_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. [Footnote 64: Vol. iv. p. 31.] [Footnote 65: Vol. i. p. 274.] _North_.--Perhaps, after all, you prefer the moderns? _Landor_.--I have not said that. _North_.--You think well of Spenser? _Landor_.--As I do of opium: he sends me to bed [66]. [Footnote 66: Thee, gentle Spenser fondly led, But me he mostly sent to bed.--LANDOR. ] _North_.--You concede the greatness of Milton? _Landor_.--Yes, when he is great; but his Satan is often a thing to be thrown out of the way among the rods and fools' caps of the nursery [67]. [Footnote 67: Vol. i. p. 301.] He has sometimes written very contemptibly; his lines on Hobbes, the carrier, for example, and his versions of Psalms. [68] Milton was never so great a regicide as when he smote King David. [Footnote 68: Blackwood.] _North_.--You like, at least, his hatred of kings? _Landor_.--That is somewhat after my own heart, I own; but he does not go far enough in his hatred of them. _North_.--You do? _Landor_.--I despise and abominate them. How many of them, do you think, could name their real fathers? [69] [Footnote 69: Vol. i. p. 61.] _North_.--But, surely, Charles was a martyr? _Landor_.--If so, what were those who sold [70] him? [Footnote 70: Vol. iv. p. 283.] Ha, ha, ha! You a Scotchman, too! However, Charles was not a martyr. He was justly punished. To a consistent republican, the diadem should designate the victim: all who wear it, all who offer it, all who bow to it, should perish. Rewards should be offered for the heads of those monsters, as for the wolves, the kites, and the vipers. A true republican can hold no milder doctrine of polity, than that all nations, all cities, all communities, should enter into one great hunt, like that of the ancient Scythians at the approach of winter, and should follow up the kingly power unrelentingly to its perdition. [71] True republicans can see no reason why they should not send an executioner to release a king from the prison-house of his crimes, [72] with his family to attend him. [Footnote 71: Vol. iv. 507.] [Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 73.]