_North_.--I will not tempt you further. Let us proceed to business. To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit, Mr. Landor? _Landor_.--I sent you the manuscript of a new Imaginary Conversation between Porsou and Southey. _North_.--A sort of abnegation of your former one. For what purpose did you send it to me? _Landor_.--For your perusal. Have you read it? _North_.--I have, and I do not find it altogether new. _Landor_.--How? _North_.--I have seen some part of it in print before. _Landor_.--Where? _North_.--In a production of your own. _Landor_.--Impossible! _North_.--In a rhymed lampoon printed in London in 1836. It is called "A Satire on Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors." Do you know such a thing? _Landor_.--(_Aside_. Unlucky! some good-natured friend has sent him that suppressed pamphlet.) Yes, Mr. North; a poetical manifesto of mine with that title was printed but not published. _North_.--No, only privately distributed among friends. It contained some reflections on Wordsworth. _Landor_.--It did. _North_.--Why did you suppress it? _Landor_.--Because I was ashamed of it. Byron and others had anticipated me. I had produced nothing either new or true to damage Wordsworth. _North_.--Yet you have now, in this article that you offer me, reproduced the same stale gibes. _Landor_.--But I have kept them in salt for six years: they will now have more flavour. I have added some spice, too. _North_.--Which you found wrapt up in old leaves of the _Edinburgh Review_. _Landor_.--Not the whole of it; a part was given to me by acquaintances of the poet. _North_.--Eavesdroppers about Rydal Mount and Trinity Lodge. It was hardly worth your acceptance. _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"