la
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
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 LETTERS 
 
 -.:•: other 
 UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

 
 
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 LETTERS 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 STEPHEN WHEELER 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 Publishers iu (Drbiiury to gjjM Jftajestj) the <$xt£zn 
 
 1897 
 
 [AH rights restrved]
 
 7>R 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Landor makes Boccaccio say, concerning the 
 critic, that he walks in a garden which is not 
 his own, and must neither pluck the flowers to 
 embellish his discourse, nor break off branches 
 to display his strength. Lying about Landor's 
 garden were a few withered sprays and faded 
 leaves. They are here collected, not with a 
 critical design, but rather for a memorial. All 
 who take interest in Landor's writings or in 
 his life will surely prize them ; while for others, 
 perhaps they might help to shape a conception 
 of his character and quality not far removed 
 from the truth. 
 
 Landor was never more himself than when 
 writing to intimate friends, and a number of 
 his letters will be found here. Some day it 
 may be thought right to publish a larger selec- 
 tion from his correspondence. Beside what is 
 
 531791 
 
 EIGLISH
 
 VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 now given, there is a quantity of verse hitherto 
 imprinted ; together with compositions in prose 
 which might otherwise have been lost beyond 
 recall. Lastly, certain bibliographical notes are 
 appended, in the hope that they may be of 
 some assistance to inquirers in this side-path 
 of literary exploration. One work of Landor's 
 — ' Letters of a Canadian ' — traces of which are 
 now discovered, seems to have been altogether 
 unknown to his editors and biographers. 
 
 In ..Chapter V., where something is said 
 about Landor's ' Poems from the Arabic and 
 Persian,' there is a reference to an Arabic 
 poet, Fazil Beg, described as the grandson of 
 Sheikh Dahir of Acre. Mr. Ellis, of the British 
 Museum, has kindly enlightened my ignorance 
 of this author and his works, which, however, 
 are more curious than edifying. According to 
 J. von Hammer-Purgstall and Mr. E. J. W. 
 Gibb, Fazil Beg was a son, not a grandson, of 
 the ruler of Acre (Tahir Pasha, the name should 
 be) ; but whereas Volney states that only one 
 of Tahir's sons was spared by Hassan Pasha, 
 Mr. Gibb tells us that Fazil Beg had a younger 
 brother, Kiamil Beg, who was also spared and 
 taken to Constantinople, and that this Kiamil
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 Beg was likewise a poet. A Turkish poem, by 
 Fazil Beg — the Zenan Nama, or ' Book of 
 Women ' — has within late years been trans- 
 lated into French. It bears no resemblance 
 to Landor's supposed translations, and their 
 original must be sought for either in Fazil 
 Beg's Arabic poems or in his brother's. 
 
 To Lady Graves-Sawle and Dr. Arthur de 
 Noe Walker my warmest thanks are due. To 
 Mr. Stephen Luke, CLE., I am indebted for 
 photographs of the Hon. Rose Aylmer's tomb, 
 the situation of which was first pointed out by 
 Dr. Busteed, in his 'Echoes of Old Calcutta,' a 
 singularly interesting volume of Anglo-Indian 
 memories.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHATTER 
 
 I. A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 
 II. IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND PROSE 
 FRAGMENTS .... 
 
 III. LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 
 
 IV. SOME OLD LETTERS 
 V. FRAGMENTS IN PRINT . 
 
 VI. LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 VII. UNPUBLISHED VERSE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY .... 
 
 HAGF. 
 I 
 
 25 
 64 
 
 93 
 J3 1 
 152 
 184 
 
 245
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PORTRAIT OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, FROM A DRAW- 
 ING by count d'orsay . . Frontispiece 
 
 ROSE AYLMER'S TOMB AT CALCUTTA, FROM A PHOTO- 
 GRAPH . .... To face page 72 
 
 PORTRAIT OF IANTHE, FROM A MINIATURE FOUND IN 
 
 landor's desk . . . To face page 76 
 
 PORTRAIT OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, FROM A BUST 
 
 by john gibson, r.a. . . To face page 244
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD. 
 
 High on a hill a goodly Cedar grewe, 
 Of wondrous length and streight proportion, 
 That farre abroad her daintie odours threwe ; 
 Mongst all the daughters of proud Libanon, 
 Her match in beauty was not anie one.' 
 
 Ed. Spenser. 
 
 More than half a century ago, a cedar-tree at 
 Ipsley Court in Warwickshire, whether by wind 
 or lightning, was shattered and overthrown. 
 ' Surely about the root,' the owner of the estate 
 wrote forthwith to his sister, ' there must be 
 some pieces large enough to make a little box 
 of. Pray keep them for me.' His desire had 
 been foreseen ; and not long after, on his 
 seventieth birthday, his sister sent him a 
 
 I
 
 2 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 cedar-wood writing-desk. Battered somewhat, 
 scarred with marks of toil and travel, that desk 
 even now contains what to its first owner were 
 relics above price. For eighteen years it served 
 the man for whom it was lovingly fashioned, 
 Walter Savage Landor. Another four-and- 
 thirty years it remained in the hands of Lan- 
 dor's intimate friend, Arthur de Noe Walker. 
 By Landor's friend it was given to me. 
 
 Landor once remarked that the scent of 
 cedar produced a singular effect on him. Even 
 a cedar-pencil held unconsciously near his face 
 would so absorb the senses that what he was 
 about to write vanished altogether and irre- 
 coverably. Memory, alas ! may at times have 
 played him false while he was sitting at this 
 desk ; more than once, what he called the 
 ' latter-math of thought ' yielded a less goodly 
 fragrance than a summer crop ; yet who will 
 affirm that the desk of cedar-wood was to 
 blame ? Other, even less palpable influences 
 were about that ' imperial brow.' From the 
 first hour he used it his steps were hastening 
 to the river all must cross : 
 
 1 Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss 
 Of half their faculties and half their friends.'
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 3 
 
 It was no perfume born of Eastern wood- 
 land and hillside — scattered, he once said, 
 from the wings of angels as they lighted on 
 cedars of Lebanon — that could overcloud his 
 intellect or disturb his fancy, but rather the 
 damps of life's autumn that ' sink into the 
 leaves and prepare them for the necessity of 
 their fall.' And if the words that came were 
 not at all times the happiest and the best, if 
 the verses were not always carmina linenda 
 cedro, et levi servanda cupresso, if some small 
 portion of prose and poetry thus written in 
 these his declining years might more wisely 
 have been blotted out, there is nothing to 
 marvel at : 
 
 ' Neither is Dirce clear, 
 Nor is Ilissos full throughout the year.' 
 
 Yet we may not forbear to guard and preserve 
 whatever can animate our memories of a great 
 writer. 
 
 To return to the desk of cedar-wood. The 
 tree out of which it was made was perhaps 
 one of ' two solitary cedar twins,' at Ipsley 
 Court, referred to in some unpublished verses, 
 not otherwise remarkable, which I find in a 
 
 1 — 2
 
 4 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 letter of Landor's written when he lived in 
 Florence in i860 ; cedars — 
 
 1 Fifty years old, and spreading wide 
 O'er the soft glebe their hospitable arms.' 
 
 These same trees also inspired one of his 
 published poems : 
 
 ' Cypress and cedar ! gracefullest of trees, 
 Friends of my boyhood ! ye, before the breeze, 
 As lofty lords before an Eastern throne 
 Bend the whole body, not the head alone.' 
 
 Everyone has heard of the countless cedars 
 that Landor planted on his Welsh estate. He 
 obtained thousands of cones from Lebanon, 
 but the experiment in forestry turned out ill. 
 It might have fared better, perhaps, had 
 Landor taken a hint from John Evelyn and 
 tried the Bermudas cedar, ' of all others the 
 most excellent and odoriferous ';* so likely, 
 moreover, as Evelyn heard, to thrive in other 
 countries that 'twas pity, he thought, but it 
 should be universally cultivated. Landor's 
 failure at Llanthony, we know, did not cure 
 him of his affection for cedar-trees. He seems 
 
 * Mr. John Evelyn, at Sayes Court, to Mr. 
 William London at Barbados, September 27, 1681.
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 5 
 
 to have kept some of the cones and to have 
 planted one in his garden at Fiesole. This at 
 least I gather from the Latin verses here printed 
 for the first time : 
 
 Cedrus Inseritur. 
 
 ' Gaudete, o flores ! quam clauserat area novennem 
 Inseritur laeta libera cedrus humo. 
 Mox ilia aestiva nutrix vos proteget umbra, 
 Forsitan atque aliam, me quoque si merear.' 
 
 So it is not difficult to understand how, in 
 Landor's eyes, the writing-desk, made from the 
 wood of his favourite tree, and given to him by 
 his best-beloved sister, acquired a value far 
 above the intrinsic worth of a roughly-shapen 
 piece of furniture, the modest essay, one doubts 
 not, of a village carpenter. He used it con- 
 stantly, carried it with him on his hurried flight 
 to Italy, and only parted with it, after eighteen 
 years of close companionship, when he believed 
 his end was approaching. Then it was that he 
 wrote to the Contessa Geltrude Baldelli, the 
 sister of his friend Arthur de Noe Walker, the 
 letter that follows : 
 
 ' Dear Countess, 
 
 • In a little while I must make a long journey, 
 and I shall not be able to take London on my way.
 
 6 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Therefor I keep my promise to Arthur in making a 
 
 present to him of my writing-desk and its contents. 
 
 During these several days, I have been almost 
 
 entirely deaf and insensible, and have seen nobody 
 
 but the kind and accomplisht Mr. Twisleton, 
 
 brother of Lord Say and Seale. He comes to 
 
 visit me almost every evening. Whenever you 
 
 have an opportunity, or whenever Arthur comes 
 
 to Florence, give him my desk. Meanwhile, 
 
 believe me, 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 1 W. S. Landor. 
 ' May 15, '63.' 
 
 The Contessa forwarded the letter to her 
 brother, writing herself on the same sheet of 
 paper : 
 
 ' Mr. Landor is apparently better than usual, but 
 persuaded that he will not live many days. I have 
 the desk in my keeping.' 
 
 With his habitual intolerance of delays, 
 Landor would not quietly await a fitting oc- 
 casion for sending the desk by a safe hand 
 to London. A few days later he had it brought 
 back to him, and himself arranged for its de- 
 spatch. A postscript to a letter of his dated 
 May 27, 1863, says :
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 7 
 
 ' I trust the writing-case will have reached you. 
 It contains the only valuables I possess — two 
 miniatures — keep them for my sake as I kept 
 them for theirs they represent. The spediziomrio 
 has promist me to pay the carriage to London.' 
 
 What the desk contained when it was opened 
 and examined, more than thirty years afterwards, 
 the following pages will in part discover. The 
 task has not been undertaken without a certain 
 trepidation. Landor himself was quick to resent 
 the heartless effrontery that lays bare to idly 
 inquisitive eyes the more sacred relics of the 
 famous dead ; while the impedimenta of great 
 men — the chair that one author of repute sat in, 
 the pen that another handled — would not, in 
 his opinion, be worth a search. Still less would 
 he have wished that every word he wrote him- 
 self should be redeemed from oblivion by the 
 indiscriminating reverence of an after age. He 
 warmly protested against ' the disinterment of 
 the rankest garbage of Swift and Dryden,' who 
 as it was, he considered, had left too much 
 above ground ; and the later successes of 
 lettered curiosity-hunters would have excited 
 his angry contempt. Nothing, therefore, either 
 of the papers or of the little possessions which
 
 8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 for some reason or other he had kept so many 
 years will be longer preserved, save such as 
 may help to a better comprehension of his life 
 and writings. 
 
 I must explain that there was much more in 
 the desk, when it was my privilege to examine 
 its contents, than had been placed in its various 
 compartments when Landor sent it to his friend 
 in London. All that was originally there still 
 remains — miniatures, an old pocket-book, a. 
 purse, a pen-wiper, some spectacles and eye- 
 glasses that Landor had used, and other belong- 
 ings, including one most precious relic, to be 
 mentioned hereafter : few who love Landor's 
 memory will hear of its existence without 
 emotion. Along with these, Landor's friend 
 kept many of the letters he had received from 
 him ; and as their correspondence extended 
 over the space of sixteen years, this portion 
 of the treasure would make many a collector 
 of autographs turn pale with envy. Moreover, 
 Landor's friend had acted the part of inter- 
 mediary — no easy function — between the exiled 
 poet and a London publisher. Thus it fell out 
 that the author's manuscript of a whole volume 
 of his works came to be kept in the desk,
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 9 
 
 together with many of his writings, which at 
 one time or another he wished to have inserted 
 in the last of his books, but which — either 
 because he changed his mind, or for some other 
 cause — were eventually held back. The manu- 
 script of the ' Heroic Idyls ' (London, 1863) — 
 Landor's last work — has been deposited in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 Then, again, there is a separate collection of 
 prose and poetry, most of it in Landor's hand- 
 writing, the rest consisting of portions of his 
 earlier books in print, but with his manuscript 
 emendations. To this separate parcel a curious 
 history is attached. Landor had heard, or read 
 in some literary journal, that a publisher in the 
 United States proposed to bring out a complete 
 edition of his works. A volume of selections 
 had already appeared there, and shortly before 
 the outbreak of the Civil War Mr. Field of 
 Boston made arrangements for bringing out a 
 reprint of the two-volume edition of Landor's 
 works published by Mr. Moxon in 1846. Landor 
 had always hoped to be widely read beyond the 
 Atlantic. ' I could never live there,' he said, 
 ' because they have no cathedrals or painted 
 glass ' ; yet he numbered many distinguished
 
 io WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 Americans among his friends — Emerson the 
 philosopher, Story the sculptor and poet, Mr. 
 James Russell Lowell, diplomatist and man of 
 letters, and many more. For upwards of half 
 a century he had taken a keen interest in 
 American politics. His first volume of imaginary 
 conversations was dedicated in 1824 to ■ Major- 
 General Stopford, Adjutant-General in the army 
 of Columbia,' and a connection of his own by 
 marriage ; for the handsome ex-Guardsman, 
 who had renounced the gaieties of London to 
 serve under Bolivar, had married Mrs. Landor's 
 sister. A subsequent volume w r as dedicated to 
 Bolivar himself. George Washington and Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, as well as the founder of Penn- 
 sylvania, figure in Landor's dialogues ; and he 
 would frequently put his own speculations on 
 American affairs into the mouths of European 
 potentates and statesmen. When he learnt, 
 therefore, that his writings were about to be laid 
 before American readers in a becoming shape, 
 he was profoundly gratified. No pains must 
 be spared to make the edition perfect. Packet 
 after packet of corrections and additions was 
 sent to Boston from Via Nunziatina, Florence, 
 where Landor spent his last years on earth.
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD u 
 
 ' Nothing in the course of my long life ever 
 went on smoothly.' So he wrote to his friend 
 in London early in 1861, and in the same letter 
 he referred to the manuscripts sent to Mr. Field 
 of Boston, who was to have begun the printing 
 of the American edition at this very time. ' It 
 is probable,' he added, 'that recent occurrences 
 in America will divert the public attention from 
 literature.' And so it was. Mr. Field presently 
 wrote to say that the approaching struggle 
 between North and South compelled him to 
 postpone the publication of an American edition ; 
 whereupon, at Landor's request, the manuscripts 
 were sent to the same friend in London who 
 had undertaken to see the ' Heroic Idyls ' 
 through the press. By him they were presently 
 put away in the cedar-wood desk, where the 
 other day I found them, along with the rest of 
 a veritable treasure trove. 
 
 But I must leave to others the task of ap- 
 praising the value of what is thus brought to 
 light — prose and poetry, letters to friends, 
 emendations of what was already in print, 
 suggestions for new editions, and the little 
 drawer full of keepsakes from people known 
 and unknown. Not being an expert in such
 
 12 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 computation, I would say the lot together is 
 worth an old song, provided Landor's comment 
 on the contrary phrase be borne in remembrance : 
 ' We often hear that such or such a thing is not 
 worth an old song. Alas ! how very few things 
 are.' 
 
 Mr. Forster, when he prepared his eight- 
 volume edition of Landor's life and works, 
 either was not aware of the existence of these 
 papers, or did not trouble his head about them. 
 An accident, which I for one sincerely deplore, 
 concealed them from Mr. Sidney Colvin's 
 knowledge when he was writing those two 
 most delightful volumes which have done more 
 than all Mr. Forster's cumbrous efforts to con- 
 vince Englishmen that Landor is among the 
 immortals. They were equally inaccessible to 
 Landor's latest editor, Mr. Crump. But if 
 ever there is to be a final and complete edition 
 of the imaginary conversations, miscellaneous 
 prose works, and poems of the great writer 
 whose first book was published when Byron 
 was a schoolboy, whose last appeared when 
 some of the best known writers of to-day 
 had already bound themselves to the idle trade 
 of versifying, this collection — as I think the
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 13 
 
 account here given of it will abundantly prove 
 — cannot possibly be overlooked. Not that 
 every scrap of paper Landor wrote on, every 
 last leaf that fell from the old tree, need be 
 handed down to posterity. Some of these 
 sweepings from his study — to use one of the 
 titles he thought of for a projected volume of 
 miscellanies — might be swept into the sea with- 
 out detriment, even with positive advantage, to 
 his fame. Others, again, he had himself re- 
 jected on second thoughts, and when his second 
 thoughts were the best ; for quick as he often 
 was to demolish a friendly objection, if it was 
 an unfounded one, he could also acquiesce when 
 he found that a flaw invisible to his own eyes 
 was patent to others. The composition so 
 condemned would be put aside without a word. 
 This is the explanation of many of the alterations 
 noted in Mr. Crump's variorum edition of his 
 works ; and I have reason to know that a few, 
 at any rate, of the fragments in his desk were 
 withheld from the printer by his own wish and 
 from the same motives. His wishes, need I 
 say, as far as they can be discerned, shall be 
 respected. 
 
 Besides manuscripts and printed papers and
 
 i 4 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 the more interesting relics which will be 
 mentioned presently, Landor's desk contained 
 a few odds and ends either of smaller account 
 or less easy to identify. There is an old- 
 fashioned purse, a network of silk with gilt 
 rings and tassels, such as our grandmothers 
 were wont to use when they wore their best 
 gowns. No doubt there is a story to it, if one 
 knew. Mrs. Dashwood* once gave Landor a 
 purse, together with some lady-like verses on 
 the presentation, to which Landor responded : 
 
 ' I should think it a sin 
 Any paid to put in 
 
 A net that the Graces have woven ; 
 And if ever I do 't 
 May he kick me whose foot 
 
 (They say who have seen it) is cloven.' 
 
 The verses may be found in Ablett's ' Literary 
 Hours,' and their authorship is avowed in a 
 manuscript note in the South Kensington copy 
 of that rare volume. Mrs. Dashwood's purse, 
 however, was of a bright crimson hue ; this one 
 is blue and orange. 
 
 Nor do I know why Landor kept the silk 
 
 * Daughter of Dean Shipley and cousin to 
 Francis Hare.
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 15 
 
 watch-guards and eye-glass cords, though 
 among the papers there are verses to Miss 
 Edith Story, the daughter of the accomplished 
 American sculptor, thanking her for some such 
 
 gift : 
 
 • With pride I wear a silken twine, 
 
 Precious as every gift of thine ; 
 Only less precious than the chain 
 For which so many sigh in vain.'* 
 
 Three pairs of spectacles and a double eye-glass, 
 with rims of tortoiseshell, were perhaps bought 
 by Landor for himself. He once told Words- 
 worth that thinking ruined one's eyesight more 
 surely than reading, and that those who read 
 much and think little do not suffer. There is 
 also a double eye-glass in silver and tortoise- 
 shell of a more antiquated pattern. A French 
 lady gave Landor some eye-glasses that once 
 belonged to Talleyrand, but by Landor they 
 were given to Sir Henry Bulwer. 
 
 A quantity of flower seeds sent to Landor, I 
 fancy, by his sister from Ipsley Court, some 
 pieces of ribbon, linked coat-buttons, a pocket- 
 book with one or two almost illegible entries, in 
 which one can make out little else except the 
 
 * Landor MSS.
 
 1 6 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 name of Kossuth, an unrecognized photograph, 
 and a penwiper may also be mentioned here. 
 Of other relics the reader shall hear in due 
 course. 
 
 But before describing the more noteworthy 
 contents of the desk of cedar-wood, a word 
 should be said of the circumstances that have 
 made me its custodian. Though Landor's 
 writings first found a place among my most 
 intimate books years ago in India, it was some 
 little time before I became aware of his Indian 
 associations. Even when I lodged in Russell 
 Street, Calcutta, I did not know that Rose 
 Aylmer's uncle gave his name to the street, 
 and that she died in that very quarter of the 
 City of Palaces ; nor when I called with letters 
 of introduction on the distinguished officer who 
 held the post of Surveyor-General had I any 
 notion that he was Landor's brother-in-law and 
 god-son. In course of time I discovered that 
 some of Landor's dearest friends had been in 
 India ; and I often wondered then who it was 
 he had addressed in the lines : 
 
 * After hot days in the wild wastes of war, 
 Where India saw thy sword shine bright above 
 The helms of thousand brave.'
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 17 
 
 At length a happy chance made me acquainted 
 with Dr. Arthur de Noe Walker, late Captain 
 in the Madras Army, the very man for whom 
 these verses were written ; and I discovered 
 that Dr. Walker had been Landor's friend for 
 thirty years. But for his unfailing kindness 
 and sympathy these chapters would not be 
 written. Besides placing the papers in Lan- 
 dor's desk at my disposal, he has helped me 
 more than I can tell to a better knowledge of 
 his old friend's life and character. I have to 
 thank him, too, for what is perhaps the best of 
 the portraits of Landor here reproduced. 
 
 What Dr. Walker thinks of the various like- 
 nesses, pictures, photographs, and engravings, 
 which we have looked at together, merits of 
 course particular attention. Writing to him 
 from Florence in February 23, i860, Landor 
 said : 
 
 ' You shall certainly have a photograph of me, 
 altho' I refused to allow Forster, who edited the two 
 volumes of my works, to place an engraving before 
 them. I utterly detest thrusting my head into 
 people's faces, with here I am. In former days no 
 fewer than thirteen portraits of me have been 
 taken — most of them miniatures. Fisher painted 
 three, Bewick three, and Boxall two.' ' 
 
 2
 
 1 8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Of these thirteen portraits I can only find 
 trace of eight, not counting engravings, photo- 
 graphs, and copies. In 1804, when Landor was 
 in his thirtieth year, and was living in some- 
 what profuse style at Bath, Nathaniel Dance, 
 R.A.,* painted his portrait. An engraving 
 forms the frontispiece to the first edition of 
 Forster's ' Biography ' of Landor, vol. i. ; but it 
 was omitted in subsequent editions. Of this 
 portrait Forster wrote : ' The eye is fine, but 
 black hair covers all the forehead, and you 
 recognize the face of the later time quite 
 without its fulness, power, and animation. 
 The stubbornness is there, without the soft- 
 ness ; the self-will untamed by any experience ; 
 plenty of energy, but a want of emotion.' The 
 late Lord Houghton, who knew Landor inti- 
 mately, and understood him better than Mr. 
 Forster could, found no trace in this portrait 
 of the sweetness and humour about the mouth 
 which redeemed ' the anti-social ' character of 
 the upper features. Still, it may serve to 
 convey some idea of what Landor was like at 
 
 * Afterwards Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, Bart., 
 who died in 181 1. Many of his portraits pass for 
 the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 19 
 
 this early stage of his life. It portrays a man 
 conscious of great powers, who has not yet 
 found his opportunity for exerting them. 
 
 In the British Museum there is a portrait of 
 Landor by William Bewick, ' done at Florence, 
 September 12, 1826.' He was then in his fifty- 
 second year, and had published two editions of 
 the first series of ' Imaginary Conversations.' 
 The hair no longer hangs in curls over his fore- 
 Iiead, which is now bald, but the lips close 
 firmly, and the eyes show a fixed resolution. 
 In the year following a bust of Landor was 
 modelled by Gibson. Writing to his sister 
 Elizabeth on April 25, 1828, Landor said : 
 
 ' Gibson came to me the very day Ackleton 
 brought me Robert's poem," and I gave him two 
 sittings, one in the morning and one in the evening. 
 There have been three days, and there will be four 
 more, before he takes the cast in plaster of paris. I 
 am told that Chantrey is equal to him in busts, but 
 very inferior in genius. The one is English upon 
 principle, the other Attic' 
 
 Landor thought highly of Gibson. He makes 
 Alfieri say of him and Thorwaldsen : ' I have 
 seen no drawings, not even Raphael's, more 
 
 * ' The Impious Feast,' by Robert Eyres Landor. 
 
 2 — 2
 
 2o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 pure and intellectual than theirs. I suspect 
 their native countries will never be competent 
 to form a just estimate of their merit. We may 
 say of each, utinam noster esses.' Yet for all that, 
 the bust of Gibson, who often failed in por- 
 traiture, is considered by Dr. Walker to be any- 
 thing but a good likeness ; and the photograph 
 from it (now reproduced) need only be studied 
 for the less minute proportions it records. It 
 was made in marble for that ' Lord of the 
 Celtic dells,' Mr. Joseph Ablett, and the photo- 
 graph was given me by Landor's brother-in-law, 
 General Sir Henry Landor Thuillier. 
 
 But I should like here to refer to another 
 portrait of Landor at this time — a portrait 
 neither in marble nor on canvas. The Countess 
 of Blessington first met Landor at Florence in 
 June, 1827, and her impressions were recorded 
 in that vivacious book of travel, ' The Idler in 
 Italy ' : 
 
 ' There is a natural dignity which appertains to 
 him, that suits perfectly with the style of his con- 
 versation and his general appearance. His head is 
 one of the most intellectual ones imaginable, and 
 would serve as a good illustration in support of the 
 theories of Phrenologists. The forehead broad and
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR- WOOD 2r 
 
 prominent ; the mental organs largely developed ; 
 the eyes quick and intelligent, and the mouth full 
 of benevolence.' 
 
 The next portrait, in another medium than 
 words, is a lithograph from a pencil drawing by 
 the Countess of Blessington's friend, Count 
 Alfred D'Orsay. The original, Mr. Colvin 
 says, was done in 1825. In the autumn 
 Landor paid a long visit to Mr. Ablett at 
 Llanbedr ; and when two years afterwards 
 Mr. Ablett, in memory of the occasion, printed 
 * Literary Hours by various Friends,' a litho- 
 graph from D'Orsay's pencil sketch was used as 
 a frontispiece. ' Corrected from D'Orsay's, in 
 which the chin was much too low and too much 
 head behind.' That was Landor's own com- 
 ment, written by himself in the copy of ' Literary 
 Hours ' at South Kensington Museum. But 
 even with these corrections the likeness can 
 hardly be regarded as a pleasing one. It seems 
 to lay stress on what was least lovable 
 in Landor's expression. In 1839, however, 
 Count D'Orsay drew, most likely on the 
 stone, a more finished portrait, which even 
 those who never saw the original would at once 
 pronounce to be a better likeness than the
 
 22 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 earlier sketch. Indeed, Dr. Walker, who gave 
 me his copy of the print, thinks it not only 
 very like Landor, but one of the very few por- 
 traits extant that are like him. Landor was 
 now sixty-four, and had been living for more 
 than a year at Bath, whence he paid frequent 
 visits to London, being ever a welcome guest at 
 Gore House, under whose hospitable roof, as he 
 says somewhere, ' a greater number of remark- 
 able men assembled from all nations than under 
 any other, since roofs took the place of caverns.' 
 A little before the date of Count D'Orsay's. 
 second portrait, Landor gave sittings to Mr. 
 William Fisher, a young artist who was pre- 
 sently to become a Royal Academician. To 
 Mr. Fisher, Landor addressed the well-known 
 lines beginning : 
 
 ' Conceal not Time's misdeeds, but on my brow 
 
 Retrace his mark ; 
 Let the retiring hair be silvery now 
 
 That once was dark : 
 Eyes that reflected images too bright 
 
 Let clouds o'ercast, 
 And from the tablet be abolisht quite 
 
 The cheerful past.' 
 
 Southey admired this portrait, but Landor
 
 A DESK OF CEDAR-WOOD 23 
 
 said the colour was too like a dragon's belly. 
 The original was the property of Mr. Kenyon, 
 by whose residuary legatees it was given to 
 Crabbe Robinson,* who in turn bequeathed 
 it to the National Portrait Gallery. An en- 
 graving on wood from this portrait was pub- 
 lished in the Century Magazine for February, 
 1888, in which there also appeared an article 
 on Landor by Mr. James Russell Lowell, 
 followed by some letters of Landor's to Miss 
 Mary Boyle. Another and, I think, a better 
 portrait by the same artist is in the possession 
 of Lady Graves-Sawle. 
 
 In 1852 Mr., afterwards Sir, William Boxall 
 painted Landor's portrait. An engraving on 
 steel from this picture is given in the second 
 volume of Mr. Forster's * Biography ' (first 
 edition 1869). Landor himself considered it 
 an excellent likeness, as may be seen from 
 his letter to Forster written in December, 
 1852: 
 
 ' Perhaps when I am in the grave, curiosity may 
 be excited to know what kind of countenance that 
 creature had who imitated nobody, and whom 
 nobody imitated : the man who walked thro' the 
 
 * H. Crabbe Robinson's Diary, ii. 360.
 
 24 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 crowd of poets and prose-men and never was toucht 
 by anyone'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 probably will within 
 your lifetime, then let the good people see the old 
 man's head by Boxall.'* 
 
 Yet, as Mr. Colvin remarks, there is much 
 that was uncharacteristic and somewhat feebly 
 benignant in Boxall's portrait. It is now in 
 the South Kensington Museum. 
 
 A striking portrait of Landor, apparently 
 from a photograph, may be found in the fourth 
 volume of Mr. Crump's edition of his works. 
 It was taken a year after the date of Fisher's 
 portrait, to which, however, it bears very little 
 resemblance, being much more like the photo- 
 graph prefixed to the second Volume of Mr. 
 Forster's edition, said to have been taken in 
 1849. Both these portraits are declared by 
 Dr. Walker to be excellent, though it must be 
 added that they only represent Landor in a 
 particular mood. His expression would change 
 in an instant to one of keen animation and the 
 most genial kindness. 
 
 * This letter was omitted in subsequent editions.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND PROSE 
 FRAGMENTS. 
 
 ' I seek not many, many seek me not.' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 Could Landor himself be consulted as to 
 which of the papers in his desk he desired 
 more especially to be given to the world, he 
 would doubtless say : Print the imaginary con- 
 versations. Of these there are three hitherto 
 unpublished, or, at any rate, not to be found 
 in the collected editions of his works ; one 
 being a ' dramatic scene ' in verse, which was 
 at first written as a prose dialogue. All three 
 were sent by Landor to Boston, to be included 
 in an American edition of his prose and poetry ; 
 and the subsequent fate of the parcel has 
 already been told. 
 
 By far the finest of the newly-discovered
 
 26 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 conversations is that in which Fra Girolamo 
 or Jeronimo Savonarola, preacher and martyr, 
 learns that he has been sentenced to death, 
 vindicates his past conduct, and speaks of the 
 end that awaits him with fortitude and com- 
 posure. George Eliot, in a historic novel, 
 and Mr. Alfred Austin, in a dramatic poem, 
 have drawn more elaborate and finished pictures 
 of Savonarola ; and there is not enough in this 
 brief scene to permit a comparison between 
 their treatment of the subject and Landor's. 
 But the conversation, written though it was 
 in its author's eighty-sixth year, is wanting 
 neither in vividness of imagination nor in 
 eloquence. The Republican Friar* who had 
 so courageously defied the Borghia and the 
 Medici, who had defended liberty and religion 
 against the flagrant scandals of the Papacy 
 and the corroding decadence that hung like a 
 plague-cloud over Florence ; the man of suffer- 
 ing who had passed through the torment of the 
 rack, and for whom the pains of death were 
 made ready as he conversed, appears only for 
 a few moments on Landor's stage, but in those 
 few moments a life's tragedy is concentrated. 
 
 * ' Savonarola and his Times,' by Professor Villari.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 27 
 
 Historical accuracy must not be sought for. 
 If a true account is wanted of Savonarola's 
 last days, we must go elsewhere. The whole 
 story has been carefully reconstructed by Pro- 
 fessor Villari. The martyrdom of Savonarola 
 and the two monks, Domenicho of Padua and 
 Silvestro Marufi, took place on the morning of 
 May 23, 1498. On April 8 (Palm Sunday), 
 Savonarola had surrendered to his enemies. 
 Since then he had been brought for trial first 
 before the judges appointed by the Signory of 
 Florence, and afterwards before the Eccle- 
 siastical Commissioners sent by the Pope ; 
 and for upwards of a month he had repeatedly 
 undergone long and grievous tortures. When 
 not in the presence of his judges, he was con- 
 fined in the Alberghettino, a small chamber in 
 the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, where it 
 must be supposed that this conversation takes 
 place. The sentence of the Pope's Commis- 
 sioners was pronounced on May 22, and was 
 made known to Savonarola the same evening. 
 The next morning it was carried out. The 
 three Friars were hanged, and their bodies 
 then committed to the flames. Professor 
 Villari does not name the messengers who
 
 28 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 informed Savonarola of the punishment to be 
 inflicted on him, but says that they found him 
 kneeling in prayer. ' On hearing the fatal 
 announcement he expressed neither grief nor 
 joy, but continued his devotions with increased 
 fervour.' Between that time and the hour 
 when he was led out to execution he saw and 
 spoke with Jacopo Niccolini, member of a 
 benevolent society, with a Benedictine friar 
 who came to receive his last confession, and 
 with his two companions in misfortune, whom 
 he was allowed to meet on the night of May 22, 
 and again on the morrow when he partook of 
 the Sacrament with them. 
 
 There was no opportunity for such a con- 
 versation as Landor imagines, unless, indeed, 
 we suppose that Savonarola was speaking, not 
 to the Prior of San Marco,* but to Jacopo 
 Niccolini, to whom he foretold the calamities 
 that were to fall on Florence, adding, ' Bear 
 well in mind that these things will come to pass 
 when there shall be a Pope named Clement.' 
 That the three monks died, not in the flames, 
 
 * Professor Villari does not say who had suc- 
 ceeded Savonarola as Prior of San Marco ; nor, 
 indeed, does he say that a successor had been elected.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 29 
 
 but by the hangman's rope, has already been 
 stated. Landor may have been misled on this 
 point by Sismondi. 
 
 It was in the latter half of the year i860 that 
 Landor wrote and published an imaginary con- 
 versation in Italian — ' Savonarola e il Priore di 
 San Marco.' It formed a small octavo pamphlet 
 of seven pages ; and the proceeds of the sale 
 were to be given for the relief of Garibaldi's 
 wounded followers.* That hero's victories over 
 the Neapolitan troops in Sicily had roused all 
 Landor's enthusiasm. Verses were written by 
 him, both English and Latin, in Garibaldi's 
 honour ; and the little cottage at Siena, where 
 Landor was now staying, must have rung with 
 revolutionary sentiment and loud denunciation 
 of ' Gallia's basest brood.' Before the end of 
 the year he also completed this English transla- 
 tion of the dialogue, and despatched it to Mr. 
 Field, the Boston publisher, to whom he had 
 already sent the original version in Italian. On 
 the back of the paper containing the translation 
 he has written : 
 
 * The approximate date may be inferred from 
 Landor's own^letters, and from the fact that Gari- 
 baldi set sail for Sicily from Genoa on May 5, i860.
 
 3 o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1 My dear Sir, 
 
 ' In the Italian dialogue I sent to you much 
 
 was omitted by the printer's fear that the sentiments 
 
 would offend the higher powers and obstruct the 
 
 publication. It gave me some trouble to compose, 
 
 and I was urged to give the whole in English, which 
 
 I now send. . . . With respectful compliments, 
 
 and wishing you a happy new year, I remain, my 
 
 dear sir, 
 
 ' Very truly yours, 
 
 « W. S. Landor.' 
 
 The few words omitted refer to a correction 
 which Landor hoped the American printers 
 would make in one of his earlier compositions. 
 I will now give the conversation : 
 
 SAVONAROLA AND THE PRIOR OF 
 S. MARCO. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Jeronimo ! dear Jeronimo ! oftentimes have I 
 
 been afflicted, but never so grievously as in this 
 
 hour. Thou art abandoned to thy enemies, and 
 
 there is no escape. The Holy Father* has found 
 
 thee guilty. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Alas ! how many has he found guilty, and how 
 many has he made so ! My Holy Father, the 
 
 * Pope Alexander VI. (Roderigo Borghia).
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 31 
 
 Father who is in heaven, has too often found 
 me guilty, even from infancy. Nevertheless has 
 He deigned to show me the light of His countenance, 
 and to confer on me the office of proclaiming His 
 will. And now His right hand guides me on the 
 road to expiate my many sins. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Thy many sins ? What mortal ever lived more 
 chastely, more charitably, more devoutly ? And to 
 die so ! Oh, God of mercy ! can human flesh endure 
 the surrounding flames ? 
 
 Savonarola. 
 Yes ; that flesh which God hath prepared for it. 
 
 Prior. 
 The Church has been openly offended. Why ? 
 
 Savonarola. 
 Because the Church opposed God openly. Tell 
 me, have I ever uttered a word contrary to the doc- 
 trine of the Apostols ? Frequently have I preached 
 before the people, but have abstained from declaring 
 this truth, that under the seat of our Roman pontifs 
 more Christian blood has been shed on behalf of 
 Europe than under all the worst Roman emperors 
 in the whole of it. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 It may be true; but there always is danger in 
 speaking ill of dignitaries.
 
 32 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 If I understand the word, it means the worthy. 
 Before them I stand humiliated, not before the 
 arrogant and presumptuous. 
 
 I am condemned to death ; so art thou, so are 
 all, even ere they cried from the cradle. 
 
 Prior. 
 Imperturbable is thy faith, thy courage super- 
 human. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Superhuman it is, but it is not mine. I have 
 
 followed with tardy pace the Precursor. He who 
 
 walks in the dark will be guided more safely by 
 
 one large and clear light, although distant, than by 
 
 many smaller which sparkle on both sides of him. 
 
 The Apostols have directed me, and my support 
 
 was Christ. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Yet the first and most sublime, of martyrs, our 
 Saviour himself, prayed of his Father that the bitter 
 cup might pass from him. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 It did not pass from him. The Son drank of it, 
 bowed his head and died. Better men than I am 
 have borne testimony to the truth ; I also have 
 been deemed worthy to die for it. 
 
 Prior. 
 Better men ! None, none.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 33 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Say not so. It appears to have been the will of 
 Providence that some of them should live longer 
 and teach more effectually. The fruit in the garden 
 of Bethlehem will ripen in its season. Enervated 
 as are our Florentines, they will rise and stand firm 
 and upright. Wicked princes, and pontifs wickeder 
 still, have led them astray, corrupted and subjugated 
 them ; strangers, in conflict one with another, have 
 trodden them down ; liberators, as they called 
 themselves and were believed, chained and sold 
 them. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 We have lived to see this in our own days. We 
 must pray for them. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Ye must, but others must rise from their knees. 
 Such is the will of God : the Merciful is the 
 Avenger. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 We men of peace should be silent. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 Not when God commands us to speak and cry 
 aloud. The Pontif is a puppet in the hands of 
 France, brought out and shut up again at her will 
 and pleasure. There is no vision to our eyes of 
 an emperor like Henry of Luxemburg. Dante 
 Alighieri, Petrarcha, Boccaccio, were not only 
 
 3
 
 34 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 nightingales that sang in the dark — which all three 
 did — but they were prophetic, and intelligible to 
 the attentive ear. The Divina Corn/media should 
 rather be entitled the Divina Satira. It has the 
 fire of Phlegethon, and the bitterness of Styx. 
 
 What France ever was, she will ever be ; a slave 
 the seller of slaves. Such have been lauded in 
 excelsis. The wolf has degenerated into a fox, an 
 animal by nature of shriller cry, yet approaching 
 the sheepfold more cautiously. There was a time 
 when princes on horseback chased this animal ; 
 now they invest him with a golden collar, and 
 
 domesticate him. 
 
 Prior. 
 Beware ! beware ! 
 
