seeing him, and found something royal in him. When I saw him he was in his seventy-eighth year, but erect and vigorous as in middle life. There was something of challenge even in the alertness of his pose, and the head was often thrown back like that of a boxer who awaits a blow. He had the air of the arena. I do not remember that his head was large, or his eyes in any way remarkable.

After the first greetings were over, I thought it might please him to know that I had made a pilgrimage to his Fiesolan villa. I spoke of the beauty of its site. I could not have been more clumsy, had I tried. "Yes," he almost screamed, "and I might have been there now, but for that intol-e-rrr-a-ble woman!" pausing on each syllable of the adjective as one who would leave an imprecation there, and making the r grate as if it were grinding its teeth at the disabilities which distance imposes on resentment. I was a little embarrassed by this sudden confidence, which I should not here betray had not Mr. Forster already laid Landor's domestic relations sufficiently bare. I am not sure whether he told me the story of his throwing his cook out of a window of this villa. I think he did, but it may have been Mr. Kenyon who told it me on the way back to London. The legend was, that after he had performed this summary act of justice, Mrs. Landor remonstrated with a "There, Walter! I always told you that one day you would do something to be sorry for in these furies of yours.' Few men can be serene under an "I always told you so"-least of all men could Landor.

But he saw that here was an occasion where calm is more effective than tempest, and where a soft answer is more provoking than a hard. So he replied mildly: "Well, my dear, I am sorry, if that will do you any good. If I had remembered that our best tulip-bed was under that window, I'd have flung the dog out of t' other."

He spoke with his wonted extravagance (he was always in extremes) of Prince Louis Napoleon: "I have seen all the great men that have appeared in Europe during the last half-century, and he is the ablest of them all. Had his uncle had but a tithe of his ability, he would never have died at St. Helena. The last time I saw the Prince before he went over to France, he said to me, 'Good-bye, Mr. Landor; I go to a dungeon or a throne.' 'Good-bye, Prince,' I answered. 'If you go to a dungeon, you may see me again; if to a throne, never!"" He told me a long story of some Merino sheep that had been sent him from Spain, and which George III. had "stolen." He seemed to imply that this was a greater crime than throwing away the American colonies, and a perfidy of which only kings could be capable. I confess that I thought the sheep as shadowy as those of Hans in Luck, for I was not long in discovering that Landor's memory had a great deal of imagination mixed with it, especially when the subject was anything that related to himself. It was not a memory, however, that was malignly treacherous to others.

I mentioned his brother Robert's "Fountain of

Arethusa;" told him how much it had interested me, and how particularly I had been struck with the family likeness to himself in it. He assented; said it was family likeness, not imitation, and added: "Yes, when it came out many people, even some of my friends, thought it was mine, and told me so. My answer always was, 'I wish to God I could have written it!"" He spoke of it with unfeigned enthusiasm, though then, I believe, he was not on speaking terms with his brother. Whenever, indeed, his talk turned, as it often would, to the books or men he liked, it rose to a passionate appreciation of them. Even upon indifferent matters he commonly spoke with heat, as if he had been contradicted, or hoped he might be. There was no prophesying his weather by reading the barometer of his face. Though the index might point never so steadily to Fair, the storm might burst at any moment. His quiet was that of the cyclone's pivot, a conspiracy of whirlwind. Of Wordsworth he spoke with a certain alienated respect, and made many abatements, not as if jealous, but somewhat in the mood of that Athenian who helped ostracize Aristides. Of what he said I recollect only something which he has since said in print, but with less point. Its felicity stamped it on my memory. "I once said to Mr. Wordsworth, One may mix as much poetry with prose as one likes, it will exhilarate the whole; but the moment one mixes a drop of prose with poetry, it precipitates the whole.' He never forgave me! Then followed that ringing and reduplicated laugh of his, so like the joyous bark of a dog when he

starts for a ramble with his master. Of course he did not fail to mention that exquisite sea-shell which Wordsworth had conveyed from Gebir to ornament his own mantelpiece.

After lunch, he led us into a room the whole available wall-space of which was hung with pictures, nearly all early Italian. As I was already a lover of Botticelli, I think I may trust the judgment I then inwardly pronounced upon them, that they were nearly all aggressively bad. They were small, so that the offence of each was trifling, but in the aggregate they were hard to bear. I waited doggedly to hear him begin his celebration of them, dumfounded between my moral obligation to be as truthful as I dishonestly could and my social duty not to give offence to my host. However, I was soon partially relieved. The picture he wished to show was the head of a man, an ancestor, he told me, whose style of hair and falling collar were of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Turning sharply on me, he asked: "Does it remind you of anybody?" Of course this was a simple riddle; so, after a diplomatic pause of deliberation, I replied, cheerfully enough: “I think I see a likeness to you in it." There was an appreciable amount of fib in this, but I trust it may be pardoned me as under duress. "Right!" he exploded, with the condensed emphasis of a rifle. "Does it remind you of anybody else?" For an instant I thought my retribution had overtaken me, but in a flash of inspiration I asked myself, "Whom would Landor like best to resemble?" The answer was easy, and I gave it forthwith: "I think I see a

likeness to Milton." "Right again!" he cried triumphantly. "It does look like me, and it does look like Milton. That is the portrait of my ancestor, Walter Noble, Speaker of one of Charles First's parliaments. I was showing this portrait one day to a friend, when he said to me, 'Landor, how can you pride yourself on your descent from this sturdy old cavalier-you who would have cut off Charles's head with the worst of 'em?' 'I cut off his head? Never!' 'You wouldn't? I'm astonished to hear you say that. What would you have done with him?' 'What would I have done? Why, hanged him, like any other malefactor!'" This he trumpeted with such a blare of victory as almost made his progenitor rattle on the wall where he hung. Whether the portrait was that of an ancestor, or whether he had bought it as one suitable for his story, I cannot say. If an ancestor, it could only have been Michael (not Walter) Noble, Member of Parliament (not Speaker) during the Civil War, and siding with the Commons against the King. Landor had confounded him with Sir Arnold Savage (a Speaker in Henry Seventh's time), whom he had adopted as an ancestor, though there was no probable, certainly no provable, community of blood between them. This makes the anecdote only the more characteristic as an illustration of the freaks of his innocently fantastic and creative memory. I could almost wish my own had the same happy faculty, when I see how little it has preserved of my conversation, so largely monologue on his part, with a man so memorable.