Walter Savage Landor is one of the class of fortunate authors. He was
born with the silver spoon in his mouth; and he was far more fortunate
than the host of those who are born thus; he cared little for the
silver spoon of indulgence, and has always been ready to help himself
to his share of the enjoyment of life with the wooden ladle of
exertion. His fortune has given him all those substantial advantages
which fortune can give, and he has despised its corrupting and
effeminating influence. It gave him a first-rate education; a power of
going over the surface of the earth at his pleasure, of seeing all
that is worth seeing at home and abroad, of indulging the real and
true pleasure of surveying the varieties and the sublimities of
scenery, and studying the varieties and genuine condition of man.
Hence his original talents, which were strong, have been strengthened;
his mind, which was naturally broad, has been expanded; his classical
tastes have been perfected by the scenery of classic countries, while
he read the ancient works of those countries, not twisted into
pedantic one-sidedness in monkish institutions of barren learning. To
him classical literature was but the literature of one, though of a
fine portion of the human race. He imbibed it with a feeling of
freshness where it grew, but at the same time he did not avert his
eyes from the world of to-day. It was humanity in its totality which
interested him. Hence the universality of his genius; the healthiness
of his tastes; the soundness of his opinions. In stretching his
inquiries into all corners of the world he loosened himself from the
restrictions of sects, parties, and coteries. Born an aristocrat, he
has nevertheless remained fully conscious of the evils of aristocracy;
educated at the schools and in the bosom of the Established Church, he
is as vividly sensible of the pride and worldliness of the hierarchy
as any dissenter, without the peculiar bigotry and narrowness of
dissent. Born a gentleman, he has felt with and for the poor; being
interested, if men of landed estate are interested, in things
remaining as they are, he has announced himself, in no timid terms,
for advance, liberty, and law for the many.
These are the characteristics of the man and of his works. His prose
and his poetry, his life and his conversation, alike display them. The
man is a man of large and powerful physical frame, of a passionate,
impulsive, yet reflective mind. There is no disguise about him. He
lives, he writes, he talks, from the vigorous strength of this great
and equally developed nature, and you can not be a day in his society
without hearing him enunciate every principle of his action, and much
of its history. His sentiments and doctrines seem continually to
radiate on all around him, from the living central fire of a heart
which feels, as a sacred duty, every great truth, which the mind has
received into its settled conviction. It is therefore astonishing,
after a few hours' conversation with him, to find on opening his works
how much of his philosophy you are acquainted with. But though you
soon learn, through the noble transparency of Landor's nature, what
are his principles of action, you do not soon reach the extent of his
thoughts. Those which play about his great principles, which
illustrate and demonstrate them, are endless in their variety, and
astonish you not the less by their originality than by their
correctness. His extensive range of observation through nature,
through men and things, has stored his mind with an inexhaustible
accumulation of imagery, equally beautiful and effective. Whenever you
meet with similes drawn from life or from nature in Landor's writings,
you may rely upon their accuracy.
The same accuracy marks his conclusions regarding man and society. He
is one of the few who, with the inherited means to distinguish himself
in politics, to ascend in the scale of artificial life, to acquire
fame and wealth by the ordinary means of promotion, has reserved
himself for a higher ambition, that of directing the future rather
than the present, and of living as a philosophical reformer when the
bulk of his cotemporaries are dead forever to this world. For this
purpose he has stood aloof from the movements of the hour; he has
refused to sit in Parliament; he has gone and spent years abroad, when
shallower thinkers would presume the only patriotic position was at
home; and by these means he has qualified himself, in various
countries and various society, but chiefly through the steady use of
his faculties in poring through men and books, and viewing them on all
sides, unfettered by interest and uninfluenced by hope, except that of
arriving at a true knowledge of things, to speak with authority. From
these causes it is that there have been and there are few men who will
so permanently and so beneficially act on the progress of society as
Walter Savage Landor. The independence of his position and of his
nature, his thoroughly high and honorable disposition, seeking truth
and hating meanness, thus aided by the wide sphere of his observation,
stamp upon his experience the characters of indisputable truth and
genuine wisdom. He has no petty bias to any party, any school, any
religious sect--all his aspirations are for the benefit of man as man,
and whatever comes in the way of the growth of what is intrinsically
true, beautiful, and beneficent, he attacks with the most caustic
sarcasm; strikes at it with the most ponderous or trenchant weapons
that he can lay hands upon, and, careless of persons or consequences,
calls on all within hearing to help him to annihilate it. In this
respect his fortune has enabled him to do much with impunity.