 Savonarola. 
 Truth, it appears, is a virgin too pure to be 
 embraced. Whatever most interests her seems 
 most reprovable. Yet the more free our thoughts 
 are, the nearer are they to that region where Truth 
 resides. Certainly it is not in the Maremma 
 Romana. God has taught me his holy Word, 
 and has commanded me also to teach it. 
 
 Prior. 
 They who find a jewel do not prudently and safely 
 wear it in all places. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 We have found what is richer than a jewel, we 
 have found what constitutes the bread of life. The
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 35 
 
 wheat that nourishes nations was but a grain at 
 first : many crops sprang from it, many were 
 mildewed, many trodden underfoot, as we have seen 
 and see now, yet the seed is incorruptible, and will 
 endure for ever. Italy will not always be what 
 Italy is now. The most acute of men will reason 
 and reflect, and will drive away those who forbid 
 it. What Christ has forbidden they will call to 
 mind, and act accordingly. He forbade even his 
 disciples to call him Lord. The impostor who 
 •calls himself, and orders others to call him His 
 Holiness, His Beatitude, God's Vicegerent, etc., offends 
 against God's express commandment. 
 
 Prior. 
 Be cool, my brother. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Presently I shall be, if anything be left of me 
 after this day's festival, celebrated with Druidical 
 rites. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 That smile strikes into my inmost heart. Let us 
 think rather of our Florentines. Let us hope 
 for them, at least. Sound bodies may recover 
 from heavy wounds, unsound succumb under 
 lighter. If our Florentines are naturally brave, 
 how greatly more brave will they become when 
 they are virtuous. The corruption of a prince 
 drops down on the heads and into the bosoms of 
 
 3—2
 
 36 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 a people. It is unsafe to animadvert on the living : 
 we may look back on Lorenzo de Medici, dead 
 recently. 1 " The defunct do not bite, and censure 
 falls without weight upon the sepulchre. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 When I was called to the bedside of that dying 
 man, in order to hear his confession, according to 
 the wish he had exprest, not a single one of his 
 iniquities would he confess, nor any retribution 
 would he offer of what he had taken from his 
 country. 'First,' said I, ' restore to the people the 
 liberty of which you deprived their fathers. 1 He turned 
 heavily round and disdainfully. I was silent, and 
 left him. 
 
 Prior. 
 Peace to his soul ! if peace there can be where 
 such souls are. Why could he not have been 
 contented in the station to which his fortune and 
 his genius had raised him ? No other sovran in 
 Europe possessed such rich and extensive lands. 
 He could enjoy every climate in this little Tuscany. 
 In Pisa there is no severity of winter, in Pratolino 
 there is no oppressive heat. The breezes of the 
 sea and of the Apennines were at his command. 
 Here in Florence he had the familiar society of the 
 
 * Lorenzo the Magnificent died in 1492. His 
 interview with Savonarola should be read in Mr. 
 Alfred Austin's poem.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 37 
 
 learned and philosophic, and poets sat convivially 
 
 at his table.* 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 These maggots accelerated his corruption. 
 
 Prior. 
 The constitution of the poetic mind is naturally- 
 febrile, and is corroded in most by the chronic 
 disease of jealousy. Lorenzo was subject to 
 neither of these infirmities, not recognizing a rival 
 in creatures so base. Adulation, if ever pardonable, 
 is most so in poets. On Parnassus there are more 
 flowers than fruits, the pasture is insufficient, and 
 the air gives a keen appetite. The birds below 
 perch on thorns, and when they alight they battle 
 for a grain of millet. Not only poets, but persons 
 in appearance more serious, consorted with Lorenzo : 
 they might have taught him better. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 They should have learnt better first. They spent 
 days and nights in trivial, futile discussions, which 
 they called Platonic! 
 
 * Lorenzo de Medici ' encouraged all the worst 
 tendencies of the age, and multiplied its corrup- 
 tions. . . . During his reign, Florence was a con- 
 tinuous scene of revelry and dissipation.' — Villavi. 
 
 \ For an account of the disputes between the 
 Platonic and Aristotelian schools, see Professor 
 Villari. Savonarola wrote a compendium of both 
 philosophies.
 
 38 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Not improperly. The dialogues of Plato are 
 mostly of no utility, for religion, morality, the 
 sciences or the arts. They resemble the pallone 
 with which our youthful citizens divert themselves, 
 empty, turgid, round, weightless, thrown up into 
 the air by one player, to be caught by another as 
 it falls to the ground, and beaten back, bouncing, 
 and covered with dust. In all his dialogues there 
 is not a single one which impresses on the heart a 
 virtuous or a tender sentiment, none of charity, 
 none of philanthropy, none of patriotism. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Oh, the littleness of such a philosophy ! We 
 
 Christians know the true ; we know where to find 
 
 it ; we know where sits the teacher. It is better 
 
 to be guided thro' thorns than to sit idly with 
 
 chatterers. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 It is well to ponder, but why pause now ? And 
 not very seriously. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 I was reminded by your observations and simili- 
 tudes of another pastime, in which a girl lays her 
 hand down flat, another claps hers upon it, and 
 thus rapidly and alternately, until both are tired of 
 it, and one gives a slap on the knuckles of her 
 playfellow and runs off laughing.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 39 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Nothing discomposes my Jeronimo ; I never 
 found him so near to facetiousness before. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 I look more willingly at tricks played in petticoats 
 than under beards. Let them only be such as 
 these. 
 
 Do not rise to go yet, my kind father ! What 
 is there to see below ? 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Florence lies in bustle and confusion under the 
 window : the sight makes me sorrowful. 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Courage, courage, my Prior ! The Sun of 
 Righteousness will shine again. The Prophets 
 will show their countenances thro' the clouds, and 
 make their voices heard. Dante Alighieri lies in 
 his tomb at Ravenna, but his spirit will return to 
 our city and reanimate a half-dead people. Italy is 
 not always to be sown with lies and irrigated with 
 blood. Her sons are to be aware that the wine of 
 the Last Supper is not drugged, is neither stimulant 
 nor narcotic. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 What noise is that I hear ? Whither are coming 
 those four carts ? With what are they laden ?
 
 4 o WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 Savonarola. 
 I will tell thee. 
 
 Prior. 
 But why dost thou also rise from thy chair ? 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Those carts are laden with faggots and stakes ; 
 one of the stoutest is several ells long. What a 
 number of poor starving creatures might be com- 
 forted at Christmas by such a quantity of materials. 
 
 The people are impatient for their bonfire, and 
 the priests for their dinner. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Embrace me, embrace me ; sanctify a sinner. 
 Jeronimo ! shall we meet no more ! 
 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Thou knowest that meet we shall ; God alone 
 knows when. The days of man are numbered : 
 there is no room for another numeral to mine ; the 
 punctuation of a period is enough. My future 
 is beginning in this piazza ; I can yet look beyond 
 it. The Florentines will soon forget me ; already 
 they have forgotten themselves. Oblivion soon 
 comes over cities ; memory rests longer on a few 
 faithful hearts. I and my words may pass away, 
 but never will God's, however now neglected. 
 
 May thy years be as many as thy virtues, and as 
 the benedictions on thy venerable head.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 41 
 
 Turn not again, as thou seemest about to do, 
 toward that window. When the smoke has been 
 carried off by the wind, and the clouds are dis- 
 sipated, then return to San Marco. 
 
 Landor sent another prose conversation to 
 Mr. Field ; and the scene of this, too, was laid 
 in Italy. It is between the Countess of Albany, 
 the widow of the Young Pretender, and her 
 lover, Alfieri. When Landor was a young 
 man, he once met the great Italian writer in a 
 London book-shop, where he himself, oddly 
 enough, was ordering copies of Alfieri's works. 
 They were introduced ; and Landor imparted 
 his views on the French Revolution. ' Sir,' 
 said Alfieri, ' you are a very young man ; you 
 are yet to learn that nothing good ever came 
 out of France, or ever will.' Landor never 
 forgot the meeting; and he used to say, long 
 afterwards, that Alfieri was the man of all 
 others with whom he himself was most nearly 
 in agreement. 
 
 Alfieri appears in two of Landor's published 
 conversations. The latest of these was printed 
 in 1856, and was warmly praised by Thomas 
 Carlyle. ' Do you think,' Carlyle asked Mr. 
 Forster, ' the grand old Pagan wrote that piece
 
 42 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 just now ? The sound of it is like the ring of 
 Roman swords on the helmets of barbarians. 
 An unsubduable old Roman !' A hint was 
 given in that conversation of the Countess 
 of Albany's partiality for the French portrait- 
 painter, M. Fabre, and of Alfieri's anger. In 
 the unpublished dialogue he tells the Countess 
 that he will not be loved in fellowship with 
 another : 
 
 Countess. 
 
 A stranger might fancy you are jealous. You 
 know I receive all sorts of people at my conversazioni. 
 Is there any stranger, any florid young Englishman, 
 to whom you imagine I have taken a fancy ? You 
 know my taste better. I hate assurance, I hate 
 coarse flattery, I hate vulgarity. On the score of 
 politeness the English are clumsy originals and im- 
 perfect imitators. You know I have a right to be 
 their queen. 
 
 Alfieri. 
 
 You have a right to be mine, and I never have 
 forsworn my allegiance or transferred it. 
 
 Countess. 
 
 Ah ! now you talk like an Italian, not like one of 
 those rude islanders.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 43 
 
 But a brief extract may suffice. To speak 
 frankly, Landor in this conversation is danger- 
 ously near the commonplace, and it contains 
 hardly a sentence or a sentiment that far 
 inferior authors might not have written. The 
 note he appends to it may be quoted, however. 
 He writes : 
 
 ' The Countess of Albany transferred her affec- 
 tions from Alfieri to one Fabre, a portrait-painter. 
 Alfieri, stung with grief and indignation, left his 
 rival long behind. On his deathbed the Countess 
 sent a priest to administer the sacrament, who 
 announced his errand. Alfieri turned round on his 
 bed, and cried, Who are you ? On the priest's reply, 
 he said, / don't know you, and I don't want you, and I 
 won't have you. Poor soul ! He went off in a few 
 hours, and without a wafer ! These facts were 
 repeated to me thirty years ago by James Smith, * 
 who heard them from Alfieri's physician, present in 
 the chamber. 
 
 < W. S. L.' 
 
 I have found the same anecdote in a manu- 
 script note, written by Landor in his copy of 
 the magazinet containing the conversation 
 
 * James Smith, one of the authors of ' Rejected 
 Addresses.' 
 
 t Fraser's Magazine, April, 1856.
 
 44 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 between Alfieri and Metastasio. Here, after 
 repeating what the poet said on his death-bed, 
 Landor goes on to say of Alfieri : 
 
 ' He was not the only wise man deluded by a 
 weak and worthless woman. Love inflicted a 
 curable wound, pride a mortal one. His monu- 
 ment is unworthy of Canova's hand. It exhibits 
 a small portrait of the poet in basso relievo. Little 
 is said of him, much of the Countess. Near it is 
 the noblest monument in the whole church erected 
 to Dante ; the sculpture by Nardi, with this brief 
 inscription from the Divina Commedia : " Venerate 
 l'altissimo poeta." ' 
 
 The unpublished dramatic scene in blank 
 verse, which was found with the others in 
 Landor's desk, may be printed in full, and it 
 needs but little in the way of introduction. In 
 it he brings the Maid of Orleans, who had 
 already appeared in one of his published con- 
 versations, before her judge, the Bishop of 
 Beauvais.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 45 
 
 JOAN OF ARC AND HER JUDGE. 
 
 Judge. 
 After due hearing in our court supreme 
 Of temporal and spiritual lords, 
 Condemn'd art thou to perish at the stake 
 By fire, forerunner of the flames below. 
 Hearest thou ? Art thou stunn'd ? Art thou gone 
 
 mad ? 
 Witch ! think not to escape and fly away, 
 As some the like of thee, 'tis said, have done. 
 
 Joan. 
 The fire will aid my spirit to escape. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Listen, ye lords. Her spirit ! Hear ye that ? 
 
 She owns, then, to have her Familiar. 
 
 And whither (to Joan) — whither would the spirit, 
 
 witch, 
 Bear thee ? 
 
 Joan. 
 
 To Him who gave it. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Lucifer ? 
 Joan. 
 
 I never heard the name until thus taught. 
 
 Judge. 
 He hath his imps.
 
 46 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Joan. 
 I see he hath. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 My lords ! 
 Why look ye round, and upward at the rafters ? 
 Smile not, infernal hag ! for such thou art, 
 Altho' made comely to beguile the weak, 
 By thy enchantments and accursed spells. 
 Knowest thou not how many brave men fell 
 Under thy sword, and daily ? 
 
 Joan. 
 
 God knows best 
 How many fell — may their souls rest in peace ! 
 We wanted not your land, why want ye ours ? 
 France is our country, England yours ; we hear 
 Her fields are fruitful : so were ours before 
 Invaders came and burnt our yellowing corn, 
 And slew the labouring oxen in the yoke, 
 And worried, in their pasture and their fold, 
 With thankless hounds, more sheep than were 
 devour'd. 
 
 Judge. 
 Thou wast a shepherdess. Were those sheep thine ? 
 
 Joan. 
 
 Whatever is my country's is mine too — 
 
 At least to watch and guard ; I claim no more. 
 
 Ye drove the flocks adrift, and we the wolves.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 47 
 
 Judge. 
 Thou shouldst have kept thy station in the field, 
 As ours do. 
 
 Joan. 
 
 Nobles ! have I not ? Speak out. 
 In the field, too — the field ye shared with me — 
 The cause alone divided us. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 My lords ! 
 
 Must we hear this from a peasant girl, a witch ? 
 
 Wolves we are call'd. {To Joan) Do wolves, then, 
 
 fight for glory ? 
 
 Joan. 
 
 No ; not so wicked, tho' by nature wild, 
 They seek their food, and, finding it, they rest. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Sometimes the devil prompts to speak a truth 
 To cover lies, and to protect his brood. 
 But, we turn'd into wolves ! — we Englishmen ! 
 Tell us, thou knowing one, who knowest well — 
 Tell us, then, who are now the vanquishers. 
 
 Joan. 
 They who will be the vanquished, and right soon. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 False prophets there have been, and thou art one, 
 And proud as he that sent thee here inspired.
 
 48 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Who ever saw thee bend before the high 
 And mighty men, the consecrate around — 
 They whom our Lord exalted, they who wear 
 The mitre on their brows ? 
 
 Joan. 
 
 One — one alone — 
 Hath seen me bend, and may he soon more nigh, 
 Unworthy as I am ! I daily fall 
 Before the Man (for Man he would be call'd) 
 Who wore no mitre, but a crown of thorns 
 Wore he ; upon his hands no jewel'd ring, 
 But in the centre of them iron nails, 
 Half-hidden by the swollen flesh they pierced. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Alert to play the pious here at last, 
 Thou scoffest Mother Church in these her sons, 
 Right reverend, worshipful, Beatitude's 
 Creation, Christ's and Peter's lawful heirs. 
 
 Joan. 
 
 My mother Church enforced no sacrifice 
 Of human blood ; she never made flames drink it 
 Ere it boil over. Dear were all her sons, 
 Nor unforgiven were the most perverse. 
 
 Judge. 
 Seest thou not here thy hearers sit aghast ?
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 49 
 
 Joan. 
 
 Fear me not, nobles ! Ye were never wan 
 
 In battle ; ye were brave to meet the brave. 
 
 I come not now in helm or coat of mail, 
 
 But bound with cords, and helpless. God incline 
 
 Your hearts to worthier service ! 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Darest thou, 
 After such outrages on knight and baron, 
 To call on God, or name his holy name ? 
 'Tis mockery. 
 
 Joan. 
 
 'Tis too often, not with me. 
 
 When first I heard his holy name I thought 
 
 He was my Father. I was taught to call 
 
 My Saviour so, and both my parents did 
 
 The like, at rising and at setting sun 
 
 And when they shared the oaten cake at noon. 
 
 Judge. 
 So thou wouldst babble like an infant still ? 
 
 Joan. 
 I would be silent, but ye bade me speak. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Thou mayst yet pray — one hour is left for prayer. 
 Edify, then, the people in the street. 
 
 4
 
 So WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Joan. 
 
 I never pray in crowds ; our Saviour hears 
 When the heart speaks to him in solitude. 
 May we not imitate our blessed Lord, 
 Who went into the wilderness to pray ? 
 
 Judge. 
 
 Who taught thee tales like this ? They are for- 
 bidden. 
 Hast thou no supplication to the court ? 
 
 Joan. 
 I never sued in vain, and will not now. 
 
 Judge. 
 
 We have been patient ; we have heard thee prate 
 A whole hour by the bell ; we have endured 
 Impiety ; we have borne worse affronts. 
 My lords, ye have been bantered long enough. 
 The sorceress would have turned us into wolves, 
 And hunt us down ; she would be prophetess. 
 
 Joan. 
 
 I am no sorceress, no prophetess ; 
 
 But this, O man in ermine, I foretell : 
 
 Thou and those round thee shall ere long receive 
 
 Your due reward. England shall rue the day 
 
 She entered France — her empire totters. 
 
 Pile 
 Ye sentinels, who guard those hundred heads
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 51 
 
 Against a shepherdess in bonds — pile high 
 
 The faggots round the stake that stands upright, 
 
 And roll the barrel gently down the street, 
 
 Lest the pitch burst the hoops, and mess the way. 
 
 (To the court). 
 
 Ye grant one hour ; it shall be well employed. 
 I will implore the pardon of our God 
 For you. Already hath He heard my prayer 
 For the deliverers of their native land. 
 
 Landor also sent to America the ' Three 
 Scenes, not for the Stage,' in which Diana of 
 Poictiers, with the assistance of the Court 
 Jester, obtains from the King, Francis I., a 
 pardon for her father. Mr. Forster, however, 
 had a copy of this dramatic sketch, and printed 
 it in his eight-volume edition. The American 
 version has, together with a few various readings, 
 a characteristic note, in which Landor says : 
 ' Francis and Henry IV. have always been the 
 favorites of the French. They were a couple 
 of brave scoundrels at the best ; each of them 
 would have been gibeted had he been a 
 private man.' 
 
 A number of poems, long and short, found 
 amongst Landor's manuscripts will be given in 
 a later chapter, but there are some unpublished 
 
 4—2
 
 52 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 fragments in prose which it will be as well to 
 deal with here. Many of them are mere 
 jottings, though meant perhaps to be inserted 
 in some conversation that was never written. 
 Without a complete concordance one cannot 
 indeed be absolutely certain that none of these 
 fragments would be found, somewhere or other, 
 in Landor's printed works ; but I have done my 
 best to avoid vain repetitions. Landor himself 
 would occasionally say the same thing twice 
 over. ' They who are afraid,' he wrote, ' of 
 repeating what they have said before, may 
 sometimes think they have spoken or written 
 what they never have, and thus an animated 
 being (such is a thought) is lost to the creation/ 
 Here are some of these detached thoughts : 
 
 ' We English are fond of quaffing diluted epi- 
 grams out of crystal cups, diamond-cut, reflecting 
 and refracting.' 
 
 ' It is usual with dogs to turn round before they 
 lie down ; so do gentlemen in the House of Com- 
 mons.' 
 
 »'. »». »», .'- .j. 
 
 -i» -i» *i- i« -i- 
 
 ' Among the instances of absurd superlatives, I 
 find in the " Aventure d'Amour of Dumas,' Dents 
 magnifiques. Another, nous avions passe tine apres- 
 viidi adorable.'
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 53 
 
 It may be objected that magnifique and 
 •adorable are not, strictly speaking, superlatives ; 
 but Landor's meaning is clear enough. He 
 somewhere says that Italian prose -writers are 
 absurdly given to the use of superlatives, and 
 styles the Italians the ' issimi nation.' In 
 talking, he himself was not always over-careful 
 to avoid the superlative of enthusiasm. His 
 brother, Robert Eyres Landor, relates that in 
 the course of a morning's walk at Oxford they 
 would pass a dozen strangers of the fairer sex, 
 €ach one of whom Landor vowed was the most 
 beautiful woman his eyes had ever rested on. 
 
 In another of these fragments Landor says : 
 
 ' If I were askt what stanza or strophe I would 
 rather have written than any other, I should doubt 
 between Gray's " The boast of heraldry," etc., and 
 George Herbert's 
 
 ' " Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 The bridal of the earth and sky ; 
 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, 
 For thou must die."* 
 
 ' If what couplet, I would go to the Latin, and 
 stand again in doubt between that of Tibullus' Te 
 
 * The whole poem is quoted by Isaac Walton in 
 his ' Compleat Angler.'
 
 54 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 teneam* and that of Johannes Secundus, Non est 
 suaviolum, etc.'f 
 
 Landor has twice translated the verses from 
 Tibullus :| once in his ' Citation of William 
 Shakespeare,' and again in a little poem, ' On- 
 receiving a portrait,' which begins : 
 
 ' To gaze on you when life's last gleams decline, 
 And hold your hand, to the last clasp, in mine.' 
 
 Of the longer prose fragments the first is a 
 retort to De Quincey's observations on Dr. 
 Samuel Parr. Landor had been reading the 
 essay on ' Whiggism in its Relation to Litera- 
 ture,'§ wherein De Quincey, after expressing a 
 doubt whether one reader in three thousand 
 would know who Dr. Parr was, went on to 
 describe the friend of Landor's early days as a 
 
 * ' Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora 
 Te teneam moriens deficiente manu.' 
 
 Tibullus, I. i. 59. 
 
 f ' Non est suaviolum dare, lux mea, sed dare 
 tantum 
 Est desiderium flebile suavioli.' 
 
 Basium, iii. 
 
 \ Works, 1876, ii. 531, and viii. 77. 
 
 § ' De Quincey's Works ' (1862), vol. v.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 55 
 
 man whom it was impossible either to like or 
 respect. He was a lisping slander -monger, 
 De Quincey said — a retailer of gossip fitter for 
 washerwomen over their tea than for scholars 
 and statesmen. His reputation for learning 
 was undeserved ; his manners were unen- 
 durable. A boundless license of personal 
 invective, an extravagance of brutality, an 
 1 obstreperous laugh monstrously beyond the 
 key of good society,' were also placed among 
 the doctor's shortcomings. ' My object is,' 
 wrote De Quincey, * to value Dr. Parr's claims 
 and to assign his true station both in literature 
 and in other walks of life upon which he has 
 come forward as a public man.' We are more 
 insidious in our literary depreciations now-a- 
 days ; but De Quincey's method would have its 
 advantages if one could trust his judgment and 
 his honesty. Others had found much to like 
 and even to love, in Dr. Parr's character. 
 Robert Landor, though he admired Parr less 
 than his brother did, pronounced De Quincey's 
 attack to be grossly unfair. What Walter 
 Landor thought of it may be seen from the 
 following paper :
 
 56 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 IN DEFENCE OF DR. PARR. 
 
 ' Mr. de Quincey's attack on Parr is insolent and 
 flippant, therefor admirably suited to a Review or 
 Magazine or any popular publication. Parr had 
 his foibles, as even the strongest men have. We 
 never say of a weak one he has his foibles. Where 
 all is weak they are unnoticed. Parr was incapable 
 of a long continuous work, such as Hooker's was. 
 His mind was splintery. But he seldom wrote a 
 sentence without something good and striking in it. 
 They are too often tripartite, as Johnson's are bipar- 
 tite. His style is on no occasion to be imitated. 
 For a style we must have recourse to Goldsmith, 
 Blackstone, and the hated and persecuted Payne. * 
 We need not go back to Addison, Swift, and Defoe. 
 
 1 And here I am forced to remark what small 
 hearts and twisted heads have some otherwise 
 great men. Swift was the reviler of Defoe. I am 
 grateful to Parr for much kindness and much in- 
 struction. He offered me the use of his library, 
 but whenever I began to read a book, he would 
 give it a running commentary. He wished me to 
 write a history of England in Latin. This advice 
 was injudicious. Few English names can be 
 Latinized. The Dean of Westminster has lately 
 desired me to write a Latin epitaph on Hallam ; 
 and Milnes made to me the same request in regard 
 
 * Thomas Paine, author of ' The Age of Reason.'
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 57 
 
 to his father. That of Milnes I declined at the 
 time, but it soon occurred to me that Milnes has 
 a Latin termination and declension. Milm's or 
 Milnetw, and you have him in his toga. 
 
 ' Now I return to Parr. I saw him in all his 
 glory, when he was invited by the Lord Mayor 
 Combe to preach the Spital Sermon.* He took me 
 with him in the carriage. Never was church so 
 crowded. Commoners, Peers, whigs, tories, filled 
 every pew ; I was favoured with a place in the 
 Lord Mayor's. How few are now surviving of 
 that multitude ! Canning, Frere, Mackintosh, 
 Bobus Smith, I recognized. Swarms of insig- 
 nificant authors crowded the aisles and galleries ; 
 some of them doubtless wrote articles by order. 
 When they went home, probably they were think- 
 ing what a good dinner Parr was enjoying with 
 the Mayor. This thought took away part of their 
 appetites, which returned the next day with the 
 half-crown, and the pewter pot of porter mantling 
 with emblematic froth. I did hope that the genial 
 soul of Parr had by this time fairly escaped out of 
 Purgatory, and that the pincers of his little perse- 
 cutors had been laid by. Porson is not to be repre- 
 hended for smiling at him over his cups, but the 
 Opium-eater is less easily to be pardoned his abusive 
 intoxication. They who are incapable of doing 
 
 * Preached on Easter Tuesday, 1800.
 
 58 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 justice may at least wish to do it, and may attempt 
 it. No exercise is wholesomer.' 
 
 In some of the fragments we seem to have 
 portions of a projected essay on poetic com- 
 position, and they might be pieced together 
 without showing any more abrupt transitions 
 than are met with in Landor's published 
 writings. There is no warrant, however, for 
 regarding them in this light, nor is it necessary 
 to exhibit them except as unconnected passages. 
 In the first Landor enlarges on the merits of 
 Ovid, a favourite topic with him. Elsewhere 
 he has made Petrarch say that of all the 
 ancient Romans Ovid had the finest imagina- 
 tion ; and in the ' Imaginary Conversations ' there 
 are endless allusions to his own liking for Ovid's 
 poetry. The observations I shall now quote 
 begin with a reference to people who find many 
 faults in Ovid and discover none in Virgil. 
 
 IN PRAISE OF OVID. 
 
 ' In the earlier [works] of Ovid there is greatly 
 more poetical spirit than in the earlier of Virgil, and 
 in my opinion all the Eclogues are not worth a single 
 epistle of the Heroines. We must never suppose
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 59 
 
 that the poet wrote the beginning in " Dido to 
 iEneas " : 
 
 ' " Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis 
 Ad vada Maeandri concinnit albus olor."* 
 
 For such trash as this a schoolmaster would pull a 
 boy's hair. In the turbulence of her grief unhappy- 
 Dido thought little about a white swan, living or 
 dying, and knew not whether there were shallows 
 on the Maeander, or even whether there were such 
 a river in the world. How affecting is the real com- 
 mencement of the epistle : 
 
 • " Non quia te nostra [sperem prece posse moveri, 
 
 Alloquor]." 
 
 ' Are there not here irrepressible sighs and irre- 
 sistible sobs and hopeless anguish ? This poem 
 had appeared before the yEneid, else we might 
 believe that Ovid had copied in it the most beauti- 
 ful part of that noble poem. 
 
 ' There is more invention and imagination in Ovid 
 than in any poet between Homer and Shakespeare. 
 Witches and faeries and allegorical impersonations 
 afford no proof of imagination or originality. We 
 find them in succession. Their moulted feathers 
 drop and repullulate periodically. A short allegory 
 may be very charming ; a longer is insufferably 
 
 * Ovid, Heroid., vii. 1. See also Landor, Works, 
 1896, viii., p. 412.
 
 60 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 tedious. Did anyone ever read the " Faery Queene" 
 a single hour at a sitting, without stretching his 
 legs out and his arms up, and the ore rotundo of a 
 gape, silent or sonorous ?' 
 
 On the same sheet of paper are some re- 
 marks concerning the difference between fancy, 
 imagination, and invention, not inaptly illus- 
 trated by references to English writers from 
 Shakespeare to Southey. Wordsworth, in the 
 preface to the volume of his poems published 
 in 1815, had enlarged on the same topic. 
 Landor writes : 
 
 ' It appears to me that fancy is somewhat lighter 
 than imagination. We often hear that he or she 
 has fancies, never imaginations. Weak intellects 
 are swayed by fancy ; stronger bring images before 
 them. Nothing is more incorrect than the expres- 
 sion of Ben Jonson* in the verse : 
 
 ' " Where sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
 Warbled his native woodnotes wild." 
 
 Shakespeare was no warbler, nor were wood-notes 
 his, nor was there any wildness [in] even his earlier 
 poems. On the contrary they were elaborate, and 
 
 * A lapsus penncB ; the lines are Milton's. The 
 same remark, with the name rightly given, is made 
 by Landor elsewhere. See Works, 1876, v. 154.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 6r 
 
 the thoughts were often far-sought and quaint. He 
 played with Fancy when he was adult, and only for 
 the hour and in brief moments of it. Imagination, 
 not Fancy, possessed him when he made Caliban 
 his slave, and when he possest the heart of 
 Miranda. His invention was more copious than 
 in any other poet, as were his fancy and imagina- 
 tion more vivid. Both invention and imagination 
 may exist in full vigour beyond the regions of 
 poetry. Richardson, an author now neglected, 
 created and imagined the characters of Clarissa and 
 her persecutors, and placed them closely and dis- 
 tinctly before our eyes. He was a great inventor. 
 Scott was more of a poet in his novels than in his 
 poems, wherein he was also great. Southey was a 
 true poet in his " Kehama " as in many of his other 
 works. In his " Kehama " he has shown more 
 imagination and invention than any other poet in 
 the present or last century.' 
 
 In another fragment, without beginning or 
 end, Landor has noted down some reflections 
 on the nature of poetry, together with opinions 
 on certain of his own contemporaries. The 
 manuscript is in places illegible, but the lacuna 
 are of slight consequence. He says : 
 
 ' For the larger works of poetry the requisites are 
 conciseness without abruptness, comprehensiveness 
 without diffuseness ; for the smaller a portion of
 
 62 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 these qualities under the presidence of grace. But 
 above all things, affectation of novelty is to be 
 avoided and never to be taken for originality. 
 Nothing in poetry is original. The best poets 
 have labored with the same conceptions. . . .* 
 But it happens more frequently that the ideas spring 
 up before him [the poet] without his consciousness. 
 They have sprung up before others from generation 
 to generation. Do you believe that the noble 
 speech of Sarpedon to Glaucost was never in the 
 mind of others long before ? The clashing of 
 characters brought out those sparks in Shake- 
 speare which will be unextinguished in the breast 
 of millions to all eternity. Men before him have 
 thought and felt somewhat of the same. There 
 was earth before God moulded it into man. 
 
 ' We must not overlook or undervalue our con- 
 temporaries, but it is safer to abstain from the 
 praise of one or other, else we may be called 
 negligent or indifferent or ignorant. 
 
 ' We may walk back with impunity among the 
 recently dead. We may revert to the " Ivan " and 
 the " Casabianca " of Felicia Hemans ; to Camp- 
 bell's " Battle of Hohenlinden " and of " The Baltic " ; 
 we may accompany Southey, and acknowledge in 
 his " Kehama " the most imaginative of our modern 
 poets in whatever country they may have been 
 
 * A few words are illegible. 
 i Homer, ' Iliad,' xii.
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS 63 
 
 flourishing. In reading some of his earlier works 
 you perhaps will say : 
 
 ' " Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret 
 vis !" 
 
 ' Cowper was grave and intellectual, but never is 
 prosaic as Wordsworth often is, for example in his 
 dedication to Lord Lonsdale : 
 
 ' " Illustrious peer 
 With high respect and gratitude sincere." 
 
 ' Moore is caught gilding refined gold, yet in 
 the midst of pleasantry there is tenderness and 
 grace. . . .* The " Lays of Rome" are vigorous ; 
 his [Macaulay's] criticism and history are diluted 
 epigrams, and are more ingenious than just. I 
 have not spoken of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron. 
 Scott superseded Wordsworth, and Byron super- 
 seded Scott, unjustly in both instances. Scott had 
 a wider range than either, and excelled in more 
 qualities.' 
 
 * A few words are illegible.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 ' Certainly there is a middle state between love 
 and friendship, more delightful than either, but 
 more difficult to remain in.' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 ' Rose Aylmer's hair.' This is the inscription 
 in Landor's unmistakable hand* on a small 
 paper packet containing a lock of hair of a 
 light amber tint, or, should one say, of sunlit 
 gold, and of a beautiful texture. Perhaps no 
 lines that Landor ever composed are better 
 known or more often quoted than the plaintive 
 elegy in which he mourned this young lady's 
 death : 
 
 ' Ah ! what avails the sceptred race, 
 Ah ! what the form divine.' 
 
 * The ink is of a peculiar kind which he some- 
 times used.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 65 
 
 There is surely no need to repeat the rest ; 
 yet not everyone, it may be, who knows the 
 lines by heart could rightly interpret the allusion 
 to a ' sceptred ' race. John Aylmer, Bishop of 
 London in the latter half of the sixteenth 
 century, is twice mentioned in Landor's ' Im- 
 aginary Conversations.' A note appended to 
 that between Lord Brooke and Sir Philip 
 Sidney reminds the reader that Bishop Aylmer 
 Avas wont to play bowls after Sunday service, 
 and that when censured by the over-devout for 
 so doing, the good prelate replied : ' The 
 Sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
 the Sabbath.' Landor also liked the Bishop 
 for his orthography, and cited his spelling of 
 the words monark and tetrark as an example 
 worthy to be imitated. 
 
 From Bishop Aylmer, as Landor believed, 
 were descended the Irish peers who bear his 
 name. The Honourable Rose Whitworth 
 Aylmer was the only daughter of the fourth 
 Baron Aylmer, and the sister of his successor, 
 who was Governor -General of Canada from 
 1830 to 1835. 
 
 The story of Landor's acquaintance with 
 Rose Aylmer has been touched on by Mr. 
 
 5
 
 66 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 Forster, and with a finer sympathy by Mr. 
 Colvin. There are one or two points, however, 
 in regard to which a few words may be said. It 
 was at Swansea, and, I think, in the autumn of 
 1796,* that Landor met Miss Aylmer. Her 
 father had died in 1785, and she was living 
 with Lady Aylmer at what was then a secluded 
 watering-place, not yet bristling with the tall 
 chimneys of copper smelting works. Landor 
 was a young gentleman of one -and -twenty, 
 Miss Aylmer being a few years younger. 
 Born in October, 1779, she was now just 
 seventeen. 
 
 I have been unable to find any portrait of 
 Miss Aylmer. In Mr. Andrew Lang's collection 
 of lyrics there is a picture of a ghost-like lady, 
 which is supposed to represent ' that form 
 divine ' ; but it is, I fear, merely a fancy sketch. 
 A portrait of Lady Graves-Sawle, Miss Aylmer's 
 niece, was published in the ■ Book of Beauty ' 
 for 1840, and General Mackinnon, C.B., has 
 an oil painting of her brother, General Lord 
 Aylmer : no portrait of herself is discoverable. 
 There is nothing but this lock of hair. Nor 
 
 * See Landor's poem, ' St. Clair,' in ' Dry 
 Sticks,' p. 86.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 67 
 
 have we any portrait of Landor at this period. 
 He had already published two little volumes of 
 poetry, had spent a year at Oxford and been 
 rusticated, had obtained glimpses of fashionable 
 life in London, and had now betaken himself 
 to South Wales, to read Milton and Pindar. 
 When not engaged in these studies or in field- 
 sports, he cultivated a far from hopeless passion 
 at Tenby, and at Swansea a sentimental friend- 
 ship with Miss Aylmer. She was his companion 
 in walks to Briton Ferry and along the banks 
 of the River Tawey ; and it was she who 
 supplied a theme for the heroic narrative which 
 made him known to some of the most dis- 
 tinguished writers of the day. For Miss Aylmer 
 lent him ' The Progress of Romance,' by Clara 
 Reeve, getting the book from the Swansea 
 circulating library. In one of the stories told 
 by that once fashionable authoress he found 
 the framework of ' Gebir,' the work in which 
 Southey discerned miraculous beauties and 
 some of the most exquisite poetry in the 
 English language ; which, years afterwards, 
 Shelley was never tired of reciting to whoever 
 would listen ; and which a Quarterly reviewer, 
 in his blindness, pronounced to be ' a thing dis- 
 
 5—2
 
 68 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 tressing to read and of an unconquerable 
 obscurity.'* 
 
 Tenderly as Rose Aylmer's memory is 
 evoked in the verses that Charles Lamb ' lived 
 upon for weeks,' and fondly as Landor cherished 
 the beautiful memento of those early days, there 
 was more sentiment than passion in his devotion, 
 and nothing of either, perhaps, in the girlish 
 regard felt by Miss Aylmer for the young poet 
 who was ready to worship at her shrine. Yet 
 mourned she was and unforgotten all the days 
 of his life ; and even in old age he would 
 transcribe and emend the poems he had written 
 for her in his boyhood. One at least of them 
 will be found among those now printed for the 
 first time. 
 
 What is even more interesting than the 
 verses is a letter of Landor's, which Lady 
 Graves-Sawle allows me to quote here. It was 
 written in reply to a question asked by her 
 mother, Mrs. Paynter, and gives us, I think, for 
 the first time an explicit allusion in Landor's 
 own words to the ' torn romance ' of his 
 youth : 
 
 ::: Quarterly Review, 1837, p. 143.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 69 
 
 4 Bath, 
 
 'Feb., 1853. 
 ' Dear Mrs. Paynter, 
 
 ' All this evening I have been trying to re- 
 collect the verses, to which you alluded, to Rose 
 Aylmer. I am quite certain I never wrote any of 
 an amatory turn, nor ever offered a word of love to 
 your lovely sister. After beating my brains, I 
 picked up the only lines I wrote about her, until I 
 heard, two years later, of her death. I took my 
 boy's copy book (we had no Albums in those days) 
 to show Mrs. Willoughby what I had written, the 
 day before, on a forfeit I had won and had exacted 
 on the evening of Twelfth Night. I will transcribe 
 them for you ; my copy book was chiefly filled with 
 Latin and Greek. I do not believe that any 
 [? prize] was prefixt to the [verses] . Your sister 
 had cut a nick at the end of her bonnet ribbon at 
 Mrs. Thomas', where several girls and youths were. 
 I picked up the little triangle, saying it was too 
 precious to be lost, or for anyone to possess it with- 
 out a contest, and proposed that we should draw 
 lots for it. I gave the verses to Mrs. Thomas, and 
 nobody else. I was not successful in the drawing. 
 In the autumn of that year I left Swansea for 
 Tenby. 
 
 ' " Where all must love, but one can win the prize, 
 The others walk away with tears and sighs. 
 With tears and sighs let them walk off, while I 
 Walk for three miles in better company."
 
 70 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' But I did not walk the three miles that morning, 
 or for many after. The more serious verses I wrote 
 six years later. 
 
 ' " I draw with trembling hand my doubtful lot ; 
 Yet where are Fortune's frowns, if she frown not 
 From whom I hope, from whom I fear the 
 kiss ? 
 O gentle Love ! if there be ought beyond 
 That makes the bosom calm, but leaves it fond, 
 O let her give me that and take back this." ' 
 
 *)* -i» -i' 'l" *!' 
 
 The reader may recollect, with some surprise, 
 that while the first of the two poemetti tran- 
 scribed in this letter cannot be found anywhere 
 in Landor's published writings ; the second was 
 printed among the verses to Ianthe. As will 
 presently be seen, there are other instances of 
 such unconscious or deliberate mystification. 
 
 Before the close of the last , century Miss 
 Aylmer went out to India to stay with her 
 mother's sister, the wife of Sir Henry Russell, 
 a judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in 
 Bengal. 
 
 ' Where is she now ? Called far away 
 By one she dared not disobey, 
 To those proud halls for youth unfit, 
 Where princes stand and judges sit.'* 
 
 :;: Landor's ' Heroic Idyls,' p. 158.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 71 
 
 Landor's verses seem to suggest that Miss 
 Aylmer went to India rather against her will, 
 but I know not if there is any warrant for this 
 theory. Sir Henry Russell was a noted man in 
 his day. Appointed by the Crown to a puisne 
 judgeship in Bengal, he went out to India in 
 the Company's ship Earl Fitzwilliam, reaching 
 Calcutta in May, 1798, a few days after the new 
 Governor-General, Lord Mornington, had taken 
 over charge of his high office. Lady Russell, 
 with her niece Miss Aylmer and another niece, 
 who afterwards married Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, 
 followed Sir Henry some months later. 
 
