r?

_North_.--The answer to that question I will borrow from the
satire itself, as you choose to term your scurrilous lampoon. Our
present affair, then, is to consider whether Walter Savage Landor,
Imaginary Conversation writer, in rushlight emulation of the
wax-candles that illumine our Noctes, shall be raised, as he aspires,
to the dignity of Fellow of the _Blackwood_ Society. In the
note at page 13 of the said lampoon, you state that "Lord Byron
declared that no gentleman could write in _Blackwood_;" and
you ask, "Has this assertion been ever disproved by experiment?" Now,
Mr. Landor, as you have thus adopted and often re-echoed Lord Byron's
opinion, that _no gentleman could write in Blackwood_, and yet wish
to enrol yourself among our writers, what is the inference?

_Landor_. That I confess myself no gentleman, _you_ would infer.
_I_ make no such confession. I would disprove Byron's assertion,
by making the experiment.

_North_. You do us too much honour. Yet reflect, Mr. Landor. After
the character you have given us, would you verily seek to be of our
fraternity? You who have denounced us so grandiloquently--you who
claim credit for lofty and disinterested principles of action?
Recollect that you have represented us as the worthy men who have
turned into ridicule Lamb, Keats, Hazlitt, Coleridge--(diverse
metals curiously graduated!)--all in short, who, recently dead, are
now dividing among them the admiration of their country. Whatever
could lessen their estimation; whatever could injure their fortune;
whatever could make their poverty more bitter; whatever could tend
to cast down their aspirations after fame; whatever had a tendency
to drive them to the grave which now has opened to them, was
incessantly brought into action against them by _us_ zealots for
religion and laws. A more deliberate, a more torturing murder, never
was committed, than the murder of Keats. The chief perpetrator of
his murder knew beforehand that he could not be hanged for it. These
are your words, Mr. Landor.

_Landor_.--I do not deny them.

_North_.--And in regard to the taste of the common public for
Blackwood's Cordials, you have said that, to those who are
habituated to the gin-shop, the dram is sustenance, and they feel
themselves both uncomfortable and empty without the hot excitement.
_Blackwood's_ is really a gin-palace. _Landor_.--All this I have
both said and printed, and the last sentence you have just read from
my sat