Landor.—You are always blowing hot and cold on it, and have done so for years past. One month you place him among the stars, the next as low as the daisies.
North.—And rightly too; for both are the better for his presence.
Landor.—But you alternately worship and insult him, as some people do their wooden idols.
North.—If you must learn the truth, then, he has been to us, in one sense, nothing better than an unfeeling wooden idol. Some of us have been provoked by his indifference to our powers of annoyance, and his ingratitude in not repaying eulogy in kind. We have among ourselves a gander or two, (no offence, Mr. Landor,) that, forgetting they are webfooted, pretend to a perch on the tall bay-tree of Apollo, and, though heavy of wing, are angry with Wordsworth for not encouraging their awkward flights. They, like you, accuse him of jealousy, forsooth! That is the reason that they are now gabbling at his knees, now hissing at his heels. Moreover, our caprices are not unuseful to our interests. We alternately pique and soothe readers by them, and so keep our customers. As day is partitioned between light and darkness, so has the public taste as to Wordsworth been divided between his reverers and the followers of the Jeffrey heresy. After a lengthened winter, Wordsworth's glory is now in the long summer days; all good judgments that lay torpid have been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and sustained ascendancy of genius. We now put up a screen for the weak-sighted, now withdraw it from stronger eyes; thus we plague and please all parties.
Landor.—Except Wordsworth, whose eyelids are too tender to endure his own lustre reflected and doubled on the focus of your burnished brass. He dreads the fate of Milton, "blasted with excess of light."
North. Thank you, sir; that is an ingenious way of accounting for Wordsworth's neglect of our luminous pages. Yet it rather sounds like irony, coming from Mr. Walter Savage Landor to the editor of "The (Not Gentleman's) Magazine."
Landor.—Pshaw! still harping on my Satire.
North.—In that Satire you have charged Wordsworth with having talked of Southey's poetry as not worth five shillings a ream. So long as you refrained from publishing this invidious imputation, even those few among Wordsworth's friends who knew that you had printed it, (Southey himself among the number,) might think it discreet to leave the calumny unregarded. But I observe that you have renewed it, in a somewhat aggravated form, in the Article that you now wish me to publish. You here allege that Wordsworth represented Southey as an author, all whose poetry was not worth five shillings. You and I both know that Wordsworth would not deign to notice such an accusation. Through good and evil report, the brave man persevered in his ascent to the mountain-top, without ever even turning round to look upon the rabble that was hooting him from its base; and he is not likely now to heed such a charge as this. But his friends may now ask, on what authority it is published? Was it to you, Mr. Walter Landor, whom Southey (in his strange affection for the name of Wat) had honoured with so much kindness—to you whose "matin chirpings" he had so generously encouraged, (as he did John Jones's "mellower song,")—was it to you that Wordsworth delivered so injurious a judgment on the works of your patron? If so, what was your reply? [113]
[Footnote 113:
"I lagg'd; he (Southey) call'd me; urgent to prolong
My matin chirpings into mellower song."—LANDON. ]
Landor.—Whether it was expressed to myself or not, is of little consequence; it has been studiously repeated, and even printed by others as well as by me.