and a "coward" wittingly, as well as lovingly. In my former letter I have remarked upon the editor's forgetfulness of Pope's benevolence. But where he mentions his faults it is "with sorrow" his tears drop, but they do not blot them out. The "recording angel " differs from the recording clergyman. A fulsome editor is pardonable though tiresome, like a panegyrical son whose pious sincerity would demi-deify his father. But a detracting editor is a parricide. He sins against the nature of his office, and connection he murders the life to come of his victim. If his author is not worthy to be mentioned, do not edit at all: if he be, edit honestly, and even flatteringly. The reader will forgive the weakness in favour of mortality, and correct your adulation with a smile. But to sit down "mingere in patrios cineres," as Mr. Bowles has done, merits a reprobation so strong, that I am as incapable of expressing as of ceasing to feel it. Further Addenda. It is worthy of remark that, after all this outcry about" in-door nature" and "artificial images," Pope was the principal inventor of that boast of the English, Modern Gardening. He divides this honour with Milton. Hear Warton: -"It hence appears that this enchanting art of modern gardening, in which this kingdom claims a preference over every nation in Europe, chiefly owes its origin and its improvements to two great poets, Milton and Pope." Walpole (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed Kent's taste, and that Kent was the artist to whom the English are chiefly indebted for diffusing "a taste in laying out grounds." The design of the Prince of Wales's garden was copied from Pope's at Twickenham. Warton applauds "his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres." Pope was the first who ridiculed the "formal, French, Dutch, false and unnatural taste in gardening," both in prose and verse. (See, for the former, "The Guardian.")1 "Pope has given not only some of our first but best rules and observations on Architecture and Gardening." (See Warton's Essay, vol. ii. p. 237, &c. &c.) Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our 1 [No. 173., on laying out Gardens. This paper, which abounds with wit as well as taste, ends with a ridiculous catalogue of various figures cut in evergreen. Here follow a few of the items "Adam and Eve in yew: Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm: Eve and the Serpent very flourishing. "The tower of Babel, not yet finished. "Edward the Black Prince in cypress. "A laurestine bear in blossom, with a juniper hunter in berry. "An old maid of honour in wormwood. "A topping Ben Jonson in laurel. Divers eminent modern poets in bags, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of a penny-worth. Lakers in "Kendal Green," and our Bucolical Cockneys, crying out (the latter in a wilderness of bricks and mortar) about "Nature" and Pope's "artificial in-door habits?" Pope had seen all of nature that England alone can supply. He was bred in Windsor Forest, and amidst the beautiful scenery of Eton; he lived familiarly and frequently at the country seats of Bathurst, Cobham, Burlington, Peterborough, Digby, and Bolingbroke; amongst whose seats was to be numbered Stowe. He made his own little "five acres" a model to princes, and to the first of our artists who imitated nature. Warton thinks "that the most engaging of Kent's works was also planned on the model of Pope's at least in the opening and retiring shades of Venus's Vale." It is true that Pope was infirm and deformed; but he could walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford from London at a stretch), and he was famous for an exquisite eye. On a tree at Lord Bathurst's is carved "Here Pope sang," he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his letters, represents them both writing in the hay-field. No poet ever admired Nature more, or used her better, than Pope has done, as I will undertake to prove from his works, prose and verse, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable a labour. I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to a man who had long served Pope in his grounds: "I understand, sir," he replied, " them hang down, sir, somewhat poetical." Now, you would have if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would suffice to prove Pope's taste for Nature, and the impression which he had made on a common-minded man. But I have already quoted Warton and Walpole (both his enemies), and, were it necessary, I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to NATURE 2 as no poet of the present day has even approached. His various excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow Heath and Clapham Common sort of country, since the principal forests have been "A quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine by its being forgot a week in rainy weather. "A lavender pig with sage growing in the belly," &c. &c.] "["To build, to plant, whatever you intend, POPE, Epistle iv.] felled. It is, in general, far from a picturesque country. The case is different with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and I except also the lake counties and Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear Harrow on the Hill, and some spots near the coast. In the present rank fertility of "great poets of the age," and "schools of poetry" - a word which, like "schools of eloquence" and of "philosophy," is never introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the number of its professorsin the present day, then, there have sprung up two sorts of Naturals; the Lakers', who whine about Nature because they live in Cumberland; and their under-sect (which some one has maliciously called the "Cockney School"), who are enthusiastical for the country because they live in London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim any connexion with their metropolitan followers, whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys atheists, foolish fellows, bad writers, and other hard names not less ungrateful than unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of Windermere to what Mr. Braham terms "entusumusy," for lakes, and mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative brethren to the same "high argument." Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled over half Europe, and seen Nature in most of her varieties (although I think that they have occasionally not used her very well); but what on earth of earth, and sea, and Nature - have the others seen? Not a half, nor a tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his Windsor Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its brick The most rural of these gentlemen is my friend Leigh Hunt, who lives at Hampstead. I believe that, I need not disclaim any personal or poetical hostility against that gentleman. A more amiable man in society I know not; nor (when he will allow his sense to prevail over his sectarian principles) a better writer. When he was writing his " Rimini," I was not the last to discover its beauties, long before it was published. Even then I remonstrated against its vulgarisms; which are the more extraordinary, because_the_author is any thing but a vulgar man. Mr. Hunt's answer was, that he wrote them upon principle; they made part of his 66 system!!" I then said no more. When a man talks of his system, it is like a woman's talking of her virtue. I let them talk on. Whe 1 ["Write but like Wordsworth, live beside a Lake, And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; Then print your book, once more return to town, And boys shall hunt your bardship up and down." English Bards, &c.] 2 ["Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow? ther there are writers who could have written "Rimini," as it might have been written, I know not; but Mr. Hunt is, probably, the only poet who could have had the heart to spoil his own Capo d'Opera. One of them, a With the rest of his young people I have no acquaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's "Ode to Shakspeare," they "defy criticism." These are of the personages who decry Pope. Mr. John Ketch, has written some lines against him, of which it were better to be the subject than the author. Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would not "march through Coventry with them, that's flat!" were I in Mr. Hunt's place. To be sure, he has "led his ragamuffins where they will be well peppered;" but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen life when they have felt it — when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex - when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River -then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope; who had, if not in Wales, been near it, when he described so beautifully the "artificial" works of the Benefactor of Nature and mankind, the "Man of Ross; " whose picture, still suspended in the parlour of the inn, I have so often contemplated with reverence for his memory, and admiration of the poet, without whom even his own still existing good works could hardly have preserved his honest renown. 66 I would also observe to my friend Hunt, that I shall be very glad to see him at Ravenna, not only for my sincere pleasure in his company, and the advantage which a thousand miles or so of travel might produce to a "natural" poet, but also to point out one or two little things in Rimini," which he probably would not have placed in his opening to that poem, if he had ever seen Ravenna; unless, indeed, it made 'part of his system!!" I must also crave his indulgence for having spoken of his disciples by no means an agreeable or self-sought subject. If they had said nothing of Pope, they might have remained "alone with their glory" for aught I should have said or thought about them or their nonsense. But if they interfere with the "little Nightingale" of Twickenham, they 66 may find others who will bear it-I won't. Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it), he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. | Sir William Temple observes, "that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story." Here is a statesman's opinion of poetry: it is honourable to him, and to the art. Such a "poet of a thousand years" was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another But it can can be hoped for in our literature. want them he himself is a literature. 1 " One word upon his so brutally abused translation of Homer. "Dr. Clarke, whose critical exactness is well known, has not been able to point out above three or four mistakes in the sense through the whole Iliad. The real faults of the translation are of a different kind.' So says Warton, himself a scholar. It appears by this, then, that he avoided the chief fault of a translator. As to its other faults, they consist in his having made a beautiful English poem of a sublime Greek one. It will always hold. Cowper and all the rest of the blank pretenders may do their best and their worst: they will never wrench Pope from the hands of a single reader of sense and feeling. 