Landor.—­Then you refuse my article.

North.—­It is a rare article, Mr. Landor—­a brave caricature of many persons and things; but, before I consent to frame it in ebony, we must come to some understanding about other parts of the suppressed pamphlet.  Here it is.  I find that in this atrabilarious effusion you have treated ourselves very scurvily.  At page 9 I see,

  “Sooner shall Tuscan Vallambrosa lack wood,
  Than Britain, Grub street, Billingsgate, and Blackwood.”

Then there is a note at page 10:  “Who can account for the eulogies of Blackwood on Sotheby’s Homer as compared with Pope’s and Cowper’s?  Eulogy is not reported to be the side he lies upon, in general.”  On the same page, and the next, you say of Us, high Churchmen and high Tories,

  “Beneath the battlements of Holyrood
  There never squatted a more sordid brood
  Than that which now, across the clotted perch,
  Crookens the claw and screams for Court and Church.”

Then again at page 12,

        “Look behind you, look! 
  There issues from the Treasury, dull and dry as
  The leaves in winter, Gifford and Matthias. 
  Brighter and braver Peter Pindar started,
  And ranged around him all the lighter-hearted,
  When Peter Pindar sank into decline,
  Up from his hole sprang Peter Porcupine”

All which is nothing to Us, but what does it lead to?

  “Him W ... son follow’d”—­

Why those dots, Mr. Landor?

  “Him W ... son follow’d, of congenial quill,
  As near the dirt and no less prone to ill. 
  Walcot, of English heart, had English pen,
  Buffoon he might be, but for hire was none;
  Nor plumed and mounted in Professor’s chair
  Offer’d to grin for wages at a fair.”

The rest is too foul-mouthed for repetition.  You are a man of nasty ideas, Mr. Landor.  You append a note, in which, without any authority but common rumour, you exhibit the learned Professor as an important contributor to Blackwood, especially in those graces of delicate wit so attractive to his subcribers.  You declare, too, that we fight under cover, and only for spite and pay; that honester and wiser satirists were brave, that—­

  “Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,
  Mounted the engine and took aim from towers;”

But that

  “From putrid ditches we more safely fight,
  And push our zig-zag parallels by night.”

Again, at page 19—­

  “The Gentleman’s, the Lady’s we have seen,
  Now blusters forth the Blackguard’s Magazine;
  And (Heaven from joint-stock companies protect us!)
  Dustman and nightman issue their prospectus.”

Landor (who has sate listening, with a broad grin, while Mr. North was getting rather red in the face.)—­Really, Mr. North, considering that you have followed the trade of a currier for the last thirty years, you are remarkably sensitive to any little experiment on your own skin.  Put what has my unpublished satire to do with our present affair?