CHAPTER V.

W. S. LAN D ̧O R, ES Q.

In a letter of Mr. Landor to Lady Blessington in 1837, the following brief notice of his career was given by him:

"Walter Landor, of Ipsley Court, in the county of Warwick, married first, Maria, only daughter and heiress of J. Wright, Esq., by whom he had an only daughter, married to her cousin, Humphrey Arden, Esq., of Longcroft, in Staffordshire; secondly, Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Charles Savage, of Tachebrooke, who brought about eighty thousand pounds into the family. The eldest child of this marriage, Walter Savage Landor, was born January 30th, 1775. He was educated at Rugby: his private tutor was Dr. Heath, of St. Paul's. When he had reached the head of the school, he was too young for college, and was placed under the private tuition of Mr. Langley, of Ashbourne. After a year, he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford, where the learned Benwell was his private tutor.* At the peace of Amiens he went to France, but returned at the end of the year."

"In 1808, on the first insurrection in Spain, in June, he joined the Viceroy of Gallicia, Blake. The Madrid Gazette' of August mentions a gift from him of twenty thousand reals. On the extinction of the Constitution, he returned to Don P. Caval

It has been stated that Landor was rusticated at college for the boyish freak of firing a gun in the quadrangle of his college, and that, after this occurrence, he never returned to take a degree. He repaired to London on leaving college, and remained there for some time, under the care of General Powell, his godfather, who pressed him to enter the army. Having declined that proposition, his father, desiring to make him a lawyer, offered him £400 a year if he would reside in the Temple and study the law, but only a small pittance, of about £150 a year, in the event of a refusal. He proceeded to South Wales, and resided in great seclusion for some time at Swansea.-R. R. M.

1 Men of the Time, p. 273, London, 1853.

los the tokens of royal approbation in no very measured terms.* In 1811 he married Julia, daughter of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, Baron de Nieuveville, first gentleman of the bed-chamber to Charles the Eighth. He was residing at Tours, when, after the battle of Waterloo, many other Englishmen, to the number of four thousand, went away. He wrote to Carnot that he had no confidence in the moderation or honor of the emperor, but resolved to stay, because he considered the danger to be greater in the midst of a broken army. A week afterward, when this wretch occupied Tours, his house was the only one without a billet. In the autumn of that year he retired to Italy. For seven or eight years he occupied the Palazzo Medici in Florence, and then bought the celebrated villa of Count Gherardesea, at Fiesole, with its gardens, and two farms, immediately under the ancient villa of Lorenzo de Medici. His visits to England have been few and short.'

For several years past Mr. Landor has resided in Bath; he has been married, and has three children; his lady is still living, though not in the vicinity of Bath. Possessing a good fortune, Mr. Landor has retained a small portion of it, just sufficient to live on, for his own wants. The remainder has been allotted to his family.

The property inherited by Landor was very considerable, but so early as 1806 he had sold a very large portion of it in Staffordshire and Warwickshire, which his ancestors had possessed for nearly seven hundred years. He then bought two estates in Monmouthshire, on which he expended several thousand pounds; on the building of a house alone, £8000. Some tenants of his, named Betham, having abandoned their farms and fled to the Crimea, being in his debt to the amount of £3000, he ceased to feel any interest in the place he had intended to

* He not only received the thanks of the Supreme Junta, but, soon after his return to England, the rank of colonel. He sent back the documents with his commission to Don Pedro Cavallos on the subversion of the Constitution by Ferdinand. He was "willing," he said, "to aid a people in the assertion of its liberties against the antagonist of Europe, but could have nothing to do with a perjurer and traitor."-See "Men of the Time."

have permanently settled in, and, on the authority I have already referred to," he ordered his house to be demolished."

When a large portion of the prose literature of our times that has acquired celebrity shall have lost its renown, or be remembered merely on account of an ephemeral celebrity, the "Imaginary Conversations" of Walter Savage Landor will live in honor, and flourish far and wide. There are intellectual gifts and graces of no ordinary kind exhibited in his prose productions: wonderful acquirements, scholarship of a genuine kind-massiveness of mind-keenness and subtilty of perception-earnestness and enthusiasm-geniality of disposition-tenderness of heart, and a noble love of every thing in nature good and beautiful. The poetry of Mr. Landor, in all probability, is not destined to the same immortality, and possibly few critics will imagine that any considerable portion of it is deserving even of passing commendation at the hands of his contemporaries.

In Landor's disposition there is a singular combination of opposite qualities, and in his mental powers and abilities a mixture no less strange of force and energy, with a childish simplicity, deep erudition, an intimate acquaintance with ancient and modern history and literature, with strong prejudices, partialities, and dislikes, by which his opinions are considerably affected, often even on the gravest subjects; great tenderness of heart is found allied with heat and excitability of temper, while critical acumen of no ordinary kind is found associated with credulity, and a disposition to believe things that to many appear marvelous, and to hesitate to give credence to those things which others think it important to receive with implicit trust.

