence legation, ii. 
 91 ; writing to Southey : upon 
 forms of government, ii. 93 ; on 
 colonisation, ii. 95 ; on Irish griev- 
 ances and errors, ii. 95 to 99 ; 
 on Byron's attacks, ii. 101 ; a his- 
 tory-writing project, ii. 103, 104, 
 note also, 350 ; on Canning, ii. 104 ; 
 on domestic affairs, &c., ii. 106, 
 and 112, 113, 117; on the Vision of 
 Judgment, ii. 108 ; on the proposal 
 to write in hexameters, ii. 110 ; on 
 the Tale of Puraguatj, 111, 120 ; 
 further grievances, public and pri- 
 vate, ii. 114 ; a parcel of books 
 from Italy, ii. 117 and 118 ; on the 
 death of Southey's uncle Hill, ii. 
 120 ; on republishing his poems, 
 ii. 121. Family letters, ii. 123-144 ; 
 fondness fur his children, ii. 126, 
 205, 233 ; fii-st letter from his son, 
 and reply, ii. 131 ; at Rome, ii. 
 131 ; illness of his children, ii. 136, 
 142 ; account of his Neapolitan 
 voyage, ii. 137; collecting pictures, 
 ii. 138, 142 ; Gibson's bust of him, 
 ii. 140-2 ; to Southey, as to second 
 series of Conversations, ii. 144-65; 
 to Julius Hare, ii. 151; contents 
 of new series, ii. 168-197; passage 
 from cancelled preface, ii. 173 note ; 
 English visiter, Florentine visiter, 
 and himself (Imaor. Con.), ii. 175; 
 at Fiesole, ii. 224, 230 ; his absence 
 of mind, ii. 202 ; closing years in 
 palazzo Medici, ii. 199-217; fa- 
 mily epitaphs, ii. 216; ordered to 
 leave Tuscany, ii. 218 ; his High 
 and Low Life in Itahj, ii. 219 
 note ; on his manner of life, ii. 
 221 ; his dispute with M. Antoir, 
 ii. 236 ; the publication of his 
 collected poems (1831), ii. 237; on 
 the condition of Italy (1831), ii. 
 238 ; revisits England, ii. 241 ; in- 
 terview witli Coleridge and Lamb, 
 ii. 242 ; visits Julius Hare, and 
 Warwick, ii. 243 ; at the Lakes 
 with Southey and Wordsworth, ii. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage : 
 
 244 ; his argument with Southey 
 about the word impugn, ii. 246 ; 
 return to Italy, ii. 248 ; his odes 
 to Southey and Wordsworth, ii. 
 249 ; ode to Joseph Ablett. ii 257 ; 
 Emerson at Fiesole, ii. 261-266 ; re- 
 ply to Emerson's account of his 
 opinions, ii. 266-70 ; his Examina- 
 tion of Wm. Shakespeare for Deer- 
 stealing, ii. 255, 260 ; story of the 
 publication and contents, ii. 272- 
 292 ; Pericles and Aspasia, letters 
 to Southey about, ii. 292-294 ; re- 
 view of the plan, &c., ii. 294-305; 
 another domestic breach, and de- 
 parture from Fiesole, ii. 307-13 ; his 
 Satire on Satirists, ii. 316 ; refunds 
 to the publisher the money paid 
 for Pericles, ii. 318 ; letters to 
 Southey, from Llanbedr, on the 
 Pericles, &c. ii. 318; from Clifton, 
 on his visit to Germany, ii. 317- 
 319, 342 ; last days with Southey, 
 ii. 321; visits to friends, ii. 322; 
 Lady Blessington, ii. 325, 326 ; 
 the Pentameron, ii. 330-346 ; set- 
 tled at Bath, ii. 343 ; Andrea of 
 Hungarg, &c. ii. 348-356, 360-363; 
 error as to Greek trilogies, ii. 363 ; 
 failures of memory, ii. 367-370, 
 and note ; unpublished criticism 
 of a review of the Pentameron, ii. 
 373-387; glimi^ses of his friends, 
 ii. 387- 399 ; his reception in Paris 
 (1841), ii. 396; last letter to Sou- 
 they, ii. 403 ; lines on the death of 
 Southey, ii. 405 ; his inscription 
 for bust of the same, ii. 406 ; last 
 series of Conversations, ii. 411 ; 
 Southey and himself (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 417 ; selected passages from his 
 letters to the author (1843-5), ii. 
 419-425 ; his dog Pomero, i. 18 
 note ; ii. 425-429, 433, and note, 
 489 ; letters from Bath to his sister 
 Elizabeth, ii. 430, 431, 4.32, 433; 
 his essays on Catullus, Theocritus, 
 and Petrarca, kc, ii. 437-445; col- 
 lection and revision of his works, 
 ii. 445-453 ; his Poemata, ii. 4.5:5- 
 457; the Hellenics, ii. 457; letter 
 to the Times on De Foe, ii. 461 ; at 
 the author's, ii. 469, &c. ; at Hurst- 
 monceaux, ii. 472., 473; last visit 
 to London, ii. 477 ; last visit 
 to Llanthony, ii. 479; grief for 
 deatlis of old friends, ii. 480-90 ; 
 verses on Wordsworth, Southey, 
 and Hare, ii. 486 ; on Julius Hare'3
 
 522 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage : 
 
 death, ii. 488 ; his Last Fruit, kc, 
 ii. 490 to 514 ; on Beatrice Oenci, 
 ii. 494 ; lines on Wordswoith, ii. 
 499 ; poem to his brother Robert, 
 ii. 500 ; i)assages from letters to 
 the author on the Life and Let- 
 ters of Blanco White, ii. 515-523. 
 Notes on Books and Men, from 
 letters to the author : of Milton's 
 poetry, ii. 523 ; of himself as he 
 appears in Southcifs Letters, ii. 
 524 ; of the great masters of our 
 language, ibid. ; of Southey and 
 Cowper, ii. 525 ; of "William Gif- 
 ford, itc. , ibid. ; of Tennyson's 
 Maud, ii. 526; of Aubrey de Vere's 
 Masque, ii. -526 ; of Scott and Keats, 
 ii. 527; of Sydney andBobusSmith, 
 ii. 527 ; a preferment unsought, ii. 
 628 ; De Quincey's Essays and Re- 
 collections, ibid. ; of some novels, ii. 
 529 ; of the Edinburgh on liis Hcl- 
 hnics, ii. 530 ; of the Quarterly on 
 Steele, ii. .531 ; of the dramatists 
 of Elizabeth and James, ii. 532 ; of 
 some recent poems (1856), ii. 532; 
 of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, ii. 532 ; 
 a strange story, ii, 533 ; of the 
 Apple of Discord, ii. 534 ; of Mrs. 
 Barbiiuld on Collins, ii. .535 ; of 
 Gcih\>e.tt'sRe(jisttr, ii. 535; of Swift's 
 Tale of a Tub, ii. 537; of Shelley 
 and himself, ii. 537 ; of Sir Robert 
 Peel's posthumous memoir, ibid. ; 
 of Grote's history, ii. 541 ; of jjarts 
 of speech, ibid. ; of corraptions of 
 language, ii. 542 ; of his own pro- 
 posed amendments, ii. 543. The 
 action for libel at Bath, ii. 545- 
 556, 559; his Dry Sticks, ii. 550, 
 552 ; last visit to the author, ii. 
 556 ; return to Italy, ii. 557-564 ; 
 at Siena, ii. 564-568 ; again at Flor- 
 ence, ii. 568; last Dramatic Scenes, 
 ii. 572,578-86; last published Con- 
 versations, ii. 574 ; Heroic Idyls, 
 ii. 576 ; five unjjublished scenes and 
 Conversations, ii. 578-84 ; last let- 
 ters to author, ii. .587-9; his death, 
 ii. 592; Swinburne's verses to his 
 memory, ii. 592 ; conclusion, ii. 
 593-595. 
 