 Of Miss Aylmer's uncle, the judge, one may 
 read in old volumes of the Asiatic Annual 
 Register how he would address the grand 
 jury ' in an elegant, pertinent and perspicuous 
 charge,' and how, on one occasion, he passed a 
 capital sentence on a young Company's cadet 
 who had set fire to a native's hut. The 
 judgment created no small sensation in Cal- 
 cutta, and was referred to by a local poet : 
 
 ' Truth and order seemed to shed a tear, 
 And Russell's voice still sounded in my ear.' ::: 
 
 * 'Calcutta: a Poem,' by J. J. London, 1811.
 
 72 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 But of Miss Aylmer's life after she said fare- 
 well to Landor we know nothing. Doubtless 
 she went to balls at Government House where 
 she perhaps had a certain Colonel Arthur 
 Wellesley as a partner. It is still more likely 
 that she knew a lady whose charms have been 
 celebrated by a great writer who, like Landor, 
 was a Warwickshire man. Writing to Boswell 
 in March, 1774, Dr. Johnson said : ' Chambers 
 is either married, or almost married, to Miss 
 Wilton, a girl of sixteen, exquisitely beautiful, 
 whom he has with his lawyer's tongue persuaded 
 to take her chance with him in the East.' Sir 
 Robert Chambers resigned the Chief Justiceship 
 of Bengal just before Sir Henry Russell took 
 his seat on the bench ; but he lived in India till 
 his death in 1803. 
 
 The Asiatic Register for 1800 records the 
 death, on March 3, of ' the Hon. Miss Aylmer,. 
 a young lady of great beauty and accomplish- 
 ments.' She died of cholera : 
 
 ' Where Ganges rolls his widest wave 
 She dropped her blossom in the grave ; 
 Her noble name she never changed, 
 Nor was her nobler heart estranged.'* 
 
 * Landor's verses in ' Heroic Idyls,' p. 158.
 
 ROSE AYLMER'S TOMB AT CALCUTTA. 
 (From a Photograph.) 
 
 To face p. 72.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 73 
 
 Her grave is in the cemetery in South Park 
 Street, Calcutta ; and I am able to give a 
 sketch of the monument erected to her memory. 
 It bears the following inscription : 
 
 In Memory of 
 
 THE HONOURABLE 
 
 ROSE WHITWORTH AYLMER, 
 
 WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 
 
 MARCH THE 2ND, A.D. 1800, 
 
 AGED 20 YEARS. 
 
 ' What was her fate ? Long, long before her hour 
 Death called her tender soul by break of bliss, 
 From the first blossoms, from the bud of joy. 
 Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves 
 In this unclement clime of human life.' 
 
 Possibly it was of Rose Aylmer's death that 
 Landor was thinking, when, years afterwards. 
 he wrote those mournful stanzas : 
 
 ' My pictures blacken in their frames 
 As night comes on ; 
 And youthful maids and wrinkled dames 
 Are now all one. 
 
 ' Death of the day ! a sterner Death 
 Did worse before ; 
 The fairest form, the sweetest breath, 
 Away he bore.'
 
 74 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 The lock of Rose Aylmer's hair, found in the 
 cedar-wood desk nearly a hundred years after 
 her death, was given to Landor by her half- 
 sister, Mrs. Paynter. The gift was acknow- 
 ledged in the lines : 
 
 ' Beautiful spoils ! borne off from vanquish'd 
 death, 
 Upon my heart's high altar shall ye lie, 
 Moved but by only one adorer's breath, 
 Retaining youth, rewarding constancy.'" 
 
 Leigh Hunt has related how he and Landor 
 made acquaintance — ' as other acquaintances 
 commence over a bottle ' — when looking at a 
 solitary hair stolen by some froward tourist 
 from a lock of Lucretia Borghia's hair exhibited 
 in the Ambrosian library at Milan. f There 
 may be some whom the sight of this lock of 
 Rose Aylmer's hair would lead to a more 
 intimate knowledge of Landor. It would be a 
 pathetic introduction. 
 
 Were it not for Landor's handwriting, one 
 might have doubted to whom it belonged. 
 
 * ' Last Fruit off an old Tree,' p. 383. 
 
 f See Landor's verses, Works, 1876, viii. 92; 
 and an article by Leigh Hunt, reprinted in his 
 London Journal, April 22, 1835.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 75 
 
 There are other ' beautiful spoils ' that inspired 
 
 his rhymes. Mention has already been made of 
 
 tender passages at Tenby, where dwelt the lone 
 
 of his verse. Some of Ione's ' golden hairs, 
 
 once mingled with my own,'* were also at one 
 
 time among the trophies of his former loves. 
 
 No trace of them, however, was found in his 
 
 desk, nor was there anything that could surely 
 
 be described as a memento of this ' gentle, 
 
 young lone,' whom he named with the nymphs 
 
 in ' Gebir,' and later with the Nereids in 
 
 ' Chrysaor ': 
 
 ' Sweet lone, youngest born, 
 
 Of mortal race, but grown divine by song.' 
 
 On the other hand there is more than one 
 visible reminiscence of another page of love in 
 his life's history ; the page, I think, which he 
 recalled most often. I have already quoted the 
 letter in which he referred to two miniatures to 
 be kept for his sake, as he had kept them for 
 theirs they represent. In another letter, written 
 apparently a day or two later, that is, about the 
 beginning of June, 1863, Landor said : 
 
 ' The smaller miniature is a portrait of the 
 Countess (sic) de Molande, who came to visit me 
 
 * See Works, 1896, viii., pp. 77 and 296.
 
 76 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 at my villa thirty years after. The smaller (sic) 
 one is of her grand-daughter, since married to 
 Mr. O'Donnell of Baltimore. The civil war in 
 America makes me anxious about her, since no 
 letter from her has reacht me lately.' 
 
 There were two miniatures in the desk, and 
 any doubt arising from the confusion between 
 smaller and larger is set at rest by the writing 
 on the back of the larger one. Here is written 
 in pencil, ' Miss de Sodre,' and in ink, the 
 signature of the artist, ' C. Ford. Bath, 1849/ 
 Miss de Sodre was the grand-daughter of the 
 Countess de Molande, who is pictured in the 
 smaller and older miniature. This represents a 
 charming girl, with laughter -loving eyes and 
 pouting lips, cheeks radiant with health, and 
 brown hair clustering in curls on her smooth 
 brow: 
 
 ' O thou whose happy pencil strays 
 Where I am call'd, nor dare to gaze, 
 
 But lower my eye and check my tongue ; 
 O, if thou valuest peaceful days, 
 Pursue the ringlet's sunny maze, 
 
 And dwell not on those lips too long.' 
 
 The lines are printed among the verses 
 addressed to Ianthe in the volume published
 
 •\ ''' 
 
 ft /////< 
 
 London I
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 77 
 
 by Landor in 1831. They were most likely 
 written some time before ; though whether in- 
 tended for a warning to the artist who painted 
 this particular miniature is a problem that 
 evades inquiry. What we do know is that the 
 charming girl here depicted is the Ianthe of a 
 cycle of love-lyrics which it is hard to match ; 
 Ianthe, whose pleasures sprang like daisies on 
 the grass ; ' she whom no Grace was tardy to 
 adorn ' ; Ianthe of the cherisht form and 
 heavenly smile ; Ianthe of the white hand and 
 warm, wet cheek ; of happy days and fond 
 regrets ; Ianthe whose lovely name inspired 
 the poet's song : 
 
 ' And dwelling in the heart 
 
 Forever falters at the tongue 
 
 And trembles to depart.' 
 
 Ianthe's genealogy and descent may be traced 
 in Burke's ' Landed Gentry.' Her maiden name 
 was Sophia Jane Swift, and her great-great- 
 grandfather was Godwin Swift, the uncle of 
 the famous Dean. Landor, who once declared 
 that he read ' The Tale of a Tub ' oftener than 
 any prose work in the English language, fell 
 an easy victim to the fascinations of a gentler 
 member of the family. Dean Swift, as we know
 
 78 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 from Alexander Pope,* had ' very particular 
 eyes ; they are quite azure as the heavens, and 
 there is a very uncommon archness in them.' 
 There may have been a family likeness. 
 
 Landor and his Ianthe met first, I think, at 
 Clifton. Inside Landor's writing-desk is 
 fastened an engraving after a sketch by 
 S. Jackson of the view from Clifton Church, 
 and he always associated that neighbourhood 
 with memories of Ianthe : 
 
 ' The mossy bank, dim glade and dizzy hight, 
 The sheep that, starting from the tufted thyme, 
 Untune the distant Church's mellow chime.' 
 
 Few poets who transmute their love affairs 
 into song can be trusted to render a strictly- 
 impartial account either of raptures or torments. 
 The loves of Landor and Ianthej, as related by 
 Landor, may bear little resemblance, in some 
 details of the story, to the truer record Ianthe 
 could have given of their companionship. Still 
 it is not difficult to make a fair guess at what 
 happened. Of Landor, three years before his 
 death, Browning wrote : ' Whatever he may 
 profess, the thing he really loves is a pretty 
 
 * ' Spence's Anecdotes,' p. 135.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 79 
 
 girl to talk nonsense with.' In such alluring 
 pastime he had found solace and contentment, 
 whatever else failed, all the days of his life ; and 
 who can doubt that he discoursed oceans of 
 nonsense with the pretty Irish girl ? How 
 much of seriousness was mixed therein one 
 cannot tell, but the fact is on record that 
 Ianthe, whose wisdom and foresight can never 
 be too highly commended, married not the heir 
 of Ipsley Court in Warwickshire, but her cousin, 
 Mr. Godwin Swifte, of Lionsden, County Kil- 
 kenny, and lived very happily with him. Even 
 if she gave Landor more encouragement than 
 should prudently have been accorded, who can 
 blame the fair inciter of such exquisite lyrics ? 
 Even were Ianthe ' fond, but fickle and untrue,' 
 literature is the richer by tender, sad complaints 
 like these : 
 
 • Bid my bosom cease to grieve, 
 
 Bid these eyes fresh objects see, 
 Where's the comfort to believe 
 
 None would once have rival'd me ? 
 What, my freedom to receive ? 
 
 Broken hearts, are they the free ? 
 For another can I live 
 
 If I may not live for thee ?'
 
 So WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 That Ianthe was Miss Swift when Landor 
 met her first is, I think, evident from more 
 than one little poem, in which, as first printed, 
 he calls her ' sweet maid.' Moreover, there are 
 Latin verses, ' Ad Ianthen ' : 
 
 ' O per virgineos, carissima dona, capillos, 
 O mihi virginea non data dona manu.' 
 
 According to family tradition, Ianthe's marriage 
 took place in 1803. Among the hitherto un- 
 published poems printed in another part of the 
 present volume there is one which seems to 
 describe a highly indiscreet endeavour to see 
 and converse with the lady after her hand had 
 been finally bestowed on a happier rival. 
 Perhaps it was no more than a dream. 
 
 When seeking for autobiography in Landor's 
 writings there are frequent pitfalls to beware 
 of. Landor once accused himself — and not 
 altogether unjustly — of being a horrible con- 
 founder of historic facts. There was usually, 
 he confessed, one history that he had read and 
 another that he had invented. Invention some- 
 times played its part in his verses, as it does in 
 those of other poets who might be named. 
 And there was another source of mystification.
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 81 
 
 In one of his dialogues Landor unconsciously 
 borrowed a notion from Sir Thomas Browne's 
 ' Religio Medici.' 'A misery there is in affection 
 that whom we truly love like our own selves, we 
 forget their looks, nor can our memory retain 
 the Idea of their faces.' So Sir Thomas 
 Browne wrote ; and Landor makes Filippo 
 Lippi repeat, as a saying of the corsair from 
 Tunis who carried him into captivity, ' Alas ! 
 when we most love the absent, when we most 
 desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her 
 image back to us.' Landor, I suspect, could 
 not always bring to mind, when nearly a long 
 lifetime afterwards he revised a poem for the 
 printer, the name of her to whom it had been 
 addressed. Then, again, he would alter a set 
 of verses, intended originally for one fair en- 
 chantress, so as to make them apply to another. 
 To me it seems indisputable that a few, at any 
 rate, of the poems labelled ' To Ianthe ' in the 
 volume printed in 1831 were actually inspired, 
 in the previous century, by lone. One in 
 particular, when published in 1804 — it was 
 doubtless written some years earlier — con- 
 tained verses which were omitted in 1831, and 
 which, though they may have referred to lone, 
 
 6
 
 82 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 would be altogether inadmissible in a poem 
 about Ianthe. This is a point which Landor's 
 future editors must not overlook. As an instance 
 of the permutation of names in Landor's love 
 poetry the lines 
 
 ' Thank Heaven, Neaera, once again 
 Our lips in ardent kisses meet,' 
 
 may be quoted. That is how they were printed 
 in 1802, and again in ' Heroic Idyls,' 1863 ; but 
 in Mr. Forster's two editions (1846 and 1876) 
 Neaera becomes Ianthe. In the same way 
 Psyche alternates with Zoe in the verses 
 beginning 
 
 ' Against the rocking mast I stand.' 
 
 Last of all there are not wanting grounds for 
 the suspicion that someone who harboured a 
 grudge against the charming Ianthe was re- 
 sponsible for a use of her name in a way wholly 
 unwarranted by the facts. ' I printed,' Landor 
 wrote to Southey, ' whatever was marked with 
 a pencil by a woman who loved me, and I con- 
 sulted all her caprices.' Some commentators 
 have supposed that Ianthe herself was the 
 ' woman who loved me,' and who made the 
 selection. On the other hand, in another letter
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 83 
 
 to the same address, Landor said : ' But, Southey, 
 I love a woman who will never love me, and am 
 beloved by one who never ought.' Here be 
 mysteries not to be fathomed. 
 
 So I do not attach very great significance to 
 a list, in Landor's hand, of ' verses to Ianthe.' 
 When he sent a copy of his poems to Miss 
 Mary Boyle, he protested that all the amatory 
 ones were ideal. ' Someone,' he said, ' has 
 fancied that Ianthe (stolen by Byron) is only 
 Jane with the Greek 0. What noodles are 
 commentators!' Still, the manuscript list may 
 suffice to clear up some perplexities. It shows, 
 for instance, that the beautiful lines to J. S., at 
 whose identity Mr. Colvin would not even 
 hazard a guess, were meant for Ianthe, being 
 addressed to Jane Sophia when she was Madame 
 de Molande. They lend such charming colour 
 to the portrait of Ianthe that I cannot refrain 
 from transcribing them : 
 
 ' Many may yet recall the hours 
 That saw thy lover's chosen flowers 
 Nodding and dancing in the shade 
 Thy dark and wavy tresses made ; 
 On many a brain is pictured yet 
 Thy languid eye's dim violet ; 
 
 6—2
 
 84 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 But who among them all foresaw 
 How the sad snows that never thaw 
 Upon that head one day should lie, 
 And love but glimmer from that eye ?' 
 
 And one would not willingly lose the 
 romance that might be woven from the chain 
 of verses to an idealized Ianthe. Remember 
 only that Ianthe does not invariably stand for 
 Miss Swift, afterwards Mrs. Swifte (her cousin 
 and husband added an e to the name), and as 
 pretty a tale of love may be told as ever poet 
 feigned. The Ianthe of our imagination had a 
 pleasing, yet perhaps not a very safe method, 
 or to be commended to a susceptible genera- 
 tion, of compelling her poet's attention : 
 
 ' Ianthe took me by both ears, and said : 
 " You are so rash, I own I am a/raid. 
 Prop, or keep hidden in your heart, my name, 
 But be your love as lasting as your fame." ' 
 
 Nor is it only once that the lover — the 
 imaginary lover — finds himself in such tolerable 
 durance. He repeats some of his Latin verses, 
 whereupon ' she held me by both ears till I gave 
 her the English.' In the language of Tibullus 
 and Ovid the lines run :
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 85 
 
 ' Vita brevi est fugitura, prior fugitura voluptas, 
 Hoc saltern exiguo tempore duret amor.' 
 
 And, Englished by the audacious versifier, they 
 become : 
 
 ' Too soon, Ianthe, life is o'er, 
 
 And sooner beauty's playful smile. 
 Kiss me, and grant what I implore, 
 Let love remain that little while.' 
 
 One of Landor's ' Hellenics ' ends with a 
 dubitation concerning a kiss : 
 
 ' A swain averr'd 
 That he descried in the deep wood a cheek 
 At first aslant, then lower, then eclipst. 
 Another said it was not in the wood, 
 But in the grotto near the water-fall, 
 And he alone had seen it. 
 
 The dispute 
 Ran high ; a third declared that both were 
 wrong.' 
 
 One is so apt to be mistaken at such times, 
 and the better way is not to look. 
 
 To return to the veritable Ianthe. Much 
 may be gathered about her life and character 
 from a little volume of reminiscences written by 
 her son. Her first husband, the father of her
 
 86 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 five children, died in 1814. She mourned him 
 sincerely, and her acute grief brought on an 
 attack of brain fever. Then followed a year 
 or two of consolable widowhood, during which 
 time Mrs. Swifte, young, pretty, and with a 
 good income at her disposal, helped to em- 
 bellish the reception-rooms of various pro- 
 vincial towns and watering-places. Her son 
 relates that on one occasion his mother's 
 power of fascination was exerted in the interests 
 of what local opinion looked upon as justice. 
 Local opinion ran high in favour of two 
 prisoners about to be tried on some capital 
 charge. Ianthe resolved that they should 
 escape the law's extreme penalty ; and to that 
 end invited the learned judge — no other than 
 Lord Norbury — and the grand jury to dinner, 
 after which there was dancing. The judge 
 vowed he would dance with the lovely widow 
 as long as he had a leg to stand on ; and his 
 Lordship, we are to infer, was so mollified by 
 the gracious attention he received, that, when 
 the trial came on, he gave the prisoners the 
 benefit of a doubt. Long before this, of course, 
 Landor had married Miss Julia Thuillier ; and 
 the same year that made Ianthe a widow saw
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 87 
 
 him, his mundane estate sadly encumbered by 
 rash experiments at Llanthony, and by experi- 
 ments still more unwise in litigation, an exile 
 from his country, and estranged for weeks 
 together from his young wife. That passing 
 discord was quickly composed, and for the 
 space of twenty years husband and wife lived 
 together in Italy, except for a few months in 
 1832, when Landor revisited England. 
 
 Toward the end of 1829 ne again met Ianthe, 
 now for the second time a widow. In 1816 she 
 had married the Count Lepelletier de Molande, 
 a Norman nobleman, who in his youth had 
 been page to the beautiful and unfortunate 
 Princesse de Lamballe, and who afterwards, 
 emigrating to England, was attached to the 
 person of George IV. He died in or about 
 1827 ; and Madame de Molande, going to 
 Florence in 1829, renewed her acquaintance 
 with Landor. Writing to his sister Ellen, he 
 styled this lady the dearest of all the friends he 
 ever had or ever should have. Neither time 
 nor bereavement had impaired her beauty, and 
 she was now being entreated by two ardent 
 suitors — an English earl and a French duke, 
 to venture on a third essay in matrimony.
 
 SB WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 * I wonder not,' Landor wrote, ' that youth 
 remains with you :' 
 
 ' Where could he find such fair domains, 
 Where bask beneath such sunny eyes?' 
 
 He also addressed some verses to ' Madame 
 de Molande about to marry the Duke of Luxem- 
 burg'; but neither this nor the other match 
 came off. During her residence in Florence, 
 the Countess visited the Landors at their 
 Fiesolan Villa. Moreover, at her host's re- 
 quest, she planted four mimosa - trees in his 
 garden, round the spot marked out by him as 
 his last resting-place. Nor did Landor shrink 
 from composing a suitable epitaph : 
 
 ' Lo ! where the four mimosas blend their shade 
 In calm repose at last is Landor laid ; 
 For ere he slept he saw them planted here 
 By her his soul had ever held most dear.' 
 
 In 1832, when Landor revisited England 
 after an absence of eighteen years, he found 
 Madame de Molande living at Brighton, ' in 
 the midst,' he wrote, ' of music, dancing, and 
 fashionable people turned Radicals,' and he 
 stayed a couple of days at her house. Of 
 further meetings there is no record till Landor
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 89 
 
 had left his wife and children in a fit of inex- 
 tinguishable anger, and had once more taken 
 up his abode among the ' peopled hills ' of 
 Bath. There also Madame de Molande settled 
 down for a while, and often helped him to bear 
 the burden of advancing age. At Bath Mr. 
 Forster was presented to the Countess. ' Even 
 when I first saw her,' he wrote, ' a bright, good- 
 humoured Irish face was all her beauty, but 
 youth still lingered in her eyes and hair.' All 
 too soon was Landor deprived of this and 
 many another consolation in his solitude. The 
 Laureate Southey, the accomplished Francis 
 Hare, the generous Joseph Ablett, the glorious 
 Lady Blessington — all were gone ; and in a 
 letter, dated August 3, 1851, Landor wrote: 
 
 1 1 have lost my beloved friend of half a century, 
 Jane, the Countess de Molande. She died at Ver- 
 sailles on the last of July after sixteen hours' illness. 
 This most affecting intelligence was sent me by her 
 son William, who was with her at her last hour. 
 She will be brought over to the family vault, in 
 County Meath, of her first husband, Swifte, great- 
 great - grandson of the uncle of the Dean of 
 St. Patrick's. I hoped she might have seen my 
 grave. Hers I shall never see, but my thoughts 
 will visit it often. Though other friends have
 
 9 o WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 died in other days (why cannot I help this running 
 into verse ?) one grave there is whose memory 
 sinks and stays.' 
 
 In the volume of ' Heroic Idyls ' is an elegy, 
 beginning : 
 
 ' I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so.' 
 
 The manuscript of these lines is now in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 With many among Landor's friends, the love 
 he bore them descended from generation to 
 generation. Of Ianthe's daughters by her 
 first husband, the elder, Jane Christiana, was 
 married in 1835 to the Chevalier Sergio de 
 Macedo, the Brazilian Minister in London. The 
 younger, Maria, had married, five years earlier, 
 the Chevalier Louis de Pereira Sodre, the 
 Brazilian Minister at the Vatican. Madame 
 de Pereira Sodre died in 1836, leaving a 
 daughter, Luisina, whose girlhood was passed 
 under the care of the Countess de Molande. 
 Miss de Pereira Sodre became a great favourite 
 of Landor's at Bath, and, as already stated, her 
 portrait was found in his writing-desk. Several 
 little poems were addressed to this young lady. 
 In one of them, published in the Keepsake for
 
 LOVES AND FRIENDSHIPS 9 1 
 
 1853, and also in ' Last Fruit,' mention is made 
 of her having waltzed with the Emperor of 
 Austria at Vienna, to whose court her uncle 
 was at one time accredited : 
 
 « Blush not to have been so chosen : 'twas that 
 blush 
 Which won the choice : 'twas not Pereira's name, 
 'Twas not De Sodre's, not Macedo's.' 
 
 There are verses also on Luisina's portrait : 
 
 ' Afar was I when thou wast born 
 More than one country to adorn, 
 My Luisina ! and afar 
 From me now shines thy morning star.' 
 
 A poetical exhortation was likewise addressed 
 to the young lady when she was about to visit 
 Paris, bidding her ' Listen not to the French- 
 man's tongue.' 
 
 A further reminiscence of Luisina, coupled 
 with one of another friend, is preserved in a 
 letter of Landor's to Mr. Forster. He was 
 enlarging on the intelligence and amiability of 
 his dog Pomero, and proceeds : 
 
 ' Last evening I took him to hear Luisina de 
 Sodre play and sing. She is my friend, the 
 Countess de Molande's grand-daughter. . . . Pomero
 
 92 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 was deeply affected and lay, close to the pedal, on 
 her gown, singing in a great variety of tones, not 
 always in time. It is unfortunate that he always 
 ■will take a part where there is music, for he sings 
 even worse than I do.' 
 
 Among the memorials found in Landor's desk 
 was a tuft of poor Pomero's hair ; Pomero, who 
 for thirteen years was his master's inseparable 
 companion, and whose virtues were celebrated 
 both in English and Latin. Here is his 
 epitaph : 
 
 ' Canem amicum suum egregie cordatum 
 qui appellatus fuit pomero, 
 savagius landor infra sepelivit.' 
 
 ' Pray for me and Pomero,' Landor wrote to 
 Miss Boyle; 'some people are wicked enough 
 to believe that we shall never' meet again.' 
 Pomero had been sent to Bath from Italy. 
 There was not an older family, his master 
 vowed, in all Bologna. ' His ancestors pre- 
 ceded the Bentivoglios, and were always staunch 
 republicans.'
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS. 
 
 1 How carelessly people say " I am delighted to 
 hear from you." No other language has this 
 beautiful expression.' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 By the kindness of a lady to whom Walter 
 Savage Landor was greatly attached, I am able 
 to print a number of letters of an earlier date 
 than those addressed to Dr. Walker. A little 
 while before he left his citron groves of Fiesole 
 and the beloved villa, where 
 
 ' By the lake Boccaccio's " Fair Brigade " 
 Beguiled the hours and tale for tale repaid,' 
 
 he enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Rose 
 Aylmer's half-sister, Mrs. Paynter, who, with 
 her daughter, a second ' Rose from that same 
 stem,' came to stay for a time in Florence.
 
 94 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 Out of fond recollections of the past, as well 
 as from the enjoyment of present felicities 
 such as he ever found in gracious company, 
 there quickly arose an affectionate esteem that 
 comforted his loneliness for another quarter of a 
 century. And for Miss Rose Paynter, a little 
 girl when he first knew her, but just released 
 from the nursery, the gallant, kindly gentleman, 
 now hard on sixty, entertained feelings not un- 
 like the loving regard of Epicurus, in the 
 ' Imaginary Conversations,' for his charming 
 pupils in philosophy, Leontion and Ternissa. 
 Need it be said that for her also there was 
 poetry in profusion ? In 1840 Miss Paynter's 
 portrait, engraved from a painting in oils by 
 Fisher, appeared in the ' Book of Beauty,' 
 along with verses by Landor. Six years later, 
 on her marriage to Sir Charles Graves-Sawle, 
 
 ' She upon her wedding day 
 Carried home my tenderest lay.' 
 
 Later still, more verses had to be written in 
 honour of a third Rose. 
 
 The letters will speak for themselves. The 
 first is addressed to Mrs. Paynter, the others to 
 Miss Rose Paynter, now Lady Graves-Sawle.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 95 
 
 To Mrs. Paynter at Rome. 
 
 4 Florence, 
 
 • Aprils [ ? 1833]. 
 ' Dear Mrs. Paynter, 
 
 ' . . . Nothing would have been more un- 
 conscionable in me than to have expressed a wish 
 to hear from you while at Rome for the first time ; 
 and nothing can be kinder than for you to cast a 
 thought on me from amidst so many wonders and 
 reflections. . . . Miss Mackenzie* is so charmed 
 with you and the twin roses, for I will not allow 
 one to be more rosy than the other. They will care 
 no more for having charmed her than for having 
 charmed me, who am rather the older of the two 
 old women, though there cannot be more than 
 twenty or thirty years' difference, which is no great 
 matter in such antiquities as you are getting used 
 to. Since you left Florence I have rarely gone 
 within the gates. Yesterday I finished the planting 
 of two thousand vines, and in the autumn I shall 
 plant as many more, besides seventy olives. I did 
 think of going to England, but if I do, I shall 
 return by November. Francis Hare is certainly 
 the best informed as well as the best natured man 
 you will meet in Italy. He will probably leave 
 Rome about the same time as you do, but you take 
 contrary directions. I am losing all my friends. 
 
 * Miss Mackenzie of Seaforth.
 
 96 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Mr. Brown,* an intelligent and most friendly man, 
 is gone to England with a resolution never to return 
 to Italy. Mr. Jamest goes to-morrow with the 
 same resolution. I cannot bear the idea of seeing 
 anything for the last time. There is something in 
 those two monosyllables that weighs very heavily 
 on the heart ; more heavily than volumes of school 
 divinity. Coragio, coragio. We must not talk in 
 this manner. Have we not both of us outlived the 
 Last Days of Pompeii ? 
 
 ' When you are at Naples, you will hear some- 
 thing of old Mathias, the man who wrote a sort of 
 satire called " The Pursuit of Literature." He now 
 writes sonnets ; Italian ones, too. When I was at 
 Naples he inspired me, as you shall see. 
 
 1 The piper's music fills the street, 
 The piper's music makes the heat 
 
 Hotter by ten degrees ; 
 Hand us a sonnet, dear Mathias, 
 Hand us a sonnet, cool and dry as 
 Your very best, and we, shall freeze.' 
 
 T *f» 'i* *r» *T* 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 1 Bath, 
 
 ' December, 1838. 
 Dear Rose, 
 
 ' It is only the pleasure you are enjoying at 
 
 Paris that would at all reconcile your circle here to 
 
 * Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, the friend of Keats. 
 f Mr. G. P. R. James, the novelist.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 97 
 
 the loss of you, the bitterness of which at the first 
 moments overflowed a little way beyond them. 
 There were too many thoughts and too perplexing 
 ones at bidding you farewell — I do not remember 
 whether there was a voice to utter them : if there was 
 it was forced into the service by a hard impressment. 
 
 ' Kenyon tells me that Southey is going to take a 
 second wife, Miss Caroline Bowles." She is repre- 
 sented as extremely amiable — not very young, nor 
 should she be. Southey is himself in his sixty-fifth 
 year. Surely he might see the mellow fruit on the 
 espalier without any hasty eagerness to gather it. 
 
 Surely, having been married once, and happily 
 
 But in fear of running too far into the romantic, I 
 will only say, I think I should have liked him rather 
 the better had he been contented to stop short of 
 matrimony. However, he is a more judicious and 
 a better man than I am, and I trust his choice will 
 be conducive to his happiness. In human life there 
 is but one important event — may God prosper it to 
 all my friends. 
 
 ' You tell me there are no pretty women in Paris. 
 Pretty women, I fancy, are reserved to be the orna- 
 ments of celebrated reigns. In the commencement 
 of Napoleon's career I remember Madame Tallien, 
 Madame Recamier and Pauline. The Duchesse de 
 Grammont was handsome, rather past her perfection, 
 but retaining a part of her bloom and all her graces. 
 
 :;: The marriage took place on June 5, 1839. 
 
 7
 
 98 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 If you meet her you will be pleased with her. I 
 cannot promise you quite so much in Lady Harriet 
 d'Orsay, if you converse with her more than once. 
 
 ' When Southey was appointed Poet-Laureate, it 
 was understood that he should not be obliged to 
 write any birthday verses, as had always been done 
 before. When you appointed me to the same office 
 the law was not very clearly laid down — I may 
 shuffle, and am half inclined. However, you shall 
 have as little as ever was offered on a similar occa- 
 sion. I believe the igth was the martyrdom of 
 St. Agnes — never mind if I am wrong. The poets 
 have as great a power as tyrants have, and can 
 order an execution or a reprieve ad libitum. 
 
 ' Slain was Agnes on the day 
 
 That we bless for Rose's birth ; 
 Heaven, who took a Saint away, 
 Sent an Angel down to Earth. 
 
 ' I have been spending a few days with my friend 
 Hare in Berkshire. The house* was built by Inigo 
 Jones— well adapted for Italy, better for Africa. 
 The cold was intense, and I slept in a bed large 
 enough for a company of comedians. Dear Rose, 
 ' Your sincere, affectionate friend, 
 
 ' W. S. L.' 
 
 Westwood Way House, where Francis Hare 
 was then living. In another letter Landor said the 
 house would have done passably well for Naples, 
 and better for Ti-mbuctoo.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 99 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 ' [Bath,] 
 
 ' March, 1839. 
 ' Dear Rose, 
 
 ' At last I am able to send you a little book* 
 to occupy you on your voyage homeward. Do not 
 censure me for representing Giovanna of Naples 
 as an amiable and virtuous woman — her true 
 character. In regard to the murder of her hus- 
 band there is no more doubt of her innocence than 
 there is of Mary Stuart's guilt. Giannone,! the 
 most dispassionate and impartial of historians, and 
 no favourer of Popes and Princes, mentions with 
 admiration her prudence, her genius, and her 
 gentleness of disposition, and repudiates the accusa- 
 tions brought against her by the blind vehemence 
 of an adverse faction. Boccaccio and Petrarcha in 
 their private letters are profuse in their praises of 
 her, and bitterly lament over her unmerited mis- 
 fortunes. They had been at her court before and 
 after her marriage. Now Petrarcha was somewhat 
 
 * f 
 
 Andrea of Hungary and Giovanna of Naples,' 
 by W. S. Landor. London, R. Bentley, 1839. 
 
 t Pietro Giannone's ' Civil History of Naples ' 
 was translated into English, early in the last 
 century, by Captain Ogilvie. Landor also quotes 
 this writer's defence of Giovanna of Naples in his 
 * Essay on Petrarcha.' Works, 1876, viii. 442. 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 addicted to censoriousness, and to conceal the fail- 
 ings of ladies was not among the habitudes of 
 Boccaccio. You will be inclined to pray that I may 
 not have another sprained ankle,* if a couple of 
 Dramas are to spring out of bran and vinegar, and 
 you must read them. 
 
 ' I have been reading the " Old Men's Tales." 
 Admirable ! admirable ! 
 
 ' Amidst the amusements of Paris you can have 
 little time for study, and much that you would read 
 would shock you as unprincipled. The harp of 
 De Beranger, the only poet, is strung only for 
 Paris. Lamartine is a mere versifier, fantastically 
 grave, and epigrammatically devout. Mignet, De 
 Tocqueville and Cousin write for politicians. Do 
 you ever meet with any of these authors ? If they 
 wish to keep up the illusion, they should rarely 
 come into sight. We soon discover, when we step 
 up close to it, of how petty materials the most solid 
 granite is composed. Among their smaller authors 
 it would be well if they exposed only the sugar and 
 water that catch flies, without the poison that 
 intoxicates and kills them. Exaggeration has 
 
 * ' He who sprains an ankle breaks a resolution. 
 I sprained my ankle a week ago. . . . On Sunday 
 after tea I began a drama on Giovanna di Napoli 
 (God defend us from the horrid sound, Joan of 
 Naples !).' Landor to Mr. Forster, October, 
 1838.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS ior 
 
 always been attractive. Voltaire alone is exempt 
 from this fault. No language is purer or more 
 perfect. We have no Bossuet, no Massillon. 
 Milton, our only great proseman, is not always 
 great as they are, although some pages of his are 
 worth nearly all they ever wrote. In his " Treatise 
 on Prelacy " are these words — printed, of course, as 
 prose — " When God commands to take the trumpet 
 and blow a dolorous or thrilling blast, it rests not 
 in man's will what he shall say, or what he shall 
 conceal."* Is there anything more solemn or 
 august in the whole range of poetry ? 
 
 ' When years have stored your mind with obser- 
 vation, you will continue to prefer Goldsmith to 
 Bulwer, Miss Edgeworth to Lady Morgan, Madame 
 de Sevigne to Chateaubriand : in other words, the 
 very best to the very worst. Well and wisely has 
 Boileau said : " Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul 
 est aimable.'" 
 
 1 I am going into Devonshire. Should I happen 
 to see a small cottage and garden to let, I hope to 
 gather my own gooseberries and radishes, and plant 
 my own rose-tree. O, that I could once more enjoy 
 the noble terraces of Sorrento, or my own at Fiesole, 
 no less delightful. Sorrento, I may perhaps ; the 
 other, never. I must break my promise with my 
 
 * Landor had a great liking for this quotation, 
 and more than once printed it in the form of blank 
 verse. See Works, 1876, v. 561 ; viii. 389.
 
 io2 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 four beautiful mimosas, to sit among them as long 
 as I live on condition that they continue to scatter 
 their sweet blossoms over me afterwards. These 
 now only fall on the myrtles and oleanders, "plants 
 of my hand and children of my care." Some of the 
 oleanders were seven feet high when I left Tuscany, 
 starring the ground and refreshing the air with their 
 flowers. 
 
 ' I once occupied the small apartment of Marie 
 Antoinette at the Petit Trianon for a fortnight.* 
 The windows were of a single pane, and overlooked 
 the English or rather Chinese garden. Happy 
 days ! but not for memory. I have been writing 
 for some hours ; none of your many friends think 
 of you oftener or more affectionately than that tire- 
 some old scribbler, 
 
 <W. S. Landor.' 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 ' [Bath,] 
 
 1 May, 1839. 
 ' Dear Rose, 
 
 ' So you have met Lord Brougham. He 
 has not quite so amiable or tranquil a face as 
 Lamartine. In plain truth it is quite the worst, 
 and very nearly the ugliest physiognomy in exist- 
 ence. It has, however, one advantage over its 
 proprietor — it does not lie. 
 
 * This was in 1802. See Forster's ' Life,' i. 174.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 10 
 
 j 
 
 ' When you visit Chantilly next, remember me 
 affectionately to my old friends, the carp. When I 
 saw them above thirty years ago, they were grayer 
 than I was. Assure them that if I now wear their 
 colours, it is not out of compliment to them. 
 Nevertheless I follow them closely in their main 
 opinion, which is always to keep out of hot 
 water. . . .' 
 
 To Miss Rose Payntev. 
 
 ' Gore House, 
 
 'June, 1839. 
 
 4 . . . . An odd thing happened to me which I 
 must tell you. I had given the Examiner-'' some 
 remarks on Lord Brougham in which I brought 
 down Bonaparte from the stilts on w T hich our 
 traitors have placed him. Prince Louis Napoleon, 
 Montauban, and Persigny had been conversing 
 with me in admirable good humour, when some- 
 thing was said by Lady Blessington about an 
 article in I know not what paper. " Apropos" said 
 Louis, " I owe many thanks to the author of the 
 Examiner for his notice of the Emperor." Luckily 
 he had forgotten that my name was at the bottom. 
 I could not help smiling. They say he is no fool — 
 — he looks like one, which is unusual in that 
 family. . . .' 
 
 * The article in the Examiner is reprinted in 
 Landor's Works, 1876, v. 553.
 
 io 4 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 ' [London,] 
 
 '■June, 1840. 
 
 ' .... I sat at dinner [at Gore House] by- 
 Charles Forester, Lady Chesterfield's brother. In 
 the last hunting season Lord Chesterfield, wanting 
 to address a letter to him, and not knowing exactly 
 where to find him, gave it to D'Orsay to direct it. 
 He directed it — Charles Forester, one field before 
 the hounds, Melton Mowbray. Lord Alvanley 
 took it, and (he himself told me) gave it to him on 
 the very spot. 
 
 Miss Caldwell :;: is returned from the sea-side — 
 fanciullesca fresca, fresca. " Sure, Landor, it is a 
 beautiful book, your ' Periwinkle and Asparagus ' ; 
 but faith ! I've no time to read it." Yesterday 
 Colonel Napier,! who is not imaginative, told me 
 this. " Sure, we have been to see St. John's latter 
 end — mighty odd name, is it not ?' — there beyond 
 the Pope's." " The Vatican ?" " Not an idea of 
 
 * ' My earliest Bath friend, Miss Caldwell, sister 
 to dear, good Lady Belmore, of whose death I so 
 lately wrote to you, died a few days ago. I had 
 known them since the beginning of the century.' 
 Landor to Mr. Forster, February 6, 1854. 
 
 i Sir William Napier, the historian of the 
 Peninsular War.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 105 
 
 it." "Perhaps you mean the Quirinal?" "The 
 Quillinan, sure I know the name as well as our 
 own house. James, put the Campanile on the 
 table." 
 
 ' Bess Caldwell was a well-known and loved Mrs. 
 Malaprop. She lived with her sister, the Dowager 
 Countess of Belmore, at Bath. Sir William Gell, 
 when they were at Naples, compiled — and I believe 
 published— a book called " Caldwelliana " of her 
 remarkable sayings. Hayward's very clever essay 
 mentions her as having said, " She had been to see 
 the house where Ariosto lived with the widow of 
 Charles the First. "* She was a very intimate 
 friend of my mother's.' 
 