The marked feature in the principal prose writings of Landor is that of originality of mind and a daring recklessness of all consequence in the expression of opinions he believes to be just and true. Take up any one of the "Imaginary Conversations," and you feel yourself in communion with the mind of an author of powerful intellect-in the presence of a great original thinker-a fervent lover of truth and goodness-a fierce hater of every thing mean and base-of all shams, and of all kinds of scoundrelism, however grandly disguised or dignified with great

names-a man of vast and varied erudition, endowed with that peculiar power of high dramatic genius which can transport the imagination to distant climes and ages, create an ideal presence of celebrities of antiquity, whom he brings before his readers in a life-like manner, looking, speaking, acting, and playing their great parts in life's drama over again, as they looked, and spoke, and acted, or pretended to be, a thousand or two thousand years ago.

Lady Blessington thus speaks in one of her letters of her first meeting with Walter Savage Landor in May, 1825, at Florence: "I had learned from his works to form a high opinion of the man as well as the author. But I was not prepared to find in him the courtly, polished gentleman of high breeding, of manners, deportment, and demeanor that one might expect to meet with in one who had passed the greater portion of his life in courts. There is no affectation of politeness, no finikin affability in his urbanity, no far-fetched complimentary hyperbolical strain of eulogy in the agrèmens of his conversation with women, and the pleasing things he says to them whom he cares to please."

Of all the literary men with whom Lady Blessington came in contact—and they certainly were not few or undistinguishedat home and abroad, the person whom she looked on with most respect, honor, and affectionate regard, was Walter Savage Landor.

LETTERS FROM LADY BLESSINGTON TO W. S. LANDOR, ESQ.

"4 Rue Bourbon, Quartier St. Germain, Paris, February, 1829. "MY DEAR MR. LANDOR,-I can no longer allow you to think that I am ungrateful for your letter of last month, which my silence might imply; but when I tell you that for the last two months I have only twice attempted to use my pen, and both times was compelled to abandon it, you will acquit me of neglect or negligence, neither of which, toward those whom I esteem and value as highly as I do you, are among the catalogue of my faults. faults. The change of climate, operating on a constitution none of the strongest, and an unusually severe winter to me, who for some years have only seen Italian ones, has brought on a severe attack of rheumatism in the head, that has not only precluded the possibility of writing, but nearly of reading also, so that my winter has been indeed cheerless. Among the partial gleams of sunshine

which have illumed it, your kind recollection so obligingly expressed, and a fortnight's sojourn which Francis Hare and his excellent wife made here, are remembered with most pleasure. She is, indeed, a treasure-well-informed, clever, sensible, well-mannered, kind, lady-like, and, above all, truly feminine: the having chosen such a woman reflects credit and distinction on our friend, and the communion with her has had a visible effect on him, as, without losing any of his gayety, it has become softened down to a more mellow tone, and he appears not only a more happy man, but more deserving of happiness than before. The amiable and, I think, admirable Augustus Hare is to be married next autumn. He is a very great favorite of mine, and he possesses a peculiar delicacy of sentiment and nobleness of nature that make one regard him as something superior to the ordinary class of mankind, while his enthusiasm and honesty, both so seldom met with in our days of commonplace mediocrity, give a raciness to his character and manner that is peculiarly pleasing to me. I look with impatience for the two volumes that have been announced from Mr. Julius Hare, and shall read them with the same attention, pleasure, and profit with which I have perused all the other productions of the same author. Should you write to him, pray urge him not to forget that you promised those two volumes, and that I have in this matter even more than my sex's share of impatience. I shall not be unmindful of the interest of Mr. Godwin Swift,* you may be sure, as I never can be to any recommendation of yours. Thanks for your congratulation on the marriage of my sister; it is, and will be, I am sure, a very happy one, for the speaker is an excellent man, and she is truly a good woman, so that this union can not but be fortunate.

My dear Mr. Landor, your sincerely attached friend,

"MARGUERITE BLESSINGTON."

"London, Seamore Place, July 10th, 1834. "What shall I say to you for all your kindness? I feel it more than I can express, and only wish I could in any way prove my sense of the obligations I owe you. I sent for Mr. Ottley the day (yesterday) I got your letter, and communicated your wishes with regard to 'The Trial.' He seemed sensibly touched, and so expressed himself, at the generosity of your proposal, and spoke in terms of the highest admiration of the production, which he considers most admirable. He requests me to assure you that the work shall go to press forthwith, and that in the course of a month from this date it will be ready for publication. How admirable is the conversation between Essex and Spenser, as also that of Colonel Walker! So inimitably do you identify yourself with the characters you make converse, that you make me forget the lapse of ages, and create new sympathies with those who have for years been *Of the Mr. Godwin Swift mentioned in this letter, an account will be found in the Appendix.-R. R. M.

† Mr. Landor's "Examination of W. Shakspeare," &c.-R. R. M.