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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article.

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

When, in October, 1864, the European steamer brought us the intelligence of Walter Savage Landor's death, which occurred the month previous at Florence, newspaper readers asked, "Who is Landor?" The few who remember him remotely through the medium of Mr. Hillard's selections from his writings exclaimed, "What! Did he not die long ago?" The half-dozen Americans really familiar with this author knew that the fire of a genius unequalled in its way had gone out. Two or three, who were acquainted with the man even better than with his books, sighed, and thanked God! They thanked God that the old man's prayer had at last been answered, and that the curtain had been drawn on a life which in reality terminated ten years before, when old age became more than ripe. But Landor's walk into the dark valley was slow and majestic. Death fought long and desperately before he could claim his victim; and it was not until the last three years that body and mind grew thoroughly apathetic. "I have lost my intellect," said Landor, nearly two years ago: "for this I care not; but alas! I have lost my teeth and cannot eat!" Was it not time for him to go?

"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

The glory of old age ceases when second childishness and oblivion begin; therefore we thanked God for His goodness in taking the lonely old man home.

Landor's characteristic fault, in fact his vice, was that of a temper so undisciplined and impulsive as to be somewhat hurricanic in its consequences, though, not unlike the Australian boomerang, it frequently returned whence it came, and injured no one but the possessor. Circumstances aggravated, rather than diminished, this Landorian idiosyncrasy. Born in prosperity, heir to a large landed estate, and educated in aristocratic traditions, Walter Savage Landor began life without a struggle, and throughout a long career remained master of the situation, independent of the world and its favors. Perhaps too much freedom is as unfortunate in its results upon character as too much dependence. A nature to be properly developed should receive as well as give; otherwise it must be an angelic disposition that does not become tyrannical. All animated nature is despotic, the strong preying upon the weak. If men and women do not devour one another, it is merely because they dare not. The law of self-preservation prevents them from becoming anthropophagi. A knowledge that the eater may in his turn be eaten, is not appetizing. Materially and professionally successful, possessed of a physique that did honor to his ancestors and Nature, no shadows fell on Landor's path to chasten his spirit. Trials he endured of a private nature grievous in the extreme, yet calculated to harden rather than soften the heart,--trials of which others were partially the cause, and which probably need not have been had his character been understood and rightly dealt with. There is a soothing system for men as well as horses,--even for human Cruisers,--and the Rarey who reduces it to a science will deserve the world's everlasting gratitude. Powerful natures are likely to be as strong in their weaknesses as in their virtues; this, however, is a reckoning entirely too rational to be largely indulged in by the packed jury that holds inquest over the bodies, rather than the souls, of men. In his old age at least, Landor's irascibility amounted to temporary madness, for which he was no more responsible than is the sick man for the feverish ravings of delirium. That miserable law-suit at Bath, which has done so much to drag the name of Landor into the mire, would never have been prosecuted had its instigators had any respect for themselves or any decent appreciation of their victim.

"TO K. F.

"WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

"Sienna, July, 1860."

The following papers, in so far as they relate to Landor personally, are not reminiscences of him in the zenith of fame. They contain glimpses of the old man of Florence in the years 1859, 1860, and 1861, just before the intellectual light began to flicker and go out. Even then Landor was cleverer, and, provided he was properly approached, more interesting than many younger men of genius. I shall ever esteem it one of the great privileges of my life that I was permitted to know him well, and call him friend. These papers are given to the public with the hope that they may be of more than ordinary interest to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great want of appreciation had I not availed myself of them. If, in referring to Landor, I avoid the prefix "Mr.," it is because I feel, with Lady Blessington, that "there are some people, and he is of those, whom one cannot designate as 'Mr.' I should as soon think of adding the word to his name, as, in talking of some of the great writers of old, to prefix it to theirs."

"At Oxford," said Landor, "I was about the first student who wore his hair without powder. 'Take care,' said my tutor. 'They will stone you for a republican.' The Whigs were then unpopular; but I stuck to my plain hair and queue tied with black ribbon."

Of Landor's mature opinion of republics in general we glean much from a passage of the "Pentameron," in which the author adorns Petrarca with his own fine thoughts.

