Landor.—Because I was ashamed of it. Byron and others had anticipated me. I had produced nothing either new or true to damage Wordsworth.
North.—Yet you have now, in this article that you offer me, reproduced the same stale gibes.
Landor.—But I have kept them in salt for six years: they will now have more flavour. I have added some spice, too.
North.—Which you found wrapt up in old leaves of the Edinburgh Review.
Landor.—Not the whole of it; a part was given to me by acquaintances of the poet.
North.—Eavesdroppers about Rydal Mount and Trinity Lodge. It was hardly worth your acceptance.
Landor.—Then you refuse my article.
North.—It is a rare article, Mr. Landor—a brave caricature of many persons and things; but, before I consent to frame it in ebony, we must come to some understanding about other parts of the suppressed pamphlet. Here it is. I find that in this atrabilarious effusion you have treated ourselves very scurvily. At page 9 I see,
"Sooner shall Tuscan Vallambrosa lack wood,
Than Britain, Grub street, Billingsgate, and Blackwood."
Then there is a note at page 10: "Who can account for the eulogies of Blackwood on Sotheby's Homer as compared with Pope's and Cowper's? Eulogy is not reported to be the side he lies upon, in general." On the same page, and the next, you say of Us, high Churchmen and high Tories,