For twenty-three years he stays there, away from his family (remembering, perhaps, in self-exculpating way, how Shakespeare had once done much the same), rambling over his old haunts, writing new verse, revamping old books, petting his Pomeranian dog, entertaining admiring guests, fuming and raving when crossed. He was more dangerously loud, too, than of old; and at last is driven away, to escape punishment for some scathing libels into which a storm of what he counted righteous rage has betrayed him. It must have been a pitiful thing to see this old, white-haired man—past eighty now—homeless, as good as childless, skulking, as it were, in London, just before sailing for the Continent,—appearing suddenly at Forster’s house, seated upon his bed there, with Dickens in presence, mumbling about Latin poetry and its flavors!
He finds his way to Genoa, then to Florence, then to the Fiesole Villa once more; but it would seem as if there were no glad greetings on either side; and in a few days estrangement comes again, and he returns to Florence. Twice or thrice more those visits to Fiesole are repeated, in the vague hope, it would seem, floating in the old man’s mind, that by some miracle of heaven, aspects would change there—or perhaps in him—and black grow white, and gloom sail away under some new blessed gale from Araby. But it does never come; nor ever the muddied waters of that home upon the Florentine hills flow pure and bright again.
Final Exile and Death.
He goes back—eighty-five now—toothless, and trembling under weight of years and wranglings, to the Via Nunziatina, in Florence; he has no means now—having despoiled himself for the benefit of those living at his Villa of Fiesole, who will not live with him, or he with them; he is largely dependent upon a brother in England. He passes a summer, in these times, with the American sculptor Story. He receives occasional wandering friends; has a new pet of a dog to fondle.
There is always a trail of worshipping women and poetasters about him to the very last; but the bad odor of his Bath troubles has followed him; Normanby, the British Minister, will give him no recognition; but there is no bending, no flinching in this great, astute, imperious, headstrong, ill-balanced creature. Indeed, he carries now under his shock of white hair, and in his tottering figure, a stock of that coarse virility which has distinguished him always—which for so many has its charm, and which it is hard to reconcile with the tender things of which he was capable;—for instance, that interview of Agamemnon and Iphigenia—so cunningly, delicately, and so feelingly told—as if the story were all his own, and had no Greek root—other than what found hold in the greensward of English Warwickshire. And I close our talk of Landor, by citing this: Iphigenia has heard her doom (you know the story); she must die by the hands of the priest—or, the ships, on which her father’s hopes and his fortunes rest, cannot sail. Yet, she pleads;—there may have been mistakes in interpreting the cruel oracle,—there may be hope still,—
“The Father placed his cheek upon her head
And tears dropt down it; but, the king of men
Replied not: Then the maiden spoke once more,—
‘O, Father, says’t thou nothing? Hear’st thou not
Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour,