passions, though in supernatural circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men? His moral truth-his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly less than his miracles? His moral precepts. And if ethics have made a philosopher the first of men, and have not been disdained as an adjunct to his Gospel by the Deity himself, are we to be told that ethical poetry, or by whatever name you term it, whose object is to make men better and wiser, is not the very first order of poetry; and are we to be told this too by one of the priesthood? It requires more mind, more wisdom, more power, than all the "forests" that ever were "walked" for their "description," and all the epics that ever were founded upon fields of battle. The Georgics are indisputably, and, I believe, undisputedly, even a finer poem than the Æneid. Virgil knew this; he did not order them to be burnt.

"The proper study of mankind is man."

Milton is as absurd (and in fact, blasphemous) in putting material lightnings into the hands 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 him and all men.

In a portion of his reply, Mr. Bowles asserts that Pope "envied Philips" 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 Philips, 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 "ReIt is the fashion of the day to lay great jected Addresses” have ridiculed the sixteen stress upon what they call "imagination" or twenty "first living poets" of the day; and "invention," the two commonest of but do they "envy" them? "Envy" writhes, qualities: an Irish peasant, with a little it don't laugh. The authors of the Rewhiskey in his head, will imagine and in-jected Addresses may despise some, but vent more than would furnish forth a modern they can hardly "envy" any of the persons poem. If Lucretius had not been spoiled whom they have parodied; and Pope could by the Epicurean system, we should have have no more envied Philips than he did had a far superior poem to any now in Welsted, or Theobalds, or Smedley, or any existence. As mere poetry, it is the first other given hero of the Dunciad. He could of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? not have envied him, even had he himself His ethics. Pope has not this defect; his not been the greatest poet of his age. Did moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious. Mr. Ings “envy” Mr. Philips when he asked In speaking of artificial objects, I have him, "how came your Pyrrhus to drive omitted to touch upon one which I will oxen, and say, I am goaded on by love?” now mention. Cannon may be presumed This question silenced poor Philips; but to be as highly poetical as art can make it no more proceeded from "envy" than her objects. Mr. Bowles will, perhaps, tell did Pope's ridicule. Did he envy Swift? me that this is because they resemble that Did he envy Bolingbroke? Did he envy grand natural article of sound in heaven, Gay the unparalleled success of his "Begand simile upon earth — thunder. I shall gar's Opera ?" We may be answered that be told triumphantly, that Milton made these were his friends – true; but does sad work with his artillery, when he armed friendship prevent envy? Study the first his devils therewithal. He did so; and this woman you meet with, or the first scribartificial object must have had much of the bler; let Mr. Bowles himself (whom I acsublime to attract his attention for such a quit fully of such an odious quality) study conflict. He has made an absurd use of some of his own poetical intimates: the it; but the absurdity consists not in using most envious man I ever heard of is a poet, cannon against the angels of God, but any and a high one; besides it is an universal material weapon. The thunder of the clouds passion. Goldsmith envied not only the would have been as ridiculous and vain in puppets for their dancing, and broke his the hands of the devils, as the "villanous shins in the attempt at rivalry, but was saltpetre:" the angels were as impervious seriously angry because two pretty women to the one as to the other. The thunder-received more attention than he did. This bolts became sublime in the hands of the is envy; but where does Pope show a sign Almighty, not as such but because he deigns to use them as a means of repelling the rebel spirits; but no one can attribute their defeat to this grand piece of natural electricity: the Almighty willed, and they fell; his word would have been enough; and

of the passion? In that case Dryden envied the hero of his Mac Flecknoe. Mr. Bowles compares, when and where he can, Pope with Cowper (the same Cowper whom in his edition of Pope he laughs at for his attachment to an old woman, Mrs. Unwin:

search and you will find it; I remember that Mr. Bowles can do in return is to ap
the passage, though not the page); in par- prove the "invariable principles of Mr.
ticular he requotes Cowper's Dutch deli- Southey.' I should have thought that the
neation of a wood, drawn up like a seeds- word "invariable" might have stuck in S-
man's catalogue, with an affected imitation they's throat, like Macbeth's "Amen!" I
of Milton's style, as burlesque as the "Splen-am sure it did in mine, and I am not the
did shilling." These two writers (for Cow-least consistent of the two, at least asi
per is no poet) come into comparison in voter. Moore (et tu, Brute!) also approves,
one great work-the translation of Homer. and a Mr. J. Scott. There is a letter alsa
Now, with all the great, and manifest, of two lines from a gentleman in asterisks,
and manifold, and reproved, and acknow-who, it seems, is a poet of "the highes
ledged, and uncontroverted faults of Pope's rank"- who can this be? not my friend
translation, and all the scholarship, and Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be;
pains, and time, and trouble, and blank Rogers it won't be.
verse of the other, who can ever read Cow-
per? and who will ever lay down Pope,
unless for the original? Pope's was "not
Homer, it was Spondanus;" but Cowper's
is not Homer, either, it is not even Cowper.
As a child I first read Pope's Homer with
a rapture which no subsequent work could
ever afford, and children are not the worst
judges of their own language. As a boy I
read Homer in the original, as we have all
done, some of us by force, and a few by
favour; under which description I come is
nothing to the purpose, it is enough that I
read him. As a man I have tried to read
Cowper's version, and I found it impossible.
Has any human reader ever succeeded?

