er death?

_Landor_.--Oh no! it might possibly have sharpened it a little;
but I felt it my duty, as a censor of morals, to mark my reprobation
of her having grown fat and wrinkled in her old age. It was
necessary for me to correct the flattering picture drawn of her by
that caitiff Canning. You know the contempt of Demosthenes for
Canning.

_North_.--Demosthenes, too!

_Landor_.--Yes, in my dialogue between him and Eubulides, he
delineates Canning as a clumsy and vulgar man.

_North_.--Every one knows that he was a man of remarkably fine
person and pleasing manners.

_Landor_.--Never mind that--A vulgar and clumsy man, a
market-place demagogue, lifted on a honey-barrel by grocers and
slave-merchants, with a dense crowd around him, who listen in
rapture because his jargon is unintelligible. [94] Demosthenes, you
know, was a Liverpool electioneering agent, so he knew all about
Canning and his tricks, and his abstraction of L.14,000 sterling
from the public treasury to defray the expenses of his shameful
flight to Lesbos, that is Lisbon.[95]

[Footnote 94: Vol. i. p. 245.]

[Footnote 95: Vol. i. p. 247. This charge against Canning is
repeated at Vol. iii. p. 186, 187, and again at Vol. iv. p. 193.]

_North_.--Has England produced no honest men of eminence,
Mr. Landor?

_Landor_.--Very few; I can, however, name two--Archbishop Boulter
and Philip Savage. [96] I am not certain that I should ever have thought
of recording their merits, if their connexion with my own family had
not often reminded me of them; we do not always bear in mind very
retentively what is due to others, unless there is something at home
to stimulate the recollection. Boulter, Primate of Ireland, saved
that kingdom from pestilence and famine in 1729 by supplying the
poor with bread, medicines, attendance, and every possible comfort
and accommodation. Again, in 1740 and 1741, no fewer than 250,000
persons were fed, twice a-day, principally at his expense. Boulter
was certainly the most disinterested, the most humane, the most
beneficent, and after this it is little to say, the most enlightened
and learned man that ever guided the counsels of a kingdom.[97]
Mr. Philip Savage, Chancellor of the Exchequer, married his wife's
sister, of his own name, but very distantly related. This minister
was so irreproachable, that even Swift could find no fault with him.
[97] He kept a groom in livery, and two saddle-horses.

[Footnote 96: Also Vol. iii. p