North.—By whom?
Landor.—That, too, is of no importance to the fact.
North.—I am thoroughly convinced that it is no fact, and that Wordsworth never uttered any thing like such an opinion in the sense that you report it. He and Southey have been constant neighbours and intimate friends for forty years; there has never been the slightest interruption to their friendship. Every one that knows Wordsworth is aware of his frank and fearless openness in conversation. He has been beset for the last half century, not only by genuine admirers, but by the curious and idle of all ranks and of many nations, and sometimes by envious and designing listeners, who have misrepresented and distorted his casual expressions. Instances of negligent and infelicitous composition are numerous in Southey, as in most voluminous authors. Suppose some particular passage of this kind to have been under discussion, and Mr. Wordsworth to have exclaimed, "I would not give five shillings a ream for such poetry as that." Southey himself would only smile, (he had probably heard Wordsworth express himself to the same effect a hundred times); but some insidious hearer catches at the phrase, and reports it as Wordsworth's sweeping denunciation of all the poetry that his friend has ever written, in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary to be met with, not only in Wordsworth's every-day conversation, but in his published works. There is no man for whose genius Mr. Wordsworth has more steadily or consistently testified his admiration than for Southey's; there is none for whom, and for whose character, he has evinced more affection and respect. You and I, who have both read his works, and walked and talked with the Old Man of the Mountain, know that perfectly well. You have perhaps been under his roof, at Rydal Mount? I have; and over his dining-room fireplace I observed, as hundreds of his visitors must have done, five portraits—Chaucer's, Bacon's, Spenser's, Shakspeare's, and Milton's, in one line. On the same line is a bust on the right of these, and a portrait on the left; and there are no other ornaments on that wall of the apartment. That bust and that portrait are both of Southey, the man whom you pretend he has so undervalued! By the bye, no one has been more ardent in praise of Wordsworth than yourself.
Landor.—You allude to the first dialogue between Southey and Porson, in Vol. i. of my Imaginary Conversations.
North.—Not to that only, though in that dialogue there are sentiments much at variance with those which you would now give out as Porson's. For example, remember what Porson there says of the Laodamia.
Landor.—The most fervid expression in commendation of it is printed as Porson's improperly, as the whole context shows. It should have been Southey's.
North.—So, I perceive, you say in this new dialogue; and such a mode of attempting to turn your back on yourself, to borrow a phrase from your friend Lord Castlereagh's rhetoric, will be pronounced, even by those who do not care a bawbee about the debate, as not only ludicrous, but pitiably shabby. Keep your seat, Mr. Landor, and keep your temper for once in your life. Let us examine into this pretended mistake in your former dialogue about Laodamia. Well, as you are up, do me the favour, sir, to mount the ladder, and take down from yon top shelf the first volume of your Conversations. Up in the corner, on the left hand, next the ceiling. You see I have given you a high place.
Landor.—Here is the book, Mr. North; it is covered with dust and cobwebs.
North.—The fate of classics, Mr. Landor. They are above the reach of the housemaid, except when she brings the Turk's Head to bear upon them. Now, let us turn to the list of errata in this first volume. We are directed to turn to page 52, line 4, and for sugar-bakers, read sugar-bakers' wives. I turn to the page, and find the error corrected by yourself; as are all the press errors in these volumes, which were presented by you to a friend. I bought the whole set for an old song at a sale. You see that the omitted word wives is carefully supplied by yourself, in your own handwriting, Mr. Landor. On the same page, only five lines below this correction, is the identical passage that you would now transfer from Porson to Southey. Why did you not affix Porson's name to the passage then, when you were so vigilantly perfecting the very page? Why does no such correction appear even in the printed list of errata? Let us read the passage. "A current of rich and bright thoughts runs throughout the poem. [114] Pindar himself would not, on that subject, have braced one into more nerve and freshness, nor Euripides have inspired into it more tenderness and passion."
[Footnote 114: Vol. i. p. 52.]