 Subjoined are references to where 
 letters from Landor to the author 
 are quoted : i, 17 note, 24, 25, 
 33 note, 34 and note, 63, 78, 80, 
 
 andor, "Walter Savage : 
 
 
 
 85 note, 104 and note. 
 
 106, 
 
 197, 
 
 309 ; ii. 173 note, 202 
 
 note 
 
 208 
 
 note, 216 note, 312 note 
 
 317, 
 
 323, 
 
 325, 327, 328, 329, 342, 
 
 343, 
 
 346, 
 
 347, 348, 350, 352, 354, 
 
 355, 
 
 360, 
 
 361, 370 note, 371, 395, 
 
 396, 
 
 40.'i, 
 
 419-425, 427, 429, 433, 
 
 439, 
 
 440, 
 
 441, 445, 448, 450, 462, 
 
 465, 
 
 466, 
 
 468, 469, 471, 472, 479, 
 
 480, 
 
 481, 
 
 483, 484, 485, 488, 489, 
 
 490, 
 
 494, 
 
 495, 506 note, 515, 518 
 
 -543, 
 
 545, 
 
 550, 552, 554, 560, 568, 
 
 569, 
 
 575, 
 
 587-589. 
 
 
 
 Landor, Doctor, Landor's father, i. 
 4, 9, 27-28, 30, 50-51, 56-57, 73-70, 
 116, 194 9.5. 
 
 Landor, Rev. Robert Eyres, i. 3, ii. 
 500-504 ; similarity of his genius to 
 his brother's, i. 3, ii. 369-70, 431. 
 Subjoined are the subjects of his 
 letters to the author contained in 
 this work: Dr. Landor, i. 4, 50; 
 the Landor family, i. 7, 8; "V\^ alter 
 at school, &c. , i. 21 ; "Walter's tem- 
 perance, i. 28 ; "Walter at Ash- 
 bourne, i. 33 ; Walter at Trinity, 
 i. 49 ; "W^alter's first book, i. 58 ; 
 General Powell, i. 73 ; "Walter's al- 
 lowance, i. 76, 77; Gebir, i. 105; 
 Walter's imijatience of controversy, 
 i. 113 and 489 note ; Dr. Parr, i. 
 119-121; Serjeant Rough, i. 143, 
 146, 151 ; Walter and his critics, 
 i. 183 ; Walter Birch, i. 186, 193 ; 
 Walter's extravagance of talk, i. 
 204 ; Walter's young wife. i. 325 ; 
 the sale at Llanthony, i. 420 ; on 
 his brother's tragedies and his own 
 Count Arezzi, &c., ii. 364-369 ; on 
 Mr. and Mrs. Rosenhagen, ii. 390. 
 As to other letters, not to the au- 
 thor : to his Brother Walter, dis- 
 suading him from leaving England, 
 i. 349 ; to Southey, on his brother's 
 sudden departure for France, i. 
 410 ; to his mother, descriptive of 
 their journey to Italy, i. 421-42(5; 
 to Southey, on the ''Como scan- 
 dal,'' i. 440; to his brother Walter, 
 on hia Andrea, &c., ii. 361, 364 ; to 
 the same, on some essays by him, 
 ii. 438. 
 
 Landor, Charles, and Henry, i. 3, 9, 
 11, 15, 76, 77, 477, ii. 481, 500, 
 546-7. 
 
 Landor, Mrs. W. S., i. 323-9, 403, 
 408, 411-15, 422, 42.5-6; ii. 130, 
 135, 136, 200, 201, 231, 307-13, 558-
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 523 
 
 64, 592 ; allusion to her father, i. 
 ;S24, 355. 
 
 Landor, Arnold, ii. 112 ; letter from 
 his graiidinother to, ii. 125 note ; 
 her wish to be intrusted with his 
 education, ib. ; tirst letter to his 
 father, and reply, ii. 130 ; question 
 of his education, ii. 233 ; a fool's 
 paradise, ii. 233-4 ; and see ii. 557- 
 559. 
 
 Landor, social position of the family 
 of, i. 6-7 and note ; use of the name 
 by Rabelais, i. 8 ; derivation of the 
 word, i. 8 note ; Doctor "Walter, i. 
 4 and 50 ; the Doctor's family, i. 
 9 ; Henry, i. 77 ; Landor's mother, 
 ibid. ; death of his father, i. 194 
 and note ; Edward Wilson, ii. 200, 
 202 and note ; longevity of the fa- 
 mily, ii. 500 note. See also under 
 "Mother'' and "Sisters." 
 
 Landseer, Sir Edwin, ii. 471. 
 
 Langley, Mr. , vicar of Ashbourne, i. 
 33. 
 
 Langiiage, the English, and ortho- 
 graphy, a favourite study of Lan- 
 dor's, ii. 60 ; contributions to reform 
 of, ii. 60-66 ; and see ii. 450, 539-45. 
 
 Laodaniia, "Wordsworth's, ii. 24, 25, 
 and note, and 90. 
 
 Larochejaquelia and Beranger (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 412. 
 
 Lascy, General, and Cura Merino 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 57. 
 
 Last Fruit from an Old Tree, Lan- 
 dor's, ii. 490-514. 
 
 Latin verse, Landor's excellence in, 
 i. 19, 21, 29. For references in this 
 •work to his Latin poetry, see a note, 
 ii. 457 ; see also ii. 453 457. 
 
 Layard, Austen H. , ii. 335 note. 
 
 Leckie, Mr., ii. 204. 
 
 Leighton, Frederick, ii. 470, 
 
 Leo XIL, pope, and his valet Gigi 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 169. 
 
 Leofrio and Godiva (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 181. 
 
 Leonora and Father Panigarola 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 414. 
 
 Leopold, Peter, and Dupaty (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 44. 
 
 Letters of a Conservative, Landor's, 
 i. 317 note. 
 
 Letters to Charles Butler, Landor on 
 Southey's, ii. 99. 
 
 Lincoln, president, allusion to liis 
 death, i. 495. 
 
 Literary fame, ii. 538-9. 
 
 Literature, how regarded by Landor, 
 i. 3 ; and see ii. 538. 
 
 Llanthony estate, described by Lan- 
 dor in a letter to Southey, i. 13, 
 327 ; proposal to plant a wood of 
 cedar of Lebanon on, i. 307 ; let- 
 ter to tbe author descriptive of. i. 
 309 ; author's visit to, i. 310 ; let- 
 ters to Bishop Burgess abovit the 
 abbey-chapel, i. 314-316 ; progress 
 of repairs and plans, i. 317-319 and 
 322 ; Ufe there, i. 323-351 ; what 
 L.iudor did there, i. 343-6 ; his mo- 
 ther's management of the estate, i. 
 420 ; as to Ipsley, ii. 234 ; and see 
 ii. 557-9. 
 
 Locke, .John, i. 364. 
 
 Lockhart on a passage from one of 
 Southey's letters, i. 407. 
 
 London Journal, Leigh Hunt's, ii. 
 260. 
 
 London Magazine, first Imaginary 
 Conversation published in, ii. 23. 
 
 Lonsdale, Lord, in DeviVs Walk, ii. 
 495. 
 
 Lough, bust and statue of Southey, 
 ii. 410-11. 
 
