ghly poetical as art can make her objects. Mr. Bowles imitation of Milton's style, as burlesque as the "Splendid wili, perhaps, tell me that this is because they resemble Shilling." These two writers (for Cowper is no poet) tha grand natural article of sound in heaven, and simile come into comparison in one great work-the translation upon earth-thunder. I shall be told triumphantly, that of Homer. Now, with all the great, and manifest, and Milton made sad work with his artillery, when he armed manifold, and reproved, and acknowledged, and unconhis devils therewithal. He did so; and this artificial ob- troverted faults of Pope's translation, and all the scholar ject must have had much of the sublime to attract his ship, and pains, and time, and trouble, and blank verse attention for such a conflict. He has made an absurd use of the other, who can ever read Cowper? and who wil of it: but the absurdity consists not in using cannon against ever lay down Pope, unless for the original? Pope's wat the angels of God, but any material weapon. The thun-"not Homer, it was Spondanus;" but Cowper's is no der of the clouds would have been as ridiculous and vain Homer, either, it is not even Cowper. As a child I first the hands of the devils, as the "villanous saltpetre:" read Pope's Homer with a rapture which no subsequent the angels were as impervious to the one as to the other. work could ever afford; and children are not the worst The thunderbolts became sublime in the hands of the Al-judges of their own language. As a boy I read Homer mighty, not as such, but because he deigns to use them as in the original, as we have all done, some of ns by force, a means of repelling the rebel spirits; but no one can at- and a few by favour; under which descriptor. I come is tribute their defeat to this grand piece of natural electri-nothing to the purpose, it is enough that I re-d him. As city: the Almighty willed, and they fell; his word would a man I have tried to read Cowper's versa, and I found have been enough; and Milton is as absurd (and in fact, it impossible. Has any human reader over succeeded? blasphemous) in putting material lightnings into the hands And now that we have heard the Catholic reproached of the Godhead as in giving him hands at all. The artillery of the demons was but the first step of his mistake, the thunder the next, and it is a step lower. It would have been fit for Jove, but not for Jehovah. The subject altogether was essentially unpoetical; he has made more of it than another could, but it is beyond tim and all men. with envy, duplicity, licentiousness, avarice-what was the Calvinist? He attempted the most atrocious of crimes in the Christian code, viz. suicide-and why? Because he was to be examined whether he was fit for an office which he seems to wish to have made a sine. cure. His connexion with Mrs. Unwin was pure enough. for the old lady was devout, and he was deranged; but why then is the infirm and then elderly Pope to be reproved for his connexion with Martha Blount? Cowper was the almoner of Mrs. Throgmorton; but Pope's charities were his own, and they were noble and extensive, far beyond his fortune's warrant. Pope was the tolerant yet steady adherent of the most bigoted of sects; and Cowper the most bigoted and despondent sectary that ever anticipated damnation to himself or others. Is this harsh? I know it is, and I do not assert it as my opinion of Cowper personally, but to show what might be said, with just as great an appearance of truth and candour, as all the odium which has been accumulated upon Pope in similar speculations. Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortunate time for his works. Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying entirely upon his own arguments, has, in person or by proxy, brought for ward the names of Southey and Moore. Mr. Southey agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his invariable prin ciples of poetry." The least that Mr. Bowles can do ir return is to approve the "invariable principles of Mr Southey." I should have thought that the word "invari In a portion of his reply, Mr. Bowles asserts that Pope envied Phillips" because he quizzed his pastorals in the Guardian, in that most admirable model of irony, his paper on the subject. If there was any thing enviable about Phillips, it could hardly be his pastorals. They were despicable, and Pope expressed his contempt. If Mr. Fitzgerald published a volume of sonnets, or a "Spirit of Discovery," or a "Missionary," and Mr. Bowles wrote in any periodical journal an ironical paper upon them, would this be "envy?" The authors of the Rejected Addresses" have ridiculed the sixteen or twenty first living poets" of the day; but do they "envy" them? "Envy writhes, it don't laugh. The authors of the *Rejected Addresses" may despise some, but they can hardly "envy" any of the persons whom they have parodied; and Pope could have no more envied Phillips than he did Welsted, or Theobalds, or Smedly, or any other given hero of the Dunciad. He could not have envied him, even had he himself not been the greatest poet of his age. Did Mr. Ings "envy" Mr. Phillips, when he