46 The grand distinction of the vulgar forms of the new school of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but 'shabby-genteel,” as it is termed. A man may be coarse and yet not vulgar, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never vulgar. Chatterton is never vulgar, nor Wordsworth, nor the higher of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all its branches. It is in their finery that the new under school are most vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow "a Sunday blood" might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened, of the two: - probably because he made the one, or cleaned the other, with his own hands. If there be force in virtue or in song! O injured Bard! accept the grateful strain In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter I know nothing; of the former, I judge as it is found. Of my friend Hunt, I have already said, that he is any thing but vulgar in his manners; and of his disciples, therefore, I will not judge of their manners from their verses. They may be honourable and gentlemanly men, for what I know; but the latter quality is studiously excluded from their publications. They remind me of Mr. Smith and the Miss Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly, in "Evelina." In these things (in private life, at least,) I pretend to some small experience; because, in the course of my youth, I have seen a little of all sorts of society, from the Christian prince and the Mussulman sultan and pacha, and the higher ranks of their countries, down to the London boxer, the "flash and the swell," the Spanish muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch highlander, and the Albanian robber; -to say nothing of the curious varieties of Italian social life. Far be it from me to presume that there ever was, or can be, such a thing as an aristocracy of poets; but there is a nobility of thought and of style, open to all stations, and derived partly from talent, and partly from education, — which is to be found in Shakspeare, and Pope, and Burns, no less than in Dante and Alfieri, but which is nowhere to be perceived in the mock birds and bards of Mr. Hunt's little chorus. If I were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I should say that it is only to be defined by examples — of those who have it, and those who have it not. In life, I should say that most military men have it, and few naval; - that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers; that it is more frequent among authors than divines (when they are not pedants); that fencing-masters have more of it than dancing-masters, and singers than players; and that (if it be not an Irishism to say so) it is far more generally diffused among women than among men. In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never make entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be good for any thing without it. It is the salt of society, and the seasoning of composition. garity is far worse than downright blackguardism ; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things," signifying nothing." It does not depend upon low themes, or even low language, for Fielding revels in both; - but is he ever vulgar? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar, sporting with his subject, - its master, Vul While canker'd Weston, and his loathsome rhymes Stink in the nose of all succeeding times." GIFFORD, Baviad.] A scribbler who, for a series of years, had been attacking the moral character of Pope, in the Gentleman's Magazine, "with all the virulence of Gildon, all the impudence of Smedley, and all the ignorance of Curl and his associates." not its slave. Your vulgar writer is always most vulgar the higher his subject, as the man who showed the menagerie at Pidcock's was wont to say, This, gentlemen, is the eagle of the sun, from Archangel, in Russia; the otterer it is the igherer he flies." But to the proofs. It is a thing to be felt more than explained. Let any man take up a volume of Mr. Hunt's subordinate writers, read (if possible) a couple of pages, and pronounce for himself, if they contain not the kind of writing which may be likened to "shabby-genteel" in actual life. When he has done this, let him take up Pope; and when he has laid him down, take up the cockney again - if he can. Note to the passage in page 396. relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W. Montague.] I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was also greatly to blame in that quarrel, not for having rejected, but for having encouraged him: but I would rather decline the task-though she should have remembered ber own line, " He comes too near that comes to be denied." I admire her so much-her beauty, her talents that I should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name of Mary, that, as John son once said, "If you called a dog Hervey(1),I should love him;" so if you were to call a female of the same species Mary," I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus. The lines, "And when the long hours of the public are past, And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last, There, Mr. Bowles!-what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too? Is not her "champaigne and chicken" worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza contains the "purée" of the whole philosophy of Epicurus: I mean the practical philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man. But, after all, would not some of us have been as great fools as Pope? For my part, I wonder that, with his quick feelings, her coquetry, and his disappointment, he did no more,instead of writing some lines, which are to be condemned if false, and regretted if true. [The Hon. Henry Hervey, third son of the first Earl of Bristol, from whom Johnson, in the early part of his London life, received great kindness.] INDEX. A. ABERDEEN, town of, 4. 11, 12. Abstinence, the sole remedy for plethora, 337. Abydos, 103. 105, 106. 497. 663. See Bride Abyssinia, Lord Byron's project of visiting, 192. Academical studies, effect of, on the ima- ginative faculty, 65. Acarnania, 99. Acerbi, Giuseppe, 327. Actium, remains of the town of, 97. Addison, Joseph, his character as a poet, 65. His conversation, 690. His Drummer,' Alvanley (William Arden), second Lord, 303. Ambrosian library at Milan, visit to, 325. Amurath, Sultan, 234. 'Anastasius,' Mr. Hope's, its character, 455. amusing medley of quotations and classical Andalusian nobleman, adventures of a young, Angelo, Michael, his tomb in the church of Animal food, influence of, on the character, |