The gardens themselves are extensive, beautifully varied, richly stocked, and sloped with fine turf. In one place you come to secluded waters and thickets; in another to an open wide lawn, all filled with beds of every imaginable kind of roses in glowing masses; in another, to the remains of the original forest, with its old trees and heathery sward; and with fine views over the neighboring valleys in different directions. It is a most delightful place for walking in, and is naturally a great resort and luxury of the poet. We traversed it, I suppose, for a couple of hours in all directions, and talked over a multitude of poets and poetry. I was glad to find Montgomery as ardent an admirer of Tennyson and of Moile's State Trials as myself, my review of the latter poet in the Eclectic having first brought them under his notice. At the gate of these pleasant gardens I take my present adieu of James Montgomery, the most genuinely religious poet of the age. With a wisdom, founded not on calculation, but on a sacred sense of duty, he had made even his ambition subservient to his aspirations as a Christian, and he has thus reared for himself a pedestal in the poetic Walhalla of England peculiarly his own. The longer his fame endures, and the wider it spreads, the better it will be for virtue and for man.
Residence near Fiesole
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
Walter Savage Landor is one of the class of fortunate authors. He was born with the silver spoon in his mouth; and he was far more fortunate than the host of those who are born thus; he cared little for the silver spoon of indulgence, and has always been ready to help himself to his share of the enjoyment of life with the wooden ladle of exertion. His fortune has given him all those substantial advantages which fortune can give, and he has despised its corrupting and effeminating influence. It gave him a first-rate education; a power of going over the surface of the earth at his pleasure, of seeing all that is worth seeing at home and abroad, of indulging the real and true pleasure of surveying the varieties and the sublimities of scenery, and studying the varieties and genuine condition of man. Hence his original talents, which were strong, have been strengthened; his mind, which was naturally broad, has been expanded; his classical tastes have been perfected by the scenery of classic countries, while he read the ancient works of those countries, not twisted into pedantic one-sidedness in monkish institutions of barren learning. To him classical literature was but the literature of one, though of a fine portion of the human race. He imbibed it with a feeling of freshness where it grew, but at the same time he did not avert his eyes from the world of to-day. It was humanity in its totality which interested him. Hence the universality of his genius; the healthiness of his tastes; the soundness of his opinions. In stretching his inquiries into all corners of the world he loosened himself from the restrictions of sects, parties, and coteries. Born an aristocrat, he has nevertheless remained fully conscious of the evils of aristocracy; educated at the schools and in the bosom of the Established Church, he is as vividly sensible of the pride and worldliness of the hierarchy as any dissenter, without the peculiar bigotry and narrowness of dissent. Born a gentleman, he has felt with and for the poor; being interested, if men of landed estate are interested, in things remaining as they are, he has announced himself, in no timid terms, for advance, liberty, and law for the many.
These are the characteristics of the man and of his works. His prose and his poetry, his life and his conversation, alike display them. The man is a man of large and powerful physical frame, of a passionate, impulsive, yet reflective mind. There is no disguise about him. He lives, he writes, he talks, from the vigorous strength of this great and equally developed nature, and you can not be a day in his society without hearing him enunciate every principle of his action, and much of its history. His sentiments and doctrines seem continually to radiate on all around him, from the living central fire of a heart which feels, as a sacred duty, every great truth, which the mind has received into its settled conviction. It is therefore astonishing, after a few hours' conversation with him, to find on opening his works how much of his philosophy you are acquainted with. But though you soon learn, through the noble transparency of Landor's nature, what are his principles of action, you do not soon reach the extent of his thoughts. Those which play about his great principles, which illustrate and demonstrate them, are endless in their variety, and astonish you not the less by their originality than by their correctness. His extensive range of observation through nature, through men and things, has stored his mind with an inexhaustible accumulation of imagery, equally beautiful and effective. Whenever you meet with similes drawn from life or from nature in Landor's writings, you may rely upon their accuracy.
