and the literary world hears
of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never could see
either his excellences or his defects, and from several who never have
perused the noblest of his writings.

_Landor._ It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have
sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble,
those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open
and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of
yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject.
Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw
them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my _Imaginary
Conversations_, and as we always do in real ones.

_Southey._ When we adhere to one point, whatever the form, it should
rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most writers of
dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most abstruse,
and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs
of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons
for the occasion.

Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I admire
his prose less than you do.

_Landor._ Probably because you dissent more widely from the opinions
it conveys: for those who are displeased with anything are unable to
confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little
when we dislike anything much. It must indeed be admitted that his
prose is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut
velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and
gummed-on flowers and puffy flounces of our present street-walking
literature. So do you, I am certain.

_Southey._ Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray, keep
astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves
into his company and imitating his manner. Milton is none of these:
and his language is never a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every
book we open, expressions which are not English, never were, and never
will be: for the writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to
be masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not
enough to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined
thoughts: there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full
establishment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their
maintenance.

Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, becau