[XV]
REPUBLICAN HUMANISM
During the period when England, as a European power, was doing the errands of the Holy Alliance, and within her own borders was oppressing the Roman Catholics and reducing the lower classes to distressful poverty by unduly favouring the landowners, there was a steady increase in the number of Englishmen who left their own country to live the life of knights-errant of freedom, and, as it were, remind the world of England's ancient fame as the protector of national independence. Such Englishmen were General Wilson, who, under Bolivar, liberated South America, and Admiral Cochrane, who won fame first in the Brazilian and then in the Greek war of liberation. And to this class also belongs Walter Savage Landor, the proudest and most singular figure in the literary world of his period.
Landor, born at Warwick in 1775, was the descendant of an ancient family and the heir of princely wealth. He studied at Oxford. In 1802 he resided for a time in Paris. On his return he sold the greater part of his property in Warwickshire and bought one in another county, on which he introduced every possible kind of improvement, to ensure that his numerous tenants should live under more favourable conditions than their class elsewhere in England. He spent £70,000 on these attempts at reform, which he carried out with less understanding of human nature than desire for human welfare. His benevolence was shamefully abused by its recipients, many of whom took advantage of his unselfishness and generosity to defraud him on a large scale. Enraged by the ingratitude and bad behaviour of his tenants, he determined to sell all his property, even the land which had been in the possession of his family for seven hundred years, and to live thenceforward as a free citizen of the world. This resolution he carried out in 1806.
As soon as he heard of the Spanish rebellion against the tyranny of Napoleon, Landor went to Spain, equipped a small troop at his own expense, and fought with the rebels. He received a public letter of thanks from the Spanish Junta, along with a commission as colonel in the Spanish army. This commission he returned when King Ferdinand was restored, with a letter in which he declared that, although he should always be devoted to the cause of Spain, he could have nothing to do with "a perjurer and traitor" like its King. In this one act we have the man's character—precipitate and reckless, but proud and high-minded. In this author's breast beat the heart of an independent chieftain.
In 1815 Landor settled in Italy, where he had his home for nearly thirty years.[1] From 1835 to 1858 he lived in England (at Bath). Throughout his long life—he died in 1864, at the age of 90—he was the mortal enemy of tyranny in all its manifestations, and the ardent champion of freedom in everything. To the last he was the unwearied benefactor of political refugees and persons suffering for their opinions.
The literary activity displayed during this long, honourable life was prodigious. Landor wrote twice as much as Byron. And it is with a feeling of reverence that we open many of his books; but during the whole literary period with which we are immediately concerned, his writings were neither understood nor valued. Landor wrote without any connection with a reading public, and without receiving any encouragement from the critics, who told him nothing but that he was stiff and cold, and that his English was like a translation from a foreign language; he never enjoyed the smallest amount of popularity or any species of literary triumph. After his death he began to be admired, and about 1870 to exercise influence.
To pass from Moore to Landor is like setting foot on firm ground after rocking on the waves. Landor's distinguishing characteristic is a manly decision; he stands high as an author, but higher still as a man. He is, unfortunately, so little read that one cannot presuppose acquaintance with any of his writings, or find any point of support in the memory or fancy of one's reader on which to base criticisms; and he is not easy to describe. His decision found its most remarkable expression in an estimate of himself which is startling to many. We come upon such verdicts as this: "What I write is not written upon a slate: and no finger, not of Time himself, who dips it in the clouds of years, can efface it"; and upon such answers to the reviewers of his Imaginary Conversations as: "Let the sturdiest of them take the ten worst of them, and if he equals them in ten years I will give him a hot wheaten roll and a pint of brown stout for breakfast." Such pride would have made a smaller man ridiculous, but it does not harm Landor; it occasionally becomes him. It reminds us at times of the not unjustifiable, but uncontrollably arrogant feeling which Schopenhauer had of his own deserts, only that Landor's manner is always that of the refined aristocrat, whilst Schopenhauer, with his utter disregard of the laws of common politeness, is a thorough plebeian. And on rare occasions the peculiar temperament, with its grand passionateness and its even grander productivity, reminds us of a man whose name is too great to be lightly named, but who, though infinitely Landor's intellectual superior, would perhaps have acknowledged the intellectual kinship—the solitary, severe Michael Angelo.
There was something severe in Landor's nature—the severity which goes along with firmness of character and absolute truthfulness to one's self and others. In his work there is a certain salutary harshness. The poem "Hyperbion," from the Hellenics, may be given as a good and very characteristic example of it.
"Hyperbion was among the chosen few
Of Phœbus; and men honored him awhile,
Honoring in him the God. But others sang
As loudly; and the boys as loudly cheer'd.
Hyperbion (more than bard should be) was wroth,
And thus he spake to Phœbus: 'Hearest thou,
O Phœbus, the rude rabble from the field,
Who swear that they have known thee ever since
Thou feddest for Admetus his white bull?'
'I hear them,' said the God. 'Seize thou the first,
And haul him up above the heads of men,
And thou shalt hear them shout for thee as pleas'd.'
Headstrong and proud Hyperbion was: the crown
Of laurel on it badly cool'd his brow:
So, when he heard them singing at his gate,
While some with flints cut there the rival's name,
Rushing he seized the songster at their head:
The songster kickt and struggled hard, in vain.
Hyperbion claspt him round with arm robust,
And with the left a hempen rope uncoil'd,
Whereon already was a noose: it held
The calf until its mother's teat was drawn
At morn and eve; and both were now afield.
With all his strength he pull'd the wretch along,
And haul'd him up a pine-tree, where he died.
But one night, not long after, in his sleep
He saw the songster: then did he beseech
Apollo to enlighten him, if perchance
In what he did he had done aught amiss.
'Thou hast done well, Hyperbion!' said the God,
'As I did also to one Marsyas
Some years ere thou wert born: but better 'twere
If thou hadst understood my words aright,
For those around may harm thee, and assign
As reason that thou wentest past the law.
My meaning was that thou shouldst hold him up
In the high places of thy mind, and show
Thyself the greater by enduring him.'
Downcast Hyperbion stood: but Phœbus said:
'Be of good cheer, Hyperbion! if the rope
Is not so frayed but it may hold thy calf,
The greatest harm is, that, by hauling him,
Thou hast chafed sorely, sorely, that old pine;
And pine-tree bark will never close again.'"