At the close of 1805 Landor's father died, and the young poet became
a man of property. In 1808 Southey and Landor first met. Their
friendship remained unbroken. When Spain rose to throw off the yoke
of Napoleon, Landor's enthusiasm carried him to Corunna, where he
paid for the equipment of a thousand volunteers, and joined the
Spanish army of the North. After the Convention of Cintra he
returned to England. Then he bought a large Welsh estate--Llanthony
Priory--paid for it by selling other property, and began costly
improvements. But he lived chiefly at Bath, where he married, in
1811, when his age was thirty-six, a girl of twenty. It was then
that he began his tragedy of "Count Julian." The patriotic struggle
in Spain commended at the same time to Scott, Southey, and Landor
the story of Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings, against whom,
to avenge wrong done to his daughter, Count Julian called the Moors
in to invade his country. In 1810 Southey was working at his poem
of "Roderick the Last of the Goths," in fellowship with his friend
Landor, who was treating the same subject in his play. Scott's
"Roderick" was being printed so nearly at the same time with
Landor's play, that Landor wrote to Southey early in 1812 while the
proof-sheets were coming to him: "I am surprised that Upham has not
sent me Mr. Scott's poem yet. However, I am not sorry. I feel a
sort of satisfaction that mine is going to the press first, though
there is little danger that we should think on any subject alike, or
stumble on any one character in the same track." De Quincey spoke
of the hidden torture shown in Landor's play to be ever present in
the mind of Count Julian, the betrayer of his country, as greater
than the tortures inflicted in old Rome on generals who had
committed treason. De Quincey's admiration of this play was more
than once expressed. "Mr. Landor," he said, "who always rises with
his subject, and dilates like Satan into Teneriffe or Atlas when he