 Louis XIV. and Father la Chaise 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 59. 
 
 Ljuis XVIII. and TallejTand (Imag. 
 Con.),ii. 4n. 
 
 Lowell, Professor, of Boston, opinion 
 of Landor, i. 2. 
 
 Lucullus and Ca;sar (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 194. 
 
 Lucys, the old and young, ii. 235. 
 
 Lynn, Miss, ii. 495. 
 
 Lyttelton, Dorothea, i. 62-68. 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer (Lord), ii. 251 ; his 
 Ca.dons, ii. 529. 
 
 Lytton, Robert, Landor on, ii. 478. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., Landor meets at 
 
 the author's, ii. 469-70. 
 Macchiavelli and Michael Argclo 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 414. 
 Mackintosh and Dr. Parr, i. 118, 165. 
 Maclise, Daniel, ii. 471 ; and "W. Mul- 
 
 ready, ibid. 
 Macready, Mr., reform of theatre- 
 
 lobbie.s, i. 298 ; on Landor's Trilogij, 
 
 ii. 362. 
 Madrid Gazette, Landor's services to 
 
 Spain acknowledged in, i. 235. 
 Mahomet and Sergius (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 186. 
 Maleaherbes and Rousseau (Imag. 
 
 Con ), ii. 183. 
 Marcellus and Hannibal (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 194. 
 Marriaije of Uelena and Menelaos, 
 
 Landor's, ii. 580.
 
 524 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Marriage, seriousness of, ii. 219. 
 
 Mai-tin and Jack, Swift's progeny 
 (I mag. Con.), ii. 412. 
 
 Marvel and Henry Marten, Lander's, 
 ii. 584. 
 
 Masque of Proserpine, Aubrey De 
 Vere's, ii. 526. 
 
 Mavrocordato and Colocotroni(Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 68. 
 
 Menander and Epicurus (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 414. 
 
 Metellus and Marius (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 194. 
 
 Middleton and Magliabechi (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. .52. 
 
 Slignet, his courtesy to Landor in 
 Palis, ii. 397. 
 
 Miguel and his mother (Imag. Con.) 
 ii. 168. 
 
 MiloQan, Dean, ii. 470. 
 
 ililnes, R. Monckton, poems on Lan- 
 dor 's children, ii. 260 ; friendship 
 with Landor, ii. 261, 291, 294; his 
 Life of Keats, ii. 388. 
 
 MiltoD, Landor's study of Paradise 
 Lost, i. 78 ; Landor charged with 
 imitating, i. 80 ; Landor's venera- 
 tion for, i. 129 30 ; Wordsworth on 
 the sonnets of, ii. 9 ; Landor on 
 the poetry of, ii. 416-418, 523-4 ; 
 and see ii. 544; and IMarvel (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. .53; and see ii. .576. 
 
 Mina, ii. 1.57 note, and 1-58 note; and 
 see ii. 451. 
 
 M'Kenzie, Miss, of Seaforth, ii. 232, 
 310. 
 
 Mocatta, Isaac, i. 139-141. 
 
 Modern allusions in dialogues of an- 
 cients, ii. 72, 173 .531, &c. 
 
 Molande, Jane Countess de, i. 199, 
 ii. 222, 223, 226, 241, 318, 427, 
 483. 
 
 Molesworth, Sir "\Mlliam, iL 489. 
 
 " Jlolly Perry" and her letter, i. 68 
 and note. 
 
 Montaigne and Joseph Scaliger (Imag. 
 Con ), ii. 184. 
 
 Monthlij Rcriew on Gchir, i. 126. 
 
 Moore and Landor. i. 477, ii. 393. 
 
 Moral Epistle to Earl Stanhope, i. 68- 
 7L 
 
 Morgan, Lady, ii. 67. 
 
 Morning Chronicle, Landor solicited 
 for contributions to, i. 124 and 166. 
 
 Morning Post and Courier, early con- 
 tributors to, i. 122. 
 
 Mother. Lsindor's, i. 4, 76-77, 324, 
 328, 407, 421-6, 441, 475-8, 511, ii. 
 123 144, 213 217 ; and see ii. 221. 
 
 Mureta, Juan Santos de, L 393. 
 
 Napier, Gen. Sir"Wm., ii. 267. .34.3, 
 432 43.5, and 451-4.53, 474, 475 ; de- 
 fence of Landor, ii. 476; Landor's 
 last meeting with, ii. 477-8. 
 
 Napier, Gen. Sir Cliarles, ii. 473. 
 
 Napoleon, Prince Louis, note of au- 
 tlior upon, ii. 468-9. 
 
 Napoleon, President Louis, and M. 
 de Mole (Imag. Con.), ii. 412. 
 
 Newton and Barrow (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 178 and note. 
 
 Nichol, Mr., of Edinburgh, and the 
 Dry Sticks, ii. 552. 
 
 Nicholas and Michael (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 172 ; and Nesseb-ode (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 412. 
 
 Noble, Michael, Christian name 
 ■wrongly given by Landor (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 3.3. 
 
 Norris, IVIiss, letter to Landor from, 
 1790, i. 30. 
 
 Nugent, Lord, ii. 465, 481. 
 
 Observations on Trotter's Life of Fox, 
 
 Landor's, i. 358 and note, 3.59. 
 O'Connell and Landor, ii. 251, 435, 
 
 436 and note. 
 Ode to General Washington, i. 46, 47; 
 
 Ghistavus, Landor's, i. 256 note. 
 Odysseus, Tersitza, Acrive, and Tre- 
 
 lawuey (Imag. Con.), ii. 172. 
 Odyssci/, the, read in the original 
 
 Greek by Landor at 85, i. 21 ; and 
 
 see ii. 553, .570. 
 Old man and a child, Landor's, ii. 
 
 584. 
 One life, incidents embraced by, i. 
 
 35. 
 Oratory, danger of, ii. 55. 
 Orense, bishop of, i. 232. 
 Oriental literature, Landor's imita- 
 tions of, i. 153 ; his studies in, i. 
 
 252. 
 Orsini, ii. 467. 468 and note. 
 Ovid, ii. 212, 379-81, &c. 
 Oxford Review, the, i. 184. 
 
 Pallavicini, Marchese, and Landor, 
 ii. 39. 
 
 Parallel, the, Landor's, i. 359 and 
 366. 
 
 Parents of Luther, a scene, ii. 342. 
 
 Parkhurst family, their friendship 
 for Landor, i. 26, 27 and note. 
 
 Parr, Dr., i. 43 and note, and 115; 
 Landor's friendship with, i. 113 ; 
 his threefold claim to the admira- 
 tion of Landor, i. 115; .Johnson's 
 story of him, i. 116 ; some of his 
 peculiarities, L 117, 118 ; in contro-
 
 GENEEAL INDEX. 
 
 525 
 
 versy with Mackintosh, i. 118 ; 
 an epitaph in praise of the Doc- 
 tor, i. 118 note; Mr. Robeit Lan- 
 dor on, i. 119-121 ; his taste for 
 IJoetiy, i. 122 ; a note to Landor, 
 i. 154 ; obscurity of his handwrit- 
 ing, i. 155 and note; his " charges" 
 against Pitt, i. 15G, ] 61 ; exaggera- 
 tion and grandiloquence, i. 155, 
 161 ; selections from his correspond- 
 ence, 163-165 ; Adair on the 'iSpital 
 Sermon, i. 166 ; instance of his 
 friendship for Landor, i. 205 ; ac- 
 knowledgment of a letter of condo- 
 lence from Landor, 1. 321 ; letter 
 to Landor on his marriage, i. 326; 
 note to the same on his enclosure 
 bill, i. 375 note; Imuyinary Con- 
 versations and, ii. 127 ; Landor'a 
 objection to a portrait of, ii. 137. 
 
