Chapter 30

"Ravenna, May 10. 1821.

"I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr. Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He is to write, and you to publish, what you please,--_motto_ and subject. I desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course, after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will _not_ publish my _defence of Gilchrist_: it would be brutal to do so after his urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon Gilchrist. You may tell him what I say there of _his Missionary_ (it is praised, as it deserves). However, and if there are any passages _not personal_ to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of my first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all, don't let any thing be added which can _personally_ affect Mr. Bowles.

"In the enclosed notes, of course what I say of the _democracy_ of poetry cannot apply to Mr. Bowles, but to the Cockney and water washing-tub schools.

"I hope and trust that Elliston _won't_ be permitted to act the drama. Surely _he_ might have the grace to wait for Kean's return before he attempted it; though, _even then_, _I_ should be as much against the attempt as ever.

"I have got a small packet of books, but neither Waldegrave, Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are excellent. Think of this--they are all for _Pope_.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however, may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature, too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for the reader.

* * * * *

"Pope himself 'sleeps well--nothing can touch him further;' but those who love the honour of their country, the perfection of her literature, the glory of her language, are not to be expected to permit an atom of his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be stripped from the laurel which grows over it. * * *

"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, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing whither to turn, as he drew towards his premature old age, childless and lonely,--like the needle which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and ceasing to tremble, rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness of Pope's heart to have been able to love such a being. But we must love something. I agree with Mr. B. that _she_ 'could at no time have regarded _Pope personally_ with attachment,' because she was incapable of attachment; but I deny that Pope could not be regarded with personal attachment by a worthier woman. It is not probable, indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love with him as he walked along the Mall, or in a box at the opera, nor from a balcony, nor in a ball-room: but in society he seems to have been as amiable as unassuming, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure, his head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his eyes. He was adored by his friends--friends of the most opposite dispositions, ages, and talents--by the old and wayward Wycherley, by the cynical Swift, the rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorney-bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the 'cankered Bolingbroke.' Bolingbroke wept over him like a child; and Spence's description of his last moments is at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of Addison. The soldier Peterborough 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.

"Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood the sex well. Bolingbroke, 'a judge of the subject,' says Warton, thought his 'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' And even with respect to the grosser passion, which takes occasionally the name of '_romantic_,' accordingly as the degree of sentiment elevates it above the definition of love by Buffon, it may be remarked, that it does not always depend upon personal appearance, even in a woman. Madame Cottin was a plain woman, and might have been virtuous, it may be presumed, without much interruption. Virtuous she was, and the consequences of this inveterate virtue were that two different admirers (one an elderly gentleman) killed themselves in despair (see Lady Morgan's 'France'). I would not, however, recommend this rigour to plain women in general, in the hope of securing the glory of two suicides apiece. I believe that there are few men who, in the course of their observations on life, may not have perceived that it is not the greatest female beauty who forms the longest and the strongest passions.

"But, apropos of Pope.--Voltaire tells us that the Marechal Luxembourg (who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valière, the passion of Louis XIV. had an unsightly defect. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip the Second of Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry the Third of France, had each of them lost an eye; and the famous Latin epigram was written upon them, which has, I believe, been either translated or imitated by Goldsmith:

"'Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro, Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos: Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori, Sic tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'

"Wilkes, with his ugliness, used to say that 'he was but a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;' and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances. Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record, Vanessa's and Stella's.

"'Vanessa, aged scarce a score. Sighs for a gown of _forty-four_.'

He requited them bitterly; for he seems to have broken the heart of the one, and worn out that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants.

"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon Fortune. 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in Ægina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea; and near here there is a winged Love. The meaning of this is, that the success of men in love affairs depends more on the assistance of Fortune than the charms of beauty. I am persuaded, too, with Pindar (to whose opinion I submit in other particulars), that Fortune is one of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than her sisters.'--See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii. chap. 26 page 246. 'Taylor's Translation.'

"Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune and family (a Miss Strafford) runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid. If I recollect rightly, this remark was also repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm's Correspondence, seven or eight years ago.

"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes _profane_ levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,' and which so much shocks the tone of _Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of the period have come down to us; but those, such as they are--a few scattered scraps from Farquhar and others--are more indecent and coarse than any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &c. which naturally attempted to represent the manners and conversation of private life, are decisive upon this point; as are also some of Steele's papers, and even Addison's. We all know what the conversation of Sir R. Walpole, for seventeen years the prime-minister of the country, was at his own table, and his excuse for his licentious language, viz. 'that every body understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less common topics.' The refinement of latter days,--which is perhaps the consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilisation,--had not yet made sufficient progress. Even Johnson, in his 'London,' has two or three passages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison's 'Drummer' some indelicate allusions."

* * * * *

To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron, at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.

