[Footnote 50: Vol. i p. 269, 270.]
[Footnote 51: Vol. i. p. 300.]
Landor.—Plato is disingenuous and malicious. I fancy I have detected him in more than one dark passage, a dagger in his hand and a bitter sneer on his countenance.[52] He stole (from the Eyptian priests and other sources) every idea his voluminous books convey. [53] Plato was a thief.
North.—"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief."
Landor.—Do you mean to insinuate that my dialogues are stolen from Plato's?
North.—Certainly not, Mr. Landor; there is not the remotest resemblance between them. Lucian and Christopher North are your models. What do you think of Aristotle?
Landor.—In Plato we find only arbours and grottoes, with moss and shell work all misplaced. Aristotle has built a solider edifice, but has built it across the road. We must throw it down again. [54]
North.—So much for philosophy. What have you to say to Xenophon as an historian?
Landor.—He is not inelegant, but he is unimpassioned and affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ages in his Cyropaedia.[56]
North.—The dunce! But what of the Anabasis?