"When the familiars of absolute princes taunt us, as they are wont to do, with the only apothegm they ever learnt by heart,--namely, that it is better to be ruled by one master than by many,--I quite agree with them; unity of power being the principle of republicanism, while the principle of despotism is division and delegation. In the one system, every man conducts his own affairs, either personally or through the agency of some trustworthy representative, which is essentially the same: in the other system, no man, in quality of citizen, has any affairs of his own to conduct; but a tutor has been as much set over him as over a lunatic, as little with his option or consent, and without any provision, as there is in the case of the lunatic, for returning reason. Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent in them, as active in the particles as in the mass, in the circumference as in the centre. Eternal it must be, as truth and justice are, although not stationary."

Let Europeans who, having predicted dismemberment of our Union, proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who believe that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Republic, think well of what great men have written. Though North America were submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as the elements endure,--borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of air, abiding its opportunity to become an active principle. Absorbed in our own peculiar form of egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has cast the cause of humanity upon one die, to prosper or perish by the chances of our game. What belittling of the Almighty! what magnifying of ourselves!

Though often urged, Landor never became a candidate for Parliamentary honors. Political wire-pulling was not to the taste of a man who, notwithstanding large landed interests, could say: "I never was at a public dinner, at a club or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to influence a vote, and yet many, and not only my own tenants, have asked me to whom they should give theirs." Nor was he ever presented at court, although a presentation would have been at the request of the Regent. Landor would not countenance a system of court-favor that opens its arms to every noodle wearing an officer's uniform, and almost universally turns its back upon intellect. He put not his faith in princes, and of titles says: "Formerly titles were inherited by men who could not write; they now are conferred on men who will not let others. Theirs may have been the darker age; ours is the duller. In theirs a high spirit was provoked; in ours, proscribed. In theirs the bravest were pre-eminent; in ours, the basest."

Landor was very fond of selecting the grand old Roundheads for his conversations. In their society he was most at home, and with them he was able to air his pet opinions. Good Andrew Marvell, a man after the author's own heart, discourses upon this matter of family: "Between the titled man of ancient and the titled man of recent date, the difference, if any, is in favor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit, the benefits that society has received from him are nearer us.... Some of us may look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the beginning." In England, where the institutions are such that a title of nobility is considered by the majority to be the highest reward attainable by merit, it is not surprising that the great god of Rank should be worshipped at the family altar of Form. In England, too, it must be acknowledged that men of rank are men of education, frequently of culture, and are useful to the nation as patrons of art and of science; therefore nobility frequently means absolute gentility. But in America what good can be said of those who, living upon the fortunes of fathers or grandfathers, amassed in honest trade,--residents of a particular street which is thereby rendered pluperfectly genteel,--with no recommendation but that derived from fashion and idleness,--draw the lines of social demarcation more closely than they are drawn in Europe, intellect and accomplishments being systematically snubbed where the possessors cannot show their family passes? Is not this attempt to graft the foibles of an older and more corrupt civilization upon our institutions, a disgrace to republicanism? Were the truth known, we should be able to report the existence of many advocates of monarchy, a privileged class, and an established church, among those into whose ancestry it would be unsafe to dig deeper than a second generation; by digging deeper we might touch sugar or tumble into a vat of molasses, and then what blushes for false pride!

A very different idea of a great man from that of the vulgar do we get out of Landor's writings. His Diogenes tells us, that "the great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of conceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him." And Petrarca says that "Time the Sovran is first to discover the truly great." Yet, though we put faith in the justice of posterity, even Time plays many a one false through misplaced favoritism. "They, O Timotheus," exclaims the imaginary Lucian, "who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, most worthy of our admiration. It is in these wrecks as in those at sea,--the best things are not always saved. Hencoops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those who most resembled them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by cold monsters below." We claim, however, that Lucian's theory is good for this world only, as we believe that soul, though it may be temporarily wrecked, speeds on to the inevitable justice of eternity. And can we, now that the fever of military glory is upon us, remember that, great as may be the man who conquers his country's enemies upon the battle-field, he is far greater who conquers the prejudices of his age and instils into groping masses the doctrines of a more glorious civilization?

"For civilisation perfected Is fully developed Christianity."

"Because ye prosper in God's name, With a claim. To honor in the old world's sight, Yet do the fiend's work perfectly In strangling martyrs,--for this lie This is the curse."