asked him, "how came your Pyrrhus to drive oxen, and say, I am goaded on by love?" This question silenced poor Phillips; but it no more proceeded from "envy" than did Pope's ridicule. Did he envy Swift? Did he envy Bolingbroke? Did he envy Gay the unparalleled success of his "Beggars' Opera?" We may be answered that these were his friends-true; but does friendship prevent envy? Study the first woman you meet with, or the first scribbler, let Mr. Bowles himself (whom I acquit fully of such an odious quality) study some of his own poetical intimates: the most envious man I ever heard of is a poet, and a high one; besides it is an universal passion. Goldsmith envied not only the puppets for their dancing, and broke his shins in the attempt Sheridan, "I remember little, except that there was a phoeniz in it.” at rivalry, but was seriously angry because two pretty Aphanix!! Well, how did he describe it ?" "like a poulterer," women received more attention than he did. This is answered Sheridan: "it was green, and yellow, and red, and-blue; he did not let us off for a single feather." And just such as his poulterer' envy; but where does Pope show a sign of the passion?account of a phoenix, is Cowper's stick picker's detail of a wood, with An that case, Dryden envied the hero of his Mac Fleck- all its petty minutiae of this, that, and the other. One more poetical instance of the power of art, and even its supe Mr. Bowles compares, when and where he can,riority over nature, in poetry, and I have done :-the bust of Antinous ! Tope with Cowper, (the same Cowper whom, in his Is there any thing in nature like this marble, excepting the Vens? Can there be more poetry gathered into existence than in that wonderful edition of Pope, he laughs at for his attachment to an creation of perfect beauty? But the poetry of this bust is in no respect old woman, Mrs. Unwin: search and you will find it; I for what is there in common with mond nature and the male minion of derived from nature, nor from any association of moral exaltedness; remember the passage, though not the page ;) in parti- Adrian? The very execution is not natural, but supernatural, or cular he re-quotes Cowper's Dutch delineation of a wood, rather super-artificial, for nature has never done so much. drawn up like a seedsman's catalogre,* with an affected of poetry!" A great artist will make a block of stone as sublime as a mountain, and a good poet can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry than inhabits the forests of America. It is the business and the prod of a poet to give the lie to the proverb, and sometimes to "make a silker noe. "Thy needles, once a shining store, I refer Mr. Bowles to the stanza, and ask if these three lincs about "nee Away, then, with this eant about nature and "invariable principle I will submit to Mr. Bowie's own judgment a passage from another porn of Cowper's, to be compared with the same writer's Sylvan Sampu se out of a son's ear;" and to conclude with another homely pro Plor. In the line to Mary, verb, "a good workman will not find fault with his tools." able" might have stuck in Southey's throat, like Macbeth's say this than I would assert in the mosque, (once St. *Amen!" I am sure it did in mine, and I am not the Sophia's,) that Socrates was a greater man than Maholeast consistent of the two, at least as a voter. Moore met. But if I say that he is very near them, it is no (et tu Brute!) also approves, and a Mr. J. Scott. There more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed is a letter also of two lines from a gentleman in asterisks, who, it seems, is a poet of "the highest rank"-who can this be? not my friend, Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be; Rogers it won't be. "You have hit the nail in the head, and **** the bead also." I remain, yours, Tectionately. (Four Asterisks.) And in asterisks let him remain. Whoever this person may be, he deserves, for such a judgment of Midas, that "the nail" which Mr. Bowles has hit in the head should be driven through his own ears; I am sure that they are long enough. "To rival all but Shakspeare's name below." I say nothing against this opinion. But of what "order" according to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns's poems ? Tam O'Shanter," a tale, These are his opus magnum, [Pope, I presume] on the "Cotter's Saturday Night," a descriptive sketch; some others in the same style; the rest are songs. So much for the rank of his productions; the rank of Burns is the very first of his art. Of Pope I have expressed my opinion elsewhere, as also of the effect which the present attempts at poetry have had upon our literature. If any great national or natural convulsion could or should overwhelm your country, in such sort as to sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earth, and leave only The attention of the poetical populace of the present that, after all the most living of human things, a dead day to obtain an ostracism against Pope is as easily ac counted for as the Athenian's shell against Aristides; language, to be studied and read, and imitated, by the they are tired of hearing him always called "the