He promulgates doctrines, and attacks selfish interests, in a manner
which would, on the other hand, bring down destruction on an author
who had to live by his labors. There are critics, and those calling
themselves liberal, too, who have crushed others for the very deeds
for which they have applauded and still continue to applaud Savage
Landor. Why? Because they know that Landor is invulnerable through his
property. If they raised the hue and cry against him of democrat,
republican, of violent or revolutionary, he would still eat and drink
independent of them; his book would remain, and his position and
influence would enable it at length to testify against them. There is,
moreover, a large class of critics who see principles, when they see
them at all, through the medium of a man's condition in the world, and
that which is audacious in a poor man, becomes only a generous
boldness in a rich. If I were to select the opinions of Savage Landor
on half-a-dozen great questions from his works, and quote him in all
his undisguised strength upon them, I could show half-a-score men of
less fortune who have been immolated by Landor's own admirers for the
proclamation of these identical opinions, or whose works have been
left unnoticed because they could not very consistently condemn in
them what they had eulogized in him! How few men in this country can
afford to be honest!
But not the less do I recognize, nor the less estimate, the sacrifices
of Landor to immortal truth. Though he could not be deprived of his
daily bread for his sins of plain speaking, yet he has had his share
of the malevolence of the low and selfish. The reptiles have bitten,
and no doubt have stung, at times, deeply, when he has trodden them
beneath his feet, or flung among them his clinging and scalding Greek
fire. But he knows that the fruit of his life will not be lost.
Already he has lived long enough to see that the tide of opinion and
reform is setting in strongly in the direction which he has indicated.
It is amazing what progress the truth has made within the last twenty
years; and a man like Landor knows that at every future step it must
derive fresh strength from his writings. He has pandered to no
corruption, he has flattered no fashion; his efforts are all directed
to the uprooting of error and the spread of sound reason; and,
therefore, the more the latter prevails the more his writings will
grow into the spirit of the age. There are those who say that Landor's
writings never can be popular. They are greatly mistaken. There is a
large reading class, every day becoming larger, in which, were they
made cheap enough, they would find the most lively acceptation. It is
the class of the uncorrupted people itself. His opinions, and his
manly, uncompromising spirit, are just what fall on the popular spirit
like showers in summer. They are drank in with a thirsty avidity, and
give at once life and solace. In this respect I do not hesitate to
place them among the very first of the age.
The poetry of Savage Landor has not been so much read as his prose.
His Imaginary Conversations have eclipsed his verse. Yet there is
great vigor, much satire, and much tender feeling in his poems, which
should render them acceptable to all lovers of manly writing. His
Gebir was written early. The scene lies chiefly in Egypt, and
introduces sorcerers, water nymphs, and the like characters, which
might charm a youthful imagination, but are too far removed from
reality to make them general favorites. Yet there is much fine,
imaginative, and passionate poetry in this composition. His Hellenics
transport you at once to the ordinary life of ancient Greece, and are
written with great force, clearness, and succinct effect. His dramas
of Count Julian, Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert,
The Siege of Ancona, etc., are reading dramas, very fine of their
kind. They abound with splendid writing and the noblest sentiments.
Giovanna of Naples is one of the finest and most beautiful characters
conceivable; and Fra Rupert has furnished Landor with a vehicle for
expressing his indignant contempt of a proud, arbitrary, and
hypocritical priest. There are many occasional verses, in which the
poet has expressed the feelings of the moment, arising out of the
connections and incidents of his life; and these are equally
remarkable for their tenderness and their very opposite quality of
caustic satire. I must not allow myself to do more than quote a few
passages from his poetical writings, which are characteristic of the
man. This fine one occurs in the last of his Hellenics, p. 486, vol.
ii. of his uniform edition:--
"We are what suns, and winds, and waters make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nurslings with their smiles.
But where the land is dim from tyranny,
There tiny pleasures occupy the place
Of glories and of duties; as the feet
Of fabled fairies, when the sun goes down,
Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then justice, called the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever varying ocean; what is best
Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deformed.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die."
This true sentiment is put into the mouth of Count Julian--page 506,
vol. ii.
"All men with human feelings love their country.
Not the high-born or wealthy man alone,
Who looks upon his children, each one led
By its gay handmaid from the high alcove,
And hears them once a-day; not only he
Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires
The name of some far village all his own;
Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills
Touch the lost clouds upon the level sky:
No; better men still better love their country.
'Tis the old mansion of their earliest friends,
The chapel of their first and best devotions.
When violence or perfidy invades,
Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there,
And wiser heads are drooping round its moats,
At last they fix their steady and stiff eye,
There, there alone, stand while the trumpet blows,
And view the hostile flames above its towers
Spire, with a bitter and severe delight."