 In the spring of 1841 Landor went to Paris 
 to meet his second son. ' Imagine my surprise,' 
 he wrote to Mr. Forster (May 6, 1841), 'that 
 any among the literary men knew even of my 
 existence. Nothing can exceed the attention 
 I receive from them. If their civilities are 
 sufficient to make a place agreeable, I ought to 
 be quite contented at Paris.' The amenities 
 of the trip are described in the following 
 letter. 
 
 * She was thinking of Alfieri and the Countess 
 of Albany. See Edinburgh Review, July, 1861.
 
 io6 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 To Miss Rose Payntcv. 
 
 ' Paris, 
 
 ' [May, 1 841]. 
 
 ' . . . I was invited to a sitting of the Institute, 
 Cousin in the chair. Mignet, the great historian of 
 the Revolution, and perpetual President, made an 
 admirable speech on Merlin de Douai. Thiers was 
 present. His countenance is like a mangy rat's. 
 M. Colmarke, private secretary to Talleyrand, 
 introduced me to Ledru, the Erskine of France. 
 He conducted Lady Bulwer's case, and has under- 
 taken the defence of the wretched fools who con- 
 spired against Louis Philippe. I called on him 
 yesterday, and he came out to see me and took me 
 into his library, and after many civilities asked me 
 if I would like to see the most noted man of France, 
 meaning Vidocq. I said yes. He was admitted. 
 He appears to be about sixty years old ; wonder- 
 fully strong and of a physiognomy mild and intelli- 
 gent. Ledru told me he was very trustworthy. 
 On a former occasion Ledru had undertaken his 
 defence, on condition that he gave 1,000 francs to 
 the poor ; he performed his engagement honorably. 
 
 ' I have never anywhere received so much kind- 
 ness and civility. I have been introduced to many 
 literary ladies, but I neither know their works nor 
 remember their names. On Monday the Princess 
 Czartoryski has promised I shall meet Madame 
 Recamier and la Guiccioli. . . .'
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 107 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 ' July 16, 1842. 
 
 ' . . . To-morrow I go with Lord Pembroke to 
 Brighton, where I leave him. As soon as I have 
 sealed this I will pay my respects to your uncle and 
 aunt, Lord and Lady Aylmer. Afterwards I make 
 a visit by appointment to a most extraordinary 
 personage, the Countess Vespucci, the only lineal 
 descendant of the discoverer of America — of North 
 America, at least. She began her career by escaping 
 from a convent at sixteen, and by placing herself at 
 the head of the insurgents. She received, in the 
 first engagement, a severe sabre cut on her head, 
 a ball broke her arm, and she was left on the field 
 of battle. She continues singularly beautiful, and 
 she has the longest and finest hair I ever saw. Her 
 genius is quite as extraordinary as her beauty and 
 courage. She has had many offers of marriage, 
 but appears more disposed to deprive others of 
 their liberty than to surrender her own. 
 
 ' The Due de Guiche is the handsomest man I 
 ever saw. What poor animals other men seem in 
 the presence of him and D'Orsay. He is also full 
 of fun, of anecdote, of spirit and of information. 
 The sorrowful death of the Duke of Orleans :1: was 
 
 * Ferdinand, Due d'Orleans, eldest son of King 
 Louis Philippe, died on July 13, 1842, from injuries 
 sustained in a fall from his cabriolet, while driving 
 in the Champs Elysees.
 
 108 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 rather a source of satisfaction to him. This vexed 
 me, not only because the Duke of Orleans was a 
 brave and kind-hearted young man, but because his 
 death must be the bitterest grief to a most affec- 
 tionate and virtuous mother. But politics make all 
 men selfish, cold and calculating. To-day it will 
 be amusing to meet the heads of both parties at 
 dinner : the Due de Guiche, the Tankervilles, 
 Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Abinger, Lord Brougham, 
 etc., etc. Some of these people are desperately 
 stupid, some villainously dishonest ; nevertheless 
 they do not take away my appetite nor injure my 
 digestion. Quiet Bath suits me better. I met 
 M aclise at dinner at Dickens's. Landseer was at 
 Gore House on Wednesday. 
 
 ' Yours affectionately, 
 
 < W. S. L.' 
 
 To Miss Rose Pay liter. 
 
 ' Warwick, 
 
 1 Sunday Night [July, 1843]. 
 ' Dear Rose, 
 
 ' . . . . Now for the first time my poetry 
 
 deserves the greater part of a smile from you. At 
 
 Mrs. Crampton's on Thursday our friend :;: (rather 
 
 fond of causing occasionally a slight trepidation) 
 
 * The late Mr. James Edward Fitzgerald, C.M.G., 
 Accountant-General, New Zealand.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 109 
 
 desired, in a laughing way, that I would write his 
 epitaph in case he happened to be lost in the British 
 Channel as he boated to Devonshire. I wrote on 
 the spot four Greek verses, of which there are 
 versions on the other side of the paper. . . . 
 
 ' Beloved by all Fitzgerald lies 
 
 Where the sea waves for ever moan ; 
 The dear delight of maiden eyes 
 
 Is now embraced by Nymphs alone.' 
 
 To Miss Rose Paynter. 
 
 ' [Bath,] 
 
 ' September 3, 1845. 
 ' Dear R., 
 
 ' You have taken the right view of F . 
 
 What I had written on his poem was little different 
 
 to that which I wrote to himself. I had remarked 
 
 the absolute want of variety and invention in Byron, 
 
 his model. Without these no poet can rise above 
 
 a secondary station. Shakespeare took many of 
 
 his characters and stories from other writers ; 
 
 nevertheless his originality is greater and more 
 
 exuberant than any other poet's. He breathed 
 
 life into what he had formed out of the earth, and 
 
 gave his fresh creation the universe for inheritance. 
 
 The great poet must be conversant with a great 
 
 variety of sentient beings and in a great variety of 
 
 feelings, thoughts, and situations. He must keep 
 
 them totally distinct from himself, and project
 
 no WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 them far before him. Striking characters, as they 
 are called, are easily portrayed. A boy can draw 
 a giant or a mountain, but how much care and 
 ability is required, even in the greatest master, to 
 catch the sparkles of a fountain or to calm the 
 breast with a still and overshadowed water. The 
 greatest achievements of poetry make no impression 
 on ordinary minds. Tens of thousands were 
 animated by the battles of the "Iliad" for one 
 who struck his brow at the agony of Priam, or who 
 prayed for the return of Hector when he lifted up 
 his child, frightened at the radiance of his helmet. 
 The last words of Lear that rive a great heart ma} 
 perhaps be the ridicule of a less. Othello has been 
 hated and execrated by more than have admired or 
 pitied him. I once heard a man call him a coward, 
 and it drove me into a gross imprudence, not to say 
 indecorum. 
 
 ' You might as well have thrown Kenyon's letter 
 into the fire with mine. I had forgotten all its con- 
 tents but his breach of promise, for which I intend 
 to prosecute him. 
 
 ' Tell Fred never to use the American word 
 realize for comprehend or conceive. 
 
 ' If there is a lodging cheap or dear to be pro- 
 cured at Budleigh I will take it from the eighth of 
 September, the day of the Blessed Virgin, as I find 
 it in the almanack, until Monday, the twenty- 
 second, which I find in the same authority is the 
 flight of Mahomet. My lodging must be open to
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS in 
 
 the sea, and have good water, my only beverage. 
 I intend to be at church on Sunday, and may reach 
 Budleigh that evening. 
 
 ' Affectionately yours, 
 
 < W. S. L.' 
 
 To Mrs. Sairfc. 
 
 '[1847.] 
 
 ' My dear, kind, hospitable friend, 
 
 ' I reached Exeter after one, and had no 
 other accident but leaving my guide-book and gold 
 spectacles. I must disburse half my patrimony for 
 another pair. Vexatious ! as I have six or seven 
 pairs already. 
 
 ' It is useful and providential to have met with 
 some accident which turned my mind for an instant 
 from my regrets at leaving Ristormel.* Dear 
 Ristormel ! its hanging woods, its sheltered gardens, 
 its warm summer-house. In all these, my past 
 days come back to me. I wish I could lift up face 
 to face the little Rosebud this morning. I can 
 fancy her splendid new sash falling over my elbow, 
 
 Ristormel in Cornwall, where Mr. and Mrs. 
 Sawle (now Sir Charles and Lady Graves-Sawle) 
 
 were living. 
 
 ' Known as thou art to ancient fame, 
 My praise, Ristormel, shall be scant ; 
 The Muses gave thy sounding name, 
 The Graces thy inhabitant.' 
 
 ' Last Fruit off an old Tree.'
 
 ii2 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 and her soft, cool little hand forbidding the ap- 
 proaches of my lips. God's blessings on her. . . . 
 
 ' I have sent Mrs. Paynter the ' Reminiscences 
 of Talleyrand." No memoirs (and memoirs are 
 the forte of French literature) are comparable to 
 this work. They were collected by Mons. Colmarke, 
 the Prince's secretary. He is dead, and they are 
 edited by his widow. I was very intimate with 
 them both when I was in Paris, and she has made 
 me a present of Talleyrand's spectacles. People 
 like to keep themselves warm with the hatreds that 
 cling about them. I confess I feel a relief in being 
 able to think better than I used to think of this 
 extraordinary man. I thought him much wiser but 
 not much better than the statesmen of our own 
 country and of the Continent who were contempo- 
 raries. 
 
 ' My vision rests upon Ristormel. There is 
 nothing half so pleasant to dwell upon. 
 ' Believe me, 
 
 ' Your affectionate old friend, 
 
 ' \V. S. L.' 
 
 To Mrs. Sawle. 
 
 ' [Bath,] 
 
 1 September 12, 1849. 
 
 ' . . . My brother Charles died tranquilly. He 
 was at once the strongest, the handsomest and the 
 wittiest man I ever knew. His family are well 
 provided for ; at seventy our portmanteaux are
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 113 
 
 locked, and our carpet-bags can hold little more. 
 I am quite ready to start whenever I am called.* 
 
 ' I may never see dear Ristormel again unless in 
 dreams ; but I trust early in October to see what 
 gave Ristormel all its charms. 
 
 ' The Grammonts and D'Orsay are desirous that 
 I should write in latin an epitaph on my kind old 
 friend Lady Blessington. I detest latin epitaphs, 
 but obey. Death commits a sacrilege when he 
 breaks into a friendship of twenty - two years' 
 standing. She is buried in a wood of old chesnuts 
 at St. Germain. There was enough money from 
 her sale to pay all her debts, and to leave ^3,000 
 to her nieces. They will continue to live with the 
 Duchesse de Grammont. . . .' 
 
 The Countess of Blessington died on June 4, 
 1849. Landor was one of her oldest friends : 
 
 ' Thou sleepest, not forgotten nor unmourn'd 
 Beneath the chesnut shade of Saint Germain ; 
 Meanwhile I wait the hour of my repose.' 
 
 So he wrote in a little elegy, printed first in 
 the Examiner. The Latin epitaph may be found 
 in ' Last Fruit,' with an English translation. 
 It ended : 
 
 ' Venit Lutetiam Parisiorum Aprili mense : 
 Quarto Junii die supremum suum obiit.' 
 
 The Rev. Charles Landor died in July, 1849. 
 
 8
 
 ii 4 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 In a memoir published in the Athenceum, this 
 was changed to ' Lutetiae Parisiorum ad meli- 
 orem vitam abiit,' etc., which, Landor com- 
 plained, would mean that she left Gore House 
 for a better life at Paris. 
 
 We now come to Landor's correspondence 
 with his friend Arthur de Noe Walker. More 
 than sixty years ago an English boy, living 
 with his family at Florence, made the acquain- 
 tance of Landor's sons. Going with a com- 
 panion to see them at the Villa Gherardesca,. 
 they saw Landor himself, of whom, from the 
 idle stories they had heard in Florence, they 
 stood not a little in awe. And just as Emerson 
 found none of the ' Achillean wrath and untame- 
 able petulance ' he had been warned to expect, 
 but the most patient and gentle, of hosts, so the 
 two English lads were pleasantly disillusioned. 
 It was no choleric, unapproachable man of 
 wrath who came out to greet them, but the 
 true Landor who, as his manner was, gave them 
 a right royal welcome, and insisted on their 
 staying to dinner. ' How kind he is,' whispered 
 one of the boys ; and twenty years afterwards 
 the other repeated the remark to Landor, who 
 was delighted at the appreciation.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 115 
 
 This was Arthur Walker's first meeting with 
 Landor, and shortly afterwards he went out to 
 India as a Company's Cadet, being presently 
 posted to the 6th Madras Infantry. It was 
 then that he was induced by a friend in the 
 Civil Service to read Landor's books ; and when 
 his regiment was quartered at Cuttack, he met 
 Landor's brother-in-law, at that time a captain 
 in the Bengal Artillery. Invalided during the 
 campaign in China, Captain Walker ' after hot 
 days in the wild wastes of war,' left the service 
 and came home. 
 
 Landor was now living in Bath, and Captain 
 Walker took the earliest opportunity of renew- 
 ing his acquaintance with one whom he had 
 since learnt to admire, not only as a genial 
 friend, but as a great writer. An inscription in 
 a copy of the two-volume edition of Landor's 
 works — ' Walter Savage Landor, to his friend 
 Arthur Walker, Feb. 5, '47 ' — commemorates 
 this second meeting. Thenceforward they met 
 frequently. 
 
 The earliest letter I have found is dated from 
 3, Rivers Street, Bath, and appears to have 
 been written in 1853. Landor alludes to the 
 beginnings of their friendship : 
 
 8-2
 
 n6 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' I do not remember the first visit you made to 
 me, but I well remember the last, hoping that it 
 may not bear that name much longer. I think I 
 must have owed to Arnold'" the former, but the 
 next will be the result of your kindness towards me.' 
 
 On leaving the Indian army, Captain Walker 
 turned his attention to the study of medicine 
 and surgery, and in 1854 ne volunteered for 
 service, as a surgeon, with the army in the 
 Crimea. He arrived at the British camp a few 
 days after the Battle of Inkermann. 
 
 ' He call'd thee forth and led thee unapall'd 
 Where Pestilence smote cities, vainly wall'd. 
 May He who rules the tempest, O may He 
 Protect and guide thee on the Euxine sea.' 
 
 So Landor wrote ; and in another poem he 
 refers to an incident during th'e attack on the 
 Malakoff on June 18, 1855 : 
 
 ' Thy strong shoulder bore 
 Amid the fiery sleet and heavier hail 
 The wretch whom Death lookt down on and past 
 by.'t 
 
 * Arnold, Landor's eldest son, born 181 8, died 
 1871. 
 
 t ' Heroic Idyls,' p. 115.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 117 
 
 When the verses were published some years 
 afterwards the printer ' took it into his head ' to 
 substitute ' freezing ' for ' fiery.' ' Dear Arthur,' 
 Landor wrote, 'evil genius has pursued me thro' 
 life, and will soon bring me to its close. All my 
 care about this cursed book has been in vain.' 
 This letter, however, belongs to a later date. 
 The following was written by Landor during the 
 Crimean War : 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 Bath, 
 
 * March 3, [1856]. 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 'Your letter dated 15 Feb. reached me this 
 
 morning. It is so wise and humane that I could 
 
 not resist my desire of sending it at once to the 
 
 Times. Whatever you do does you honour, and 
 
 the more because you have a higher motive. It is 
 
 seldom that I myself have been able to perform 
 
 any essential service to anyone. But it will please 
 
 you to hear that I have procured a subscription for 
 
 the descendant of Daniel Defoe by means of the 
 
 Times.* Enough has been collected to make him 
 
 comfortable for life. There is also a laboring man 
 
 * Landor's appeal on behalf of the descendants 
 of Daniel Defoe was printed in the Times of Novem- 
 ber 5, 1855.
 
 u8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 who writes wonderful poetry. For him also I 
 have obtained subscribers, and have printed some 
 dramatic scenes* for his benefit. This is all the 
 little good I have been able to accomplish. Cap- 
 pern's, the laborer's, poem on Balaclava I send en- 
 closed. . . . Write to me again before you leave 
 Balaclava, and tell me when I may probably see 
 you. Meanwhile be sure how highly I esteem and 
 love you. 
 
 ' W. S. Landor.' 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' Bath, 
 
 'Jan. 12, 1857. 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' . . . Your campaign in the Krimea is in- 
 finitely more glorious than arms could have achieved. 
 Welcome home again. Let me repeat these words 
 to you in Bath ; and the sooner the. better. You 
 will find your old room and your old friend. . . . 
 ' I read little now, chiefly Punch and the Household 
 
 '• ' Antony and Octavius, Scenes for the Study,' 
 by Walter Savage Landor. • These scenes are 
 dedicated to Edward Cappern, Poet and day-laborer, 
 at Bideford, Devon. The dedication concludes 
 with a Landorian outburst : ' Depend not on the 
 favor of Royalty ; expect nothing from it ; for you 
 are not a hound or a spaniel or a German prince.'
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 119 
 
 Words. I want amusing ideas, not serious ones. 
 . . . On the thirtieth" I enter my eighty-third 
 year. 
 
 ' Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 ' W. S. Landor.' 
 
 The remaining letters in this series were 
 written after Landor's return to Italy in 1858. 
 They mostly refer to the ' Heroic Idyls,' which 
 Dr. Walker, at his request, saw through the 
 press ; but various other matters are touched 
 on which are of interest from the biographical 
 and bibliographical points of view. 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' Florence, 
 
 'Feb. 23, [18] '60. 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' You shall certainly have a photograph of 
 
 me. . . . Here in Florence I have found several 
 
 men worth knowing ; among the rest some 
 
 Americans. Winthrop, a member of Congress. 
 
 . . . Beside him, Story, son of the celebrated 
 
 jurist, Judge Story. You know the poetry of the 
 
 Brownings — most vigorous — she was Miss Barrett. 
 
 He is indefatigable in his good offices. . . .' 
 
 January 30, 1857.
 
 120 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 [Florence, 
 
 'July 5, i860.] 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' Your sister permits me to write a few lines 
 at the back of her letter. I go to a villa a mile 
 from Siena the day after to-morrow. You will find 
 it pleasanter than Florence this hot weather. There 
 will be a room kept for you. . . . Come soon. We 
 can return to Florence time enough. 
 
 ' Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 ' W. S. Landor.' 
 
 The visit was duly paid, and Landor enlisted 
 the services of his friend for the preparation and 
 issue of another volume of poetry. In a letter 
 dated December 2 (i860), he enclosed some 
 verses, and promised to send more for the 
 projected publication. ' So judicious a man as 
 Mr. Newby,' he writes, ' will perhaps take the 
 trouble to arrange the small pieces, both English 
 and Latin, in the order in which it may be 
 supposed they were written, some bearing the 
 appearance of a young man, and others of an 
 older.'
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 121 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 [Florence, 
 
 'Jan., 1 86 1.] 
 
 ' . . . I am now meditating an imaginary con- 
 versation between Virgil and Ovid (sic) on their 
 journey to Brundusium. Do you know of any 
 Periodical whose editor will give a few crowns for 
 it to the subscription towards [? helping] the 
 wounded under the command of Garibaldi ? This 
 composition I promise you shall not be worse than 
 he generality of the others, altho' written in my 
 eighty -seventh year, which will commence before 
 the end of the present month. ... I now read 
 nothing but novels when I read at all, or turn back 
 to Shakespeare.' 
 
 It was not Ovid with whom Virgil was to 
 converse. In a letter, dated March 6, 1861, 
 Landor wrote : 
 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' You are perfectly right in your remark that 
 Ovid was only about 24 years old when Virgil died. 
 But my conversation was between Virgil and Horace, 
 not Ovid, who says, Virgilium tantum vidi. . . .' 
 
 The conversation duly appeared in the 
 Athenceum on March 9, 1861, but Landor was 
 vexed to find that there were mistakes in it.
 
 122 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 For Ovid he would read Ovidius. ' We English 
 say Ovid,' he remarked, ' but Romans say 
 Ovidius. I have been careful in keeping the 
 right names of the Antients.' Worse than this, 
 three essential words had been omitted in an 
 observation made by Horace. What Landor 
 meant him to say to Virgil was : ' You have 
 done wonders with a language so inflexible as 
 ours, in which the close of almost every heroic 
 verse is either a dissyllable or a trisyllable.' 
 The three words in italics have yet to be 
 inserted in a correct copy of the conversation. 
 
 A letter to Dr. Walker from his sister, the 
 Contessa Baldelli, contains an interesting 
 reference to Landor : 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' Florence, 
 
 'March 14, 1861. 
 
 ' . . . . Mr. Landor has been very often here 
 lately ; and on his expressing a wish to go to the 
 Protestant burial-ground here, I sent to propose 
 driving him there. He happened to be rather sad, 
 however, that morning, and said he would go this 
 summer " before I am laid flat there." . . . The 
 children had two peewits which they brought in to 
 show him, and he nursed one in his arms for a long
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 123 
 
 time. All at once he said : " This peewit will come 
 to an untimely end ; I am sure of it." " Why," I 
 replied, " what makes you think so ?" " I feel 
 sure of it," he answered. " I have been thinking 
 of it for the last two or three minutes." ' 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' Florence, 
 
 'August, 1 86 1. 
 
 ' .... It would be worth a scholar's while to 
 trace the different spellings of the same words from 
 Chaucer down to the present day. Many are spelt 
 better by him than by any author since. He avoids 
 the reduplication of vowels ea, etc., and ends the 
 word with e. . . . The Elizabethan age, so highly 
 cried up, was the most corrupt of any, in language 
 as in morals. Ben Jonson made a few good remarks 
 on some words. For instance, he notices the 
 absurdity of writing cannot, uniting the two words, 
 and asks how you would decline its tenses. . . . 
 Middleton, whose Letter from Rome is a treasure 
 of higher value than even his life of Cicero, writes 
 taste and haste without the final vowel, which is 
 wrong and vulgar. Our best writer now is Arch- 
 bishop Whately. In almost all the rest are 
 neologisms and slang. . . . Horace Walpole was 
 a Frenchman in manners and conduct, but he wrote 
 pure English. There may have been rouge on his 
 cheeks, but there was none in his writings. He
 
 i2 4 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 wrote red when everybody else wrote and said rouge. 
 His Historical Doubts are very ingenious and ad- 
 mirably exprest. The family of Lucas in Glamorgan 
 has always been reputed to be descended from Perkin 
 Warbec. His tenants would have it that he was 
 the only man in the principality who was equal in 
 descent to Lord Dynevor.' 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 1 [Florence, 
 
 'October, 1861.] 
 1 Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' . . . . You will receive a case containing 
 two pictures — one is by Penni who worked with 
 Raffael, and is thought to contain the touches of this 
 master ; it is a copy, if not a duplicate of his larger 
 picture. This is not for you, but a rarer is — con- 
 taining many figures by Mazzolina da Ferrara. 
 But take whichever you prefer, and forward the 
 other to the Rev. Mr. Tate, Widcombe, near Bath. 
 This gentleman had the kindness to keep a place 
 for me in that churchyard ; and, as he may soon 
 leave the parish, he thinks it advisable to have the 
 grave made and brickt directly. . . .' 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 [? Florence, 
 
 'October, 1861.] 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' . . . . You are somewhat too indulgent to 
 Lytton. He writes worse lately. Hood's " Song
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 125 
 
 of the Shirt " is fairly worth all the poetry written 
 since. It sinks sadly deep in the sands of Germany. 
 Are Gray and Goldsmith, are Cowper and Southey, 
 are Keats and Shelley so utterly forgotten ? 
 Bembo's epigram to Venice is the best thing in 
 Latin verse between Ovid and Bobus Smith — but 
 Bembo had imbibed faintly the spirit of poetry. 
 His Latin, and Pico's di Mirandola, is excel- 
 lent. . . .' 
 
 To A. de Noe Walker. 
 
 ' Florence, 
 
 '[1862]. 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 1 During the last fortnight I have been 
 
 incessantly occupied in writing and transcribing 
 
 over and over again what I now send to you. My 
 
 poetry will find but little favour with the public, but 
 
 I am confident that this will be red eagerly. There 
 
 is enough for a pamphlet of twenty or more pages. 
 
 If Mr. Newby is so occupied that he cannot bring 
 
 it out within the week after he receives it, throw it 
 
 [away], for, like fish and venison, it must not stay 
 
 on the table to get cold. . . . 
 
 ' Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 ' W. S. Landor. 
 
 ' I hope to get some money by this — not for 
 myself, as you shall see.' 
 
 From subsequent letters it appears that this 
 pamphlet was entitled, ' Letters of a Canadian.'
 
 i 2 6 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Nothing of the kind is even mentioned in any 
 of the lives of Landor ; but though careful 
 inquiries have failed to bring to light a single 
 copy, there is no doubt that the letters were 
 written and printed. Landor's name was 
 omitted from the title-page, the pamphlet was 
 still-born, and but for the correspondence now 
 discovered, would most likely never have been 
 heard of. 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' [Florenxe, 
 
 ' 1862.] 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' I had red the Laureate's Ode,* very spirited 
 and poetical. But I discover a superfetation of 
 rhymes — they are like the young frogs over the 
 bodies of older. There are seven words that rhyme 
 in the course of 13 lines. No ear can bear this 
 buffeting. Rhymes are troublesome and capricious, 
 sometimes holding back and sometimes coming un- 
 called. 
 
 * It is difficult to keep them away from the higher 
 poetry. Milton must have found it so occasionally. 
 
 * Tennyson's ' Ode on the Opening of the Great 
 Exhibition.' This poem was published in Fraser's 
 Magazine, June, 1862 ; but an unauthorized version 
 had previously appeared in the Times.
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 127 
 
 ... I wish our present poets would pay more atten- 
 tion to immovable and solid models, and less to 
 hollow and light plaster. The Laureate could well 
 afford to throw away the last verse of his Ode, 
 which, in fact, is two verses — an alexandrine in an 
 overall. Do not think I undervalue this excellent 
 man's poetry. He well deserves the station he 
 holds. . . .' 
 
 As usual, Landor was impatient at the delay 
 in printing his pamphlet. ' I am now anxious/ 
 he writes in an undated note, ' about the 
 " Letters of a Canadian." Send me three 
 copies of these, if they come into mouths which 
 are now agape and would soon be filled with 
 coarser stuff.' A note dated June 5 (1862) says : 
 ' The Canadian letters came safe. Thanks 
 again.' In his next letter he says : ' Let 
 Monckton Milnes and Kenneth Mackenzie, 12, 
 Newton Road, have one, and Mrs. Linton, 
 Larrymore House, Hampstead.' He adds : 
 
 ' I wish I never had anything to do with pub- 
 lishers. Duncan is the most honorable I have 
 found among them. My only anxiety in these 
 matters is that no incorrect copy of my last writings 
 may ever come before the world.'
 
 i 2 8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 [Florence] 
 
 ' September n [1862]. 
 
 ' . . . . Lately I have had one or two letters 
 from America. Half the nation would utterly 
 ruin the other half — would liberate the Blacks, who 
 are well contented, and would enslave their masters 
 under whom they were happy. Union is broken 
 up for ever. Within half a century there will be 
 fifty or more independent States : — Washington 
 the capital of the Southern, New York of the 
 Northern.' 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 ' [Florence, 
 
 ' 1863]. 
 
 ' . . . . Above all things I am anxious that no 
 copy of the book* be sent to me. God grant me 
 patience to recover from what I have suffered 
 already. The sight of anything relating to this 
 accursed book might drive me distracted for another 
 four days of the delirium it caused. 
 
 ' Believe me ever, dear Arthur, 
 
 ' Your affectionate old friend, 
 
 ' W. Landor.' 
 
 * ' Heroic Idyls.'
 
 SOME OLD LETTERS 129 
 
 To A. de N. Walker. 
 
 1 [Florence, 
 
 1 1863]. 
 ' Dear Arthur, 
 
 ' A folded sheet is come leaving a blank 
 between pp. 240 and 257. I am made to write (in 
 note to 158 which is numbered wrong), endurated 
 for indurated, p. 262, v. 13, spread for sprad, and 
 p. 264, v. 7, Ptolemies for Ptolemais. God has 
 preserved me from cutting my throat after this. . . . 
 May you be happier than your affectionate 
 
 <W. L.'
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT. 
 
 ' There never was a right thing done, or a wise 
 one spoken, in vain.' 
 
 W. S. Laxdor. 
 
 A number of fragments in print, some of them 
 both rare and curious, were found in Landor's 
 desk. The earliest in date is a copy — un- 
 happily imperfect — of ' Poems from the Arabic 
 and Persian,' a thin quarto printed in 1800 by 
 Mr. Sharpe of Warwick. Wrapper, title-page, 
 and two pages of preface are needed to make 
 the volume complete ; but what is left gains 
 additional value from the author's manuscript 
 corrections. These Arabic and Persian poems 
 — whether written in imitation of Asiatic verse, 
 or translated from a translation is uncertain — 
 were reprinted, but without the bulk of the 
 notes, in ' Dry Sticks ' (Edinburgh, 1858).
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 131 
 
 They cannot be found elsewhere ; and the 
 original edition — the thin quarto— of which 
 only a hundred copies were printed for friends, 
 is very scarce indeed. Mrs. Browning, who 
 accepted Landor's assurance that he wrote 
 these poems for the mystification of scholars, 
 described them as extremely beautiful, breathing 
 the true Oriental spirit throughout, ' ornate in 
 fancy, graceful and full of unaffected tenderness.' 
 Landor's annotations — as already said, they 
 have all but dropped out of existence — are 
 hardly less interesting than the text. Com- 
 paring Persian erotic verse with that of Greek 
 and Latin authors, he says, with the felicity of 
 decision which was the keynote of his style 
 from the very first, ' Anacreon was the master, 
 Tibullus the slave of Love; and while the 
 Orientals are engaged in perplexing us, the 
 Classics have seized his arrows and exercised a 
 portion of his power.' In a letter of a later 
 date, to Robert Southey, Landor said : ' I have 
 read everything Oriental I could lay my hands 
 on, and everything good may be comprised in 
 thirty or forty lines. ... I would rather have 
 written the worst page in the Odyssea than all 
 the stuff Sir William Jones makes such a pother 
 
 9—2
 
 1 32 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 and palaver on. ... It is better to describe a 
 girl getting a tumble over a skipping-rope made 
 of a wreath of flowers.' After all, Landor did 
 not differ so widely from Edward Fitzgerald, 
 translator of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, who, 
 writing to Professor Cowell, said : ' O dear I 
 when I look into Homer, Dante, and Virgil, 
 yEschylus, Shakespeare, etc., those Orientals 
 look — silly ! Don't resent my saying so. Don't 
 they ?' I will quote the last of Landor's notes, 
 printed after the lines ' To Rahdi.' The pre- 
 tended translator says: 'This poem resembles 
 not those ridiculous quibbles which the English 
 in particular call Epigrams, but rather, abating 
 some little for Orientalism, those exquisite 
 cidyllia, those carvings, as it were, in ivory or 
 gems, which are modestly called Epigrams by 
 the Greeks.' 
 
 I have said that there is some uncertainty as 
 to whether Landor invented these poems from 
 the Arabic and Persian or translated them, as 
 at first he professed to have done, from a 
 French translation. The internal evidence can 
 hardly be regarded as convincing either way. 
 He ascribes the Arabic poems to the son of the 
 Bedouin, Sheikh Dahir. Ahmed Dahir ruled
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 133 
 
 over Acre from 1750 till 1776, when he was 
 ■overthrown by Hassan Pacha and the soldier 
 of fortune, Ahmed el Jezzar, who afterwards 
 became celebrated for his defence of Acre 
 against Bonaparte. According to the French 
 traveller, M. Volney, Dahir had a son, Othman, 
 who, ' on account of his extraordinary talents 
 for poetry, was spared and carried to Con- 
 stantinople.' Of this Othman, however, there 
 is no further record. Moreover, according to 
 some authorities, it was not Othman, but one 
 Fazil Beg, a grandson of Ahmed Dahir, who 
 was taken to Constantinople and became a 
 poet ; though whether there is anything in his 
 extant writings which bears any resemblance 
 to Landor's Arabic poems I cannot ascertain. 
 With regard to the poems from the Persian, 
 Professor E. G. Browne, of Cambridge, who 
 most kindly gave me his opinion, inclines to 
 the belief that they are not genuine transla- 
 tions. It might be worth while to reprint the 
 poems, if only to find whether there is any 
 means of arriving at a final decision as to 
 their authenticity. 
 
 Of the printed papers in Landor's desk, next 
 in order of date is his mutilated copy (with his
 
 134 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 name in autograph on the cover) of a volume 
 published in 1802 — ' Poetry by the author of 
 " Gebir." The missing portions are the title- 
 page ; pages 1 to 11, containing ' Chrysaor,' a 
 narrative poem in blank verse, which made a 
 deep impression on Wordsworth, and fore- 
 shadowed, Mr. Colvin thinks, in subject and 
 treatment the ' Hyperion ' of Keats ; and 
 portions of pages 53 to 56. Here again there 
 is compensation in the shape of notes in the 
 author's hand. Of special significance are the 
 additions made to another narrative poem, 
 ' From the Phoceans.' This was not reprinted 
 either by Landor or Mr. Forster ; and Mr. 
 Colvin found it ' so fragmentary and obscure as 
 to baffle the most tenacious student.' Landor, 
 writing to Robert Browning the year before his 
 death, said : ' I am persuaded now that it is 
 worth preserving as a curiosity of the kind ; 
 but, years before, he admitted to Southey that 
 it could never be expanded into a good poem. 
 He had begun it, he then said, in a wrong ke) r 
 for English verse. In Mrs. Browning's opinion 
 ' From the Phoceans ' took ' a high classic rank ' 
 along with ' Gebir.'
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 135 
 
 In a manuscript note which I have found 
 among Landor's papers, he says : 
 
 '"Gebir" and "From the Phoceans " were 
 written in the last century, when our young English 
 heads were turned towards the French Revolution, 
 and were deluded by a phantom of Liberty, as if 
 the French could ever be free or let others be.' 
 
 ' From the Phoceans ' has been reprinted, 
 without later emendations, in Mr. Crump's 
 selections from Landor's poetry ; but Mr. 
 Crump was perhaps unaware of the fact that 
 over three hundred verses, headed ' Part of 
 Protis's narrative ' (these he did not reprint) 
 were a continuation of ' From the Phoceans/ 
 and should have been reprinted with it. In 
 another section of the present volume, I will 
 give, from Landor's manuscript, a page or two 
 of verse which was to have formed the con- 
 clusion of ' From the Phoceans.' More to show 
 the extent of the additions in Landor's copy of 
 the book than to remove the obscurity of the 
 poem, I add here the lines that were to serve 
 as a connecting link between the first part and 
 the narrative of Protis :
 
 1 36 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' Here ended Hymneus : and the hall awhile 
 Was silent, Arganthonius then arose. 
 " My honored guests ! who bravely have endured 
 The toils of exile and the storms of war, 
 It will add little to your weariness," 
 Said he, " if ye will trace to us the ways 
 By land and sea ye have gone thro', before 
 Ye reacht the port wherein ye now shall rest." 
 
 ' Then Protis, he who led them, thus replied : 
 " O King ! the stranger finds in thee a friend 
 Who found none in his kindred. But reproach 
 Better becomes the weak than firmer breast. 
 We will not turn to those who past us by 
 In the dark hour : from such and from the land 
 Where Pelops, in the days of heroes, reigned, 
 We speed to Delphi : we consult the God, etc." ' 
 
 At the end of Protis's narrative, Landor has 
 written : 
 
 ' There would have been a second part of this 
 poem, narrating a sea-fight with the Carthaginians 
 recorded in history ; then conflicts with the natives. 
 The main difficulty was to devise names for them. 
 An approximation was attempted from the Welsh 
 and Irish, many of which are harmonious in the 
 termination, an essential in poetry. Druids, 
 Druidesses, Bards, old oaks, and capacious wicker- 
 baskets were at hand.'
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 137 
 
 For the student's benefit another passage 
 from Landor's letter to Browning may be 
 quoted. ' At College,' he wrote, ' I and Stack- 
 house were examined by the college tutor in 
 Justin, who mentions the expulsion of the 
 Phoceans 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, and 
 corrected it the year following.'* 
 
 I now come to a copy of a little work in 
 prose, rarer, I think, than either of the volumes 
 of poetry mentioned above. In the last year of 
 his residence at Llanthony, Landor sent a series 
 of letters on the state of European politics to 
 the Courier. It was in the latter half of 1813, 
 just after Bonaparte had been defeated at the 
 battle of Leipzic. Southey, poet laureate, was 
 composing the ' Triumphal Ode ' to herald the 
 new year, in which he proclaimed that 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 * Forster's ' Life of Landor,' i. 178.
 
 138 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' I, too,' Landor wrote to Southey, ' had been 
 employing some midnight hours to prove that 
 " Justice must go before " ; but the evil genius 
 to whom I committed the manuscript has 
 printed what he chose and omitted the rest.' 
 But before seeing what the letters contained, a 
 word or two may be said on Landor's attitude 
 toward politics at this particular period. He 
 was the owner and occupier of a large landed 
 estate, and he was also known, among men of 
 letters of the first rank, as a writer of con- 
 spicuous genius, even though he displayed no 
 faculty either of arresting the popular attention 
 or of disarming the criticism that had broken 
 the heart of Keats, and would have crushed, if 
 it could, Wordsworth and Southey. With all 
 his poetry and scholarship, his excursions in 
 literature and love-making, there was much 
 that seemed to mark him out, during the third 
 decade of his life, as one who might take a 
 leading part in directing the affairs of his 
 country. ' Had avarice or ambition guided 
 me,' he wrote afterwards, ' remember I started 
 with a larger hereditary estate than those of 
 Pitt, Fox, Canning, and twenty more such 
 amounted to. . . . My education and that
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 139 
 
 which education works upon or produces was 
 not below theirs.' It was Landor, the man of 
 action, who, strange as it may seem to-day, 
 once had thoughts of founding a kingdom in 
 Crete — at least, I gather from one of Southey's 
 letters" to him that he contemplated some such 
 adventure. Certainly it was Landor, the man 
 of action, who took up arms as a volunteer to 
 help the Spaniards in their resistance to Bona- 
 parte. Again, it was the resolute, energetic 
 Landor who threw himself impetuously into 
 the task of improving the Llanthony property. 
 It was not the inditer of occasional epics and 
 not occasional love-lyrics, nor was it a specula- 
 tive philosopher, walking solitary on far eastern 
 uplands, meditating and remembering, who 
 addressed these letters to his countrymen on 
 what was the burning topic of the day ; but 
 rather one who, so long as his home was in 
 England, kept alert watch on all that involved 
 the glory and welfare of his country ; the interest 
 he took therein being none the less real though 
 he never ranked himself as a party man, and 
 detested those who made politics a profes- 
 sion. 
 
 * Southey to Landor, May 2, 1808.
 
 i 4 o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 This reprint of the ' Letters of Calvus,' as the 
 author entitled them, was meant, no doubt, for 
 private circulation,* the portions omitted by the 
 Courier being restored, and a fourteenth letter 
 being added by way of postscript. Writing 
 about them when they first appeared, Southey, 
 in a letter to his brother, said : 
 
 ' You have seen the letters in the Courier with 
 the signature of Calvus ? Landor is the writer. I 
 entirely agree with him that this is the time for un- 
 doing the mischief done by the Peace of Utrecht. 
 France was then made too strong for the repose of 
 Europe, and she ought now to be stript of Alsace, 
 Lorraine, and Franche-Comte.' 
 
 Since Mr. Forster merely makes passing 
 reference to the letters, without quoting from 
 them, a few extracts from what is probably the 
 only unabridged copy in existence may not be 
 unwelcome. Calvus addresses his remarks to 
 Lord Liverpool and the Parliament. He claims 
 a right to be heard : 
 
 ' I never wrote a pamphlet : I belong to no 
 party, no faction, no club, no coterie ; I possess no 
 seat in Parliament, by brevet or by purchase ; I can 
 afford to live without it ; but I cannot afford that 
 
 ::: I know of no other copy of the reprint.
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 141 
 
 accumulation of taxes which will arise from another 
 war, if after our experience we conclude another 
 probationary peace, and enter on a new course of 
 experiments with all our instruments unscrewed and 
 all our phials evaporated.' 
 
