LAN'DOR, WALTER SAVAGE ( 1775-1364) . An English poet and prose writer. son of Walter Landor and of Elizabeth Savage. born at 1psley Court, Warwickshire, Jannary 30. 1775. As a sturdy boy of twelve he was sent to Rugby, where lie distinguished himself in Latin verse. Owing to an ungovernable temper lie was difficult to manage. and was accordingly removed from Rugby at the advice of the head master. In 1793 lie entered Trinity College, Oxford. Un conventional in his bearing. too pronounced in his republican opinions, he got into difficulties there. For firing a gun at the window of a Tory undergraduate he was rusticated in 1794. and never returned. He quarreled with his father over the incident, and was left to look after him self on an allowance of £150 a year. He now spent three years in Wales, where lie wrote Gebir (179S), which shows the influence that Milton and Pindar were then exercising upon him. The poem was greatly admired by Coleridge. Southey. and the young Shelley,but it found no favor with the general public. Writing with almost equal facility in Latin. lie made a Latin version of the poem (1803). On the death of his father in 1805 he succeeded to the family estates. and began squandering them at Bath. For a few months in 1808 he served under Blake in Spain, largely to gratify a dislike to the French which he had conceived on a visit to Paris in 1802. In 1809 lie purchased the estate of Llanthony Abbey, in South Wales. where by his extrava gance and quarrels he wasted a large part of his patrimony. In 1811 he married Julia Thuillier. the daughter of an unsuccessful banker. The marriage was particularly unfortun ate. At this time he wrote a tragedy, I'ount Julian (1812). which, though ill adapted to the stage, is a most impressive dramatic poem.
Leaving his \Wish estate in charge of his mother. he settled first at Tours. and then in Italy, where he lived mostly until 1835. occupying the Palazzo Medici in Florence and the Villa (Thera &sea in Fiesole To this period and the years following belong the delightful Imaginary Con •ersations (1824.29) the Citation and Examina tion of William Shakespeare . . Touching Deer- Stealing (1834): Pericles and igpasift (1836) and The Pentameron (1837). In 1838 be settled in Bath, where he lived, with some interruptions, till 185S. In the meantime he had published his choicest poems. the lIcllenies (1846), some of which were translations of Latin poems written when a young man under the title Idyllic Heroic(' (1814, 1820). Best of them is "The Hamadryad." In 1858 Landor returned to Italy, eventually taking apartments at Flor ence. Here he was aided by Browning and vis ited by Swinburne. He (lied September 17, 1864. Landor's was a powerful personality connecting the earlier and later poets of the nineteenth century. His poetry has never been widely read, hut has almost invariably charmed the poets themselves. His prose, though uneven in quality, rises at times to magnificence. As a man lie was given to explosions of anger, but also to ex plosions of laughter. He was kind-hearted and chivalrous. and made many friends as well as enemies. Consult his Works, with life by Forster ( 8 vols., Loi:don. 1876); Letters and tither Un published Writings, edited by Wheeler (ib., 1897) ; Letters, Private and Public, edited by Wheeler (ib- 1899); and Colvin, Landor, in "English Men of Letters Series" (ib.. 1881).