Just." wise of future and far generations upon foreign shores, your literature should become the learning of mankind, They are also fighting for life; for if he maintains his divested of party cabals, temporary fashions, and nationa! station, they will reach their own falling. They have raised a mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious that the purest architecture; and, more barbarous than the bar-posterity of strangers should know that there had been such a thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish barians from whose practice I have borrowed the figure, for the preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but the they are not contented with their own grotesque edifice, unless they destroy the prior and purely beautiful fabric surviving world would snatch Pope from the wreck, and which preceded, and which shames them and theirs for let the rest sink with the people. He is the moral poet of all civilization, and, as such, let us hope that he will ever and ever. I shall be told that amongst those I have been (or it may be still am) conspicuous-true, and I one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only am ashamed of it. I have been among the builders of poet that never shocks; the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach. Cast your eye over his this Babel, attended by a confusion of tongues, but never among the envious destroyers of the classic temple of productions; consider their extent, and contemplate their our predecessor. I have loved and honoured the fame variety:-pastoral, passion, mock-heroic, translation, saand name of that illustrious and unrivalled man, far tire, ethics, all excellent, and often perfect. If his great charm be his melody, how comes it that foreigners adore more than my own paltry renown, and the trashy gin-him even in their diluted translation? But I have made gle of the crowd of "schools" and upstarts, who pretend this letter too long. Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles. Yours ever, rery truly, to rival, or even surpass him. Sooner than a single leaf should be torn from his laurel, it were better that all which these men, and I, as one of their set, have ever To J. Murray, Esq. written, should "Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row, I look one. and his own two lines BYRON. Post scriptum.-Long as this letter has grown, I find it necessary to append a postscript,-if possible, a short Mr. Bowles denies that he has accused Pope of There are those who will believe this, and those who "a sordid money-getting passion;" but he adds "if I had will not. You, sir, know how far I am sincere, and ever done So, I should be glad to find any testimony that whether my opiniorf, not only in the short work intended might show me he was not so." This testimony he may for publication, and in private letters which can never find to his heart's content in Spence and elsewhere. be published, has or has not been the same. First, there is Martha Blount, who, Mr. Bowles charitupon this as the declining age of English poetry; no regard for others, no selfish feeling, can prevent me from ably says, probably thought he did not save enough for her as legatee." Whatever she thought upon this point, seeing this, and expressing the truth. There can be no her words are in Pope's favour. Then there is Alderworse sign for the taste of the times than the depreciaman Barber-see Spence's Anecdotes. There is Pope's tion of Pope. It would be better to receive for proof cold answer to Halifax, when he proposed a pension; his Mr. Cobbet's rough but strong attack upon Shakspeare behaviour to Craggs and to Addison upon like occasions : and Milton, than to allow this smooth and "candid" undermining of the reputation of the most perfect of our power poets and the purest of our moralists. Of his the passions, in description, in the mock-heroic, I leave others to descant. I take him on his strong ground, as written when princes would have been proud to pension, an ethical poet: in the former none excel, in the mock-and peers to promote him, and when the whole army of heroic and the ethical none equal him; and, in my mind, dunces were in array against him, and would have been the latter is the highest of all poetry, because it does but too happy to deprive him of this boast of indepenthat in verse, which the greatest of men have wished to dence. But there is something a little more serious in accomplish in prose. If the essence of poetry must be Mr. Bowles's declaration, that he "would have spoken" a lie, throw it to the dogs, or banish it from your republic, of his "noble generosity to the outcast, Richard Savage, as Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry and other instances of a compassionate and. generous with truth and wisdom, is the only true "poet" in its real heart, "had they occurred to his recollection when he wrote." sense; "the maker," "the creator"—why must this mean What! is it come to this? Does Mr. Bowles sit down the "liar," the "feigner," "the tale-teller?" A man may to write a minute and laboured life and edition of a great poet? Does he anatomize his character, moral