Walter+Savage+Lander

====﻿Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an [|English] [|writer] and [|poet]. His best known works were the prose //[|Imaginary Conversations],// and the poem //Rose Aylmer,// but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equaled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament.====



====Landor’s life is an amazing catalogue of incidents and misfortunes, many of them self-inflicted but some of no fault of his own. His headstrong nature and hot-headed temperament, combined with a complete contempt for authority, landed him in a great deal of trouble over the years. By a succession of bizarre actions, he was successively thrown out of Rugby, Oxford and from time to time from the family home. In the course of his life he came into conflict deliberately with his political enemies - the supporters of Pitt - but inadvertently with a succession of Lord Lieutenants, Bishops, Lord Chancellors, Spanish officers, Italian Grand Dukes, nuncio legatos, lawyers and other minor officials. He usually gained the upper hand, if not with an immediate hilarious response, then possibly many years later with a biting epithet.==== ====Landor’s writing often landed him on the wrong side of the laws of libel, and even his refuge in Latin proved of no avail in Italy. Many times his friends had to come to his aid in smoothing the ruffled feathers of his opponents or in encouraging him to moderate his behaviour. His friends were equally active in the desperate attempts to get his work published, where he offended or felt cheated by a succession of publishers who found his work either unsellable or unpublishable. He was repeatedly involved in legal disputes with his neighbours whether in England or Italy and Dickens’ characterisation of him in [|Bleak House] revolves around such a dispute over a gate between Boythorn and Sir Leicester Dedlock. Fate dealt with him unfairly when he tried to put into practice his bold and generous ideas to improve the lot of man, or when he was mistaken at one time for an agent of the Prince of Wales and at another for a tramp. His stormy marriage with his long-suffering wife resulted in a long separation, and then when she had finally taken him back to a series of sad attempts to escape.==== And yet Landor was described as “the kindest and gentlest of men”. He collected a coterie of friends who went to great lengths to help him as “his loyalty and liberality of heart were as inexhaustible as his bounty and beneficence of hand”. It was said that “praise and encouragement, deserved or undeserved, came more readily to his lips than challenge or defiance”. The numerous accounts of those with whom he came in contact reveal that he was fascinating company and he dined out on his wit and knowledge for a great part of his life. Landor's powerful sense of humour, expressed in his tremendous and famous laughs no doubt contributed to and yet helped assuage the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. “His passionate compassion, his bitter and burning pity for all wrongs endured in all the world, found outlet in his lifelong defence of tyrannicide. His tender and ardent love of children, of animals and of flowers makes fragrant alike the pages of his writing and the records of his life”. > //By that dejected city, Arno runs,////Where Ugolino claspt his famisht sons.////There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes////Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.////And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring////Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing////Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,////And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,////Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest////My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:////For many griefs had wounded it, and more////Thy little hands could lighten were in store.////But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow////Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.////And all that Rumour has announced of grace!////I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.////O! could I sleep to wake again in May."//In the following year his daughter Julia returned and gave him a dog Pomero, who was a faithful companion for a long time. In the same year, he published a poem to Browning in the Morning Chronicle. > Forster and Dickens used to visit Bath, to celebrate Landor's birthday and Charles I's execution on the same day. Forster helped Landor in publishing his plays and the `Collected Works' in 1846, and was employed on //[|The Examiner]// to which Landor frequently contributed on political and other subjects. Forster objected to the inclusion of some [|Latin] poetry, and so Landor published his most important Latin work `Poemata et Inscriptiones' separately in 1847. This consisted of large additions to the main contents of two former volumes of idyllic, satiric, elegiac and lyric verse. One piece referred to George IV whose treatment of Caroline of Brunswick had been distasteful to Landor. > //Heic jacet,////Qui ubique et semper jacebat////Familiae pessimae homo pessimus////Georgius Britanniae Rex ejus nominis IV////Arca ut decet ampla et opipare ornata est////Continet enim omnes Nerones.//(Here lies a person who was always laying about all over the place - the worst member of the worst family - George the fourth of that name of Britain. It is suitable that the vault be large and excessively decorated as it contains all the Neros). Landor's distaste for the [|House of Hanover] is more famously displayed in the doggerel that many do not realise is his composition. > //George the First was always reckoned////Vile, but viler George the Second.