some old gentleman, upright and stalwart as he had been described to us, with a massive gray head, a fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double-chin but for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his face was lighted up by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was, incapable of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those blank great guns because he carried no smallarms whatever; that really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed, or was led into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and gave out that tremendous Ha! ha! ha!'

The world did not make this pleasant acquaintance till some years later; but the Boythorn of Bleak House was the Landor of this earlier time, from a few of whose many attractive and original qualities, omitting all the graver, our great master of fiction drew that new and delightful creature of his fancy. In the letter thanking me for my Life of Cromwell (April 1839) Landor had sent his first message to Dickens. 'Tell him he 'has drawn from me more tears and more smiles than are remaining to me for all the rest of the world, real or ideal.' It cannot be always the Boythorn laugh, in the world either of fact or fancy; Landor in both had his ample share at all times of the tears as well as of the smiles; and neither few nor transient were the shadows that fell across his present enjoyments, as well in summer as in winter days, from remembrances of Italy.

The change from Fiesole had of course tried him the most in winter. With amusing heat he wrote to me of one of his Bath Novembers: We have had only four hours of sun in six 'weeks; never since the creation of the world has this hap

pened before.' And this had befallen him after a July which he had thus described to me: 'I could not get salt-bathing 'quite so near at hand as yours' (I was then at Brighton); ' but 'I can get a fine fresh bath, or even swim, every day before my 'window. Never had we such continued rain. I doubt whe ́ ́ther there are any trout in the grand canal before my house,

but its ripples would tempt any stranger to look over his col•lection of flies and try his tackle.' Nor was his trouble al

ways from the climate merely, but sometimes from the ill-provision made against it. When Francis Hare came over to England the year before his death, and Landor visited him (January 1839) for the last time at Westwood-Way house in Berkshire, he described it as a house that would have done passably well for Naples, but better for Timbuctoo. Everything around him but his friend's cheerful greeting was congealed; and into so enormous a bed was he put to sleep, such a frozen sea of sheets stretching out on every side of him, that for once he envied the bed of Procrustes. Those were country inconveniences, and town-streets were worse. On another occasion (21st December 1840) he wrote to me:

myself, an oddly-mixt

'In this weather nobody can be quite well. metal with a pretty large portion of iron in it, am sensible to the curse of climate. The chief reason is, I cannot walk through the snow and slop. My body, and my mind more especially, requires strong exercise. Nothing can tire either, excepting dull people, and they weary both at once. The snow fell in Italy at the end of November, and the weather was severe at Florence. Lately, from the want of sun and all things cheerful, my saddened and wearied mind has often roosted on the acacias and cypresses I planted. Thoughts when they're weakest take the longest flights, and tempt the wintry seas in darkest nights. How is it that when I am a little melancholy my words are apt to fall into verse? Joy has never such an effect on me. In fact, we hardly speak when we meet, and are at best but bowing acquaintance.'

It was always so when he thought of Fiesole, from which, let me add, after many disappointments in that direction, he heard, a few months later, of a proposed visit to him, and at once eagerly went over to Paris to meet and bring back his second son; when occasion was taken, in the French capital, to show him some civilities that pleased him. Imagine my sur'prise,' he wrote to me (6th May 1841), that any among the Nothing can exceed

literary men knew even of my existence. 'the attention I received from them. If their civilities are suf'ficient to make a place agreeable, I ought to be quite contented 'at Paris. Mignet has invited me this evening to a sitting of 'the Institut.' Victor Cousin was in the chair, Mignet delivered the oration, and Thiers was among those who attended. Beyond all others in the gay city, however, one visit gave him the greatest satisfaction. Playfully replying to a remonstrance

of kind Bath friends against the old hat he had taken with him on his journey, he thus wrote to Miss Rose Paynter :

'Being somewhat hot-headed, is not an old hat likely to fit me better than a new one? I wish you had seen it in all its glory. What think you of my talking with a king and queen, and displaying it before them? Such, in the most legitimate sense, are the Prince and Princess Czartoryski, he having been proclaimed King of Poland by the deputies of the nobility and people. Knowing my devotion to royalty, but probably more attracted by my hat than by me, he conversed with me the greater part of the evening.'

On his return from Paris with his son, who, upon arrival in London, paid a promised visit to his aunts at Richmond, Landor passed some days with me, while the whigs were making their last unsuccessful resistance to Peel; and it was in my library, as he always afterwards said, he composed the shortest of all his Conversations. It was sent to Kenyon.

Landor. Kenyon, I've written for your delectation

A short Imaginary Conversation.

Kenyon. Landor, I much rejoice at the report;
But only keep your promise-be it short.

