On this, Landor applied to a nobleman in high favor with the king, and who was well known to himself. On announcing that he wanted him to do him a service, the nobleman replied, "With all the pleasure in the world: any thing that is in my power." Landor then explained the case, showed his letter from the Spanish nobleman, and begged that his noble friend would lay the matter before the king. The nobleman seemed struck dumb. After a while, recovering his speech, he exclaimed—"Lay the case before his majesty! Advise his majesty to have a score of Merinos of this quality delivered up to you! Why, Landor, you must be mad. There is not a man in the kingdom who dare do any such thing. It would be his ruin." All similar efforts were in vain, and so the royal farmer kept Landor's sheep. They were at that time worth £1,000. He has the subject in his mind when he makes Sheridan say to Wyndham, "I do believe in my conscience he would rather lose the affection of half his subjects than the carcass of one fat sheep. I am informed that all his possessions in Ireland never yielded him five thousand a-year. Give him ten, and he will chuckle at overreaching you; and not you only, but his own heirs forever, as he chuckled when he cheated his eldest son of what he pocketed in twenty years from Cornwall, Lancashire, and Wales."—Vol. ii. p. 179. Landor never relates one of these facts without the other, adding, "When George was asked to account for the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and the Principality, during the prince's minority, he said he had spent the money in the prince's education! What an education George IV., the prince, must have had!"
If the life of Savage Landor was written, it would be one of the most remarkable on record. He has lived much abroad, in the most eventful times in the history of the world. He witnessed the progress of the French Revolution; saw Bonaparte made First Consul; saw him and his armies go out to victory; saw and conversed with the greatest of his generals, and the most remarkable men of those times and scenes. His conversation, therefore, abounds with facts and personages from his own actual knowledge, of which most other men have only read, and many of which no one has read. On the fall of Napoleon, he saw him ride, followed by one servant, into Tours, whose inhabitants hated him, and would have rejoiced to give him up to his enemies. He was disguised, but Landor recognized him in a moment. Hating and despising the man as he did, yet he never for a moment dreamed of betraying him. He, however, went close to the fallen emperor, and touching his arm, said, "You are not safe here. I have penetrated your disguise, and others may." "Sir," replied Bonaparte, "you are, I perceive, an Englishman. My secret is in good keeping." He mounted and rode away, wholly undiscovered by the townsmen.
Before this time, however, he had done what gave him infinite annoyance. I quote the account from Mr. Horne: "In 1806, Mr. Landor sold several estates in Warwickshire, which had been in his family nearly seven hundred years, and purchased Lantony and Comjoy in Monmouthshire, where he laid out nearly £70,000. Here he made extensive improvements, giving employment daily, for many years, to between twenty and thirty laborers in building and planting. He made a road at his own expense, of eight miles long, and planted and fenced half-a-million of trees. The infamous behavior of some tenants caused him to leave the country. At this time he had a million more trees ready to plant, which, as he observed, 'were lost to the country, by driving me from it. I may speak of their utility if I must not of my own.' The two chief offenders were brothers, who rented farms of Mr. Landor to the amount of £1500 per annum, and were to introduce an improved system of Suffolk husbandry. Mr. Landor got no rent from them, but all manner of atrocious annoyances. They even rooted up his trees, and destroyed whole plantations. They paid nobody. When neighbors and work-people applied for money, Mr. Landor says, 'they were referred to the devil, with their wives and families, while these brothers had their two bottles of wine upon the table. As for the Suffolk system of agriculture, wheat was sown upon the last of May, and cabbage, for winter food, was planted in August or September.' Mr. Landor eventually remained master of the field, and drove his tormentors across the seas; but so great was his disgust at these circumstances that he resolved to leave England. Before his departure he caused his house, which had cost him some £8000, to be taken down, that his son might never have the chance of similar vexations in that place."
To this there wants a few additional facts. It was not only the Suffolk farmers, but the general spirit and brutality of the people of the country which wearied and disgusted him beyond endurance. In the verses we have recently quoted he vents unmitigated hatred of the Welsh, as a "churlish nation," and a "reptile race." He seems to have been subjected to a system of universal plunder and imposition. None but they who have lived among such a rude, thievish, and unattractive crew can conceive the astonishment and exasperation of it to an intelligent and generous mind. He used to have twenty watchers on his moorland hills night and day to protect his grouse. He had twelve thousand acres of land, and never used to see a grouse upon his table. He says the protection of game that he never eat or benefited by, cost him more than he now lives at. Disgusted by all these circumstances, he left the place and resolved never to return to it. But it was not yet that he ordered the destruction of his new and splendid house, in which he only resided six months. He ordered his steward to let it. Five years went on, and it still remained unlet. He then chanced to meet with a nobleman in Italy who had once applied to him for its occupation, "How was it," he asked, "that you did not take my house at Lantony?" "How, why it was not to be let." "It has been to let this five years." "You amaze me. I was most anxious to take it, but your steward assured me it was not to be let on any account."
Landor immediately wrote to England to make particular inquiries, and found that the steward was keeping the house to accommodate his own friends, who came down there in parties to shoot his master's grouse. With characteristic indignation, Mr. Landor at once ordered the steward to quit his service and estate, and that the house should be leveled to the ground.
In 1811, Mr. Landor married Julia, the daughter of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of the Baron de Neuve-ville, first gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles VIII. He went to reside in Italy, and, during several years, occupied the Palazzo Medici, in Florence. The proprietor dying, and the palace being to be sold, he looked out for a fresh residence, and found that the villa Gherardesca, at Fiesole, with its gardens and farms, about three thousand acres, was to be sold; and he purchased it. The villa Gherardesca lies only two miles from Florence, on the banks of the Affrico. It was built by Michael Angelo, and is one of the most delightful residences in the world. Here Landor resided many years, and here his family still resides. In both poetry and prose, he frequently refers to this beloved spot with deep feeling and regret, as in the verses commencing—
"Let me sit here and muse by thee
Awhile, aerial Fiesole!
Thy sheltered walks and cooler grots,
Villas, and vines, and olive plots,