 Pasley, Captain, R E., Essay on the 
 Military Policy cL-c. of the British 
 Empire, i. 257 and 258 note. 
 
 Paynter, Miss Rose, afterwards Lady 
 Sawle, ii. 343, 447-8, 462. 
 
 Pdayo, Southey's. See Roderick. 
 
 Penn and Peterborough (Imag. Con.), 
 ii.180. 
 
 Pcntanieron, Landor's, ii. 330-346. 
 
 Pei-icles and Aspasia, Landor's letters 
 to Southey on, ii. 292, 294 ; account 
 of, &c.,ii. 294-305. 
 
 Pericles and Sophocles (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 58. 
 
 Peter the Great and Alexis (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 188. 
 
 Phocdans, the, whence derived, i. 
 178 ; some extracts from, i. 180 ; 
 Southey's article in the Annual 
 Review on, i. 181 ; commenced in 
 Latin, 1. 294. 
 
 Photo, Lavellas, and Kaido (Imag. 
 Con.),ii. 172. 
 
 Pictures, old and new, and picture- 
 dealers, ii. 253-7, 271. 
 
 Pitt and Canning (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 17L 
 
 Pitt, "William, state of the newspaper 
 press in the days of, i. 122-126 ; Dr. 
 Parr's opinion of him, i. 156, l(Jl ; 
 results from him and Fox, i. 356. 
 
 Plato, imperfect estimate of, by Lan- 
 dor, i. 22 ; explanation of, ii. 191- 
 2; see also ii. 71, 72, 374-6, 525, 
 &c. 
 
 Pluck, Landor's horror of the word, 
 ii. 66 note. 
 
 Poetry, danger in modem criticism 
 of, to poets, ii. 176. 
 
 Poets, what they think of poets, ii. 
 
 187, 416, 534-5 ; four magic ones, 
 
 ii, 523. 
 PoUio, Asinius, and Licinius Calnis 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 414. 
 Pomare, queen of Tahiti, and othei s 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 411. 
 Pomero, Landor's dog, ii, 425-429, 
 
 433, 490. 
 Popery, British and Foreign, Lan- 
 dor's, ii. 490-492. 
 Popular writers, i. 1. 
 Person, Parr's remark about, 1. 115 
 
 note. 
 Portland, Duke of, Adair to Landor 
 
 on his defection, i. 165. 
 Postscript (unpublished) to Gehir, i. 
 
 127-140. 
 Powell, General, i. 73. 
 Pride and Prejudice, Miss Austen's, 
 
 ii. 551, 566. 
 Puntomichino, Cavaliere, and Mr. 
 
 Denis Eusebius Salcranagh (loiag. 
 
 Con.), ii. 66. 
 Pybus, JNIr., i. 128. 
 Pythagoras and the beans, i. 43 and 
 
 note. The Priest of Isis and, ii. 
 
 578. 
 
 Quarterly Review, notice of Gehir, i. 
 81 ; Southey's connection with, i. 
 3-53, ii. 92 ; Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions and, ii. 34 ; its intended no- 
 tice anticipated by Hare, ii. 87, 88. 
 
 Rabelais' use of the name Landore, 
 
 i. 8. 
 Rawson, Mr., of A^astwater, ii. 245. 
 Reeve, Clara, the poem of Gehir in. 
 
 her book on romance, i. 79-80. 
 Reminiscences, Landor's proposal to 
 
 write his own, i. 10. 
 Reviewers, challenge to, ii. lGl-2. 
 Richard Coeur de Lion and the abbot 
 
 of Boxley (Imag. Con.), ii. 28. 
 Richelieu, Due de. Sir I'irebrace 
 
 Cotes, Lady Glengrin, and jNIr. 
 
 Normanby (Imag. Con.), ii. 173, 174 
 
 and notes. 
 Rickman, clerk to parliament, i. 307. 
 Riguelme, General, i. 239 and note, ii, 
 
 535. 
 Robert, William, of Bristol, i. 260. 
 Robinson, Mr. Crabbe, ii. 232, 311; on 
 
 Landor's ,S'a<t>*e on Satirists, ii. 316; 
 
 letters to Landor on the Pericles, 
 
 &c. , ii. 324; opiiaon of the Pcnta- 
 nieron, ii. 335 ; opinion of Andrea, 
 
 kc, u. 362. 
 Roderick, Southey's, i. 257 ; plan of 
 
 the poem e.\pluined to Landor, i.
 
 52G 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 262, 265 ; R. and Landor's Count 
 Julian, i. 287. 
 
 Roderigo, the theme of Scott, Sou- 
 they, and Landor simultaneously, 
 i. 299. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, ii. 470. 
 
 Komilly and Perceval (Imag Con.), ii. 
 183 ; and Wilberforce (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 413. 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, i. 50, ii. 330, 
 413. 
 
 Rose, George, i. 360, 362. 
 
 Rosenhagen, Mr. and Mrs., i. 27 and 
 note, ii. 390 ; his death, ii, 484. 
 
 Rough, Serjeant, i. 142-152 ; his imi- 
 tation of Gebit\ i. 142 ; his anxiety 
 to retain the friendship of Landor, 
 i. 144 ; his visit to Robert Landor, 
 i. 46, 147-151; Sir Frederick Pol- 
 lock's recollections of, i. 150 note ; 
 end of the friendship with Landor, 
 i. 147, ii. 141. 
 
 Saez, Don Victor, and El Rey Netto 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 168. 
 
 Sandford, William, ii. 468, 555. 
 
 Sanford ami Merton, Landor's esti- 
 mate of, i. 15 note. 
 
 Satire on Satirists, Landoi"'s, ii, 316. 
 
 Savage, Elizabeth, Doctor Landor's 
 second wife, i. 4. 
 
 Savonarola and the prior of Flor- 
 ence, Italian dialogue by Landor, 
 ii. 574. 
 
 Scott, Walter, i. 84, 95, 257, 297, 299, 
 304, 390-1, ii. 244, 527. 
 
 Self-portraiture, touches of, i. 301-2, 
 ii. 129, 136, 153, 267, 
 
 Seward, Miss, of Staffordshire, i. 110 
 and note; Landor's anger at her 
 attack upon him, i. 111 ; consoled 
 by Fellowes, i. 112 note. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, ii. 409. 
 
 Shakespeare, i. 3-5, ii. 3.34, 416 ; Exa- 
 mination of, bifore Sir Th. Lucy 
 touching Deer - stealing, Landor's, 
 ii. 255, 260, 272-292 (see also Exa- 
 mination, &c.); a Shakespeare ce- 
 lebration, ii, 423 ; his chronicles, 
 ii. 50 ; and see ii, 148, 328, 387 ; 
 a remark of Landor's on, ii, 519, 
 532 ; allusion to, as " perfect poet," 
 ii. 593. 
 
 Shelley, his favourite passages in 
 Oebir, i. 95 ; his passion for that 
 work, related by Hogg, i. 114 ; Lan- 
 dor disappointed in, ii. 167, 176 ; 
 on Plato, ii. 375 ; Mrs. Shelley to 
 Landor on his Collected Works, ii, 
 453 ; and see ii, 537. 
 
 Sheridan, a glimpse of, i. 165, 
 
 Simonidca, Landor's, i. 255 and 256, 
 and note ; ii. 8 and note. 
 
 Sisters, Landor's, chiefly Elizabeth, 
 i. 9, 10. 62, 64, 172-5, 201-3. 328, 
 ii. 2, 123-144, 215-16, 222, 225-35, 
 237-41, 248, 250-52, 2.54-57, 259, 
 429-34, 48.5. 
 
 Slavery, Landor's abhorrence of, i. 
 177. 
 
 Sleath, Dr., Landor's Latin tutor at 
 Rugby, i. 20, 
 
 Smith. Sydney, and Dr, Parr, i. 115, 
 117, 118 ; Bobus and, ii. 527; on De- 
 mosthenes, ii. .528, 
 
 SoUman and Mufti (Imag. Con,), ii. 
 187. 
 
 Sophocles, note on, i. 71 ; ii. 407. 
 
 Southey on a passage in Gehir, i. 87 ; 
 lines now omitted, especially liked 
 by, i. 103 note; his notice of Gehir 
 in the Critical Bcricw, i. 107 ; and 
 to his private friends, i. 108, 109 ; 
 his connection with the Morning 
 Post, i. 122; his review of Landor s 
 Phocceans,i. 181 ; his Mador, i. 207; 
 letter to Grosvenor Bedford on his 
 introduction to Landor, i. 208 ; 
 Curse of Kehama, i. 210-251 ; com- 
 mencement of his friendship with 
 Landor, i. 209 ; its progress and 
 importance, i. 210-213, 215; his 
 poetiy, i. 214 ; first letters from 
 Landor, i. 216 to 221; letters on 
 Spain, i. 235-247 ; on the conven- 
 tion of Cintra, i. 236 ; on Spanish 
 affairs, i, 245 ; misgivings about 
 his own work, i. 240 ; his reply to 
 Landor's suggestion about Kehama, 
 i. 248 ; on the publication of the 
 same, i. 251 ; proposes Pelaiio as a 
 subject for his new epic poem, i. 
 252 ; on the same, and a Latin 
 idyl of Landor's, i. 254 ; on early 
 poetry and poets, i. 258 ; on a 
 peculiarity of his own tempera- 
 ment in writing two poems con- 
 currently, i, 260 ; on Roderick 
 and further plans, i, 262, 263 
 and note ; a comment on the 
 critical part of Roderick, i. 265 ; 
 letters from Landor on Count Ju- 
 lian, i. 286-306 ; his opinion of that 
 work, i, 293 and 304 ; its unfit- 
 ness for the stage, i. 296 ; diflScul- 
 ties in the way of its iniblication, 
 i, 303. Letters from Landor con- 
 cerning the Llanthony estate, i. 
 307, 309, 312, 317, 318, and 322; 
 reminiscences of Bath in a letter
 
 GENBEAL INDEX. 
 
 527 
 
 Southey : 
 
 to Landor, i. 333 ; Landor's reply, 
 i. 334; at work on the Quarterly, 
 i. 352 ; letters from Landor on 
 public men and affairs, i. 354, 355, 
 357, 359, 363, 366, 371, 374, 375, 
 377, 378, 380; on Landor's "Obser- 
 vations on Trotter's Life of Fox," 
 i. 358, 361, and 365 ; on America, 
 and some questions of policy, i. 361 
 and 369-371; receives the laure- 
 ateship, i. 376 ; to Landor on the 
 liosition of affairs (1814), i. 379; 
 to the same on Bonaparte's last 
 order, i. 382; to the same on the 
 Charitable Dowager, i. 387 and 394 ; 
 from Landor on his troubles at 
 Llanthony, i. 398 and 402 ; from 
 the same, explaining his sudden 
 departiu'e from England, i. 407. 
 Letters fi'om Landor in Italy, i. 
 427, 428, 429, 434, 435, 437, 440, 
 443, 445, 447, 449, 452, 456, 458, 
 460, 466, 471, 475, 478, 510 ; ii. 1, 
 and 94 note, 3, 85, 91, 93, 95, 96, 
 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, and note, 107 
 note, 110 and 112 note, 111, 113, 
 114, 117, 120 ; surreptitious pub- 
 lication of Wat Tula; i. 429 ; to 
 Landor, on his return from visit- 
 ing him in Italy, i. 432 ; to the 
 same, on the "amusements of Co- 
 mo," i. 439-440 ; to the same on the 
 Byron madness, i. 448; to the same 
 on Su- Charles Wolseley's letter, i. 
 463 ; to the same, on his Vision of 
 Judgment, &c., i. 470 ; to the same, 
 on the advantages of a house of 
 Lords, i. 494 ; to the same, on his 
 own dialogues, i. 509 ; to the same, 
 on Wordsworth's poetry, ii. 5; let- 
 ters from Landor on the Imaginanj 
 Coivversatloaa, kc, iL 4, 11, 12, 1.3, 
 14, 17, 19 note, 20, 21 ; to Landor 
 on the revision of the same, ii. 20 ; 
 on the Wordsworth conversation, 
 ii. 33, 415 ; on the theology of the 
 eighth conversation, it 37 ; on the 
 first series, ii. 82, 83 ; on politi- 
 cal affairs (1822), ii. 91; on the 
 state of Ireland, iL 97, 98 ; from 
 Landor on the Letters to Charles 
 Butler, ii. 99 ; to the same, on the 
 history- writing project, ii. 103 ; 
 from Landor, on the Vision of 
 Judgment, ii. 108 ; to Landor, on 
 the same, ii. 109 ; letters to Lan- 
 dor on tlie Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions, ii. 154, 167 ; letters from 
 Landor on the same, ii. 145, 148, 
 
 Southey : 
 149, 151, 161, 164. 165 ; elected to 
 parliament, ii. 163-4 ; dispvite with 
 Landor on the word impugn, ii, 
 246 ; letters from Landor on Peri- 
 cles and Aspasia, &c., ii. 292, 
 294 ; last visit to Bristol, ii. 321 ; 
 last letter to Landor, ii. 402 ; mar- 
 riage with Caroline Bowles, ii. 401 ; 
 Landor's last letter to him, ii. 403; 
 Mrs. Southey to Landor, ii. 404, 
 405, 410 ; his death, ii. 405 ; Lan- 
 dor's lines thereupon, ibid. ; and 
 inscription, ii. 406 ; disposition of 
 tlie materials for his life, ii. 407 ; 
 Jeffrey's encomium, ii. 408 ; re- 
 trospective, ii. 408-411 ; Porson 
 and (Imag. Con.), ii. 415; Landor 
 and (Imag. Con.), ii. 417 ; Landor 
 on his minor pieces, ii. 422; ef- 
 forts on behalf of his family, ii. 
 492 ; Landor on his Life and Let- 
 ters, ii. 523 ; Landor on CowjDer 
 and, ii. 525. 
 
 Southey and Porson (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 15, 23, 31 ; and see ii. 415-17, also 
 ii. 417-18. 
 
 Southey's son, a living obtained for, 
 ii. 492-3. 
 
 Sixain, the invasion of, by the French, 
 i. 222 ; Landor at Corunna during, 
 i. 225. 
 
 Spenser and Chaucer, Landor and 
 Southey on, i. 2.57-259 ; defended 
 by Elizabeth (Imag. Con.), it. 35; 
 sketch of a scene at his burial, ii. 
 288, 289 ; conference with Essex, 
 ii. 290. 
 
 Sponsalia Polyxence, Landor's, i. 437, 
 456. 
 
 St. Clair, Landor's, i. 80. 
 
 Stanfield, Clarkson, ii. 471. 
 
 Stoneleigh living, Parr to Landor on, 
 i. 163, 
 
 Stopfords, the, ii, 107 note, 433 and 
 .577. 
 
 Story, William, Landor's visit to, ii. 
 565. 
 
