North.—Fair and softly, Mr. Landor; I have not rejected your article yet. I am going to be generous. Notwithstanding all your abuse of Blackwood and his countrymen, I consent to exhibit you to the world as a Contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and, in the teeth of all your recorded admiration of Wordsworth, I will allow you to prove yourself towards him a more formidable critic than Wakley, and a candidate for immortality with Lauder. Do you rue?
Landor.—Not at all. I have past the Rubicon.
North.—Is that a pun? It is worthy of Plato. Mr. Landor, you have been a friend of Wordsworth. But, as he says—
"What is friendship? Do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."
Landor.—I have never professed friendship for him.
North.—You have professed something more, then. Let me read a short poem to you, or at least a portion of it. It is an "Ode to Wordsworth."
"O WORDSWORTH!
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of poesy,
Pleases me better than the toil
Of smoothing, under harden'd hand,
With attic emery and oil,
The shining point for wisdom's wand,
Like those THOU temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.
He who would build his fame up high,
The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say—I'll do what I have plann'd,
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polish'd pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device
THOU raisest every edifice:
Whether in shelter'd vale it stand,
Or overlook the Dardan strand,
Amid those cypresses that mourn
Laodamia's love forlorn."
Four of the brightest intellects that ever adorned any age or country. are then named, and a fifth who, though not equal to the least of them, is not unworthy of their company; and what follows?
"I wish them every joy above
That highly blessèd spirits prove,
Save one, and that too shall be theirs,
But after many rolling years,
WHEN 'MID THEIR LIGHT THY LIGHT APPEARS."
Here are Chaucer, Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Dryden too, all in bliss above, yet not to be perfectly blest till the arrival of Wordsworth among them! Who wrote that, Mr. Landor? [123]