A Reply to an Unsentimental Sort of Critic

I wish you to think he now appears before you, and calls on you as his JURY. Mr. MURRAY has, perhaps, his Life of POPE: will you do him the favour to look over it?

Mr. MURRAY also, who I believe is kind as courteous, would procure you, or perhaps you would not object to paying half-a-crown to get, a Letter written by this Editor to Mr. CAMPBELL, and published by Messrs. LONGMAN and REES.

When you have read the Quarterly Review, for October, containing an account of these two publications, and are prepared to believe that "the Life of POPE is the essence of calumny and "spleen;" that the "ravings there are those of "an hypocondriacal Recluse ;" that the writer's only object was to to "vilify;" and "to sur"mise away every amiable characteristic of the

man;" when you are, moreover, prepared to believe, that in the Letter to CAMPBELL, concerning the "Invariable Principles of Poetry," what he has said of the "SUBJECT" of a poem, and the " EXECUTION” of it, is as "nebulous as the dreams "of a Muggletonian or Sweedenbourg" after your minds have been thus excited; in the spirit of justice or of truth, I would beg you to cast your eyes over the said writings. I would, on the part of Mr. BowLES, constitute you, in the very head-quarter, if I may say so, of that Journal * See Quarterly Review.

which has fulminated its

nated its report, his fair, his honest, his honourable, and his IMPARTIAL JURY!

In the mean time I solicit your attention on the part of the said editor of POPE's Works, and writer of the Letter on the Principles of Poetry, to the following remarks on the criticism in the Quarterly; begging your pardon, if the mode of treatment should have wrung from any "one of the family" of the BOWLESES a single expression you might think coarse.

But I trust this language, and even the name of grocer," (which I have used without the least disrespect to any honest man in that line of business,) will not be thought applied impertinently; forasmuch as a "shop," that beautiful specimen of "in-door nature," is an object more pleasant to contemplate than a mad-house!!*

In his "shop," then, let this Reviewer, this lover of the "sublime and beautiful" of in-door nature, indulge his own poetical and romantic reveries, till the pipe in his own mouth becomes, in his glowing imagination, that of THEOCRITUs; the old ledgerbook, the Georgicks of VIRGIL; a grove of green canisters, a grove of green trees; the dingy shopboy, a shepherd of Arcadia; and a lake of brown treacle, in half-a-hogshead by the window, more enchanting to the view than the lakes of Cumberland, with their mountains and woods shining to the

* See what is said of a "provincial" editor, whose imagination is diseased, and intellect crazed, by living in the country!

glorious sun-set! Let him enjoy all these delightful landscapes of" in-door nature;" but let him not affect insolently to talk of "OUR EXPLAINING, FOR "TWO THOUSAND YEARS," beauties of another nature, which he and his purblind family have neither "the eye to see," nor" the heart to feel."

"One of the Family of the BOWLESES.”

REPLY, &c.

T HE first impression which the criticism on "SPENCE'S Anecdotes," in the Quarterly Review for October, excited in my mind was regret that such an article, so false in its charges, so flippant in its style, so destitute of argument, and so abhorrent from the liberal feelings of an educated gentleman, should have been admitted in so respectable a publication. When what affected my relation Mr. BowLES more immediately, was taken into consideration, I felt greater regret that such a coarse, but I hope to prove, futile attack should have passed the eye of 'an editor, so distinguished by acuteness as well as candour as Mr. GIFFARD.

Though this criticism is ostensibly on SPENCE'S Anecdotes of POPE, as the last editor of the

works of that illustrious Poet receives his full share of notice, and as the observations which are particularly directed to him in that character, appear neither fair nor well supported, I, as "one of the Family," shall endeavour to make some reply: and before I have done, I have little doubt but that I shall convince every dispassionate reader how ill this critic has performed his task. I hope I shall be excused, if, in repelling sneers and sarcasms, I use a somewhat coarser manner in reply, than is either consonant to the habits or dispositions of our Family.

do not fear to say, great

The Letter to CAMPBELL is that of a gentleman to a gentleman. Mr. CAMPBELL had written, I as his as his talents are, ignorantly on the question, as far as Mr. B.'s opinion of Pope was concerned. He had mis-stated his arguments; he had supported his own by proofs which turned against himself; and he had attributed to Mr. BoWLES conduct, with respect to the

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