 Stuart, Charles, envoy at Corunna, 
 i. 224 ; misunderstanding between 
 Landor and, i. 226, 230 to 235 ; 
 letter to Vaughau about this, i. 
 232 ; his explanatory letter to Lan- 
 dor from, i. 233. 
 
 Swansea, Landor's liking for, i. 79, 
 ii. 133. 
 
 Swift, style of, ii. .537. 
 
 Swinburne, A. C. , visit to Landor, 
 ii. 591 ; verses in memory of Lan- 
 dor, ii. 592.
 
 528 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Sydney, Six Philip, and Lord Brooke 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 29. 
 
 Taclibrooke, the Savages of, i. 5 ; 
 
 Lander's attachment to, i. 11. 
 Tale of Paraguay, Southey's, ii. 106, 
 
 108, 111. 
 Talleyrand and Archbishop of Paris 
 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 41L 
 Talma, ii. 50. 
 
 Taxation, Landor on, i. 244. 
 Taylor, John, first publisher of the 
 
 Imaginary Conversations, ii. 19-23; 
 
 Landor's charges against, ii. 150- 
 
 153 ; Hare's vindication of, ii. 154- 
 
 158; his own letter to Ilare, ii. 
 
 158. 
 Taylor, Wm., of Norwich, i. 108 and 
 
 118 ; on Gehir, i. 182 note. 
 Taylor, Henry, author ol Philip Van 
 
 Artevelde, ii. 255, 362 and 407. 
 Tennyson, Landor on his Death of 
 
 Arthur, ii. 323 ; and see ii. 423, 
 
 526, 535. 
 Terence and Plautus, ii. 544. 
 Thiers and Lamartine (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 412. 
 Thomson, some characteristics of his 
 
 poetry, i. 189. 
 Tiberius and Vipsania (Imag. Con.), 
 
 ii. 194. 
 Titian and Cornaro (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 
 414. 
 Truro, Lord Chancellor, ii. 493. 
 Twisleton. Mr., ii. 576. 
 Tyrannicide, i. 237, 355, 495, ii. 434, 
 
 476. 
 
 Vaughan, Charles Eobert, and the 
 Spanish mission, i. 225 and 230 ; 
 letter to Landor on the misunder- 
 standing with Stuart, L 233. 
 
 Venice, ii. 249, 270, &c. 
 
 Venturada, Landor's gift to the in- 
 habitants of, i. 225 note. 
 
 Villa Gherardesca, last look at, ii. 
 574. 
 
 Villele and Corbiere (Imag. Con.), ii. 
 171. 
 
 Virgil, a translation from, by Landor, 
 i. 38-40 ; Horace and (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 575 ; and see ii. 380-2, kc. 
 
 Vision of Judgment, Southey's, ii. 
 100, 109 ; Landor on, ii. 108. 
 
 Voltaire referred to, i. 293, 316 ; and 
 see ii. 50, 543. 
 
 Vyner, Captain, ii. 11 and 14. 
 
 Walker, Hattaji, Gonda, and Dewah 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 414. 
 
 "Wallace, William, and Edward the 
 Fu-st (Imag. Con.), ii. 188. 
 
 Walton, Cotton, and Old ways (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 181. 
 
 Warter, Rev. J. Wood, ii. 407. 
 
 Washington and Franklin (Imag. 
 Con.), ii. 54. 
 
 Wat Tyler, Southey's, surre^jtitiously 
 published, i. 429. 
 
 Wellington, Lord, i. 359, 366, 368, 
 309, and 372; and see ii. 411-12, 
 473. 
 
 Wellington and Inglis (Imag. Con.), 
 ii. 413. 
 
 Wesley and Methodism, iL 491. 
 
 White, Blanco, ii. 515-523. 
 
 William the Deliverer, one of the 
 Landors a high-sheriff during his 
 reign, i. 9 ; Adair to Landor on, i. 
 106. 
 
 Willis, N. P., visit to Landor in 
 Italy, ii. 271 ; letter to Landor, ii. 
 313. 
 
 Wolfgang and Henry of Melchtal 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 184. 
 
 Wolseley, Sir Charles, L 463. 
 
 Wordsworth and Gehir, i. 85 note ; 
 Landor on a reply to an attack 
 upon, i. 319 ; remarks by Landor 
 on, i. 438, 446, 456, and 468 ; slow 
 progress to fame, i. 450 ; letters to 
 Landor from, i. 481-484 and note ; 
 ii. 4, 6, 9, ] 17 ; Southey to Landor 
 on, ii. 5 ; urges Landor to write in 
 English, i. 483, ii. 7 ; on the writ- 
 ing of sonnets, ii. 9 ; proposed de- 
 dication to him of the Imaginary 
 Conversations, ii. 11, 15, and 18 ; 
 Southey and Porson (Imag. Con.) 
 on, ii. 24 ; letter to Landor on the 
 same, ii. 25-27 ; letter on comple- 
 
 • tion of lii-st series, ii. 83 ; letter of 
 thanks for books, ii. 115; praise of, 
 in early days, ii. 120 ; Hazlitt, de- 
 scription of, ii. 209 ; visit to, and 
 lines by Landor in album of W.'s 
 daughter, ii. 244, 245 ; effect of re- 
 form agitation (1832) upon him, ii. 
 247 ; ode to, ii. 249 ; difference with, 
 ii. 316-23, 415 ; his grave, ii. 411 ; 
 position as a poet, ii. 418 ; on his 
 prelude, ii. 423; lines upon, ii. 424, 
 499 ; and see ii. 544. 
 
 Wyndham and Sheridan (Imag. Con. ), 
 ii. 413. 
 
 Zenophon and Cyrus the Younger 
 (Imag. Con.), ii. 188, 189 and note.
 
 GENEEAL INDEX. 
 
 52<J 
 
 Subjoined is a list of all the letters of 
 Landor printed, or quoted, in this 
 •work, in the order in which tJiey 
 appear. 
 To Henry Landor, 1852, i, 11. 
 
 EUen Landor, 1881, i. 11, 12 and 
 
 note. 
 Southey, 1811, i. 13. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1831, i. Ion. 
 the author, 1852, i. 17 note. 
 Lady Sawle, 18.58, i. 19. 
 Southey, 1811, i. 23. 
 Mr. Robert Lytton, 1860, i. 23, 
 
 24 and note. 
 Dr. Birch, 1846, i. 24 note, 
 the author, 1854, i. 24. 
 the same, 1851, i. 25 note. 
 Mrs. Rosenhagen, 1839, 1. 27 note. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1830, i. 27 note. 
 Henry Landor, 1847, i. 27, 28. 
 Southey, 1824 i. 29. 
 the author, 1851, i. 33 note, 
 the same, i. 34 and note. 
 Dr. Davy, 1857, i. 42. 
 Sir H. Davy, 1857, i. 49 note. 
 Walter Birch, 1795, i. 53, 54, 56, 
 
 57. 
 Elizabeth Landor, i. 58 note, 
 the author, i. 63. 
 the same, i. 78. 
 
 „ 1857, i. 80. 
 ,, „ i. 85 note. 
 „ ,, 1857, i. 104 and note. 
 
 „ 1853, i. 106. 
 Southey, 1811. i. 111. 
 the same, i. 112. 
 
 „ 1832, i. 119. 
 Parr, i. 125. 
 the same, i. 1.58. 
 
