have
been awakened, and the light prevails against the darkness. But as
bats and owls, the haters of light, are ever most restless in the
season when nights are shortest, so are purblind egotists most
uneasy when their dusky range is contracted by the near approach and
sustained ascendancy of genius. We now put up a screen for the
weak-sighted, now withdraw it from stronger eyes; thus we plague and
please all parties.

_Landor_.--Except Wordsworth, whose eyelids are too tender to
endure his own lustre reflected and doubled on the focus of your
burnished brass. He dreads the fate of Milton, "blasted with excess
of light."

_North_. Thank you, sir; that is an ingenious way of accounting for
Wordsworth's neglect of our luminous pages. Yet it rather sounds
like irony, coming from Mr. Walter Savage Landor to the editor of
"The (Not Gentleman's) Magazine."

_Landor_.--Pshaw! still harping on my Satire.

_North_.--In that Satire you have charged Wordsworth with having
talked of Southey's poetry as not worth five shillings a ream. So
long as you refrained from _publishing_ this invidious imputation,
even those few among Wordsworth's friends who knew that you had
_printed_ it, (Southey himself among the number,) might think it
discreet to leave the calumny unregarded. But I observe that you
have renewed it, in a somewhat aggravated form, in the Article that
you now wish me to publish. You here allege that Wordsworth
represented Southey as an author, _all_ whose poetry was not worth
five shillings. You and I both know that Wordsworth would not deign
to notice such an accusation. Through good and evil report, the
brave man persevered in his ascent to the mountain-top, without ever
even turning round to look upon the rabble that was hooting him from
its base; and he is not likely now to heed such a charge as this.
But his friends may now ask, on what authority it is published? Was
it to you, Mr. Walter Landor, whom Southey (in his strange affection
for the name of Wat) had honoured with so much kindness--to you
whose "matin chirpings" he had so generously encouraged, (as he did
John Jones's "mellower song,")--was it to you that Wordsworth
delivered so injurious a judgment on the works of your patron? If so,
what was your reply? [113]

[Footnote 113:
"I lagg'd; he (Southey) call'd me; urgent to prolong
My matin chirpings into mellower song."--LANDON. ]

_Landor_.--Whether it was expressed to myself or not, is of litt