and make and create better things than these. in "And, thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive. po I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet etical? Does he present us with his faults and with his as Shakspeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, foibles? Does he sneer at his feelings, and doubt of his places him unmediately under them. I would no more sincerity? Does he unfold his vanity and duplicity? and then omit the good qualities which might, in part, have as unpleasant, as could well be pronounced. In the re "covered this multitude of sins?" and then plead that view of The fall of Jerusalem," it is stated that I "they did not occur to his recollection?" Is this the frame have devoted "my powers, etc. to the worst parts of of mind and of memory with which the illustrious dead manicheism," which being interpreted, means that I are to be reproached? If Mr. Bowles, who must have worship the devil. Now, I have neither written a reply, had access to all the means of refreshing his memory, nor complained to Gifford. I believe that I observed in did not recollect these facts, he is unfit for his task; but a letter to you, that I thought "that the critic might if he did recollect, and omit them, I know not what he have praised Milman without finding it necessary to is fit for, but I know what would be fit for him. Is the abuse me;" but I did not add at the same time, or soon plea of "not recollecting" such prominent facts to be after, (apropos, of the note in the book of travels,) that admitted? Mr. Bowles has been at a public school, I would not, if it were even in my power, have a single and, as I have been publicly educated also, I can sym-line cancelled on my account in that nor in any other pathize with his predilection. When we were in the publication?-Of course, I reserve to myself the privi third form even, had we pleaded on the Monday morning,lege of response when necessary. Mr. Bowies seems that we had not brought up the Saturday's exercise be- in a whimsical state about the article on Spence. You cause we had forgotten it," what would have been the know very well that I am not in your confidence, nor in reply? And is an excuse, which would not be pardoned that of the conductor of the journal. The moment ] to a schoolboy, to pass current in a matter which so saw that article, I was morally certain that I knew the nearly concerns the fame of the first poet of his age, if author "by his style." You will tell me that I do not not of his country? If Mr. Bowles so readily forgets know him: that is all as it should be: keep the secret, the virtues of others, why complain so grievously that so shall I, though no one has ever intrusted it to me. others have a better memory for his own faults? They He is not the person whom Mr. Bowles denounces. are but the faults of an author; while the virtues he Mr. Bowles's extreme sensibility reminds me of a ciromitted from his catalogue are essential to the justice cumstance which occurred on board of a frigate, in due to a man. which I was a passenger and guest of the captain's for Mr. Bowles appears, indeed, to be susceptible beyond a considerable time. The surgeon on board, a very the privilege of authorship. There is a plaintive dedi- gentlemanly young man, and remarkably able in his cation to Mr. Gifford, in which he is made responsible profession, wore a wig. Upon this ornament he was for all the articles of the Quarterly. Mr. Southey, it extremely tenacious. As naval jests are sometimes a seems, "the most able and eloquent writer in that Re-little rough, his brother-officers made occasional alluview," approves of Mr. Bowles's publication. Now, it sions to this delicate appendage to the doctor's person. seems to me the more impartial, that notwithstanding One day a young lieutenant, in the course of a facetious that the great writer of the Quarterly entertains opinions discussion, said, "Suppose, now, doctor, I should take opposite to the able article on Spence, nevertheless that off your hat." "Sir," replied the doctor, "I shall talk essay was permitted to appear. Is a review to be de-no longer with you; you grow scurrilous." He would voted to the opinions of any one man? Must it not not even admit so near an approach as to the hat which vary according to circumstances, and according to the subjects to be criticised? I fear that writers must take the sweets and bitters of the public journals as they occur, and an author of sc long a standing as Mr. Bowles might have become accustomed to such incidents; he might be angry, but not astonished. I have been reviewed in the Quarterly almost as often as Mr. Bowles, and have had as pleasant things said, and some protected it. In like manner, if any body approaches Mr. Bowles's laurels, even in his outside capacity of an editor," they grow scurrilous." You say that you are about to prepare an edition of Pope; you cannot do better for your own credit as a publisher, nor for the redemption of Pope from Mr. Bowles, and of the public taste from rapid degeneracy. Note 1. Page 291. NOTES. The Italians, with the most poetical language, and the most fastidious taste