le
consequence; it has been studiously repeated, and even printed by
others as well as by me.

_North_.--By whom?

_Landor_.--That, too, is of no importance to the fact.

_North_.--I am thoroughly convinced that it is no fact, and that
Wordsworth never uttered any thing like such an opinion in the sense
that you report it. He and Southey have been constant neighbours and
intimate friends for forty years; there has never been the slightest
interruption to their friendship. Every one that knows Wordsworth is
aware of his frank and fearless openness in conversation. He has
been beset for the last half century, not only by genuine admirers,
but by the curious and idle of all ranks and of many nations,
and sometimes by envious and designing listeners, who have
misrepresented and distorted his casual expressions. Instances of
negligent and infelicitous composition are numerous in Southey, as
in most voluminous authors. Suppose some particular passage of this
kind to have been under discussion, and Mr. Wordsworth to have
exclaimed, "I would not give five shillings a ream for such poetry
as that." Southey himself would only smile, (he had probably heard
Wordsworth express himself to the same effect a hundred times); but
some insidious hearer catches at the phrase, and reports it as
Wordsworth's sweeping denunciation of all the poetry that his friend
has ever written, in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary to
be met with, not only in Wordsworth's every-day conversation, but in
his published works. There is no man for whose genius Mr. Wordsworth
has more steadily or consistently testified his admiration than for
Southey's; there is none for whom, and for whose character, he has
evinced more affection and respect. You and I, who have both read
his works, and walked and talked with the Old Man of the Mountain,
know that perfectly well. You have perhaps been under his roof, at
Rydal Mount? I have; and over his dining-room fireplace I observed,
as hundreds of his visitors must have done, five portraits--Chaucer's,
Bacon's, Spenser's, Shakspeare's, and Milton's, in one line. On the
same line is a bust on the right of these, and a portrait on the left;
and there are no other ornaments on that wall of the apartment. That
bust and that portrait are both of Southey, the man whom you pretend
he has so undervalued! By the bye, no one has been more ardent in
praise of Wordsworth than yourself.

_Landor_.--You allude to the fir