th, I hope you are well.

_North_.--I thank you, sir.--Be seated.

_Landor_.--I have called to enquire whether you have considered my
proposal, and are willing to accept my aid.

_North_.--I am almost afraid to trust you, sir. You treat the
Muses like nine-pins. Neither gods nor men find favour in your sight.
If Homer and Virgil crossed your path, you would throw stones at them.

_Landor_.--The poems attributed to Homer, were probably, in part at
least, translations. He is a better poet than Hesiod, who has, indeed,
but little merit![49] Virgil has no originality. His epic poem is a
mere echo of the Iliad, softened down in tone for the polite ears of
Augustus and his courtiers. Virgil is inferior to Tasso. Tasso's
characters are more vivid and distinct than Virgil's, and greatly
more interesting. Virgil wants genius. Mezentius is the most
heroical and pious of all the characters in the Aeneid. The Aeneid, I
affirm, is the most misshapen of epics, an epic of episodes.[50] There
are a few good passages in it. I must repeat one for the sake of
proposing an improvement.

"Quinetiam _hyberno_ moliris sidere classem,
Et mediis properas aquilonibus ire per altum ...
Crudelis! quod si non arva aliena domosque
Ignotas peteres, et Troja antiqua maneret,
Troja per _undosum_ peteretur classibus aequor?"

If _hybernum_ were substituted for _undosum_, how incomparably more
beautiful would the sentence be for this energetic repetition? [51]

_North_.--I admire your modesty, Mr. Landor, in quoting Virgil
only to improve him; but your alteration is not an improvement. Dido,
having just complained of her lover for putting out to sea under a
wintry star, would have uttered but a graceless iteration had she in
the same breath added--if Troy yet stood, must even Troy be sought
through a wintry sea? _Undosum_ is the right epithet; it paints to
the eye the danger of the voyage, and adds force to her complaint.

_Landor_. Pshaw! You Scotchmen are no scholars. Let me proceed.
Virgil has no nature. And, by the way, his translator Dryden, too,
is greatly overrated.

_North_..--Glorious John?

_Landor_.--Glorious fiddlestick! It is insufferable that a rhymer
should be called glorious, whose only claim to notice is a clever
drinking song.

_North_.--A drinking song?

_Landor_. Yes, the thing termed an Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.

_North_.--Hegh, sir, indeed! Well, let us go on with the Ancients,
and dispatch them first. T