 „ i. 16L 
 Henry Landor, i. 170, 171. 
 Elizabeth Landor, i. 172. 
 the same, i. 175 and note. 
 Southey, 1809, i. 177. 
 the same, 1810. i. 178 note. 
 Browning, i. 178. 
 Robert Lytton, i. 187. 
 Walter Birch, i. 189. 
 Henry Landor, 1S05, i. 194 note, 
 the author, i. 197. 
 Dr. Parr, i. 201. 
 Elizabeth Landor, i. 201. 
 the same, i. 202. 
 Southey, 1808, i. 216. 
 the same, 1808, i. 218. 
 • „ „ 1808, i. 219, 220. 
 „ ,, 180S, i. 220. 
 A. Alcedo, governor of Corunna, 
 
 i. 225 note. 
 Southey, i. 226. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Landor's letters : 
 
 To , i. 228 and 229. 
 
 Charles Robert Vaughan, i. 231. 
 
 Southey, i. 233 note. 
 
 the same, i. 235. 
 
 „ ,, 1809, i. 237 note. 
 
 „ 1808, i. 237. 
 
 „ 1819, i. 239 note. 
 
 ,, 1809, i. 239 and 240. 
 
 ,, 1809, i. 242. 
 
 „ 1809, i. 243 and 244. 
 „ „ 1810, i. 245. 
 
 „ 1810, i. 246 and 247. 
 
 „ 1809, 1. 247. 
 „ „ 1809, i. 248. 
 ,, ,, i. 250. 
 
 ,, 1809, i. 2.51. 
 
 „ i. 253. 
 , , , , i. 256 and note. 
 
 „ i. 2.57. 
 
 „ i. 259. 
 „ „ 1810, i. 260. 
 
 „ 1810, i. 261. 
 
 „ 1810, i. 264. 
 „ ., 1812,1.266,267. 
 
 „ i. 267. 
 
 „ 1810, i. 286. 
 
 „ 1810, 287. 
 
 „ i. 289, 290. 
 
 „ i. 290. 
 „ „ i. 292 note. 
 ,, „ 1811,1.292. 
 
 „ 1811, i. 294. 
 
 „ 1811, L 295. 
 ,, „ 1811, i. 298. 
 
 „ 1811, i. 299. 
 
 „ 1811, i. 299 and 300. 
 
 ,, 1811, i. 30L 
 
 „ 1811, i. 301 and 302. 
 
 „ 1812, i. 304. 
 
 „ 1809,1.307. 
 
 „ 1809, i. 309. 
 the author, i. 309. 
 Southey, 1809, i. 312. 
 Bishop Burgess, i. 314. 
 the same, i. 316. 
 Southey, i. 317. 
 the same, i. 318. 
 Miss Holford. i. 319. 
 Southey, i. 322. 
 the same, i. 323. 
 his mother, i. 324. 
 Southey, i. 326. 
 the same, i. 327. 
 „ „ i. 329. 
 „ „ i. 331. 
 „ „ i. 332. 
 „ „ i. 3.34. 
 
 „ 1812, ibid. 
 Baron Thompson, 1812, i. 337. 
 MM
 
 530 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Landur's letters : 
 To l]aron Tliomi.son, 1812, i. 338. 
 the Duke of Beaufort, 1812, i. 
 
 341. 
 tlie Lord Chancellor Eldon, 1812, 
 
 i. 342. 
 the same, 1812, i. 343. 
 Southey, 1812, i. 347, 348, and 
 
 note, 
 the same, 1811, i. 354. 
 
 ,, 1812, i. 355. 
 
 „ 1812, i. 357. 
 
 „ i. 359. 
 
 „ i. 363. 
 
 „ 1812, i. 366. 
 ;, ,, i. 37L 
 
 „ 1813, i. 374. 
 
 „ 1813, i. 375. 
 
 „ 1813, i. 377. 
 „ „ 1814, i. 378. 
 
 „ 1814, i. 380. 
 
 „ 1813, i. 383, 384. 
 
 „ 1813, i. 388. 
 ,, „ i. 393. 
 ,, „ i. 394. 
 
 „ i. 395. 
 Mr. Richard Lewis, i. 396 note. 
 Southey, i. 398. 
 the same, i. 402. 
 Mr. Jervis, i. 403-406, 
 Southey, 1814, i. 407. 
 the same, i. 407. 
 
 „ 1814, i. 412. 
 „ ,, 1814, i. 414. 
 
 „ 1815, i. 415, 416, and n. 
 
 ,, 1815, i. 418. 
 
 „ 1816,1.427. 
 
 „ 1816. i. 428. 
 
 ,, i. 429. 
 
 ,, 1816, i. 434. 
 
 „ 1817, i. 435. 
 „ „ 1817,1.437. 
 
 „ 1818, i. 440 to 443. 
 his mother. 1818, 1. 441. 
 Southey, 1818, i. 443. 
 the same, i. 445. 
 
 „ 1819, i. 447. 
 
 „ 1819, i. 449. 
 ,, „ 1819, i. 452. 
 
 „ 1820, i. 456. 
 
 ,, 1820,1.458. 
 ,, „ 1820, i. 460 and 461. 
 
 „ 1820, 1. 466 and 467. 
 „ ,, 182L i. 47L 
 his mother, 1821, 1. 475. 
 Southey, 1821, i. 478. 
 the same, 1822, i. 510. 
 „ „ 1822, 11. 1, 94 note, 
 his sister, 1833, il. 2. 
 Southey, 1827, ii. 3. 
 
 Lander's letters : 
 To Southey, 1822 11. 4. 
 
 „ 1822, li. IL 
 
 „ 1822, li. 11, 12. 
 
 „ 1822, 11. 13. 
 
 ,, 1822, 11. 14. 
 
 „ 1823, li. 17. 
 
 ,, 1822, li. 19 note. 
 
 „ 1823, 11. 20. 
 
 „ 1823, 11. 22. 
 
 „ 1825, li. 85, 
 
 ,, 1822, 11. 91. 
 
 ., 1823, 11. 93, 
 
 ;, 1823, ii. 95. 
 
 ,, 1823, 11. 96. 
 
 „ 1824, li. 97. 
 
 „ 1824, 11. 98. 
 
 „ 1827, ii. 99. 
 
 „ 1822, ii. lOL 
 
 „ 182.S, li. 101. 
 
 „ 1829, ii. 104. 
 
 „ 1827, 11. 104. 
 
 ,, 1824, ii. 105. 
 
 ,, 1822, 11. 106 note. 
 
 „ 18-i.5, 11. 107 note. 
 
 „ 1824, ii. 106. 
 
 ,, 1824, 11. 108. 
 
 „ 18J5, 11. 110 and 112 n. 
 
 „ 1825 11 111. 
 
 „ 1823. 11. 113. 
 
 „ lS-25, 11. 114. 
 
 „ 1824, 11. 117. 
 
 ,, 1829, 11. 120. 
 
 „ ii. 120 note. 
 
 „ 1827, 11. 121. 
 his mother. 1824, 11 126. 
 Dr. Parr, 1824, 11. 127. 
 his mother, 1825, 11. 129. 
 the same, 1825. 11. 130. 
 „ „ 1826, 11. 131. 
 his son Arnold. 1826, 11. 132. 
 his mother, 1826. 11. 133. 
 the same, 1827, ibid. 
 Ellen Landor, 1827, 11. 135, 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1827, ii. 136. 
 Ellen Landor, 1827, 11. 137. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1827, 11. 138. 
 his mother and sisters, 1827, ii. 
 
 138. 
 Elizabeth Landor. 1827, ii. 140 n. 
 Ellen Landor, 1828, 11. 141. 
 Elizabeth Landor. 1828. ibid. 
 Ellen Landor, 1828, 11. 142. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1828, ibid. 
 Ellen and Elizabeth Landor, 1828, 
 
 ii. 143. 
 Southey, 1824. ii. 145 note, 
 the same, 11. 145. 
 „ „ 1824, Ibid. 
 „ „ 1824, u. 148.
 
