The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 | Page 8

you, for the laurel has begun to blossom.' I
never see laurel now, that it does not make me sad, for it recalls her to

me so vividly. During these visits I never saw Lady Blessington until
dinner-time. She always breakfasted in her own room, and wrote during
the morning. She wrote very well, too; her style was pure. In the
evening her drawing-room was thrown open to her friends, except
when she attended the opera. Her opera-box faced the Queen's, and a
formidable rival she was to her Majesty."
"D'Orsay was an Apollo in beauty, very amiable, and had considerable
talent for modelling." Taking me into his little back sitting-room,
Landor brought out a small album, and, passing over the likenesses of
several old friends, among whom were Southey, Porson, Napier, and
other celebrities, he held up an engraving of Lady Blessington. Upon
my remarking its beauty, Landor replied: "That was taken at the age of
fifty, so you can imagine how beautiful she must have been in her
youth. Her voice and laugh were very musical." Then, turning to a
young lady present, Landor made her an exceedingly neat compliment,
by saying, "Your voice reminds me very vividly of Lady Blessington's.
Perhaps," he continued with a smile, "this is the reason why my old,
deaf ears never lose a word when you are speaking." Driving along the
north side of the Arno, one summer's day, Landor gazed sadly at a
terrace overlooking the water, and said: "Many a delightful evening
have I spent on that terrace with Lord and Lady Blessington. There we
used to take our tea. They once visited Florence for no other purpose
than to see me. Was not that friendly? They are both dead now, and I
am doomed to live on. When Lady Blessington died, I was asked to
write a Latin epitaph for her tomb, which I did; but some officious
person thought to improve the Latin before it was engraved, and ruined
it."
This friendship was fully reciprocated by Lady Blessington, who, in her
letters to Landor, refers no less than three times to those "calm nights
on the terrace of the Casa Pelosi." "I send you," she writes, "the
engraving, and have only to wish that it may sometimes remind you of
the original.... Five fleeting years have gone by since our delicious
evenings on the lovely Arno,--evenings never to be forgotten, and the
recollections of which ought to cement the friendships then formed."
Again, in her books of travel,--the "Idler in France" and "Idler in

Italy,"--Lady Blessington pays the very highest tribute to Landor's heart,
as well as intellect, and declares his real conversations to be quite as
delightful as his imaginary ones. She who will live long in history as
the friend of great men now lies "beneath the chestnut shade of Saint
Germain"; and Landor, with the indignation of one who loved her, has
turned to D'Orsay, asking
"Who was it squandered all her wealth, And swept away the bloom of
health?"
Although a Latinist, Landor did not approve of making those who have
passed away doubly dead to a majority of the living by Latin eulogy. In
an interesting conversation he gives the following opinion: "Although I
have written at various times a great number of such inscriptions"
(Latin), "as parts of literature, yet I think nothing is so absurd, if you
only inscribe them on a tomb. Why should extremely few persons, the
least capable, perhaps, of sympathy, be invited to sympathize, while
thousands are excluded from it by the iron grate of a dead language?
Those who read a Latin inscription are the most likely to know already
the character of the defunct, and no new feelings are to be excited in
them; but the language of the country tells the ignorant who he was that
lies under the turf before them; and, if he was a stranger, it naturalizes
him among them; it gives him friends and relations; it brings to him
and detains about him some who may imitate, many who will lament
him. We have no right to deprive any one of a tender sentiment, by
talking in an unknown tongue to him, when his heart would listen and
answer to his own; we have no right to turn a chapel into a library,
locking it with a key which the lawful proprietors cannot turn."
I once asked Landor to describe Wordsworth's personal appearance. He
laughed and replied: "The best description I can give you of
Wordsworth is the one that Hazlitt gave me. Hazlitt's voice was very
deep and gruff, and he peppered his sentences very bountifully with
'sirs.' In speaking to me of Wordsworth, he said: 'Well, sir, did you ever
see a horse, sir?' 'Yes.' 'Then, sir, you have seen