oes it not?" he asked, smiling, and turning
to me.

After my recitation he would lean back in the arm-chair and relate
anecdotes of great men and women to a small, but deeply interested
audience of three, including Giallo. A few well-timed questions were
quite sufficient to open his inexhaustible reservoir of reminiscences.
Nor had Landor reason to complain of his memory in so far as the dim
past was concerned; for, one morning, reference having been made to Monk
Lewis's poem of "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," he recited it
in cadences from beginning to end, without the slightest hesitation or
the tripping of a word. "Well, this is indeed astonishing," he said at
its conclusion; "I have not _thought_ of that poem for thirty years!"

* * * * *

Landor was often very brilliant. At Sienna, during the summer of 1860,
an American lady having expressed a desire to meet him the following
season, he replied, "Ah, by that time I shall have gone farther and
fared worse!" Sometimes, when we were all in a particularly merry mood,
Landor would indulge in impromptu _doggerel_ "to please _Giallo_"!
Absurd couplets would come thick and fast,--so fast that it was
impossible to remember them.

Advising me with regard to certain rules in my Latin Grammar he
exclaimed,

"What you'd fain know, you will find:
What you want not, leave behind."

Whereupon Giallo walked up to his master and caressed his hand. "Why,
Giallo," added Landor, "your nose is hot, but

He is foolish who supposes
Dogs are ill that have hot noses!"

Attention being directed to several letters received by Landor from
well-meaning but intensely orthodox friends, who were extremely anxious
that he should join the Church in order to be saved from perdition, he
said: "They are very kind, but I cannot be redeemed in that way.

When I throw off this mortal coil,
I will not call on you, friend Hoil;
And I think that I shall do,
My good Tompkins, without you.
But I pray you, charming Kate,
You will come, but not too late."

"How wicked you are, Mr. Landor!" I replied, laughingly. "It is well
that _I_ am not orthodox."

"For if you were orthodox
I should be in the wrong box!"

was the ready response.

Landor held orthodoxy in great horror, having no faith in creeds which
set up the highly comfortable doctrine, "I am holier than thou, for I am
in the Church." "Ah! I have giv