?

_Landor_.--I tolerate both as men of some talents; but comedy is,
at the best, only a low style of literature; and the production of
such trifling stuff is work for the minor geniuses. I have never
composed a comedy.

_North_.--I see: farewell to the sock, then. Is Horace worth his
salt?

_Landor_.--There must be some salt in Horace, or he would not have
kept so well. [63] He was a shrewd observer and an easy versifier; but,
like all the pusillanimous, he was malignant.

[Footnote 63: Vol. ii. p. 249.]

_North_.--Seneca?

_Landor_.--He was, like our own Bacon, hard-hearted and
hypocritical, [64] as to his literary merits, Caligula, the excellent
emperor and critic, (who made sundry efforts to extirpate the writings
of Homer and Virgil,) [65] spoke justly and admirably when he compared the
sentences of Seneca to lime without sand.

[Footnote 64: Vol. iv. p. 31.]

[Footnote 65: Vol. i. p. 274.]

_North_.--Perhaps, after all, you prefer the moderns?

_Landor_.--I have not said that.

_North_.--You think well of Spenser?

_Landor_.--As I do of opium: he sends me to bed [66].

[Footnote 66:
Thee, gentle Spenser fondly led,
But me he mostly sent to bed.--LANDOR. ]

_North_.--You concede the greatness of Milton?

_Landor_.--Yes, when he is great; but his Satan is often a thing
to be thrown out of the way among the rods and fools' caps of the
nursery [67].

[Footnote 67: Vol. i. p. 301.]

He has sometimes written very contemptibly; his lines on Hobbes,
the carrier, for example, and his versions of Psalms. [68] Milton was
never so great a regicide as when he smote King David.

[Footnote 68: Blackwood.]

_North_.--You like, at least, his hatred of kings?

_Landor_.--That is somewhat after my own heart, I own; but he does
not go far enough in his hatred of them.

_North_.--You do?

_Landor_.--I despise and abominate them. How many of them, do you
think, could name their real fathers? [69]

[Footnote 69: Vol. i. p. 61.]

_North_.--But, surely, Charles was a martyr?

_Landor_.--If so, what were those who sold [70] him?

[Footnote 70: Vol. iv. p. 283.]

Ha, ha, ha! You a Scotchman, too! However, Charles was not a martyr.
He was justly punished. To a consistent republican, the diadem
should designate the victim: all who wear it, all who offer it, all
who bow to it, should perish. Rewards should be offered for the
heads of those monsters, as for the wolves, the kites, and the vipers.
A