North.—You like Plautus, then, and endure Terence?
Landor.—I tolerate both as men of some talents; but comedy is, at the best, only a low style of literature; and the production of such trifling stuff is work for the minor geniuses. I have never composed a comedy.
North.—I see: farewell to the sock, then. Is Horace worth his salt?
Landor.—There must be some salt in Horace, or he would not have kept so well. [63] He was a shrewd observer and an easy versifier; but, like all the pusillanimous, he was malignant.
[Footnote 63: Vol. ii. p. 249.]
North.—Seneca?
Landor.—He was, like our own Bacon, hard-hearted and hypocritical, [64] as to his literary merits, Caligula, the excellent emperor and critic, (who made sundry efforts to extirpate the writings of Homer and Virgil,) [65] spoke justly and admirably when he compared the sentences of Seneca to lime without sand.
[Footnote 64: Vol. iv. p. 31.]
[Footnote 65: Vol. i. p. 274.]
North.—Perhaps, after all, you prefer the moderns?