North.—­That story is probably an allegory, signifying that Euripides was after all worried out of life by the curs of criticism in his old age.

Landor.—­As our Keats was in his youth, eh, Mr. North?  A worse fate than that of Aeschylus, who had his skull cracked by a tortoise dropt by an eagle that mistook his bald head for a stone.

North.—­Another fable of his inventive countrymen.  He died of brain-fever, followed by paralysis, the effect of drunkenness.  He was a jolly old toper:  I am sorry for him.  You just now said that Aristophanes wanted wit.  What foolish fellows then the Athenians must have been, in the very meridian of their literature, to be so delighted with what they mistook for wit as to decree him a crown of olive!  He has been styled the Prince of Old Comedy too.  How do you like Menander?

[Footnote 52:  Vol. ii. p. 298.]

[Footnote 53:  Vol. iii p. 514.]

[Footnote 54:  Vol. iv. p 80.]

[Footnote 55:  Vol. i. p. 233.]

[Footnote 56:  Vol. ii. p. 331.]

[Footnote 57:  Vol. iii. p. 35.]

[Footnote 58:  Vol. ii. p. 332.]

[Footnote 59:  Vol. i. pp. 299, 298, 297.]

[Footnote 60:  Vol. i. p. 298.]

[Footnote 61:  Vol. ii. p. 12.]

Landor.—­We have not much of him, unless in Terence. [62] The characters on which Menander raised his glory were trivial and contemptible.

[Footnote 62:  Vol. ii. p. 5.  At p. 6th, Mr. Landor produces some verses of his own “in the manner of Menander,” fathers them on Andrew Marvel, and makes Milton praise them!]

North.—­Now that you have demolished the Greeks, let us go back to Rome, and have another touch at the Latins.  From Menander to Terence is an easy jump.  How do you esteem Terence?

Landor.—­Every one knows that he is rather an expert translator from the Greek than an original writer.  There is more pith in Plautus.

North.—­You like Plautus, then, and endure Terence?

Landor.—­I tolerate both as men of some talents; but comedy is, at the best, only a low style of literature; and the production of such trifling stuff is work for the minor geniuses.  I have never composed a comedy.

North.—­I see:  farewell to the sock, then.  Is Horace worth his salt?

Landor.—­There must be some salt in Horace, or he would not have kept so well. [63] He was a shrewd observer and an easy versifier; but, like all the pusillanimous, he was malignant.

[Footnote 63:  Vol. ii. p. 249.]

North.—­Seneca?

Landor.—­He was, like our own Bacon, hard-hearted and hypocritical, [64] as to his literary merits, Caligula, the excellent emperor and critic, (who made sundry efforts to extirpate the writings of Homer and Virgil,) [65] spoke justly and admirably when he compared the sentences of Seneca to lime without sand.