V. THE CLOSE. Implored so long in vain, at last is come The hour that leads me to a peaceful home. These lines, with others that spoke of the burden of life, and its heaviness at last even when we have only years to carry, were in a letter from Landor brought to me by Mr. Twisleton at the close of 1863. During the decline of that year he is described by those living in Italy to have become but the wreck of himself; and visitors whose very names recalled to him the happiest associations of bygone years, had to report that 'his mind was clouding;'* yet the pieces which have just been given were its product. Exceptional indeed, and very wonderful, such a lot, -to be carrying the weight of ninety years with so little loss. of intellectual power, after so much self-achieved greatness and self-inflicted misery. A friend in writing to him at this date very aptly compared him to one of the 'Jötuns' of his early poem of Gunlaug, in a note to which it is said that in the North at all times had existed men of enormous stature; that we ourselves had seen them, our fathers had seen them, and our children (perhaps) might see them; but that ordinary people were apt to fear these higher sort of men, would lie in ambush for them, and would persecute them; until at last mothers came again to produce children only or nearly of the common size; and yet, for all that, one of the old stock would occasionally reappear. 'Well I hope you take the due comfort out of your ' wonderful amount of achievement, and keep up the old heroic heart usque ad finem, post finem! And so, all happiness to 'you from God, and all honour from men.' * Without comment, and requesting only that the reader will 'As we passed through Florence, in the spring of 1864, we paid a ' last visit to Landor, then in extreme old age, looking most patriarchal in his white hair and beard. His mind was clouding, and he scarcely re'collected us at first, but he remembered the family, and repeated over ' and over again the familiar names, "Francis, Julius, Augustus, I miei "tre Imperatori! I have never known any family I loved so much as yours. I loved Francis most, then Julius, then Augustus, but I loved "them all. Francis was the dearest friend I ever had." A few weeks after, his great spirit passed away.' Memorials of a Quiet Life, by Augustus J. C. Hare, ii. 423 (1872). considerately forgive some expressions retained in them favourable to myself which I could not wholly erase, I now print, exactly as they came, Landor's last letters. They carry my narrative very nearly to its close, relating what it would be difficult otherwise to express, yet hardly desirable to omit altogether; and here, at the end of life, as invariably at its beginning, they were signed simply 'Walter' Landor. 14TH DECEMBER 1863. 'Well do I know the friendship you had for me, and have grieved over its interruption. I would not now write but for the promise you once held out to me that you might consent to be my biographer. Last week I received a most insolent letter from a Mr. containing a note from a person connected with him informing me that he was writing my life. He gave me a specimen, full of abuse and falsehood. This I communicated to my excellent friend Mr. Twisleton. If you still retain a thought of becoming my biographer, I hope you will protect me from this injustice. How often have I known you vindicate from unmerited aspersions honest literary men! Unhappily no friend has been found hitherto who takes any such interest in WALTER LANDOR.' 4TH JANUARY 1864 (with order for copies of the Heroic Idyls). 'MY DEAR FORSTER, I write instantly on receiving your generous and manly letter. Severe sciatica has deprived me both of locomotion and of sleep, but not of gratitude. I have been able to write what I am now writing with great difficulty. Were it possible, I would answer at the same time Browning's ever-kind letter. Will you send this to him, which says all I could say. Excessive pain at every movement withholds me from it. May both of you enjoy as many happy new-years as I have endured of unhappy ones! and may you ever believe that no man is more affectionately yours than WALTER LANDOR.' 2D FEBRUARY 1864. 'MY DEAR FORSTER, Your kind letter has almost made me well again. It will be with renewed pleasure that I receive your book. Browning will give you the address of his correspondent in Florence, through whom I may receive it. Many are the kind letters on my last birthday, for last it must be-but yours the kindest. So, good-bye, with every blessing from WALTER LANDOR.' your grateful 18TH FEBRUARY 1864. 'MY DEAR FORSTER, It is to you I write the last letter that perhaps I may ever write to any one. Several days I have been confined to my bed by a sciatica, and could neither write not read. I hope I may live long enough to read your Life of Eliot. Our friend Browning has my address. He lives where you know in London. My head and eyes are confused so that I cannot find his letter, which I laid by. He has a banker here whose [he means Mrs. Wilson] 'to tell me, which name I sent for Mrs. But not, nor ever W. LANDOR.' 22D FEBRUARY 1864. Your book 'DEAR FORSTER, Tear off the opposite page, and send it to Dickens. I am anxious to read the book you so kindly promised me. seller will have a correspondent here by whom it can come. tionately yours, 21ST MARCH 1864. Ever affecW. LANDOR.' 'MY DEAR FORSTER, Your book reached me yesterday and kept me awake. To-day comes your kind letter. While I have any of my senses about my head I will attempt to write of both. * There has long been a sickly season in all countries for the growth of men to greatness. How few have been bred in England that could compare with Eliot and Pym! Alas, I cannot write more. Adieu then, and believe me ever your 'affectionate W. LANDOR.' 