the corner, on the left hand, next the ceiling. You see I have given you a high place.

Landor. Here is the book, Mr North; it is covered with dust and cobwebs.

North.-The fate of classics, Mr Landor. They are above the reach of the housemaid, except when she brings the Turk's Head to bear upon them. Now, let us turn to the list of errata in this first volume. We are directed to turn to page 52, line 4, and for sugar-bakers, read sugarbakers' wives. I turn to the page, and find the error corrected by yourself; as are all the press errors in these volumes, which were presented by you to a friend. I bought the whole set for an old song at a sale. You see that the omitted word wives is carefully supplied by yourself, in your own handwriting, Mr Landor. On the same page, only five lines below this correction, is the identical passage that you would now transfer from Porson to Southey. Why did you not affix Porson's name to the passage then, when you were so vigilantly perfecting the very page? Why does no such correction appear even in the printed list of errata? Let us read the passage. "A current of rich and bright thoughts runs throughout the poem. Pindar himself would not, on that subject, have braced one into more nerve and freshness, nor Euripides have inspired into it more tenderness and passion."*

Landor.-Mr North, I repeat that that sentence should have been printed as Southey's, not Porson's.

North. Yet it is quite consistent with a preceding sentence which you can by no ingenuity of after-thought withdraw from Porson; for the whole context forbids the possibility of its transition. What does Porson there testify of the Laodamia? That it is "a composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own !”—and a part of one of its stanzas "might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the "Elysium the poet describes."† These expressions are at least as fervid as those which you would reclaim from Porson, now that, like a pettifogging practitioner, you want to retain him as counsel against the most illustrious of Southey's friends-the individual of whom in this same dialogue you cause Southey to ask, "What man ever existed who spent a more retired, a more inoffensive, a more virtuous life, than Wordsworth, or who has adorned it with nobler studies ?"-and what does Porson answer? "I believe so; I have always heard it; and those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men of no morality and no reflection."‡ Thus you print Wordsworth's praise in rubric, and fix it on the walls, and then knock your head against them. You must have a hard skull, Mr Landor.

Landor.-Be civil, Mr North, or I will brain you.

North.-Pooh, pooh, man! all your Welsh puddles, which you call pools, wouldn't hold my brains. To return to your proffered article, there is one very ingenious illustration in it. "Diamonds sparkle the most brilliantly on heads stricken by the palsy."

Vol. i. p. 52.

Vol. i. p. 51. Few persons will think that Mr Landor's drift, which is obvious enough, could be favoured if these passages could be all shuffled over to Mr Southey. It would be unwise and inconsistent in Mr Landor of all men to intimate that Southey's judgment in poetry was inferior to Porson's; for Southey has been so singular as to laud some of Mr Landor's, and Mr Landor has been so grateful as to proclaim Southey the sole critic of modern times who has shown“ a delicate perception in poetry." It is rash, too, in him to insinuate that Southey's opinion could be influenced by his friendship; for he, the most amiable of men, was nevertheless a friend of Mr Landor also. But the only object of this argument is to show how mal-adroitly Mr Landor plays at thimblerig. He lets us see him shift the pea. As for the praise and censure contained in his dialogues, we have no doubt that any one concerned willingly makes him a present of both. It is but returning bad money to Diogenes. It is all Mr Landor's; and, lest there should be any doubt about the matter, he has taken care to tell us that he has not inserted in his dialogues a single sentence written by, or recorded of, the persons who are supposed to hold them.-See Vol. i. p. 96, end of note.

Vol. i. p. 40.

Landor.-Yes; I flatter myself that I have there struck out a new and beautiful, though somewhat melancholy thought.

North.-New! My good man, it isn't yours; you have purloined those diamonds.

Landor.-From whom?

North. From the very poet you would disparage-Wordsworth.

"Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."

Those lines have been in print above twenty years.

Landor.-An untoward coincidence of idea between us.

North. Both original, no doubt; only, as Puff says in the Critic, one of you thought of it the first, that's all. But how busy would Wordsworth be, and how we should laugh at him for his pains, if he were to set about reclaiming the thousands of ideas that have been pilfered from him, and have been made the staple of volumes of poems, sermons, and philosophical treatises without end! He makes no stir about such larcenies. And what a coil have you made about that eternal sea shell, which you say he stole from you, and which, we know, is the true and trivial cause of your hostility towards him!