 Then follows a brief statement of the author's 
 proposals, in the shape of a series of questions 
 intended to show that the time was opportune 
 for destroying, once and for all, the offensive 
 power of France, and putting an end to Bona- 
 parte's ambition by compassing his execution 
 or perpetual imprisonment. Is England, Lan- 
 dor asks, again to be contented with an experi- 
 mental peace ? 
 
 c Shall we fight only until he consents to exchange 
 some stone walls for some sugar-plantations, and 
 throws down the bag of horse beans that he holds 
 up against our coffee ? What scoffs, what bitter 
 scorn would Lord Chatham have poured forth 
 against England, crouching from an elevation to 
 which she never rose before, down to a degradation 
 to which the united world could not reduce her ! . . . 
 " We are not to meddle," Lord Castlereagh says, 
 " with that great and powerful country itself." 
 Why not ? Has not that great and powerful 
 country meddled with every other ? Is she not 
 great and powerful because she has done so ?'
 
 142 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 No war, says Calvus, that is waged in vain 
 can be glorious. Unless it brings an accession 
 of power or freedom, blood will have flowed to 
 no purpose. ' To engage in war with so futile 
 a design as merely to bind at last an atheist 
 with an oath, and an assassin with a piece of 
 red tape, is as foolish and as wicked as to dis- 
 charge a cannon into a crowded market-place 
 for a jubilee.' The object of the war for which 
 Landor's voice was raised was to be the ex- 
 tinction of Bonaparte ; such being necessary 
 for the repose and independence of Europe. 
 Now was the fitting opportunity. Let the 
 French, dejected, discomfited and scattered, 
 recover their former power and posture, and 
 England would never again come forward 
 with the prowess and terrors now at her 
 command : 
 
 'Your well-dressed ambassadors and your in- 
 genious state-papers, in which I must observe that 
 the weakest governments and the worst causes have 
 generally shone most, may be very much admired 
 in the drawing-room and at the breakfast-table, and 
 you will have glorious opportunities of breeding up 
 your children (I mean you who have seats in Parlia- 
 ment) to the study of diplomacy ; but you will have 
 lost for ever that bright pre-eminence on which you
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 143 
 
 stand at present, and you must prepare the means 
 of taxation for the support of indefinite and hope- 
 less wars.' 
 
 Readers of to-day may find it hard to compre- 
 hend the feeling that inspired all this bellicosity. 
 Landor's remarks on the respective merits of 
 political parties in England will perhaps seem a 
 trifle less antiquated : 
 
 ' Whenever the Tories' (he wrote) 'have deviated 
 from their tenets, they have enlarged their views 
 and exceeded their promises. The Whigs have 
 always taken an inverse course. Whenever they 
 have come into power, they have previously been 
 obliged to shift those maxims and to temporize with 
 those duties, which they had not either the courage 
 to follow or to renounce. The character of Lord 
 Rockingham gave them a respectability, and the 
 genius of Burke added a splendour, which have 
 long since utterly passed away : and the nation sees 
 at last that nothing is more unsound and perishable 
 than what is founded on an oligarchy of gamesters 
 and adventurers.' 
 
 But an appeal to party passion was remote 
 from Landor's purpose. It was the nation he 
 called upon to inflict condign punishment on 
 ' the monster,' Bonaparte. ' Six months of 
 active warfare, with all our heart and all our
 
 i 4 4 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 strength, will complete the task.' Here is 
 another typical utterance : 
 
 ' War, it has often been said, is a game of chance, 
 in which governors are the players, and the things 
 governed are the stakes. Bonaparte, with the con- 
 sent and applause of all classes in France, played 
 for the whole continent against his empire ; and 
 every Frenchman took a share in the bank. After 
 all sorts of packing and shuffling and tricking, to 
 say nothing of mixing drugs of a soporific quality 
 in the cakes and wine, he has lost all he played for. 
 Yet we have such respect for his dexterity, such 
 confidence in his honour, and such veneration for 
 his goodness of heart, that we not only think of 
 giving him back whatever he laid down, but also a 
 great part of what he failed to win, and what, as 
 belonging to others, we have no right to dispose of 
 in any manner, without first obtaining their consent. 
 Yet besides all this, we sweep the board for him, 
 lift the candlesticks, and make him a present of the 
 card-money. 
 
 ' The English are the only people in the Universe 
 that ever played voluntarily this losing game. They 
 sit down to it quietly, night after night, to the 
 astonishment of their observers, the despair of 
 their friends, and the derision of their adversaries.' 
 
 There is much else in the ' Letters of Calvus ' 
 one would like to quote, both in illustration of
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT t 45 
 
 the writer's political opinions and also for the 
 sake of those recurring flashes of insight and 
 passages of the finest eloquence that are never 
 long absent from Landor's pages. The exhorta- 
 tion so often heard in the ' Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions,' that a closer attention should be paid to 
 the lessons of history, by those whose duty or 
 ambition it is to manage the affairs of States, 
 is insisted on in language not always at a 
 pamphleteer's command. Kings and statesmen, 
 Calvus complains, will endure any insult rather 
 than listen to those who entreat them to look 
 to history for a guide. ' History would lead 
 them into that chilly and awful chamber in 
 which, under the suspended armour, they might 
 read their own destinies.' 
 
 The fourteenth letter, to which Landor pre- 
 fixed, in his own hand, the word ' Postscript,' is 
 dated December 20, 1813. Since the preceding 
 letters had been sent to the Courier he had 
 perused the Manifesto of the Allied Powers. 
 * Who in the name of Heaven,' he asks, ' could 
 have composed this flimsy tissue of folly, 
 cowardice, and falsehood ?' But enough of 
 the pamphlet has been quoted to show its 
 nature, if not to gain for the letters of Calvus 
 
 10
 
 146 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 a place in any collection of Landor's works 
 that can be regarded as complete. 
 
 There remains to be noticed in this chapter 
 a collection of shorter pieces, in prose and 
 verse, of a later date. They are letters and 
 poems sent by Landor, during his last residence 
 in Bath, to the newspapers. With one or two 
 unimportant exceptions, all the verses have been 
 republished ; but the letters will be new, except 
 to the industrious bibliographer who has 
 searched the files of the Examiner and the 
 Atlas. The earliest is a letter on 'the com- 
 fortable state of Europe,' printed in the 
 Examiner of September 8, 1849. Landor 
 prophesied that there would be a great war in 
 Europe before two years were out ; and he was 
 not far wrong. He was alarmed at the pros- 
 pect of Russian aggression. ' Russia,' he wrote, 
 ' is guided systematically by watchful and 
 thoughtful, prompt and energetic ministers. 
 Every step of hers is considerate and firm, 
 is short and sure ; she is exhausted by no hasty 
 strides, she is enfeebled by no idle aspirations. 
 France believes it to be her interest, and fancies 
 it to be in her power to divide the world with 
 her ; and if two such nations with ambitions in
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 147 
 
 accord are resolved on it, what power upon 
 earth can effectually interpose ?' Landor was 
 no believer in dreams of universal peace. 
 ' There never can be universal peace, nor even 
 general peace long together, while three-score 
 families stand forth on the high grounds of 
 Europe, and command a hundred millions to 
 pour out their blood and earnings whereon to 
 float enormous bulks of empty dignities.' 
 
 In 1851, Landor was writing innumerable 
 letters about Kossuth's visit to England. He 
 had sold, or tried to sell, his pictures in order 
 to raise money for the Hungarian revolt. 
 When Kossuth sought a refuge in England, 
 Landor organized a reception committee at Bath, 
 and wrote a poem to be recited at a public 
 meeting held in the patriot's honour at Birming- 
 ham. Kossuth at first seemed to resent Landor's 
 impetuous enthusiasm, but ended by thanking 
 him civilly enough for his efforts. Landor 
 replied in a letter dated Bath, October 28, 
 1851: 
 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' The chief glory of my life is that I was 
 the first in subscribing for the assistance of the 
 Hungarians at the commencement of their struggle. 
 
 10 — 2
 
 r 4 8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 The next is that I have received the approbation of 
 their illustrious leader. I, who have held the hand 
 of Kosciosko, now kiss with veneration the signature 
 of Kossuth. No other man alive could confer an 
 honour I would accept. 
 
 1 Believe me, Sir, 
 
 ' Ever yours most faithfully, 
 
 ' Walter Savage Landor.' 
 
 About the same time, Landor sent the 
 Examiner ten letters addressed to Cardinal 
 Wiseman ; but these have been reprinted in 
 ' Last Fruit.' More interesting, however, and 
 less accessible, are the letters he wrote during 
 the Crimean War. The following protest 
 against a form of intolerance, which is not 
 without its counterpart in our own days, was 
 printed in the Atlas of September 29, 1855 : 
 
 'To the Editor of the Atlas. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' It is much to be regretted that the Chris- 
 tian religion, from the decease of the Apostles 
 down to the present day, has produced more 
 animosity and discord in the East than all the 
 religions which it encountered and struggled to 
 supersede. The star of Bethlehem was a morning 
 star, appearing but too short a time above the 
 horizon, and extending its radiance but a little
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 149 
 
 way beyond the circle it illuminated. I am led to 
 these serious and sad reflections by seeing the 
 Greek and Latin churches at daggers drawn still, 
 after an incessant conflict for many centuries above 
 a thousand years. All the religions in the world, 
 innumerable as they have been and are, never shed 
 so much innocent blood as that which arrogantly 
 and falsely calls itself the Christian. The first 
 lesson of its Divine teacher was goodwill toward 
 all ; but no sooner were the scholars out of school 
 than they tore out that page, and scribbled un- 
 intelligible words over the remainder of the volume. 
 The ushers at last turned out the master, and 
 declared he never knew what he had been talking 
 about. It was their business, they said, to set him 
 right ; but he could not be set right until they had 
 houses and lands to set him right in, with chains and 
 padlocks for security. Story-tellers from the borders 
 of the desert broke in among them as they were 
 carousing, threw flask after flask upon the floor, 
 called the people from round about, and told them a 
 fresh series of equally marvellous and more pleasant 
 stories. The candle, after flaring and glittering, 
 went out ; but left behind it, and still leaves, a close 
 unwholesome stench. 
 
 ' Recently there have been loud complaints against 
 the followers of Mahomet for persecuting the Chris- 
 tians. I shall now examine this matter. Twelve 
 years ago there appeared in the Morning Chronicle a 
 refutation of a cruel judgment against an Armenian
 
 ISO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 subject of the Ottoman Empire. This lies now 
 before me. It was based on a statement made by 
 the highest officer of State, whose name I do not 
 feel myself at liberty to announce. This, however, 
 I will venture to say of him : I wish we had in 
 England a functionary of the same station possess- 
 ing the same solidity of judgment and the same 
 integrity. 
 
 ' And now come forward fresh accusations against 
 the most tolerant and indulgent government. It 
 appears as if every priest and missionary were 
 emulous of the Tzar. What portentous impudence 
 is there in the Turkish Mission Aid Society, exprest 
 as follows : " I am further directed by the committee 
 most respectfully to submit to your lordship whether 
 the present may not be a favourable juncture for 
 the ' great community ' represented at the Porte to 
 urge on his Highness the Sultan that inasmuch as 
 the pledge of March 21, 1844, appears to admit a 
 different interpretation, and as doubts exist respect- 
 ing its application to the case, his Highness may be 
 pleased to make it so comprehensive as to include 
 the exemption from the punishment of death, on 
 account of religious offences, of all classes of his 
 Highness's subjects." This is a requisition that 
 blasphemy may go for nothing in Turkey, and a 
 presumption that God can only be blasphemed in 
 Anglo-Saxon. Will the clergy never be quiet ? 
 Will they never mind their own business, and their 
 own laws, without an interference with foren
 
 FRAGMENTS IN PRINT 151 
 
 institutions ? Did these noisy men who now appeal 
 to Lord Clarendon, as I read in to-day's newspaper, 
 ever raise a cry against Austria and Russia when 
 those Christian potentates drove Kossuth and the 
 other brave and virtuous defenders of their country 
 far away from it ? Who at that hour of calamity 
 gave help and asylum to the lovers of their native 
 land, the defenders of their faith ? Who, but the 
 most Christian of all Christian potentates, the 
 Khalif Abdul Medjid ? 
 
 ' Walter Savage Landor. 
 ' September 25.'
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
 ' We English are generally as fierce partizans in 
 literary as in Parliamentary elections, and we cheer 
 or jostle a candidate of whom we know nothing.' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 Some of Landor's opinions on the work of his 
 fellow-labourers in ' letter-land ' have already 
 been brought to notice. It may not be alto- 
 gether a vain undertaking to ( inquire more 
 closely what he thought about the writers of 
 his own time who, to use a phrase he liked, 
 made a noise in the world ; and also what they 
 in their turn thought of him. Such judgments, 
 of course, do not amount to a final decision in 
 either case. On the one hand, Landor's 
 sympathies and antipathies, where a con- 
 temporary was concerned, were not wholly 
 exempt from personal bias. That is a failing
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 153 
 
 which may often be observed in people who 
 write books and read them ; but somehow or 
 other he is reckoned to have been specially 
 liable to it. On the other hand, in regard to 
 what his contemporaries said about him, 
 posterity, as usual, will prefer to think for 
 itself. A wiser generation consents to forget 
 Mathias, ' the Pursuer of Literature,' and re- 
 members Charles Lamb. It can cheerfully dis- 
 pense with the ' Rosciad,' but it wants endless 
 editions of Boswell. So we need not listen too 
 earnestly to what Southey said about ' Gebir,' 
 or to Landor's laudations of ' Kehama.' Still 
 it is a fact of some significance that many, if 
 not all, the foremost English authors of the 
 nineteenth century have agreed in recognizing 
 his power. Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Byron, and Shelley, as well as Dickens, Brown- 
 ing, and Swinburne, have confessed his great- 
 ness. As for his opinions on his coevals, if at 
 times they are too laudatory, it rarely happens 
 that they err in the other direction. Edward 
 Fitzgerald said that Landor seemed to judge of 
 books and men as he did of pictures, ' with a 
 most uncompromising perversity, which the 
 phrenologists must explain to us after his
 
 154 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 death.'* But this was in conversation, when 
 Landor's extravagance of enthusiasm always 
 became more boisterous and more pronounced. 
 In writing, he very seldom lays down a criti- 
 cism which is altogether perverse ; while, as 
 a general rule, his literary judgments, on 
 ancients and moderns alike, bear the unmis- 
 takable stamp of sound taste, extensive know- 
 ledge both of books and men, and matured 
 reflexion. 
 
 Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Southey, and 
 Lamb all came into the world about the same 
 time as Landor. De Quincey and Byron, 
 Shelley and Keats, were a little later. He was 
 a man of five-and-twenty when Macaulay was 
 born. Tennyson, Thackeray, Mr. Gladstone, 
 Charles Dickens, and Robert Browning were 
 all born during the third decade of his life. 
 Of his immediate contemporaries, it was 
 Robert Southey who had most influence over 
 him. To Southey he owed the first public 
 acclamation of his talents ; Southey writing 
 in the Critical Review that he had read ' Gebir ' 
 repeatedly ' with more than common attention, 
 and with far more than common delight.' That 
 * Fitzgerald to F. Tennyson, May 7, 1854.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 155 
 
 was the foundation of a friendship, of the 
 warmest kind, which lasted for forty years, 
 unbroken by a single misunderstanding. ' The 
 Curse of Kehama' and 'Thalabathe Destroyer,' 
 and even ' Roderick,' have gone out of fashion 
 nowadays ; and Landor's estimate of Southey's 
 poetry would be thought too exalted. These 
 three poems, he said, surpassed any three of 
 Wordsworth's, who wanted Southey's diversity 
 and invention as well as his humour. And yet 
 it was the man, rather than his writings, that 
 Landor more especially admired. ' If his 
 elegant prose and harmonious verse are in- 
 sufficient to incite enthusiasm, turn to his 
 virtues, to the ardour and constancy of his 
 friendships, to his disinterestedness, to his 
 generosity.' There, at any rate, Landor stands 
 on safe ground. Southey also valued Landor 
 more highly as a friend than as a maker of 
 books. ' Never did man,' he said, ' represent 
 himself in his writings so much less generous, 
 less just, less compassionate, less noble in all 
 respects than he really is. I certainly never 
 knew anyone of brighter genius or of kinder 
 heart.' 
 
 With Wordsworth Landor was not always in
 
 156 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 touch. At first, and when Wordsworth's merits 
 were eclipsed by the popularity of Byron, Landor 
 was loud in his praise. ' In thoughts, feelings, 
 and images not one amongst the antients 
 equals him, and his language (a rare thing) is 
 English.'* No poet since Milton, he makes 
 Southey say, had exerted greater powers with 
 less of strain and less of ostentation. ' Lao- 
 damia ' was ' a composition such as Sophocles 
 might have exulted to own.' This admiration 
 was repaid in kind. ' It could not but be 
 grateful to me,' Wordsworth wrote, ' to be 
 praised by a poet who has written verses of 
 which I would rather have been the author 
 than of any produced in our time ; and what 
 I now write to you I have frequently said to 
 many.' The verses referred to were ' Gebir ' 
 and ' Count Julian.' 
 
 But Landor's liking for Wordsworth, as they 
 grew older, underwent diminution. At a break- 
 fast party, where both were present, Words- 
 worth said, or Landor fancied he said, that he 
 would not give five shillings for all Southey's 
 poetry. ' My spirit,' Landor afterwards wrote, 
 ' rose against his ingratitude toward the man 
 : Landor to Southey, 181 8.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 157 
 
 who first, and with incessant effort and great 
 difficulty, brought him into notice.'* In a 
 second conversation between Southey and 
 Porson, published originally in Blackwood's 
 Magazine,^ Landor's disapproval of what he 
 held to be flaws in Wordsworth's poetry was 
 put in a shape that could hardly fail to vex and 
 grieve the future Laureate's admirers. Porson 
 is made to say that ' among all the bran in the 
 little bins of Mr. Wordsworth's beer-cellar there 
 is not a legal quart of that stout old English 
 beverage with which the good Bishop of 
 Dromore regaled us.' The insinuation is not 
 outrageously unfair. After a course of ' Chevy 
 Chase ' and ' Otterburne ' a good many people 
 might find even the ' Excursion ' a trifle flat. 
 Nor is Porson so very wide of the mark when 
 he says that Wordsworth's is an instrument 
 which has no trumpet -stop. Descending to 
 particulars, he lays his finger on inanities 
 which even a devout Wordsworthian must 
 deplore. Landor also makes Porson the 
 vehicle for some parodies of Wordsworth. 
 One of them begins : 
 
 :;: ' Letter to Emerson.' 
 
 t December, 1842.
 
 158 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' Hetty, old Dinah Mitchell's daughter, 
 Had left the side of Derwentwater 
 
 About the end of Summer. 
 I went to see her at her cot, 
 Her and her mother, who were not 
 
 Expecting a new comer. 
 
 ii. 
 
 ' They both were standing at one tub, 
 You might have heard their knuckles rub 
 
 The hempen sheet they wash'd. 
 The mother suddenly turn'd round, 
 The daughter cast upon the ground 
 
 Her eyes, like one abasht.' 
 
 And so on. The whole tone of Porson's 
 remarks rather suggests that Landor regretted 
 having praised Wordsworth so highly in former 
 conversations. 
 
 However this may be, it served to make 
 Wordsworth's son-in-law, Edward Quillinan, 
 exceedingly angry. Four months later there 
 appeared in Blackwood's an Imaginary Con- 
 versation written by Mr. Quillinan, who re- 
 ferred, in a note, to Landor as a garrulous 
 sexagenarian. Landor possibly would have 
 pocketed this affront had not a charge of
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 159 
 
 plagiarism been added thereto ; of plagiarism, 
 moreover, from the very writer who, as the 
 garrulous sexagenarian was never tired of re- 
 iterating, had stolen a sea shell from ' Gebir.' 
 Landor had made Southey say : ' Wit appears 
 to require a certain degree of unsteadiness in 
 the character. Diamonds sparkle the most 
 brilliantly on heads stricken by the palsy.' 
 Now Wordsworth, in a little poem written in 
 1818, and called ' Inscriptions in a Hermit's 
 Cell,' had said : 
 
 ' Diamonds dart their brightest lustre 
 From a palsy-shaken head.' 
 
 The resemblance was indisputable, but 
 Landor never told his mortification. He only 
 hastened to cancel the passage ; and when the 
 dialogue was reprinted in 1846, not only had 
 all traces of the plagiarism disappeared, but 
 some of Porson's sharpest criticisms, together 
 with the parody quoted above, had been cut 
 out. 
 
 It is Mr. Forster who tells us that Sir Walter 
 Scott found much to admire in ' Gebir,' having 
 read the poem on Southey's commendation. 
 According to the same authority, Landor
 
 160 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 fancied that Scott's appreciation was shown by 
 borrowing from ' Gebir ' without acknowledg- 
 ment ; and Mr. Forster found a list of the 
 alleged peculations in Landor's hand. Landor 
 never quite forgave Sir Walter Scott either for 
 this or for his loyal attentions to the Prince 
 Regent ; but it did not prevent his expressing, 
 in the highest terms, his regard for Scott's 
 merits as a writer whether in prose or verse. 
 ' The trumpet blast of Marmion ' delighted him. 
 No large poem of the time, not even Southey's 
 ' Roderick ' was so animated, or so truly heroic. 
 The battle scene, he declared, was one of the 
 four epic pieces transcending all others ; the other 
 three being the colloquy of Achilles and Priam 
 in Homer's ' Iliad,' the contention of Ulysses 
 and Ajax in Ovid's ' Metamorphoses,' and the 
 first book of Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' He was 
 no less ready to praise the Waverley Novels. 
 At first, the ' Heart of Midlothian ' was his 
 favourite ; but in his old age, it was ' Kenil- 
 worth ' that he liked best. There is a freshness 
 in all Scott's scenery, he makes Porson say to 
 Southey, and a vigour and distinction in all his 
 characters. ' He seems the brother in arms of 
 Froissart,' and it would not be easy to hit on a
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 161 
 
 happier comparison. He also puts into Porson's 
 mouth a wicked story about Wordsworth, who, 
 being invited to read one of the Waverley Novels, 
 and finding at the commencement a quotation 
 from his own poetry, totally forgot the novel, 
 and recited the poem from end to end, with 
 many comments and more commendations. No 
 doubt there are some people who will laugh at 
 Landor for ranking Scott above Byron as a 
 poet ; but a good deal might be said in favour 
 of his choice, and he was always ready to 
 vindicate it. 
 
 In one of his letters to his sister, Landor 
 told her of a visit he paid to Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge at Highgate, in 1832. Coleridge 
 would not come downstairs till he had arrayed 
 himself in the sumptuous splendour of a brand 
 new suit of black, brought out in honour of the 
 occasion. When at length he appeared, he 
 welcomed his visitor with ' as many fine 
 speeches as he could ever have made to a 
 pretty girl '; though that sort of eloquence, 
 may be, was less in Coleridge's line than 
 Landor's. Possibly it was at the same solemn 
 interview that, after quoting fourteen German 
 poets of the first rank, Coleridge expressed his 
 
 11
 
 1 62 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 compassion for iEschylus and Homer, which is 
 one of Landor's stories about him. The new 
 suit of broadcloth was no doubt the outward 
 and visible sign of a real regard for Landor's 
 character and genius. Not that Coleridge 
 rated Landor with first-class writers. A couple 
 of years after this visit, he delivered himself of 
 the following judgment : 
 
 ' What is it that Mr. Landor wants, to make him 
 a poet ? His powers are certainly very consider- 
 able, but he seems to be totally deficient in that 
 modifying faculty which compresses several units 
 into one whole. . . . His poems, taken as a whole, 
 are unintelligible ; you have eminences excessively 
 bright, and all the ground around and between them 
 is darkness. Besides which, he has never learned, 
 with all his energy, to write simple and lucid 
 English. '* 
 
 A raking criticism of that kind, however, is 
 ineffective without examples, which Coleridge 
 does not venture on. It is otherwise when 
 Landor criticizes Coleridge. For instance, in a 
 letter to Mr. Forster, after admitting that few 
 men in our time have written more eloquently 
 than Coleridge, he adds : ' But to say things 
 
 :: ' Table Talk/ January i, 1834.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 16 
 
 j 
 
 well is not enough for wisdom,' and he quotes 
 from ' Lay Sermons ' what Coleridge said in 
 favour of reviving ' the ancient feeling of rank 
 and ancestry as a counterbalance to the com- 
 mercial spirit now prevalent.' 'What,' Landor 
 asks, ' could be more contrary to the spirit of 
 Christianity, or indeed more absurd in itself; 
 for how extremely small a number can possibly 
 be actuated by the antient feeling of rank and 
 ancestry ?' Landor himself was by no means 
 inclined to forego his own pride of descent. In 
 spite, however, of all that has been said to the 
 contrary, he cared little about other people's 
 ancestors. The religious argument may sur- 
 prise the reader ; but the truth is that Landor 
 was never an irreligious man. He did not like 
 priestcraft, and made no mystery of his feel- 
 ings on that score. Yet he was far from 
 being an agnostic. In his ' Letters of an 
 American ' — a little book one seldom meets 
 with — the supposed writer, Jonas Pottinger, 
 says : ' I hope to be always a Christian, never a 
 theologian ' ; and he adds in true Landorian style : 
 ' There are things which I believe, things which 
 I disbelieve, things which I doubt. Among the 
 latter is this, that I can ever be carried to heaven 
 
 ii — 2
 
 1 64 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 on the shoulders of a cod-fish, or get forward a 
 good part of the journey on a smooth and level 
 road, on a couple of eggs for rollers.' 
 
 It might be mentioned here that the late 
 Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, was among 
 Landor's constant readers, and what is more 
 remarkable, he has convicted him of a mis- 
 quotation from the Latin. The autograph of 
 'John Duke Coleridge,' with the date 1853, is 
 on the fly-leaf of my copy of ' Last Fruit off an 
 old Tree,' published in that year ; and on page 
 305 there is a marginal note in the same hand- 
 writing. Landor had said : 
 
 ' How beautifully does Ovid, who is thought in 
 general to have been less tender, and was probably 
 less chaste [than Petrarch] , refer to the purer 
 objects of his affection ! — 
 ' " Unica nata, mei justissima causa doloris," etc. 
 
 The marginal note says, rightly enough : 
 
 ' This is not Ovid ; it is Propertius, :;: and the line 
 in the original is somewhat different. Nata does 
 not mean daughter in the context, and the mistake 
 is curious for an accurate scholar like Landor.' 
 
 Landor and Lord Byron were not formed for 
 :;: Propertius, ii., xxv. 1.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 165 
 
 mutual admiration. Still, they might have said 
 nothing uncivil of each other had it not been 
 for Landor's offensive and defensive alliance 
 with Southey. When the opening cantos of 
 ' Don Juan ' appeared, Southey, in a preface 
 to his ' Vision of Judgment,' entered an angry 
 protest against the wickedness and immodesty 
 of the Satanic school, quoting in support of his 
 animadversions a passage from Landor's ' De 
 cultu atque usu Latini sermonis.' Then a 
 report got abroad in literary circles that 
 Landor had said he would not or could not 
 read Byron's poems ; and it may even be sur- 
 mised that some verses of Landor's on Byron's 
 marriage had obtained the same currency. 
 They were not published till 1831, and are not 
 reprinted in Mr. Forster's editions, so there is 
 an excuse for quotation : 
 
 ' Weep, Venus, and ye 
 
 Adorable Three 
 Who Venus for ever environ ! 
 
 Pounds, shillings, and pence 
 
 And shrewd sober sense 
 Have clapt the strait waistcoat on * * * 
 
 Off, Mainot and Turk, 
 
 With pistol and dirk,
 
 1 66 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Nor palace nor pinnace set fire on 
 The cord's fatal jerk 
 Has done its last work, 
 
 And the noose is now slipt upon * 
 
 To Southey, Byron replied in another 'Vision 
 of Judgment,' praised by Leigh Hunt as the 
 most masterly satire since Pope. In the pre- 
 face Landor was referred to as one ' who culti- 
 vates much private renown in the shape of 
 Latin verses.' There is an allusion also to 
 ' Gebir,' ' wherein,' said Byron, ' the aforesaid 
 Savage Landor (for such is his grim cognomen) 
 putteth into the infernal regions no less a 
 person than the hero of his friend, Mr. Southey's 
 heaven — yea, even George the Third.' A year 
 later (1823) Byron found another opportunity 
 for a hit at Landor, whom, in <a note to ' the 
 Island,' he named as the author of Latin poems 
 ' which vie with Martial and Catullus ' in what 
 is least admirable. Lastly, in the eleventh 
 canto of ' Don Juan,' published in August of 
 the same year, came the lines so often quoted 
 when Landor is mentioned by people who do 
 not take the trouble to read him : 
 
 ' That deep-mouth'd Boeotian, Savage Landor, 
 Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander.'
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 167 
 
 In private Byron would express his admira- 
 tion of Landor's generosity and independence, 
 of his profound erudition and brilliant talents. 
 Such concessions, however, were unlikely to 
 disarm a man of Landor's temper. In the 
 Imaginary Conversation between Bishop Burnet 
 and Humphrey Hardcastle, Byron is referred to 
 as George Nelly, reputed son of Lord Rochester. 
 * Whenever he wrote a bad poem, he supported 
 his sinking fame by some signal act of profligacy 
 —an elegy by a seduction, a heroic by an 
 adultery, a tragedy by a divorce.' Nor was a 
 saving clause without its sting. ' Say what 
 you will of him, once whispered a friend of 
 mine, there are things in him strong as poison 
 and original as sin.' 
 
 The passage had hardly been printed when 
 news came of Byron's death at Missolonghi. 
 Landor was profoundly touched. In a note 
 inserted in the second edition (1826) of the 
 volume containing the conversation, he wrote : 
 
 ' Little did I imagine that the extraordinary man, 
 the worst of whose character is here represented, 
 should indeed have been carried to the tomb so 
 prematurely. If before this dialogue was printed 
 he had performed those services to Greece which
 
 1 68 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 will render his name illustrious to eternity . . . the 
 performance of which I envy him from my soul, 
 and as much as any other does the gifts of heaven 
 he threw away so carelessly, never would I, from 
 whatever provocation, have written a syllable 
 against him.' 
 
 Landor seems to have shared his mother's 
 estimate of Byron, whose high abilities, that 
 lady said, ' had given him the power of doing 
 much good, which he failed to do.' Eleven 
 years before, Byron had written in his private 
 journal : ' The most I can hope is that someone 
 will say — he might, perhaps, if he would.' 
 
 As time went on, Landor's dislike, both of 
 Byron and of much that he wrote, became 
 more and more emphatic. Allowing him to be 
 the keenest and most imaginatixe of satirists, 
 Landor saw less to admire in ' the Oriental train 
 and puffy turban,' only put on, he suggested, in 
 order to attract feminine notice, and perfumed 
 with a superabundance of musk. That is a 
 fairer hit than the accusation which Byron 
 brought against Landor. Nor was the ' Boeotian ' 
 far wrong when he said that Byron lacks the 
 freshness and sanity that delight us in Burns ; 
 or again when he compares the author of ' Lara '
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 169 
 
 and the ' Corsair ' to a horse that has good 
 action but tires by fretting and tossing his 
 head and rearing. In his own occasional verse 
 Landor would often launch out in dispraise of 
 Byron : 
 
 ' Say, Byron, why is thy attar 
 Profusely dasht with vinegar?' 
 
 In some verses addressed to ' The Recruits 
 of Poetry,' he exhorts them to leave in the rear 
 
 ' Asthmatic Wordsworth, Byron piping hot,' 
 
 and to march with ' manly Scott.' For 
 ' Marmion ' — 'at first too much applauded, 
 now too much underrated ' — always pleased 
 Landor better than ' Bvron's trash.' But while 
 
 j 
 
 he detested ' Giaours ' and ' Corsairs,' he could 
 praise Byron's ' Dream '; a poem, he said, that 
 will always live. The Quarterly Review, years 
 ago, charged Landor with speaking of Byron 
 as a mere rhymer, wholly devoid of wit or 
 genius. Landor's answer was that he had done 
 nothing of the kind ; he was ready to admit 
 that Byron possessed much of both qualities, 
 ' not always well applied.' And it was of 
 Byron he spoke when he said that ' an in-
 
 170 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 domitable fire of poetry, the more vivid for the 
 gloom about it, bursts through crusts and 
 crevices of an unsound and hollow mind.' 
 
 If one wished to show how widely Landor 
 and Byron stood apart from each other in their 
 way of looking at things, no more striking 
 instance could be given of their incompatibility 
 of judgment than is contained in what each 
 said about Keats. Byron talked of the drivelling 
 idiotism of the poet who had already written 
 his ' Endymion ' and the ' Ode on a Grecian 
 Urn.' Some of the expressions he used, though 
 they are scarcely veiled even in the latest editions 
 of Moore's ' Life of Lord Byron,' are unfit for 
 publication. Almost worse is the coarse 
 malignity which prompted Byron, in a letter 
 to Mr. Murray, to say, ' No more of Keats, I 
 entreat — flay him alive ; if some of you don't, I 
 must do it myself.' Afterwards, indeed, when 
 poor Keats was in his grave, Byron declared 
 that he did not envy the man who had written 
 the murderous article in the Quarterly ; but he 
 nevertheless thought the affair a proper subject 
 for an ill-natured jest. Which would one rather 
 have written, Byron's doggerel, ' Who killed 
 John Keats ?' or Landor's verse :
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 171 
 
 ' Fair and free soul of poesy, O Keats ! 
 O how my temples throb, my heart-blood beats, 
 
 At every image, every word of thine ! 
 Thy bosom, pierced by Envy, drops to rest ; 
 Nor hearest thou the friendlier voice, nor seest 
 
 The sun of fancy climb along thy line.'* 
 
 Landor, who was living in Italy when Keats 
 came there to die, regretted afterwards that 
 they had never met. One would like to think 
 that Keats was praised during his lifetime by 
 Landor ; but this seems doubtful. In a letter 
 to Southey, written in 1825, there is mention of 
 the 'sycophantic ruffian' who had recommended 
 the author of ' Endymion ' to go back to his 
 gallipots. A year or two later, in a letter to his 
 sister Elizabeth, Landor said : ' By the way, 
 you have not read Keats and Shelley ; read 
 them.' I do not know, however, of any earlier 
 allusion to Keats ; and Keats was now dead. 
 But thenceforward Landor's admiration found 
 frequent utterance. Keats, he said, was the 
 most imaginative of English poets, after 
 Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. 
 There might be wild thoughts in his poetry 
 and extravagant expressions ; ' but in none of 
 
 * ' Imaginary Conversations,' 1828, iii. 427.
 
 172 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 our poets, with the sole exception of Shakes- 
 peare, do we find so many phrases so happy in 
 their boldness.'* Landor, however, found fault 
 with Shelley's remark that Keats was truly a 
 Greek, which was Shelley's way of accounting 
 for the fact that the author of ' Hyperion ' 
 could not read a line of Homer in the original. 
 ' Between you and me,' Landor wrote, ' the 
 style of Keats is extremely far removed from 
 the very boundaries of Greece.' 
 
 In one of the Imaginary Conversations in 
 which Landor speaks in his own person, he 
 protests that if ever again he visits Rome, it 
 will be to spend an hour, in solitude, where the 
 pyramid of Cestius points to the humbler tombs 
 of Keats and Shelley. He had never met 
 Shelley ; for when they were b©th living at 
 Pisa, someone had told him a story about the 
 younger poet, which Landor thought so dis- 
 agreeable, that he avoided him. It turned out 
 to have been untrue. ' I blush in anguish,' 
 Landor then wrote, 'at my prejudice and 
 injustice ;' and whenever he spoke of Shelley 
 afterwards, he would praise him both for his 
 
 * Works, 1846, i. 339. The passage quoted does 
 not appear in the 1876 edition.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 173 
 
 virtues and for his writings, and as one who 
 united the ardour of the poet with the patience 
 and virtue of the philosopher. ' Shelley,' he 
 said, ' may have had less vigour than Byron, 
 and less command of language than Keats ;' but 
 he himself would rather have written his — 
 
 ' Music, when soft voices die, 
 Vibrates in the memory ' 
 
 than all the lyrics of the Elizabethans, Shake- 
 speare's only excepted. Elsewhere he says 
 that Shelley and Keats were inspired with a 
 stronger spirit of poetry than any other writer 
 since Milton, Robert Burns only excepted.*' 
 ' I sometimes think,' he added, ' that Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning comes next '; an opinion 
 which not many people would have endorsed 
 forty years ago. 
 
 Neither Shelley nor Keats lived long enough 
 to judge Landor by his most finished work ; 
 but the former, at any rate, needed no further 
 evidence of his poetic power than was displayed 
 in his very earliest books. Shelley, when he 
 was at Oxford, was always reading ' Gebir, 
 either to himself or aloud to his friends, who 
 
 ::: Letter to Mr. Forster, April 26, 1858.
 
 i74 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 were not always tolerant of his infatuation. 
 One of them, eager to tell him something of 
 importance and rinding him immersed in the 
 volume, threw it out of the window ; but it was 
 brought indoors again, and in a few minutes 
 Shelley was as deep as ever in the woes of the 
 Gadite king. 
 
 But while recalling what Landor and some 
 of his brother poets of the first half of the 
 century said of each other, we ought not to 
 overlook a writer of prose who, like Landor, 
 also rhymed on occasions. Charles Lamb was 
 born only a few weeks after Landor ; and, unlike 
 as they were in some respects, they also had 
 much in common. To the superficial observer, 
 perhaps, no two men would have seemed less 
 akin than the shy, gentle Elia, quietly eking 
 out his little pittance from the East India 
 House by unobtrusive contributions to the 
 periodicals of the day, and the confident, large- 
 voiced country gentleman, who could squander 
 in a few months as much as Lamb earned in 
 as many years, and who grandly professed to 
 despise the emoluments of literature. How 
 would it have been with them, one is tempted 
 to ask, had Lamb inherited a fortune and had
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 175 
 
 Landor been forced to dip his daily bread in ink 
 and to work for a living ? Yet if destiny not 
 only led them along widely different paths of 
 life, but also brought out qualities and capacities 
 in the one altogether unlike those to which it 
 allowed free play in the other, and if there were 
 unmistakable divergencies of temper, intellect, 
 and attainments, each alike had a genius and 
 style of his own ; each in literature pursued the 
 same ideal, so far as mere writing goes ; each, 
 when his own taste and conscience were satisfied, 
 cared nothing for the disapproval, and little for 
 the applause, either of a coterie or of the crowd. 
 So it is not strange that Charles Lamb and 
 Walter Landor knew each other for kindred 
 spirits. The recognition seems first to have 
 come from Lamb. Describing his memorable 
 voyage in the old Margate Hoy, Lamb quotes a 
 line from ' Gebir ' : 
 
 ' Is this the mighty ocean ? Is this all ?' 
 
 Doubtless, too, when he talked about the sweet 
 security of London streets, a passage in ' Count 
 Julian '* was running in his head. When Southey 
 sent him a presentation copy of ' Roderick/ 
 
 * ' Count Julian : a Tragedy,' Act ii., Scene 5.
 
 176 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Lamb said he must read Landor's 'Julian' again. 
 He could only recollect fine-sounding passages, 
 and was inclined to think that Landor had 
 failed in some of the characters. However, 
 his memory, he confessed, was weak, and he 
 would not by trusting to it ' wrong a fine poem.' 
 A few years later, and after Lamb's gaol 
 delivery from the bondage of the India House, 
 we have evidence that he read the ' Imaginary 
 Conversations.' In one of the earliest of them 
 Landor had started the odd theory that ' Don 
 Quixote ' was nothing more nor less than a 
 dexterous attack on the worship of the Virgin 
 Mary. Cervantes, he makes President du Paty 
 say, was never such a knight errant as to attack 
 knight errantry — a folly, if it was one, which 
 had disappeared a century before. Don 
 Quixote was the Emperor Charles V., ' devoting 
 his labours and vigils, his wars and treaties, to 
 the chimerical idea of making minds, like 
 watches, turn their indexes, by a simultaneous 
 movement, to one point ' ; while Sancho Panza 
 symbolized the people, sensible in other matters, 
 but ready to follow the most extravagant 
 visionary in this. The notion did not com- 
 mend itself to Charles Lamb, who protested
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 177 
 
 against ' Landor's unfeeling allegorizing away of 
 honest Quixote.'* Landor, he declared, might 
 as well say that Strap, in Smollett's ' Roderick 
 Random,' was meant to symbolize the Scottish 
 nation before the Union, and Random the 
 same nation after ; or that Fielding's Partridge 
 stood for the mystical man, and Lady Bellaston 
 for the ' woman upon many waters.' For all 
 Lamb knew to the contrary, ' Gebir ' might 
 mean the state of the hop market a month ago. 
 Landor, more likely than not, never heard of 
 Lamb's objection to his gloss on Don Quixote ; 
 but when a Quarterly Reviewer in 1837 cited the 
 same theory as a notable instance of Landorian 
 whim, he took some pains to elaborate this part 
 of the conversation. 
 
