Quite in strong contrast to the irascible side of his nature was his tender love for his children, of which he had four, the last born in 1825. In them he took constant delight. In their games _Babbo_, as he was affectionately termed, was the most gleeful and frolicsome of them all. When he was separated from them he was in continual anxiety. On one of his trips he received the first childish letter from his son Arnold. In his reply the concluding lines reveal the intense affection of the father: I shall never be quite happy until I see you again and put my cheek upon your head. Tell my sweet Julia that if I see twenty little girls I will not romp with any of them before I romp with her, and kiss your two dear brothers for me. You must always love them as much as I love you, and you must teach them how to be good boys, which I cannot do so well as you can. God preserve and bless you, my own Arnold. My heart beats as if it would fly to you, my own fierce creature. We shall very soon meet. Love your, BABBO. In literature Landor will be remembered as the author of _Imaginary Conversations_, composed during his years of retirement at Florence. In these _Conversations_ we hear the great men and women of the past who converse as Landor imagined they might have talked. Landor's prose style is admired, because of its simplicity and classic purity. After the publication of the first two volumes of this work Landor was visited as a man of genius by Englishmen and Americans. One day Hogg, the friend of Shelley, was announced while Hare, a well-known Englishman, was sitting in the room. Landor said, as he considered the names of his two visitors, that he felt like La Fontaine with all the better company of the beasts about him. Hazlitt was one of his frequent visitors. One of their reported conversations is about Wordsworth. Upon Landor's saying that he had never seen the famous Lake poet, Hazlitt asked, "But you have seen a horse, I suppose?" and on receiving an affirmative answer, continued, "Well, sir, if you have seen a horse, I mean his head, sir, you may say you have seen Wordsworth, sir." Emerson was desirous of seeing Landor. One of the motives that led him to take his first trip abroad was the desire to see five distinguished men. These men were Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, DeQuincey, and Carlyle. "On the 15th May," writes Emerson in his _English Traits_, "I dined with Mr. Landor. I found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful landscape. I had inferred from his books, or magnified from some anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath,--an untamable petulance. I do not know whether the imputation were just or not, but certainly on this May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind and he was the most patient and gentle of hosts."