in Europe, possess now five great poets, they say, Danie, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and lastly Alfieri. Virgil; once Dryden, and since Walter Scott; now Cor neille, and now Racine; now Crebillon, now Voltaire a century. Not fifty years ago the Italians neglected The Homerists and Virgilians in France disputed for half Dante-Bettinelli reproved Monti for reading "that bar. barian" at present they adore him. Shakspeare and Milton have had their rise, and they will have their decline. Already they have more than once fluctuated, as living language. This does not depend upon their merits, must be the case with all the dramatists and poets of a Schlegel and Madame de Stael have endeavoured also to but upon the ordinary vicissitudes of human opiriens reduce poetry to two systems, classical and romantic. The effect is only beginning. Note 2. Page 293. Of these there is one ranked with the others for his SONNETS, and two for compositions which belong to no class at all? Where is Dante? His poem is not an epic; then what is it? He himself calls it a "divine comedy and why? This is more than all his thousand commentators have been able to explain. Ariosto's is not an epic poem; and if poets are to be classed according to the genus of their poetry, where is he to be placed? Of these five, Tasso and Alfieri only come within Aristotle's ar. ringement, and Mr. Bowles's class-book. But the whole position is false. Poets are classed by the power of their erformance, and not according to its rank in a gradus. in the contrary case, the forgotten epic poets of all countries would rank above Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, Burns, If the opinions cited by Mr. Bowles, of Dr. Johnson Gray, Dryden, and the highest names of various countries. against Pope, are to be taken as decisive authority, they Mr. Bowles's title of "invariable principles of poetry," will also hold good against Gray, Milton, Swift, Thomson, is, perhaps, the most arrogant ever prefixed to a volume. and Dryden: in that case what becomes of Gray's poetical So far are the principles of poetry from being "invaria- and Milton's moral character? even of Milton's poetica. ble," that they never were nor ever will be settled. These character, or, indeed, of English poetry in general? fo "principles" mean nothing more than the predilections Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel. Stil of a particular age; and every age has its own, and a Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can neve different from its predecessor. It is now Homer and now be read without instruction and delight. I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him immediately under them. OBSERVATIONS UPON "OBSERVATIONS.' A SECOND LETTER TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. ON THE REV. W. L. BOWLES'S STRICTURES ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF POPE DEAR SIR, Ravenna, March 25, 1821. when it should have been called "Gilchrist's Abuse of Bowles." On this error in the baptism of Mr. Gilchrist's pamphlet, it may be observed, that an answer may be abusive and yet no less an answer, though indisputably a temperate one might be the better of the two; but if abuse is to cancel all pretensions to reply, what becomes of Mr. Bowles's answers to Mr. Gilchrist? Mr. Bowles declares, that "he will not enter into a particular examination of the pamphlet," which by a In the further "Observations" of Mr. Bowles, in re- misnomer is called "Gilchrist's Answer to Bowles," joinder to the charges brought against his edition of Pope, it is to be regretted that he has lost his temper. Whatever the language of his antagonists may have been, I fear that his replies have afforded more pleasure to them than to the public. That Mr. Bowles should not be pleased is natural, whether right or wrong; but a temperate defence would have answered his purpose in the former case-and, in the latter, no defence, however violent, can tend to any thing but his discomfiture. I have read over this third pamphlet, which you have been so obliging as to send me, and shall venture a few observations, in addition to those upon the previous controversy. Mr. Bowles continues :-" But as Mr. Gilchrist derides my peculiar sensitiveness to criticism, before I show how destitute of truth is this representation, I will here explicitly declare the only grounds, &c. &c. &c.