*LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, was born at Tpsley Court, War wickshire, on the 30th of January 1775. His father, Walter Lander, Esq., was a gentleman of ancient family and largo property, which was much increased by his marriage with his second wife, Elizabeth Savage, a wealthy Warwickshire heiress. Walter Savage Lauder was the eldest son of this marriage. He was educated with great care at Rugby School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Oxford. He was, at first, intended for the army, and then for the law ; but a certain stubborn independence of spirit, accompanied by an earnest theoretical republicanism, led him to decline both professions, and to devote himself, on an income allowed him by his father, to a lifo of freedom and literature. In the year 1796 he published a volume of ' Poems,' thus following by only re short interval Crabbo, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and others of the poets who began the new literary movement which signalised the close of the last century iu Britain, and preceding Campbell, and Scott, if not Southey. In 1802, during the peace of Amiens, ho visited Paris and saw the accession of Bona parte to the consulship for life. In 1803 he published a Latin trans lation of his poem 'Glair,' previously composed in English. On the death of his father he succeeded to the family estates, and bought others in Monmouthshire; but after expending largo sums of money in building on his estates, and otherwise improving them, he became disgusted with the conduct of some of his tenants whom he had befriended, and (1S06) selling off his property, part of which is said to have been in the possession of his family fur seven hundred years, he resolved to he an English landlord no more, but to spend his life abroad as an untrammelled citizen of the world. In 1808 he raised men at his own expense and joined the Spanish patriots under Blake, then fighting for the independence of the peninsula against Napoleon I. For some years he assisted this cause personally and by gifts of money to the Spanish junta; and ho was made a colonel of the Spanish service. On the restoration of the Spanish king Ferdinand and the subversion of the constitution which the Spaniards had framed foi themselves during their struggle for independence, Mr. Landoi resigned his commission, and declared that though "willing to aid the Spanish people in tho assertion of their liberties against the antagonisl of Europe, he would have nothing to do with a perjurer and a traitor.' In 1815, after the fall of Napoleon (having in the year 1811 married Julia Tbuillier, of Bath, a lady of Swiss extraction), he removed to Italy, and purchased a mansion close to Florence, with estates in the neighbourhood. Here, with the exception of occasional tours, in eluding some visits to England, ho remained for more than thirty years; and here his family, of three eons and one daughter, still reside, Dlr. Lander allowing them the possession of most of what remains of his once ample fortune, and retaining but little for himself.
The period of Mr. Landor's residence in Italy was the period of his greatest literary productiveness. In 1820 there appeared from the press of Pisa his Latin work entitled Idyllic Heroics,' with an appended Latin dissertation on the causes why recent Latin poets were so little read. In 1824-29 there was published in London in five
volumes, that which is perhaps his greatest and most original work— his 'Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen.' Sub sequent works were—a new edition of his Gebir, Count Julian, and other Poems.' in 1831 ; Letters of a Conservative, in which are shown the only means of saving what is left of the English Church,' 1836 ; 'A Satire on Satirists and Admonition to Detractors,' 1836; The Pentatneron and Peatalogue; 1837 ; and Andrea of Hungary and Giovanni of Naples; dramas, published in 1839. Ou the whole Mr. Landor's poetry was less appreciated than his prose. His 'Imagi nary Conversations' from the first rivetted public attention by the novelty of their form, their masculine and yet rather singular English style, and the bold and often paradoxical nature of their opinions ; and in virtue of this work alone, had he written nothing else, many would assign Mr. Lander one of the highest places among the English prose-writers of his age. Mr. Emerson, who visited Mr. Lands's. at Florence in 1833, gives an interesting description of him at that time, when he was yet in the prime of his strength, "I had inferred from his books," says Mr. Emerson, "or magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of Achillean untameable petulance. I do not know whether the imputation was just or not, but certainly on this day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was the most patient and gentle of hosts. . . . . Ile carries to its height the love of freak which the English delight to indulge, as if to signalise their commanding freedom. He has a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, inexhaustible, meant for a soldier, by what chance converted to letters. in which there is not a style nor a tint not known to him, yet with an English appetite for action and heroes." During the last few years, Mr. Lander, who had almost become a naturalised Italian, has resided in England—chiefly at Bath. Here he takes a vehement interest In whatever goes on abroad ; end fre quently pens powerful letters or pungent epigrams on topics of foreign polities. Hating tyranny is every shape, he has more than once declared himself through the press a believer in the old Roman doctrine of tyrannicide. But it is not merely in casual communica tions to the newspapers that he has expressed the thoughts and feelings of his observant and still impassioned old age. The following works, some political and others literary, have proceeded from hie pen during the last ten years The Ilellenies, enlarged and pleted,' 1847; 'Imaginary Conversation of King Carlo Alberto and the Duchess Belgioioso on the Affairs and Prospects of Italy,' 1848; l'oemata et luscriptiones; a new and enlarged edition, 1847 ; ' Popery, British and Foreign,' 1851; 'The Last Fruit off an Old Tree,' 1853; and ' Letters of an American' (puhliahed under the pseudonym of I'ottinger), 1854. Mr. Lander still survives among ns, a wonderful literary veteran, in his eighty second year.