"The commentator ought to thank us, for our delicacy, for not dwelling on the indecency of some of his notes!"

What! has so much "aggravation" been employed to make Pope's commentator think there is any "delicacy," for which he ought to "THANK" this critic, or to induce him to believe that he would not have exposed" the indecency of the notes" if HE COULD!

The commentator indignantly rejects his proffered "delicacy!" If a single "indecent note" could be pointed out, he should indeed be sorry-to express this is all he can do; but as the critic has not spared the commentator in any instance where he thought he could bring a charge against him, so he sincerely believes he deliberately intended to imply a charge where he knew he could not bring one.

I have just before said, his "sneers" and his insinuations I retort on himself!

The "sneer" that follows is despicable indeed.

Lord Byron had published, in his animated satire on "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," a laughable passage, and ascribed this passage to me!

'I

No construction of my language could possibly bear him out, in such a representation. However, it was read, and believed, and laughed at! Lord Byron was of too noble a mind to misrepresent me deliberately; and on showing him the misstatement, he frankly acknowledged he had unintentionally done me wrong, and he had the generous magnanimity to say he would explain the circumstance, had he not given orders that the book should be suppressed!

I narrated the circumstance just as it happened, which affords this critic such wry-mouthed amusement! It is said "I spoke in a tone of seriousness, but with perfect good humour." I did so.

'Now, with that “naïveté” which you have attributed to me, will I declare why the expression, "perfectly good-humoured," was used on this occasion, which seems to make you so merry. It was used for no other reason than to show I could speak of the criticisms on any thing I had written, without "ill-humour," as some such critic as you might have inferred. Whether I was, on this occasion, or on any other, where criticism is concerned, perfectly good-humoured, those who were present, and Lord Byron himself, if he remembers the circumstance, will witness. Whether you will feel in as perfect good-humour," when I have a little farther probed your criticism, as I felt when Lord Byron probed my poetry, I know not sure I am, there are some touches which must make you “wince,” if you have any sensibility, in finding baseness and falsehood laid bare to the sinews; for there is this difference between my poetry and your prose Lord Byron imagined a sore place in the one, but the other is putrid from head to foot, as to what concerns myself in this article. I have no doubt two hands were concerned, because, where prejudice does not interfere, it is entertaining and sensible.

1 should have thought it a "serious" thing deliberately to publish and hold up "to public ridicule," a passage, as written by another, which he never wrote. Whether to have spoken of " humour was wise, I will not now affirm; but I said no more than what many witnesses can affirm to be true.

good

This circumstance thus awakens our blithe annotator's faceti

ousness.

"Mr. Bowles has more than once complained that his critics will not understand him (certainly where they, as this critic has done, insidiously leave out half he has said); however, Lord Byron quoted, according to other critics, a passage in Mr. Bowles's poems, not as Mr. Bowles wrote, but as critics said he wrote it. Thus, Mr. Bowles had reason to complain that he was "not understood," and more so when that very mis-quotation was the cause of sarcasm! Mr. Bowles, therefore, related a circumstance that passed between himself and Lord Byron, on this subject, not concealing the manner in which he spoke to Lord Byron."

Euge! cries the critic, this is an anecdote of admirable naïveté ! It is characteristic! "The plot was well laid and the scene not ill got up!"

This man, who thinks there "is nothing serious" in attributing to another that which he knows he did not deserve, is welcome to this merriment. In his own case, this very critic has said deliberately that of another which the person so charged does not deserve, and which he knew he did not deserve! He is guilty of uttering a calumny, knowing it is a calumny!

This I am "sentimental" enough to think an infamous crime; and the mention of Lord Byron gives him an opportunity not only of a flippant remark and heartless "sneer;" but the opportunity is too tempting for baser passions to let slip, for, as if unwilling to take leave of the subject, without indulging his "malignity," as well as his merriment, he thus held up the commentator:

"If Pope, whose fame and genius from the first,

Have foil'd the best of critics, need the worst,

Do thou essay

Affect a candour which thou can'st not feel,

Clothe ENVY in the garb of honest zeal;

Write, as if St. John's soul could still inspire,
And do from HATE what Mallet did for hire."

Lord Byron knows I do not deserve this character: he knows I never "affected a candour I did not feel;" and he is too generous to apply to me that character which I DO NOT DESERVE, though being totally ignorant of me, and locking on Pope with a warmth of a sacred predilection, which could not bear the thought of his

failings, he might thus have drawn such a portrait. Lord Byron knows (I hope I may now say so) I do not deserve this representation; and my critic himself knows I do not deserve it, or he has told a falsehood; for he says, it ill became a person "whose amiable disposition is ACKNOWLEDGED," "to aggravate" such infirmities into viciousness!

He therefore states, if he be sincere in what he here says, that I do not deserve that which this quotation imputes to me. Either he or 1, then, must be most atrocious. I, if indeed, in writing Pope's Life,

I did for "Hate" what Mallet did for pay;

Or he, if he advanced this, believing "IT WAS NOT TRUE!"

Whether it were true or false, if I had quoted, in the Life of Pope, the satiric lines of Lord Henry or Lady Montague, to prove, that his "heart was as hard" as his "birth obscure,' I should deserve this censure, and much more; and I leave every impartial and equitable judge, to pronounce whom "THE CAP MOST FITS" me, whom this critic has acquitted of intentional hostility; or himself, who, so thinking, has brought a professed satire, to prove my "envy, and hate," which himself does not believe.

