A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)Saintsbury, George
History
A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)
Saintsbury, George
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
without good things, were _The Mountain Bard_, _The Queen's Wake_,
_Mador of the Moor_, _The Pilgrims of the Sun_, _Jacobite Relics_ (some
of the best forged by himself), _Queen Hynde_, and _The Border Garland_.
A greater writer, if his work be taken as a whole, than any who has been
mentioned since Keats, was Walter Savage Landor, much of whose
composition was in prose, but who was so alike in prose and verse that
the whole had better be noticed together here. Landor (who was of a
family of some standing in Warwickshire, and was heir to considerable
property, much of which he wasted later by selling his inheritance and
buying a large but unprofitable estate in Wales) was born at Ipsley
Court, in 1775. He went to school at Rugby, and thence to Trinity
College, Oxford, at both of which places he gained considerable
scholarship but was frequently in trouble owing to the intractable and
headstrong temper which distinguished him through life. He was indeed
rusticated from his college, and subsequently, owing to his extravagant
political views, was refused a commission in the Warwickshire Militia.
He began to write early, but the poem of _Gebir_, which contains in germ
or miniature nearly all his characteristics of style, passed almost
unnoticed by the public, though it was appreciated by good wits like
Southey and De Quincey. After various private adventures he came into
his property and volunteered in the service of Spain, where he failed,
as usual, from impracticableness. In 1811, recklessly as always, he
married a very young girl of whom he knew next to nothing, and the
marriage proved anything but a happy one. The rest of his long life was
divided into three residences: first with his family at Florence; then,
when he had quarrelled with his wife, at Bath; and lastly (when he had
been obliged to quit Bath and England owing to an outrageous lampoon on
one lady, which he had written, as he conceived, in chivalrous defence
of another) at Florence again. Here he died in September 1864, aged very
nearly ninety.
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