[Footnote 51:  Vol. i. p. 300.]

Landor.—­Plato is disingenuous and malicious.  I fancy I have detected him in more than one dark passage, a dagger in his hand and a bitter sneer on his countenance.[52] He stole (from the Eyptian priests and other sources) every idea his voluminous books convey. [53] Plato was a thief.

North.—­“Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief.”

Landor.—­Do you mean to insinuate that my dialogues are stolen from Plato’s?

North.—­Certainly not, Mr. Landor; there is not the remotest resemblance between them.  Lucian and Christopher North are your models.  What do you think of Aristotle?

Landor.—­In Plato we find only arbours and grottoes, with moss and shell work all misplaced.  Aristotle has built a solider edifice, but has built it across the road.  We must throw it down again. [54]

North.—­So much for philosophy.  What have you to say to Xenophon as an historian?

Landor.—­He is not inelegant, but he is unimpassioned and affected; [55] and he has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ages in his Cyropaedia.[56]

North.—­The dunce!  But what of the Anabasis?

Landor.—­You may set Xenophon down as a writer of graceful mediocrity.[57]

North.—­Herodotus?

Landor.—­If I blame Herodotus, whom can I commend?  His view of history was nevertheless like that of the Asiatics, and there can be little to instruct and please us in the actions and speeches of barbarians.[58]

North.—­Which of the Greek tragedians do you patronise?

Landor.—­Aeschylus is not altogether unworthy of his reputation; he is sometimes grand, but oftener flighty and obscure.[59]

North.—­What say you of Sophocles?

Landor.—­He is not so good as his master, though the Athenians thought otherwise.  He is, however, occasionally sublime.

North.—­What of Euripides? [60]

Landor.—­He came further down into common life than Sophocles, and he further down than Aeschylus:  one would have expected the reverse.  Euripides has but little dramatic power.  His dialogue is sometimes dull and heavy; the construction of his fable infirm and inartificial, and if in the chorus he assumes another form, and becomes a more elevated poet, he is still at a loss to make it serve the interests of the piece.  He appears to have written principally for the purpose of inculcating political and moral axioms.  The dogmas, like valets de place, serve any master, and run to any quarter.  Even when new, they are nevertheless miserably flat and idle.

North.—­Aristophanes ridiculed him.

Landor.—­Yes, Aristophanes had, however, but little true wit. [61]

North.—­That was lucky for Euripides.

Landor.-A more skilful archer would have pierced him through bone and marrow, and saved him from the dogs of Archelaus.