II. Individualists, then, each in his own way, CHAPTER these two men stand together-averse from the popular, and yet defenders of popular liberty, as they understood it, lovers of little children and of great men, of Nature and of Art. III. CHAPTER III SWINBURNE'S LANDOR CHAPTER IN the mid-spring of 1864 Swinburne first saw his hero. Landor was then living in Florence, "in a little house under the wall of the city directly back of the Carmine, in a by-street called the Via Nunziatina" (76), its number 2671. Not far away is the Casa Guidi, which the name of Browning has made famous; and it was Browning who had found this lodging for him. Swinburne's announcement of his arrival in Florence was among the letters sent by Landor to his biographer, Forster, and the sum of it, not given as quoted verbatim, yet having every appearance of being approximately so, was that "he had travelled as far as Italy with the sole object and desire of seeing him. He carried to him a letter from an old friend (since 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 lifelong reverence" (77). Writing to Edmund Clarence Stedman ten years later Swinburne adds something to the little that is recorded of the meeting that CHAPTER ensued: I remember well how pleasant and how precious for all his high self-reliance and conscious avтáρкeia, the sincere tribute of genuine and studious admiration was even at the last to the old demigod with the head and the heart of a lion. I have often ardently wished I could have been born (say) but five years earlier, that my affection and reverence might have been of some use, and their expression found some echo while he was yet alive beyond the rooms in which he was to die (78). Landor's biographers also speak of the pleasure which this tribute brought. Landor was then eighty-nine years old, his hair snowy white, his grand head not unlike that of Michael Angelo's Moses, with a patriarchal beard (79) ; his grey eyes still keen and clear. He had never had such a tribute before, though his greatness had been acknowledged and reverenced by the great men of three generations. The two poets must have discussed many matters: Landor's work; the many aspects and concerns of life that it considers from as many points of vantage— one of these concerns the immortality of the soul. Of this Swinburne says in the same letter to Stedman that he had received it at Landor's lips that he had no belief whatever on the subject, "but was sure of one thing: whatever was to come was best." Swinburne laid before him the first part (80) of the poem in Greek, which he extended after Landor's death and prefaced as Dedication to Atalanta, that though losing the pleasure he might not lose the honour of inscribing in front of his work" the highest of contem III. CHAPTER porary names. III. The first part of this poem has a noble beauty; and the second even more, revealing as it does yet a little more of their conversation. Thou art gone. No more shalt thou be, nor shall I ever sit by thee in awe, and touch thy hands with reverent hands. Now once more a bitter sweet reverence steals over me as I recall what such an one as I have gained from thee. No more, sire, shall I gladden my dear eyes by thine, nor, best beloved, grasp thy right hand" (81). It is a scene far away from our modern world, from English inhibitions and reserves. Like his old philosophers with Alcibiades (82), who laid their hands caressingly on his "crisp glossy curls so delicate and umbrageous," Landor laid his hand on the "gold-haired head" (83) of this son of his spirit. He was the one in the world who could so consummate a lifelong benediction : the one living in Swinburne's experience of the "few poets (who) lay a hallowing hand upon the head" (84). Like Sandt in one of the "Conversations" the young poet must have counted it pleasant (85) and more; for in the memorial verses on the death which followed in a few months, the supreme lament for Landor," he gave perfect expression to constrained grief, and recalled again the dear intimacies of this communion : 66 By this white wandering waste of sea, Far north, I hear One face shall never turn to me As once this year: Shall never smile and turn and rest On mine as there, Nor one most sacred hand be prest III. Besides this poem and the Greek dedicatory CHAPTER poem to Atalanta and a hitherto unpublished sonnet on Landor which now comes to light in Mr. Gosse's Gosse's Life, Swinburne has left six important documents that emphasise again and again the sincerity of the grief and devotion for which the first two poems alone would be the most convincing evidence. These are the Prelude to Songs before Sunrise (1871); the Latin verses entitled "Ad Catullum" (1874), included in Poems and Ballads, Second Series; the "Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor" in Studies in Song (1880); "Thalassius" in Songs of the Springtides (1880); the article on Landor (1880) in the Encyclopædia Britannica, which is also included in Miscellanies; and, by allusion, the poem “On the Death of Mrs. Lynn Linton" (1898), in A Channel Passage and Other Poems. Besides these there are many occasional references to Landor scattered throughout the whole range of the critical work, the most important being in the "Notes on the Text of Shelley" (Essays and Studies); in the essay on Byron; and in the review of the anthology of "Social Verse" (Studies in Prose and Poetry) to which reference has already been made. In the prose articles the classic grace of Landor's verse receives significant praise; as do also his Republicanism and the largeness of his sympathy: "His passionate compassion, his bitter and burning pity for all wrongs endured in all the world" (86); the devotion to the cause of popular liberty which seals him, with Byron and Shelley, child of the eighteenth century political |