North.—­In that Satire you have charged Wordsworth with having talked of Southey’s poetry as not worth five shillings a ream.  So long as you refrained from publishing this invidious imputation, even those few among Wordsworth’s friends who knew that you had printed it, (Southey himself among the number,) might think it discreet to leave the calumny unregarded.  But I observe that you have renewed it, in a somewhat aggravated form, in the Article that you now wish me to publish.  You here allege that Wordsworth represented Southey as an author, all whose poetry was not worth five shillings.  You and I both know that Wordsworth would not deign to notice such an accusation.  Through good and evil report, the brave man persevered in his ascent to the mountain-top, without ever even turning round to look upon the rabble that was hooting him from its base; and he is not likely now to heed such a charge as this.  But his friends may now ask, on what authority it is published?  Was it to you, Mr. Walter Landor, whom Southey (in his strange affection for the name of Wat) had honoured with so much kindness—­to you whose “matin chirpings” he had so generously encouraged, (as he did John Jones’s “mellower song,")—­was it to you that Wordsworth delivered so injurious a judgment on the works of your patron?  If so, what was your reply? [113]

[Footnote 113: 
   “I lagg’d; he (Southey) call’d me; urgent to prolong
   My matin chirpings into mellower song.”—­LANDON. ]

Landor.—­Whether it was expressed to myself or not, is of little consequence; it has been studiously repeated, and even printed by others as well as by me.

North.—­By whom?

Landor.—­That, too, is of no importance to the fact.

North.—­I am thoroughly convinced that it is no fact, and that Wordsworth never uttered any thing like such an opinion in the sense that you report it.  He and Southey have been constant neighbours and intimate friends for forty years; there has never been the slightest interruption to their friendship.  Every one that knows Wordsworth is aware of his frank and fearless openness in conversation.  He has been beset for the last half century, not only by genuine admirers, but by the curious and idle of all ranks and of many nations, and sometimes by envious and designing listeners, who have misrepresented and distorted his casual expressions.  Instances of negligent and infelicitous composition are numerous in Southey, as in most voluminous authors.  Suppose some particular passage of this kind to have been under discussion, and Mr. Wordsworth to have exclaimed, “I would not give five shillings a ream for such poetry as that.”  Southey himself would only smile, (he had probably heard Wordsworth express himself to the same effect a hundred times); but some insidious hearer catches at the phrase, and reports it as Wordsworth’s sweeping denunciation of all the poetry that his friend