And now that we have heard the Catholic reproached 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 sinecure. 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 forward the names of Southey and Moore. Mr. Southey "agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his invariable principles of poetry." The least

"You have hit the nail in the head, and****
[Pope, I presume] on the head also."

I remain yours, affectionately,
(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.

The attempt of the poetical populace of
the present day to obtain an ostracism
against Pope, is as easily accounted for as
the Athenian's shell against Aristides; they
are tired of hearing him always called "the
Just." They are also fighting for life; for if he
maintains his station, they will reach their
own by falling. They have raised a mosque
by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest
architecture; and, more barbarous than the
barbarians from whose practice I have bor-
rowed the figure, they are not contented
with their own grotesque edifice, unless
they destroy the prior and purely beautiful
fabric which preceded, and which shames
them and theirs for ever and ever. I shall
be told that amongst those I have been (or
it may be, still am) conspicuous - true, and
I am ashamed of it. I have been amongst
the builders of this Babel, attended by a
confusion of tongues, but never amongst the
envious destroyers of the classic temple of
our predecessor. I have loved and ho-
noured the fame and name of that illustrious
and unrivalled man, far more than my own
paltry renown, and the trashy jingle of the
crowd of "Schools" and upstarts, who pre-
tend 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 that I, as one of their set, have
ever written, should

Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam or Soho!
There are those who will believe this, and
those who will not. You, sir, know how
far I am sincere, and whether my opinion,
not only in the short work intended for
publication, and in private letters which can
never be published, has or has not been
the same. I look upon this as the declining

a n

i

age of English poetry; no regard for others, the posterity of strangers should know that no selfish feeling, can prevent me from see-there had been such a thing as a British ing this, and expressing the truth. There Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the can be no worse sign for the taste of the preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but times than the depreciation of Pope. It the surviving world would snatch Pope would be better to receive for proof Mr. from the wreck, and let the rest sink with Cobbett's rough but strong attack upon the people. He is the moral poet of all Shakespeare and Milton, than to allow this civilization; and, as such, let us hope smooth and "candid” undermining of the that he will one day be the national poet reputation of the most perfect of our poets of mankind. He is the only poet that never and the purest of our moralists. Of his shocks; the only poet whose faultlessness power in the passions, in description, in has been made his reproach. Cast your the mock-heroic, I leave others to descant. eye over his productions; consider their I take him on his strong ground, as an extent, and contemplate their variety:ethical poet: in the former none excel, in pastoral, passion, mockheroic, translation, the mock-heroic and the ethical none equal satire, ethics,- all excellent, and often perhim; and in my mind, the latter is the fect. If his great charm be his melody, highest of all poetry, because it does that how comes it that foreigners adore him in verse, which the greatest of men have even in their diluted translations? But I wished to accomplish in prose. If the es- have made this letter too long. Give my sence of poetry must be a lie, throw it to compliments to Mr. Bowles. the dogs, or banish it from your republic, as Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry with truth and wisdom, is the only true "poet" in its real sense: "the maker," "the creator" - why must this mean the "liar," the "feigner," "the tale-teller?" A man may make and create better things than these.

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. I would no more say this than I would assert in the mosque (once Saint Sophia's), that Socrates was a greater man than Mahomet. But if I say that he is very near them, it is no more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed

Yours ever, very truly,

BYRON. Postscriptum.-Long as this letter has grown, I find it necessary to append a postscript,-if possible, a short one. Mr. Bowles denies that he has accused Pope of "a sordid money-getting passion;" but he adds, "if I had ever done so, I should be glad to find any testimony that might show he was not so." This testimony he may find to his heart's content in Spence and elsewhere. First, there is Martha Blount, who, Mr. Bowles charitably says, "probably thought he did not save enough for her as legatee." Whatever she thought upon this point, her words are in Pope's favour. Then there is Alderman Barber; see Spence's Anecdotes. There is Pope's cold answer to Halifax when he proposed a pension; his behaviour to Craggs and to Addison upon like occasions; and his own two lines

And, thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive,

"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? There are his opus magnum, “Tam Ó'Shanter," a tale; the "Cotter's Saturday Night," a descriptive Indebted to no prince or peer alive. sketch; some others in the same style; the written when princes would have been rest are songs. So much for the rank of proud to pension, and peers to promote him, his productions; the rank of Burns is the and when the whole army of dunces were very first of his art. Of Pope I have ex-in array against him, and would have been pressed my opinion elsewhere, as also of but too happy to deprive him of this boast the effect which the present attempts at of independence. But there is something poetry have had upon our literature. If a little more serious in Mr. Bowles's deany great national or natural convulsion claration, that he "would have spoken" of could or should overwhelm your country, his "noble generosity to the outcast, Richin such sort as to sweep Great Britain from ard Savage," and other instances of a the kingdoms of the earth, and leave only compassionate and generous heart, “had that, after all the most living of human they occurred to his recollection when he things, a dead language, to be studied, wrote." What is it come to this? Does and read, and imitated by the wise of future Mr. Bowles sit down to write a minute and far generations upon foreign shores; and laboured life and edition of a great if your literature should become the learn-poet? Does he anatomize his character, ing of mankind, divested of party-cabals, moral and poetical? Does he present us temporary fashions, and national pride and with his faults and with his foibles? Does prejudice; an Englishman, anxious that he sneer at his feelings and doubt of his

as often as Mr. Bowles, and have had as pleasant things said, and some as unpleasant, as could well be pronounced. In the review of "The Fall of Jerusalem," it is stated that I have devoted "my powers, to the worst parts of Manicheism," which, being

Now, I have neither written a reply, nor complained to Gifford. I believe that I observed in a letter to you, that I thought "that the critic might have praised Milman without finding it necessary to abuse me;" but did I not add at the same time, or soot after (apropos of the note in the book of Travels), that I would not, if it were even in my power, have a single line cancelled on my account in that nor in any other publication?— Of course, I reserve to myself the privilege of response when necessary. Mr. Bowles seems in a whimsical state about the article on Spence. You know very well that I am not in your confidence, nor in that of the conductor of the journal. The moment I saw that article, I was morally certain that I knew the author "by his style." You will tell me that

sincerity? Does he unfold his vanity and duplicity? and then omit the good qualities which might, in part, have "covered this multitude of sins?" and then plead that "they did not occur to his recollection?" Is this the frame of mind and of memory with which the illustrious dead are to be ap-interpreted, means that I worship the devil proached? If Mr. Bowles, who must have had access to all the means of refreshing his memory, did not recollect these facts, he is unfit for his task; but if he did recollect, and omit them, I know not what he is fit for, but I know what would be fit for him. Is the plea of "not recollecting" such prominent facts to be admitted? Mr. Bowles has been at a public school, and as I have been publicly educated also, I can sympathize with his predilection. When we were in the third form even, had we pleaded on the Monday morning, that we had not brought up the Saturday's exercise because "we had forgotten it," what would have been the reply? And is an excuse, which would not be pardoned to a schoolboy, to pass current in a matter which so nearly concerns the fame of the first poet of his age, if not of his country? I do not know him: that is all as it should If Mr. Bowles so readily forgets the virtues of others, why complain so grievously that others have a better memory for his own faults? They are but the faults of an author; while the virtues he omitted from his catalogue are essential to the justice due to a man.

be; keep the secret, so shall I, though no one has ever intrusted it to me. He is not the person whom Mr. Bowles denounces. Mr. Bowles's extreme sensibility reminds me of a circumstance which occurred on board of a frigate, in which I was a passenger and guest of the captain's for a Mr. Bowles appears, indeed, to be sus- considerable time. The surgeon on board, ceptible beyond the privilege of authorship. a very gentlemanly young man, and reThere is a plaintive dedication to Mr. markably able in his profession, wore a Gifford, in which he is made responsible wig. Upon this ornament he was extremely for all the articles of the Quarterly. Mr. tenacious. As naval jests are sometimes a Southey, it seems, “the most able and elo- little rough, his brother-officers made ocquent writer in that Review," approves of casional allusions to this delicate appendage Mr. Bowles's publication. Now, it seems to the doctor's person. One day a young to me the more impartial, that, notwith-lientenant, in the course of a facetious disstanding that the great writer of the Quar-cussion, said, "Suppose, now, doctor, I terly entertains opinions opposite to the should take off your hat." "Sir,” replied able article on Spence, nevertheless that the doctor, "I shall talk no longer with essay was permitted to appear. Is a Review you; you grow scurrilous." He would not to be devoted to the opinions of any one even admit so near an approach as to the man? Must it not vary according to cir- hat which protected it. In like manner, cumstances, and according to the subjects if any body approaches Mr. Bowles's laurels, to be criticised? I fear that writers must even in his outside capacity of an editor, take the sweets and bitters of the public "they grow scurrilous." You say that you journals as they occur, and an author of are about to prepare an edition of Pope; so long a standing as Mr. Bowles might you cannot do better for your own credit have become accustomed to such incidents; as a publisher, nor for the redemption of he might be angry, but not astonished. I Pope from Mr. Bowles, and of the public have been reviewed in the Quarterly almost taste from rapid degeneracy.

NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match. [p. 8. St. 51. [p. 6. St. 24. All who have seen a battery will recollect The Convention of Cintra was signed in the the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are palace of the Marchese Marialva. The late ex-piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every ploits of Lord Wellington have effaced the fol- defile through which I passed in my way to lies of Cintra. He has, indeed, done wonders: Seville. he has perhaps changed the character of a na