plored
By him who, to befriend his steed's dim sight,
Would blow the pungent powder in his eye.'" [117]

Is that receipt for horse eye-powder to be found in White's Farriery,
Mr. Landor?

[Footnote 117: The lines within inverted commas, are Mr. Landor's,
without alteration.]

_Landor_.--Perhaps not, Mr. North. Will you cease your fooling,
and allow me to proceed? "I," the author of _Gebir_, "never lamented
when I believed it lost." The MS. was mislaid at my grandmother's,
and lay undiscovered for four years. "I saw it neglected; and never
complained. Southey and Forster have since given it a place whence
men of lower stature are in vain on tiptoe to take it down. It would
have been honester and more decorous if the writer of certain verses
had mentioned from what bar he took his wine." [118] Now keep your ears
open, Mr. North; I will read my verses first, and then Wordsworth's.
Here they are. I always carry a copy of them both in my pocket. Listen!

[Footnote 118: Mr. Landor's printed complaint, _verbatim_, from his
"Satire on Satirists."]

_North_.--List, oh list! I am all attention, Mr. Landor.

_Landor_ (reads.)--

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where, when unyoked,
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave."

"Shake one, and it awakens--then apply
Its polish'd lip to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

These are lines for you, sir! They are mine. What do you think of
them?

_North_.--I think very well of them; they remind one of
Coleridge's "Eolian Harp." They are very pretty lines, Mr. Landor. I
have written some worse myself.

_Landor_--So has Wordsworth. Attend to the echo in the _Excursion_.

"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listen'd intensely, and his countenance soon
Brighten'd with joy; for, murmuring from within,
Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby,
To his belief, the monitor express'd
Mysterious union with its native sea."

_North_.--There is certainly much resemblance between the two
passages; and, so far as you have recited Wordsworth's, his is not
superior to yours; which very likely, too, suggested it; though that
is by no means a sure deduc