When home you brought his voyages, who found the fair South Seas.
For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea,
And the pond, amid the willows, our ocean seemed to be;
The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,
We called the South Sea Islands, each flower a different isle.
Within that lovely garden what happy hours went by,
While we fancied that around us spread a foreign sea and sky."
From this place the family removed to Lower-place, Fulham, where they continued about a year, and then removed again to Old Brompton. Miss Landon now gave continually increasing signs of a propensity to poetry. Mr. Jordan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, was a neighbor of her father, and from time to time her compositions were shown to him, who at once saw and acknowledged their great promise. It does not appear very clear whether Miss Landon continued at home during this period—that is, from the time the family came to live here when she was about fourteen, till the death of her father when she was about twenty,—but it is probable that she was for a good part of this time at the school, No. 22, Hans-place, which was now in the hands of the Misses Lance, as she says of herself,—"I have lived all my life since childhood with the same people. The Misses Lance," etc. However, it was at about the age of eighteen that her contributions appeared in the Literary Gazette, which excited universal attention. These had been preceded by a little volume now forgotten, The Fate of Adelaide, a Swiss romantic tale; and was speedily followed by the Improvisatrice. It was during the writing of this her first volume of successful poetry that her father died, leaving the family in narrow circumstances.
The history of her life from this time is chiefly the history of her works. The Improvisatrice was published in 1824; the Troubadour in 1825; the Golden Violet in 1826; the Venetian Bracelet, 1829. In 1830, she produced her first prose work, Romance and Reality. In 1831, she commenced the editorship of Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book, which she continued yearly till the time of her marriage—eight successive volumes. In 1835, she published Francesca Carrara; the Vow of the Peacock, 1835; Traits and Trials of Early Life, 1836; and in the same year, Ethel Churchill. Beside these works, she wrote immensely in the annuals and periodicals, and edited various volumes of illustrated works for the publishers.
None of the laborious tribe of authors ever toiled more incessantly or more cheerfully than Miss Landon—none with a more devotedly generous spirit. She had the proud satisfaction of contributing to the support of her family, and to the last minute of her life this great object was uppermost in her mind. On her marriage, she proposed to herself to go on writing still, with the prospect of being thus enabled to devote the whole of her literary profits to the comfort of her mother and the promotion of the fortunes of her brother. In all social and domestic relations no one was ever more amiable or more beloved. It has been said that the same generous and disinterested spirit actuated her in her literary character; and that, in the many opportunities which she possessed of giving an opinion from the press on the works of cotemporaries, she displayed not only a fair, but a magnanimous disposition. I regret to say that from documents—manuscripts of her own—which chanced to fall into my hands, I can not by any means fully subscribe to this opinion. But no mortal is perfect; and let these exceptions to the generally amiable spirit of a high-hearted and gifted woman sleep with her in the grave.