Landor.—­Good-morning, Mr. North, I hope you are well.

North.—­I thank you, sir.—­Be seated.

Landor.—­I have called to enquire whether you have considered my proposal, and are willing to accept my aid.

North.—­I am almost afraid to trust you, sir.  You treat the Muses like nine-pins.  Neither gods nor men find favour in your sight.  If Homer and Virgil crossed your path, you would throw stones at them.

Landor.—­The poems attributed to Homer, were probably, in part at least, translations.  He is a better poet than Hesiod, who has, indeed, but little merit![49] Virgil has no originality.  His epic poem is a mere echo of the Iliad, softened down in tone for the polite ears of Augustus and his courtiers.  Virgil is inferior to Tasso.  Tasso’s characters are more vivid and distinct than Virgil’s, and greatly more interesting.  Virgil wants genius.  Mezentius is the most heroical and pious of all the characters in the Aeneid.  The Aeneid, I affirm, is the most misshapen of epics, an epic of episodes.[50] There are a few good passages in it.  I must repeat one for the sake of proposing an improvement.

  “Quinetiam hyberno moliris sidere classem,
  Et mediis properas aquilonibus ire per altum ... 
  Crudelis! quod si non arva aliena domosque
  Ignotas peteres, et Troja antiqua maneret,
  Troja per undosum peteretur classibus aequor?”

If hybernum were substituted for undosum, how incomparably more beautiful would the sentence be for this energetic repetition? [51]

North.—­I admire your modesty, Mr. Landor, in quoting Virgil only to improve him; but your alteration is not an improvement.  Dido, having just complained of her lover for putting out to sea under a wintry star, would have uttered but a graceless iteration had she in the same breath added—­if Troy yet stood, must even Troy be sought through a wintry sea? Undosum is the right epithet; it paints to the eye the danger of the voyage, and adds force to her complaint.

Landor.  Pshaw!  You Scotchmen are no scholars.  Let me proceed.  Virgil has no nature.  And, by the way, his translator Dryden, too, is greatly overrated.

North..—­Glorious John?

Landor.—­Glorious fiddlestick!  It is insufferable that a rhymer should be called glorious, whose only claim to notice is a clever drinking song.

North.—­A drinking song?

Landor.  Yes, the thing termed an Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.

North.—­Hegh, sir, indeed!  Well, let us go on with the Ancients, and dispatch them first.  To revert to the Greeks, from whom Virgil’s imitation of the Iliad drew us aside, favour me with your opinion of Plato.

[Footnote 48:  See Mr. Landor’s “Imaginary Conversations.”—­Vol. i. p. 44, and ii. p. 322, note.]

[Footnote 50:  Vol. i p. 269, 270.]