f a man who,
notwithstanding large landed interests, could say: "I never was at a
public dinner, at a club or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to
influence a vote, and yet many, and not only my own tenants, have asked
me to whom they should give theirs." Nor was he ever presented at court,
although a presentation would have been at the request of the (at that
time) Regent. Landor would not countenance a system of court-favor that
opens its arms to every noodle wearing an officer's uniform, and almost
universally turns its back upon intellect. He put not his faith in
princes, and of titles says: "Formerly titles were inherited by men who
could not write; they now are conferred on men who will not let others.
Theirs may have been the darker age; ours is the duller. In theirs a
high spirit was provoked; in ours, proscribed. In theirs the bravest
were pre-eminent; in ours, the basest."

Although a democrat, Landor was not indifferent to the good name of his
own ancestors, not because of a long pedigree, but because many of these
ancestors were historical personages and served their country long and
well. That stock must be worthy of honorable mention which, extending
with its ramifications over several centuries, gives to the world its
finest fruit in its latest scion. It is a satisfaction to spring from
hidalgo blood when the advantages of gentle rearing are demonstrated by
being greater than one's fathers. In Lander's most admirable "Citation
and Examination of William Shakespeare," the youngster whom Sir Silas
Gough declares to be as "deep as the big tankard" says, "out of his own
head":--"Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors,
although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if,
indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to
see the day, and, although I shall not see it, it must come at last,
when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim
nobility or precedency, and cannot show his family name in the history
of his country. Even he who can show it, and who cannot write his own
under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the
imputation of degeneracy, from which the lowly and obscure are exempt."
Good old Penn, too, is made a lay figure upon which Landor dressed his
thoughts, when the Quaker tells Lord Peterborough: "Of all pride,
however, and all folly, the grossest is where a man who possesses no
merit in hims