Landor. Surely I am an ill-used man, Mr North. My poetry, if not worth five shillings, nor thanks, nor acknowledgment, was yet worth borrowing and putting on. I, the author of Gebir, Mr North,-do you mark me?

North.-Yes; the author of Gebir and Gebirus; think of that, St Crispin and Crispanus!

Sing me the fates of Gebir, and the Nymph
Who challenged Tamar to a wrestling-match,
And on the issue pledged her precious shell.
"Above her knees she drew the robe succinct,
"Above her breast, and just below her arms.
"She, rushing at him, closed," and floor'd him flat.
And carried off the prize, a bleating sheep;
The sheep she carried easy as a cloak,"
And left the loser blubbering from his fall,
And for his vanish'd mutton. "Nymph divine!
"I cannot wait describing how she came;
"My glance first lighted on her nimble feet;
"Her feet resembled those long shells explored
"By him who, to befriend his steed's dim sight,
"Would blow the pungent powder in his eye."

Is that receipt for horse eye-powder to be found in White's Farriery, Mr
Landor?

Landor.-Perhaps not, Mr North. Will you cease your fooling, and allow me to proceed? "I," the author of Gebir, "never lamented when I believed it lost." The MS. was mislaid at my grandmother's, and lay undiscovered for four years. "I saw it neglected, and never complained. Southey and Forster have since given it a place whence men of lower stature are in vain on tiptoe to take it down. It would have been honester and more decorous if the writer of certain verses had mentioned from what bar he took his wine."† Now keep your ears open, Mr North; I will read my verses first, and then Wordsworth's. Here they are. I always carry a copy of them both in my pocket. Listen!

North.-List, oh list! I am all attention, Mr Landor.

Landor (reads.)—" But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue

Within, and they that lustre have imbibed

In the sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked,
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave.

The lines within inverted commas, are Mr Landor's, without alteration.
Mr Landor's printed complaint, verbatim, from his "Satire on Satirists."

Shake one, and it awakens then apply
Its polish'd lip to your attentive ear,

And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

These are lines for you, sir! They are mine. What do you think of them?

North. I think very well of them; they remind one of Coleridge's "Eolian Harp." They are very pretty lines, Mr Landor. I have written some worse myself.

Landor. So has Wordsworth. Attend to the echo in the Excursion.

"I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,

To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul

Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon

Brighten'd with joy; for, murmuring from within,
Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby,

To his belief, the monitor express'd
Mysterious union with its native sea."

North. There is certainly much resemblance between the two passages; and, so far as you have recited Wordsworth's, his is not superior to your's; which very likely, too, suggested it; though that is by no means a sure deduction, for the thought itself is as common as the sea-shell you describe, and, in all probability, at least as old as the Deluge.

Landor." It is but justice to add, that this passage has been the most admired of any in Mr Wordsworth's great poem.'

North.-Hout, tout, man! The author of the Excursion could afford to spare you a thousand finer passages, and he would seem none the poorer. As to the imputed plagiarism, Wordsworth would no doubt have avowed it had he been conscious that it was one, and that you could attach so much importance to the honour of having reminded him of a secret in conchology, known to every old nurse in the country, as well as to every boy or girl that ever found a shell on the shore, or was tall enough to reach one off a cottage parlour mantelpiece; but which he could apply to a sublime and reverent purpose, never dreamed of by them or you. It is in the application of the familiar image, that we recognise the master-hand of the poet. He does not stop when he has described the toy, and the effect of air within it. The lute in Hamlet's hands is not more philosophically dealt with. There is a pearl within Wordsworth's shell, which is not to be found in your's, Mr Landor. He goes on:

"Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things --
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."

These are the lines of a poet, who not only stoops to pick up a shell now and then, as he saunters along the sea-shore, but who is accustomed to climb to the promontory above, and to look upon the ocean of things

"From those imaginative heights that yield
Far-stretching views into eternity."

Do not look so fierce again, Mr Landor. You who are so censorious of

* From Mr Landor, verbatim.

self-complacency in others, and indeed of all other people's faults, real or ima gined, should endure to have your vanity rebuked.

Landor. I have no vanity. I am too proud to be vain.

North.-Proud of what?

Landor. Of something beyond the comprehension of a Scotchman, Mr North-proud of my genius.

North.-Are you so very great a genius, Mr Landor?

