[Footnote 116:  Vol. i. p. 40.]

Landor.—­Be civil, Mr. North, or I will brain you.

North.—­Pooh, pooh, man! all your Welsh puddles, which you call pools, wouldn’t hold my brains.  To return to your proffered article, there is one very ingenious illustration in it.  “Diamonds sparkle the most brilliantly on heads stricken by the palsy.”

Landor.—­Yes; I flatter myself that I have there struck out a new and beautiful, though somewhat melancholy thought.

North.—­New!  My good man, it isn’t yours; you have purloined those diamonds.

Landor.—­From whom?

North.—­From the very poet you would disparage—­Wordsworth.

  “Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
  From the palsy-shaken head.”

Those lines have been in print above twenty years.

Landor.—­An untoward coincidence of idea between us.

North.—­Both original, no doubt; only, as Puff says in the Critic, one of you thought of it the first, that’s all.  But how busy would Wordsworth be, and how we should laugh at him for his pains, if he were to set about reclaiming the thousands of ideas that have been pilfered from him, and have been made the staple of volumes of poems, sermons, and philosophical treatises without end!  He makes no stir about such larcenies.  And what a coil have you made about that eternal sea-shell, which you say he stole from you, and which, we know, is the true and trivial cause of your hostility towards him!

Landor.—­Surely I am an ill-used man, Mr. North.  My poetry, if not worth five shillings, nor thanks, nor acknowledgment, was yet worth borrowing and putting on.  I, the author of Gebir, Mr. North, —­do you mark me?

North.—­Yes; the author of Gebir and Gebirus; think of that, St. Crispin and Crispanus!

  “Sing me the fates of Gebir, and the Nymph
  Who challenged Tamar to a wrestling match,
  And on the issue pledged her precious shell. 
  Above her knees she drew the robe succinct;
  Above her breast, and just below her arms. 
  ’She, rushing at him, closed, and floor’d him flat. 
  And carried off the prize, a bleating sheep;
  The sheep she carried easy as a cloak,
  And left the loser blubbering from his fall,
  And for his vanish’d mutton.  Nymph divine! 
  I cannot wait describing how she came;
  My glance first lighted on her nimble feet;
  Her feet resembled those long shells explored
  By him who, to befriend his steed’s dim sight,
  Would blow the pungent powder in his eye.’” [117]

Is that receipt for horse eye-powder to be found in White’s Farriery, Mr. Landor?

[Footnote 117:  The lines within inverted commas, are Mr. Landor’s, without alteration.]