 Landor's liking for Lamb was unqualified. 
 Writing to Henry Crabb Robinson in April, 
 1831, he quoted a sentence or two from ' Mrs. 
 Leicester's School,' and went on to say: 'If 
 your Germans can show us anything compar- 
 able to what I have transcribed, I would almost 
 undergo a year's gurgle of their language for it.' 
 In another letter of the same year he declared 
 that Elia's essays in the New Monthly Magazine 
 * Letter to Mr. Southey, August 19, 1825. 
 
 12
 
 178 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 were admirable — ' the language truly English. 
 We have none better, new or old.' In the 
 following year Landor, revisiting England, 
 called on the Lambs at Enfield. Crabb Robin- 
 son was of the party, and describes the visit. 
 Lamb and his sister, one can imagine, may 
 have been a little embarrassed by the large 
 utterance and expansive manner of their new 
 friend. ' I thought Lamb by no means at his 
 ease,' Crabb Robinson tells us, ' and Miss Lamb 
 was quite silent.' Landor, however, was de- 
 lighted with them both, as also with Miss Isola, 
 for whose album he presently wrote some verses. 
 It was his only meeting with Charles Lamb : 
 
 ' Once, and once only, have I seen thy face, 
 Elia ! Once only has thy tripping tongue 
 Run o'er my breast, yet never has been left 
 Impression on it stronger or more sweet. 
 Cordial old man ! what youth was in thy years !' 
 
 These lines were written on receiving the 
 news of Lamb's death, when, also, to the 
 sister of Elia Landor addressed the well-known 
 verses beginning : 
 
 ' Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile ! 
 Again shall Elia's smile 
 Refresh thy heart.'
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 179 
 
 Both poems have been reprinted, but a letter 
 of Landor's, published in Leigh Hunt's London 
 Journal * is not to be found in his collected 
 works. 'The Essays of Elia,' he said, 'will 
 afford a greater portion of pure delight to the 
 intellectual and the virtuous, to all who look 
 into the human heart, for what is good and 
 graceful in it, than any other two prose volumes, 
 modern or ancient.' 
 
 There is not much that can profitably be 
 added to what Landor says, in the extracts 
 that have been given from his private letters, 
 about the later generation of English writers 
 who began to flourish when he was an old man. 
 Browning dedicated a volume of poetry to him, 
 and came to his rescue in those dark days 
 when he was a homeless wanderer in Florence. 
 Landor had been among the first to welcome 
 Browning as a great poet — ' A very great poet,' 
 he wrote in 1845, ' as the world will have to 
 agree with us in thinking.' He only wished 
 that Browning would ' atticize ' a little. ' Few 
 of the Athenians had such a quarry on their 
 property, but they constructed better roads for 
 the conveyance of the material.' And Mrs. 
 
 * July n, 1835. 
 
 12 — 2
 
 180 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 Ritchie, in her delightful reminiscences, has 
 told us how Browning would take down 
 one of Landor's many books that stood on 
 the book-shelves, and vow that he knew of 
 no better reading. Nor had Landor been 
 less ready to single out Tennyson from the 
 band of minor poets who were trying their 
 wings in the early days of the Victorian 
 era. 
 
 In 1837 a volume of poetry* for the draw- 
 ing-room table was published by subscription, 
 her Majesty the Queen heading the list of sub- 
 scribers. Among those who contributed were 
 Southey, Wordsworth, Tom Moore, James 
 Montgomery, Henry Taylor, Monckton Milnes, 
 the Tennysons, and Landor himself. Alfred 
 Tennyson sent the stanzas : , 
 
 ' Oh ! that 'twere possible 
 
 After long grief and pain,' etc., 
 
 which afterwards, with alterations, became part 
 of ' Maud.' In that same year Landor was 
 shown a manuscript poem by Tennyson, which 
 he at once pronounced to be Homeric, rivalling 
 
 * ' The Tribute.'
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 181 
 
 some of the finest passages in the ' Odyssey.' 
 It was the ' Morte d'Arthur.' Six years later 
 Landor was delighted with ' Ulysses ' and 
 ' Godiva,' liking the last-named poem, perhaps, 
 all the better because he himself had written 
 verses about Godiva when he was a school- 
 boy at Rugby. And when the finished ver- 
 sion of ' Maud ' came out, Tennyson rose yet 
 higher in his estimation. What other modern 
 poet, he asked, could have written the verse 
 in the ' Ballad of Oriana,' worth whole 
 volumes — 
 
 ' O breaking heart that will not break '! 
 
 Everyone knows, of course, that Landor and 
 Dickens were close friends, and that Landor 
 is Mr. Boythorn in ' Bleak House.' Landor's 
 liking for Dickens found expression in two or 
 three of his poems, and in the dedication of the 
 volume in which he collected his Greek and 
 Roman Conversations. Possibly he did not 
 think quite so highly of Thackeray, but he called 
 ' Esmond ' a noble story, and the ' Lectures on 
 the Four Georges ' were very much to his 
 taste. Someone has written on the fly-leaf 
 of my first edition of the ' Imaginary Con-
 
 1 82 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 versations ' the following verses which, he 
 says, Landor recited ex tempore for Thackeray's 
 edification when he met him after the delivery 
 of the lectures : 
 
 ' I sing the Georges four, 
 For Providence could stand no more. 
 Some say that far the worst 
 Of all the four was George the First ; 
 But still by some 'tis reckon'd 
 That worser still was George the Second. 
 No mortal ever said one word, 
 Or good or bad of George the Third. 
 When George the Fourth from earth descended, 
 Thank Heaven ! this line of Georges ended.' 
 
 A distinguished critic* has expressed his 
 astonishment that Thackeray was seldom, ' if 
 ever,' mentioned by Landor. They moved in 
 different planes, but Landor would have been 
 the last man to affect indifference to the merits 
 of a contemporary. 
 
 Mr. Forster's biography fitly ends with the 
 memorial verses written by Mr. Swinburne, 
 who, a few months before Landor died, went 
 to Florence on purpose to see him — 
 
 * Professor Saintsbury.
 
 LANDOR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 183 
 
 ' The youngest to the oldest singer 
 That England bore. 
 
 I found him whom I shall not find 
 
 Till all grief end, 
 In holiest age our mightiest mind, 
 
 Father and friend. 
 
 To this felicitous determination of Landor's 
 place among English writers of the nineteenth 
 century, one may well hesitate to add so much 
 as a single word.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE. 
 
 ' Poetry was ever my amusement ; prose my 
 
 study and business.' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 A number of miscellaneous poems by Landor, 
 all of them found among the papers in his 
 writing-desk, have now to be given. For reasons 
 already stated, it has not been considered neces- 
 sary to print the whole collection ; but an en- 
 deavour has been made to rescue as much as 
 seemed worth preserving. Only in a few cases 
 has a heading been supplied by Landor ; nor 
 was it possible to discover his wishes as to the 
 order in which the poems should appear. A 
 few explanatory notes have been added. First 
 come a number of poems which should have a 
 place among those quoted or referred to in the 
 chapter on Landor's loves and friendships.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 185 
 
 Then follow verses embodying his views on 
 various points of philosophy, politics and litera- 
 ture, together with a few others which are 
 mainly of interest for the light they may throw 
 on his life and character. 
 
 WRITTEN IN 1793. 
 
 ' Tell me what means that sigh,' lone said, 
 When on her shoulder I reclined my head ; 
 And I could only tell her that it meant 
 The sigh that swells the bosom with content. 
 
 THE FEARFUL (l8oi).* 
 
 I would not see thee weep but there are hours 
 When smiles may be less beautiful than tears, 
 
 Some of those smiles, some of those tears were 
 ours; 
 Ah ! why should either now give place to fears ? 
 
 * This and the preceding poem have a particular 
 interest, as they are dated by Landor himself. In 
 1801 he narrowly escaped marrying a rich heiress ; 
 ' but after committing a piece of foolery, in which I 
 was the puppet, the farce ended.' The date ascribed 
 to the verse in which lone is named was that of his 
 first year at Oxford. His biographers, however, 
 have supposed that he met lone in 1795.
 
 1 86 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 ABERTAWY.* 
 
 Along the seaboard sands there grows 
 The tiniest and the thorniest rose, 
 And tawny snapdragons stand round, 
 Above it, on the level ground. 
 ' Here,' said I, ' sit, or you will weary 
 Before you come to Briton Ferry.' 
 And I began to pluck away 
 The stubborn twisting roots. 
 
 'Stay! stay!' 
 She cried ; ' your hand begins to bleed.' 
 I hid it ; for it bled indeed. 
 ' Now do not hold it back,' said she, 
 ' No, nor deny it ; let me see.' 
 With gentle violence she prevail'd, 
 For when has gentle violence fail'd ? 
 How sat we down ? who , smooth'd the 
 
 sand ? 
 Who cured, and how was cured, that hand ? 
 It was a dream ; which to explain 
 I try (and so will you) in vain. 
 
 * These lines, probably an earlier version of a 
 little poem published in ' Heroic Idyls,' p. 157, 
 and reprinted in the Works, 1876, viii., 320, un- 
 doubtedly commemorate a walk with Miss Rose 
 Aylmer.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 187 
 
 TO ROSE. 
 
 WITH A PORTRAIT OF PETRARCH'S LAURA.* 
 
 In her green vest and golden hair, 
 Laura is coming, so prepare : 
 The chaste Ristormel can alone 
 Replace the loss of Avignon. 
 
 TO ROSE. 
 
 If by my death I win a tear, 
 O Rose, why should I linger here ? 
 If my departure cost you two, 
 Alas ! I shall be loth to go. 
 
 * By Simone Memmi, on the inner cover of a 
 missal. [Note by Landor.] 
 
 The portrait is still in the possession of Lady 
 Graves-Sawle, to whom Landor sent it. ' Simone 
 Memmi,' Landor tells us elsewhere, ' the first 
 of the moderns who gave roundness and beauty 
 to the female face, neglected not the graceful air 
 of Laura. Frequently did he repeat her modest 
 features in the principal figure of his sacred com- 
 positions, and Petrarcha was alternately tortured 
 and consoled by the possession of her portrait 
 from the hand of Memmi.' — Works, 1876, viii., 
 
 432. 
 
 The verses ' To Rose,' that follow, were also sent 
 to Miss Paynter, now Lady Graves-Sawle.
 
 1 88 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 love's secrets. 
 
 Poplar ! I will not write upon thy rind 
 
 Ianthe's cherisht name, 
 Which it would grieve me should another 
 find, 
 
 And the same station claim. 
 
 Ours, O Ianthe, ours must never meet, 
 
 Tho' here we tarry long. 
 To hear the whisper of the leaves is sweet, 
 
 And that bird's even-song. 
 
 One sweeter I have bidden thee to check 
 
 In fear of passer by, 
 Who might have seen an arm about a 
 neck ; 
 
 So timorous am I. 
 
 ianthe's name.* 
 
 ' Cannot you make my name of Jane 
 Sound pleasanter ? Now try again,' 
 Said she. At once I thought about 
 The matter, and at last cut out 
 
 * Mr. Sidney Colvin has quoted some unpub- 
 lished verses of Landor's on the invention of the 
 names, lone and Ianthe. The 'smart ring'd robber'
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 189 
 
 A letter from Greek alphabet, 
 And had it, as I thought, well set ; 
 'Twas then ' Ianthe.' Soon there came 
 A smart ring'd robber with a claim, 
 You find it in his wardrobe stil, 
 More he would have, but never will. 
 
 CALLED PROUD. 
 
 If I am proud, you surely know, 
 Ianthe ! who has made me so, 
 And only should condemn the pride 
 That can arise from aught beside. 
 
 was Lord Byron ; and the phrase suggests an ex- 
 planation of the lines : 
 
 ' Wearers of rings and chains ! 
 Pray do not take the pains 
 To set me right.' 
 
 Curious that Landor makes no reference to Ovid's 
 ' Ianthe.' In an unpublished fragment he says : 
 ' A name was converted by the magic of a Greek 
 letter (8) from a monosyllable into a trisyllable ; 
 and the fresh Ianthe was seized by the pet poet of 
 the day, and offered by him to a Deity in the clouds. 
 No hue and cry was raised after it. Trespassers 
 have carried off weighter materials from my higher 
 quarries : it were uncharitable to close the gate 
 against a gleaner, and indecorous to snatch a cock's 
 feather from his hat-band.'
 
 190 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 THE LOVER.* 
 
 Now thou art gone, tho' not gone far, 
 
 It seems that there are worlds between us ; 
 
 Shine here again, thou wandering star ! 
 Earth's planet ! and return with Venus. 
 
 At times thou broughtest me thy light 
 When restless sleep had gone away; 
 
 At other times more blessed night 
 Stole over, and prolonged thy stay. 
 
 a dreamer's tale. 
 
 Dreamer I ever was by night and day. 
 
 Strange was the dream that on an upland bank 
 
 My horse and I were station'd, and I saw 
 
 By a late gleam of an October sun 
 
 The windows of a house wherein abode 
 
 One whom I loved, and who loved me no less — 
 
 And was she not drawn back ? and came not forth 
 
 Two manly forms which would impede her steps ? 
 
 I was too distant for them to discern 
 
 My features, but they doubted : she retired ; 
 
 * This is Landor's heading to the lines, which 
 may refer to the separation we read of in the 
 beautiful poem, beginning : 
 
 ' Ianthe ! you are called to cross the sea, 
 A path forbidden me.'
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 191 
 
 Was it into her chamber ? did she weep ? 
 I did not at that hour, but in the next 
 Silently flowed tear after tear profuse. 
 There are sweet flowers that only blow at night, 
 And sweet tears are there bursting then alone.* 
 
 I turn'd the bridle back and rode away, 
 Nor saw her more until a loosen'd bond 
 Led her to find me a less happy man 
 Than she had left me, little happy then, 
 For hope had gone with her and not return'd. 
 She lookt into my eyes, fixt upon hers, 
 And said ' You are not cheerful, tho' you say 
 How glad you are to see me here again. 
 Is there a grievance ? I have heard there is, 
 And the false heart slips down and breaks the 
 
 true; 
 I come to catch it first ; give it me back ; 
 Sweet fruit is no less sweet for being bruiz'd.' 
 
 Thus at brief intervals she spake and sigh'd ; 
 I sigh'd, too, but spake not : she then pursued, 
 ' Tell me, could it be you who came so far 
 Over the sea to catch a glance at one 
 You could not have ? Rash creature ! to incur 
 
 * These two lines, slightly altered, were printed 
 by themselves in ' Heroic Idyls,' p. 228. The lady 
 of the poet's dream was doubtless Ianthe.
 
 i 9 2 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Such danger ! was it you ? I often walkt 
 Lonely and sad along that upland bank, 
 Until the dew fell heavy on my shawl, 
 And calls had reacht me more and more distinct, 
 Ah me ! calls how less willingly obey'd 
 Than some I well remember not so loud.' 
 
 INCONSISTENCY.* 
 
 Spring smiles in Nature's face with fresh delight, 
 With early flowers her mother's brow adorn- 
 ing; 
 When morning comes, I wish again for night, 
 And when night comes, I wish again for 
 morning. 
 
 TO IANTHE IN ADVANCING AGE. 
 
 The violets of thine eyes are faded, 
 [Surviving] ill their radiafit noon, 
 
 Nor will thy steps move on unaided 
 By friendly arm, alas ! how soon. 
 
 Well I remember whose it was 
 
 They sought ; no help they wanted then ; 
 Methinks I see the maidens pass 
 
 In envy, and in worse the men. 
 
 * Verses something like these may be found in 
 ' Last Fruit,' p. 394, with the date, Brighton, 1807.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 193 
 
 TO IANTHE GROWING OLD. 
 
 For me you wish you could retain 
 
 The charms of youth ; the wish is vain, 
 
 Ianthe ! Let it now suffice 
 
 To pick our way with weaker eyes : 
 
 They cannot light it as of yore 
 
 Where Pleasure's sparkling fount ran o'er. 
 
 Time spares not Beauty, Love he spares, 
 
 Who covers with his wing grey hairs. 
 
 ianthe's daughter.* 
 
 To thee, Maria, now within thy tomb, 
 God seem'd to promise many years to come. 
 A gift beyond the rest to Him we owe, 
 He left one image of thee here below. 
 
 TO LUISINA.t 
 
 Sweet as it is to hear a voice 
 
 Dense crowds and distant lands above, 
 Yet in Luisina's I rejoice 
 
 More deeply, voice of truth and love. 
 
 * Madame de Pereira Sodre. See Landor's 
 verses on this lady's marriage, Works, 1876, viii., 
 p. 49. 
 
 t Miss de Pereira Sodre was Ianthe's grand- 
 
 daughter. 
 
 13
 
 i94 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 To me was it bequeath'd by one 
 
 Who little thought her nursling child, 
 
 When she from earthly friends had gone 
 In distant climes and deserts wild, 
 
 Columbia's youth should melt or cheer, 
 With plaintive and with sportive song, 
 
 Or that her groves his name should bear 
 Who loved so fondly and so long. 
 
 ON THE HEIGHTS. 
 
 The cattle in the common field 
 
 Toss their flat heads in vain, 
 And snort and stamp ; weak creatures yield 
 
 And turn back home again. 
 
 My mansion stands beyond it, high 
 
 Above where rushes grow ; 
 Its hedge of laurel dares defy 
 
 The heavy-hooft below. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 He who sits thoughtful in a twilight grot 
 Sees what in sunshine other men see not.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 195 
 
 I walk away from what they run to see, 
 I know the world, but the world knows not 
 me. 
 
 ADVICE TO A POET. 
 
 If you are jealous as pug-dog, O poet, 
 Button your bosom tight, and never show it. 
 If you are angry at the world's disdain, 
 What the world gives you, give the world again. 
 The Muses take delight in poets' sighs, 
 But they hear few ascending from the wise. 
 ' The more the merrier ' (wicked jades !) they say, 
 Laugh in your face, and turn their own away. 
 
 TOLERANCE. 
 
 Mobs I abhor, yet bear a crowd 
 Which speaks its mind, if not too loud. 
 Willingly would I hear again 
 The honest words of pelted Payne.* 
 Few dared such homely truths to tell, 
 Or wrote our English half so well. 
 
 * Thomas Paine, author of the ' Rights of Man,' 
 for whom Landor professed to have a certain liking. 
 See Works, 1876, vi., 157. De Quincey said that 
 Aroar, in ' Gebir,' was too Tom Paineish. 
 
 13—2
 
 196 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 INVITATION. 
 
 If there be any who would rather 
 Short thyme from steep Hymettus gather, 
 Than thro' Hyrcanian forests trudge 
 In heavy boots, knee-deep in sludge, 
 Come, here is room enough for you, 
 There will be round about but few. 
 
 THE POET WHO SLEEPS. 
 
 One day, when I was young, I read 
 About a poet, long since dead,* 
 Who fell asleep, as poets do 
 In writing — and make others too. 
 But herein lies the story's gist, 
 How a gay queen came up and kist 
 The sleeper. 
 
 ' Capital! ''thought I. 
 ' A like good fortune let me try.' 
 
 :;: Clement Marot, Landor says in a note, but he 
 was forgetting his history. It was Alain Chartier, 
 the most ill-favoured man in France, whom Mar- 
 garet Stuart, wife of the Dauphin, kissed on his 
 mouth, ' de laquelle sont issus tant d'excellent 
 propos, matieres graves et paroles elegantes.' In 
 prose Landor has told the story correctly. See 
 Works, 1876, iii., 39.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 197 
 
 Many the things we poets feign. 
 I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain. 
 I tost and turn'd from side to side, 
 With open mouth and nostrils wide. 
 At last there came a pretty maid, 
 And gazed ; then to myself I said, 
 ' Now for it !' She, instead of kiss, 
 Cried, ' What a lazy lout is this !' 
 
 THE POET WIDE AWAKE.* 
 
 Kisses in former times I've seen 
 Which, I confess it, rais'd my spleen : 
 They were contrived by Love to mock 
 The battledore and shuttlecock. 
 Given, return'd : how strange a play 
 Where neither loses all the day, 
 And both are, e'en when night sets in, 
 Again as ready to begin ! 
 I am not sure I have not plaid 
 This very game with some fair maid. 
 Perhaps it was a dream ; but this 
 I know was not : I know a kiss 
 Was given me in the sight of more 
 Than ever saw me kist before. 
 
 * Written July 8, i860.
 
 198 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Modest as winged angels are, 
 And no less brave, and no less fair, 
 She came across, nor greatly fear'd 
 The horrid brake of wintery beard. 
 
 POET AND BUTTERFLY. 
 
 A poet sate in bower ; there soon came nigh 
 With flappings up and down a butterfly. 
 Her name was Gloriosa ; 'twas a name 
 Given at her birth by one who bore the same. 
 He saw its likeness, and he loved its ways 
 And gaudy colours in all sunny days. 
 ' Ah !' sigh'd the poet, ' soon such days are over, 
 And our best plumage books and bindings cover. 
 Vainly we flutter, vainly are we loth 
 To leave our heritage to grub and moth. 
 
 WIDCOMBE CHURCHYARD.* 
 
 Widcombe ! few seek in thee their resting-place, 
 Yet I, when I have run my weary race, 
 
 Will throw my bones upon thy churchyard 
 turf; 
 
 * Mr. Forster, in his ' Life of Landor,' gives the 
 first stanza. Landor purchased a plot of ground in 
 the churchyard at Widcombe, near Bath, where he 
 hoped to be buried.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 199 
 
 Although malignant waves on foren shore 
 Have stranded me, and I shall lift no more 
 
 My hoary head above the hissing surf. 
 Perhaps my dreams may not be over yet, 
 And what I could not in long life forget 
 
 May float around that image once too dear ; 
 Perhaps some gentle maiden passing by, 
 May heave from true-love heart a generous sigh, 
 
 And say, ' Be happier, thou reposing here.' 
 
 CERVANTES.* 
 
 Cervantes was among my first delights, 
 Nor was forgotten in maturer age ; 
 I dare not ask myself if Freedom urged 
 My steps to Spain more powerfully than he, 
 
 :|: Landor's memory played him a strange trick 
 when he wrote these verses. He never saw the 
 birthplace of Cervantes, who, moreover, was born 
 in Alcara de Henares, in New Castile. While 
 serving in Spain as a volunteer in 1808, Landor's 
 journeys were confined to the northern province. 
 Most of his three months in the country he spent in 
 the neighbourhood of Aguilar — ' impenetrable, 
 marble-turreted,' and ' in Reynosa's dry and thrift- 
 less dale.' He would have liked to see Madrid, he
 
 200 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 When that inveterate and infuriate foe 
 Of England and of Europe vaulted o'er 
 The Pyrenees. I went there not unarm'd, 
 Nor left unhonour'd, tho' my stay was brief. 
 When Blake retreated to unsafe Seville 
 I stayed behind, but would not go aboard, 
 Tho' Digby call'd to welcome me, but went 
 To view La Mancha, where no human step 
 Disturb'd the silence, where the lizard clung 
 Upright and panted on the sultry wall. 
 My sword was idle, not the hand that bore it. 
 There were who wanted that, nor sued in vain. 
 
 told Southey, but feared lest a battle might be 
 fought in his absence. It follows that he had no 
 opportunity of visiting either La Mancha or New 
 Castile. In an Imaginary Conversation, however, 
 between Don Ferdinand and Don J6hn Mary Luis, 
 first printed in 1829, mention is made of a foolish, 
 heretic Englishman who, on a hot day in August, 
 when ' the very lizards panted for breath, and 
 hardly clung against the walls,' visited Santillana, 
 ' the birthplace of one Gil Bias' (Works, 1876, vi., 
 318). Landor was a great admirer of Le Sage. 
 ' Show me,' he wrote, ' any style in any language 
 so easy, so diversified.' But for ' the glorious wit, 
 Cervantes, who shattered the last helmet of knight 
 errantry,' his regard passed admiration.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 201 
 
 birthplace of Cervantes ! proud of him ! 
 Proud of the giver of another world ! 
 Proud of immortal poets ! hast thou risen 
 Only to fall again ? Bring back the hour 
 (Ah, couldst thou !) when I rode along thy 
 
 downs 
 While war raged under me ; some duty done, 
 
 1 slept more soundly where the cistus helpt 
 My slumber, and the weaker thyme gave way. 
 
 DANIEL DEFOE. 
 
 Few will acknowledge all they owe 
 
 To persecuted, brave Defoe. 
 
 Achilles, in Homeric song, 
 
 May, or he may not, live so long 
 
 As Crusoe ; few their strength had tried 
 
 Without so staunch and safe a guide. 
 
 What boy is there who never laid 
 
 Under his pillow, half afraid, 
 
 That precious volume, lest the morrow 
 
 For unlearnt lesson might bring sorrow ? 
 
 But nobler lessons he has taught 
 
 Wide-awake scholars who fear'd naught : 
 
 A Rodney and a Nelson may 
 
 Without him not have won the day.
 
 202 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 DANIEL DEFOE. 
 
 Strangers in vain enquire, for none can show 
 Where rests thy mutilated frame, Defoe ! 
 Small men find room enough within St. Paul's, 
 The larger limb'd must rest outside the walls. 
 Be thou content, no name hath spred so 
 
 wide 
 As thine, undamaged stil by time and tide. 
 Never hath early valour been imprest 
 On gallant Briton's highly-heaving breast 
 So deeply as by Crusoe ; therefor Fame 
 O'er every sea shall waft your social name. 
 
 JEFFREY CRITICISING SOUTHEY.* 
 
 Jeffrey ! the rod and line lay by, 
 Or only fish for little fry. • 
 On dace and gudgeon you may fare, 
 Too deep for you lies Derwent Char. 
 
 * Landor heartily disliked the Edinburgh Review 
 and its editor. ' I was once asked,' he wrote to 
 Southey, ' whether I would be introduced to this 
 gentleman. My reply was : " No, nor to any other 
 rascal." I like to speak plainly, and particularly so 
 when the person of whom I speak may profit 
 by it.'
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 20* 
 
 >> 
 
 WILLIAM GIFFORD.* 
 
 Hold hard ! let puffing Giff reach first 
 The sacred spring, for fierce his thirst. 
 Press not too nigh lest he bespatter 
 Each rival with the muddied water. 
 
 WITS AND BORES.f 
 
 There are few wits who never speak ill 
 In prose or rhyme, such wits are Jekyl 
 And Luttrell : like this couple let us 
 Gather our honey from Thymettus : 
 
 * Landor liked Gifford of the Quarterly even less 
 than he liked Jeffrey. The animosity was reciprocal, 
 and Gifford saw in Landor ' a most rancorous and 
 malicious heart.' — ' Memoirs of John Murray,' 
 i. 164. 
 
 f Writing to Southey in August, 1832, Landor 
 told a story of a breakfast-party, at which he him- 
 self and Jekyl were present. It was at Dr. Parr's, 
 and Sir James Mackintosh was also among the 
 guests. Mackintosh — very inaccurate, Landor 
 notes, not only in Greek but in Latin — said some- 
 thing about the Anabasis. ' Very right, Jemmy,' 
 was the Doctor's comment, ' Anabasis with you, 
 but Anabasis with me and Walter Landor.' The 
 anecdote is not altogether pertinent ; but I cannot 
 recall any other mention of Mr. Jekyl in Landor's 
 writings. Henry Luttrell wrote ' Advice to Julia.'
 
 2o 4 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Let the kid suck, the mother graze, 
 Nor pelt the poor old buck that strays. 
 Those thirst the most who are as dry as 
 Gifford or bell-weather Mathias. 
 At flabby pens why frown offended ? 
 By the best blade can they be mended. 
 
 MEN OF THE DAY. 
 
 Disparage not our age, such thought were 
 
 wrong, 
 Ask not a poet is it worth a song ; 
 To this ye might hear Tennyson reply 
 At times in accents deep, at times in high. 
 Here has been in our iland one great man 
 Who, beyond all, the race of glory ran. 
 Beneath the rising and the setting sun, 
 The helm and scymeter of Wellesley shone. 
 And who was he* who later [dared] to 
 
 brave 
 The icy barrier of the Baltic wave ? 
 Nor have our gentle poets since been mute, 
 Although contented with their softer flute. 
 O'er the wide Continent, despotic Power 
 Is seen in threatening thunder-clouds to lour, 
 
 * Admiral Sir Charles Napier.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 205 
 
 And there if any loftier heads remain 
 They raise them not, aware 'twould be in vain. 
 From thousand city bards no voice is heard 
 Above the twitterings of a household bird. 
 While in our happy Britain there is stil 
 Breath left the trumpet of fair fame to fill. 
 
 JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Have I no sympathy for kings ? I have, 
 
 And plant a laurel on a royal grave. 
 
 James ! I will never call thy fortunes hard, 
 
 A happy lover and unrival'd bard. 
 
 For Chaucer, Britain's first born, was no more, 
 
 And the Muse panted after heavy Gower. 
 
 DESPOTS OF EUROPE. 
 
 Regain, ye despots, if ye can your thrones, 
 And drown with trumpeting a nation's groans. 
 For you in vain do watchful dragons keep 
 The lonely darksome intervals of sleep. 
 Ere long shall justice from high heaven descend, 
 And man's worst grief, when you she smites, 
 shall end.
 
 2o6 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 POLAND AND THE CZAR.* 
 
 Who would not throw up life to be exempt 
 From Europe's execration and contempt, 
 From all the written and unwritten scorn 
 Of thousands round, and thousands yet unborn, 
 That withers with a tongue of quenchless 
 
 shame 
 Wilhelm and Nicholas and one more name ? 
 
 THE RISING IN POLAND. 
 
 March, tyrant, o'er Sarmatia's blooded plain. 
 One hand may do what armies dare in vain. 
 Few of thy race have died a natural death, 
 Or drawn without fierce pangs their latest 
 
 breath. 
 What have I spoken ? inconsiderate word ! 
 Natural their death is, by the drug or sword, 
 Who burn the cottage and the babe within, 
 No doubt to purge him of original sin. 
 
 * ' I am confident you would not willingly omit the 
 verses I wrote last night, after reading the atrocious 
 threat of the Czar, ordering the death-stroke to be 
 given to Poland within ten days. . . . The shock 
 given me by the Czar has made my head, after 
 whirling round, come nearly right again.' — Landor 
 to A. de Noe Walker.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 207 
 
 Some call it cruel, others think it odd 
 In those who govern by the Grace of God : 
 Others impatiently rush forth with arms 
 Across the wastes which lately were their farms ; 
 Sickle and scythe are all that now remain, 
 But these shall reap their harvest — not of grain. 
 
 WILLIAM I. OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 William ! great men have sat upon the throne 
 Beneath whose weight thy Prussian subjects 
 
 groan. 
 Frederic and Frederic's father bravely fought, 
 And did, tho' scepter'd, some things as they 
 
 ought. 
 Illiterate was the latter, and severe 
 To those about him, more so to those near. 
 The wittiest and the wisest of their times 
 Bestow'd on him what he could spare of 
 
 rhymes, 
 And in his closet saw no sin or shame 
 (For who was there to do it or to blame ?) 
 In washing what he call'd his dirty linen, 
 Which, like us others, he was apt to sin in. 
 Thy smear'd and daily change wants cleansing 
 
 more 
 Than what those bloody ones required before.
 
 208 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 TO AMERICA, ON ITALY. 
 
 My eyes first saw the light upon the day* 
 It dawn'd on thee, but shone not brightly yet, 
 America ! and the first shout I heard 
 Of a mad crowd, around a madder king, 
 Was shout for glorious victory, for blood 
 Of brethren shed by brethren. 
 
 Few the years 
 Before I threw my cricket bat along 
 The beaten turf to catch the song of France 
 For freedom — ah poor slave! free one short 
 
 hour. 
 Glorious her women : will she ever bear 
 A man, whom God shall raise so near Himself 
 As Roland, Corday, and the Maid of Arc, 
 Deliverer of her country, vanquisher 
 Of her most valiant chiefs, enraged to see 
 The captive lilies droop above the Seine ? 
 America ! proud as thou well mayst be 
 Both of thy deeds and thy progenitors, 
 Thy hero, Washington, stands not alone ; 
 Cromwell was his precursor, he led forth 
 
 * Landor was born on January 30, 1775. His 
 earliest book of poetry contains an Ode to George 
 Washington.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 209 
 
 Our sires from bondage, Truth's evangelist, 
 And trod down, right and left, two hostile 
 
 creeds. 
 Brothers of thine are we, America ! 
 Now comes a sister, too long held apart. 
 Lo ! Italy hath snapt her double chain, 
 And Garibaldi sounds from shore to shore. 
 
 SICILY. 
 
 Again her brow Sicania rears 
 Above the tomb : two thousand years 
 Have smitten sore her beauteous breast, 
 And War forbidden her to rest. 
 Yet War at last becomes her friend 
 And shouts aloud, ' Thy grief shall end, 
 Throw off the pall, and rise again, 
 A homeless hero breaks thy chain.' 
 
 ORSINl'S LAST THOUGHTS.* 
 
 Condemn'd I die, by one who once conspired 
 With me, and stood behind me while I struck. 
 Where are the Gracchi, where are those twin- 
 stars 
 
 * It was on January 14, 1858, that Felix Orsini 
 attempted to assassinate the Emperor and Empress 
 of the French by means of explosive bombs. Two 
 
 14
 
 210 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Who guided men thro' tempests ? are they 
 
 set 
 Never to rise again ? No, there remain 
 For Italy, brave guides to lead her sons 
 In the right path, altho' its end be death. 
 
 I would live one day longer, only one, 
 
 Not that a wife and children might embrace 
 
 years earlier he had been Landor's guest at Bath, 
 having come with letters of introduction from Italian 
 gentlemen living in London. ' Miserable Orsini !' 
 Landor wrote to Mr. Forster, on the day after the 
 outrage ; ' he sat with me two years ago at the 
 table on which I am now writing. Dreadful work ! 
 horrible crime ! To inflict death on a hundred for 
 the sin of one ! Such a blow can serve only to 
 awaken Tyranny, reverberating on the brass helmets 
 of her Satellites.' In the excitement of the time, 
 says Mr. Forster, Landor was publicly named as 
 friendly to Orsini's later opinions ; and was at some 
 pains to declare, as publicly, that the imputation 
 was grossly unjust. Landor was also acquainted 
 with Allsop, in whose name Orsini's passport was 
 made out, and who was accused of complicity in 
 the plot against the Emperor. He had met 
 him at Charles Lamb's. Landor's belief in the 
 righteousness of tyrannicide was not without limita- 
 tions.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 211 
 
 A neck so soon to let its weight fall off, 
 The eyes yet rolling round, nor seeing them ; 
 For the worst stroke comes from that word 
 
 adieu, 
 And heavier than the stroke is the recoil. 
 
 Rome's ravens feed not the deserted child, 
 But God will feed it, and in God I trust : 
 His breath shall cleanse the temple long pro- 
 faned, 
 And the caged doves within the portico 
 Flutter, leap up, and wildly flit around 
 Hearing the scourge of him who lets them 
 out. 
 
 Free thou wast never long, beloved Rome ! 
 But free thou wast, and shalt again be free. 
 
 NICE, THE BIRTHPLACE OF GARIBALDI.* 
 
 In fields of blood however brave, 
 Base is the man who sells his slave ; 
 But basest of the base is he 
 Who sells the faithful and the free. 
 Nicsea ! thou wast rear'd of those 
 Who left Phocsea crusht by foes, 
 
 * Written on June 13, 1S60. 
 
 14—2
 
 212 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 And swore they never would return 
 Until the red-hot ploughshare burn 
 Upon the waves whereon 'twas thrown : 
 Such were thy sires, such thine alone. 
 Cyrus had fail'd with myriad host 
 To chain them down ; long tempest-tost, 
 War-worn and unsubdued, they found 
 No refuge on Hellenic ground. 
 All fear'd the despot : far from home 
 The Cimri saw the exiles come, 
 Victorious o'er the Punic fleet, 
 Seeking not conquest but retreat, 
 A portion of a steril shore 
 Soliciting, nor vantage more. 
 There rose Massilia. Years had past 
 And once again the Tyrian mast 
 Display'd its banner, and once more 
 Phocasans won it ; on thy shore, 
 Landed their captives and raised high 
 Thy city named from victory. 
 Firmly thou stoodest ; not by Rome, 
 Conqueror of Carthage, overcome. 
 Fearing not war, but loving peace, 
 Thou sawest thy just wealth increase* 
 Alas ! What art thou at this hour ? 
 Bound victim of perfidious Power.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 213 
 
 Bystanders we (oh shame !) have been 
 And this foul traffic tamely seen. 
 
 Thou wast not heart-broken yet, 
 Nor thy past glories will forget ; 
 No, no, that city is not lost 
 Which one heroic soul can boast. 
 So glorious none thy annals show 
 As he whom God's own voice bade go 
 And raise an empire, where the best 
 And bravest of mankind may rest. 
 Enna for them shall bloom again 
 And peace hail Garibaldi's reign. 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 Lately 'twas shown that usurpation 
 Will suit no more the Spanish nation. 
 The luckless king of Mountain Mill* 
 In his campaign succeeded ill. 
 Sadly we fear the holy oil 
 In these hot days will waste and spoil ; 
 Let those who vend it get fresh grease 
 To smear him, chanting 'Rest in Peace.'' 
 
 * The Count of Montemolin, who renounced his 
 claim to the Spanish throne in April, i860.
 
 2i 4 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 Ireland ! now restless these eight hundred years ! 
 Thy harp sounds only discords ; day and night 
 Thy cries are cries for murder, friend or foe 
 It matters not. Ah ! when wilt thou repose ? 
 When will thy teachers cease to preach against 
 All human laws ? when bid obey thy prince, 
 Nor listen to another who assumes 
 To rule as God's vicegerent, yet who knows 
 That God is truth and God's command is peace ? 
 ' Ye can not serve, two masters,'' so said He, 
 Yet thou rejectest one who rules thy land, 
 Obeying one who calls across the sea, 
 Who claims the tribute and who girds the 
 sword. 
 
 MILO AND PIO NONO. 
 
 Milo of Croton with a stroke 
 
 Of his clencht fist could fell an ox ; 
 
 But when he tried to split an oak, 
 
 He found himself ' in the wrong box.' 
 
 He thrust both hands into the slit. 
 
 It closed on them ; he stampt and swore. 
 Would it not open ? Not a bit ; 
 
 It only held him fast the more.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 215 
 
 Pio could bring down kings and princes 
 By dozens, but there comes at last 
 
 An ugly customer who winces 
 
 And kicks amain, and holds him fast. 
 
 O, Mother Church ! what hast thou done ? 
 
 I hardly think thy fornications 
 Deserve the curse of such a son ; 
 
 A plague to thee, a scourge to nations. 
 
 Ah ! but thou taughtest him to lie 
 When first he sat upon thy knee ; 
 
 Now thy weak frown he dares deny, 
 And spits upon thy rotten see. 
 
 CHURCHMEN. 
 
 Churchmen there are who, after one more 
 
 bottle, 
 Would even leave old port to kick the shin 
 Of dissident, but would not push aside 
 The last half-cup of luke-warm tea to loose 
 A martyr from the stake. And some there are 
 Who curb and spur, and make curvet and 
 
 prance 
 That piebald steed the jockies call Religion. 
 By Jove ! what quarters has the jade ! what 
 
 thews !
 
 216 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Grace. 
 
 There was a clergyman who used to say 
 (Morn, noon, and night) his prayers every day ; 
 Perhaps they all do ; but this worthy priest 
 Long before dinner-time outran the rest. 
 Now mark the sequel of his earnest words, ' 
 After the solemn reading of the Lord's, 
 ' O Lord ! be merciful to me a sinner ! 
 Sally ! what is there in the house for dinner ?' 
 
 RELIGION IN DANGER.* 
 
 Alas ! infidelity darkens the land, 
 
 Which we must enlighten with faggot and 
 
 brand, 
 For how can we ever expect any good 
 From churchmen who question' if hares chew 
 
 the cud? 
 
