scribed are not those he is likely to have used. The picture of him on horseback out of bounds, galloping beyond the reach of pedestrian authority, bears small resemblance to the studious wil ful boy, both shy and impetuous,-not indeed backward in the ordinary sports of the school, but in boxing not more than the equal of any of his three brothers, of whom none were in a remarkable degree pugnacious or skilful, and in riding certainly inferior to them all. Charles more especially, the brother next to himself, was his admitted superior in athletic exercises; and Rugby recollections have doubtless given to Walter many of the exploits of this younger brother, always fonder of country sports, and to whom the language quoted would be more applicable though still extravagant. Charles had a larger and finer presence, both as boy and man, and to the last was an admirable horseman. Walter was of strong build, but never in early or later life rode well; and though he took part in cricket, football, and other games, and was even famous for the skill with which he threw a net in fishing, he was at all times disposed rather to walk by the river-side with a book than to engage in such trials of strength and activity. In one of his letters he remarks both of school and college days that he oftener stuck in the middle of a Greek verse than of a brake; and he writes on one occasion to Southey much in the style of an inexpert horseman: 'I was very fond of riding when I was young, but I found that it produces a rapidity in the creation of thought which 'makes us forget what we are doing.' His brother Robert tells me that he never followed the hounds at Rugby or any where else, and that when he kept three horses he never mounted one of them; they were only for his carriage. Average-sized as he was, he was the least, though not the weakest, of the four brothers; well-shaped, but not in youth so good-looking as those who knew him only in after-days would imagine.

For a moment I recall the well-remembered figure and face, as they first became known to me thirty years ago. Landor

The first two books of this biography were written in the winter of 1865, and, up to the close of the fourth book, the work was printed off in the summer of 1867. Its completion was delayed until 1869, the year of publication.

was then upwards of sixty, and looked that age to the full. He was not above the middle stature, but had a stout stalwart presence, walked without a stoop, and in his general aspect, particularly the set and carriage of his head, was decidedly of what is called a distinguished bearing. His hair was already silvered gray, and had retired far upward from his forehead, which, wide and full but retreating, could never in the earlier time have been seen to such advantage. What at first was noticeable, however, in the broad white massive head, were the full yet strangely-lifted eyebrows; and they were not immediately attractive. They might have meant only pride or self-will in its most arrogant form, but for what was visible in the rest of the face. In the large gray eyes there was a depth of composed expression that even startled by its contrast to the eager restlessness looking out from the surface of them; and in the same variety and quickness of transition the mouth was extremely striking. The lips that seemed compressed with unalterable will would in a moment relax to a softness more than feminine; and a sweeter smile it was impossible to conceive. What was best in his character, whether for strength or gentleness, had left its traces here. It was altogether a face on which power was visibly impressed, but without the resolution and purpose that generally accompany it; and one could well imagine that while yet in extreme youth, and before life had written its ineffaceable record, the individual features might have had as little promise as they seem to bear in a portrait of him now before me belonging to his brother Henry, and taken in his thirtieth year. The eye is fine; but black hair covers all the forehead, and you recognise the face of the later time quite without its fulness, power, and animation. The stubbornness is there, without the softness; the self-will, untamed by any experience; plenty of energy, but a want of emotion. The nose was never particularly good; and the lifted brow, flatness of cheek and jaw, wide upper lip, retreating mouth and chin, and heavy neck, peculiarities necessarily prominent in youth, in age contributed only to a certain lion-look he liked to be reminded of, and would confirm with a loud long laugh hardly less than leonine. Higher and higher went peal after peal, in continuous and increasing volleys, until regions of sound were reached very far beyond ordinary human lungs.

With this accompaniment I have heard him relate one Rugby anecdote that is certainly authentic. Throwing his net one morning in a stream to which access on some previous occasion had been refused to him, the farmer who owned the land came down upon him suddenly; angry words were exchanged; and Landor, complying quite unexpectedly with a peremptory demand for his fishing apparatus, flung the net over the farmer's head with such faultless precision as completely to entangle in its meshes his enraged adversary, and reduce him to easy submission. Nor did he less riotously laugh at the relation of one of his many differences with the head-master in his later years at the school, when he would entangle him as suddenly in questions of longs and shorts; and the Doctor, going afterwards good-naturedly to visit him in his private room, would knock vainly for admission at the bolted study-door, from within which Landor, affecting to discredit the reality of the visit or the voice, and claiming there his right to protest against all intrusion of the profane, would devoutly ejaculate, Avaunt, Satan!

Among his school-fellows was Butler, afterwards head-master of Shrewsbury and bishop of Lichfield: but Landor had the reputation in the school of being the best classic. The excellence of his Latin verses was a tradition at Rugby for half a century after he left; and one of the fags of his time, a peer's son, has described the respectful awe with which he read one day on the slate, in the handwriting of Doctor James himself, Play-day for 'Landor's Latin verses.' His familiarity with Greek was less conspicuous, that language having become his more especial study only in later years; and there is doubtless some truth in the playful allusion of one of his letters written when he was eighty-four. 'I have forgotten my Greek, of which I had formerly as much as boys of fifteen have now. Butler, afterwards bishop of Lichfield, and myself, were the first at Rugby, or, I believe, any other school, who attempted a Greek verse. Latin I still pos

'sess a small store of.'* But what would seem most to have marked itself out as peculiar in his mastery of both Greek and Latin, even so early as his Rugby days, was less what masters could teach him, than what Nature herself had given him. This * Letter to Lady Sawle, 8th February 1858.

was a character and habit of mind resembling closely that of the ancient writers; ways of seeing and thinking nearly akin to theirs the power, sudden as thought itself, of giving visual shape to objects of thought; and with all this, intense energy of feeling, and a restless activity of imagination, eager to reproduce themselves in similar forms of vivid and picturesque expression. It was this that gave originality to his style, even while he most appeared to be modelling himself upon antiquity. He had the Greek love of the clear, serene, and graceful, of the orderly and symmetrical; he had the Greek preference for impulsive rather than reflective forms of imagination; and he had the sense of material grandeur, and the eager sympathy with domestic as well as public life, peculiar to the Latin genius. In this way, to the last, he was more himself of the antique Roman or Greek than of a critical student of either tongue; although the marvellous facility with which he had been writing Latin verse from his youth, gave him always a power over that language which might well supply the place of more severe requirements of scholarship. Very largely also, during all his life, had the power contributed to his own enjoyment; and it is in this view, rather than in the light of tasks or lessons, we have to speak of his classical attainments even so far back as his boyhood. Such acquaintance with parsing, syntax, and prosody as the Rugby exercises at that time called for, cost him of course no effort; and long before he had formally qualified for the rank, he was practically the first Latinist in the school. His tutor was Doctor Sleath, the late prebend of St. Paul's; but though this good man had some influence over him, it was exerted in vain to induce him to compete for a prize poem. 'I never would contend at school,' he wrote in one of his last letters to Southey, 'with any one for anything. I formed the same resolution when I went to college, and I have kept it.' With something of the shyness that avoided competition, there was more of the pride that would acknowledge no competitor; and he was, in truth, never well disposed to anything systematised either in pursuits or studies. What he did best and worst, he did, in his earliest as his latest life, for the satisfaction of his own will or pleasure.

The subject thus adverted to will frequently recur, and frank

confession of my want of qualification to speak of it critically must accompany all remarks of my own. I will yet venture to say of his Latin verse, which he wrote as abundantly as English and of which he had himself the higher opinion, that I believe more of the pleasure of original poetry to be derivable from it than from any other modern Latinity; and though here and there it seems to me to be somewhat difficult in construction, it has never anything of the schoolmaster's expletives or phrases, but, in that as in other respects, may be read as if a Roman himself had written it. Nor is it less certainly to be said of his Greek, that, though he more rarely composed in that language, he had the sense inseparable from a poet and scholar of the vast superiority of its literature, and derived from it an influence that in his own original writing became strikingly visible. He is one of the dozen men in a generation who can be said to have read Plato through in his own tongue; and when he had passed his eighty-fifth year he read in the original Greek the whole of the Odyssey. I will add a remark from one of his brother's letters: 'At school and college he had gained superiority over his com'panions, and, seventy years ago, very little Greek was sufficient 'for such distinction. There are better scholars passing from our 'public schools now than were then the fellows of my college 'who had taken their master's degree. But Walter increased his 'Latin all his life long, because he had pleasure in it. He had ' also a fondness for the derivation of words: reading the Port'Royal Grammar twice through, and Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary once. But it was not till after he had left England, and 'was preparing to qualify himself for the Imaginary Conversations and Pericles and Aspasia, that he applied his thoughts thoroughly to Greek literature; and even then his reading was very confined. His friends must regret his estimate of Plato 'especially. But there was no deception, no false pretence, in his criticisms. He did not affect more scholarship than he pos'sessed but because his contemporaries had once been inferior to him, he believed that they must ever remain at the same distance from him; that they must be inferior still; and hence the appearance of too much pretension. Compared with such scholars

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' as the universities are producing now he was a very idle stu