* * * * *

"Poor Scott is now no more. In the exercise of his vocation, he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly. Although several years my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the 'grammar-schule' (or, as the Aberdonians pronounce it, '_squeel_') of New Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely in his capacity of editor a few years ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. The moment was too tempting for many friends and for all enemies. At a time when all my relations (save one) fell from me like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my few friends became still fewer--when the whole periodical press (I mean the daily and weekly, _not_ the _literary_ press) was let loose against me in every shape of reproach, with the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of 'The Courier' and 'The Examiner,'--the paper of which Scott had the direction, was neither the last, nor the least vituperative. Two years ago I met him at Venice, when he was bowed in griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the bitterness of domestic privation. He was then earnest with me to return to England; and on my telling him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he replied to me,'that he and others had been greatly misled; and that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to excite them. Scott is no more, but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very considerable talents, and of great acquirements. He had made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy at some appointment which he had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevented the further extension (unless by a rapid run to Rome) of his travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would conduct him. Peace be with him! and may all such other faults as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him, as the little injury which he had done to one who respected his talents and regrets his loss."

* * * * *

In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus proceeds:--

"I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount?--to an impeachment of a liver complaint. 'I will tell it to the world,' exclaimed the learned Smelfungus: 'you had better (said I) tell it to your physician. 'There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students. It has been the complaint of the good and the wise and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Molière, was atrabilarious, and Molière himself saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs. But even were it so,

"'Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee; Folly--Folly's only free.' PENROSE.

"Mendelsohn and Bayle were at times so overcome with this depression as to be obliged to recur to seeing 'puppet-shows,' and 'counting tiles upon the opposite houses,' to divert themselves. Dr. Johnson, at times, 'would have given a limb to recover his spirits.'

"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is sufficient to convict him (Pope) of _gross licentiousness_.' Thus, out it comes at last--Mr. B. does accuse Pope of 'gross licentiousness,' and grounds the charge upon a poem. The _licentiousness_ is a 'grand peut-être,' according to the turn of the times being:--the _grossness_ I deny. On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy mingled with, at the same time, such true and intense passion. Is the 'Atys' of Catullus _licentious_? No, nor even gross; and yet Catullus is often a coarse writer. The subject is nearly the same, except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the victim.

"The 'licentiousness' of the story was _not_ Pope's,--it was a fact. All that it had of gross he has softened; all that it had of indelicate he has purified; all that it had of passionate he has beautified; all that it had of holy he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. 'I fear,' says he, 'that had the subject of 'Eloisa' fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given us but a _coarse_ draft of her passion.' Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts and the letters of 'Eloisa' he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)--all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production.

"Let us hear no more of this trash about 'licentiousness.' Is not 'Anacreon' taught in our schools?--translated, praised, and edited? and are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire, it will be time to denounce the moderns. 'Licentiousness!'--there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned or poured forth since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles by _reasoning_ upon the _passions_; whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism."

Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the circumstance.

"I agree with Mr. B. that the intention was to annoy him; but I fear that this was answered by his notice of the reception of the criticism. An anonymous writer has but one means of knowing the effect of his attack. In this he has the superiority over the viper; he knows that his poison has taken effect when he hears the victim cry;--the adder is _deaf_. The best reply to an anonymous intimation is to take no notice directly nor indirectly. I wish Mr. B. could see only one or two of the thousand which I have received in the course of a literary life, which, though begun early, has not yet extended to a third part of his existence as an author. I speak of _literary_ life only;--were I to add _personal_, I might double the amount of _anonymous_ letters. If he could but see the violence, the threats, the absurdity of the whole thing, he would laugh, and so should I, and thus be both gainers.

"To keep up the farce, within the last month of this present writing (1821), I have had my life threatened in the same way which menaced Mr. B.'s fame, excepting that the anonymous denunciation was addressed to the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. I append the menace in all its barbaric but literal Italian, that Mr. B. may be convinced; and as this is the only 'promise to pay' which the Italians ever keep, so my person has been at least as much exposed to 'a shot in the gloaming' from 'John Heatherblutter' (see Waverley), as ever Mr. B.'s glory was from an editor. I am, nevertheless, on horseback and lonely for some hours (_one_ of them twilight) in the forest daily; and this, because it was my 'custom in the afternoon,' and that I believe if the tyrant cannot escape amidst his guards (should it be so written), so the humbler individual would find precautions useless."

The following just tribute to my Reverend Friend's merits as a poet I have peculiar pleasure in extracting:--

"Mr. Bowles has no reason to 'succumb' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the author of 'The Missionary' may compete with the foremost of his contemporaries. Let it be recollected, that all my previous opinions of Mr. Bowles s poetry were _written_ long before the publication of his _last_ and best poem; and that a poet's last poem should be his best, is his highest praise. But, however, he may duly and honorably rank with his living rivals," &c. &c. &c.

Among various Addenda for this pamphlet, sent at different times to Mr. Murray, I find the following curious passages:--

"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.')

"'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 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 a hayfield. 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: 'you would have them hang down, sir, _somewhat poetical_.' Now 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_ 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 a country, since the principal forests have been 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 professors--in 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 connection 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. B * * 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_?

"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.

"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 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 can be hoped for in our literature. But it can _want_ them--he himself is a literature.

"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.

"The grand distinction of the under 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 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.

"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. * * 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 are now, 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. _Vulgarity_ is far worse than downright _black-guardism_; 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, 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.'"

* * * * *

In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W. Montague, he says--

"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 her 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 Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog _Harvey_, 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, May every fond pleasure that moment endear.' Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd, He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud, Till,' &c. &c.

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."

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