Bounding with steady pride and high disdain;
Then will I pardon all the faults of fate,
And hang fresh garlands, Ipsley, on thy gate."
Landor laughingly calls this old house a barracks. It is nearly a hundred feet in front, if not quite, but this portion formed only the offices of the old March-house, which the steward of the Savages, the clergyman, pulled down, and built his own with!
He received his education at Rugby, and at Trinity College, Oxford. At Rugby, as we are told by Mr. Horne in his New Spirit of the Age, he was famous for riding out of bounds, boxing, leaping, net-casting, stone-throwing, and making Greek and Latin verses. A droll anecdote is related of his throwing his casting-net suddenly over the head of a farmer who found him fishing in his ponds, and keeping him there till the fellow was tame enough to beg to be allowed to go away, instead of seizing Landor's net, as he had threatened. He was conspicuous there for his resistance to every species of tyranny, either of the masters and their rules, or the boys and their system of making fags, which he violently opposed against all odds; and he was considered arrogant and overbearing in his own conduct. All this, I have no doubt, is quite correct—it is most characteristic of the man and his writings; as well as that he was a leader of the boys in all things, and yet did not associate with them. This trait sticks by him to the present hour. He declares that he never can bear to walk with men; with ladies he can, but not with men, and that to walk in the streets of London drives him mad. To this peculiarity he alludes in the opening of the conversation between Southey and Landor; where also Southey mentions another, which no one can be long in Landor's society without noticing—his hearty peals of laughter at some merry story or other, often of his own.
"Landor.—The last time I ever walked hither in company (which, unless with ladies, I rarely have done anywhere), was with a just, a valiant, and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols.
"Southey.—I never had the same dislike to company in my walks and rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no sign whatever when I visited you, first at Lantony Abbey, and afterward on the Lake Como. Well do I remember four long conversations in the silent and solitary church of Sant' Abondio (surely the coolest spot in Italy), and how often I turned back my head toward the open door, fearing lest some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the wood above, pursuing the pathway which leads toward the tower of Luitprand, should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the stories you had collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the place."
At Oxford, Mr. Horne informs us, Landor was rusticated for firing off a gun in the quadrangle, and, as he never intended to take a degree, he never returned. On quitting the university, he published, in 1793, a small volume of poems. After spending some time in London studying Italian, he went to reside at Swansea, where he wrote "Gebir."
Having been pressed in vain by his friends to enter the army, or to study the law, he was moved by his old spirit of resistance to oppression, by the French invasion of Spain. He embarked for that country, raised a number of troops at his own expense, and—being the first Englishman who landed in Spain for the purpose of aiding it—marched with his men from Corunna to Aguila, the head-quarters of General Blake. For this, he received the thanks of the supreme junta, in the Madrid Gazette, together with an acknowledgment of the donation of twenty thousand reals from Mr. Landor. On the subversion of the constitution by Ferdinand, he returned the letters and documents, with his commission, to Don Pedro Cevallos, telling Don Pedro that he was willing to aid a people in the assertion of its liberties against the antagonist of Europe, but he could have nothing to do with a perjurer and traitor.
I suppose it was before he left Spain that a circumstance occurred which led to his being robbed by George III., of which he often talks. Expressing to a Spanish nobleman a desire to have a ram and a couple of ewes of his celebrated Merino breed, the nobleman replied, "Oh, I will give you a score." Mr. Landor thanked him, but replied, that he did not wish to tax his generosity to that extent. "Oh," said he, "I kill them for mutton; you shall have a score. The King of England is to have a cargo of them, and I will send yours in the same ship." The ship arrived; a letter from the Spanish nobleman also arrived to say, that, according to promise, there they were, and that on applying to the king's steward, he would have them. Away went Landor to the steward, showed his letter, and demanded his sheep. The steward said he had no commands on the subject. "But his majesty," suggested Landor, "has undoubtedly information of the fact." "That," replied the steward, "is in his own breast." "But on seeing this letter," continued Landor, "his majesty will certainly give commands for the sheep to be delivered to me. Be so good as to see that it is laid before his majesty." The steward declined, declaring that it would be at the risk of his place.