Like the rest of human kind, Landor had his prejudices,--they were very many. Foremost among them was an antipathy to the Bonaparte family. It is not necessary to have known him personally to be aware of his detestation of the first Napoleon, as in the conversation between himself, an English and a Florentine visitor, he gives expression to a generous indignation, which may well be inserted here, as it contains the pith of what Landor repeated in many a social talk. "This Holy Alliance will soon appear unholy to every nation in Europe. I despised Napoleon in the plenitude of his power no less than others despise him in the solitude of his exile: I thought him no less an impostor when he took the ermine, than when he took the emetic. I confess I do not love him the better, as some mercenaries in England and Scotland do, for having been the enemy of my country; nor should I love him the less for it, had his enmity been principled and manly. In what manner did this cruel wretch treat his enthusiastic admirer and humble follower, Toussaint l'Ouverture? He was thrown into a subterranean call, solitary, dark, damp, pestiferously unclean, where rheumatism racked his limbs, and where famine terminated his existence." Again, in his written opinions of Caesar, Cromwell, Milton, and Bonaparte, Landor criticises the career of the latter with no fondness, but with much truth, and justly says, that "Napoleon, in the last years of his sovereignty, fought without aim, vanquished without glory, and perished without defeat."

Among other persons of note encountered by Landor at Lady Blessington's was Rachel. It was many years ago, before her star had attained its zenith. "She took tea with her Ladyship, and was accompanied by a female attendant, her mother I think. Rachel had very little to say, and left early, as she had an engagement at the theatre. There was nothing particularly noticeable in her appearance, but she was very ladylike. I never met her again."

Landor entertained a genuine affection for the memory of Lady Blessington. "Ah, there was a woman!" he exclaimed one day with a sigh. "I never knew so brilliant and witty a person in conversation. She was most generous too, and kind-hearted. I never heard her make an ill-natured remark. It was my custom to visit her whenever the laurel was in bloom; and as the season approached, she would write me a note, saying, 'Gore House expects you, for the laurel has begun to blossom.' I never see laurel now, that it does not make me sad, for it recalls her to me so vividly. During these visits I never saw Lady Blessington until dinner-time. She always breakfasted in her own room, and wrote during the morning. She wrote very well, too; her style was pure. In the evening her drawing-room was thrown open to her friends, except when she attended the opera. Her opera-box faced the Queen's, and a formidable rival she was to her Majesty."

This friendship was fully reciprocated by Lady Blessington, who, in her letters to Landor, refers no less than three times to those "calm nights on the terrace of the Casa Pelosi." "I send you," she writes, "the engraving, and have only to wish that it may sometimes remind you of the original.... Five fleeting years have gone by since our delicious evenings on the lovely Arno,--evenings never to be forgotten, and the recollections of which ought to cement the friendships then formed." Again, in her books of travel,--the "Idler in France" and "Idler in Italy,"--Lady Blessington pays the very highest tribute to Landor's heart, as well as intellect, and declares his real conversations to be quite as delightful as his imaginary ones. She who will live long in history as the friend of great men now lies "beneath the chestnut shade of Saint Germain"; and Landor, with the indignation of one who loved her, has turned to D'Orsay, asking

"Who was it squandered all her wealth, And swept away the bloom of health?"

Although a Latinist, Landor did not approve of making those who have passed away doubly dead to a majority of the living by Latin eulogy. In an interesting conversation he gives the following opinion: "Although I have written at various times a great number of such inscriptions" , "as parts of literature, yet I think nothing is so absurd, if you only inscribe them on a tomb. Why should extremely few persons, the least capable, perhaps, of sympathy, be invited to sympathize, while thousands are excluded from it by the iron grate of a dead language? Those who read a Latin inscription are the most likely to know already the character of the defunct, and no new feelings are to be excited in them; but the language of the country tells the ignorant who he was that lies under the turf before them; and, if he was a stranger, it naturalizes him among them; it gives him friends and relations; it brings to him and detains about him some who may imitate, many who will lament him. We have no right to deprive any one of a tender sentiment, by talking in an unknown tongue to him, when his heart would listen and answer to his own; we have no right to turn a chapel into a library, locking it with a key which the lawful proprietors cannot turn."