 * ' This I wrote on seeing in the Times last 
 Tuesday the persecution of Bishop Colenso. 
 Landor to A. de Noe Walker — MS. correspon- 
 dence [? March, 1863].
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 217 
 
 ARTHUR DE NOE WALKER. 
 
 Arthur, who snatches from the flames 
 Scraps which Oblivion vainly claims, 
 And givest honest Newby those 
 Which rhyme holds separate from prose, 
 Add to the flyleaf or fag-end 
 These few last scratches of a friend. 
 
 ON THE GRAVE OF GARROW AT FLORENCE.* 
 
 How often have we spent the day 
 
 In pleasant converse at Torquay ; 
 
 Now genial, hospitable Garrow, 
 
 Thy door is closed, thy house is narrow. 
 
 No view from it of sunny lea 
 
 Or vocal grove or silent sea. 
 
 AZEGLIO.f 
 
 Azeglio is departed : what is left 
 
 To Italy, of such a son bereft ? 
 
 Hope, valour, virtue, all the Arts — they rest, 
 
 Tho' sadly sighing, on a mother's breast. 
 
 * The father of Theodosia Garrow, afterwards 
 Mrs. T. A. Trollope. 
 
 f Massimo Taparelli, Marchese di Azeglio, after 
 distinguishing himself as painter, author, patriot,
 
 2i8 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ON MY SISTER.* 
 
 Of many I have mourn'd the death, 
 But thou the most, Elizabeth ! 
 Of all our house the first thou wast 
 Who would thy Walter have embraced ; 
 Therefor I will not dry the tears 
 The daily thought of thee endears. 
 
 SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 
 
 How could you think to conquer Scinde, 
 And leave no enemy behind ? 
 Indus rolls onward fifty streams, 
 But none so noisome as the Thames. 
 
 EPITAPH FOR GENERAL W. NAPIER. 
 
 Last of the Giants ! thou wnose vigorous 
 
 breast 
 Bore many wounds, and sank by none opprest, 
 
 and statesman, became Prime Minister to the King 
 of Sardinia. The lines seem to refer to his journey 
 to England. He outlived Landor, who dedicated 
 to him his ' Last Fruits off an old Tree.' 
 
 * Elizabeth Savage Landor, his eldest sister, 
 died February 24, 1854, aged seventy-seven years.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 219 
 
 Earth covers thee, like all, and War and Peace 
 Upon thy tomb from equal discord cease. 
 Heard was the trumpet that was blown from 
 
 Scinde, 
 And the true brother would not halt behind. 
 
 A CHILD TO A BIRD. 
 
 Bad little bird ! why art thou gone, 
 
 Deserter of my breast ? 
 Why to the wood ? In wood is none 
 
 So soft and safe a nest. 
 
 Good little birds fly not from home, 
 Nor, when we call 'em, linger. 
 
 I will not scold thee, only come 
 And perch upon my finger. 
 
 I long to feel thy claw, I long 
 
 To hold thy beak in mine, 
 Then loosen it. Come, bring thy song, 
 
 No song so sweet as thine. 
 
 CHILD AGAIN. 
 
 Question. 
 And what became of that old man 
 
 Whose name I could not spell, 
 So fond of that sad boy who ran 
 
 Pelting the birds ? Come, tell.
 
 220 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 A nswer. 
 My pretty child ! the tale all through 
 
 I would have gladly told 
 When I repeated all I knew 
 
 About both young and old. 
 
 Question. 
 But surely you will let me hear 
 
 What, when CBnone died, 
 Became of those two faithful deer, 
 
 And how they must have cried ? 
 
 A nswer. 
 They wept, I doubt not, but they left 
 
 The shed, their haunt before, 
 Of her who fondled 'em bereft, 
 
 And fed them at the door. 
 
 Question. « 
 
 I am (and are not you ?) afraid 
 
 The dogs who came from Troy 
 Would presently find where they stray'd, 
 
 Cheer'd on by wicked boy. 
 
 A nswer. 
 No hound (or hunter crueler 
 
 Than hound) would hurt those two, 
 Who lay upon the grave of her 
 
 Whose love had been so true.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 221 
 
 TO A MASTIF. 
 
 Mastif ! why bark at me who love thy race ? 
 To fear thee I should deem it foul disgrace. 
 In thy dominions I have walked alone, 
 Nor ever bore a stick or rais'd a stone. 
 Against the little, low, and wiry-hair'd, 
 I must confess it, I would go prepared : 
 To the high-crested creature, dog or man, 
 I do whatever services I can, 
 But to caress or compliment a cur 
 Of either species, stiffly I demurr. 
 
 TO MY DOG. 
 
 Giallo !* I shall not see thee dead 
 
 Nor raise a stone above thy head, 
 
 For I shall go some years before, 
 
 And thou wilt leap up me no more, 
 
 Nor bark, as now, to make one mind 
 
 Asking me am I deaf or blind. 
 
 No, Giallo ! but I must be soon, 
 
 And thou wilt scratch my grave and moan. 
 
 * ' Poor Giallo died yesterday. Poor dog ! I 
 miss his tender faithfulness.' Contessa Baldelli to 
 her brother, November 30, 1872.
 
 222 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 TO A TREE. 
 
 Acacia, how short-lived is all thy race ! 
 Slender was I, but thou wast slenderer, 
 When I began to notice thee ; thy stem 
 Hath long been wrinkled, long before my brow. 
 Well I remember tossing up against 
 Thy lowest tassel my blue-ribbon'd hat, 
 And how it hung there till the rake was call'd 
 To rescue it, nor that light work refused. 
 Well I remember the limp hat, and aim 
 To bring the blossom down within my reach, 
 And break it — boys too soon are mischiefous 
 Almost as men — and how the blossom caught 
 And held to it what would have caught the 
 
 blossom. 
 Thus happens it sometimes with weightier 
 
 things. 
 
 Acacia ! low thou liest, and the axe 
 
 Hath scattered wide thy weak and wither'd 
 
 limbs, 
 But I will treasure up one particle 
 Before some strangers take thy wonted place, 
 Small, delicate, requiring nurse's aid ; 
 Pamper'd and rear'd for parlour company 
 They soon will be, thou not so soon, forgotten.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 223 
 
 Epigrams. 
 
 Epigrams must be curt, nor seem 
 
 Tail-pieces to a poet's dream. 
 
 If they should anywhere be found 
 
 Serious, or musical in sound 
 
 Turn into prose the two worst pages 
 
 And you will rank among the sages. 
 
 TO AN OLD POET. 
 
 ' Turn on the anvil twice or thrice 
 Your verse,' was Horace's advice : 
 Religiously you follow that, 
 And hammer it til cold and flat. 
 
 THE GOOD-NATURED FRIEND. 
 
 Some if they're forced to tell the truth 
 Tell it you with a sad, wry mouth, 
 And make it plainly understood 
 Such never was their natural food. 
 
 FUGITIVE PIECES. 
 
 Fugitive pieces ! no indeed, 
 
 How can those be whose feet are lead ?
 
 224 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 THE SONNETTEER. 
 
 Sonnet is easy in the Tuscan tongue, 
 
 And poets drop it as they walk along. 
 
 A young professor was invited once 
 
 To try his hand, and this was the response 
 
 ' I never turn'd a sonnet in my life, 
 
 I had no mistress, and I have a wife. 
 
 If anything should happen, then the Muse 
 
 To help me at a pinch might not refuse. 
 
 Fancy and tenderness, I have enough 
 
 For that occasion — but she is so tough.' 
 
 IDLE WORDS. 
 
 They say that every idle word 
 
 Is numbered by the Omniscient Lord. 
 
 O Parliament ! 'tis well that He 
 
 i 
 
 Endureth for Eternity, 
 
 And that a thousand Angels wait 
 
 To write them at thy inner gate. 
 
 ON THESE EPIGRAMS. 
 
 Germans there are who sweat to cram 
 
 Conundrum into epigram ; 
 
 And metaphysics overload 
 
 A cart that creaks on sandy road.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 225 
 
 All who look out for quaint and queer 
 Are sadly disappointed here : 
 Our only aim has been to fit 
 A ready rhyme to ready wit. 
 
 WILLIAM VON SCHLEGEL. 
 
 Schlegel ; where first I met thee was at Bonn : 
 I knew thee but by name, and little thought 
 The only mortal who could comprehend 
 Shakespeare, in all his vastness, stood before 
 
 me. 
 I wondered, when I lookt on thee, at tags 
 Of ribbon, buckles, crosses, round thy breast ; 
 As, on their birthday, boys display new drums, 
 High feather in the hat and fierce cockade. 
 Is this the man, thought I, but held my tongue, 
 Who knew the heart of Shakespeare, and his 
 
 ways 
 Thro' every walk of life, o'er land and sea, 
 And into regions where nor sea nor land 
 Are peopled, but where other Beings dwell, 
 Above, below. 
 
 Schlegel, he recognized , 
 In thee his privy-counselor, bade step 
 
 15
 
 226 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 With him thro' treacherous courts, courts dark 
 
 with blood, 
 Bade thee bare witness how Othello stabb'd 
 His Desdemona, bade thee hold the pall 
 Of virgin white that cover'd Juliet's bier, 
 Then gather daisies, rosemary and rue, 
 And columbine, as crazed Ophelia will'd. 
 No sadness ever toucht my heart like hers : 
 I think, but dare not own it, I have cried 
 As child, who to his tongue applies a bee 
 And, as he tastes the honey, feels the sting. 
 Master of mind, in every form it takes, 
 And universal as the Universe, 
 Is Shakespeare, ambient as the air we breathe, 
 Bright as the sun that warms it, vast and high 
 As that dispenser to all worlds around 
 Of light and life, wherever life 'exists : 
 Many are the stars that gem the throne of 
 
 Night 
 But veil their lustrous eyes when he walks forth. 
 So are there poets in our hemisphere 
 Who glimmer, not obscurely ; they approach, 
 Gazing with bated breath and front abashed : 
 Barr'd in a tower where none can touch them 
 
 lie 
 His sceptre, sword and coronation robes.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 227 
 
 MEMORIAL OF E. M. ARNDT.* 
 
 Arndt ! in thy orchard we shall meet no more 
 
 To talk of freedom and of peace revived. 
 
 We stood, and looking down across the Rhine 
 
 Heard fights and choral voices far below. 
 
 ' What an enthusiastic song, O Arndt !' said I, 
 
 ' Is that !' then smiled he, and he turn'd aside 
 
 My question. 
 
 ' Why not deem our Teuton tongue 
 Worthy to have been learnt with ancient 
 
 Rome's 
 Which we converse in ? When an Attila, 
 Far less ferocious, far more provident, 
 
 * Toward the end of 1832, after a visit to England, 
 where he had met Charles Lamb and Coleridge, 
 Landor, on his way back to Fiesole, spent a few 
 days at Bonn. There he saw William von Schlegel 
 and Arndt. Of the former he wrote to Crabb 
 Robinson : ' He resembles a little pot-bellied pony 
 tricked out with stars, buckles, and ribbons, looking 
 askance from his ring and halter in the market for 
 an apple from one, a morsel of bread from another, 
 a fig of ginger from a third, and a pat from every- 
 body.' His interview with Arndt the next day, he 
 said, ' settled the bile this coxcomb of the bazaar 
 had excited.' One poem to Arndt was published 
 in ' Last Fruits,' p. 475. 
 
 15—2
 
 228 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Than his successor, storm'd the Capitol, 
 He broke no oaths, no vows, no promises ; 
 But he who since laid waste our fertile fields, 
 And handcuft our weak princes, broke them all. 
 I am among the many better men 
 Whose head he had devoted : I am he, 
 The framer of that anthem ; they who now 
 Sing it would then have sung it o'er my grave, 
 And found their own in singing it.' 
 
 He stopt 
 Suddenly, then ran forward ; swiftly ran 
 The septuagint, and overtook the youth 
 Who carried the light weight of ten years less, 
 For he had seen an apple drop and roll 
 Along the grass : he stoopt and took it up 
 And wiped the dew away, and gave it me. 
 ' Keep it, for there are better in, the house,' 
 Said he, ' and this is over-ripe ; one pip 
 Keep in remembrance of our converse here.' 
 I sow'd them all ; but kill'd were the new-born 
 Ere slender stem could rear its first twin-leaves, 
 And all were swept away maliciously 
 By one who never heeded sage or sire.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 229 
 
 A PASTORAL.* 
 
 Damon was sitting in the grove 
 With Phyllis, and protesting love ; 
 And she was listening ; but no word 
 Of all he loudly swore she heard. 
 How ! was she deaf then ? no, not she, 
 Phyllis was quite the contrary. 
 Tapping his elbow, she said, ' Hush ! 
 
 what a darling of a thrush ! 
 
 1 think he never sang so well 
 As now, below us, in the dell.' 
 
 TO LESBIA. 
 
 I loved you once, while you loved me ; 
 
 Altho' you flirted now and then, 
 It only was with two or three, 
 
 But now you more than flirt with ten. 
 
 * Mr. Kenyon told the story, in a somewhat 
 different form, to the late Mrs. Andrew Crosse. 
 Landor, on his honeymoon, was entertaining his 
 bride with a reading of his own poems. Suddenly 
 she rose, with the exclamation : ' Oh, do stop, 
 Walter ! There's that dear, delightful Punch per- 
 forming in the street. I must look out of the 
 window.'
 
 230 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 TO LESBIA. 
 
 I swore I would forget you ; but this oath 
 Brought back your image closer to my breast : 
 
 That oaths have little worth your broken troth 
 Had taught me ; teach my heart like yours to 
 rest. 
 
 SAPPHO TO PHAON. 
 
 Time has not made these eyes so dim ; 
 
 I never have complain'd of him : 
 Of one how different I complain ! 
 
 Come, Phaon, bring them light again. 
 
 A WARNING TO KINGS.* 
 
 My mule ! own brother of those eight 
 Which carried Ferdinand in state ; 
 Alas ! how many a dublado 
 I paid for thee to Infantado. 
 None but his Excellence and Grace 
 Possesses thy unequal'd race. 
 I grieve not that my gold is gone, 
 My noble Mule ! I grieve alone 
 
 * A reminiscence of Landor's campaigning days 
 in Spain.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 231 
 
 That thou, the highest of the high 
 And whitest of the white, shouldst die 
 Under the plate some robber steals 
 Stabb'd by another at his heels. 
 Thou never stumbledst ; but my humble 
 Prayer is that thou some day wilt stumble, 
 And break the neck of him whose reign 
 Is now extending over Spain. 
 
 INFLUENCES. 
 
 There are two rivals for the heart of Man, 
 Pleasure and Power ; first comes into the field 
 Power, while yet Pleasure has not learnt to 
 
 smile 
 At the fond teacher bending o'er the task. 
 Years fly fast over him, then Pleasure calls 
 Nor waits, but shows before him various paths, 
 All verdant, fresh, and flowery : midst of these 
 He wearies and he stretches out his arms 
 To some fair object beckoning from beyond. 
 Even at the feast of Love he sits morose 
 If any should sit opposite this one 
 And hold sly converse with prone ear too close 
 To ear as prone. 
 
 Tell me, ye whom the Muse 
 Hath wean'd from Pleasure, tell me have not ye
 
 23 2 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Been also jealous, tho' afar from Love, 
 Afar from Beauty, and in dell or bower 
 Immerst ; and have not oft your temples 
 
 throb'd, 
 Withering the moss whereon they would repose 
 When Power was leading, high above your 
 
 heads, 
 A happier brother onward. 
 
 We are all 
 Babes at some moment of our after-life. 
 
 ADVICE IN RETURN FOR CANTOS. 
 
 Ah ! heap not canto upon canto 
 Which you must drag a weary man to, 
 But try such themes as may be brief 
 And, if they tire, soon comes relief. 
 The Greeks have done it, and our neigh- 
 bours 
 The French succeed in these light labours. 
 Firm mansions oft are built of stone 
 Less than a waggon-load each one ; 
 And oaks that o'er the forest frown 
 For pleasure-boats are not cut down. 
 A poem of ten thousand verses 
 Is parent of as many curses.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 233 
 
 PISA.* 
 
 At Pisa let me take my walk 
 Alone, where stately camels stalk, 
 And let me hope to catch the eye 
 Of pheasant on the ilex by, 
 That he alight and find the bread 
 Crumbled for him, and none instead. 
 Robins in earlier morn may come 
 And make my winter house their home. 
 
 AT ARNO'S SIDE. 
 
 Pisa ! I love thee well, altho' 
 Compell'd by friendship now I go 
 Where golden cones of pine illume 
 No more with fragrant warmth my room, 
 Nor patient camels crouch, or stand 
 Awaiting from a well-known hand 
 To crunch with palm-long teeth the tips 
 Of stubborn thorn thro' hardy lips, 
 Then stalk along with stately stride 
 To rest again at Arno's side. 
 
 * Where Landor lived, 1820-21. 'We gave a 
 dinner yesterday in the forest of Pisa. . . . What 
 adds considerably to the Oriental aspect of the 
 scene are the droves of camels wandering through 
 it.' (Lady Blessington.)
 
 234 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 But camels ! winter will return 
 
 When cones from your old pines shall burn, 
 
 Changeless in form : I wish that we 
 
 The same throughout our lives could be, 
 
 With warmth as temperate waste away 
 
 And cheerful to the last as they. 
 
 Some lower necks, good mothers, bring 
 
 For me to pat ere pass the Spring. 
 
 TO THE RIVER AVON. 
 
 Avon ! why runnest thou away so fast ? 
 Rest thee before that Chancel where repose 
 The bones of him whose spirit moves the 
 
 world. 
 I have beheld thy birthplace, I have seen 
 Thy tiny ripples where they played amid 
 The golden cups and ever-waving blades. 
 I have seen mighty rivers, I have seen 
 Padus, recovered from his fiery wound, 
 And Tiber, prouder than them all to bear 
 Upon his tawny bosom men who crusht 
 The world they trod on, heeding not the cries 
 Of culprit kings and nations many-tongued. 
 What are to me these rivers, once adorn'd 
 With crowns they would not wear but swept 
 
 away ?
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 235 
 
 Worthier art thou of worship, and I bend 
 
 My knees upon thy bank, and call thy 
 
 name, 
 And hear, or think I hear, thy voice reply. 
 
 LAST WORDS. 
 
 Pretty Anne Boleyn made a joke 
 
 On her thin neck, just when the stroke 
 
 That was to sever it was nigh, 
 
 And show'd how innocence should die. 
 
 The wittier and the wiser More 
 
 With equal pace had gone before. 
 
 Earlier in Athens died the sage 
 
 Who's death o'er Plato's puzzling page 
 
 Sheds its best light : well matcht with 
 
 these 
 Was shrewd and sturdy Socrates. 
 He laught not at the gods aloud, 
 For that would irritate the crowd ; 
 But, not to die in debt, he said, 
 To the few friends about his bed, 
 ' Let iEsculapius have his fee 
 For radically curing me. 
 A gamecock he deserves at least 
 So catch and take one to his priest.'
 
 236 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 FOND AND FOOLISH. 
 
 If ever there was man who loved 
 And wept for it, that man has proved 
 Our earlier authors are less wrong 
 Than we are in our native tongue ; 
 That fond and foolish, tho' in name 
 Unlike, are in effect the same. 
 
 THE PHOC^EANS.* 
 
 O'erpast was warfare : youths and maidens 
 
 came 
 From the Ligurian shore, and the Tyrrhene 
 And the far Latian, to console the brave 
 After their toils, and celebrate the rites 
 Of the same gods. Hymen stood up aloft ; 
 His torch was brighter than the* deadly glare 
 Lately so reverenced by a crouching throng 
 In Druid worship, over blacken'd oak 
 Leafless and branchless : hymns were sung 
 
 before 
 That smiling youth whose marble brow was 
 
 crown'd 
 
 * These lines, Landor says in a note, would have 
 closed ' The Phocseans.' See above, p. 135.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 237 
 
 With summer flowers, and Love's with earlier 
 
 spring's. 
 Apollo stood above them both, august, 
 Nor bent his bow in anger more than Love. 
 Here was no Python ; worse than Python one 
 Had vext the land before his light came down. 
 Here stood three maidens, who seem'd ministers 
 To nine more stately, standing somewhat higher 
 Than these demure ones of the downcast smile : 
 Silent they seem'd ; not silent all the nine. 
 One sang aloud, one was absorb'd in grief 
 Apparently for youths who lately bled ; 
 Others there were who, standing more elate, 
 Their eyes upturn'd, their nostrils wide ex- 
 panded, 
 Their lips archt largely ; and to raise the hymn 
 Were lifted lyres ; so seemed it ; but the skill 
 Of art Hellenic forged the grand deceit. 
 Night closed around them, and the stars went 
 
 down 
 Advising their departure : when they went 
 I too had gone, for without them I felt 
 I should be sad, when from above there came 
 A voice — it must have been a voice of theirs, 
 It was so musical — and said ' Arise, 
 Loiterer, and sing what thou alone hast heard.'
 
 238 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' Inspire me then,' said I, 'O thou who standest 
 With the twelve maidens round ! 
 
 Was it a dream ? 
 I thought the Delian left his pedestal 
 A living God, I thought he toucht my brow ; 
 Then issued forth this hymn, the very hymn 
 I caught from the full choir, the last they sang, 
 ' Incline a willing ear, O thou supreme 
 Above all Gods ! Jove liberator ! Jove 
 Avenger ! to Phocaea's sons impart 
 The gift of freedom all our days, and peace 
 To hold it sacred and with blood unstain'd. 
 And do thou, consort of the Omnipotent ! 
 Bestow thy blessing on our rescued few, 
 And grant the race, adoring thee, increase.' 
 
 Greece. 
 
 A voice descending from the Parthenon 
 
 Cried ' Rise up, sons of Hellas !' It was borne 
 
 Beyond the land of Pelops, and beyond 
 
 The iEgsean and Ionian sea, across 
 
 The Adriatic, to that wounded man 
 
 Who gave a kingdom and who lost a home. 
 
 They whom he saved dared strike him. Death 
 
 dared not, 
 Standing above his head with lifted dart.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 239 
 
 The voice assuaged his anguish ; on his lips 
 Ye might have fancied hung these warning 
 
 words : 
 ' My friends, my future comrades ! stand com- 
 pact, 
 And drive the intruder from your sacred soil. 
 Be vigilant ; look westward ; he who feign'd 
 Deliverance is enslaver ; he attunes 
 His fiddle to the steps of dancing slaves, 
 And stamps on toes that keep not to his time. 
 
 The Briton has been free two hundred years, 
 Longer the Hollander, Helvetia's son 
 Preceded him, and won the upland race ; 
 Be Hellas fourth, no sluggard in the field. 
 Their glory none of those had merited 
 Had they forbidden God to hear the prayers 
 Of his weak children in their mother tongue. 
 The human body rises not at once, 
 But member after member ; its extremes 
 Are first to stir, and they support the rest. 
 
 Give freedom if thou wouldst thyself be free, 
 Resurgent Hellas ! force not on the neck 
 Of others that spiked yoke thou hast thrown 
 
 off; 
 Leave his one God to the quell'd Osmanli, 
 Nor tread the papal slipper down at heel,
 
 2 4 o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Nor drive the quiet Martin from thy gate. 
 Take and hold stedfastly one more advice. 
 Remain within thy ancient boundary. 
 Worst of all curses is the thirst of rule 
 O'er wide dominion : where is Babylon ? 
 Where Carthage ? Earth's proud giant brood, 
 
 they lie 
 Along the dust ; the dust alone remains 
 Imperishable and by age unchanged. 
 Marble and bronze may crowd the peopled 
 
 street, 
 Men will ask who were those ? I place my palm 
 On a small volume which contains his words 
 Who rous'd and shook and would have saved 
 
 thy land, 
 Demosthenes, the patriot who disdain'd 
 To live if life must be a despot's* gift. 
 Cherish his memory, teach thy sons his lore.' 
 
 APOLOGY FOR THE HELLENICS. 
 
 None had yet tried to make men speak 
 
 In English as they would in Greek. 
 
 In Italy one chief alone 
 
 Made all the Hellenic realms his own ; 
 
 He was Alfieri, proud to teach 
 
 In equally harmonious speech.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 241 
 
 Soon, wondering Romans heard again 
 
 Brutus, who had been dumb, speak plain. 
 
 Corneille stept forth, and taught to dance 
 
 The wigs and furbelows of France. 
 
 In long-drawn sighs the soft Racine 
 
 Bestrewed with perfumed flowers the scene. 
 
 I wish our bard, our sole dramatic, 
 
 Had never overlookt the attic : 
 
 Tho' dried the narrow rill whereby 
 
 The bards of Athens loved to lie, 
 
 Yet Avon's broader deeper stream 
 
 Might have brought down some distant dream, 
 
 Nor left for trembling hand like mine 
 
 To point out forms and feats divine. 
 
 Children, when they are tired with play, 
 
 Make little figures out of clay, 
 
 And many a mother then hath smiled 
 
 At the rare genius of her child ; 
 
 But neither child nor man will reach 
 
 The godlike power of giving speech. 
 
 Fantastic forms weak brains invent . . . 
 
 Show me Achilles in his tent, 
 
 And Hector drag'd round Troy, show me 
 
 Where stood and wail'd Andromache ; 
 
 Her tears through ages still flow on, 
 
 Still rages, Peleus, thy stern son. 
 
 16
 
 242 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 HYMN TO PROSERPINE. 
 
 Look up, thou consort of a king whose realm 
 Is wider than our earth, and peopled more, 
 A king, a god ; look up, Persephone ! 
 Behold again the land where thou wast born, 
 The field where first thy mother from her 
 
 knee 
 Let down, with both her hands, thy dimpled 
 
 feet, 
 Cautiously, slowly, where the moss was soft 
 And crowds of violets bow'd their heads around. 
 From thy calm region cast thine eyes again 
 On Enna, where sang once thy virgin choir, 
 And gather'd flowers for thy untroubled brow ; 
 Here never wilt thou shudder at a car 
 Of ebony and iron, nor bite his arm 
 Who lifted thee above the sable steeds, 
 Snorting and rearing, and then rushing down, 
 Nor hearing the shrill shrieks of those behind. 
 Happy art thou, and happy all thou seest 
 Around thee, far as stretch the Elysian plains, 
 Where weapons bright as in the blaze of war 
 Are interchanged by chiefs who strove at Troy, 
 And music warbles round the concave orb 
 Of golden cup, well-drain'd, of roseate wine.
 
 UNPUBLISHED VERSE 243 
 
 But, O Persephone ! what wasting herd 
 O'erruns the meadow of thy joyous youth ! 
 What monsters lurk amid those chestnut groves, 
 And ilexes, and trample down the bank 
 Of rivers where thou freshenedst thy limbs 
 Glowing with brightness thro' the boughs 
 
 above ! 
 Dwarf Cyclopses, more hateful than the huge, 
 Crunch daily in their cavern brave men's bones, 
 And howl against the pilot who directs 
 The sad survivers thro' the swelling sea. 
 The largest hearts are overladen most, 
 They swell to bursting ; wrath dries up the tear 
 Of grief; strong men sink at the feet of weak ! 
 Dastards, where once rose heroes, and where 
 
 rang 
 The hymn of triumph sang by bards as bold, 
 Depopulated thy cities and thy fields, 
 Follow'd by slaves in arms. 
 
 Persephone ! 
 Thou art persuasive ; none but thou alone 
 Can bend the monark ; raise thy cheek against 
 His rigid beard and kiss his awful brow ; 
 Promise him, swear to him by Styx itself, 
 That thou wilt give him twice the worth of 
 
 what 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 He once made drop from thee he well knows 
 
 where ; 
 Remind him how his true and constant love, 
 While other gods swerv'd wide from constancy, 
 Hath made him dearer than thy earlier friends, 
 And charm'd away even thy fond mother's grief; 
 Tell him that he, true king, must hate the false ; 
 Tell him to let them pass the Styx unhurt, 
 And walk, unstay'd, unterrified, until 
 Phlegethon drown their cries in liquid fire.
 
 LA N DO R 
 
 ¥1) 
 
 PORTRAIT OF WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR. 
 
 ( From a Bust by Gibson. ) 
 
 Tpface f>. 244.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 1 795-~ The Poems of Walter Savage 
 
 Landor. London : Cadell and Davies. 
 
 [Of the thirty -two poems contained in this 
 
 volume, six are quoted, in part or at length, in 
 
 Forster's ' Life of Landor.' The remainder have 
 
 not been reprinted.] 
 
 1795- — A Moral Epistle ; respectfully 
 Dedicated to Earl Stanhope. 
 London : Cadell and Davies. 
 [In verse. An attack upon William Pitt.] 
 
 1798. — Gebir; a Poem in Seven Books. 
 London : Rivingtons. 
 
 1800. — Poems from the Arabic and Persian, 
 with Notes, by the author of ' Gebir.'
 
 246 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Warwick: printed by H. Sharpe, High 
 Street, and sold by Messrs. Rivingtons, 
 St. Paul's Churchyard, London. 
 
 [Reprinted, but without some of the notes, in 
 'Dry Sticks.' See 1858.] 
 
 1800. — Poetry, by the Author of ' Gebir,' and 
 a Postscript to that Poem, with Re- 
 marks on some Critics. Warwick : 
 Sharpe, Printer. 
 
 [Landor's friend, Mr. Isaac Mocatta, persuaded 
 him to suppress this volume (Forster's ' Life,' 
 i. 140) ; but there are two copies of it, one im- 
 perfect, at South Kensington Museum. Some of 
 the poetry was published in 1802 and afterwards; 
 other pieces, of which Mr. Forster quotes a 
 couple (' Life,' i. 191), were cancelled.] 
 
 1802. — Poetry, by the author of ' Gebir.' 
 London : Rivingtons. 
 
 [This volume contained, ' The Story of 
 Chrysaor ' ; two fragments of an epic, ' From 
 the Phocaeans,' and ' Part of Protis's Narrative ' ; 
 and some English and Latin verses. ' The Story 
 of Chrysaor ' was reprinted by Mr. Forster ; the 
 fragment 'From the Phocaeans' by Mr. Crump. 
 Of the shorter English poems all except one may 
 be found in the 1876 edition of Landor's works.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 247 
 
 The verses beginning ' Is haughty Spain again in 
 arms?' were reprinted in ' Heroic Idyls,' but not 
 elsewhere.] 
 
 1803. — Gebir; a Poem in Seven Books, by 
 Walter Savage Landor; second edition. 
 Oxford : Slatter and Munday. 
 
 1803. — Gebirius ; Poema. Scripsit Savagius 
 Landor. Oxford : Slatter and Mun- 
 day. 
 
 [The Latin version of ' Gebir.'] 
 
 1806. — Simonidea. Bath: Meyler; and London: 
 Robinson. 
 
 [English and Latin verses. All but two of the 
 English poems and a portion of a third have been 
 reprinted.] 
 
 1809. — Three Letters, written in Spain, 
 to D. Francisco Riguelme, command- 
 ing the 3rd Division of the Gallician 
 Army. Printed for G. Robinson and 
 J. Harding, London. 
 
 1810. — Ad Gustavem Regem. 
 
 1812. — Count Julian : a Tragedy. London : 
 Murray.
 
 248 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1812. — Commentary on Memoirs of Mr. Fox. 
 
 London : Murray. 
 
 [Mr. Sidney Colvin believes that there is only 
 one copy in existence, in the possession of Lord 
 Crewe.] 
 
 1813. — Letters to the Courier, signed Calvus. 
 
 [These were reprinted in the form of a 
 pamphlet, with an additional letter, dated De- 
 cember 30, 1813. A copy of the pamphlet, with 
 MS. corrections in Landor's hand, was among 
 the papers in his desk.] 
 
 1815. — Idyllia nova quinque Heroum atque 
 Heroidum. Oxford. 
 
 1820. — Idyllia Heroica decem. Partim jam 
 primo partim iterum atque tertio edit 
 Savagius Landor. Pisa. 
 
 1821. — Poche Osservazioni, etc., di Walter 
 Savage Landor. Naples. 
 
 1824. — Imaginary Conversations of Liter- 
 ary Men and Statesmen, by Walter 
 Savage Landor, Esq. Vols. i. and ii. 
 London : Taylor and Hessey. 
 
 [Vol. i. contains a dedication, dated Florence, 
 October 1822, to the author's brother-in-law,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 
 
 Major -General Stopford, Adjutant -General in 
 the Army of Columbia ; Vol. ii. is dedicated from 
 Florence, November, 1823, to the Spanish General, 
 Mina. Each volume contained eighteen conversa- 
 tions, all of which reappeared in the same or an 
 altered shape in later editions.] 
 
 1826. — Imaginary Conversations of Liter- 
 ary Men and Statesmen, etc. Vols. i. 
 and ii. The second edition, corrected 
 and enlarged. London : Colburn. 
 
 [The order of the conversations is not the same 
 as in the first edition.] 
 
 1828. — Imaginary Conversations of Liter- 
 ary Men and Statesmen, etc. Vol. iii. 
 London : Colburn. 
 
 [Contains twenty new conversations. That 
 between Ines de Castro, Don Pedro and Dona 
 Blanca was afterwards turned into blank verse. 
 The remaining conversations were all reprinted, 
 with more or less alterations. The dedication, 
 dated June 3, 1825, with postscript, July 1, 1827, 
 is to ' Bolivar, the Liberator.'] 
 
 1829. — Imaginary Conversations, etc. Vols, 
 iv. and v. London : Duncan. De- 
 scribed in a separate title - page as
 
 2 5 o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' Imaginary Conversations,' second 
 series, vols. i. and ii. 
 [Vol. iv. contained fifteen new conversations ; 
 vol. v. twelve. The former was dedicated, 
 May 5, 1826, to General Sir Robert Wilson ; 
 the latter, on August 18, 1826, to the Earl of 
 Guilford. In the preface Landor expresses his 
 sorrow at the death of Dr. Parr. The old dedi- 
 cations were omitted in later editions. ' Mina 
 gave orders,' Landor wrote, ' to kill a woman ; 
 Bolivar was a coxcomb and imposter, having been 
 200 miles distant from the battle he pretended to 
 have won ; and Wilson is worse than a Whig.'] 
 
 1831. — Gebir, Count Julian, and other 
 Poems, by Walter Savage Landor, 
 Esq. London : Moxon. Dedication 
 to Francis George Hare, Florence, 
 January 1, 1827. , 
 
 contents. 
 
 Gebir. 
 
 Count Julian, a tragedy. 
 InesdeCastroat Cintra. 
 Ines de Castro at Coim- 
 bra. 
 
 Ippolito di Este. 
 Gunlaug. 
 Ianthe. 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems. 
 On the Dead. 
 
 [Several of the poems had appeared in 
 ' Simonidea.' All but thirteen are reprinted in 
 Works, 1846 and 1876.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 2 5i 
 
 1834. — Citation and Examination of William 
 Shakespeare, etc. To which is 
 added a conference of Master Edmund 
 Spenser, a Gentleman of Note, with 
 the Earl of Essex, Touching the State 
 of Ireland in 1596. London: Saunders 
 and Otley. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1836. — Death of Clytemnestra. Friendly 
 Contributions for the Benefit of Three 
 Infant Schools in the Parish of Ken- 
 sington. Printed solely for the Right 
 Honourable Lady Mary Fox. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1836. — Pericles and Aspasia, by Walter 
 Savage Landor, Esq. Two vols. 
 London : Saunders and Otley. 
 
 [Vol. i. contains a dedication to the Earl of 
 Mulgrave, Lord - Lieutenant of Ireland, and 
 Advertisement, dated Villa Fiesolana, July 4, 
 1835. Vol. ii. contains an Ode to General 
 Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, 
 dated July 3, 1835; an ^ an appendix entitled 
 ' Reflections on Athens at the decease of Pericles.' 
 For the Ode see Works, 1876, vol. viii., p. 134. 
 Mr. Forster did not reprint the ' Reflections.'
 
 252 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 ' Pericles and Aspasia ' was reprinted, with some 
 alterations, in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1836. — The Letters of a Conservative ; in 
 which are shown the only means of 
 saving what is left to the English 
 Church, addrest to Lord Melbourne. 
 London : Saunders and Otley. 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 1836. — Terry Hogan ; an Eclogue lately dis- 
 covered in the Library of the Propa- 
 ganda at Rome, and now first Trans- 
 lated from the Irish. Thereunto is 
 subjoined a dissertation by the Editor, 
 Phelim Octavius Quarle, S. T. P. 
 TwaiK€<; (oXecrav fxe. — Euripides. 
 London : printed by J. Westheimer 
 and Co. 
 
 [Never reprinted, and not reprintable. The 
 copy in the British Museum, the only one I have 
 seen, was given to Dr. Garnett by the late Mrs. 
 De Morgan in 1873.] 
 
 1837. — A Satire on Satirists, and Admo- 
 nition to Detractors. London : 
 Saunders and Otley. 
 
 [Not reprinted.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 
 
 x 837- — The Pentameron and Pentalogia. 
 London : Saunders and Otley. 
 
 [1. The Pentameron, or interviews of Messer 
 Giovanni Boccaccio and Messer Fr. Petrarcha, 
 when said Messer Giovanni lay infirm at his 
 Viletta hard by Certaldo ; after which they saw 
 not each other on our side of Paradise ; shewing 
 how they discoursed upon that famous theologian, 
 Messer Dante Alighieri, and sundry other matters. 
 Edited by Pievano D. Grigi. 
 
 [2. The Pentalogia, or five dramatic scenes : 
 
 Essex and Bacon. 
 
 Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus. 
 
 The Parents of Luther. 
 
 The Death of Clytemnestra. 
 
 The Madness of Orestes. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1839. — Andrea of Hungary and Giovanna 
 of Naples, by Walter Savage Landor. 
 London : Richard Bentley. 
 
 [Two dramas; reprinted in Works, 1846 
 and 1876.] 
 
 1841. — Fra Rupert. London : Saunders and 
 Otley. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.]
 
 254 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1846. — The Works of Walter Savage 
 Landor. Two vols. London: Moxon. 
 
 1847. POEMATA ET INSCRIPTIONES novis 
 
 auxit Savagius Landor. Londini : Im- 
 pensis Edwardi Moxon. 
 
 1847. — The Hellenics of Walter Savage 
 Landor, Enlarged and Completed. 
 London : Moxon. 
 
 [There is a dedication to Pope Pius IX., in 
 which Landor says, ' Cunning is not wisdom ; 
 prevarication is not policy ; and — novel as the 
 notion is, it is equally true — armies are not 
 strength : Acre and Waterloo show it, and the 
 flames of the Kremlin and the solitudes of Fon- 
 tainebleau.] 
 
 1848. — Imaginary Conversation of King 
 • Carlo-Alberto and the Duchess 
 Belgoioiso. London : Longmans. 
 
 [Reprinted in ' Last Fruit ' and in Works, 
 
 1876.] 
 
 The Italics of Walter Savage 
 Landor. London : Reynell and Weight. 
 
 [This volume, now a rare one, contained seven 
 short poems ; all reprinted in ' Last Fruit,' and 
 again in Works, 1876, vol. viii.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 
 
 1851. — Popery; British and Foreign, by 
 Walter Savage Landor. London : 
 Chapman and Hall. 
 
 [Reprinted in ' Last Fruit.'] 
 
 1853. — The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, 
 by Walter Savage Landor. London : 
 Moxon. 
 
 [The dedication, in Italian, to the Marchese di 
 Azeglio. Reprinted, with some exceptions, in 
 Works, 1876.] 
 
 1853. — Imaginary Conversations of Greeks 
 and Romans, by Walter Savage 
 Landor. London : Moxon. 
 
 [With a dedication to Charles Dickens, ' to 
 register my judgment that, in breaking up and 
 cultivating the unreclaimed wastes of Humanity, 
 no labours have been so strenuous, so continuous, 
 or half so successful, as yours.'] 
 
 1854. — Letters of an American, Mainly on 
 Russia and Revolution, edited by 
 Walter Savage Landor. London : 
 Chapman and Hall. 
 
 [Not reprinted.]
 
 256 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1856. — Antony and Octavius ; Scenes for 
 the Study, by Walter Savage Landor, 
 London : Bradbury and Evans. 
 
 [These scenes are dedicated to Edward Cap- 
 pern, ' poet and day-laborer at Bideford, Devon.' 
 Reprinted in Works, 1876, vol. vii.] 
 
