once wrote, "to the reflecting mind is less serious
than marriage. The elder plant is cut down that the younger may have
room to nourish; a few tears drop into the loosened soil, and buds and
blossoms spring over it. Death is not even a blow, it is not even a
pulsation; it is a pause. But marriage unrolls the awful lot of
numberless generations." The man who could write thus impressively
about marriage one spring evening at Bath attended a ball. There he
met a beautiful young lady whom he admired. As soon as he set eyes on
her he exclaimed, "By heaven! that's the nicest girl in the room, and
I'll marry her." He married her and was ever after unhappy. "God
forbid," once growled Landor, "that I should do otherwise than declare
that she always _was_ agreeable--to every one but _me_." Landor was
not in the habit of talking about his domestic troubles, but at one
time when he was contrasting other and more agreeable marriages he was
heard to say that he "unfortunately was taken by a pretty face."

Kenyon related to a friend an incident of the Landor honeymoon that is
significant. On one occasion, it seems, the newly married couple were
sitting side by side; Landor was reading some of his own verses to his
bride--and who could read more exquisitely?--when all at once the
lady, releasing herself from his arm, jumped up, saying, "Oh, do stop,
Walter, there's that dear delightful Punch performing in the street. I
must look out of the window." Exit poetry forever.

It would have been difficult for any woman to live amicably with
Landor. In his youth he was suspended from college, and when he was a
very old man he was fined $5,000 for writing a libelous article.
Between these two periods his life was made up of many fits of
passion. His rustication, or suspension from Trinity College,
Cambridge, came about in the following manner: One evening Landor
invited his friends to wine. His gun, powder, and shot were in the
next room, as he had been out hunting in the morning of that day. In a
room opposite to Landor's lived a young man whom Landor disliked. The
two parties exchanged taunts. Finally in a spirit of bravado Landor
took his gun and fired a shot through the closed shutters of the
enemy. Quite naturally this bit of pleasantry was not appreciated by
the owner of the shutters and complaint was lodged. When the
investigation was made the president tried to be as lenient as he
possibly could, but his conciliatory manner was stubb