This was the time also, he would amusingly protest, when he failed in the only attempt he ever made on ministerial patronage. He had written to tell Lady Blessington that, now the tories were coming in and he was growing old, he should like the appointment of road-sweeper from Gore-house across to Hydepark: nobody could dispute his claims, because he had in print avowed himself a conservative; he knew however there must be many names down, and he could wait; only she was to be particular in saying that the place he wanted was for removing dirt, or else there might be some mistake. The mistake must have occurred after all, he said, for the thing was not given to him.

He visited at Richmond, before his return to Bath, the mother and sisters of his wife. I might have expected some degree of shyness, at the least on her mother's part. However, nothing of the kind. Neither she nor any one of her daughters was less cordial with me than they had been formerly. Not a single word on those matters which rendered

my stay in Italy quite impossible, and equally so my return to the only habitation in which my heart ever delighted.' 'Excellent creatures !' he wrote to Kenyon. They received me ' with indescribable kindness, and gave me a couple of dormice. 'These are great blessings.' The reader will remember Mr. Boythorn's canary.

VI. DEATH OF SOUTHEY.

Southey's last letter to Landor was dated at the close of March 1839. He told his friend that the portrait of Savonarola which he had sent was safely lodged at Keswick; spoke of an epitaph for a proposed monument to Chatterton; and made another announcement, for which the proper place will shortly present itself. His wife Edith had died two years before, having been for many previous years dead to him: but, long as the event had been looked for, it fell heavily at last, and it was to help in bringing back some shadow of his wonted cheerfulness that a little excursion had been projected in the autumn of 1838; when his old friends, Kenyon, Senhouse, and Crabb Robinson, accompanied him and his son to Paris, through Normandy, Brittany, and a part of Louvaine. Kenyon described it to Landor:

'We made a prosperous journey, good weather, good roads, good temper throughout. We travelled five weeks, did all we had intended, and reached Paris on the day we proposed. The only drawback on our journey was that Southey's spirits were not up to the mark, except occasionally, when we passed through the country of Joan of Arc; and that, not having cultivated catholic tastes, pictures, statues, and streets have not much charm for him. We separated at Paris, which Southey declares he will never enter again, and which I had hardly the heart to quit after a month's stay.'

Kenyon's letter closed with a whisper of an expected marriage of one of the travelling party, neither himself, nor Crabb, nor Cuthbert, nor Senhouse; but it was not a thing to talk about till more assured. Though a very rational match, you 'heretic !' The news being at first not a little startling, the same kind-hearted correspondent hastened to suggest what might better reconcile Landor's thoughts to his friend. It was no foolish doting, he assured him, no probable or even possible intru

sion of a second family among the first; but rather an act in its nature considerate to those around him.

'I know no man so nobly and honourably helpless as to all transactions of this world, all its butcherings and bakings and bankings and fendings for himself (out of a library), as Southey; and his daughters, I am sure, could never quit him if the consequence were a solitary life for him. Alone, no man would be so pitiable; and altogether, if a man is to marry again, I should think this a wise match. Never suspecting that he would ever do such a thing however, I asked him the other day whether he had approved or disapproved the marriage of his uncle Hill, who took a wife at sixty. He said, I approved it.'

Kenyon added something as to the lady; naming her age, her frail health, and her unconquerable spirit. He had himself been able to judge of her courage and highmindedness by a truly Spartan letter of hers which Southey had shown him many years ago.

'It was in the time of the stack-burnings, and never was bitter contempt for what she esteemed a cowardly generation of magistrates more strongly expressed than by Caroline Bowles. Southey told me too that in her district they had nominated her for constable, hoping that she would draw off. No such thing. She offered to serve, but they could not for shame swearin a woman. Yet her writings (for, although you and I in our ignorance do not know her works, she is an authoress) are full of beauty, tenderness, and feminine feeling; as her life, I doubt not, has also been. She has for years been a great friend of Southey's, and he has rarely come south without paying her a visit.'

The impression thus conveyed to Landor determined the course taken by him in some painful disputes that followed; and, sharing his high opinion of some friends of his friend to whom it placed him for a time in antagonism, I thought then, and think still, that he was right. Caroline Bowles deserved all that the good Kenyon says of her, and she forfeited none of her titles to admiration or esteem when she became Caroline Southey. In genius and character she was worthy to have inspired an affection for which she sacrificed far more than it was possible she could ever receive.

Between the time of his return from abroad and the incident of his marriage, Southey wrote to a friend that he had heard of Landor during his last transit through London, and had seen at Kenyon's an excellent portrait of him by a young artist named Fisher. As a picture too he thought it not less good than as a likeness; though the same artist had also painted Kenyon, and

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