 1856. — A Letter from W. S. Landor to 
 R. W. Emerson. Bath : published 
 by E. Williams. 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 1858. — Dry Sticks, fagoted by Walter 
 
 Savage Landor. Edinburgh : James 
 
 Nichol. London : James Nisbet and 
 
 Co. 
 
 [These dry sticks kindled to anything but love, 
 
 and the law's wrath well-nigh consumed him who 
 
 collected them. The volume* is dedicated to 
 
 ' L. Kossuth, President of Hungary.' Portions 
 
 of the volume only were reprinted in Works, 
 
 1876.] 
 
 1859. — The Hellenics of Walter Savage 
 Landor, comprising Heroic Idyls, 
 etc. New edition, enlarged. Edin- 
 burgh : J. Nichol. 
 [The dedication is to General Sir W. Napier. 
 Reprinted in Works, 1876.] 
 
 1
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 
 
 1862. — Letters of a Canadian. [See above, 
 p. 125.] 
 
 1863. — Heroic Idyls, with additional 
 Poems, by Walter Savage Landor. 
 London : Newby. 
 
 [Dedication to the Hon. Edward Twisleton, 
 Florence, August 25, 1863. Portions of this 
 volume were reprinted in Works, 1876.] 
 
 1869. — Walter Savage Landor; a Biography, 
 by John Forster. Two vols. London : 
 Chapman and Hall. 
 
 [This is the edition of Forster's Life of Landor 
 cited in the text.] 
 
 1876. — The Works and Life of Walter 
 Savage Landor. Eight vols. London: 
 Chapman and Hall. 
 
 Vol. i. Biography, by John Forster. 
 Vol. ii. Classical Dialogues, and 
 Citation and Examination of 
 William Shakespeare. 
 Vol. iii. Conversations of Sovereigns 
 and Statesmen. Five Dialogues 
 of Boccaccio and Petrarcha. 
 Vol. iv. Dialogues of Literary Men. 
 
 17
 
 258 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Vol. v. Dialogues of Literary Men 
 (continued) ; Dialogues of Famous 
 Women ; Pericles and Aspasia ; 
 Minor Prose pieces. 
 
 Vol. vi. Miscellaneous Conversa- 
 tions. 
 
 Vol. vii. Gebir ; Acts and Scenes 
 and Hellenics. 
 
 Vol. viii. Miscellaneous poems, and 
 Criticisms on Theocritus, Ca- 
 tullus, and Petrarcha. 
 
 REPRINTS, Etc 
 
 1882. — Selections from the Writings of Walter 
 Savage Landor, arranged and edited by 
 Sidney Colvin. London : Macmillan. 
 
 1883. — Imaginary Conversations, by Walter 
 Savage Landor. Five volumes. London : 
 Nimmo. 
 [A reprint of the prose Conversations in Works, 1876.] 
 
 1884. — English Men of Letters — Landor, by 
 Sidney Colvin. London : Macmillan. 
 
 1886. — Imaginary Conversations, by Walter 
 Savage Landor. With introduction by 
 Havelock Ellis. London : W. Scott. 
 [Contains thirty-three Conversations.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 
 
 1889. — The Pentameron and other Imaginary 
 Conversations, by Walter Savage Lan- 
 dor. Edited by Havelock Ellis. London : 
 W. Scott. 
 
 1890. — Pericles and Aspasia, by Walter Savage 
 Landor. Preface by Havelock Ellis. 
 London : W. Scott. 
 
 1890. — Pericles and Aspasia, by Walter Savage 
 Landor. Edited by C. G. Crump. Two 
 vols. London : Dent. 
 
 1891. — Imaginary Conversations, by Walter 
 Savage Landor. With bibliographical 
 and critical notes by C. G. Crump. Six 
 volumes. London : Dent. 
 
 1892. — Poems, Dialogues in Verse, and Epi- 
 grams, by Walter Savage Landor. 
 Edited, with notes, by C. G. Crump. Two 
 vols. London : Dent. 
 
 [A selection.] 
 
 1892. — Citation and Examination of William 
 Shakespeare, by Walter Savage Landor. 
 London : Chatto and Windus. 
 
 1892. — The Longer Prose Works of Walter 
 Savage Landor. Edited, with notes, by 
 
 17 — 2
 
 2 6o WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 C. G. Crump. Two vols. London : 
 Dent. 
 
 [Contains ' Citation and Examination of Shakespeare ' ; 
 ' Pericles and Aspasia,' ' Pentameron ' ; five Conversations 
 not in Works, 1876 ; and Critical Essays on Theocritus, 
 Catullus, and Petrarcha.] 
 
 1895. — Walter Savage Landor ; a Biography, by 
 John Forster. London : Chapman and 
 Hall. 
 
 [A new edition of the Biography, as published in Works, 
 1876.]
 
 PART II. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, ETC.* 
 
 1823. — London Magazine, July. Imaginary 
 Conversation : Southey and Porson. 
 
 1832. — Philological Museum. (Cambridge, 
 edited by Julius Hare.) 
 Vol I., Poemata Latina. 
 [Signed ' W. S. L.'] 
 
 Imaginary Conversation : Solon and 
 Pisistratus. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1S33. — Athenaeum, January. Ode to Southey. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 * This list of Landor's innumerable contributions 
 to magazines, reviews, and newspapers has yet to 
 be completed.
 
 262 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 1833. — Philological Museum. Vol. II., 
 Imaginary Conversation : P. Scipio 
 Emilianus, Polybius and Pansetius. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 [? A note on Cleon and Admiral Vernon. 
 Signed ' W. S.'] 
 
 1834. — Book of Beauty. Imaginary Con- 
 versations : Rhadamistus and Zeno- 
 bia ; Philip II. and Dona Juana 
 Coelho. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1834. — Leigh Hunt's London Journal, 
 December 3. Ode to Joseph Ablett. 
 
 [Reprinted in W T orks, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1835. — Book of Beauty. Imaginary Con- 
 versation : Steel and Addison. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1835. — Leigh Hunt's London Journal, 
 
 June 13. Verses : 'To the Sister of 
 
 Charles Lamb.' 
 July 11. Letter on 'Language and 
 Orthography.'
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 
 
 1836. — Book of Beauty. 'The Parable of 
 Asabel.' 
 
 [Reprinted in ' Literary Hours ' and in Works, 
 1876, v., 593.] 
 
 1837. —Book of Beauty. 
 
 Imaginary Conversation. Colonel 
 Walker and Hattaji. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 Verses : ' Farewell to Italy !' 
 [Works, 1876, viii., 80.] 
 
 1837. — The Monthly Repository (edited by 
 Leigh Hunt). 'High and Low Life 
 in Italy.' 
 
 [A series of letters ; not reprinted.] 
 
 1837. — Literary Hours by various Friends, 
 printed by George Smith, Liverpool, 
 for Joseph Ablett. This volume 
 contained six Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions, and ' The Parable of Asabel,' all 
 reprinted from the Book of Beauty and 
 Philological Museum; the Conversa- 
 tion : ' Bishop Shipley and Benjamin 
 Franklin'; and the ' Death of Hofer'—
 
 264 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 all in prose : and a number of occa- 
 sional poems. 
 
 [Reprinted, with one or two exceptions, in 
 Works, 1876.] 
 
 I 837- — The Tribute (edited by Lord 
 Northampton. 
 
 1. Orestes and Electra. Last 
 
 scene. 
 
 2. Luther's Parents. Dialogue in 
 
 verse. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, vols, v., and vii.] 
 
 1838. — Book of Beauty. 'The Dream of 
 Petrarcha.' 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, v., 590.] 
 
 ^39' — Book of Beauty. 
 
 1. Anne Boleyn and the Constable 
 
 of the Tower. 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vii.] 
 
 2. Henry VIII. and Northumber- 
 
 land. 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vol. vii.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 
 
 1840. — Book of Beauty. Imaginary Con- 
 versation ; Galileo, Milton and 
 Dominican. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 Verses to Miss Rose Paynter. 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 145.] 
 
 1841. — Book of Beauty. Verses : 
 
 ' Pleasures away, they please no 
 more.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, v., 433.] 
 
 1841. — Keepsake. Verses: 'Torbay.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 78.] 
 
 1842. — Book of Beauty. Verses : ' To Zoe,' 
 June, 1808. 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 45.] 
 
 1842. — Keepsake. ' A Skolion from the 
 Greek.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 1842. — Foreign Quarterly Review, July : 
 ' The Poems of Catullus.' 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, vol. viii.]
 
 266 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 October : ' The Poems of Theo- 
 critus.' 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, vol. viii.] 
 
 1842. — Blackwood's Magazine, December. 
 Imaginary Conversation : Southey 
 and Porson. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1843. — Book of Beauty. 
 
 Imaginary Conversation : Vittoria 
 Colonna and Michel Angelo. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1843. — Keepsake. 
 
 A Story of Santander. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1843. — Blackwood's Magazine. 
 
 January. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Tasso and Cornelia. 
 
 February. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Oliver Cromwell and Sir O. Crom- 
 well. 
 
 March. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Sandt and Kotzebue. 
 
 Verses : ' To my Daughter.' 
 [All reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 
 
 1843. — Foreign Quarterly Review. 
 July. Francesco Petrarcha. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876.] 
 
 1844. — Book of Beauty. 
 
 Imaginary Conversation : iEsop and 
 
 Rhodope. 
 A Vision. 
 
 Verses to Lady Charles Beauclerk. 
 [All reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1844. — Keepsake. 
 
 Verses : ' Malvern.' 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1845. — Book of Beauty. 
 
 Imaginary Conversation : iEsop and 
 Rhodope, ii. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1845. — Keepsake. 
 
 Verses : ' Take the last flowers your 
 natal day.' 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1846. — Book of Beauty. 
 
 Imaginary Conversation : ' Tancredi 
 and Constantia.' 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.]
 
 268 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1846. — Keepsake. 
 
 Verses : ' One year ago my path was 
 green.' 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1846 and 1876.] 
 
 1847. — Book of Beauty. Italian verses : 
 ' Veglia di Partenza.' 
 
 1847. — Keepsake. ' A Dream of Youth and 
 Beauty.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 Italian verses : ' Mi vien, mi vien da 
 piangere.' 
 
 1848. — Keepsake. 
 
 Verses : ' On leaving my Villa.' 
 [Not reprinted.] , 
 
 1848. — Examiner, March 25. Imaginary Con- 
 versation : ' Thiers and Lamartine.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vol. vi.] 
 
 1849. — Examiner. Letters to the Editor: 
 
 July 7. ' The Pope temporal and 
 
 spiritual.' 
 July 28. 'France, Italy and the 
 
 Czar.'
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 
 
 August 11. 'Austrian Cruelties.' 
 September 8. ' The comfortable state 
 of Europe.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 1850. — Leigh Hunt's Journal, December 7. 
 Verses : 
 
 1. ' Instead of idling half my hours.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 172.] 
 
 2. 'Again to Paris? Few remain.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 3. ' Love flies with bow unstrung 
 
 when Time appears.' 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 166.] 
 
 1851. — Keepsake. 
 
 Dramatic Scene : ' Beatrice Cenci 
 and Clement VIII.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vii., 342.] 
 
 185 1. — Examiner. 
 
 March 13. ' Sir Benjamin Hall and 
 the Bishop of St. David's.' 
 
 [Letter, not reprinted.]
 
 270 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 June 21, June 28 and August 2. 
 Imaginary Conversation : Nicholas 
 and Nesselrode. 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vi., 585.] 
 
 August 16. ' Naples and Rome.' 
 [Letter, not reprinted.] 
 
 August 20 and 23. Imaginary Con- 
 versation : Antonelli and Gemeau. 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vi., 616.] 
 
 September 27. Verses : ' To Meschid 
 the Liberator.' 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 248.] 
 
 October 11. Verses: 'Hast thou 
 forgotten, thou more vile.' 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 251.] 
 
 October 25. Verses: 'To Beranger 
 at Tours.' 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 249.] 
 
 Verses : ' Hymn to America.' 
 [Reprinted, ' Last Fruit,' 477.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 
 
 December 13. ' Tranquillity in 
 Europe.' 
 [Letter. Reprinted in ' Last Fruit,' 348.] 
 
 Verses : ' Made our God again, Pope 
 Pius.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 253.] 
 
 December 20. ' Finality in Politics.' 
 [Letter, not reprinted.] 
 
 Verses : ' Save from Thee, most Holy 
 Father.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 December 27. Verses: 'City of men. 
 rejoice.' 
 
 [Reprinted, ' Last Fruit,' 481.] 
 
 ' Ten letters to Cardinal Wiseman,' 
 reprinted in Last Fruit, were also 
 first published in the Examiner this 
 year. 
 
 1851. — Leigh Hunt's Journal. 
 February 1. Verses : 
 ' To Luisina at Paris.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.]
 
 272 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Verses to a Lizard : 
 
 ' You pant like one in love, my 
 Ramorino.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 188.] 
 
 Verses : 
 
 ' If you go on with ode so trashy 
 Cupples will seize the crutch and 
 thrash ye.' 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 February 15. Verses : 
 
 ' So then, I feel not deeply ! if I 
 did.' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 233.] 
 
 March 1. Verses: 
 
 ' Nay, thank me not again for 
 those.' • 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 175.] 
 
 March 22. Verses : 
 ' Horace and Creech !' 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, viii., 190.] 
 
 1852. — Athen^UM. 
 
 January 10. Imaginary Conversa- 
 tion : Alcibiades and Xenophon. 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, ii., 122.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 
 
 1853. — Examiner. 
 
 February ig. Imaginary Conversa- 
 tion : Archbishop of Florence and 
 Francesco Madiai. 
 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, vi., 631.] 
 
 June 11. Imaginary Conversation: 
 Nicholas and Nesselrode. 
 [Reprinted in Mr. Crump's edition.] 
 
 1854. — Examiner. 
 
 February 11. Imaginary Conversa- 
 tion : Nicholas and Diogenes. 
 [Reprinted in Mr. Crump's edition.] 
 
 December 2. Imaginary Conversa- 
 tion : Pio Nono and Antonelli. 
 [Reprinted in Mr. Crump's edition.] 
 
 1855. — Life and Correspondence of the 
 Countess of Blessington, by 
 Madden, contains an unpublished 
 Imaginary Conversation : ' Lord 
 Mountjoy and Lord Edward Fitz- 
 
 gerald. 
 
 1855. — The Atlas. 
 
 April 28. ' To the people of England.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 18
 
 274 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Verses : ' The Four Georges.' 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 May 19. ' Failure of Negotiations.' 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 May 23. ' House of Commons' 
 
 Morality.' 
 
 [Letter. Not reprinted.] 
 
 June 9. Verses : ' A most puissant 
 picture-scouring prince.' 
 [Reprinted in ' Dry Sticks,' p. 35.] 
 
 July 14. 'A Lesson from the Crystal 
 Palace.' 
 
 [Letter. Not reprinted.] 
 
 1 
 
 September 22. 'The Fall of Sebas- 
 
 topol.' 
 [Letter, not reprinted.] 
 
 September 29. Verses : ' Why should 
 
 not A meet the Czar ?' 
 
 [Reprinted in ' Dry Sticks,' p. 50.] 
 
 ' The Christian and the Mahomedan.' 
 [Letter : see above, p. 148.]
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 275 
 
 October 6. A long letter on the 
 execution of Count Louis Batthy- 
 any. 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 October 13. Two letters : 
 
 1. ' Dishonest conduct of the War.' 
 
 2. ' Royal Marriages.' 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 1855. — Examiner. 
 
 April 17. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Ovid and the Prince of the Getae. 
 [Reprinted in Mr. Crump's edition.] 
 
 August 4. Verses : 
 ' Under the Lindens.' 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, viii., 281.] 
 
 1855.— Fraser's Magazine, November. 
 Imaginary Conversation : Asinius 
 Pollio and Licinius Calvus. 
 [Reprinted, Works, 1876, ii., 433.] 
 
 1856. — Fraser's Magazine, April. Imaginary 
 Conversations : Alfieri and Metas- 
 tasio ; Menander and Epicurus, ii. 
 [Both reprinted in Works, 1876.] 
 
 18—2
 
 276 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 1861. — Athenaeum. 
 
 March 2. Letter on the Pope's 
 Temporal Power, dated Florence, 
 February 26. 
 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 March g. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Virgil and Horace. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, ii., 428.] 
 
 April 20. Letter on ' Fashions in 
 Spelling.' 
 [Not reprinted.] 
 
 May 18. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Milton and Marvel. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, v., 150.] 
 
 October 12. Imaginary Conversa- 
 tion : Machiavelli and Guicciar- 
 dini. 
 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, v., 145.] 
 
 1862. — Athenaeum. 
 
 August 16. Imaginary Conversation : 
 Milton and Marvel, ii. 
 [Reprinted in Works, 1876, v., 156.]
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ablett (Joseph), 20. 21, 89 
 
 Ablett's ' Literary Hours,' 14, 21, 
 263 
 
 Abdul Medjid (Sultan 1839-1861) 
 151 
 
 Abertawy (River), 67 ; verses on 
 186 
 
 ^Eschylus, Coleridge on, 162 
 
 Ahmed el Jezzar, 133 
 
 Albany (Countess of), 41-44, 
 105 n. 
 
 Alexander VI. (Pope), 30 
 
 Alfieri (Victor), 19, 41, 105 ; death 
 of, 44 ; and the Countess of 
 Albany, an imaginary conver- 
 sation, 41-43 
 
 Alvanley (Lord), 104 
 
 America, Landor and, 10, 128 ; 
 verses to, 208, 270 
 
 ' Andrea of Hungary ' (by W. S. 
 Landor), 99, 253 
 
 ' Anthony and Octavius : Scenes 
 for the Study ' (by W. S. Lan- 
 dor), 118, 256 
 
 Apology for the Hellenics, verses, 
 240 
 
 Armenian question, the, 149, 150 
 
 Arndt (Ernest Maurice), verses 
 to, 227 
 
 ' Atlas,' Landor's contributions to 
 the, 146, 273-275 
 
 Austin (Alfred), his ' Savonarola, 
 
 a Tragedy,' 26, 36 
 Avon, verses to the river, 234 
 
 Aylmer (Bishop), 65 
 
 Ayliner (the Hon. Rose), 16, 
 64-74, !86 ; a lock of her hair, 
 74 ; tomb at Calcutta, 73 
 
 Azeglio (Marchese di), 217, 255 
 
 Baldelli (Contessa Geltrude), 5 ; 
 Letters from, 6, 122, 221 n. 
 
 Bath, Landor at, 89, 108, in;, 
 146, 147, 210 n. 
 
 Bembo (Cardinal), epigram on 
 Venice, 125 
 
 Beranger (Jean de), 100, 270 
 
 Bewick (William), portraits of 
 Landor by, 17, 19 
 
 Blackstone (Sir William), 56 
 
 Blackwood 's Magazine and Lan- 
 dor, 157, 158 ; Landor's con- 
 tributions to, 266 
 
 Blessington (Countess of), 89 
 103, 273 ; her account of W. S. 
 Landor, 20 ; death and epitaph 
 on, 113, 114 
 
 Boccaccio, 33, 93, 99, ico, 253 
 
 Boileau (Nicolas), 101 
 
 Bolivar (Simon), 10, 249, 250 
 
 Bonaparte (Napoleon), 137, 142- 
 144 
 
 Bonn, Landor at, 227 n. 
 
 ' Book of Beauty,' 66, 94, 262-268 
 
 Borgia (Lucretiaj, lock of hair, 
 74 
 
 Bossuet (James de, Bishop of 
 Meaux), 101
 
 278 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bowles (Caroline, Mrs. Southey), 
 
 97 
 . Boxall (Sir William, R.A.). por- 
 traits of Landor, 17, 23, 24 
 Boyle (Miss Mary), 23, 83, 92 
 Brougham (Lord), 102, 103, 108 
 Brown (Charles Armitage), 96 
 Browne (Professor E. G. ), 133 
 Browne (Sir Thomas), ' Religio 
 
 Medici,' 81 
 Browning (Mrs.), 119, 131, 134, 
 
 173 
 Browning (Robert), 78, 119 ; 
 
 Landor on, 179, 180 
 Brownings, the, 119 
 Bulwer (Sir Henry Lytton-Bul- 
 
 wer, afterwards Lord Dalling), 
 
 15 
 Bulwer (Sir Edward Lytton), 101. 
 
 See Lytton 
 Burke (Edmund), 143 
 Burns (Robert), 168, 173 
 Byron (Lord) , 63, 109, 189 ; 'The 
 
 Island,' 166 ; ' Don Juan,' 166; 
 
 ' A Vision of Judgment,' 165 ; 
 
 Landor and, 165-170 ; Landor 
 
 on Byron's death, 167 
 
 Caldwell (Miss), 104, 105 
 Calvus,' ' Letters of, 140-145, 
 
 248 
 Campbell (Thomas), 62 
 Canova (Anthony), monument to 
 
 Dante, 44 
 Cappern (Edward), 118, 256 
 Carlyle (Thomas), 41 
 Castlereagh (Viscount), 141 
 Cedar-tree, verses on, 4, 5 
 Cedar-wood, scent of, 2 
 Century Magazine, 23 
 Cervantes, verses on, 199 
 Chambers (Sir Robert and Lady), 
 
 72 
 Chantilly, 103 
 Chantrey (Sir Francis), 19 
 Chartier (Alain), 196 
 Chateaubriand, 101 
 Chatham (Lord), 141 
 Chaucer, spelling of, 123 
 
 Chesterfield (Lord), 104 
 
 ' Chrysaor,' by W. S. Landor, 75, 
 
 134, 246 
 Clifton, Landor at, 78 
 Colenso (Bishop), 216 n. 
 Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) 
 
 Lay 
 
 and 
 Ser- 
 
 Landor, 161-163 
 
 mons,' 163 
 Coleridge, Lord, 164 
 Colvin (Mr. Sidney), 12, 24, 66, 
 
 83. 134. 248, 258 
 Combe (Lord Mayor), 57 
 Commons, House of, 52, 224 
 ' Count Julian : a Tragedy,' by 
 
 W. S. Landor, 247 ; Charles 
 
 Lamb on, 175 ; Wordsworth 
 
 on, 156 
 Courier, Letters to the, 137, 140, 
 
 248 
 Cousin (Victor), 100, 106 
 Cowper (William), 63, 125 
 Crimean W<ir, Landor on, 148, 
 
 274, 275 ; Dr. Walker in, 116 
 Crosse (Mrs. Andrew), 229 n. 
 Crump (C. G. ), editor of Landor's 
 
 Works, 12, 13, 24, 135, 259 
 Czartoryski (Princess), 106 
 
 Dance (Nathaniel), portrait of 
 
 Landor, 18 
 Dante, 33.^39; ' Divina Comedia,' 
 
 34, 44 ; monument at Florence, 
 
 44 ; tomb at Ravenna, 39 
 Dashwood (Mrs.), 14 
 Defoe (Daniel), 56 ; descendants 
 
 of, 117 ; verses on, 201, 202 
 De Molande, Countess. See 
 
 Ianthe 
 De Quincey (Thomas), 54, 195 n. 
 De Tocqueville (Alexis), 100 
 Diana of Poictiers, 51 
 Dickens (Charles), 108, 181, 255 
 Don Quixote, Landor on, 176 
 D'Orleans, (Ferdinand, Due), 
 
 death of, 107 
 D'Orsay (Count Alfred), 104, 107, 
 
 113 ; portraits of Landor by, 
 
 21 
 D'Orsay (Lady Harriet), 98
 
 INDEX 
 
 279 
 
 ' Dry Sticks,' by W. S. Landor, 
 
 66 n., 130, 256 
 Dumas (Alexandre), 52 
 Duncan (James, publisher), 127, 
 
 249 
 
 Edgeworth (Maria), 101 
 Eliot (George), * Romola,' 26 
 Emerson (Ralph Waldo), 10,114; 
 
 Landor's letter to, 256 
 Evelyn (John), quoted, 4 
 Examiner, Landor's contribu- 
 tions to the, 103, 113, 146, 148, 
 273. 275 
 
 Fabre (M.), 42, 43 
 
 Field (Mr.), of Boston, publisher, 
 
 9, 11, 29, 41 
 Fiesole, Landor's villa at, 5, 88, 
 
 101, 114 
 Fisher (William), portraits of 
 
 Landor by, 17, 22 ; portrait of 
 
 Miss Rose Paynter, 94 
 Fitzgerald (Edward), 132 ; on 
 
 Landor, 153 
 Fitzgerald (Mr. J. E., C.M.G.), 
 
 108, 109 
 Florentines, 35 
 Forester (Major the Hon.Charles), 
 
 104 
 Forster (Mr. John), 17 ; meeting 
 
 with Ianthe, 89 ; his editions 
 
 of Landor's Works, 12, 51, 82, 
 
 254, 257 ; Life of Landor by, 
 
 18, 23, 137, 245, 246, 257, 260 
 France, 34, 241 ; and Russia, 146 
 Francis I. (King of France), 51 
 French Revolution, the, 135; Al- 
 
 fieri on, 41 
 
 Garibaldi (Guiseppe), 29, 121, 
 209 ; verses on his birthplace, 
 211 
 
 Garrow (Mr. Joseph), verses on, 
 217 
 
 ' Gebir,' by W. S. Landor, 67, 
 75. 134. 135. 153- 154- 245-247 ; 
 Byron on, 166; Charles Lamb 
 and, 175-177 ; de Quincey on, 
 
 195 n. ; Sir Walter Scott and, 
 
 159; the sea- shell in, 159; 
 
 Shelley and, 173 ; Wordsworth 
 
 on, 156 
 Gell (Sir William), 105 
 Germany, poets of, 125, 224 
 Gherardesca Villa, 114. See 
 
 Fiesole 
 Giallo (Landor's dog), verses to, 
 
 221 ; his death, ib. 
 Giannone (Pietro), 99; 'History 
 
 of Naples 'by, 99 n. 
 Gibson (John, R.A. ), bust of 
 
 Landor by, 19, 20 
 Gifford (William), verses on, 203 
 ' Gil Bias,' 200 n. 
 Giovanna di Napoli, 99, 100, 253 
 Goldsmith (Oliver), 125; his style, 
 
 56, 101 
 Gore House, Kensington, 22, 108, 
 
 114 
 Grammont (Duchesse de), 97 
 Grammonts, the, 113 
 Graves - Sawle (Lady), 23, 66, 
 
 in n. ; letters to, 111-113 ; por- 
 trait of, 66, 94 ; verses to, 187 
 Graves-Sawle (Sir Charles, Bart. ), 
 
 94, in n. 
 Gray (Thomas), 125 ; ' Elegy in 
 
 a Country Churchyard,' 53 
 Greece, verses on, 238 
 Guiccioli (Countess), 106 
 Guiche (Due de), 107, 108 
 
 Hallam (Henry), 56 
 
 Hare (Archdeacon Julius), 261 
 
 Hare (Francis), 95, 98 
 
 Hay ward (Mr. Abraham), 105 
 
 Hellenics, the, 85, 254, 256 ; 
 
 Apology for (verses), 240 
 Hemans (Mrs. Felicia), 62 
 Henry IV. (King of France), 
 
 Henry of Luxemburg (Emperor), 
 
 33 
 
 Herbert (George), 53 
 
 Heroic Idyls, 70, 72, 82, 90, 116, 
 128, 129, 186, 191, 257; manu- 
 script of, 9, 11
 
 28o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Holland (Sir N. D ). See Dance 
 
 Homer, no ; S. T. Coleridge on, 
 162 ; his ' Iliad,' 62, 160 ; his 
 ' Odyssey,' 131 
 
 Hood (Thomas), ' The Song of 
 the Shirt,' 124, 125 
 
 Hooker (Richard), 56 
 
 Houghton (Richard, Lord), 18. 
 See M ilnes. 
 
 Hunt (Leigh), meeting with Lan- 
 dor, 74 ; ' London Journal,' 
 179, 262 ; ' Monthly Reposi- 
 tory,' 263; ' Journal,' 269 
 
 Hymn to Proserpine (verses), 
 242 
 
 Ianthe, 70, 75-90; death of, 89; 
 miniature of, 75-77 ; her name, 
 188, 189 ; verses to, 188, 190- 
 
 193 
 
 lone, 75, 81 ; verses to, 135 
 Ipsley Court, Warwickshire, 1, 
 
 3. 15 
 Ireland, verses on, 214 
 Italians, the issimi nation, 53 
 
 Jackson (Andrew), 251 
 
 James I. of Scotland, verses on, 
 
 205 
 James (G. P. R.), 96 
 Jeffrey (Francis, Lord), verses on, 
 
 202 
 Jekyl (Mr.), 203 
 ' Joan of Arc and her Judge,' 
 
 dramatic scene, 45-51 
 Johnson (Doctor), 72; his style, 56 
 Jones (Sir William), 131 
 Jonson (Ben), on spelling, 123 
 
 Keats (John), 125 ; ' Hyperion,' 
 
 134; Landor and, 170-173; 
 
 verses on, 171 
 Keepsake, Landor's contributions 
 
 to the, 265-269 
 Kenyon (Mr. John), 23, 97, 229 n. 
 Kosciosko, 148 
 Kossuth (Louis), 16, 256; in 
 
 England, 147 ; and the Turks, 
 
 151 
 
 Lamartine ( Alphonse de), 100, 268 
 
 Lamb (Charles) and Landor, 174- 
 179 ; verses on, 178 
 
 Landor (Arnold), 116 n. 
 
 Landor (Rev. Charles), 112, 113 
 
 Landor (Miss Elizabeth), 1, 19 
 letter to, 171 ; verses on, 218 
 
 Landor (Miss Ellen), 87 
 
 Landor (Rev. Robert), 19, 53 ; 
 on Parr and de Quincey, 55 
 
 Landor (Walter Savage), Alfieri 
 and, 41 ; on America, 9, 128 ; 
 Lady Blessingion on, 20; at 
 Bonn, 227 ; Browning on, 78 ; 
 on his contemporaries, 152-183 ; 
 Garibaldi and, 29 ; visit to the 
 Lambs, 178 ; on literary ex- 
 humations, 7 ; portraits of, 17- 
 24; on repetitions, 52; Spanish 
 campaign, 199, 230; on him- 
 self, 138 
 
 Landor (Walter Savage), Biblio- 
 graphy, 245-276 
 
 Landor's Letters, to Contessa G. 
 Baldelli, 5; to R. Browning, 
 x 34' I 37 '< to R- W. Emerson 
 157, 256; to Mr. Field, of 
 Boston, 30 ; to Mr. Forster, 23, 
 ioo, 105, 162, 173, 210; to Lady 
 Graves-Sawle, 96-113; to Kos- 
 suth, 1471; to Mrs. Paynter, 
 69, 95; to Crabb Robinson, 
 177; to R. Southey, 82, 131, 
 138, 156, 171, 203; to A. de 
 N. Walker, 7, n, 17, 116-129, 
 206, 216 
 
 Landor (Mrs. Elizabeth) on 
 Byron, 168 
 
 Landor (Mrs. W. S.), 86 ; anec- 
 dote of, 229 n. 
 
 Landseer (Sir Edwin), 108 
 
 ' Last Fruit off an old Tree,' by 
 W. S. Landor, 74, 91, in, 192, 
 218, 255 
 
 Laura, Petrarch's, 187 
 
 Ledru-Rollin, 106 
 
 Leipzig, battle of (1813), 137 
 
 Le Sage (Alain Ren6), 200 
 
 Lesbia, verses to, 229, 230
 
 INDEX 
 
 281 
 
 'Letters of an American,' by 
 W. S. Landor, 163, 255 
 
 ' Letters of a Canadian,' by W. S. 
 Landor, 125-127, 257 
 
 Linton (Mrs. Lynn), 127 
 
 ' Literary Hours by Various 
 Friends.' See Ablett 
 
 Liverpool (Lord), 140 
 
 Llanthony, 87, 137, 139 ; cedar- 
 trees at, 4 
 
 Lorenzo (de Medici) the Magni- 
 ficent, 36, 37 
 
 Lowell (James Russell), 10, 23 
 
 Luttrell (Henry), 203 
 
 Lyndhurst (Lord), 108 
 
 Lytton (Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, 
 Lord Lytton), 101, 124 
 
 Macaulay (Lord), ' Lays of An- 
 cient Rome,' 63 
 Mackenzie (Miss, of Seaforth), 
 
 95 
 
 Mackenzie (Mr. Hector), 127 
 
 Mackintosh (Sir James), 57, 203 n. 
 
 Maclise (Sir D.), 108 
 
 Malakoff, the attack on the, 116 
 
 Marie Antoinette at Petit Tria- 
 non, 102 
 
 Marot (Clement), 196 
 
 Mary Stuart (Queen), 99 
 
 Massillon, 101 
 
 Mathias (Thomas James), author 
 of 'Pursuits of Literature,' 
 96 
 
 Mazzolina da Ferrara, 124 
 
 Memmi (Simone), 187 
 
 Middleton (Dr. Conyers), ' Letters 
 from Rome,' 123 
 
 Mignet (F. A.), 100 
 
 Milnes (R. Monckton, Lord 
 Houghton), 56, 127 
 
 Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' 160; 
 prose writings, 101 ; verifica- 
 tion, 126 
 
 Mina (General), 249, 250 
 
 Mocatta (Mr. Isaac), 246 
 
 Molande (Count de), 87. See 
 Ianthe 
 
 Montemolin (Count of), 213 
 
 Moore (Thomas), 63 ; ' Life of 
 
 Byron,' 170 
 Morgan (Lady), 101 
 Mulgrave (Earl of), 251 
 
 Napier (Admiral Sir Charles), 
 
 204 ; verses on, 218 
 Napier (Sir William), 104, 256 ; 
 
 verses on, 218 
 Napoleon III. (Emperor), 103, 
 
 209 
 Nardi, monument to Alfieri by, 
 
 44 
 Newby (Mr. E. ), 120, 125, 257 
 Nicholas I. (Czar of Russia), 
 
 206, 273 
 Norbury (Lord), 86 
 
 Omar Khayyam, 132 
 Orsini (Felix), 209, 210 
 Othman, an Arab poet, 133 
 Ovid, ' Metamorphoses,' 160; in 
 
 praise of, 58-60 ; spelling of the 
 
 name, 122 
 
 Paine (Thomas), 56, 195 
 
 Parr (Dr. Samuel), 54, 203 250: 
 
 Landor on, 56 
 Paynter (Miss Rose), 265 ; Lan- 
 
 dor's letters to, 96-111. See 
 
 Graves-Sawle (Lady) 
 Paynter (Mrs.), 68, 74, 93 ; Lan- 
 
 dor's letters to, 69, 95 
 Penni (Giov. Fr.), a picture by, 124 
 ' Pericles and Aspasia,' by W. S. 
 
 Landor, 104, 251, 259 
 Petrarcha, 33, 99, 253 
 Phoceans,' ' From the,' by W. S. 
 
 Landor, 134, 135, 236, 246 
 Pico di Mirandola, 125 
 Pio Nono (Pope), verses on, 214, 
 
 254, 271 
 Pisa, Landor at, 172 ; camels at, 
 
 233 ; verses on, 233 
 Pius IX. (Pope), 254 
 Plato, 38 
 
 Poems from the Arabic and Per- 
 sian, by W. S. Landor, 130-133, 
 
 2 45
 
 282 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ' Poetry by the author of Gebir,' 
 
 134, 246 
 Poland and the Czar, verses, 206 
 Poland, Rising in, 206 
 Pomero (Landor's dog), 91 ; his 
 
 death and epitaph, 92 
 Pope (Alexander), 78 
 Porson (Richard), 57, 157-159 
 Propertius, Landor misquotes, 
 
 164 
 ' Protis's narrative,' 135, 136, 246 
 
 Quarterly Review, on ' Gebir,' 
 68 ; Landor and, 169, 203 
 
 Quillinan (Mr. Edward) and 
 Landor, 158, 159 
 
 Raphael, 19 
 
 R£camier (Madame), 97, 106 
 Reeve (Miss Clara), 67 
 Richardson (Samuel), ' Clarissa 
 
 Harlowe,' 61 
 Ristormel, 111-113, 187 
 Ritchie (Mrs. Richmond), 180 
 Robinson (H. Crabb), 23, 177 
 Rockingham (Marquis of), 143 
 Russell (Sir Henry), 16, 70, 71 
 Russia, Landor on, 146 
 
 Santillana, Landor at, 200 
 Sappho to Phaon, verses, 230 
 Savonarola, 26, 29 ; and the Prior 
 of San Marco, Imaginary Con- 
 versation, 30-41 
 Schlegel (William von), verses to, 
 
 225, 227 n. 
 
 Scott (Sir Walter), 61, 63 ; com- 
 pared to Froissart, 160 ; Landor 
 and, 159-161 ; ' Marmion,' 160, 
 169; 'Waverley Novels,' 160, 
 161 
 Secundus (Johannes), 54 
 S^vigne' (Madame de), 101 
 Shakespeare, 60, 109, no, 121, 
 
 226, 251 
 
 Sheikh Dahir (Tahir), 132, 133 
 Shelley, 67, 125 ; Landor and, 
 
 172-174 
 Sicily, verses on, 209 
 
 Siena, Landor at, 120 
 
 Smith (Bobus), 57, 125 
 
 Smith (James), 43 
 
 Sodre (Madame de Pereira), 90, 
 
 193 
 
 Sodre (Miss Luisina de Pereira), 
 76, 90, 193 ; portrait of, 76, 91 
 Sorrento, 101 
 
 Southey (Robert), 22, 89, 98, 125, 
 134; ' Kehama,' 61, 62, 153; 
 ' Triumphal Ode,' 137 ; ' Vision 
 of Judgment,' 165; Byron and, 
 166 ; his second marriage. 97 ; 
 Landor and, 154, 155 ; on 
 ' Gebir,' 67, 153, 154 ; on the 
 ' Letters of Calvus,' 140 ; letter 
 to Landor from, 139 
 Spain, Landor in, 139, 230 n. ; 
 
 verses on, 213 
 Spenser (Edmund), 'Faery 
 
 Queene,' 60 
 Stopford (General), 10, 249 
 Story (Miss Edith), verses to, 15 
 Story (Mr. William), 10, 119 
 Superlatives, absurd, 52 
 Swansea, Landor at, 67, 69 
 Swift (Dean), jj, 89 ; and Defoe, 
 
 Swift (Godwin), jj 
 Swift (Mis§ ). See Ianthe 
 Swifte (Mr. Godwin), 79; death 
 
 of, 86 
 Swifte (Mrs.). See Ianthe 
 Swinburne (Mr. Algernon), 183 
 
 Talleyrand, 106; ' Reminiscences,' 
 
 112; his spectacles, 15, 112 
 Tallien (Madame), 97 
 Tenby, Landor at, 67, 69, 75 
 Tennyson (Alfred, Lord), 204 ; 
 
 ' Exhibition Ode,' 126 ; Landor 
 
 and, 180, 181 
 Thackeray (William Makepeace), 
 
 Landor and, 181, 182 
 Thiers (Louis Adolphe), 106, 268 
 Thorwaldsen (Albert), 19 
 Thuillier (General Sir H . Landor ), 
 
 16, 20, 115 
 Tibullus, 54, 131
 
 INDEX 
 
 283 
 
 Tories, the, 143 
 Tribute, the, 180, 264 
 Turkey and the Armenians, 150 
 Twisleton (Hon. E. ), 6, 257 
 
 Utrecht, Peace of, 140 
 
 Vespucci (Countess), 107 
 
 Vidocq, 106 
 
 Villari (Professor), 'Savonarola 
 
 and his Times,' 26 
 Virgil and Horace, Imaginary 
 
 Conversation, 121, 276 
 Virgil, compared with Ovid, 59 
 Voltaire, 101 
 
 Walker (Dr. Arthur de N06), 2, 
 17 ; Landor's first meeting with, 
 
 114; verses to, 217; Landor's 
 letters to, 115-129 
 Walpole (Horace), 123, 124 
 Walton's ' Compleat Angler,' 53 
 Washington (George), 208 
 Whateley (Archbishop), 123 
 Whigs and Tories, 143 
 Widcombe, 124, 198 
 William I. (King of Prussia), 206, 
 
 207 
 Wilson (Sir Robert), 250 
 Wiseman (Cardinal), 148, 271 
 Wordsworth (William), 63 ; ' In- 
 scriptions in a Hermit's Cell,' 
 159; ' Laodamia,' 156; Lan- 
 dor and, 155 ; Landor's parody 
 on, 158 ; the Waverley Novels 
 and, 161 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

 
 
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