Landor, WALTER SAVAGE, was born at Warwick, 30th January 1775. He was the eldest son by a second marriage of Dr Landor, a medical practitioner in that town. His mother was Elizabeth Savage, of a well-known Warwickshire family. At the age of ten he was sent to Rugby School, from which he was expelled for insubordination. After two years spent with a private tutor, Landor, now in his eighteenth year, entered Trinity College, Oxford. At the university he gave further proof of his impracticable temper—pursuing his own independent course of study, and flouting his political opinions so ostentatiously as to gain for himself the name of 'mad Jacobin.' For firing a gun into the room of a Tory undergraduate, and absolutely refusing to make any statement to the president, he was rusticated in 1794. He published a volume of Poems in 1795. Returning home, he shortly afterwards quarrelled with his father, and left the house 'for ever.' A reconciliation having been effected, Landor retired to South Wales on an allowance of £150 a year, with the liberty to live as he pleased. As the result of a diligent study of Milton and Pindar he published his Gebir in 1798. The poem found a few ardent admirers, and was the occasion of his lifelong friendship with Southey; but it failed, as it has done ever since, to find acceptance with the majority of those interested in poetry.
On the death of his father in 1805 Landor settled in Bath, where his style of living went beyond even his now considerable income. In 1808, with a band of volunteers raised at his own expense, he went to Spain to assist in the emancipation of that country from the yoke of Napoleon Bonaparte. The following year he purchased the estate of Llanthony in South Wales, where he mainly lived till 1814. Landor had bought the estate with the intention of doing all in his power for the good of his tenants and the neighbourhood in general. Before long, however, he quarrelled all round with his neighbours and his tenantry alike, and administered his affairs with so little judgment that ruin stared him in the face. In 1811 he had married Miss Thuillier, a step he took in the true Landorian manner, after a casual meeting with the lady at a ball. The union proved an ill-assorted one, and in 1814 he quitted her and crossed to France. Throughout all his domestic troubles Landor, who had in singular degree the faculty of forgetting the actual cares of life, had never ceased to occupy himself with literature. The most notable production of this period is his tragedy of Count Julian, which De Quincey has praised in the strongest terms, but which the majority even of Landor's admirers find defective in all the qualities indispensable to a successful drama.
After a short sojourn in Tours Landor, accompanied by his wife, who had rejoined him, proceeded to Italy, where, living in succession at Como, Pisa, and Florence, he remained till 1835, with the exception of a short visit to England. To this period belongs the best known of all his works, the Imaginary Conversations, a first instalment of which was published in England in 1831. A second quarrel with his wife in 1835 led to his return to England, where he settled in Bath till 1858. During these years Landor wrote much in prose and verse. As the most solid contributions to his fame should be specially mentioned the Examination of Shakespeare (1834), the Pentameron (1837), Pericles and Aspasia, and his Hellenics. The writing of Latin verse had from Landor's youth been one of his serious occupations, and in 1847 he published a collection of his Latin poems under the title of Poemata et Inscriptiones. In 1858 an unhappy scandal (see Dry Sticks Pagoted, by W. S. Landor), which involved him in an action for libel, again forced him to make his home in Italy. After an unsuccessful attempt to live with his family in Florence, by the advice and assistance of friends, chief among whom was Browning, he took rooms by himself in that city. Here, with health and faculties in wonderful preservation, visited by men who have since become famous in literature and art, Landon lived till his death on 17th September 1864, assiduously composing to the last both in prose and verse.
By his singularly imposing personal appearance, his imperious will, and his massive intelligence, this 'unsndubable old Roman,' as Carlyle called him, was one of the most original figures among his contemporaries. A brief record of Landon's life perhaps unduly emphasises the least attractive aspect of his character. Irrational in the highest degree in the everyday conduct of life, he yet inspired affection and esteem in men whose opinions cannot be disregarded. Southey and Francis and Julius Hare were his friends of many years' standing, and in the latter part of his life, John Forster (afterwards his biographer), Charles Dickens, and others all testify to the essential nobility of his character. By a narrow circle of admirers Landon is ranked with the great names of English literature. In the sculptresque severity of his verse they find a perfect reproduction of the finest work of the ancients. His prose they place even higher than his verse, asserting that a judicious selection from the Imaginary Conversations would be 'one of the most beautiful books in the language—that is to say, in the world.' For the majority even of cultivated readers, however, Landon holds by no means so supreme a place either as a poet or writer of prose; and the very subordinate place assigned to him in every history of literature clearly marks where he stands in the aggregate opinion of his countrymen. While it is admitted that there are 'shining elevations' in all his work, the general impression seems to be that his form, alike in his prose and verse, is essentially artificial and factitious, and that the subject-matter of both is largely vitiated by the same irrationality which displayed itself so grotesquely at every period of his life.
See Forster, Life and Works of Landon; Sidney Colvin, Landon ('English Men of Letters' series); Mrs Lynn Linton, Reminiscences of Landon (Fraser's Mag., July 1870); Lord Houghton, Monographs; S. Wheeler, Letters and Unpublished Writings of Landon (1897); Swinburne, Miscellanies. Mr Boithorn, in Bleak House, embodies Dickens's impressions of Landon 'with his intellectual greatness left out.'