Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/270

232 Mr. J. Wells, author of "Oxford and its Colleges," says that neither here nor anywhere else, in his youth, or at any other time, was Walter Savage Landor "a sweetly reasonable person." The phrase is a happy one!

Landor entered Trinity in 1793, and he retired a year later. He went out of Oxford literally with a bang. An undergraduate of his College, whom Landor did not like, had rooms opposite Lander's, where he had the bad taste, one day, to give a party to other men who were equally disliked by Landor. What was the natural consequence is here set down in Landor's own words: "All the time I was only a spectator, for I should have flushed to have had any conversation with them, particularly out of a window. But my gun was lying on a table in the room, and I had, in a back closet, some little shot. I proposed, as they had closed the casements, and as the shutters were on the outside, to fire a volley. It was thought a good trick, and accordingly I went into my bedroom and fired!"

Who thought it a good trick the poet does not say.

The recipients of the shot did not like the trick, the authorities objected to it, and Landor was forced to go elsewhere to fire his guns.

It will be remembered that, in later life, he fired