Having thus, "step by step," attended the critic through this intemperate discussion; having shown his aggravation of offences, his petulent "sneers," and his affected sarcasms; his appeal to a professed SATIRE, to establish charges of which himself acquits me

Having, I trust, also, vindicated myself from the accusation brought against me, that I had "aggravated" Pope's "infirmities into licentiousness," and "surmised away EVERY AMIABLE quality." Having shown satisfactorily, as I hope, to every unprejudiced understanding, that I have been, in point of "aggravation," "more sinn'd against than sinning," I now come to the consideration of a more heinous part of this inconsiderate and intemperate piece of criticism.

Passing by, for the present, the fooleries about Lord Monboddo, I shall, with great reluctance, call the reader's attention to a circumstance far more serious than any of which I have yet spoken; whether it be not audaciously and deliberately false, and, if so, whether the accuser be not as unprincipled as he is intemperate, I must leave the wise and good, to whom I appeal, to determine.

After what is said of the "wild speculations" of Lord Monboddo, and the honest curate in the wilds of Devonshire," these words occur:

66

"It is only on this principle that we can account for the injury inflicted on Pope, by the strange proceedings of his last Editor, who VOL. XVII. Pam. NO. XXXIII. F 2

having possessed himself of the ravings of all the dunces on their arch-enemy, dwelled on them till their sinister influence operated on his imagination, and prompted him to hesitate, and suggest, and surmise away every amiable characteristic of the Poet; and, "INCREDIBLE AS IT MAY APPEAR, to accuse him of the CONTRARY DISPOSITIONS!"

That is

Thus, then, I have not only "aggravated" all "infirmities' into "viciousness," but, "INCREDIBLE AS IT MUST APPEAR," having "surmised away EVERY AMIABLE CHARACTERISTIC," have accused Pope of the CONTRARY DISPOSITIONS! to say, I have turned his friendships into hatreds, his affectionate duty and tender love for his aged mother, into cold-hearted ingratitude, his general benevolence into feelings of malevolence. What "malevolence" could have dictated this deliberate and atrocious falsehood? Did the sun shine when you wrote it

down?

It is a most serious accusation, and seriously it must be answered. The charge is true or false: if true, there is no kind of earthly infamy I do not deserve. If it be false, and coldly written down, when the writer knew it was false, on purpose to impress the public with an unjust opinion, what must the malignant fabricator be? This is worse, far worse, than any thing absurdity could utter about "mystic dreams." It is true or false, and infamy ought to await either him or me.

To show whether or not I deserve it, I place before the public those extracts which were before the eyes of this man when he

wrote:

"This year he (Pope) lost his aged mother, who had gradually sunk before his eyes, into the extremest imbecility of age, and whose 'cradle of parting repose he had so long rocked with solicitude and affection,' &c. Whatever irritation he might sometimes have experienced, he no sooner turned his eyes on those he loved, but his passions seemed to subside, and his spirit became gentle. Hence, in his severest denunciations of satirical indignation, he so often and so delightfully interests us by unexpected touches of domestic tenderness."-Life of Pope, page 92.

"No poet, perhaps, ever left the world with greater general testimonies to his virtues and his genius."-Page 118.

"Whatever might have been his defects, he could not have had many bad qualities, who never lost a friend, and whom Arbuthnot, Gay, Bathurst, Littleton, Fortescue, and Murray, esteemed and loved through life -Page 131.

"That he was a most dutiful and affectionate son, a kind master, a sincere friend, and, generally speaking, a benevolent man, is undoubted."-Page 120.

Now, Sir, whoever you are, I take you on your word. Either

you have said, what, if true, ought indeed to make me "hang my head, and blush to think myself a man." If what you asserted is false, and you knew it to be false, which you must have done, you, if you have the heart of a man- -I will not say of a Christianought to "blush." We stand not before the public only, but before Him who "made us." If what you have laid to my charge be true, the last extract should be read thus:

"That he was a most undutiful and unaffectionate son, a false friend, and unkind master; and, generally speaking, a malevolent man, is undoubted."

There you stand, Sir, exposed; and no sophistry, no vapouring declamation, will help you out. There you stand, and if not "blushing" for your atrocious calumny, I must believe your Editor will "blush" for you, and for the envenomed but impotent shaft you have aimed, through his indulgence, at an innocent man.

When Lander stood exposed in his audacious baseness, his own booksellers, highly to their credit, publicly disclaimed him. You are, I believe, a trading critic to many of the Magazines. Whether they will in future be so ready to admit your communications I know not. I believe Mr. Gifford will not. At all events you stand exposed, as far as this exposition extends; and I am willing to think that, in other times, when Pope shall be read with as much delight as he is now, if ever the name of the last editor should be spoken of, that defence which he here makes will not be forgotten!

The reader may now possibly ask what could induce any writer thus to commit himself? I will set before him a plain statement respecting what I sincerely believe to be the cause:

An article, reviewing Spence's Anecdotes, appeared in the London Magazine. Three or four months afterwards, being in London, I took up the Magazine, at the rooms of the Alfred Society, and the first article that struck me was the Review of Spence's Anecdotes; in which, with the same violent prejudice as appears in this article, the Editor of Pope was attacked, as if he had even disgraced the character of a Christian, and CHRISTIAN MINISTER. This was on account of what I had said in the Life of Pope, in regard to the intimacy between Pope and Martha Blount; but no particular passage was adduced, nor could the writer adduce one to justify such "unchristian" aspersions.

The idea, however, was excited; and it may be imagined, after such an accusation that, being totally unconscious of ever having written a word which might deserve such asperity, I must have considered the charge most unjust.

The language in which the accusation was conveyed, was at once so abhorrent from Christian charity, and so utterly destitute of delicacy (whilst I am reproved for the want of it), that it would disgust the reader were I literally to transcribe it.