s praise in rubric,
and fix it on the walls, and then knock your head against them. You
must have a hard skull, Mr. Landor.

[Footnote 116: Vol. i. p. 40.]

_Landor_.--Be civil, Mr. North, or I will brain you.

_North_.--Pooh, pooh, man! all your Welsh puddles, which you call
pools, wouldn't hold my brains. To return to your proffered article,
there is one very ingenious illustration in it. "Diamonds sparkle
the most brilliantly on heads stricken by the palsy."

_Landor_.--Yes; I flatter myself that I have there struck out a
new and beautiful, though somewhat melancholy thought.

_North_.--New! My good man, it isn't yours; you have purloined
those diamonds.

_Landor_.--From whom?

_North_.--From the very poet you would disparage--Wordsworth.

"Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From the palsy-shaken head."

Those lines have been in print above twenty years.

_Landor_.--An untoward coincidence of idea between us.

_North_.--Both original, no doubt; only, as Puff says in the
_Critic_, one of you thought of it the first, that's all. But how
busy would Wordsworth be, and how we should laugh at him for his
pains, if he were to set about reclaiming the thousands of ideas
that have been pilfered from him, and have been made the staple of
volumes of poems, sermons, and philosophical treatises without end!
He makes no stir about such larcenies. And what a coil have you made
about that eternal sea-shell, which you say he stole from you, and
which, we know, is the true and trivial cause of your hostility
towards him!

_Landor_.--Surely I am an ill-used man, Mr. North. My poetry, if
not worth five shillings, nor thanks, nor acknowledgment, was yet
worth borrowing and putting on. I, the author of _Gebir_, Mr. North,
--do you mark me?

_North_.--Yes; the author of Gebir and Gebirus; think of that, St.
Crispin and Crispanus!

"Sing me the fates of Gebir, and the Nymph
Who challenged Tamar to a wrestling match,
And on the issue pledged her precious shell.
Above her knees she drew the robe succinct;
Above her breast, and just below her arms.
'She, rushing at him, closed, and floor'd him flat.
And carried off the prize, a bleating sheep;
The sheep she carried easy as a cloak,
And left the loser blubbering from his fall,
And for his vanish'd mutton. Nymph divine!
I cannot wait describing how she came;
My glance first lighted on her nimble feet;
Her feet resembled those long shells ex