—Mr. Bowles's sensibility in denying his "sensitiveness to Mr. Bowles sets out with repeating his "confirmed criticism" proves perhaps too much. But if he has conviction," that "what he said of the moral part of been so charged, and truly-what then? There is no Pope's character was, generally speaking, true; and moral turpitude in such acuteness of feeling: it has that the principles of poetical criticism which he has laid been, and may be, combined with many good and great down are invariable and invulnerable," &c.; and that he qualities. Is Mr. Bowles a poet, or is he not? If he is the more persuaded of this by the " exaggerations of be, he must, from his very essence, be sensitive to critihis opponents." This is all very well, and highly na- cism; and even if he be not, he need not be ashamed of tural and sincere. Nobody ever expected that either Mr. the common repugnance to being attacked. All that is Bowles or any other author, would be convinced of hu- to be wished is, that he had considered how disagreeable man fallibility in their own persons. But it is nothing a thing it is, before he assailed the greatest moral poet to the purpose-for it is not what Mr. Bowles thinks, of any age, or in any language. but what is to be thought of Pope, that is the question. Pope himself sleeps well,"-nothing can touch It is what he has asserted or insinuated against a name him further; but those who love the honour of their which is the patrimony of posterity, that is to be tried; country, the perfection of her literature, the glory of her and Mr. Bowles, as a party, can be no judge. The language-are not to be expected to permit an atom of more he is persuaded, the better for himself, if it give his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be stripped him any pleasure; but he can only persuade others by from the laurel which grows over it. the proofs brought out in his defence. Mr. Bowles assigns several reasons why and when After these prefatory remarks of "conviction," &c." an author is justified in appealing to every upright Mr. Bowles proceeds to Mr. Gilchrist; whom he charges and honourable mind in the kingdom." If Mr. Bowles with "slang" and "slander," besides a small subsidiary limits the perusal of his defence to the upright and indictment of" abuse, ignorance, malice," and so forth. honourable" only, I greatly fear that it will not be exMr. Gilchrist has, indeed, shown some anger; but it tensively circulated. I should rather hope that some is an honest indignation, which rises up in defence of of the downright and dishonest will read and be conthe illustrious dead. It is a generous rage which in-verted, or convicted. But the whole of his reasoning is terposes between our ashes and their disturbers. There here superfluous—“ an author is justified in appealappears also to have been some slight personal pro-ing," &c. when and why he pleases. Let him make vocation. Mr. Gilchrist, with a chivalrous disdain of out a tolerable case, and few of his readers will quarrel the fury of an incensed poet, put his name to a letter with his motives. avowing the production of a former essay in defence of Pope, and consequently of an attack upon Mr. Bowles. Mr. Bowles appears to be angry with Mr. Gilchrist for four reasons:-firstly, because he wrote an article in "The London Magazine;" secondly, because he afterwards avowed it; thirdly, because he was the author of a still more extended article in "The Quarterly Review;" and, fourthly, because he was NOT the author of the said Quarterly article, and had the audacity to disown it-for no earthly reason but because he had NOT written it. Mr. Bowles" will now plainly set before the literary public all the circumstances which have led to his name and Mr. Gilchrist's being brought together," &c. Courtesy requires, in speaking of others and ourselves, that we should place the name of the former first-and not "Ego et Rex meus." Mr. Bowles should have written "Mr. Gilchrist's name and his." This point he wishes "particularly to address to those most respectable characters, who have the direction and management of the periodical critical press." That the press may be, in some instances, conducted by re spec able characters is probable enough; but if they are so, there is no occasion to tell them of it; and if they are not, it is a base adulation. In either case, it looks like a kind of flattery, by which those gentry are not very likely to be softened; since it would be difficult to find two passages in fifteen pages more at variance, than Mr. Bowles's prose at the beginning of this pamphlet, and his verse at the end of it. In page 4. he speaks of "those most respectable characters who have the direction, &c. of the periodical press," and in page 10. we find "Ye dark inquisitors, a monk-like band, Who o'er some shrinking victim-author stand, And so on-to" bloody law" and "red scourges," with boundless wealth, has nothing to require apology; bu even if it had, such a reproach was not very gracious on the part of a clergyman, nor graceful on that of a gentleman. The allusion to "Christian criticism" is not particularly happy, especially where Mr. Gilchrist is accused of having "set the first example of this mode in Europe." What Pagan criticism may have been we know but little; the names of Zoilus and Aristarchus survive, and the works of Aristotle, Longinus, and Quintilian: but of "Christian criticism" we have already had some specimens in the works of Philel phus, Poggius, Scaliger, Milton, Salmasius, the Cruscanti (versus Tasso,) the French Academy (against the Cid,) and the antagonists of Voltaire and of Pope-to say nothing of some articles in most of the reviews, since their earliest institution in the person of their respectable and still prolific parent, "The Monthly." Why, then, is Mr. Gilchrist to be singled out "as having set the first example?" A sole page of Milton or Salmasius contains more