////And what mortal ever heard////Any good of George the Third,////But when from earth the Fourth descended////God be praised the Georges ended//In 1846 he also published the `Hellenics', including the poems published under that title in the collected works, together with English translations of the Latin idyls. In this year he first met [|Eliza Lynn] who was to become an outstanding novelist and journalist as Lynn Linton, and she became a regular companion in Bath. Now aged over seventy Landor was losing many of his old friends and becoming more frequently ill himself. On one occasion when staying with the Graves-Sawle he visited Exeter and sheltered in the rain on the doorstep of a local barrister James Jerwood. Jerwood mistook him for a tramp and drove him away. Landor's follow-up letter of abuse to the barrister is magnificent. In 1849 he wrote a well-known epitaph for himself on his 74th birthday. > //I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.////Nature I loved, and, next to nature, Art;////I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life;////It sinks, and I am ready to depart.//However he was leading an active social life. [|Tennyson] met him in 1850 and recorded how while another guest fell downstairs and broke his arm, "Old Landor went on eloquently discoursing of Catullus and other Latin poets as if nothing had happened".[|[][|11][|]][|Thomas Carlyle] visited him and wrote "He was really stirring company: a proud irascible, trenchant, yet generous, veracious, and very dignified old man".[|[][|12][|]] In 1851 Landor expressed interest in Church reform with a pamphlet //"Popery, British and Foreign"//, and Letters to Cardinal Wiseman. He published various other articles in The Examiner, Fraser's Magazine and other journals. During the year he learnt of the death of his beloved Ianthe and wrote in tribute to her. > //Sophia! whom I seldom call'd by name,////And trembled when I wrote it; O my friend////Severed so long from me! one morn I dreamt////That we were walking hand in hand thro' paths////Slippery with sunshine: after many years////Had flown away, and seas and realms been crost,////And much (alas how much!) by both endured////We joined our hands together and told our tale.////And now thy hand hath slipt away from mine,////And the cold marble cramps it; I dream one,////Dost thou dream too? and are our dreams the same?//In 1853 he published the collected //"Imaginary Conversations of the Greeks and Romans"// which he dedicated to Dickens. Dickens in this year published //"Bleak House"// which contained the amazingly realistic characterisation of Landor as Boythorn. He also published //"The Last Fruit off an Old Tree"//, containing fresh conversations, critical and controversial essays, miscellaneous [|epigrams], lyrics and [|occasional poems] of various kind and merit, closing with //Five Scenes on the martyrdom of Beatrice Cenci//. Swinburne described these as //"unsurpassed even by their author himself for noble and heroic pathos, for subtle and genial, tragic and profound, ardent and compassionate insight into character, with consummate mastery of dramatic and spiritual truth."//[|[][|13][|]] At this time Landor was interesting himself in foreign affairs, in particular Czarist oppression as he saw it and Louis Napoleon. At the end of 1854 his beloved sister Elizabeth died and he wrote a touching memorial. > "Sharp crocus wakes the froward year;In their old haunts birds reappear;From yonder elm, yet black with rain,The cushat looks deep down for grainThrown on the gravel-walk; here comesThe redbreast to the sill for crumbs.Fly off! fly off! I can not waitTo welcome ye, as she of late.The earliest of my friends is gone.Alas! almost my only one!The few as dear, long wafted o'er,Await me on a sunnier shore."In 1856 at the age of 81 he published //Antony and Octavius: Scenes for the Study//, twelve consecutive poems in dialogue, and //"Letter to Emerson"//, as well as continuing Imaginary Conversations.//
 * 1) ﻿Landor settled in South Wales, returning home to Warwick for short visits. It was at [|Swansea] that he became friendly with the family of [|Lord Aylmer], including his sister, Rose, whom Landor later immortalized in the poem, //"Rose Aylmer"//. It was she who lent him //"The Progress of Romance"// by the Gothic authoress [|Clara Reeve]. In this he found the story //"The History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt"//, which inspired his poem //"Gebir"//. Rose Aylmer sailed to India with an aunt in 1798, and two years later died of [|Cholera]. //Ah, what avails the sceptred race,////Ah, what the form divine!////What every virtue, every grace!////Rose Aylmer, all were thine.////Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes////May weep, but never see,////A night of memories and of sighs////I consecrate to thee.//
 * 2) //Landor received a visit from his son Arnold in 1842 and in that year wrote a long essay on Catullus for Forster who was editor of "Foreign Quarterly Review" and followed it up with The Idylls of Theocritus. Super was critical of the essays claiming "A more thoroughly disorganised work never fell from his pen".[|[][|10][|]] In 1843 he mourned the death of his friend Southey and dedicated a poem in the Examiner. Landor was visited by his children Walter and Julia and published a poem to Julia in Blackwood's magazine.

=Inscription from Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) to Robert Browning (1812-1889)= "W.S. Landor gave this book to the kindest of his friends Robert Browning June 16 [18?]60[?] Es aei memnesomeno ten charin RB" Established forms: Landor, Walter Savage, 1775-1864 Browning, Robert, 1812-1889