4TH MAY 1864. DEAR FORSTER, My kind friend Mr. Twisleton will convey to you some papers and a small bundle of letters, the last I receive. They show that I have yet friends, and am grateful ever as your old friend, 'W. LANDOR.' 9TH MAY 1864. 'MY DEAR FORSTER, This is the last letter I shall ever write to anybody. My kind friend Mr. Twisleton will carry it, with my others last received, to England with him. My love to noble Dickens, with, to yourself, your ever affectionate W. LANDOR's. 'I have been utterly deaf and almost dumb these last five weeks. I am grateful for your promise that you will give to the world the last things the old man has done.' 9TH SEPTEMBER 1864. 'MY DEAR FORSTER, Nothing could give me greater pleasure than the letter I receive from you to-day. I lost my senses for five days and nights in consequence of a verdict obliging me to pay so vast a sum for exposing. I must leave off. My head is splitting. You will print what I sent you. Ever affectionately yours, 'W. LANDOR.' Shortly before the letters were written immediately preceding this last, which brings the end very near to us, an incident is said to have occurred, which, upon the relation of a friend in Florence, the American lady describes in her recollections. On the night before the 1st of May, Landor became very restless, as during the year had happened frequently, and at about 2 o'clock in the morning he rang for Mrs. Wilson, and insisted on having his room lighted and its windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the 1st of May, he wrote a few lines of verse, and, leaning back, said, 'I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the curtains.' The The paper on which he had written was not afterwards found, and his housekeeper supposed it was destroyed by him. She described him, during what remained of life, as gradually more and more indifferent to outward things; for the most part reading, or at all events with a book in his hand; physically not more deaf, but so much more heedless of external impressions that she had to write down every question she asked him; and with hardly any one crossing his threshold except his two younger sons. 'I did not give up visiting him,' Mr. Kirkup says in a letter to me: 'but, as he had complained of the fatigue of talking to me, who am deaf, I went just enough to show that I did not take offence, and I made my visits short ones. Another cause of my keeping away was that he had reconciled himself to two of his sons, who were always there, and he felt uneasy at my seeing them after all that had formerly passed with me and Mr. Browning. The last time I saw him was in a chair drawn by Carlino, who stopped to speak to me; but his father hardly noticed me. Since that I have kept away, but was glad to hear that the young men continued to live with him and to sleep at his house. Carlino ha told me that he went every evening to put him to bed, and afterwards that they both slept there because their father was afraid of their returning at night to the villa on account of brigands.' Landor himself confirmed this account in one of his last letters to another friend. Kirkup comes often to visit me. I can hardly wish it. We are both as deaf as posts, and it brings me the bronchitis to speak audibly.' One more incident remains to be mentioned, which in writing to me some time later Mr. Kirkup referred to. Young Algernon Swinburne, whose mother I knew thirty years ago, came ' out from England for no other purpose than to see Landor, 'without knowing him, a few weeks before his death. He 'afterwards dedicated to him, in Greek, his beautiful tragedy ‘of Atalanta in Calydon. Landor was much gratified by his ' enthusiasm, and brought him to me.' The visit happily was made not quite so late, or it could hardly have yielded the gratification it gave. The young poet's announcement of his arrival in Florence was among the letters sent me by Landor in May. He had indeed, he wrote to him, travelled as far as Italy with the sole object and desire of seeing him. He carried to him a letter from an old friend, now Lord Houghton; from many others of his countrymen, who might never hope to see him, he was the bearer of infinite homage and thankfulness; and for himself he had the eager wish to lay at his feet, what he could never hope to put into adequate words, profound gratitude and life-long reverence. It was but natural that all this should give pleasure to the old man, in the sense of fame it brought so closely home to him; and with it may also have come some foretaste of a higher pleasure and happier fame awaiting him in the future. In the present there was little more left to him. His last note to me was dated on the 8th of September, and on the 17th he had ceased to live. He had so weakened himself by abstaining from food during three preceding days, that a fit of coughing killed him. There was no other suffering. It was a buona morte, said the Italian who was present; as brief, as it was unexpected and sudden. He was laid in the English buryingground, and a stone placed over the grave. On this had been cut correctly his name, and the dates of his birth and death ; but the Florentine stonecutter's English was imperfect, and the word 'wife,' which should have appeared in the 'last sad tribute' of the rest of the inscription, had taken the quite unintelligible form of 'coife.' But as there was no conscious irony in this, so neither was there much inappropriateness; and Landor was not to pass away without a worthier written epitaph. It came from the young poet who visited him so lately, and needs only to be prefaced by the remark that the convention by which Florence became the capital of Italy had been signed two days before Landor died. IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Back to the flower-town, side by side, The sweet land laughs from sea to sea, All things come back to her, being free; In many a tender wheaten plot |