 GENEEAL INDEX. 
 
 531 
 
 Lander's letters : 
 To Southey, 1826, ii. 149. 
 Julius Hare, 1825, ii. 151. 
 Southey, 1825, ibid, 
 the same, ] 825, ii. 155 note. 
 ,, ,, 1825, ii. 157 note. 
 ,, ,, 1825, ii. 161 and note. 
 
 „ 1827, ii. 161. 
 
 „ 1828, ii. 165. 
 the author, ii. 173 note. 
 the same, ii. 202 note. 
 
 „ 18.54, ii. 208 note, 
 his mother, 1829, ii. 214. 
 his sisters, 1829, ii. 215. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1829, ii. 216. 
 the author, 1856, ii. 216 note. 
 Southey, 1829, ii. 218. 
 the same, 1829, ii. 220. 
 Ellen Landor, ii. 222. 
 his sisters, 1830, ii. 225. 
 the same, 1830, ii. 226. 
 
 „ 1830, ii. 227. 
 „ ,, 1830, ii. 228. 
 
 „ 1830, ii. 229-232. 
 
 „ 1831, ii. 23.3. 
 
 ., 1831, ii. 234. 
 
 ;, 1831, ii. 237. 
 
 ,, 1831, ii. 2.38. 
 
 „ 1831, ii. 240. 
 
 „ 1832, ii. 241. 
 „ ,, 1832, ii. 244. 
 Southey, 1832, ii. 246. 
 the same, 1832, ibid, 
 his sisters, 1832, ii. 248. 
 the same, 1832, ibid. 
 
 „ 1833, ii. 250. 
 
 „ 1833, ibid. 
 
 „ 1833, ii. 251. 
 
 „ 1833, ibid. 
 
 „ 1833, ii. 252. 
 
 „ 1834, ii. 2.54. 
 
 ,, 1834, ii. 255. 
 
 „ 1834, ii. 256, 
 
 „ 1834, ii. 257. 
 
 „ 1835, ii. 259. 
 Lady Blessington, 1834, ii. 273. 
 the same, 1834, ii. 291. 
 Southey, 1835, ii. 292. 
 the same, 1836, ii. 294. 
 
 , 1836, ii. .305. 
 
 Gary, ii. 307. 
 Southey, 1835, ii. 310. 
 Elizabeth Landor, ii. 312 note, 
 the author, ii. 312 note, 
 the same, 1836, ii. 317. 
 ,, „ 1836, ibid. 
 Southey, 1836, ii. 318. 
 the same, 1k;{6, ii. 319. 
 the author, 18.37, ii. 323. 
 Crabbe Kobinson, 1837, ii. 324. 
 
 Landor's letters : 
 To the author, 1837, ii. 325. 
 the same, 1837, ii. 327. 
 
 „ 1837, ii. 328. 
 
 ,, 1837, ii. 329. 
 „ „ 1837, ibid. 
 
 „ 1837, ii. 330. ■ 
 
 „ 1837, ii. 342, 343. 
 Southey, 1837, ibid, 
 tlie author, 1838, ii. 346. 
 the same, 1838, ii. 347. 
 ,, ,, 1838, ii. 348. 
 
 ,, 1838, ii. 350. 
 
 „ 1838, ibid. 
 
 „ 1838, ii. 352. 
 
 „ 1838, ii. 354. 
 
 „ 1838, ii. 355. 
 
 „ 1840, ii. 360. 
 
 ,, 1840. ii. .361. 
 ,, ,, ii. 370 note, 
 
 „ ii. 37L 
 
 „ 1838, ii. 371. 
 
 „ 1839, ii. 395. 
 ,, ,, ibid. 
 
 „ 1840, ii. 396. 
 
 „ 1841, ibid. 
 Miss Paynter, ii. 398. 
 Mr. Ken > on, ii. 399. 
 
 , 1.N39, ii. 402. 
 
 Southey, 1839, ii. 403. 
 
 the author, 1843, ii. 405. 
 
 the Southey Memorial Committee, 
 
 ii. 406 note, 
 the author, 1843-1845, ii. 419-425. 
 ,, ,, 1844, ii. 425. 
 „ „ 1844, ii. 427. 
 1844, ii. 429. 
 Elizabeth Landor, 1845, ii, 430, 
 the same, 1845 ibid. 
 „ „ 184.5, ii. 43L 
 
 „ 1841, ibid. 
 
 „ 1841, ii. 432. 
 
 „ 1842, ii. 433. 
 the author, 1844, ibid. 
 
 1S42 ii 439 
 „ „ LS42, ii. 440. 
 1842, ii, 441. 
 ii 442, 
 Lady Blessington, 1844, ii. 445. 
 the author, 1844, ibid. 
 Lady Sawle, 1846, ii, 447. 
 the author, ii 448. 
 the saiue, ii. 450. 
 the 7'ime.i, ii. 461, 
 the author, 1849, ii. 462, 
 the same, 1850 ii. 465, 
 „ „ 1852, ibid. 
 „ ,, ]S46, ii. 466. 
 „ „ 1846, ibid. 
 ,, „ 1858, ii. 468, 469.
 
 532 
 
 GENEEAL INDEX. 
 
 Lander's letters : 
 To the author, ii. 471. 
 the same, 1843, ii. 472. 
 Lady Sawle, 1855, ii. 478. 
 the author, 1S56, ii. 479. 
 the same, ibid. 
 „ „ 1848, ii. 480. 
 
 „ „ 1840, ii. 48L 
 
 1851, ii. 483. 
 „ 1853, ii. 484. 
 
 1854, ibid. 
 
 „ 18.54, ii. 485. 
 „ 18.55, ii. 488. 
 ,, 18.55, ii. 489. 
 „ „ 1856, ibid. 
 1856, ii. 490. 
 1850, ii. 494. 
 ii. 495. 
 ,, ,, ii. 506 note. 
 „ „ ii. 515, 518-523. 
 18.50, ii. 523. 
 1850, ii. 524. 
 1856, ii. 525. 
 1856, ibid. 
 
 1855, ii. 526. 
 „ „ 1848, ibid. 
 
 „ 18.50, ii. ,527. 
 „ „ 18.55, ibid. 
 
 1855, ii. 528. 
 
 Lander's letters : 
 To the author. 1856. ii. 529. 
 the same, 1850, ii. 530. 
 
 185.5, ii. 531. 
 1856, ii. 532. 
 „ ■ „ 18.54, ibid. 
 
 „ 1850, ii. 533. 
 
 18.51, ii. .534. 
 
 1851, ii. 535. 
 
 „ „ 1858, ii. 537. 
 
 1858, ibid. 
 „ „ 1853, ibid. 
 
 „ 1852, ii. 54L 
 
 1853, ii. 541, 542. 
 „ 1854, ii. 543. 
 1856, ii. 54.5. 
 Walter Lander of Rugely, 1856, 
 
 ii. 547. 
 the author, 1857, iL 550. 
 18.58, ii. 552. 
 
 1858, ii. 554. 
 18.58, ii. 560. 
 
 1859, ii. 568. 
 1859, ii. 569. 
 1863, ii. .575. 
 1863, ii. 587. 
 
 „ (3) 1S64, ii. 588. 
 „ (5) 1864, ii. 589. 
 
 For Corrigenda see p. vii. of the present volume. 
 
 LONDON : ROnSON AKD SONS, PRINTERS, PAIs'CRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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