[Footnote 86:  Vol. ii. p. 240, 241, 242.]

[Footnote 87:  Vol. iii. p. 66.]

[Footnote 88:  Vol. iii. p. 134.]

[Footnote 89:  Vol. iii. p. 172, and that there should be no mistake as to the person indicated, Lord Castlereagh is again accused by name at p. 187.  The same charge occurs also in the dialogue between Aristotle and Calisthenes! p 334, 335, 336; where Prince Metternich, (Metanyctius,) the briber, is himself represented as a traitor to his country.  Aristotle is the teller of this cock-and-bull story!]

North.—­Horrible! most horrible!

Landor.—­Hear Epicurus and Leontion and Ternissa discuss the merits of Castlereagh and Canning.

North.—­Epicurus!  What, the philosopher who flourished some centuries before the Christian era?

Landor.—­The same.  He flourishes still for my purposes.

North.—­And who are Leontion and Ternissa?

Landor.—­Two of his female pupils.

North.—­Oh, two of his misses!  And how come they and their master, who lived above 2000 years before the birth of Canning and Castlereagh, to know any thing about them?

Landor.—­I do not stand at trifles of congruity.  Canning is the very man who has taken especial care that no strong box among us shall be without a chink at the bottom; the very man who asked and received a gratuity (you remember the Lisbon job) [90] from the colleague he had betrayed, belied, and thrown a stone at, for having proved him in the great market-place a betrayer and a liar.  Epicurus describes Canning as a fugitive slave, a writer of epigrams on walls, and of songs on the grease of platters, who attempted to cut the throat of a fellow in the same household, [91] who was soon afterward more successful in doing it himself.

[Footnote 90:  Vol. iv. p. 194.]

[Footnote 91:  Vol. iv. p. 194.]

North.—­Horrible, most horrible mockery!  But even that is not new.  It is but Byron’s brutal scoff repeated—­“Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh.”

Landor.—­You Tories affect to be so squeamish.  Epicurus goes on to show Canning’s ignorance of English.

North.—­Epicurus!  Why not William Cobbett?

Landor.—­The Athenian philosopher introduces the trial of George the Fourth’s wife, and describes her as a drunken old woman, the companion of soldiers and sailors, and lower and viler men.  One whose eyes, as much as can be seen of them, are streaky fat floating in semi-liquid rheum.

North.—­And this is the language of Epicurus to his female pupils!  He was ever such a beast.

Landor.—­You are delicate.  He goes on to allude to Canning’s having called her the pride, the life, the ornament of society, (you know he did so call her in the House of Commons, according to the newspaper reports; it is true he was speaking of what she had been many years previously; before her departure from England.) [92] Epicurus says triumphantly that the words, if used at all, should have been placed thus—­the ornament, pride, and life; for hardly a Boeotian bullock-driver would have wedged in life between pride and ornament.