The Late Walter Savage Landor
1860
Engraving after photograph by Herbert Watkins
Source: Illustrated London News (15 October 1864): 385
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Commentary from the Illustrated London News
In our Impression of the week before last we made such remarks upon the character and genius of Walter Savage Landor as seemed to be called for by his recent death. The Portrait of him which we have now engraved, from a photograph by Mr. Herbert Watkins, will perhaps be recognised by some of those familiar with his writings as a characteristic likeness of the kind of man they may have imagined such an author to be; though without having met him in person. In one of the memoirs published the day after we received the news of his death reference was particularly made to certain feature of his countenance and habitual attitudes—the head cast backward in the up-looking face, and the eyebrows strangely lifted high into the broad, sloping forehead, as well ns the quick, fierce, and restless eye—which might be fancied to express Landor’s most prominent moral and intellectual qualities: his mighty self-will, his arrogant audacity, his capacity of destructive rage, his fine imagination and fastidious taste, his delicate perception, his want of speculative power, his-proneness to paradoxical views, his tendency to run into extremes, and whatever else would be ascribed to him by the discerning critic of his works. Our readers may, however, be left to decide upon the justice of this opinion. They will, at any rate, look with some interest upon the portrait of a man of great originality and force of mind, who, having won a high rank in classical English literature, and taken his part in the battles of opinion for seventy years, died, the other day, at the great age of ninety, and left a name which will abide longer than those of some more facile and popular writers. He was bom on the 30th of January, 1775, at Ipsley Court, Warwickshire; he died, on the 17th of September last, at Florence. Ten years ago, in anticipation of his own death, the poet composed three lines, which may perhaps serve for his epitaph:—
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life.
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
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Last modified 23 November 2015