“Alas, I have lost my poor dear Pomero! He died after a long illness, apparently from a kick he received during my absence. The whole house grieved for him. I buried him in a coffin in the garden. I would rather have lost everything else I possessed in the world. Seven years we lived together in more than amity. He loved me with all his heart; and what a heart it was! mine beats audibly while I write about him. Pray for me and Pomero; some people are so wicked as to believe we shall never meet again.” Charles Dickens was one of Landor’s warmest admirers; he loved him dearly, and, as the saying goes, “all round.” He understood, and was even amused, by his outbursts of eloquent vituperation, and the character he has drawn of Boythorn in “Bleak House” is true to the very life. A school-fellow thus describes him: “In those days he was the most impetuous of schoolboys, _now_ he is the most impetuous of men; _then_ the loudest boy in the world, _now_ the loudest of men; _then_ the sturdiest boy in the world, _now_ the sturdiest man; _then_ the heartiest boy in the world, _now_ the heartiest man. Talking or laughing he makes the very house shake. But it is the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man. His language is as astounding as his voice. He is always in extremes, frequently in the superlative degree. He talks sometimes like an ogre, which some people believe him to be. No one could be more aware of his irascibility than Landor himself, who told me, amid shouts of laughter, how he had overheard a peasant at his own Florentine villa describing him in these terms: ‘Oh, he’s a capital good fellow, but—— he’s a real devil when the fit’s upon him.’”[67] Footnote 67: “Il signor è un vero Galant uomo, ma è un vero diavolo quando la piglia.”