Does Cincirillo follow thee about,

Inverting one swart foot suspensively,

And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp,

Of bird above him on the olive-branch?

Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew,

Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed,

That feared not you and me alas, nor him!

I flattened his striped sides along my knee,

And reasoned with him on his bloody mind,

Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes,

To ponder on my lecture in the shade.

I doubt his memory much, his heart a little,

And in some minor matters (may I say it?)

Could wish him rather sager. But from thee,

God hold back wisdom yet for many years!

Whether in early season or in late,

It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast,

I have no lesson; it for me has many.

Come throw it open then! What sports, what cares,

(Since there are none too young for these) engage,

Thy busy thoughts? Are you again at work,

Walter and you, with those sly labourers,

Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta,

To build more solidly your broken dam,

Among the poplars, whence the nightingale,

Inquisitively watch'd you all day long?

I was not of your council in the scheme,

Or might have saved you silver without end,

And sighs too without number. Art thou gone,

Below the mulberry, where that cold pool,

Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit,

For mighty swimmers, swimming three abreast?

Or art thou panting in this summer noon,

Upon the lowest step before the hall,

Drawing a slice of watermelon, long,

As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips,

(Like one who plays Pan's pipe), and letting drop,

The sable seeds from all their separate cells,

And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,

Redder than coral round Calypso's cave?

In 1853 Landor put forth what he thought his last book, under the title "Last Fruit off an Old Tree." Unhappily it was not his last, for in 1858 he issued yet one more, "Dry Sticks faggotted by W. S. Landor," in which was a malicious copy of verses reflecting upon a lady. He was sued for libel, lost the case with heavy damages, and once more and for the last time left England for Florence. He was now eighty-three. At first he went to the Villa Gherardesco, then the home of his son Arnold, but his outbursts were unbearable, and three times he broke away, to be three times brought back. In July, 1859, he made a fourth escape, and then escaped altogether, for Browning took the matter in hand and established him, after a period in Siena, in lodgings in the Via Nunziatina. From this time till his death in 1864 Landor may be said at last to have been at rest. He had found safe anchorage and never left it. Many friends came to see him, chief among them Browning, who was at once his adviser, his admirer and his shrewd observer. Landor, always devoted to pictures, but without much judgment, now added to his collection; Browning in one of his letters to Forster tells how he has found him "particularly delighted by the acquisition of three execrable daubs by Domenichino and Gaspar Poussin most benevolently battered by time." Another, friend says that he had a habit of attributing all his doubtful pictures to Correggio. "He cannot," Browning continues, "in the least understand that he is at all wrong, or injudicious, or unfortunate in anything. . . . Whatever he may profess, the thing he really loves is a pretty girl to talk nonsense with."

Of the old man in the company of fair listeners we have glimpses in the reminiscences of Miss Kate Field in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1866. She also describes him as in a cloud of pictures. There with his Pomeranian Giallo within fondling distance, the poet, seated in his arm-chair, fired comments upon everything. Giallo's opinion was asked on all subjects, and Landor said of him that an approving wag of his tail was worth all the praise of all the "Quarterlies." It was Giallo who led to the profound couplet:

He is foolish who supposes,

Dogs are ill that have hot noses.

Miss Field tells how, after some classical or fashionable music had been played, Landor would come closer to the piano and ask for an old English ballad, and when "Auld Robin Gray," his favourite of all, was sung, the tears would stream down his face. "Ah, you don't know what thoughts you are recalling to the troublesome old man."

But we have Browning's word that he did not spend much time in remorse or regret, while there was the composition of the pretty little tender epigrams of this last period to amuse him and Italian politics to enchain his sympathy. His impulsive generosity led him to give his old and trusted watch to the funds for Garibaldi's Sicilian expedition; but Browning persuaded him to take it back. For Garibaldi's wounded prisoners he wrote an Italian dialogue between Savonarola and the Prior of S. Marco. The death of Mrs. Browning in 1861 sent Browning back to England, and Landor after that was less cheerful and rarely left the house. His chief solace was the novels of Anthony Trollope and G. P. R. James. In his last year he received a visit from a young English poet and enthusiast for poetry, one Algernon Charles Swinburne, who arrived in time to have a little glowing talk with the old lion and thus obtain inspiration for some fine memorial stanzas. On September 17th, 1864, Death found Landor ready as nine years earlier he had promised it should:

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on,

And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;

She who once led me where she would, is gone,

So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

Landor was buried, as we saw, in the English cemetery within the city, whither his son Arnold was borne less than seven years later. Here is his own epitaph, one of the most perfect things in form and substance in the English language; It should be cut on his tombstone.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life,

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.