Landor.-I am. Almighty Homer is twice far above Troy and her towers, Olympus and Jupiter. First, when Priam bends before Achilles, and a second time, when the shade of Agamemnon speaks among the dead. That awful spectre, called up by genius in after-time, shook the Athenian stage. That scene was ever before me; father and daughter were ever in my sight; I felt their looks, their words, and again gave them form and utterance; and, with proud humility, I say it

"I am tragedian in this scene alone.

Station the Greek and Briton side by side,
And if derision be deserved-deride."

Surely there can be no fairer method of overturning an offensive reputation, from which the scaffolding is not yet taken down, than by placing against it the best passages, and most nearly parallel, in the subject, from Eschylus and Sophocles. To this labour the whole body of the Scotch critics and poets are invited, and, moreover, to add the ornaments of translation.*

North. So you are not only a match for Eschylus and Sophocles, but on a par with "almighty Homer when he is far above Olympus and Jove." Oh! ho! ho! As you have long since recorded that modest opinion of yourself in print, and not been lodged in Bedlam for it, I will not now take upon myself to send for a straight-waistcoat.

Landor.-Is this the treatment I receive from the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, in return for my condescension in offering him my assistance? Give me back my manuscript, sir. I was indeed a fool to come hither. I see how it is. You Scotchmen are all alike. We consider no part of God's creation so cringing, so insatiable, so ungrateful as the Scotch : nevertheless, we see them hang together by the claws, like bats; and they bite and scratch you to the bone if you attempt to put an Englishman in the midst of them.† But you shall answer for this usage, Mr North: you shall suffer for it. These two fingers have more power than all your malice, sir, even if you had the two Houses of Parliament to back you. A pen! You shall live for it.

North.-Fair and softly, Mr Landor; I have not rejected your article yet. I am going to be generous. Notwithstanding all your abuse of Blackwood and his countrymen, I consent to exhibit you to the world as a Contributor to Blackwood's Magazine; and, in the teeth of all your recorded admiration of Wordsworth, I will allow you to prove yourself towards him a more formi dable critic than Wakley, and a candidate for immortality with Lauder. Do you rue?

Landor. Not at all. I have past the Rubicon.

North. Is that a pun? It is worthy of Plato. Mr Landor, you have been a friend of Wordsworth. But, as he says

"What is friendship? Do not trust her,

Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."

Landor.-I have never professed friendship for him.
North. You have professed something more, then.

Let me read a short

poem to you, or at least a portion of it. It is an "Ode to Wordsworth."

This strange rhapsody is verily Mr Landor's. It is extracted from his " Satire on

Satirists."

Imaginary Conversations, vol. iv. p. 283.

Ibid. vol. i. p. 126.

"O WORDSWORTH!

That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of poesy,
Pleases me better than the toil

Of smoothing, under harden'd hand,
With attic emery and oil,

The shining point for wisdom's wand,
Like those THOU temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.

He who would build his fame up high,

The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say I'll do what I have plann'd,
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polish'd pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device
THOU raisest every edifice:
Whether in shelter'd vale it stand,
Or overlook the Dardan strand,
Amid those cypresses that mourn
Laodamia's love forlorn."

Four of the brightest intellects that ever adorned any age or country are then named, and a fifth who, though not equal to the least of them, is not unworthy of their company; and what follows?

"I wish them every joy above

That highly blessed spirits prove,

Save one, and that too shall be theirs,

But after many rolling years,

WHEN 'MID THEIR LIGHT THY LIGHT APPEARS."

Here are Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Dryden too,* all in bliss above, yet not to be perfectly blest till the arrival of Wordsworth among them! Who wrote that, Mr Landor?

Landor.-I did, Mr North.

North.-Sir, I accept your article. It shall be published in Blackwood's Magazine. Good-morning, sir.

Landor.-Good-day, sir. Let me request your particular attention to the correction of the press. (Landor retires.)

North. He is gone! Incomparable Savage! I cannot more effectually retaliate upon him for all his invectives against us than by admitting his gossiping trash into the Magazine. No part of the dialogue will be mistaken for Southey's; nor even for Porson's inspirations from the brandy-bottle. All the honour due to the author will be exclusively Mr Walter Savage Landor's; and, as it is certainly "not worth five shillings," no one will think it "worth borrowing or putting on."

* Whom Mr L., who is the most capricious as well as the most arrogant of censors, sometimes takes into favour.