o revert to the Greeks, from whom Virgil's
imitation of the Iliad drew us aside, favour me with your opinion of
Plato.

[Footnote 48: See Mr. Landor's "Imaginary Conversations."--Vol. i. p.
44, and ii. p. 322, note.]

[Footnote 50: Vol. i p. 269, 270.]

[Footnote 51: Vol. i. p. 300.]

_Landor_.--Plato is disingenuous and malicious. I fancy I have
detected him in more than one dark passage, a dagger in his hand and
a bitter sneer on his countenance.[52] He stole (from the Eyptian
priests and other sources) every idea his voluminous books convey.
[53] Plato was a thief.

_North_.--"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief."

_Landor_.--Do you mean to insinuate that my dialogues are stolen
from Plato's?

_North_.--Certainly not, Mr. Landor; there is not the remotest
resemblance between them. Lucian and Christopher North are your
models. What do you think of Aristotle?

_Landor_.--In Plato we find only arbours and grottoes, with moss
and shell work all misplaced. Aristotle has built a solider edifice,
but has built it across the road. We must throw it down again.
[54]

_North_.--So much for philosophy. What have you to say to Xenophon
as an historian?

_Landor_.--He is not inelegant, but he is unimpassioned and
affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of
nations and of ages in his Cyropaedia.[56]

_North_.--The dunce! But what of the Anabasis?

_Landor_.--You may set Xenophon down as a writer of graceful
mediocrity.[57]

_North_.--Herodotus?

_Landor_.--If I blame Herodotus, whom can I commend? His view of
history was nevertheless like that of the Asiatics, and there can be
little to instruct and please us in the actions and speeches of
barbarians.[58]

_North_.--Which of the Greek tragedians do you patronise?

_Landor_.--Aeschylus is not altogether unworthy of his reputation;
he is sometimes grand, but oftener flighty and obscure.[59]

_North_.--What say you of Sophocles?

_Landor_.--He is not so good as his master, though the Athenians
thought otherwise. He is, however, occasionally sublime.

_North_.--What of Euripides? [60]

_Landor_.--He came further down into common life than Sophocles,
and he further down than Aeschylus: one would have expected the
reverse. Euripides has but little dramatic power. His dialogue is
sometimes dull and heavy; the construction of his fable infirm and
inartificial, and if in the chorus he assumes another form, and
becomes a more elevate