It was only when George IV. actually ascended the throne in 1820 that his separated wife put in a disturbing appearance again; she had been living very independently for some years on the Continent; and it occurred to her--now that George was actually King--that it would be a good thing, and not impinge on the old domestic frigidities, to share in some of the drawing-room splendors and royalties of the British capital. To George IV. it seemed very awkward; so it did to his cabinet. Hence came about those measures for a divorce, and the famous trial of Queen Caroline, in which Brougham won oratorical fame by his brilliant plea for the Queen. This was so far successful as to make the ministerial divorce scheme a failure; but the poor Queen came out of the trial very much bedraggled; whether her Continental life had indeed its criminalities or not, we shall never positively know. Surely no poor creature was ever more sinned against than she, in being wheedled into a match with such an unregenerate partaker in all deviltries as George IV. But she was not of the order of women out of which are made martyrs for conscience’s sake. It was in the year 1821 that death came to her relief, and her shroud at last whitened a memory that had stains. _A Scholar and Poet._ We freshen the air now with quite another presence. Yet I am to speak of a man whose life was full of tumult, and whose work was full of learning and power--sometimes touched with infinite delicacy. He was born four years after Sydney Smith and Walter Scott--both of whom he survived many years; indeed he lacked only eleven years of completing a century when he died in Florence, where most of his active--or rather inactive--life was passed. I allude to the poet and essayist, Walter Savage Landor.[45] He is not what is called a favorite author; he never was; he never will be. In fact, he had such scorn of popular applause, that if it had ever happened to him in moments of dalliance with the Muses, and of frolic with rhythmic language, to set such music afloat as the world would have repeated and loved to repeat, I think he would have torn the music out in disdain for the approval of a multitude. Hear what he says, in one of his later poetic utterances:-- “Never was I impatient to receive What _any_ man could give me. When a friend Gave me my due, I took it, and no more, Serenely glad, because that friend was pleased. I seek not many; many seek not me. If there are few now seated at my board, I pull no children’s hair because they munch Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet, Or wallow in the innocence of whey; Give _me_ wild boar, the buck’s broad haunch give _me_, And wine that time has mellowed, even as time Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.”[46]