The same accuracy marks his conclusions regarding man and society. He is one of the few who, with the inherited means to distinguish himself in politics, to ascend in the scale of artificial life, to acquire fame and wealth by the ordinary means of promotion, has reserved himself for a higher ambition, that of directing the future rather than the present, and of living as a philosophical reformer when the bulk of his cotemporaries are dead forever to this world. For this purpose he has stood aloof from the movements of the hour; he has refused to sit in Parliament; he has gone and spent years abroad, when shallower thinkers would presume the only patriotic position was at home; and by these means he has qualified himself, in various countries and various society, but chiefly through the steady use of his faculties in poring through men and books, and viewing them on all sides, unfettered by interest and uninfluenced by hope, except that of arriving at a true knowledge of things, to speak with authority. From these causes it is that there have been and there are few men who will so permanently and so beneficially act on the progress of society as Walter Savage Landor. The independence of his position and of his nature, his thoroughly high and honorable disposition, seeking truth and hating meanness, thus aided by the wide sphere of his observation, stamp upon his experience the characters of indisputable truth and genuine wisdom. He has no petty bias to any party, any school, any religious sect—all his aspirations are for the benefit of man as man, and whatever comes in the way of the growth of what is intrinsically true, beautiful, and beneficent, he attacks with the most caustic sarcasm; strikes at it with the most ponderous or trenchant weapons that he can lay hands upon, and, careless of persons or consequences, calls on all within hearing to help him to annihilate it. In this respect his fortune has enabled him to do much with impunity.
He promulgates doctrines, and attacks selfish interests, in a manner which would, on the other hand, bring down destruction on an author who had to live by his labors. There are critics, and those calling themselves liberal, too, who have crushed others for the very deeds for which they have applauded and still continue to applaud Savage Landor. Why? Because they know that Landor is invulnerable through his property. If they raised the hue and cry against him of democrat, republican, of violent or revolutionary, he would still eat and drink independent of them; his book would remain, and his position and influence would enable it at length to testify against them. There is, moreover, a large class of critics who see principles, when they see them at all, through the medium of a man's condition in the world, and that which is audacious in a poor man, becomes only a generous boldness in a rich. If I were to select the opinions of Savage Landor on half-a-dozen great questions from his works, and quote him in all his undisguised strength upon them, I could show half-a-score men of less fortune who have been immolated by Landor's own admirers for the proclamation of these identical opinions, or whose works have been left unnoticed because they could not very consistently condemn in them what they had eulogized in him! How few men in this country can afford to be honest!
But not the less do I recognize, nor the less estimate, the sacrifices of Landor to immortal truth. Though he could not be deprived of his daily bread for his sins of plain speaking, yet he has had his share of the malevolence of the low and selfish. The reptiles have bitten, and no doubt have stung, at times, deeply, when he has trodden them beneath his feet, or flung among them his clinging and scalding Greek fire. But he knows that the fruit of his life will not be lost. Already he has lived long enough to see that the tide of opinion and reform is setting in strongly in the direction which he has indicated. It is amazing what progress the truth has made within the last twenty years; and a man like Landor knows that at every future step it must derive fresh strength from his writings. He has pandered to no corruption, he has flattered no fashion; his efforts are all directed to the uprooting of error and the spread of sound reason; and, therefore, the more the latter prevails the more his writings will grow into the spirit of the age. There are those who say that Landor's writings never can be popular. They are greatly mistaken. There is a large reading class, every day becoming larger, in which, were they made cheap enough, they would find the most lively acceptation. It is the class of the uncorrupted people itself. His opinions, and his manly, uncompromising spirit, are just what fall on the popular spirit like showers in summer. They are drank in with a thirsty avidity, and give at once life and solace. In this respect I do not hesitate to place them among the very first of the age.
The poetry of Savage Landor has not been so much read as his prose. His Imaginary Conversations have eclipsed his verse. Yet there is great vigor, much satire, and much tender feeling in his poems, which should render them acceptable to all lovers of manly writing. His Gebir was written early. The scene lies chiefly in Egypt, and introduces sorcerers, water nymphs, and the like characters, which might charm a youthful imagination, but are too far removed from reality to make them general favorites. Yet there is much fine, imaginative, and passionate poetry in this composition. His Hellenics transport you at once to the ordinary life of ancient Greece, and are written with great force, clearness, and succinct effect. His dramas of Count Julian, Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert, The Siege of Ancona, etc., are reading dramas, very fine of their kind. They abound with splendid writing and the noblest sentiments. Giovanna of Naples is one of the finest and most beautiful characters conceivable; and Fra Rupert has furnished Landor with a vehicle for expressing his indignant contempt of a proud, arbitrary, and hypocritical priest. There are many occasional verses, in which the poet has expressed the feelings of the moment, arising out of the connections and incidents of his life; and these are equally remarkable for their tenderness and their very opposite quality of caustic satire. I must not allow myself to do more than quote a few passages from his poetical writings, which are characteristic of the man. This fine one occurs in the last of his Hellenics, p. 486, vol. ii. of his uniform edition:—