Those who have seen good likenesses of Wordsworth will readily remark this resemblance. A greater length of ear would liken the Lake poet to an animal of less dignity.

Continuing the conversation thus begun, Landor said: "I saw a great deal of Hazlitt when he was in Florence. He called upon me frequently, and a funny fellow he was. He used to say to me: 'Mr. Landor, I like you, sir,--I like you very much, sir,--you're an honest man, sir; but I don't approve, sir, of a great deal that you have written, sir. You must reform some of your opinions, sir.'" And again Landor laughed with great good-will.

"I regret that I saw Charles Lamb but once," replied Landor, in answer to many questions asked concerning this delightful man and writer. "Lamb sent word by Southey" "that he would be very happy to see me, whereupon we made him a visit. He had then retired from the India House, and lived at Enfield. He was most charming in conversation, and his smile impressed me as being particularly genial. His sister also was a very agreeable person. During my visit, Lamb rose, went to a table in the centre of the room, and took up a book, out of which he read aloud. Soon shutting it, he turned to me, saying: 'Is not what I have been reading exceedingly good?' 'Very good,' I replied. Thereupon Lamb burst out laughing, and exclaimed: 'Did one ever know so conceited a man as Mr. Landor? He has actually praised his own ideas!' It was now my turn to laugh, as I had not the slightest remembrance of having written what Lamb had read."

Are there many to whom the following lines will not be better than new?

"Once, and only once, 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, What wisdom in thy levity! what truth In every utterance of that purest soul! Few are the spirits of the glorified I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven."

Being asked if he had met Byron, Landor replied: "I never saw Byron but once, and then accidentally. I went into a perfumery shop in London to purchase a pot of the ottar of roses, which at that time was very rare and expensive. As I entered the shop a handsome young man, with a slight limp in his walk, passed me and went out. The shopkeeper directed my attention to him, saying: 'Do you know who that is, sir?' 'No,' I answered. 'That is the young Lord Byron.' He had been purchasing some fancy soaps, and at that time was the fashion. I never desired to meet him."

As all the world knows, there was little love lost between these two great writers; but it was the man, not the poet, that Landor so cordially disliked.

MY ANNUAL.

FOR THE "BOYS OF '29."

How long will this harp which you once loved to hear Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear? How long stir the echoes it wakened of old, While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold?

Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong; The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song; It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes,-- "We will bid our old harper play on till he dies."

Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings, Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings, Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone, It is still the old harp that was always your own.

I claim not its music,--each note it affords I strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords; I know you will listen and love to the last, For it trembles and thrills with the voice of your past.

Ah, brothers! dear brothers! the harp that I hold No craftsman could string and no artisan mould; He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyres That ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs.

Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings, Not mine the faint fragrance around it that clings; Those shapes are the phantoms of years that have fled, Those sweets breathe from roses your summers have shed.

Each hour of the past lends its tribute to this, Till it blooms like a bower in the Garden of Bliss; The thorn and the thistle may grow as they will, Where Friendship unfolds there is Paradise still.

The bird wanders careless while Summer is green, The leaf-hidden cradle that rocked him unseen; When Autumn's rude fingers the woods have undressed, The boughs may look bare, but they show him his nest.

Too precious these moments! the lustre they fling Is the light of our year, is the gem in its ring, So brimming with sunshine, we almost forget The rays it has lost, and its border of jet.

While round us the many-hued halo is shed, How dear are the living, how near are the dead! One circle, scarce broken, these waiting below, Those walking the shores where the asphodels blow!

Not life shall enlarge it, nor death shall divide,-- No brother new-born finds his place at my side; No titles shall freeze us, no grandeurs infest,-- His Honor, His Worship, are boys like the rest.

Some won the world's homage,--their names we hold dear,-- But Friendship, not Fame, is the countersign here; Make room by the conqueror crowned in the strife For the comrade that limps from the battle of life!

What tongue talks of battle? Too long we have heard In sorrow, in anguish, that terrible word; It reddened the sunshine, it crimsoned the wave, It sprinkled our doors with the blood of our brave.

Peace, Peace, comes at last, with her garland of white; Peace broods in all hearts as we gather to-night; The blazon of Union spreads full in the sun; We echo its words,--We are One! We are One!

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