abuse-rank, rancorous, unleavened abuse-than all that can be raked forth from the whole works of many recent critics. There are some, indeed, who still keep up the good old custom; but fewer English than foreign. It is a pity that Mr. Bowles cannot witness some of the Italian controversies, or become the subject of one. He would then look upon Mr. Gilchrist as a panegyrist. * * * To me it appears of no very great consequence whether Martha Blount was or was not Pope's mistress, though I could have wished him a better. She appears to have been a cold-hearted, interested, ignorant, disA page and a half-nay only a page before-Mr. agreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's Bowles re-affirms his conviction, that what he has heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, said of Pope's moral character is (generally speaking) not knowing whither to turn, as he drew towards his true, and that his "poetical principles are invariable premature old age, childless and lonely,—like the needle and invulnerable." He has also published three pam-which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, phlets,-ay, four of the same tenour,—and yet, with this becomes helpless and useless, and, ceasing to tremble, declaration and these declamations staring him and his rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of adversaries in the face, he speaks of his "readiness to tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness admit errors or to abandon prejudices!!!" His use of of Pope's heart to have been able to love such a being. the word "amicable" reminds me of the Irish Institu-But we must love something. I agree with Mr. B. that tion (which I have somewhere heard or read of) called she could at no time have regarded Pope personally the "Friendly Society," where the president always with attachment," because she was incapable of attachcarried pistols in his pocket, so that when one amicable ment; but I deny that Pope could not be regarded with gentleman knocked down another, the difference might personal attachment by a worthier woman. It is not be adjusted on the spot, at the harmonious distance of probable, indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love twelve paces. with him as he walked along the Mall, or in a box at But Mr. Bowles "has since read a publication by the opera, nor from a balcony, nor in a ball-room; but him (Mr. Gilchrist) containing such vulgar slander, in society he seems to have been as amiable as unassumaffecting private life and character," &c. &c.; and Mr. ing, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure, his Gilchrist has also had the advantage of reading a pub-head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his lication by Mr. Bowles sufficiently imbued with per-eyes. He was adored by his friends-friends of the sonality; for one of the first and principal topics of most opposite dispositions, ages, and talents-by the reproach is that he is a grocer, that he has a "pipe in old and wayward Wycherley, by the cynical Swift, the his mouth, ledger-book, green canisters, dingy shop-boy, rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorneyhalf a hogshead of brown treacle," &c. Nay, the same bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the delicate raillery is upon the very title-page. When cankered Bolingbroke." Bolingbroke wept over hin controversy has once commenced upon this footing, as like a child; and Spence's description of his last moDr. Johnson said to Dr. Percy, "Sir, there is an end of ments is at least as edifying as the more ostentatious politeness-we are to be as rude as we please-Sir, account of the deathbed of Addison. The soldier Peteryou said that I was short-sighted." As a man's profession is generally no more in his own power than his person-both having been made out for him-it is hard that he should be reproached with either, and still more that an honest calling should be made a reproach. If there is any thing more honourable to Mr. Gilchrist than another it is, that being engaged in commerce he has had the taste, and found the leisure, to become so able a proficient in the higher literature of his own and Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have other countries. Mr. Bowles. who will be proud to understood the sex well. Bolingbroke, "a judge of the own Glover, Chatterton, Burns, and Bloomfield for his subject," says Warton, thought his "Epistle on the Deers, should hardly have quarrelled with Mr. Gilchrist Characters of Women" his "masterpiece." And even for his critic. Mr. Gilchrist's station, however, which with respect to the grosser passion, which takes occamight conduct him to the highest civic honours, and to Isionally the name of "romantic," accordingly as the borough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve and the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst, were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men of the most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remarkable or a celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the attachment which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable woman. |