Generally entitled to the highest moral respect; to gentleness, peculiarly so to those he loved; with claims the most undisputed to tenderness, beyond all praise, with regard to his aged mother, and to those who never offended him; he appears to have been disingenuous; vain; sensibly alive to every thing he conceived detractive of his high merits; jealous, in this respect, to feverish irritation; and always, in his letters, in company, in solitude, having, if I may say so, his own darling portrait before him!

Constantly filled with the idea of his own excellence, he professed, and perhaps believed what he professed; but those professions were often directly contrary to facts, as, when he constantly declares his letters are artless effusions; whilst this critic himself will not deny, they are, for the most part, elaborate, elegant, and assiduously polished writings.

In addition to these failings he was, (as the Miscellanies published jointly by himself and SWIFT will amply prove,) to say nothing of numerous pas sages in his professed works, in the highest degree, indelicate.

His editor says," he seemed to have indulged a "libertine kind of love, which his moral feeling s "restrained." Who can deny this, who reads his letters to Lady MONTAGUE? These failings are admitted by many other biographers, who never

were suspected of unkindness; and the Letters printed by CURLL, compared with the originals, prove that he was, where self-love was concerned, never free from a mixture of duplicity and art.

These things Mr. BowLES has said. I have read the arguments in the Review; and, I repeat, I think the same now as I did before.

If Mr. B. has said, "the heart is sick," &c. I will add, at the risk of being thought a “ sentimental "critic," the heart Is SICK, to hear these charges so often repelled, and so often repeated!!

Let me, however, hope it will be the last time; and I therefore proceed further with my unwilling task. The Critic acknowledges Mr. BowLES has "the appearance, undoubtedly not the reality, of 'personal hostility!" We thank him for this acknowledgment; but how such an acknowledgment is consistent with the tone he afterwards assumes, I can hardly conceive.

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Perhaps, as he tells us, Mr. B. had "better never "have engaged" in an edition of POPE, I may be excused if I here say what I have heard on that subject. He was written to by the booksellers, Messrs. CADELL and DAVIES. He repeatedly declined such an office. Being pressed and encouraged by others, and trusting to common good sense and considerable various reading of the kind, and a determined adherence to truth, he undertook that reluctantly, which he would not undertake again, I believe,

B

even if he wanted bread. We believe this is the fact; but can he plead guilty to the charge of "attempting" to spread among new generations of readers the most "unjust" impressions of the poet and of the man?

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No! the charge is foul and false. Nor has he endeavoured, nor did I suppose it ever could be thought, nor do I believe now it can be so thought by any dispassionate judge, that in his Life of POPE he has sought to "surmise away every amiable quality of the man."

"(

What gratification could he have in "attempting "to depreciate excellence in art, or to VILIFY one "whose works were of no ordinary sort:" He might conscientiously and proudly say, To my knowledge, this I have never done! And I join, as seriously as this Critic, in hoping the world has not reached yet that "point of degradation;” though the deliberate charges brought against him almost tempt me to fear that the world may not stand so clear of reaching this point at present, at least whilst such a critic WRITES IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEW!!

He has not "calumniated" POPE, Sir, but you have "calumniated him." As to what he has said of POPE's character, Dr. JOHNSON has surely said as much concerning his duplicity, his turn for stratagem, and his indelicacy.

We now enter on the subject of his POETICAL

CHARACTER.

What was said in the Letter to CAMPBELL, satisfied, I believe, all impartial judges. The testimony which I know Mr. BowLES received, both public and private, induces me to think this.

Mr. CAMPBELL will not deny he misrepresented him; and more than one classical and eminent writer affirmed, after the Letter to CAMPBELL, he would "hear no more of the subject." I am tempted on this occasion to produce one testimony from a Poet of the very highest rank in his art, and also a friend of Mr. CAMPBELL's, which has been shewn to me. The note is short, but characteristic; and I leave it for you to make such comments as you have done with the plain fact about Lord BYRON.

"You have hit the nail in the head, and **** "on the head also.

"I remain your's affectionately, *****."

How, then, must the Editor have been disappointed to find, that not only what WARTON has said so repeatedly, has been said so repeatedly in vain, but that the arguments in the "Letter to "CAMPBELL," whilst their introduction is cautiously avoided, are sarcastically treated in this article, as if they had never been advanced.

For the hundred and ninetieth time, Dr JOHNSON's words are quoted. "If POPE is not a great

poet, where is a great poet to be found?"

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For the hundred and ninety-ninth time I answer, "no one ever denied POPE to be a poet, and a great poet; but he is not in the GREATEST class." Now again to encounter your flippancy. "Do you understand my meaning, Sir?" No one excluded, or attempted to exclude, POPE from being a poet, and a great one;" but he is not a poet in the same high order as MILTON is. "Do "you understand my meaning;" or are you prepared to say, that, in the highest flight of poetical imagination, POPE is of the same wing with MILTON? Why then all this clutter?

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Let us hear the critic again. "The Rev. "WM. L. BOWLES has distinguished himself in "this idle controversy;" answer, the Rev. Wм. L. BOWLES was "idly misrepresented." The controversy was not, therefore," idle" on his part, but necessary in self-defence. The opponent, however, was Mr. CAMPBELL, and writing to such an opponent was as pleasing as this toil is irksome to me. But we must 66

on."

Mr. B. had laid down a position, that "works of "Nature are, per se, more poetical than works of "art." What says Mr. CAMPBELL? "The "exquisite description of artificial manners and "habits is NOT LESS characteristic of genius than "the description of simple physical appearances." Upon this, which is undoubtedly true, the critic builds all his sophistry in p. 410 of the Review.