Landor.—Hear Epicurus and Leontion and Ternissa discuss the merits of Castlereagh and Canning.
North.—Epicurus! What, the philosopher who flourished some centuries before the Christian era?
Landor.—The same. He flourishes still for my purposes.
North.—And who are Leontion and Ternissa?
Landor.—Two of his female pupils.
North.—Oh, two of his misses! And how come they and their master, who lived above 2000 years before the birth of Canning and Castlereagh, to know any thing about them?
Landor.—I do not stand at trifles of congruity. Canning is the very man who has taken especial care that no strong box among us shall be without a chink at the bottom; the very man who asked and received a gratuity (you remember the Lisbon job) [90] from the colleague he had betrayed, belied, and thrown a stone at, for having proved him in the great market-place a betrayer and a liar. Epicurus describes Canning as a fugitive slave, a writer of epigrams on walls, and of songs on the grease of platters, who attempted to cut the throat of a fellow in the same household, [91] who was soon afterward more successful in doing it himself.
[Footnote 90: Vol. iv. p. 194.]
[Footnote 91: Vol. iv. p. 194.]
North.—Horrible, most horrible mockery! But even that is not new. It is but Byron's brutal scoff repeated—"Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh."