such light, and shade, and distance, as serve not only to heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformities. The poetry of Nature alone, exactly as she appears, is not sufficient to bear him out. The very sky of his painting is not the portrait of the sky of Nature; it is a composition of different skies, observed at different times, and not the whole copied from any particular day. And why? Because Nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are widely scattered, and occasionally displayed, to be selected with care, and gathered with difficulty.

It is

Of sculpture I have just spoken. the great scope of the sculptor to heighten Nature into heroic beauty, i. e. in plain English, to surpass his model. When Canova forms a statue, be takes a limb from one, a hand from another, a feature from a third, and a shape, it may be, from a fourth. probably at the same time improvSing upon all, as the Greek of old did in embodying his Venus.

Ask a portrait-painter to describe his agonies in accommodating the faces with which Nature and his sitters have crowded

"tower," it would have been as poetical as
if he had compared her to a tree.

is an instance of an artificial image to ex-
"The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex,"
is probable, did not compare his beloved's
press a moral superiority. But Solomon, it
but of its symmetry; and, making allowance
nose to a "tower" on account of its length,
for eastern hyperbole and the difficulty of
in nature, it is perhaps as good a figure as
finding a discreet image for a female nose
any other.

Art is not inferior to nature for poetical
diers a more noble object of view than the
purposes. What makes a regiment of sol-
their banners, and the art and artificial
same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses,
symmetry of their position and movements.
and a Roman toga, are more poetical than
A Highlander's plaid, a Mussulman's turban,
the tattooed or untattooed buttocks of a New-
Sandwich savage, although they were de-
like the "idiot in his glory."
scribed by William Wordsworth himself

I have seen as many mountains as most his painting-room to the principles of his of landsmen: and, to my mind, a large men, and more fleets than the generality art: with the exception of perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which convoy, with a few sail of the line to conhe can venture to give without shading duct them, is as noble and as poetical a much and adding more. Nature, exactly, prospect as all that inanimate nature can simply, barely Nature, will make no great ammiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch produce. I prefer the "mast of some great artist of any kind, and least of all a poet-fir or the Alpine tannen; and think that the most artificial, perhaps, of all artists in his very essence. With regard to na- what does the infinite superiority of "Falmore poetry has been made out of it. In mtural imagery, the poets are obliged to take some of their best illustrations from art. wrecks, consist? In his admirable applicaconer's Shipwreck, over all other shipYou say that a "fountain is as clear or tion of the terms of his art; in a poet-sailclearer than glass," to express its beauty-or's description of the sailor's fate. These

"O fons Bandusiæ, splendidior vitro!" In the speech of Mark Antony, the body of Casar is displayed, but so also is his mantle:

"You all do know this mantle,"

it

strength and reality of his poem. Why? very terms, by his application, make the because he was a poet, and in the hands of a poet art will not be found less ornamental than nature. It is precisely of his element, that Falconer fails; where in general nature, and in stepping out he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and "such branches of learning."

herself is moralized into an artificial image:

“Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through." If the poet had said that Cassius had run his fist through the rent of the mantle, would have had more of Mr. Bowles's "na-fame rests, the very appearance of Nature In Dyer's Grongar Hill, upon which his ture" to help it; but the artificial dagger is more poetical than any natural hand without it. In the sublime of sacred poetry, "Who is this that cometh from Edom? with dyed garments from Bozrah?" Would "the comer" be poetical without his "dyed garments?" which strike and startle the spectator, and identify the approaching object.

The mother of Sisera is represented listening for the "wheels of his chariot." Solomon, in his Song. compares the nose of his beloved to "a tower," which to us appears an eastern exaggeration. If he had said, that her stature was like that of a

"Thus is Nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.'

mis-use of which, from Milton, has rendered
And here also we have the telescope, the
Mr. Bowles so triumphant over Mr. Camp-

bell.

"So we mistake the future's face, Eyed through Hope's deluding glass." And here a word, en passant, to Mr.

Campbell:

"As yon summits, soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,

Which, to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear,
Still we tread the same coarse way-
The present's still a cloudy day."
Is not this the original of the far-famed
""Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue?"

To return once more to the sea. Let any one look on the long wall of Malamocco, which curbs the Adriatic, and pronounce between the sea and its master. Surely that Roman work (I mean Roman in conception and performance), which says to the ocean, "thus far shalt thou come, and no further," and is obeyed, is not less sublime and poetical than the angry waves which vainly break beneath it.

who has rendered the "game of cards poetical, is by far the greater of the two. But all this "ordering" of poets is purely arbitrary on the part of Mr. Bowles. There may or may not be, in fact, different orders of poetry, but the poet is always ranked according to his execution, and not according to his branch of the art.

Tragedy is one of the highest presumed orders. Hughes has written a tragedy, and a very successful one; Fenton another; and Pope none. Did any man, however.

will even Mr. Bowles himself rank Hughes and Fenton as poets above Pope? Was even Addison (the author of Cato), or Rowe (one of the higher order of dramatists, a far as success goes), or Young, or even OtMr. Bowles makes the chief part of a way and Southern, ever raised for a maship's poesy depend on the "wind:" then ment to the same rank with Pope in the why is a ship under sail more poetical than estimation of the reader or the critic, before a hog in a high wind? The hog is all na- his death or since? If Mr. Bowles will ture, the ship is all art, "coarse canvas," contend for classifications of this kind. let "blue bunting." and "tall poles ;" both are him recollect that descriptive poetry has violently acted upon by the wind, tossed been ranked as among the lowest branches here and there, to and fro; and yet nothing of the art, and description as a mere ornabut excess of hunger could make me look ment, but which should never form the upon the pig as the more poetical of the subject" of a poem. The Italians, with the two, and then only in the shape of a griskin. most poetical language, and the most fastiWill Mr. Bowles tell us that the poetry dious taste in Europe, possess now five of an aqueduct consists in the water which great poets, they say, Dante, Petrarch, it conveys? Let him look on that of Just- Ariosto, Tasso, and lastly Alfieri; and whom inian, on those of Rome, Constantinople, do they esteem one of the highest of these, Lisbon, and Elvas, or even at the remains of that in Attica.

We are asked "what makes the venerable towers of Westminster Abbey more poetical, as objects, than the tower for the manufactory of patent-shot, surrounded by the same scenery?" I will answer - the architecture. Turn Westminster Abbey, or Saint Paul's, into a powder-magazine, their poetry, as objects, remains the same: the Parthenon was actually converted into one by the Turks, during Morosini's Venetian siege, and part of it destroyed in consequence. Cromwell's dragoons stalled their steeds in Worcester cathedral; was it less poetical, as an object, than before? Ask a foreigner on his approach to London, what strikes him as the most poetical of the towers before him: he will point out St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, without, perhaps, knowing the names or associations of either, and pass over the "tower for patent-shot," not that, for any thing he knows to the contrary, it might not be the mausoleum of a monarch, or a Waterloo-column, or a Trafalgar-monument, but because its architecture is obviously inferior.

and some of them the very highest? Petrarch, the sonneteer: it is true that some of his Canzoni are not less esteemed, bat not more; who ever dreams of his Latin Africa?

Were Petrarch to be ranked according to the "order" of his compositions, where would the best of sonnets place him? With Dante and the others? No; but, as I have before said, the poet who executes best is the highest, whatever his department, and will ever be so rated in the world's esteem.

Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it is the cornerstone of his glory: without it, his odes would be insufficient for his fame. The depreciation of Pope is partly founded upon a false idea of the dignity of his order of poetry, to which he has partly contributed by the ingenuous boast,

"That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long. But stoop'd to Truth, and moralized his song.” He should have written “rose to truth" In my mind the highest of all poetry is ethic al poetry, as the highest of all earthly To the question, "whether the descrip- objects must be moral truth. Religion does tion of a game of cards be as poetical, sup-not make a part of my subject; it is some posing the execution of the artists equal, thing beyond human powers, and has as a description of a walk in a forest?" it failed in all human hands except Milton's may be answered, that the materials are and Dante's, and even Dante's powers certainly not equal; but that "the artist," are involved in his delineation of hum

ical; he has made more of it than another could, but it is beyond him and all men.

passions, though in supernatural circum- | Milton is as absurd (and in fact, blasphemstances. What made Socrates the greatest ous) in putting material lightnings into the of men? His moral truth-his ethics. What hands of the Godhead as in giving him proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly hands at all. less than his miracles? His moral precepts. The artillery of the demons was but the And if ethics have made a philosopher the first step of his mistake, the thunder the first of men, and have not been disdained next, and it is a step lower. It would have as an adjunct to his Gospel by the Deity been fit for Jove, but not for Jehovah. The himself, are we to be told that ethical poet-subject altogether was essentially unpoetry, 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 Eneid. Virgil knew this; he did not order them to be burnt.

"The proper study of mankind is man."

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 of the passion? In that case Dryden envied 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

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 apthe 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 Souman'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 as a 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 also 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 highest 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 Cowper? 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?

"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 And now that we have heard the Catholic maintains his station, they will reach their reproached with envy, duplicity, licenti- own by falling. They have raised a mosque ousness, avarice-what was the Calvinist? by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest He attempted the most atrocious of crimes architecture; and, more barbarous than the in the Christian code, viz. suicide and barbarians from whose practice I have bor why? because he was to be examined rowed the figure, they are not contented whether he was fit for an office which he with their own grotesque edifice, unless seems to wish to have made a sinecure. His they destroy the prior and purely beautifal connexion with Mrs. Unwin was pure fabric which preceded, and which shames enough, for the old lady was devout, and them and theirs for ever and ever. I shall he was deranged; but why then is the in- be told that amongst those I have been (or firm and then elderly Pope to be reproved it may be, still am) conspicuous-true, and for his connexion with Martha Blount? I am ashamed of it. I have been amongst 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 accumu

lated upon Pope in similar speculations. Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortunate time for his works.

the builders of this Babel, attended by 4 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 pretend to rival, or even surpass him. Soone 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 Sobo! There are those who will believe this, and Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying en-those who will not. You, sir, know how tirely upon his own arguments, has, in far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, person or by proxy, brought forward the not only in the short work intended fat names of Southey and Moore. Mr. Southey publication, and in private letters which can "agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his never be published, has or has not been invariable principles of poetry." The least the same. I look upon this as the declining

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,

Mr.

BYRON. Postscriptum.-Long as this letter has grown, I find it necessary to append_a postscript,-if possible, a short one. 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." 1 say nothing against this opinion. But of what "order," according to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns's poems? There are his opus magnum, "Tam O'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 learning of mankind, divested of party-cabals, temporary fashions, and national pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious that

poet? Does he anatomize his character, moral and poetical? Does he present us with his faults and with his foibles? Does he sneer at his feelings and doubt of his